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...a boy scout built a working breeder from junk he scrounged (for a merit badge no less!); why not two physics majors?

I am in high school and very interested in physics and it would be an awsome project to work on something like this.

Where have I heard this type of thing before?

You may think this is the ultimate chick "magnet," but personally, I think that even if fusion reactors only get a second place in the science fair these days, you should try to build a Tokomak. There's just something sexy about how they look.

After the fair, no matter how you do, you can take a promising date to see it, dim the lights and crank it up and see if sub-nuclear particles are all that get excited. Who knows, maybe you'll finally discover the joys of practical applications for combinatorial physics, where books have only given you theories to feed your fantasies...

(moderators: please don't "nuke" me too badly on this one)

What happened last time? Well, Boston just had a huge flap over whether to conduct classes in Spanish. The answer? None yet but here's more background. And ebonics. Everybody remember ebonics?

Not only is the question evolving, but so is the answer. We recognise that not everyone speaks- or writes- the same language. But people are bilingual without meaning to be. How many people have included an HTML tag in a document? Raise your hands. Be honest. How many people have tried to use tags in a limited-to-plain-text format? Because that's what school english is: it's no smileys, no phone text, use the language and get graded on how well you do with it. No shortcuts, no abbreviations, no shorthand notes. (Remember shorthand?)

How many people can go from writing a full document in HTML to having a verbal conversation in regular speech?

We are already doing it, folks. And we should require of the kids that they live up to the standard: don't mix codes unless they're compatible. Is school english the same as street english? NO! Do we sound different when we call home than when we answer the phone at work? Yes, if we're in an old-school business environment- and if we do, we frequently get recognised for it, no matter what our middle managers can't spell. What's happening is that excellence is having an even greater field for visibility: the more they can't spell or speak in one coherent language at a time, the more those of us who are multilingual and fluent in our many fields look great by comparison.

YES. Grade them accroding to what's required. And acknowledge that there are places where this is acceptable, and that if they don't even know what they're writing, they aren't paying enough attention. They need to know what language they're using, and they need to know how to keep their codes clean. (by the way, this coment is being written by someone whose code is awful, and i'm having to clean it up, too.)

And here is an article to really bend your brain over just how much argument has existed just within the 'what's plain english?' bracket over the years.

For the record, i found a way to keep my Handheld/PDA graffiti out of my handwriting. I use my left hand for their writing system, and my right for regular script. This would probably be more difficult for someone who isn't ambidextrous, but with a little practice works just fine. Picked up the tip from a neuropsych buddy with whom I had a long debate over brain centers and speech.

You might not discover cold fusion in your garage, bug you might create a breeder reactor in your garden shed after school.

I'm not saying that oil is GOOD, only that Ethanol is not the panacea many make it out to be, and it carries problems as severe as oil. The world needs a much different energy source, but that is a whole 'nother topic.

Ali

So, given the inclination and funds, I could, as an american, obtain things like rocket launchers, and RPGs?

What's the stance in the U.S. on privately owned nuclear ICBM's?

Privately owned ICBMs are probably forbidden as unlicensed destructive devices. However, you could build your own breeder reactor as one enterprising teenager did in Detroit in 1995. As far as I could tell from the article having your own reactor per se is not illegal. He got into trouble for contaminating the neighborhood and not handling the waste properly. Kids, definitely do not try this at home or in the backyard.

Camille Paglia writes for Interview magazine now. Although Interview articles generally aren't up on the web, selected Paglia articles are available here, including some analysis of September 11.

