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That article in the summary is misleading. The article at Georgia Tech is a lot better. I was thinking of a bunch of wires hanging in your aorta. But they talk about putting them in your shoes or muscles, which makes more sense. I have since changed my position on it entirely.

To my knowledge, there are already LTFC (Low-temperature fuel cells), like PEM, which are already working for years in 50-100 deg C range, but the problem is keeping them below the 100 degrees.
Two years ago, Georgia Tech has announced, that they were capable of pushing it up to 120 deg (source)
and last year, Volkswagen announced the development of a fuel cell working at 160 deg (source).

Georgia Tech is doing some cool stuff with aerial robotics:

http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/atas/teams/aerialroboti cs.html

Kinda wish I was there now instead of 1962...;-)

rj

Hey! I have bushy eyebrows, dark skin and dark curly hair ! But I have been asked by Egyptian kids if I was one :)
Personal appearances aside, when I was in the ATL, rednecks would either ask me if I was Arab or if I was Muslim. Others are usually scared to take a shot at it and ask me where I am from. Such minute differences worry me in terms of society's ignorance, prejudice and obsession with PCness...
Cheers!

The way it's looking so far, it basically checks if that social security number is valid or if that person's visa/green card/whatever is still valid.

By requiring the employers to use it for all their employees it becomes impossible for the government to not know exactly who is illegally being employed and where they are. Then all they have to do is send the employer a notice that xxyy employee is no longer a Legal US citizen.

Look at it from the other side-- think of all the businessmen who will be afraid of lawsuits and legal repercussions for their business if the gov't looked their direction (this would be an easy way for the gov't to get some extra cash on the side-- fine employers of illegal immigrants). If somebody applies for a job and is turned down while the employer is currently paying illegals you could sue them.

I see this as nothing but a good thing for all of us-- keep in mind government is government and sucks at doing just about everything (you should talk to the people my mother worked with in the county gov't...complete idiots...). Them building a database that checks for valid green card/social security number info of employees, and shoots out an email to employers employing illegals? Easy hat. This system, if I understand it correctly, is for the gov't to make sure employers are employing legal citizens. I don't see employers being able to view your work history through this tool (and it's not like you don't already have to tell them when you apply). Believing the gov't is capable of building such a database (when they can't even build a national database of state criminals) takes a much higher level of faith in conspiracy theories than I find rational (or even close to rational). Besides, at 10% (30 million illegal Mexicans in the US right now) and counting, such a population would be a (poor, unwealthy) political force our politicians would want to keep tabs on and under control. I see this as a concern to them that is much larger than us legal folk.

As for the "being good for us" part-- when the government fines employers for employing illegals, this gives the employers less incentive to employ them, which increases our market power in our ability to command a fair salary. There's no reason our children shouldn't be able to work for more than minimum wage; except that they can't do that now because of the competing illegals. When I worked at McD 2 years ago I was paid $5.50/h. Worked there for a year, never showed up late, always did what was asked, and the store manager wouldn't give me a raise (some of you may say "you have to earn your raise"--> no, if you're doing what's asked of you then you need to get the 5% inflation raise regardless, more because you've been dedicated to that company for a year. Not getting that is your employer _taking_ money from you. More than 5%+delta, yes, you need to earn that). But why should he give me the raise? I quit, and he just hired the next person (for $5.50) that applied, because that person knew they couldn't ask for more. If half the people McD (and the rest of the fast food industry) employed weren't illegals, all us legal workers could ask for what we're really worth. Let me tell you, this $16/hour Co-op I have is 1234134x easier than working at McD was. But it pays 3x more. It pays 2x what my construction job paid.

So what now? I'm not even done with my second year of schooling and I've already accumulated more than $35,000 in student loan debt. Working 25h/week (40 during summer) @$5.50/h starting when you turn 16 in high school gets you to ~$15000 for schooling in those two years you work. That's assuming you save all of it, that you're not paying for a car or gas or insurance to get you to your job. Guess how much one year expected out-of-state tuition + food + housing costs at Georgia Tech? $29,532. Yes, you can get scholarships, but not unless you have a 3+ GPA (you gotta be pretty smart here to have that from the get go); the freshman

