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The original Popular Science article is a much better read and includes additional detail, including the fact that the projectile will experience 5,000G forces. Definitely not for human passengers.

but ... the LHC is on the French-Swiss border: that must affect the laws of physics somehow ...

That make the LHC neutral about surrendering?

(sorry, it probably just means the researchers are too full on great chocolate AND great wine, cheese, and pastries to notice where their missing baguette went.)

I knew it! "Free Tibet" is just a front organization for the Association of Avian Baguette Bombers. Sent from the future.

I thought people were already trying to do this sort of thing using electroactive polymers. Certainly there seems to be a couple patents on the idea, not to mention someone who thinks the technology could be used to make braille-capable touchscreens.

But you are incorrect that they did it for intel, since that is also not possible.

Where's the study or even a valid argument supporting this claim.

Ok. Studies and reports on them:

http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=20647
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/519416/
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/21/21847/9403
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-09/new-study-finds-torture-negatively-affects-memory

And further valid arguments supporting those claims:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30721458/print/1/displaymode/1098/
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/torture-is-more-than-just-harsh-tactics/
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Dbq-Usefulness-Torture/132993

And at least one example of how this is a slippery slope that leads to nothing good:
  http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
If nothing else, please Please read about this person!

Do further googles (or wiki searches) for Maher Arar
Then just keep in mind there is NOTHING at all that happened nor will happen that would prevent you or anyone else you know from being in that persons shoes, by a random throw of the dice.

Sure that is an extreme case, but it is cases like that where I can honestly say I would support the usage. If anything, allowing these terrorists to come to a US Court sets a precedent where the usage of information gathered by torture becomes acceptable in a criminal investigation.

That is until they* come into your home at night, haul you and your wife/gf/S.O./whatever away to different prisons in another country and torture you for your terrorists connections for 9 months.
You are doing exactly everything required to qualify as a terrorist suspect under our current methods of determining who is or could be a terrorist, so it is not at all as far fetched as your extreme example is.

[*] They being all of the sociopaths that work their way into positions of power and dominance due to their personality requiring it, whom you are willingly and gladly giving permission to torture anyone and everyone (since that is our current definition of terrorist suspect)

Considering loiter time a blimp makes a lot more sense than a 747 or C-130.

I'm sure the blimp in development will do a whole lot more than surveillance.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-06/dread-zeppelin-armys-new-surveillance-blimp

There was a writeup on this stuff in this (last?) month's Popular Science. They posted a video of a wrecking ball hitting brick walls with and without it on their website.

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2009/video/video-bombproof-wallpaper-vs-wrecking-ball

Science was popular enough the magazine Popular Science was in most supermarket news racks much like computer game magazines are now. It wasn't popular with everyone, but enough were interested to have a huge circulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Science
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/index.html

>It is easy for us on Slashdot to see how stupid this is.

Look, there's a lot of stupidity on slashdot too, like how everyone wants to completely dismantle the government and heaven forbid you mention UFOs or 9/11, because the nutters will come out of the woodwork.

That said, its unfair to judge slashdot by a minority of vocal nuts and the moderators that support them, the same way its unfair to judge the majority of Americans by focusing on a minority of nuts. Every survey shows the US to be a science loving country, with about 15% who dont care for it. Ignoring hot button issues like global warming and evolution, we're not bad on a global scale, especially compared to homeopathy/traditional loving countries like Germany, China, and Russia. If people werent being brainwashed over evolution by conservative media outlets, their churches, etc it would be much better.

Not to mention pollsters dont understand alternative medicine, and I suspect many loudmouth US critics dont either. For instance, I take a multivitamin (I have a poor diet) and fish oil daily and occasional kava kava if I have insomnia. There are no shortage of studies to support these things, yet many polls would group me in with people who do homeopathy or visit a psychic.