TOmorrow I'm gonna submit a story about how Linux kernal 2.0 was finally released... :-)

In our view the copyright statutes, while protecting the owner of the copyright in his right to multiply and sell his production, do not create the right to impose, by notice, such as is disclosed in this case, a limitation at which the book shall be sold at retail by future purchasers, with whom there is no privity of contract. This conclusion is reached in view of the language of the statute, read in the light of its main purpose [210 U.S. 339, 351] to secure the right of multiplying copies of the work,-a right which is the special creation of the statute. True, the statute also secures, to make this right of multiplication effectual, the sole right to vend copies of the book, the production of the author's thought and conception. The owner of the copyright in this case did sell copies of the book in quantities and at a price satisfactory to it. It has exercised the right to vend. What the complainant contends for embraces not only the right to sell the copies, but to qualify the title of a future purchaser by the reservation of the right to have the remedies of the statute against an infringer because of the printed notice of its purpose so to do unless the purchaser sells at a price fixed in the notice. To add to the right of exclusive sale the authority to control all future retail sales, by a notice that such sales must be made at a fixed sum, would give a right not included in the terms of the statute, and, in our view, extend its operation, by construction, beyond its meaning, when interpreted with a view to ascertaining the legislative intent in its enactment.

The supreme court likes taking the side of the consumer in cases involving the doctine of first sale

From the Tap Room.

From Scientific American.

And one from Science News.

Now really, how would any of this classify you ask? It is accessible to students (at least I recall accessing a fair amount of it), it changed the way people think (at least about beer, and your eyes are opened to the wonderous presence of physics in everyday life), and if all else fails, you can usually drink your experimental supplies, which would be a damn risky proposition in many other experimental situations....

Now how can you honestly say D.I.Y. is dead when young boy scouts are still doing things like this for their badges =)

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/n1782_v297/ 21281407/p1/article.jhtml

(on a serious note, I agree with the article - and it's a very sad trend to see happen)

DIY nuclear reactor, no joke.

He almost turned his backyard into a federal toxic waste site, and shortened his life by 5 years or so, but hey, it almost worked! :-)

Smoke detecters have Americium in them, lantern mantles have thorium, if I recall correctly.

You really don't want to turn out like this guy, do you?

For purposes of this section, the Software means the FrontPage Web components, including the MSNBC news headline component, the MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quote component, and the MSN Search component.

It's not my fault that I'm smarter than you.

SAAB had a similar concept known as the vehicle exhaust recirculation concept. It was an experiment to address the fact that the majority of pollution given off by modern automobiles occurs at startup, before the catalytic converter reaches the critical temperature needed to properly "scrub" the exhaust of its pollutants.

SAAB's response was to develop a system that would route the exhaust of the car for the first 25 seconds into a balloon. After 25 seconds, the catalytic converter SAAB was using had heated sufficiently to properly scrub the exhaust, so the balloon's exhaust contents would then be filtered back through the intake manifold into the engine to be run through it again. The flow is regulated so as not to affect engine performance.

The net result from this system was lower emissions than the US Ultra Low Emission Vehicle (ULEV) standard, but SAAB hasn't announced any plans to put it into commercial use.

There is an article with more details here. Once the page loads, you can quickly get to the SAAB information by searching for "SAAB".

The archaea (or archaebacteria) are an interesting group of organism. They look like bacteria, but are more closely related to plants and animals than to bacteria, even though they have the circular DNA of bacteria rather than the straight DNA of animals/plants. The can also survive in a remarkable range of hostile environments. Two interesting pages on them are:

• Domain Archaea
• Recent excitement about the Archaea.(Archaebacteria)

http://www.findarticles.com/m1111/n1782_v297/21281 407/p1/article.jhtml

Just a fun article . . .

That's right. The Russians are kicking themselves for not introducing the Radioaktivo backyard nuclear reactor kit for kids back in the '50s, after that whole Chernobyl thing.

Since the purpose of the laws appears to be to protect the interests of Canadians...

Protect which Canadians?

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission protects the Canadian cable companies and satellite TV companies from competition by U.S. satellite TV companies. CRTC regulations prevent the Canadian public from seeing many U.S. channels like HBO that are only available from DirecTV.

The debate is over who will deliver U.S. television shows to Canadian homes. Right now the law favors Canadian corporations. Perversely, this approach creates a market for pirate decoders of DirecTV, which the law was designed to exclude.

