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The Von Neumann-Landauer limit suggests that each bit of information lost requires ln(2)*kT of energy which is released as heat. Assuming that, as a minimum, it is necessary to flip through all the bits in the key to brute force it then a 512 bit key which requires 2^512 - 1 bit flips corresponding to an energy of 4*10^133 Joules if done at room temperature or around 6*10^121 Joules if done at the coldest temperature yet achieved which is 450 pico Kelvin. Given a universe of mass 1.6*10^55 kg Einstein's relation suggests than if this were entirely converted to energy then only 1.4*10^72 Joules would be available. So even converting the entire universe to energy and using it to run your computer you'd still fall short (by a factor of 10^49) of the energy required to brute force that 512 bit key.

The Von Neumann-Landauer limit suggests that each bit of information lost requires ln(2)*kT of energy which is released as heat. Assuming that, as a minimum, it is necessary to flip through all the bits in the key to brute force it then a 512 bit key which requires 2^512 - 1 bit flips corresponding to an energy of 4*10^133 Joules if done at room temperature or around 6*10^121 Joules if done at the coldest temperature yet achieved which is 450 pico Kelvin. Given a universe of mass 1.6*10^55 kg Einstein's relation suggests than if this were entirely converted to energy then only 1.4*10^72 Joules would be available. So even converting the entire universe to energy and using it to run your computer you'd still fall short (by a factor of 10^49) of the energy required to brute force that 512 bit key.

The Von Neumann-Landauer limit suggests that each bit of information lost requires ln(2)*kT of energy which is released as heat. Assuming that, as a minimum, it is necessary to flip through all the bits in the key to brute force it then a 512 bit key which requires 2^512 - 1 bit flips corresponding to an energy of 4*10^133 Joules if done at room temperature or around 6*10^121 Joules if done at the coldest temperature yet achieved which is 450 pico Kelvin. Given a universe of mass 1.6*10^55 kg Einstein's relation suggests than if this were entirely converted to energy then only 1.4*10^72 Joules would be available. So even converting the entire universe to energy and using it to run your computer you'd still fall short (by a factor of 10^49) of the energy required to brute force that 512 bit key.

You jest, but it's a big issue. It's got no lock-in like Android and iPhone UI, MS don't gimp your phone if you try and unlock it (and nor do the carriers) and there are plenty of useful (read: Not involving boobs, fart noises, or hideous bright colours) and mature applications for the platform from several websites listed on Google search.

The UI reponse and stability issues are really all that anyone who owned a WinMobile phone after version 5 complained about.

Funny you should mention that, since Microsoft already sold the ultimate pointing device: the Trackball Explorer. Now out of production, and edging towards $200 per unit on eBay.

They killed that, they'll kill this too.

Or you could even go completely crazy and simply look at how other countries do this sort of thing. London's Liverpool St. Station is a great example. They've got, what, 12? 15? sets of tracks for their National Rail system there. Plus however many sets of tracks for the Underground. And nobody tripping to their deaths there either. Go figure.

That's a terminus, so there's no need for bridges/subways between the tracks.

A better example (in London) is Clapham Junction, which has 18 platforms pic (you can see the footbridge, there's also a subway).
(I used to have to change trains from platform 2 to platform 15. The walk over the footbridge was longer than the walk from my house to the nearest station...)

The drug was Levamisole and Ergamisol

The car/battery needn't be useful for everyone in every circumstance to sell well, just useful enough for enough people to buy it. I can't go 600 miles in a day on my bicycle, but I still use it daily.

I live in Great Britain, so the furthest I could drive without meeting water is 837 miles (and the only people doing that trip are cyclists, it's a traditional route for obvious reasons). The furthest I've ever driven in one go is ~400 miles from ~Birmingham to the Scottish Highlands. If I'm travelling alone, a train is my preferred way to go (because of comfort and cost), with more people the car gets less comfortable but cheaper.

In continental Europe water doesn't get in the way, but still most people won't drive much more than 500 miles at a time for a bi-annual holiday.

The UK is not a place to seek asylum. Asylum is to be sought in the closest possible nation to where you are trying to leave which is not under the same strain which caused you to wish to emigrate.