I guess its easy to just complain about the US as being the worst thing ever and it sure gets you mod points here, but in reality you're the irrational one. Youre making unsupported generalizations about a very wide and general topic. Id like to see how a plurality of Americans pride themselves on science ignorance and dismiss the scientific method because such evidence doesnt exist. I guess you cant keep pointing to evolution or global warming, but those are still highly politicized and largly more media issues than anything else. A general dismissal of science? Not really.

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2008/product/boeing-advanced-tactical-laser

August of 2008 a similar report was released.

There has also been a lot of chatter that Iraqi insurgents have already fallen victim to the ATL and fear it.

Why did nobody patent breathing, drinking mechanisms, water filters, bottled water, and clothing, or sewing? How about the process of applying heat to food? Then they could sue any human being for being alive and not paying royalties. No matter. The race to patent human DNA is on, lawsuits over the right included.

Spilling Mercury on an Aircraft is almost as bad as a bomb (except slower) Mercury speeds up the oxidization of Aluminum to the point where you can just about watch it fall apart, spill that on an aircraft and they'll likely ground it for a good long time while they strip to the base structure and make sure every bit of aluminum isn't damaged. Good 'before and after' pics in this article.

I have a hunch Chrome OS is more about taking on Apples tablet, which introduce a more or less full fledged OSX install which, and mark my words here, will be locked down just like the iPhone and it's App store. Spiffy interface and a killer App store will mask the gilded cage your in and the total utter control Apple will have over your computing experience. Popsci has a excellent write up on how the Apple Tablet could ruin computing. http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-08/how-apple-tablet-could-ruin-computing

Could they go further, possibly introduce an App Store for their desktop OSX platform, oh but to use it you have to accept EULA that gives them a kill switch for your applications?

Apple is close to the unique position of being arbitrarily make something illegal on their newest computing platform. That is if, of course, they suceeed in making Jailbreaking outright illegal. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says-jailbreaking-illegal Yes it's ok to be disturbed.

This no doubt worries Google. Google really does not like any barrier to getting their applications and projects to the market (have you noticed too?). Apple could shut them out of a platform on a whim. They don't like that risk.
Oh wait, it has happend, with Google Voice.

As established by intellegent /.ters here Chrome will not be killing Windows, barely chewing away some market share around the fringes.

In the PC world Apple has a small market share, but they own 70% of the smartphone market. Google's response to this was Android and Android Market which has done wonders to free up the smartphone market, Microsoft certainly wasn't up to the task this time around.

Apple Tablet would no doubt sell like hotcakes and you can bet Apple netbooks will follow soon after. Chrome is an attempt to get their first, stop a repeat of the iPhone market domination.

I'm waiting to see if I'm wrong.

I've suspected Google really has something up their sleeve with Chrome OS. You get the impression they've only just started on this, but it's also obvious it has been in development in secret for a long time, the announcement timed only to take a little thunder of Microsoft. I would go so far as to say the two were developed in paralle, perhaps even had working code perhaps a year before Chrome went BETA.

Here's a better, more recent article

Here is another article with a CG Drawing of it.

Roads - should be privatized ($x/mile driven)
Water supply - should be privatized ($x/gallon taken into the house)
Sewage treatment - should be privatized ($x/gallon taken out of the house)
Police - should be privatized ($x/call to 911 etc)
Fire department - should be privatized ($x upfront to have your fire put out, but the neighbors can chip in so their houses won't be next)
Army - should be privatized (don't want that North Korean missile landing in your backyard? I hope you have the money to pay for it)
Schools - should be privatized ($x/day of school, and of course for missing school, turning in homework, missing homework etc)
Power (including lease of the lines that feed your house) - should be privatized
Street lighting - should be privatized (why not charge neighborhoods for the privilege of light?)
Garbage collection - should be privatized ($x/lbs of garbage, extra charges if you don't sort everything perfectly)
Ambulance - should be privatized (got mugged, wallet and ID stolen, head smashed in? Too bad - if you don't have the cash or picture ID to show that you're covered, the EMTs won't help you)

I wonder what other publicly provided services I left out.

