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I apologize for not explicitly defining every single absolute. Obviously I, and the submitter of the article, were not perfectly clear in such statements. I will attempt to fix this issue immediately.

The article, the first link in the submission, which ultimately leads down to http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/13597 is a tech piece from May 2004 describing a hardware device for deploying sound along a narrow beam and being able to control and direct it. This first article describes the technology behind the device that is listed in the second link of the submission which leads to http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/05/loudhailer-or-weapon.html, a product review as of May 2008.

Here is where the disconnection has occurred and again I apologize. Both articles are speaking of the same thing. The first article relates to the technology in a general scope that the product in the second article is based off of. While the May 2004 article doesn't explicitly discuss that the technology can be used to modify behavior, it is indeed the same technology being used for the LRAD product being sold currently.

For future correspondence, instead of using so many words for personal attacks, assumptions, and generally unintelligent conversation you should concentrate on looking at the sources displayed. I understand that today's Slashdot may be suffering from some quality control issues but that is a far cry from being able to pen every reader into the same field. I hope I've been able to clear up this inconsistency for you.

Says here that "All data we collect from the new site will be freely and publicly available"

Not necessarily so. For a single Bot to build a house in the traditional manner, it would be pretty tough from a mechanical design standpoint. For multiple Bots to build one in the traditional manner it would be pretty easy. Bots building cars has to be a lot tougher than building a house which requires a lot less precision.

Also, having Bots build a house using alternative methods like the method described here or others would make the task much, much easier.

Back when the Shuttle was called the "National Space Transportation System" and NASA was claiming that launch costs would come down, NASA used to talk about materials processing in space. That was a long time ago.

The trouble with materials processing in space is that for small things, gravity is dominated by surface tension and other forces like Brownian motion. So biological processing in space never amounted to much. Some early Shuttle flights carried an electrophoresis apparatus designed for zero-G operation to make some kind of diabetes drug. But bioengineering went beyond that approach; today it's easier to engineer some bacterium to crank out whatever you need.

For big objects, there would be some advantages (and many disadvantages) to working in zero G. Handling molten metal in zero G safely would be tough. One molten droplet could puncture anything we currently send into space. With gravity and in air, molten droplets don't travel very far and cool. In space, they can go a long way. Steel mills use floors of dirt or refractory brick in molten metal areas; concrete will blow up when its water content boils. Welding in space has been tried, but on a very small scale, and very nervously.

Lift to orbit is far too expensive to justify flying heavy metal up there for casting and welding. This is one of those ideas that won't be feasible unless and until lift to orbit costs about what long distance air travel costs now.

if sequestered under the sea it would be even more stable than the gas at one atmosphere in air case.

However CO2 reacts with water to form acid. Because of this the world's oceans are acidifying. This acidification creates more problems, for instance it eats coral reefs and the shell of shellfish, and who know how many fish can't live in acidic environs?

For your edification: Climate change: A guide for the perplexed.

Please read. It touches on all the points that concern you.

If you can back up your statements with facts, please cite your sources and provide links. But don't be too surprised if your sources' credibilities get challenged if they aren't using peer reviewed scientific studies.

Global warming is a myth, well, due to CO2 emissions anyway.

Ah, another anthropogenic climate change denier. Well, this article and the US Supreme Court disagree with you.

Ah, another anthropogenic climate change denier. Well, this article and the US Supreme Court disagree with you.

Detroit and Tokyo live in the world where trial lawyers will rip ya a fresh asshole if a jury can be convinced your design wasn't 'perfectly safe.'

Well then perhaps they should start with the automakers that make over sized Soccer-Mom Assault Vehicles and over powered Impotence Compensators. The trend towards ever larger and more powerful cars is what is increasing the danger of our roads. The gains made by auto safety improvements has only served to As Click and Clack pointed out in a recent Nova show about the "Car of the Future", no commuter needs 500hp, and that is ridiculous to even offer it. Automakers will be quick to point out that consumers (as a broad trend) buy the most horsepower they can afford for the car type they buy. But huge monster cars are not a true necessity for a car to be a success. Lets look at one of the most successful cars of all time. The 1967 VW Beetle weighed 1850lbs and had 53hp, and they worked just fine. With modern techniques it should be easy enough to make a vehicle with enough room, with a curb weight of under a ton. Then a simple 75 hp engine can get you where you are going just fine. There is no need to go 0-60 in under ten seconds if most cars on the road do it in fifteen seconds. Perhaps if there were tighter regulations on vehicle size (without a special license) and size to horsepower ratio limits, then there would be more room for innovative cars like the Aptera. Structural engineering of cars is really only half the crash test, the other half is the size of the other car they collide with.