Unless you're emigrating and seeking asylum from France or RoI, there are closer countries. Asylum seekers seem to bypass all of Western Europe just to come here... I don't want to say it's because they want a free ride, but let's get one thing clear; Between Iraq and the UK there are at least seven Europnean contries, and Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc are further east (more countries distant) than that. Why, if they can make the choice to bypass all of those nations, can we not make the choice to send a few back for not being able to contribute in any way to the nation which offers them asylum?

Is it wrong to want the asylum seekers who can get work, pay taxes, build society to have enough of their pay left over from keeping the country running to have a better life than in the country they had left? Accepting any and all who say "asylum, asylum, asylum" at the border will not allow that.

My wireless keyboard and mouse work for weeks on a couple of AAA batteries. You're going to have to try extremely hard to tell me that this kind of energy level can't be produced by induction in a mat on your desk, especially as they're already charging mobile phones with it

70 years ago we didn't pollute ANYWHERE as much as we do today

(citation needed)

(I'm not saying it isn't true, but in the west at least it seems we have been trying to cut down on our emissions, and I don't have any data comparing emissions from power plants, factories, cars, shuttle launches etc etc over the last century).

In the 1940s, air pollution received greater attention in the United States when smog was noticed in Los Angeles. Visibility was only three blocks and people suffered from smarting eyes, respiratory discomfort, nausea, and vomiting. California passed the first state air pollution law in 1947, and the first National Air Pollution Symposium in the United States was held in 1949. Initially, municipal governments were responsible for the passage and enforcement of such legislation.

(from http://www.epa.gov/apti/course422/apc1.html ).

Might also want to look into the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s (see here for pretty pictures).

One reason it matters is that we are forever being told how embryonic stem cell research is going to find the cure for every disease under the sun

Bullshit.

The second paragraph of this article says "The move will be welcomed by scientists who say this type of work will lead to medical breakthroughs and cures for debilitating diseases like Parkinson's."

This one promises the "first global embryonic stem cell therapy."

Here again is a promise of a cure for Parkinson's plus Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and other illnesses.

You might also like to look here.

The promise of cures is always used to justify embryonic stem cell research, yet these cures remain elusive.

I thought the long tail was significantly discredited a while ago. Lets check google. hmm, not entirely. however, the guy who wrote it keeps coming up with new ideas which get a lot of attention and even praise before cooler heads actually think about it properly. The FT took a look at Chris Anderson's book freemium and, well, read John Gapper and his follow-up questions.

I believe there's some evidence that both can negatively impact social development in children, with the latter having a measurably stronger impact.

You don't believe in evidence. There either is evidence supporting your claim, or there isn't. Current research on a causal relationship between video game violence and real world violence is pretty inconclusive. Take a quick look at the top 10 hits in google reporting on the findings of recent papers.

Now if you'd rather be safe than sorry with your own children that's fair enough, but I really think its morally wrong to use censorship to deny a work to an entire country based on unscientific opinions.

In libel law the claimant is presumed innocent of the defamation unless proved otherwise, which (IMO) is the way it should be.

If someone says something damaging about me, and I can demonstrate to a court that it is damaging, then the onus should be on the person who said it to prove they were just telling the truth. Otherwise what is to stop someone who doesn't like me launching 'scattergun' attacks of allegation after allegation?

This is what has happened in the Singh case. Rightly or wrongly, the BCA has convinced a court that Singh's use of "bogus" was defamatory, so Singh is left with the task of proving he was justified in using it about them. And as much as I detest the pseudoscience of chiropracty, they have a point. The UK press regularly run stories of "bogus doctors", "bogus police" or "bogus gasmen" ripping off the sick and the elderly. So what is an 'average man' going to think on reading that the BCA pushes "bogus treatments", that they've simply not confirmed the efficacy of their practises to a high enough standard to justify their claims? Or that they're deliberately promoting treatments they know to be worthless?

CFLs hate...

My experience is quite different from yours. I use CFLs in my upside-down kitchen lights too: installed two years ago, still going strong. I use them in my bathroom too, and I shower daily: still going strong after two years. I have not tried them outdoors or in my dimmer fixture, but dimmable CFLs are available. My CFLs do not take "five minutes" to warm up; they are on and fully usable when I turn the switch on -- although I admit that some of my oldest ones (many years old) come on at near full brightness instantly but brighten a bit more over a second or two until they reach full. And frankly, as far as I can remember, I have never in ten years had a CFL die except from dropping it on the floor.