According to that link posted in a few posts above...

Tungsten

When it comes to awesome bad plans involving elements, Theodore Grey is usually a good one to talk to...

So what are you saying?
That the robot is actually as tall as the Statue of Liberty only it is really far in the back?

Take a look at the photos in TFA:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-05/man-machine

See the giant robot? See its giant head? How about that giant plate across its giant chest and the triangular formation in between the chest-plate and the head?
Now scroll down and take a look at the other photo.

See that triangular formation and robot's chin? And the giant human inside the robot?

 
How about that other photo at ZDnet?
http://content.zdnet.com/2346-9595_22-11979-1.html

See the chest-plate and the human inside the robot?
Also, note that the robot's leg-plates are just slightly wider than human legs and that the distance from the top of the leg plates to the robots chin is about 4-4.5 feet (height of a 6-foot human minus the lower half of the leg) - give or take a couple of inches.

I think this super expensive design is the wrong approach to fusion and that this guy is on the right track. This is assuming, of course, that fusion can work as a power source.

Yes, drugs consumption really needs to be addressed, but now (or, now more than ever) we need to consider that legalization of certain recreational drugs would likely just compound the problem of the chemicals tainting the oceans and local water bodies.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-02/your-sewer-drugs

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4207235.ece

http://www.sfei.org/inthenews/5-11-06_sfchron_Dumpoldmeds.pdf

'At 8 a.m. on May 4, 2001, anyone trying to access the White House Web site got an error message. By noon, whitehouse.gov was down entirely, the victim of a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Somewhere in the world, hackers were pinging White House servers with thousands of page requests per second, clogging the site. Also attacked were sites for the U.S. Navy and various other federal departments'

The solution is obvious, get a 'computer' that can't be hijacked to be used as part of a botnet, to launch DDOS attacks, to me co-opted in a spam farm, to be used to steal online identity and steal all your money from your bank account.

It's bankrupting smaller farmers all over the world and leading to a global hegemony on seeds and food. Do we *really* want that to happen, do we really want to lose natural biodiversity and to keep putting millions of the poorest even further into the poorhouse? And, more importantly than that, something that impacts everyone, think of this: we have no "food insurance" or backup planet either once they screw up even worse,. and it is GOING to happen, inevitable.

This already happened to the Gros Micheal banana and is almost certainly going to affect the Cavendish banana. The failure of a homogeneous crop supply is a practical certainty.

I remembered reading about this topic in popular science. Here is the article:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-11/better-blood

Battlefield "first response" was a major topic, as getting oxygen to the brain during the first hours was one of the keys to survival.

Holy crap! The Internet *is* a series of tubes! Evidence:Image from TFA

Popsci did an entire article on this....
Images...
http://www.popsci.com/node/2282
Check out image 4

Entire article http://www.popsci.com/iclone

Popsci did an entire article on this....
Images...
http://www.popsci.com/node/2282
Check out image 4

Entire article http://www.popsci.com/iclone

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2007-07/skyscraper-farms Hello and welcome to 2007.

The cold winter in 1709 was towards the tail-end of the "Maunder Minimum" in sunspots and solar activity. Given that sunspot numbers are again unusually low, maybe it will happen again.

I thought China would do this before India because all I see around is stuff with the label "Made in China." I hear they (the Chinese), even made an iphone rip-off , but I have not seen it anywhere! So where is China's innovation?

Yep, if you believe the product literature ;)

You might rather use this if you've got reliable waves.

On the bright side it means less competition for me.

As long as my bosses are old enough to be from the "old school" they can tell the difference between me and the incoming new crap ( but not so old that they are senile or demented ;) ).

I can honestly tell them that even though I am indeed crap and not that good, I'm still many times better than more than 95% of the prospective candidates. I can usually spell and write more than a few sentences without making silly mistakes. Every so often I am even capable of coherent thought and basic reasoning!