I'm an 18 year old just finishing his last programming courses in high school, so I can give a slightly different perspective of this. I hate to be cocky, but simply put, I'm better at programming than most of my friends. Many people I know are interested in taking programming courses but are daunted by the pages of code they have to deal with. The concepts of programming logic are hard for some to handle, even if the interest is there. I started with Visual Basic then moved on to Java and then AP level Java. My teacher is one of the leaders of comp sci teaching in my county, so he loved to use methods such as Jeroo or Alice, both similar to Scratch, to teach programming. The reaction from the students who were struggling in the class was outstanding. Seeing a little arrow move around picking up flowers or seeing a Turtle Prince dance and change colors totally change the way they look at programming. Having something like Scratch in middle schools (I think elementary may be a little early) would be awesome. Classes like those are optional, and it's not "forcing programming down kids throats". Having a basic knowledge of how programming works will spark potential interest in computers as a career, especially in young girls who shy away from the stereotypical nerd programming classes. Something like this will definitely benefit our schools.

Scientology is dangerous, a few links for you copied from my web site: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Today, we have nothing left to fight over, so we must imagine property to kill and enslave each other for.

Have you seen Weblo yet?

There was some V-Worlds scheme like this years ago too.

Not only can we imagine it, we can text our peers and blog about it too.

Perhaps even something like an x-prize for robotics...

Well, there are a few such competitions, but more for serious stuff like search and rescue, and firefighting than for simple household chores. After all, there are already cheap, mass production robots and automated machines for vacuuming, mowing lawns, making coffee, doing dishes, etc.

Why are the links always to crappy re-statements of the original press release ?

Here's the original

http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/3d-so lar.htm

It's like a third grader's book report... Why don't we just get the water from the well... from GTRI's site

The op article was vague and didn't have the pretty picture the one below has:

http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/3d-so lar.htm

Or Thad Starner.

I went to GT, and even took a class of his. You could always see him walking around with all kinds of things attached to him. Some of his PhD students are the same way, too. Although, the continuous clicking and buzzing does get to you after a while.

Both Starner and Mann have done some very pioneering work in this area.

Although, to be fair, Mann has done significantly more and has been at this a lot longer. IIRC, he was once stopped at an American airport for carrying this stuff. They refused to believe that he was dependent on them (he's Canadian). I remember a talk by him where he said that he now drove, instead.

There are two ways to make graphene I have known, one is to exfoliate graphite and the second one is to produce an oversaturated silicon carbide single crystal, and the graphene will grow epitaxially from the carbon layer on the surface of the silicon carbide crystal. None of these two can be "practical" IMHO. I also believe the researchers claim the new transistor is "practical" just to differentiate them from the old ones. Anyway I will read the real paper on Nature Materials and see what Novoselov's group has done this time.

Here is the article of the Tech page: http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=128 1

Late reply, but maybe it will help somebody. The article is crap, and it's not surprising that all the other replies have misunderstood what it's about. The engine is not used for launch, it is only used for maneuvering the satellite once in orbit. It's not that it takes 40% less fuel to launch the satellite, rather that 40% less fuel needs to be carried for subsequent orbital maneuvering/adjustment due to the efficiency of this engine.

The Georgia Tech press release is slightly less misleading than the various summaries derived from it.

That's the Stanford Bunny.

• CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. Absorbing infrared radiation results in a net increase in thermal equilibrium. That results in hotter temperatures. (I've had several physics courses in thermodynamics - I know what I'm talking about.)
• Historically, over the last 800,000 years (including several ice ages), CO2 levels have varied from approximately 180 ppmv (ice age) to 280 ppmv ("normal" temperatures). Currently we're at about 380 ppmv. Carbon isotope ratios of C13/C12 independently verify that the overwhelming majority (about 98%) of the increase in CO2 is due to burning fossil fuels.

AFAIK, there is no debate on either of these two issues. The only debate is over how much worse it will get. The few scientists who challenge global warming do not challenge these two points, to the best of my knowledge. The only thing I've gotten from reading the "challengers" is that they think that sooner, rather than later, hidden systems will kick in that will counteract our influence. Other than wishful thinking, I have no idea what they're basing this on (as I can't find any journal articles that support this idea).

I posted this on reddit which broke the story earlier, and on my blog. Thought you might find it useful.

Quick follow-up. On digg someone posted the un-obfuscated code: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~achille/contacts-source. txt

How it works

The code is pretty straightforward. Basically, Google docs has an embedded script that will run a callback function, passing the function your contact list as an object. The embedded script presumably checks a cookie to ensure you are logged into a Google account before handing over the list.