It isn't monitoring their health status, it is monitoring their excertion level.

You mean the teachers are measuring how much they're crapping in the toilet? Eeww... that's definitely going too far!

Can I recommend to you the following Google search?

define: often

You'll notice that it varies from the definition of 'always' in several key areas. Would you like me to continue the English lesson, or are you happy to admit that this is a botnet?

When are they going to get around to replacing the X-302s? (AKA F-302)

Those hyperdrives are might unstable, surely they could use the Asgard knowledge base to build a stable engine?

Hahahahaha.

It's funny because you call people who "twitter" "twits".

I bet you're the first person to think of that.

Oh...

Arguing against the messenger and not the message? His work appears to be well researched and referenced - which of his arguments do you think are incorrect? It's not as if he is the only writer to make these claims:

Homosexuality & Civilization By Louis Crompton

page 158

Bishop Wala, the leading churchman of the Frankish kingdom, convened the Council at Paris... the council explicitly endoresed the death penalty for sodomy. Moreover, Canon 34 not only endorsed Leviticus but also interpreted Paul's Epistle to the Romans as advocating capital punishment: "Moreoever, the Lord in his law commands that any who commit this infamous crime be punished with death [Lev. 20:13], and the Apostle adds that they are "worthy of death [Rom. 1:32]. We may recall that at the end of the first chapter of Romans, Paul accuses non-believers of a long list of sins, in which homosexuality is given a special prominence. Tnen he adds that the "judgement of God" makes such sinners "worthy of death."

Justinian's jurists had made male love responsible for the "destruction of cities." But Canon 34 went further and make it the reason for Noah's Flood - and the near extinction of humanity....

page 162

Elsewhere in Islamic cultre, however, the evidence is strikingly contradictory. Popular attitudes were more accepting than in Christendom, and European visitors were repeatedly shocked by the relaxed tolerance of Arabs, Turks, and Persians, who seemed to find nothing unnatural in love between men and boys. Behind this important cultural difference lies a vein of romanticism that runs deep through medieval Arab treatises on love. For Islamic writers, emotional intoxication might spring not just from the love of women, as with the troubadours, but also from the love of males.

Sex, drugs, death and the law: an essay on human rights and overcriminalization By David Richards

page 70

Finally, the Christian interpretation of the unnaturalness of homosexuality was consolidated and given theoretical statement by St. Thomas's reformulation of St. Augustine's view that the only proper 'genital commotion' is that aimed toward the reproduction of the species in marriage... Building on these Augustinian foundations, St. Thomas argued that, even granting that homosexual acts between consenting adults harm no one, it is still unnatural and immoral, for it is an offense to God himself who has ordained procreation as the only legitimate use of sexuality.Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. cliv, I, II, and XII. St. Thomas takes the Platonic view - namely, that human sexuality has a distinct purpose - and gives it a theological interpretation. Homosexuality is unnatural not primarily because it degrades proper human function, but because it violates divine law, which sanctions that function.

On the basis of such views, there arose the conviction that homosexuality was a heresy, a clear and fragrant violation of express divine command. Accordingly, throughout the Middle Ages, homosexuals were prosecuted as heretics, often being burned at the stake.... ... during the Middle Ages in England, homosexuality was... within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts... The first English statute forbidding homosexual acts... confiring the religious grounds of its legitimacy, recited that the law was necessary to combat the prevalence of the 'horrible and detestable vice of buggery, aforesaid, to the high displeasure of Almighty God.'... citing Old Testament prohibitions and the Sodom and Gomorrah legend for the appropriateness of capital punishment (preferably, it seems, by burning).

A Christian response to homo

Oh please. The BBC is hardly impartial. It's been accused (with evidence) of being pro-Palestinian and well as anti-Israel. It's not neutral. Is the BBC as a concept wonderful? Yeah. Is it objective? No.

Yeah, well plenty of other people have accused it of being pro-Israeli, so go figure.

I guess I should back up that 'dates back to 2001' thing since the original poster said 2002. Well, it was released in Jboss 2.2, on April 16 2001:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/fm.announce/browse_thread/thread/37c61f64c32a05b1/cfa9c852a1f37f7?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=jbossmq#0cfa9c852a1f37f7

My bad on OAQ tho - it was in Oracle 8 (1997), as an optional extra.