The danger of course is if the crap gets so widespread that there are no longer enough decent hirers who can tell the difference.

Lastly, there appear to be some decent chemists coming from India:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-11/11-year-quest-create-disappearing-colored-bubbles

Yes the US guy had the idea and drive (which counts for a lot), but in the end he needed the Indian guy to create the dye.

Here's an article from Popular Science in 2007: The Prophet of Garbage

One of the main benefits of this process is that nothing needs to be sorted; however this leaves me wondering if this will ultimately trap valuable elements (e.g. gold and copper) in the slag, such that it is ultimately more expensive to retrieve them from the slag than from landfill mining should that ever become necessary.

READ THIS !! This is a technology being developed and tested by many companies. There is a small scale production test facility in Ottowa, Canada that has been running for months as a proof of concept for them to build bigger plants. (I believe Plasco Energy Group built that one). Read the Popular Science article "The Prophet of Garbage" http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage to see how it works and to answer your questions about the energy production and waste byproducts. After reading this article all the way through you should have almost all of your questions answered and should become a believer in this technology. Every Plasma gasification company seems to be doing things a little differently, but Startech from the popsci article shows what their "complete" solution would look like. Obviously the more refinement done to the waste materials the more energy that you will consume. Startech uses a 30,000 degree plasma arc instead of the usual 10,000 degree arc. I do not work in the energy sector, I work in the computer technology sector but have been an avid reader of plasma gasification technologies since reading the popsci article over a year ago.

This process will NOT "create" energy. In fact, I doubt it will have any more efficiency than the current conventional methods of turning trash into useful components. Keep in mind that vaporization of any solids from room temperature it going to take a massive amount of energy. Spinning turbines with the gasses until it condenses is an obvious step to take, but there is a lot of legislation that can be made to supplant the need for more technology. Just take a look at Germany. You can get a hefty fine for putting a can in the bio-degradable receptacle, but those guys have one helluva disposal system.

Way to have no idea what you're talking about. I've read several articles on this process and the man behind it.

Yes, it takes a lot of energy to start the reaction and form the initial plasma. Once it is started, however, as long as it is fed fuel (garbage, or any compound matter), the reaction will continue. The process completely breaks apart whatever is fed to it into its elementary components, thus effectively neutralizing virtually every known toxin and hazardous substance, the only exception is radioactive elements which cannot be broken down any further without undergoing a nuclear reaction.

Regarding energy output, this method produces energy in the form of heat from the plasma itself which can be harnessed and it produces syngas. Both of which are useful. this process has been in trials for some time now and has been proven to work. The reason everyone isn't running to it is that the plants are expensive to build, and never been done wide scale before. It's a new tech that the people with cities to run and people to protect are dubious about. New York and Ottawa Canada both plan on having plasma gasification plants, afaik.

Think of it like a really big fire. To start a fire a lot of initial energy is needed. Once it is started, it will keep going as long as it has fuel. The bonds in all molecules contain energy. This process breaks those bonds and release the energy and the result of the process is salable, environmentally friendly materials.

I'm sorry, but that's got to be one of the most naive things I've ever heard. Considering all polymers, there are arbitrarily many different permutations of the known elements available in a pure substance and then considering all mixtures thereof we have more different concoctions than can be enumerated. While certainly the properties of many of these have been well-understood or could be inferred from known experiment, there are many that await only someone with imagination to discover and apply.

Case in point: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-11/11-year-quest-create-disappearing-colored-bubbles

Reading your analogy about games, http://www.newgrounds.com/ might also be an eye-opener. Many of those games are whipped up by talented hobbyists but still get a lot of play.

~Ben

The best speech recognition application I've come across for creating my own speech commands to open programs, files, and even websites without touching my PC is Tazti Speech Recognition by Voice Tech Group. It's a free download and works 100% of the time with custom commands I create. It does require a some training for the XP version, but less for the Vista. I've used them both.

