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Yep, they are, and "reading comprehension required" - I'm not asking them to eval code at runtime, either. They are already well-defined and do what they do. My plotting tool needs the ability for the researcher to ask for things - axis mappings from one or more data sources - the programmer could not anticipate, and whatever the language, Glade, Gnuplot, and perl itself are all written in C - but, and this is important - I didn't have to do it.
This is for parameter sweeping a fusion reactor I'm working with, and for example, fusions/second is a cool thing to know vs all the other parameters, but so is "output vs input" for both scientific and real world breakthrough Q calculations. Since I'm also doing ion trap kinds of things, the RF frequencies, levels, DC biases, you name it, all might want to be plotted vs "how well did that work" so I can run all day, then interpret data all night. Without having to drop back into programming at all, other than to select presets and once in awhile set up a new one. If you care, you can see an example of the resulting GUI and some data here: http://www.coultersmithing.com...

Wow, it's been so long it took me awhile to find it on my own site:
http://www.coultersmithing.com...
It's been trouble free. I just use it to make 120v to run a RV battery charger for the main house.
I haven't used it much as I finally got "enough" panels to run the place, at least in conserve mode, even in mostly cloudy sky conditions.

There are a lot more than this, but I'll leave these here - not that they are "pure" - some are just teaching existing knowledge and encouraging new people. My "thing" is non-thermal fusion so...the second one of these is my site. http://www.fusor.net/board/ind... - fusor.org, helping beginners, some new science. http://www.coultersmithing.com... My site for a little more advanced user (no, I'm not pimping for members unless you're a super content contributor). Neither accept money or show ads....

Super caps are neat for their application but suggesting they are useful for this is a stretch. It seems from RTFA that they think 5 Wh/Kg is comparable to 128 Wh/Kg for Li-ion . Also the incorporation into silicon presents serious issues that never get resolved in less than 10 years. No sane company is going to incorporate this in a line of CPUs and then find out that after a year they like to release their energy in one single burst. I suggest we test them in 747s first to make sure they are safe and do not pose any risk to my CPU.
Thanks for the link , looks interesting. Hands-on scientists like Science/Engineering/Tech forums

Trader myself. Mod parents up - they are correct. Check the Knight trading debacle: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=328&p=3924&hilit=knight#p3924
The deployed their test harness instead of their HFT bots for 44 min and lost half a billion in that time - now out of business. I made good money during that time using human judgement. You can often catch an accidental high bid or low ask from an HFT, when they screw up, which is fairly often, as well.

Though with no intention I know of to become a product. Many page detailed write up of how this has been done with mostly junkyard parts, yet to great accuracy on my site (I didn't do this, one of the other members did). 6 pages of just how Jerry Biehler did it here: (with pix and videos) http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=78&hilit=laser+cutter When hackaday linked this last month, we got slashdotted (but our servers handled it OK).

You can hate on "government motors" all ya want - They did a great job on this one, and unlike the haters, I'm getting that bailout money back in the form of something pretty darn cool. Could it just be sour grapes? Or is it all astroturfing by people with errrm, illiquid investments in the oil patch who are desperate?

More here: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=48

Don't get me wrong - I admire Elon and his projects quite a bit. They're just behind. A big company might take longer to get the word, but once they get in motion, look out - I couldn't get a Tesla, or afford one, but this is in my driveway now. And I promise to exit the car within the three weeks it takes to catch on fire after being total lossed sideways into a pole. I'd rather not starve to death before burning.

Well, I belong to, and help promote a large crowd of amateurs who actually produce very measurable fusion in their home labs (see the forums at my sig, and elsewhere, fusor.net). Some of them are polywell believers. There's just one problem - NO ONE has demonstrated convincingly any real fusion out of a polywell, ever. We build some pretty doggone fancy stuff, and we even get things like 3He neutron detectors, serious instrumentation to prove it - my fusor even activates elements to see the radioactive results from all the neutrons it makes. Bussard, on the other hand, only tried one dirt cheap (particularly in the context of the money he spent compared to us) plastic neutron detector, and didn't even get conclusive results - with thousands of times the money and time we've all spent at this. I won't say polywell is wrong (but I easily could - they are trying to make a magnetic monopole -GoodLuckWithThat), or that fusors are the way (they probably aren't). but the real data says that....well, go look for yourself but ask real people really doing one or the other - some are easy to find, some aren't (because there aren't any?). I just wasted a couple hours looking at this crap. Anyone who can't instantly pick out a large number of VERY obvious flaws in this guy's talk is NOT invited to my forums. http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=544

I do nuclear research for a living in a lab I own, check my site for some info. Potassium isn't so hot, it's barely out of a low background in my lab on a very nice 6" NaI:Tl gamma spectrometer, and since you eat it daily, that's a good thing indeed. Our geiger counters can usually not see a jar of KNO3 out of the cosmic background -- partly because the sensing mechanism in a geiger tube doesn't see gammas all that well -- you want a scintillator based detector for that.