And getting all of those SUVs off the road is easy, it's called $10-a-gallon gas.

Please see this journal entry, note especially this document to which I link. Whether you're trying to redefine the word "Open" (with a capital O, much like Free) or the phrase "Open Source", there was meaning before the OSI, and hopefully, it will have that same meaning when the OSI is gone.

Perens attempted to register "open source" as a service mark for the OSI, but that attempt was impractical by trademark standards. (ref) Of course it is. The phrase was in common use in the Unix community prior to the OSI being a twinkle in anyone's eye. And if you just do a little google archive search (don't know why I didn't think of this before today...) then you will see that the phrase "open source" was used in the media primarily to discuss state secrets available from non-domestic spies (e.g. foreign and free agents.) You can see the two come together in this New Scientist article from 1993.

I still have yet to see a good reason why any terms should be redefined here.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn13815&print=true
Without the ads and other extraneous stuff.

From last year:

Motorola's mobile smell-o-phone, April 2007

I appologize to all /.ers but I did RTFA. (Insert appropriate smiley here.)

The title (which came directly from the New Scientist article) comes from a single, deeply buried paragraph.

The gadget-powering technique works in the near-field, like the lens does, but would need a low frequency (~3 MHz) so the near field can include a whole room. I suspect Grbic spoke without thinking through the frequency issue; microwave techniques rarely scale to hundred-meter wavelengths.

The real news was the development of a material design which could be more easily mass produced. So the New Scientist choice of title suggests the meme "It's not news, it's...."

Also, equation 14 of Near-Field Focusing Plates and Their Design (Grbic and Merlin) means the field strength at the focal point ~ e^-BIGNUM for any application involving orbital distances. This makes a lot of interesting comments OT. If the mods understand the implications and delete all the appropriate OT posts, I expect my karma to drop to ~ e^-USERNUM .

The way I see it, the more criminals in prison, the less there are on the streets.

That would make sense if you could simply divide the population into criminals and non-criminals. Unfortunately it's not that simple - people move between the two categories. So when judging whether a particular method of punishment works, we need to ask three questions:

1) Does it keep criminals off the streets?
2) Does it dissuade non-criminals from becoming criminals?
3) Does it persuade criminals to become non-criminals?

Prison does well on the first test, and fairly well on the second (although the worst offenders don't respond to deterrents). But it fails the third test: criminals released from prison in the UK have a higher reoffending rate than those given community sentences. That's why judges are reluctant to impose a prison sentence for a first offence: once you've gone to prison, you're likely to keep going back.

For me CFLs would do absolutely nothing in terms of greenhouse gas

Might want to rethink that one. Not to mention the huge ecological damage that comes from building a dam.

would add to the mercury problem.

The "mercury problem", plus the problem from *all the other heavy metals* and *many other types of pollutants* comes mostly from the burning of coal. Point out to me a single time you objected to the ubiquitous use of fluorescent tubes that contain an order of magnitude or more mercury, found in every officebuilding across the country, and I'll lay off you on this one, but CFLs have a tiny, miniscule amount of mercury. There's a tiny amount of all sorts of toxic chemicals in a computer chip. Are you going to stop using a computer, too? And even for this tiny amount of mercury, when disposed of, only a tiny fraction of *that* escapes. I can dig up the ref againfor you if you want, but in a previous debate on this subject, I dug up an EPA document on how much mercury is released from a CFL disposed of in different manners. If the trash is incinerated, a little over 20% of it ends up released. If it's buried, about 3% of it gets released. If it's treated as hazardous waste, the amount is negligible. In short, we're talking about small fractions of what starts out as only a couple milligrams. Oh, and to top it all off? It's inorganic mercury, which has low toxicity. What coal plants emit is largely organic.

But something annoys me more: People who call themselves green, but promote fossil fuels.

Gasoline isn't a "fossil fuel" when you make it from biomass.

Not that I particularly agree with the ban but it isn't anything new. As said the issue is only with lasers strong enough to reasonably blind people. Even as someone who regularly shoots firearms I fear said lasers more than a firearm - the laser is "on" or "off" and the "on" state lasts until the laser looses power. It is *immediately* dangerous through the whole process and is deceptively so (after all it is only a small dot). For various reasons people do not give it the necessary respect, if they did then I wouldn't mind so much.