Unfortunately, the script doesnt check what page is making the request. So, if you are logged in on window 1, window 2 (an evil site) can make the function call. Since you are logged in somewhere, the cookie is valid and the request goes through.

Also, if you check the object that is returned, you see fields for the contact's name, email and "affinity". Presumably, a higher affinity means a more-emailed contact, so it may be possible to know the relative weight of links.

Possible solutions

Google is run by smart people and I'm sure they'll have this fixed soon. A few suggestions appear to be popping up, all centered on making sure the user is on a Google.com page and not a random site:

Referrer blocking: Block all requests from sites not in the google.com domain. However, some people run referrer-blocking software. It may be the price they have to pay for security, but there could be other consequences.

Script checks: An idea I had was to check the window.location (just like you check the cookie) to make sure it's coming from a google.com domain. This is another way to see what page is making the request.

Challenge-response: Google pages (like Gmail) can have some token or unique, computed data that they submit with their requests. Random pages won't have access to this token when they make the function call.

(From user JRF on reddit): Include part of cookie in the request URL as a unique token that only a "real" Google page would know. Need to watch out for proxies/browser history (accessible from other pages) being able to access this unique data. May need to seed or salt it in a challenge-response system.

It's interesting thinking of fixes for this - do you have any other suggestions for how Google would fix this?

Heres the code that the original site used. http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~achille/contacts- source.txt

As a Georgia Tech student, I find it hilarious that U[sic]GA felt the need to actually research the "boiling frog" legend. On the other hand, Tech actually gets stuff done.

• Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
• RobotFlow (also check out Flowdesigner and MARIE) http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/
• CARMEN http://carmen.sourceforge.net/
• ADE http://ade.sourceforge.net/
• MIRO http://smart.informatik.uni-ulm.de/MIRO/
• ARIA http://robots.mobilerobots.com/
• YARP http://eris.liralab.it/yarp/
• Missionlab http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/resea rch/MissionLab/
• ORCA http://orca-robotics.sourceforge.net/
• GenoM http://softs.laas.fr/openrobots/tools/genom.php
• ROLE http://wurde.sourceforge.net/

It's a cool toy, but would lug around something like that for everyday use?

Please look at this low cost alternative CO2 Sequestration system.

The integrated energy strategy offered by Terra Preta Soil technology may
provide the only path to sustain our agricultural and fossil fueled power
structure without climate degradation, other than nuclear power.

I feel we should push for this Terra Preta Soils CO2 sequestration strategy as not only a global warming remedy for the first world, but to solve fertilization and transport issues for the third world. This information needs to be shared with all the state programs.

The economics look good, and truly great if we had CO2 cap & trade in place. These are processes where you can have your Bio-fuels, Carbon Sequestration and fertility too.

  Nature article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7103/fu ll/442624a.html

Here's the Cornell page for an over view:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehm...r_home.h tm

This Earth Science Forum thread on these soil contains further links ( I post everything I find on Amazon Dark Soils, ADS here):
http://forums.hypography.com/earth-science/3451-te rra-preta.html

The Georgia Inst. of Technology page:
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/presentations/dday.pd f

There is an ecology going on in these soils that is not completely understood, and if replicated and applied at scale would have multiple benefits for farmers and environmentalist.

Terra Preta creates a terrestrial carbon reef at a microscopic level. These nanoscale structures provide safe haven to the microbes and fungus that facilitate fertile soil creation, while sequestering carbon for many hundred if not thousands of years. The combination of these two forms of sequestration would also increase the growth rate and natural sequestration effort of growing plants.

Here is a great pyrolysis process , ( http://www.eprida.com/hydro/ ) which could use existing infrastructure to provide Charcoal sustainable Agriculture , Syn-Fuels, and a variation of this process would also work as well for H2 , Charcoal-Fertilizer, while sequestering CO2 from Coal fired plants to build soils at large scales , be sure to read the "See an initial analysis NEW" link of this technology to clean up Coal fired power plants.

If pre Columbian Indians could produce these soils up to 6 feet deep over 20% of the Amazon basin it seems that our energy and agricultural industries could also product them at scale.

Harnessing the work of this vast number of microbes and fungi changes the whole equation of EROEI for food and Bio fuels. I see this as the only sustainable agricultural strategy if we no longer have cheap fossil fuels for fertilizer.

We need this super community of wee beasties to work in concert with us by populating them into their proper Soil horizon Carbon Condos.