Here's some threads on detectors: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=11

Most nuclear waste products and fuel produce either beta (electrons) or alpha (He nuclei) which geiger counters see quite well, especially the thin window types. That's what you want, and many are available or the parts for them, on places like ebay. The tiny ones based on Russian tubes the size of a pencil aren't that great, lousy quantum efficiency, but that's not hardly a blanket condemnation of them, since even a relatively numb sensor will still tell you "you're going to die" a long time before you're in trouble. The ones to really avoid are the ion chamber based old CDV models for civil defense -- they won't read jack on a box of rocks (U ore) so hot they'll burn you.

It's not hard for any EE type hacker to make a counter if you can find the tubes surplus, which is how we do it. Plenty of good Russian new-old-stock out there cheap, and all it needs is an appropriate power supply in the few hundred volt range, a series resistor in the 1 meg region, and a coupling cap in the hundred pf region to be able to drive cmos logic directly -- the rest is left to the student. We use inexpensive CCFL inverters and fast diodes and caps to do the HV supply -- the older ones are quite good for this, the new ones with dimming aren't what's wanted. You can control the HV output by regulating the LV input to the CCFL with a simple 3 terminal regulator - they run all the way down to about 1 volt - even the 12 volt input types, and the output scales with the input.

It's true that a decent geiger counter or the better "gamma scout" are hard to find right now, the demand way outstripped the supply on the event in Japan. There are other issues with the TSA and others buying up all the good detectors for neutrons (rare He isotope based) and so forth - but there's a lot of used stuff around that's still quite good if you look. Just avoid the old civil defense stuff and dosimeter pens -- they really stink. I've had one of those pens in a box of U ore for months and it's barely started to read at all.

A typical 2" diameter window pancake geiger tube will read about 100 cpm here on cosmic background for reference. A smoke detector source right on it will be in the 10k cpm range, as will a little bit of yellowcake in a test sample. A CS-137 cal sample will read quite high 14k cpm (it is rated at .25 microcurie)-- and those are considered "safe" to have in the lab, outside of a lead pig.

Yes, there is plenty of controversy about what constitutes "safe" and there are even people who believe in hormesis -- that a little is good for you. Whatever your personal religion -- don't get alpha or beta sources inside you (eat them) because then you are going to absorb 100% of the radiation they produce, and most often they sequester in some bad place for that. I would point out that moderate amounts of radiation mainly increase risk of cancer in the out years -- so if you're already old, maybe not such a worry as if you're pretty young. I might get cancer from the radiation I've been exposed to - but it will have to reach down into my grave to get me 30 years out.

I don't know if I'm "that guy on slashdot last week" that built a fusor last week, but I am a guy on slashdot who does build fusors and other fusion devices for the last few years, and I even run a discussion board about it to help and encourage others to do so. It's not a hobby for idiots (various parts are dangerous) or the impatient, or people with no funds, but it's a lot of fun for those who do it.

FWIW, my best output (continuous) is on the order of 5 microwatts fusion energy, quite a lot of which goes into energetic neutrons. If I were to use tritium instead of just deuterium, I'd expect about 100 times that. Doesn't sound like much does it? Well, it's enough to make silver radioactive enough to count about 2000 cpm on a geiger with a five minute exposure. Or enough to kill you if you expose yourself to the radiation output (which also has a lot of gamma rays) for too long.

I think, but am not sure, that I hold the record for non-funded (eg I paid for all this myself) fusion work, and beat out quite a few government and university efforts hands down. I fund the effort via trading stocks, as does my partner in this particular crime.

My forum is in my sig. Here's a thread on a recent run I did: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&p=1836#p1836

This one has a picture of the side I don't sit on while it's running. It's where most of the radiation comes out. http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=309

And of course, everyone wants to see the eye candy, so here it is: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=246

Be aware, we've been attacked by bots lately, and I only allow new members to join if they use obviously real human first and last names....by the time I make the captcha hard enough for the robots to fail, so do the humans, sigh. The site should otherwise withstand a slashdotting, and has in the past.
Bring it on!

I don't know if I'm "that guy on slashdot last week" that built a fusor last week, but I am a guy on slashdot who does build fusors and other fusion devices for the last few years, and I even run a discussion board about it to help and encourage others to do so. It's not a hobby for idiots (various parts are dangerous) or the impatient, or people with no funds, but it's a lot of fun for those who do it.

FWIW, my best output (continuous) is on the order of 5 microwatts fusion energy, quite a lot of which goes into energetic neutrons. If I were to use tritium instead of just deuterium, I'd expect about 100 times that. Doesn't sound like much does it? Well, it's enough to make silver radioactive enough to count about 2000 cpm on a geiger with a five minute exposure. Or enough to kill you if you expose yourself to the radiation output (which also has a lot of gamma rays) for too long.