"I wish the book publishers would start reprinting more books about good children who sit still and devote themselves to watching Disney cartoons. If kids must get off of the couch, they might devote themselves to collecting Disney beanbag dolls or maybe those plastic action figures for Disney characters."

Hell yes!

We all *know* those MSC kids would have grown up to be cyberterrorists, drug dealers, money launderers and child pornographers (did I leave anything out?). They might even have done things like code free and open operating systems, in an attempt to destroy prefectly good American institutions like Microsoft; disrupted the smooth functioning of universities like MIT, with so-called "harmelss yet educational" acts of violence and danger, as documented here, here and here; or even subverted the messages of honest hard-working advertisers through blatantly anti-capitalist and possibly Communist-supported billboard vandalism! And they would have tried to justify it with names like "hacking" or "pranks" or "social commentary"!

Books like these should be banned! Kids read this stuff and get ideas into their heads, and that inevitably leads to Columbine or possibly even "thinking for themselves" and (selfishly) having "fun"!

Now stop wasting time reading Slashdot and get back to work making your corporate masters wealthier!

I'm surprised more people are talking about burning grain alcohol or other biomass.

Plant uses photosynthesis to convert H20 and CO2 into sugar. We use yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. (Or other biological fuels such as methane.) Then we burn the alcohol. CO2 is released, but it is never more than the plants first took out of the air with photosynthesis.

On the other hand, how much cropland would be required to produce amounts of alcohol equivalent to the amount of petroleum we currently consume?

... does anyone know of a nitrogen fixing crop that can be easily turned into alcohol?

Of course, the most efficient system is probably just to make hydrogen from green slime and sunlight. This avoids most of the miscellaneous metabolic processes of advanced plants (which are great but don't contribute to the desired fuel product), plus all the lossy steps of fermentation and distillation.
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Jesus...

Under the digital television spec, the broadcaster can actually change the channel on your television, with or without your approval.

I don't think that that's what happened. On his last day as president of the company, Adam took down the web servers, encrypted the code base, and left with a copy of the code burned to CD. The owners immediately filed several suits against him, and had the police raid his home. Adam was facing jail time and stiff fines, so he relented and unlocked the code.

I've followed the story of Hinkley and Hotline over the last few years, and it seems that the whole story has not been said. Hinkley always talks about getting burned, and certainly there were some emotional stand-offs with his company exec's. However, according to this rather detailed account of Hinkley's struggles, his former boss says that he would very much like to have Hinkley back.

Let's be practical...it makes no business sense to rob your star programmer blind and show him the door. Sure, his investors secured the rights to the code in a draconian fashion, but they went to the extrodianry step of making this teenager the president of the company. Something tells me that Adam realized got ticked off when he realized he turned over all property rights, and the friction probably grew when he found out that these seasoned businessmen were treating this teenager as president in name only. I can't say as I entirely blame them, although they shouldn't have made him president in the first place. It was obviously just a tactic to try to keep him onboard.

I wish the kid the best and hope he finds the success he deserves, but frankly, it seems that there has yet to be an account written by an objective 3rd party who can tell us how much of the problem was Hinkley's youth and business inexperience. Signing away all IP rights was pretty naive for a "company president".

These things are never as simple as they first appear.

Aussie youth bailed on Toronto partners.

It looks like Hotline didn't have much choice but to sue for the IP. At any rate it is a particularly strange story.

link 3

stupid me, these 2 links now work

link 2

link 3

link 4

Infact i remember doing a Cell biology paper way back in 1995 and summarizing several articles on Programmed cell death (apoptosis). And it is NOT usefull for cancer. Cancer cells in general are cells that are divind more rapidly (except for a few slow growing tumors such as small cell carcinoma of the lung etc) and DO NOT respond to the bodies commands/attempts to regulate them. In most cases they do not respond to signals to begin apoptosis.

Have you ever heard of MEMS?
It's mech-tv all over again.