The Red Cross has been trying to ban the blinding ones as weapons since the early 90's (and they explicitly state terrorist use even back then). A simple google search turned up a few articles on the front page, I'm sure there are better, yet since the first page results are good enough:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14419521.100-ban-cruel-laser-weapons-says-red-cross.html
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/7120/1392
http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/12/18/edmol.t.php

and finally what they actually passed: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/49de65e1b0a201a7c125641f002d57af?OpenDocument

So, yea, not really anything new and is pretty much in line with international law. I don't know if Australia is a signatory to the law, however as we know from the US detractors that is irrelevant as it is an "international law".

Can't say as I agree with it (even as used as a weapon - better to be blinded than the alternatives) and I would really like one of the things that could pop a balloon, but for most of what the posters here who want to enforce this it *should* be a triumph of international law and the logical progression of said law. If you want your country to follow "international law" then kiss these thing good buy as you cant have them since the early 90's, Bush's term and the current so called "War on Terror" have nothing to do with said laws. We can't simply pick and choose which laws we observe (as is rightly said by Bush detractor's - it is pretty much all or nothing).

did anbody actualyl listen to the .wav sample? http://media.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/av/dn13672A1.wav it's soooo funny

Unless I'm not finding a link in the article, it seems like they only managed to simulate the letter "e". Not exactly full speech emulation (yet) and sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking. Still, kinda cool. One can only assume the next effort will include the full poetic expression: Eegah

Wasn't that malfunction not actually a problem with the robotic aspect of the weapon, but mechanical though? According to this article http://technology.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12812&feedId=online-news_rss20, it looks like a shell exploded in the breach, causing an uncontrollable chain fire. Not a problem with the robotics.

George Packer Berry was the Dean of Harvard Medical School (1949-1965) and had a much wiser approach to information. In an address to students at the Medical School, he said, "Half of what we are going to teach you is wrong, and half of it is right. Our problem is that we don't know which half is which."

You need to check information from any source when it matters to you. You think that published books are always better? Check this one out: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Texbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. Indeed, according to one study, Most scientific papers are probably wrong. One study found that Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica had similar error rates.

Wikipedia is new, so it's forcing people to notice something that was always true about any information, but that they've been ignoring up to now: You need to check information that's important to you.

You'd be interested to know that rat's brain cells have already (the linked article is from 2004) been harnessed to fly a virtual F-22.

The singularity, as the man said, is near.

Old news...... http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/15/2324253&mode=thread&tid=155

But then, this is slashdot, so it's to be expected.

And this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2178-boy-takes-swing-at-us-patents.html

And plenty more.

Layne

You must never have smoked pot, or had friends who did, for you would never make this argument otherwise. Alcohol is so much worse in terms of impairment of judgment, as well as motor skills, that what you said just doesn't hold any water. Really.

People on pot do not frequently get the urge to destroy property or get into fights. Go to a football game, or even a local pub, and tell me this is not the case for alcohol.

Furthermore, there is much evidence to suggest that alcohol impairs driving more than weed. Obviously, this is the most talked about and consequential form of motor impairment, but it can be seen as an indicator that other motor functions are also not as impaired by pot.

Then, of course, there is the whole overdose thing. Alcohol poisoning? Yes. THC poisoning? No. Unless you're like this idiot cop who thinks he is dying from the brownies he ingested, made from pot he stole in a bust.

You said the poster failed to respond to either of your points, so let's try to tease out which points you want answered. Point 1 - other planets temperatures have gone up so something other than CO2 is causing global climate change on earth, and 2, ice core samples don't show that CO2 increases cause global climate change. Did I get them right?

The poster said, "98% of the worlds scientist who've looked into this accept the science behind CO2 and it's impact on climate, and the simple fact that there has been zero peer-reviewed research that disproves the impact that CO2 can have on climate." Sounds to me like a response to both points. Climate scientists don't believe either of the points you raise having anything to do with whether CO2 increases cause global climate change.

I'll respond specifically to your points, though. You appear to be claiming the sun is responsible for global climate change on Earth. It's not. A lot of research has been done on this topic. At most 10% of the observed climate change on Earth can be attributed to solar variation - most studies show a much smaller impact. The fact that at least one other planet in our solar system (Mars) is seeing planet-wide temperature changes doesn't change that since the global climate change on Earth and the planet wide temperature change on Mars have nothing to do with each other. As an aside, the increase in temperature on Mars has nothing to do with solar variations. I'm not sure what other planets you think are going through global climate change, so I can't speak to them.