I found out about tazti through a Popular Science Online article. It's also mentioned in a Geek.com blog and also a blog post on the Intel Software website that talks about creating custom commands.

It works on XP and Vista and a friend of mine installed it on a Mac but had to use Parallels and Windows on top of Parallels and then installed tazti.

Other Features: I can control the iTunes player, log into and Navigate Facebook and Myspace, and perform Voice Searches of Google, yahoo, MSN, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia... all by talking to my PC. There are about 15 search engines or websites with search built in. It has other features too, but you can check it out yourself. There's a demo video on YouTube.

Best of all... this is a free download. I don't know how they can afford to do it????

That is the most amazing and terrible idea I have ever heard. How wonderful would it be to help soldiers not feel guilty about doing their duty and yet so utterly terrifying. Part of what makes war a "last resort" option is the horror that it causes. If we removed the pain of war, perhaps it would become far to easy to wage it.

While I do not wish PTSD upon any person, and wish that no person should ever fight in a war ever again, I cannot condone taking the sting out of war. Contraptions like remote bombing drones, cruise missiles and robotic fighters remove one side from the killing and take away the reality and the horror of war. War is terrible, awful, hellish and traumatic. The trauma and horror are what make us abhor it. Every time we remove one of those elements, we make it easier for us to wage war. It also makes it easier for us to kill them, whomever they may be.

Anything that makes it easier for us to kill them takes away a little bit of our humanity. Robotic killing machines, remorseless soldiers and supid ideas like Rods From God all take the killer too far away from their victim. It's significantly easier to maim and kill when it's a glob of pixels on the screen. Seeing and knowing the person you are killing makes it much more difficult. War should remain messy and terrible; it's the mess and the horror of it that makes us think twice about waging it.

This sounds very reminiscent of science fiction writer Terry Carr's infamous Claude Degler hoax in the 1950s or the George Burdell hoax at Georgia Tech (see http://www.popsci.com/entertainment-%2526-gaming/gallery/2008-08/great-college-pranks) which has continued for decades.

CO2 under pressure becomes denser than water, so if done right, it'll stay down there.

An example of this is the idea of sinking liquid CO2 to the bottom of the oceans:

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-06/10-audacious-ideas-save-planet?page=3

Expect several lectures on the nature of filters, how digital cameras really work and how photographs aren't 'real science'. But don't expect to be satisfied with any other explanation.

I won't fall for the bait, since you know that all digital camera sensors (even Foveon X3 with its integrated filtering) are actually monochrome, and it takes extra processing to generate a colour image. :-)

However, it *IS* worth pointing out that Phoenix's panoramic camera sensor resolution is very low compared to the consumer cameras of today (just 1024x1024 each). While this is by design and comes bundled with goodies like stereo imaging, full panning in horizontal and vertical, and 12-position colour wheel, nevertheless the fundamental 1-megapixel restriction exists and does affect images taken. Single shots from Phoenix are never going to rival a $50 compact camera of today in resolution and hence in immediate impact. But of course Phoenix isn't restricted to single shots. :-)

As Mars-Earth communication bandwidths increase, we'll be able to afford higher resolution single frames in the future.

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-06/popsci-5-minute-project-gadget-charging-station

Popular science had a nice article on how to build your own recharging station designed to cut down on the clutter. It looks like it would help in your situation.

And it is easier to come by and analyze. Check
PopSci Article
In general, there is no shortage of methods that can give you the same results easier or with more fun (good old torture for example).
The problem is that we probably should not do that anyway, it does not matter how you invade into other people's lives, it is bad. And pulling the terrorist theme here is no excuse. If yu can identify explosives through fingerprints, that means that you could have done that easier anyway.

There ain't much going on there.

Apologies, the Apollo mission did do some great stuff for science but most of it could be done by robot these days. That is progress.

People can't go to Mars, because it would be a one-way trip.