Btw, since you seem to be doubting that statement, I'll provide a nice link to my thesis for my Master's in Astrophysics (from Georgia State) as well as a link to my project for my Master's in Computer Science. Naturally, I also have a BS in Physics (from Georgia Tech), and I'm working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science. If you like, you can also read my dissertation proposal for the dissertation I'm currently working on.

This is not meant to impress you - just to point out that your skepticism is ill-founded.

"Saying Trusted Computing is neutral is like saying that apples with cyanide pills inside are neutral (and they refuse to permit you to but a normal poison-free apple)."

Except that TC offers a lot more useful functionality (and more ethical, even if only relatively) than cyanide.

"All of the benefits and none of the abuses, with identical hardware. "

Well, except for remote attestation. That kind of becomes as silly as trusting a self-signed SSL certificate on an ecommerce website. Although, I suppose if you consider all possible uses of remote attestation "abuses", you're still right. Others have been more imaginative as to consensual uses of it.

I'm not an expert on what colleges offer, but I can share that here at GA Institute of Technology their Calculus III class is specialized for CS majors. We don't take the same one as everyone else, it is more geared to computer science. Also certain threads require certain math courses for that speciality within computer science. Its really a lot to explain, but its the direction that computer science will be going in the future. Check out the link: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/content/view/692/144/

Now I realize how rigorous our CS curriliculm is at Georgia Tech. Check out the classes- http://www.cc.gatech.edu./ We do at least 3 complete software project including CS 4911 [Senior Design Capston]. Currently I am taking a class where we are implementing a C Compiler. No wonder companies go crazy trying to recruit tech students..

As a soon to be graduating senior for BSCS at the Georgia Institute of Technology, we are required to take at least two software development classes, CS2335 and CS2340. As you can see from the numbering, they are both sophomore level classes. The reasoning for this, which I highly agree with, is to start learning the process of software development early and correctly before bad habits begin.

For CS2335, we had 7 projects, six smaller projects, with the first three being individual, and the next three being group projects (2-4 man). Each of these previous projects received 1-2 weeks to finish depending on difficulty. These projects demonstrated various aspects of software development, which mirrored the curriculum of UML, extreme programming, debuging, errors, and so on. Finally, we had a six-week final project that brought together the many aspects of all previous projects. Below is a like to my final project. As you can see the entire project is outlined with all project requirements, much like a requirements doc in business (I co-oped for 2 years, so I do know spec and req documents, and have done a few myself). The best part of this project is we would lose points if there were any bugs in the project code from junit, checkstyle, and pmd, forcing us to actually test and debug our code properly.

I know that everyone who has taken that class, and the follow-up CS2340, has gained a better appreciation for the software development process, and has a better understanding before learning it the hard way in the real world.

CS2335 Final Project

Could you honestly have predicted in 2002 then that multi-core CPU's would be commonplace on laptops or even desktops?

Neither Intel nor AMD have a patent on the dual core concept, thank goodness.

In 1991, I was part of a research project at UNC -- Pixel-Planes -- that stored floating point texture coordinates on a per-pixel basis in a frame buffer. (I believe Greg Turk http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~turk/ did the actual implementation.)

Man, sucks to be them. My guess is the lack of electricity in the country is some sort of ploy to confuse all of our advanced weapons and smart bomb technology. ;-)

It is also worth checking out Afghanistan and Mongolia at night. From looking at their night time maps, I admit that I am just AMAZED at how awesome their energy conservation programs are. California could learn a lot from Afghanistan for sure. And Mongolia better not give the US any lip.

And if you are looking at the map, check out how well lit Iran is. I don't know about you, but with the amount of bright lights all over that country, I'm guessing the US wouldn't hit that. I think we like our bitches more backwards and with a southern accent. :-)

Carl Sagan had a great story related to this very subject, in his book The Demon Haunted World. I found a copy of the story at this website. Here's the story Sagan relates:

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, newly arrived on American shores, enlisted in the Manhattan nuclear weapons Project, and brought face-to-face in the midst of World War II with U.S. flag officers.

        So-and-so is a great general, he was told.

        "What is the definition of a great general?" Fermi characteristically asked.

        I guess it's a general who's won many consecutive battles.

        "How many?"

        After some back and forth, they settled on five.

        "What fraction of American generals are great?"

        After some more back and forth, they settled on a few percent.