You are wrong about the ice cores, not just about what has been found, but what it means. Ice core show very close correlations between CO2 and temperature. See Climate Myth: Ice cores show CO2 rising as temperatures fell among other articles on this topic. The nice thing about the New Scientist article is that it actually links to peer reviewed

Why should I re-invent the wheel? I'm representing the conventional viewpoint. If you wish to dispute current scientific thought then you must provide evidence. However, in the interests of expediance, here you go.
On the warming of planets:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11642

So, your contention fails. Not all the planets are warming. Further, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you finger the Sun as the main culprit here, although you didn't explicitly state that. However, solar output hasn't increased since we've begun specifically measuring it in '78.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650

Now to the Ice cores:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11640
If anyone takes the time to read through the above links they will discover that there are many factors that can and have influenced global temperatures in the past. (As the skeptics continually refer) Some of these factors include, Solar luminosity, Cloud formation, particulate in the air, Carbon Dioxide and so on. If there is a big change in any of the factors that control climate (which there has been in the past)then you would expect to see an effect on climate. CO2 records from ice cores DO match up well with the CO2 record but there are cases where they don't. HOWEVER: these deviances are satisfactorily explained by the presence of other factors over-riding the effect of CO2 during a specific geologic era. What's happening today is that we are altering the climate mainly by heavily altering the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Why should I re-invent the wheel? I'm representing the conventional viewpoint. If you wish to dispute current scientific thought then you must provide evidence. However, in the interests of expediance, here you go.
On the warming of planets:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11642

So, your contention fails. Not all the planets are warming. Further, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you finger the Sun as the main culprit here, although you didn't explicitly state that. However, solar output hasn't increased since we've begun specifically measuring it in '78.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650

Now to the Ice cores:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11640
If anyone takes the time to read through the above links they will discover that there are many factors that can and have influenced global temperatures in the past. (As the skeptics continually refer) Some of these factors include, Solar luminosity, Cloud formation, particulate in the air, Carbon Dioxide and so on. If there is a big change in any of the factors that control climate (which there has been in the past)then you would expect to see an effect on climate. CO2 records from ice cores DO match up well with the CO2 record but there are cases where they don't. HOWEVER: these deviances are satisfactorily explained by the presence of other factors over-riding the effect of CO2 during a specific geologic era. What's happening today is that we are altering the climate mainly by heavily altering the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Why should I re-invent the wheel? I'm representing the conventional viewpoint. If you wish to dispute current scientific thought then you must provide evidence. However, in the interests of expediance, here you go.
On the warming of planets:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system.htm
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11642

So, your contention fails. Not all the planets are warming. Further, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you finger the Sun as the main culprit here, although you didn't explicitly state that. However, solar output hasn't increased since we've begun specifically measuring it in '78.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650

Now to the Ice cores:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11640
If anyone takes the time to read through the above links they will discover that there are many factors that can and have influenced global temperatures in the past. (As the skeptics continually refer) Some of these factors include, Solar luminosity, Cloud formation, particulate in the air, Carbon Dioxide and so on. If there is a big change in any of the factors that control climate (which there has been in the past)then you would expect to see an effect on climate. CO2 records from ice cores DO match up well with the CO2 record but there are cases where they don't. HOWEVER: these deviances are satisfactorily explained by the presence of other factors over-riding the effect of CO2 during a specific geologic era. What's happening today is that we are altering the climate mainly by heavily altering the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

There's also the recent Puccinia graminis "wheat blight" currently happening across Asia. Puccinia graminis affects both wheat and barley (and some other crops). Combine that with a weak U.S. dollar, which means we are exporting more, and the fact that U.S. growers have been switching to the more-profitable corn growing, and you can see why grain prices have gone up, at least in the U.S.

they could probably make 88mph o_o what has science done?!

All we need now is for these self-assembling block robots http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624997.100 to meet up with this self-replicating printer and then we've got a problem...

Flowers, my ass! When you have a baby you're supposed to hand out cigars. Where's my cigar, dammit?

In related news, they've discovered the smallest black hole yet with a mass of only 3.8 times the sun's mass, and a diameter of only 24 km (that's about fifteen miles).

So is this black ho the baby planet's momma?

but time travel too: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19726421.700-2008-does-time-travel-start-here.html
So we may survive the singularity only to be enslaved by giant intelligent wasps from the future. Nice.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925423.600-three-cosmic-enigmas-one-audacious-answer.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16322014.700-a-black-hole-ate-my-planet.html

"Within 24 hours, the laboratory issued a rebuttal: the risk of such a catastrophe was essentially zero"

Hmm... Wiki doesn't have a page on it (or fused/sintered regolith either)
here's the NS article:
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn8320-lunar-lawnmower-to-deal-with-moon-dust-menace-.html/

In testing for radioactivity they are NOT conducting strip- or cavity searches

A 34-year-old patient who had been treated with radioactive iodine for Graves disease, a thyroid disorder, returned to their clinic three weeks later complaining he had been strip-searched twice in Manhattan subway stations.