I think, but am not sure, that I hold the record for non-funded (eg I paid for all this myself) fusion work, and beat out quite a few government and university efforts hands down. I fund the effort via trading stocks, as does my partner in this particular crime.

My forum is in my sig. Here's a thread on a recent run I did: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&p=1836#p1836

This one has a picture of the side I don't sit on while it's running. It's where most of the radiation comes out. http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=309

And of course, everyone wants to see the eye candy, so here it is: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=246

Be aware, we've been attacked by bots lately, and I only allow new members to join if they use obviously real human first and last names....by the time I make the captcha hard enough for the robots to fail, so do the humans, sigh. The site should otherwise withstand a slashdotting, and has in the past.
Bring it on!

I don't know if I'm "that guy on slashdot last week" that built a fusor last week, but I am a guy on slashdot who does build fusors and other fusion devices for the last few years, and I even run a discussion board about it to help and encourage others to do so. It's not a hobby for idiots (various parts are dangerous) or the impatient, or people with no funds, but it's a lot of fun for those who do it.

FWIW, my best output (continuous) is on the order of 5 microwatts fusion energy, quite a lot of which goes into energetic neutrons. If I were to use tritium instead of just deuterium, I'd expect about 100 times that. Doesn't sound like much does it? Well, it's enough to make silver radioactive enough to count about 2000 cpm on a geiger with a five minute exposure. Or enough to kill you if you expose yourself to the radiation output (which also has a lot of gamma rays) for too long.

I think, but am not sure, that I hold the record for non-funded (eg I paid for all this myself) fusion work, and beat out quite a few government and university efforts hands down. I fund the effort via trading stocks, as does my partner in this particular crime.

My forum is in my sig. Here's a thread on a recent run I did: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=40&p=1836#p1836

This one has a picture of the side I don't sit on while it's running. It's where most of the radiation comes out. http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=309

And of course, everyone wants to see the eye candy, so here it is: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=246

Be aware, we've been attacked by bots lately, and I only allow new members to join if they use obviously real human first and last names....by the time I make the captcha hard enough for the robots to fail, so do the humans, sigh. The site should otherwise withstand a slashdotting, and has in the past.
Bring it on!

Admire mine here: http://www.coultersmithing.com/OldStuff/kart.html I did this so long ago I'm two websites, a new business, and a forum since then. And yes, I still drive it every day, it's handy and did I say fun? Swaps ends with the best of them on a limited traction road....mini cooper claims go-kart handling, but this is far better....and it will climb almost straight up. Other than the body work, does this look a little familiar? Sure does to me. Paid about $2k for this, yeah, they can make them for 10 times that, duh.

But at a few million fusions/second/kilowatt -- good luck making a mole of He of any isotope in your lifetime. For those who don't do chemistry a mole is 6.02 e 23 atoms, more or less, or 22.4 liters of gas at STP. Lessee, 23 - 6 is 17, so roughtly speaking, at current production rates you need say 6 e17 seconds of running to get a mole or so of output gas. call it 1.9 e-10 years per mole, running at a kw input with current tech at its best. As we say here, GoodLuckWithThat.

You can see more about fusors here:

My homepage (we also have a forum linked on the front page, but it's invite-only)

and

The open source fusor forum

It works well, and we designed the database schema for extensibility, normalized and all that. (and the thing is growing and adapting well to changes, but that DB design is all important to make that not so hard)

Looks like the best plan for stuffing a lot of data away and finding it later on. www.coultersmithing.com will show you a bit of what we are up to here. Or our forum at Science/Engineering/Tech forums

I'll help with that marketing -- I'm no stranger to nuclear issues as my name here implies. I would gladly store and guard a few drums of really hot (the shorter half life stuff) waste here -- I'd put thermocouples or the moral equivalent into it and supplement my already existing off the grid alternative power system nicely. And have a nice source of things to calibrate my gamma ray spectrometer from. As has been pointed out -- it wouldn't take that many guys like me to handle all the hot stuff there is, and it will go dead fairly quickly anyway. See http://www.coultersmithing.com/