I don't agree that we have suitable alternative in wind power or anything else at this point (besides nuclear power, and you know how anything with nuclear in it scares people).

If you want motive power for free-running vehicles, wind power is only good for charging batteries (and we all know how crappy batteries are compared to a tankful of gas). The lousy density of hydrogen makes it not a whole lot better. However, nothing says you can't have a hybrid car that tops off its batteries whenever you're at a plug and uses the batteries to boost its fuel-burning efficiency by 50% or more. We can do that today. Heck, we could have had that in full production five years ago. We could have had 90-MPG passenger cars here except that they all seem to use direct-injection diesels and you can't get one to pass the EPA emissions tests any more.

No kidding about popular paranoia about all things nuclear. Know why Magnetic Resonance Imaging is now the favored term? It's because Nuclear Magnetic Resonance makes the ignorant masses all uneasy.

...this is a worldwide problem that is not going to be solved until we develop clean, cheap, and renewable energy that can replace the gasoline engine and coal power plants. You think the South American governments would spend a dime to see clean burning cars over cheaper gas?

I would like to see us focus all our research on fusion energy.... I like to think of myself as a practical environmentalist.

There was an article on harnessing the energy of warm ocean-surface water in a magazine a few years ago, but I'm having no luck at all finding it in their issue index otherwise I'd point you at it. Would you believe 23 gigawatts per unit and hurricane-abatement benefits besides? The only problem is that you can't do anything like this in a small way, you have to make a few really big ones and the learning curve is a bitch even if the cost of money is no object (same problem fusion has, minus the fast neutrons).
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spam spam spam spam spam spam
No one expects the Spammish Repetition!

- $4.96 DSP (and this is a way overkill in performance)

- $2.60 battery

And there's no LCD in this phone...

I imagine a purchasing agent could do a bit better if they spent some more time...

This just goes to show how much people pay for distribution and advertizing...

I can loan it to someone, or flat out resell it (although the latter is arguably legal).

The latter is absolutely legal: it's called the First-Sale Doctrine, and means that once the copyright-holder has sold the copy (hence, the ``first sale''), the purchaser can do anything she pleases with it, except copy it (hence, ``copyright'' :-). This article talks about it in an amusing sidelight, but includes an excellent point:

The Supreme Court, at least, has not forgotten that copyright is a bargain---that the copyright owner takes away some exclusive rights, but those rights are limited by and subservient to other rights held by the owners of copies of protected works and by the public at large.

Sell it, burn it, fly it from a flagpole, it's yours now.

A conflicting article on CFC damage to the ozone layer was published Dec. 1999 in Science News.

Volcanos do dump tons of nasty stuff into the air, having adverse consequences on the environtment worldwide. And on that note don't forget that we have ticking timebombs of our own, even in my own backyard, Mt. Rainier.

A conflicting article on CFC damage to the ozone layer was published Dec. 1999 in Science News.

Volcanos do dump tons of nasty stuff into the air, having adverse consequences on the environtment worldwide. And on that note don't forget that we have ticking timebombs of our own, even in my own backyard, Mt. Rainier.

If the Russians could just wait a few more years, I promise them, I will do my best to retrieve the 'Mir' space-station for them, returning it safely so that they may stick it in a museum. Considering certain advances in RLV technology, a heavy lifter shuttle-barge is sure to be developed soon- and I'm going to buy one. I will gladly swing by and pick it up for them. Can someone please suggest they park it in a libration point, someone that knows a powerful Russian politico personally?

:)Fudboy

While many only want your money, there are many sites whose aim is solely malicious.

I suggest reading the following ARTICLE.

And you are correct: It is not difficult for children to find their parents' credit card number if parents are not discerning.

Operator error, I think.

Let's say an earthquake takes the calandria off its base and it rolls around. Fine, the heavy water will leak and the reactor will stop. There'd be some release, but since the fuel is in ceramic pellets in zirconium-alloy fuel bundles, it's unlikely to escape too far.