Now, how do you explain that you've just had radiation treatment to the mindless TSA buffoon who's found you're radioactive?

This isn't really a new problem. Radiotherapy patients were getting picked up by radiation monitors in the New York subway system years ago. See for example this case, which involves a fellow who was searched (strip searched) twice in Manhattan subway stations during a three-week period. This was back in 2002. My understanding is that most (American) clinicians are aware of the potential problem, and know enough to send their patients out the door with explanatory paperwork and pager numbers for medical personnel who can explain to police why certain individuals are radioactive.

Heck, it's been long enough that I suspect most police/Homeland Security officers may actually be familiar with this potential for false positives. Now, I admit that the 'radioactive pets' problem is a new one to me, and there's a large part of my mind that says, "Quit torturing the cat. Let it go. Put the animal to rest peacefully, rather than have it get arrested, detained, and blown up by Homeland Security."

They have.

Americans undergoing radioactive medical treatments risk setting off anti-terrorism sensors in public places, and subsequent strip searches by police, warn doctors at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Doesn't beat White LEDs at 300 lumens per watt.

What about radiation? we still don't know where all the heat comes from that our planet generates internally, but one of the things that generates it is radioactive decay.

Pardon the lame article...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725103.700

Black stem rust itself is nothing new. It has been a major blight on heat production since the rise of agriculture, and the Romans even prayed to a stem rust god, Robigus. It can reduce a field of ripening grain to a dead, tangled mass, and vast outbreaks egularly used to rip through wheat regions. The last to hit the North American breadbasket, in 1954, wiped out 40 per cent of the crop. In the cold war both the US and the Soviet Union stockpiled stem rust spores as a biological weapon.

What's the definition of "central Asia"? Is there really "billions of people" there?

A few seconds research would've give you an answer (80 million for the lazy).

I think however that the range of the fungus is far wider than just central Asia. Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia (along with the countries they supply grain to] could be affected, along with the rest of the world if the fungus continues to spread.

New scientist has a better article (from almost a year ago).

Work is being done to protect crops, but Norman Borlaug says "This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction." Oh yes, and you can say goodbye to cheap white bread.

The reason we will peak is because if it wasn't for immigration developed countries would have had a negative growth rate, that coupled with the AIDS virus and effective birth control. poor countries will develop and large families will not be needed anymore. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1108-global-population-to-peak-in-2070.html

no doubt there will be alarmists that claim there is already too many people in the world, but that's their bullshit code for "we are more important than everyone else"

Actually, the whole premise is wrong.
Interstellar trade will involve data, not materials.
Our solar system has plenty enough raw materials for the next few thousand years. Real estate will be at a premium though.
Interstellar travel will most probably be about expansion until the technology advances enough to make it commonplace.

Why data?

It's easier to squirt an idea or plan across 12 LY then it is to haul finished goods, and it's definitely easier to haul raw materials from the asteroid belt or the Oort cloud then to ship it from Tau Ceti.

Desktop duplicators will have advanced in the next century, I hope.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn10922-desktop-fabricator-may-kickstart-home-revolution.html

And quantum entanglement may even allow for FTL communication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible

Captcha; eleven. My lucky number.

"Their obsession with conformity has also graced them with the highest suicide rate in the world."

Ahh... no. According to the WHO Suicide Rates (per 100,000), by country, year, and gender for the most recent year available.
As of May 2003. http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/
Or maybe you mean teen suicide?
Err... No again. As of 2004 seems Indian teen girls get that.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4846-indian-teens-have-worlds-highest-suicide-rate.html

Now if you wanted a list that included attempted suicide as well, I don't have any information for that, but I would like to. I'd hate to think that Japan's traditionally high rating for suicide has been helped out by a culture that promotes meticulous attention to detail. Just a thought.

Japan is no paradise, but please try harder in your dismissing it that regurgitating memes for the Reagan era. Thank you.

Linky

Tm

The Vatican said that the Pope had been misquoted and since the episode, several of the professors have retracted their protest.

Only 67 of us signed the letter to our rector, however thousands of people are now supporting our initiative by signing online documents. What worried me was the reaction of the Italian media, commentators and even left-wing politicians. Their only argument was: these people are intolerant, they shut the pope's mouth. But the pope is talking continuously. It is we who have problems putting across our arguments. The church operates colleges and university centres all over the world. It owns radio and TV stations, newspapers, magazines.