        "But imagine," Fermi rejoined, "that there is no such thing as a great general, that all armies are equally matched, and that winning a battle is purely a matter of chance. Then the chance of winning one battle is one out of two, or 1/2; two battles 1/4, three 1/8, four 1/16, and five consecutive battles 1/32 - which is about 3 percent. You would expect a few percent of American generals to win five consecutive battles - purely by chance. Now, has any of them won ten consecutive battles... ?"

The problem with the business world - especially in America these days - is that it's absolutely filled with climbers, idiots with loads of ambition and not a lot else. A few of these baboons get promoted to the executive ranks based largely upon politicking and thanks to random chance - as Fermi correctly observed 60 years ago - and then promptly go about looting the entire organization they run.

HP, having been hijacked by Carly Fiorina and her ilk, is a prime example. They've surrendered HP's position as an industry and technology leader and are now simply cashing in on decades worth of work by engineers and more competent managers. They're eating the seed corn. Look to Detroit if you want to know where this folly will leave America's technology industry.

Take a look here --> http://kubuntu.org/announcements/koffice-16.php

or, add these to you /etc/sources.list :

        * deb ftp://bolugftp.uni-bonn.de/pub/kde/stable/koffice- 1.6.0/kubuntu dapper main
        * deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.kde.org/pub /kde/stable/koffice-1.6.0/kubuntu dapper main
        * deb http://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/kde/stable/koff ice-1.6.0/kubuntu dapper main
        * deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/koffice-16 dapper main

Example college at GT: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Example college at UGA: School of Poultry Science(sic)

You can't get an Engineering degree from UGA. Similarly, you can't get a Literature degree from Georgia Tech.

Time to continue ramblin'.

Military drones fly at extremely high altitudes.

completely retarded.

They should be focusing on alternative energy sources themselves because oil isn't going to last forever and they can get a jump on the future with their own research.

First of all, what makes you think they aren't? Read here, here, here, and here, for example.

Secondly, what makes you think a bunch of ex-divorce lawyers in Sacramento who don't have a dime of their own at stake have better ideas about investing in new energy research than folks with PhD's in chemical engineering and economics, who work at a major oil company's research division, and who have their pensions on the line?

Third, the way government research typically works, and works best, is when you already have a gaggle of researchers doing the work because the science (and not a popular vote) says it's worth pursuing, and you have them compete for funding. That's how the NSF works, or DARPA, for example. The stiff competition means only the best (with some obnoxious exceptions) get funded and you need to produce sound results to keep your funding. What do you suppose happens when you turn the process around and begin with the huge pile of cash, then wait to see who it attracts? Do you think you will get the best research? Or will you get a whole lot of goofballs, incompetents, and perpetual-motion weirdos who are just sane enough to use plenty of politically-correct buzzwords in their application?

Fourth, maybe the folks on the other side should also think long-term, too. If you're in the alternative-energy biz, shouldn't you be focussing on alternative capital sources (such as the marketplace), since free money from the taxpayers can't last forever?

Various attempts have been made by engineers to overcome the house edge through predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably by Joseph Jagger, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo in 1873. These schemes work by determining that the ball is more likely to fall at certain numbers. Claude Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist best known for his contributions to information theory, built arguably the first wearable computer to do so in 1961.

To try to prevent exploits like this, the casinos monitor the performance of their wheels, and rebalance and realign them regularly to try to keep the result of the spins as random as possible.

More recently Thomas Bass, in his book The Newtonian Casino 1991, has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. He is also the author of The Eudaemonic Pie, which describes the exploits of a group of computer hackers, who called themselves the Eudaemons, who in the late 1970s used computers in their shoes to win at roulette by predicting where the ball would fall.

In the early 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo used a computer to model the tendencies of the roulette wheels at the Casino de Madrid in Madrid, Spain. Betting the most likely numbers, along with members of his family, he was able to win over one million dollars over a period of several years. A court ruled in his favor when the legality of his strategy was challenged by the casino.

In 2004, it was reported that a group in London had used mobile cameraphones to predict the path of the ball, a cheating technique called sector targeting. In December 2004 court adjudged that they didn't cheat because their special laser cameraphone and microchip weren't influencing the ball - they kept all £1.3m.

Actually just about a week ago this came up in conversation, and I've sorta been thinking about it since (and a bit before too). It has a few problems, but I think it's the best solution. For instance, you'd probably want an introductory course in a language that would be immediately practical for non-CS majors who still want or need programming experience; currently the intro CS course seems to usually serve both purposes, so this split would require adding a new course.