Further, http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=**filehere**+filetype:torrent

Guess Irelands' oldest ISP wants to go out of business.

We're fucked now!

So, which one is it?

http://www.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:EBAY

They have lost 2/3 of their value in 2004...

MS, like many American companies, are fleecing the country.

GB prices for tech are usually close to the same number of pounds as dollars things have eased a bit recently, here are two random examples:
* New Apple iPod Touch 8GB 2nd Generation (amazon UK), £152 = $250
* ditto (amazon US), $215 -> UK one is only 16% more

* Dell M17X laptop (UK), £1699 = $2815
* ditto (US), $1799 -> saving $1000 by purchasing in the US vs in the UK where it is 56% more expensive

Last year it was about $2 = £1; http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=GBPUSD

You were saying ...? This would make it even more extraordinary for Win 7 to be cheaper here, but when I look ...

* Win 7 ultimate (amazon UK), £170 = $280
* ditto (amazon US), $220 -> so only $60 / 27% more and the UK price is a "discounted" one from an RRP (recommended price) of £230

Um?

Link to Google Maps, for those without Google Earth installed: 53 34'34.34"N 0 6'39.69"E.

Also, an article about location on Wikipedia -- the area is a nature reserve!

Sorry for making yet another post on this, but this is interesting.

Reading:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-7inyeQbBjQC&pg=RA1-PA224&lpg=RA1-PA224&dq=microscopic+density+fluctuations+sky+blue&source=bl&ots=NXsk2qek_Q&sig=EpbQ4QtC7VSh-3z95R8U2-krUs8&hl=en&ei=Y0WESrOCAtSG-Qbu76G_Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false

This says that the problem with the Rayleigh scattering explanation is that the scattering particles are extremely close to each other - far closer than the wavelength of light - and so end up having no scattering effect.

It goes on to say that it was Einstein that came up with the idea of density fluctuations to solve this problem.

I'm now even less convinced that Rayleigh scattering is the right answer.

Is your username based on Ivor Cutler's sparrow?

http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=netbook%20linux&oe=utf-8&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wf

There was nothing like this 2 or 3 years ago. Nothing.

Progress is slow, but steady.

http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=netbook%20linux&oe=utf-8&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wf

Funnily enough 750,000 seems to be the go-to figure for jobs, either created or lost. I read "Risk" by Martin Gardener recently and I've found it's great for noticing when people use their memory of other numbers to cue-up made-up stats like these. (That will also take you to some debunkings of those numbers.)

There's now strong evidence that it's possible to train fluid intelligence. For a long time it was considered impossible, and most types of training are indeed ineffective, but not all:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/04/25/0801268105.abstract
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cites=7546690114547074715&hl=en
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18556560

If you want to try it yourself you can download software here:
http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

They are quite common in Britain
http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=economy+7+meter&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=2J11SqOKAca2jAfr7aS9Bw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4

if(pointerA=marker1){
$result=x;
}elsif(pointerA=marker2){
$result=y;
}else {
$result=0;
}

I can think of simpler devices that can be called computers. Ever heard of a "go- no go" test ? By making a template or a mould that is exactly the dimensions you require, by applying a manufactured item to the "go - no go" test you can determine whether the item passes the dimensional requirements without further calculation. That is computing. The fixed rules are the template, the data is the manufactured item. What's more, it can be parallel computing by measuring more than one dimension at once.

If you define computing by what an electronic computer can do, you are missing the bigger picture.

Define compute

Are you sure about that?

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/2008/03/daily-mail-dont-do-brown-acid.html
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/2008/05/daily-fail-what-is-your-major.html
and many more.

And to throw in another, Belkin were also caught paying people to do reviews on some tech websites fairly recently, the whole "pay for good review" thing.

So many links on it, it is just better to link the search.
Belkin Paying for good reviews

And funny thing about these is that so many companies do it, even small-time shops, anything to get customers.
And if you were to ask most of them if they knew the legality of it, they'd never think once that it was illegal.

Perhaps 5-10 years ago. No modern GPS has any significant problems getting a lock in London these days. It doesn't even have skyscrapers. New York City perhaps, but not London.