More likely - and more sinister - is the possibility of a used fuel bundle somehow getting out. That would be very dangerous, high-level radioactive waste, and could expose thousands of people to lethal doses of radiation.

I've held new CANDU fuel bundles; they're quite harmless. They're heavy, for sure. And they're very radioactive, but it's all U-238, which occurs commonly in nature, and while it's chemically purified, it's also chemically stable. So, it's no worse than a big chunk of good uranium ore. And you can go to the north shores of the Great Lakes and find that easily, if you know what you're looking for.

Like all reactors, the concept and operation is quite simple. A kid can do it in his back yard. But the problem is that they become complicated with all the monitoring and safety systems required to make them practical and actually harness the energy. At the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant - one of three (Pickering, Darlington and Bruce) that powers Toronto, Canada - a plumber made a mistake and hooked a water fountain up to the wrong pipe. Instead of fresh clean tapwater, the plumber managed to run into reserve heavy water. Not a problem to drink - it's water with extra neutrons in the hydrogen, not radioactive - but it's very expensive to isolate. But the big uproar that hit Toronto's media after the incident was that these workers had been drinking "radioactive" water. Indeed, the water had a little more than background radiation - it had run through the reactor core a few times before and had dissolved trace amounts of fuel - but it still posed no serious health risk. Mistakes happen, they have to be carefully monitored.

I think it's fair to say that the biggest risk with a CANDU reactor is accidental release of radioactive materials. I've never seen anyone come up with a failure mode that could cause a CANDU to pull a Chernobyl, or even a Three Mile Island.

I'd live, quite happily, next to any Canadian or American nuclear power plant. Real estate would be cheap, and the neighbor is quiet.

Co-60, and yup. In fact, that's where most of the world's Co-60 is from.

I'm not sure what percentage of it comes from the Whiteshell, Manitoba labs, but I know a lot is made at Chalk River.

I was looking for an article that I had seen somewhere where some kids had found an old radiotherapy machine in a South American garbage dump, and had later died as a result of having painted themselves with glowing paint made from the cobalt they found inside... But I happened on this instead. It's not about cobalt - it's about a kid in Michigan who appears to have gotten quite close to building his own breeder reactor, before the Feds got involved.

Now, I feel like a loser. As far as I got was being able to find steel rebars in concrete walls with an x-ray machine that I built using a microwave oven transformer and a tube I made with a blowtorch and a vacuum pump.

Sun has an ad campaign of "We are the DOT in DOT COM".

Singer sold point-of-sale systems that it obtained from purchasing a company called Friden in 1963. The computer branch of Singer was sold in 1976 to ICL. Here's a German page with a listing for an old Singer computer, as well as another listing in English. This article on Computer Weekly describes Singer and NCR as being the kings of the point-of-sale terminal market in the mid-seventies.

Second Law of Blissful Ignorance

First they were announced in 1997 to be released in mid 1998.

Then they were "on track" for volume shipments by the end of 1999.

Now they finally have some of them in products in late 2000.

Very impressive. Heck, weren't we supposed to have UltraSparc IV's by now?

Why is this man still the president of the MPAA? The statistics have shown that vhs and casette tapes helped the industry.

I was reading an article about it in my sister's Entertainment Weekly (cover "A Year Without Movies?"), which basically said that the last time a strike like this was coming, one of the Hollywood moguls was able to negotiate a deal. However, huge multinationals, so says the article, are apparently incapable of negotiating... they'll just have to break the strike.

One of the points that the strikers are upset about is that they are pretty sure that "pay-per-download" TV is coming, but that the writers and the actors who created the original shows used by this system won't get a penny of the profits from it.

I keep wondering if there was some way the people involved with the anti-MPAA lawsuits could hook up with the anti-MPAA strikers. I doubt they'd see eye to eye though.

This page lists a few more lawsuits from company liability about email. To limit liability in such cases, they suggest:

• Have an Explicit Written Email Policy
• Have an Explicit written email monitoring policy
• Have a User Education Program