In fact, our open source fusor forum, http://www.fusor.net/board/index.php?site=fusor doesn't even know this guy, or I don't recognize him, anyway -- we usually use our real names there. It's been around for quite awhile too -- if you go there look at the archives and see for yourself. Not only does this represent a dupe, and not to take anything away from this guy, he's far from alone, and unless he is making over 2 million neutrons/second on less than 5w power input, he's not even caught up to the current hobby record, which as far as I know, I hold -- some of it shown at http://www.coultersmithing.com/ , my site (which can take a slashdotting much better than the forum can, which is "some guy" hosting from home -- the perfessor we call him and are grateful. If you go there you'll find many more than 38 folks with working fusors I think. The pic in the BBC article looks in fact like one copied from one of our (main) forum members fusors, Richard Hull (see wikipedia on that). Again, not taking anything away from the guy -- the more the merrier -- hope he catches up with the rest of us at some point, as we have refined the Farnsworth concept quite a bit over the years, and made much more progress than is normally reported, because what funding is done is either to ITER with their non working approach, or NIF, which is really a weapons stewardship test device. Mod me up, damnit -- this is sick, we've been doing this for decades and are pretty good at it, and nearly all of us have done it *purely* with our own earned bucks, not taking contributions from people dumb enough to donate for no return. I guess we mostly care more about the science than being 15-minute famous. And most of us (but not I) have done it for a lot less money than that. We have a few high school students who have made working fusors on high school student spare change kinds of money. I had the bucks, so I went whole hog and do a real science approach myself, but I am the exception, not the rule. Strictly speaking it's against regulations to make a device that makes either X rays or Neutrons without some paperwork, so that's another incorrect statement, and many hobby fusors make amounts that would be dangerous if we weren't careful, and part of what we do on our forum is mention what we have "activated" eg made our own radioisotopes via neutrons from fusors.

I did some EEG work while working on a prosthetic for deaf infants -- how to even tell if it was having any effect? No one had looked into that, it was wide open and easy to make real progress at.

I got a nice telescope and camera setup, and did do some stuff I thought was worthwhile in digital signal processing to get rid of some atmospherics. And it was fun.

Now I work on nuclear fusion full time. Since it's my time, my money, my lab, I can do things no governement or university can, the most important one of which is turn on a dime every time I learn something new. My results are at worst "competitive" with all comers in the particular area I'm working in too -- all that money hasn't bought them much progress as it hasn't been spent wisely.

If in today's science, a lab grunt brought a potential Fleming a contaminated petri dish, they'd get harsh words, a do over if not a reprimand, and we'd not find penicillin.

In today's science, if an apple hits you on the head, you build a roof or move away from the tree, you don't try and figure out why.

Yes, the chances of one person doing something really earth shaking are about like they've always been, but that means -- there's a chance. Einstein was mentioned, but there are many others going back and forward in time from that, quite a few actually, and most of them didn't have the gear I have or can get cheap surplus. What was "rocket science" in the 30's is now around on ebay for pennies.

Think of the greats who would have *killed* to get the scientific gear we can get today for cheap, and how much low hanging fruit there might be as science rushed on to the next sexy thing, leaving behind quite a lot for the button sorter types -- who wouldn't realize something new happening if it killed them.

And here on Slashdot, we can afford to remember that rocket science started in the middle kingdom some thousands of years ago, and I'd bet some of it was done by what we call drunken rednecks today.

It's a matter of perspective.

My site shows some of what I can do -- go ahead and bang on me, my ISP boasts they can take a Slashdotting, lets see if they can. You should be nice to

these guys, as that's a home-class server on a not very fat pipe funded by the guy who shares it with us, but it's a group of pretty smart guys who *are right now* doing things in advance of the big boys. If you are clever, you might not need billions and big buildings to find things out that are useful. So, the word is, go for it.
I had to spend most of a lifetime getting ready -- you know, money, knowledge, experience, equipment, all that mundane crap. But it was worth it for me, and should be to you too.

They'll have to save most of the money for bribes in the crash test. I own a 200 mph "car" myself, which you can see at http://www.coultersmithing.com/kart.html I converted a kart you can get at Northern Hydraulics to fit adult humans and to be usable in the rain. Anybody half co-ordinated can do this. The kart has a roll cage and a frame (all chrome moly) and has passed an accidental full rollover test at top speed of about 50 mph. It drives like a little porsche and is WAY too much fun. These could be sold for the price of an ATV or less, making them disposable. BUT -- and this is the game I'm having fun with now -- just try to get plates on it. At the milage it gets, no way it'd fail a pollution test, and it's been crash tested by me, but not by the guys you have to pay a million bucks a shot to. I can't afford that, so I'm arrainging to be arrested on TV so I can get some politicos to come on and explain about those laws that make it impossible to actually start competing with the big guys. Why can't I have my 200mpg car? It's not a technnical problem, it's a legal one.

This even in cases where the research as government funded and done say, in 1935 -- author long dead, unknown copyright status and so on, but the society or publisher feels entitled to get this fee. I'd go bankrupt in no time buying lots of articles that I can't tell contain the information I need from the abstract. This is ridiculous, does not advance science (as many of these societies and publishers state in their mottos) and is surely a major profit center for someone. I cannot afford to subscribe to all these journals and so on, I need some money left over for equipment! I suppose larger outfits do subscribe for the benefit of their employees, but this is yet another case of big vs small with small getting the shaft. Have fun at http://www.coultersmithing.com/