I don't own a GPS device, and I've never seen anyone using GPS have a problem in London (but it's not really necessary, there are excellent maps in/outside every station and on every bus stop anyway) but remember many streets in London are much closer together than they are in New York. (example -- there are several skyscrapers (for London) on that view. For instance, look at the narrow street at the bottom of this one with streetview. Does "I'm need to get to near the dildo building" count as local knowledge?)

Perhaps 5-10 years ago. No modern GPS has any significant problems getting a lock in London these days. It doesn't even have skyscrapers. New York City perhaps, but not London.

I don't own a GPS device, and I've never seen anyone using GPS have a problem in London (but it's not really necessary, there are excellent maps in/outside every station and on every bus stop anyway) but remember many streets in London are much closer together than they are in New York. (example -- there are several skyscrapers (for London) on that view. For instance, look at the narrow street at the bottom of this one with streetview. Does "I'm need to get to near the dildo building" count as local knowledge?)

Most of the digital mapping data misses out a lot of local features. Even the Tele Atlas data that Google maps uses is buggy and in Western Europe misses minor roads, and I've even seen it miss junctions between major roads. In Eastern Europe it often misses entire roads and cities (e.g. compare the capital of Albania on Google Maps and OpenStreetMap .

Even in Western Europe, the digital map makers miss stuff like cycle and walking trails. If you look at a detailed map like the British Ordnance Survey, which has been built upon local knowledge for hundreds of years, you'll see an amazing amount of information that is missed in the digital maps. I was surprised the first time I looked up my local area and saw that even the tiniest woods were named, and every hill was named and had elevation data. This is local data that almost no-one cares about anymore, but it still seems a shame to lose the history. I think the future is this kind of local data encoded in a modern digital open-standard format, and the only project I see doing this kind of work is OpenStreetMap.

You also need rubber tracks so you don't rip up the road. And it's a licence for a tracked vehicle, not "the same as a JCB licence". JCB is a brand name not a class of vehicle. When I think JCB I think of farm tractors or diggers with wheels not tracked vehicles.

Image search on google
JCB machinery only shows 3 tracked vehicles out of 20 images.

I imagine a good electric vehicle being had for less than 2000 dollars, and being a 3-wheel, 2 seater with a lightweight basket capable of carrying a couple bags of groceries. It would have to be weather-proof, but that could (and should) be accomplished using something cheap and effective like tarp and plexi-glass and aluminium.

Sounds a lot like an electric rickshaw.

Seriously, though, there are already lots of more efficient car alternatives, people in the US just don't choose to use them, due to a combination of infrastructure, social, and capability limitations.

If people aren't giving up their cars (in appreciable numbers) for busses, trains, pushbikes, motorbikes, motortrikes, motor scooters, enclosed scooters, electric bikes, european 'city cars', community cars, or car sharing.

What would an electric rickshaw offer that would cause it to be more successful than those?

An ant will see a 1" width water stream as a fast flowing river would be to us.

Given that water surface is reflective, and there is a large quantity of blue above them, could this be an alternative?

'it isn't a bug, it's a feature'

Absolutely! This is just more Apple-hating propaganda. Everyone in the iPhone community knows this is an auto-repair feature, designed to weld together all those cracks in the casing.

Well, my thought (singular) was "Meh. http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=torrent+tracker "

Interest in video games is waning

Citation needed.

Are you using a sample size of 1, perchance?

Cheap, proven, clean, unsubsidied, nuclear energy thank you.

Nuclear power is neither clear nor unsubsidized. The world's largest producer of nuclear power is France, and it dictates nuclear power plant be built and pays for them. SO does China, India, and Russia. The European Pressurized Reactor being built in Finland is "beset by long-running construction problems, schedule and cost overruns, and all-round hilarious ineptitude and controversy." And "is already running three years behind schedule due to a multitude of factors including quality control issues." It is also being built by Areva which is owned and subsidized by the government of France.

There's some uranium in the ground (which is actually poisoning our wells and room air in eastern part of Finland).

And you don't think mining more won't be worse? Fact is is without subsidies nuclear power would not be profitable.

Falcon

Thomas was caught with her pants down

Intrigued to see this, I did a google image search and shockingly, on the first page there was a link to a story from the register about a fund raising thong! Eww, she wasn't that attractive anyway..