Read this in the NY Times.

It's just too expensive

With $55 billion you could feed, clothe an educate every man women and child in Rwanda for a decade, assuming their GDP is about $3bn.

and there's nothing to do up there that we couldn't do with robots.

Sample return would be much easier and cheaper without bulky, fragile humans.

Much better to spend the billions and billions of dollars on lots of probes, better very-long-range telescopes

Are we alone in the universe? Manned missions won't tell us, bigger telescopes might.

I'm a regular subscriber to Popular Science magazine, and I recall seeing several similar-sounding devices covered in there over the years.

Maybe the problem is, most of them work great in a lab environment, as a "demo", but can't scale up to cost-effective, usable/functional products for the real world?

Like what's going on with Frank Pringle's microwave emitter:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/innovator_2.html

Or Joseph Longo's plasma trash converter thing:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage?page=1

I'm a regular subscriber to Popular Science magazine, and I recall seeing several similar-sounding devices covered in there over the years.

Maybe the problem is, most of them work great in a lab environment, as a "demo", but can't scale up to cost-effective, usable/functional products for the real world?

Like what's going on with Frank Pringle's microwave emitter:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/innovator_2.html

Or Joseph Longo's plasma trash converter thing:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage?page=1

I don't mean to dog cellular/wireless as a backup, but anything based on the POTS network is going to be more reliable in terms of being strong against blackouts and disaster. Latter day technologies are less likely so because generally the legal requirements for that strength are not there or are significantly less.

High-speed cable and DSL aren't that cheap (~$100/month and up) and T1's are cheap as hell nowadays (~$400/month is not uncommon, can be less) and you've got a 4 hour repair guarantee - if you're CO is online (they are built like bunkers), you'll be back up in 4 hours from almost any outage. Check with Speakeasy.net first as I think they have about the best service going, but there are other providers as well.

So, if your goal is primarily to gain additional uptime, go with a T1 - back that up with some kind of "unregulated" connection (cable/DSL) or wireless.

Another tack to pursue if cost-efficiency has a higher priority is using wi-fi to link to a neighbor. Using some simple technology expands the range of potential connectees considerably. Find someone with a different ISP than you (different Layer 1, that is) and get them to share with you - share both ways and you both get a reliable backup (as long as your network gear is on a nice big battery) for $0/month. Make sure neither of you scrimps on that battery equipment though! (Speakeasy encourages connection sharing and would even facilitate billing if desired even on their lower-end DSL connections if that becomes a problem/need.)

-Matt

P.S. Both of those links are step-by-steps, not theoretical articles.
P.P.S. I'm not connected to Speakeasy in any way other than as a very satisfied former (for now) customer. :-)

http://www.popsci.com/aeros/article/2006-02/flying-luxury-hotel

WAIT ONE MOMENT...

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-11/turning-water-fuel

http://www.topix.com/forum/tech/TTIH6KF6MDPN1SS51

A cancer researcher using radio waves to target cancer cells stumbled upon a novel method to split water atoms into their hydrogen and oxygen component gasses using radio waves.

A research assistant noted test a tube with saline solution bubbling gas while the tube was in the path of a radio wave emitter operating at 14 megahertz. The researcher exposed the gas to an open flame and the gas stream lit. The photo in the article shows a yellow white flame coming from the mouth of the tube much like that of a propane torch. What is different about this method from run-of-the mill eletrolysis of water is the volume of gas being produced. It appears to be measurable in several liters/second rather than several liters/hour obtainable from laboratory eletrolysis equipment. Since it is not safe to store hydrogen and oxygen together because of the potential for violent explosion this method would be ideal for producing hydrogen fuel for immediate use or for storage of hydrogen after the two gasses are separated.

The article stated that the reaction was observed by others, but it did not say that the method has been duplicated. The article also did not say what the energy consumption was for the radio wave emitter. The observer surmised that the reaction may be asisted by the presence of NaCl in the solution.