Unfortunately, Georgia Tech has changed their curriculum since I took the course. Now, they've got three different "intro to computing" classes: one for "normal" CS majors, which is based on Python; one for engineers (and scientists, etc.), which is based on Matlab, and one for "Computational Media" majors (which falls into the College of Computing, along with Computer Science), which is based on Jython.

Personally, I liked the "Scheme for everybody" approach better, because it focused entirely on the fundamentals of programming rather than on the domain-specific stuff the new classes do. In my opinion, even engineers ought to understand algorithms well, and I'm not convinced a Matlab-based course is sufficient for that.

Anecdote: my Statics professor (I'm a CS/C[ivil]E double major, and he's a both CE prof and the lead programmer for GT STRUDL) continually complains about the poor programming skills of engineering students, because all they know how to use is "Kindergarden Bill [Gates]'s" software. Apparently, what engineers really need to learn is still FORTRAN. : )

Here's the "vital point" you seem to be missing: lots of other profs give away lecture notes etc. for free. Sure, in most cases it isn't an audio recording, but depending on how visually-oriented the material is, powerpoint or whatever is probably better anyway. And sometimes, if you get lucky, the professor posts nearly verbatim transcripts of all his lectures!

Ok, I submitted a story, but in case it gets rejected, here you go:

Jon Ellch and Dave Maynor have raised quite some noise about ther recent wifi exploits. But some clever sleuthing from a blogger has dug up some some damning evidence. Most notably a high resolution version of the video (2) where you can see Maynor claiming he is using an external card. He further states that he got an ip 192.168.1.50, but according to the ifconfig output, the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D. According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple. The problem here is that Secureworks claims they he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver. Thus the video was faked.

Ok, I submitted a story, but in case it gets rejected, here you go:

Jon Ellch and Dave Maynor have raised quite some noise about ther recent wifi exploits. But some clever sleuthing from a blogger has dug up some some damning evidence. Most notably a high resolution version of the video (2) where you can see Maynor claiming he is using an external card. He further states that he got an ip 192.168.1.50, but according to the ifconfig output, the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D. According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple. The problem here is that Secureworks claims they he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver. Thus the video was faked.

*fixed the links:
Here's a mirror: maynor video screenshots (image 6)
If you check the mac address you will see that it's an apple mac address. See the IEEE OUI list.

So, what we have is:
a) Maynor claiming he is using an external card
b) Maynor claiming that the ip they got is 192.168.1.50 (see the video)
c) According to the screenshot the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D
d) According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple
e) Maynor claiming he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver

THE VIDEO WAS FAKED. END OF STORY

*fixed the links:
Here's a mirror: maynor video screenshots (image 6)
If you check the mac address you will see that it's an apple mac address. See the IEEE OUI list.

So, what we have is:
a) Maynor claiming he is using an external card
b) Maynor claiming that the ip they got is 192.168.1.50 (see the video)
c) According to the screenshot the mac address associated with that ip is 00-17-F2-41-31-6D
d) According to the IEEE OUI that mac address belongs to apple
e) Maynor claiming he did not hack the apple driver but an external card's driver

THE VIDEO WAS FAKED. END OF STORY

If you accelerate something to escape velocity, it does exactly that: escapes the gravitational attraction of the Earth and never comes back, unless it's decelerated by some unspecified means. And escape velocity at 11km height means it will be burned to ashes very quickly, remember the Columbia. With our current technology level, building a ship that can fly at escape velocity at 11km height is much more difficult than building a space elevator.

Whoops yes sorry, thats what happens when you repost something after several discussion on it. The escape velocity part shouldn't be there, since to reach escape velocity you would need many more gees than the human body could take for too long. And in any case, the high speeds are reached at the point where the ship enters the atmosphere above the troposphere (another editing error, hey this is slashdot, what can you do), so the effects of the atmosphere are greatly reduced. I should really make a website about this.

OTOH, if you want to put something in orbit around the Earth, then you should give it orbital velocity, which means it should have a very high tangential velocity around the Earth. You cannot do that with a vertical tower, unless that tower reaches the synchronous orbit altitude of 36000km, which is the whole idea of a space elevator. Remember, velocity is a vector. It has both magnitude and direction. If you want to reach orbit, it's useless to throw something straight up with a high speed, because it will fall straight down.

Yes, thats angular momentum there, the craft would probably need some kind of power to adjust for that. Far, far less than a standard earth based launch however, which again leads to greatly increased room for other cargo and reduces the cost to orbit.

Well, you may say, let's make the top of the tower curved, so the ship will be accelerated tangentially.

No no, you can't do that. the only place you can have curvature is at the start of the acceleration. Trying to curve the trajectory of a significant mass at those speeds is a really bad idea.

I have an old book, "Flight in Cosmic Space", written in 1952 by Russian scientist Ari Sternfeld, where he analyzes, among other concepts, the idea you have proposed. A practical accelerator to send a ship into space would have to reach a 100km height and have a curvature radius so great that it would be several thousands kilometers in length.

Well what I would say to that is that they had nowhere near the engineering ability in 1952 that we do today, especially in the realms of maglev and tower construction. I suggest you read the link to the tower launch archive I supplied.

I've been playing didgeridoo for less than a year (sax is main instrument). I wrote a Matlab script to analyze the frequency content of recordings I made. It's not real-time, but still neat to see how tongue movements change the harmonics. Pictures/code samples here: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg601q/didj/didj.htm l

Yet within the realm of science, we didn't have to advance much to get from one to the other. We needed an understanding of rocketry, some knowledge of life support, some advances in various engineering disciplines.

So you are telling me that the leap from canvas winged powered kites to putting men on the moon wasn't much of an advance?

Moreso in space since you've got to take into account the limitations imposed by automation, or else deal with the problems associated with long term space habitation and life support, and you've got to get from Earth orbit to wherever it is in the asteroid belt you're planning to mine/build

What limitations? I wasn't proposing an AI to drive them, more like remote piloting with certain systems semi autonomous. With that in mind there are no limitations on automation. And its a whole lot easier to get from earth orbit to wherever than it is to get from the earth's surface to wherever.

Have you checked the price of putting something in even LEO lately? We need to make serious improvements to our launch technology first if we're going to do anything like building stuff in the belt.

Heyyy, wow did you ask the wrong man. Here's an older post I made....

With all the talk lately about a space elevator, I got to thinking after a recent slashdot discussion, just what advantages would a space elevator offer over a tower launch? I contacted the man responsible for a similar idea, the skyramp (warning: hideous javascript menu may break firefox), Carlton Meyer, and had a dialogue in which he pointed me to a tower launch archive.

The ideas I see bandied about there are similar to what I had in mind, which would be essentially an 11km tall tower (think pylons rather than skyscrapers, based at sea), with evacuated airless launch tubes, using nuclear reactors to power a maglev or pulley system to accelerate vessels to escape velocity. These would then emerge above the end of the troposphere, with it's associated weather and air pressure, and have little to no fuel needed to escape the earth's gravity, meaning you could do a lot more while you were up there. At normal launch accelerations you can get to LEO with very little external propulsion.

Not only would this enable multiple launches daily, it is, unlike the space elevator, readily achievable with today's technology, and financially viable as well. Given NASA had an annual budget of $16.2 billion for 2005, and a nuclear power plant costs a cool billion to build, give or take, we could have this up and running in a few years.

Space has got vast, essentially unlimited resources. One recent story pointed out the trillion dollar iron asteroid up there. The thing has about 5 tons of steel for every man, woman and child on earth. And thats just one of god knows how many... billions more?

Once we leap the cost to escape hurdle (as I think I have managed), we can proceed to use these resources. There are several obstacles in the way of this, first of which is zero gee mining, we have no idea how to do it. We can either mine the ore out there, or bring the asteroid back into orbit and slice it up there. Or slice it up and send it back to orbit. I would be opposed to moving it back into orbit for processing, purely for the debris issue. Perhaps a lunar base would have some merit there.

So we set up a mining and processing operation either on the moon or in deep orbit, and start cutting and processing one of those bad boys. Whats the first thing we build? A bigger processing and mining operation. Space exploration, much like the internet, has to be a largely incestuous affair at first, existing solely for its own benef

Unless they're vaccinated, don't give them MUMPS; if you do find a nice Doctor (Like Dr. Pascal), 'cuz Pascal was fun for me in College.

If they like noises, Squeak is good, but the cogently verbiaged might prefer SmallTalk in a group. For those speech impaired, knowing there's other people who Lisp would be good.

The mean ones will abuse Snobol in Winter

The A.D.D. kids will probably like the feeling of Euphoria they get from their first

Of course, you could teach them a very nice language with a horrible name, Brainfuck.

Or, you could just look Here for a comparison of popular programming languages.