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Scientific American ran a really detailed article a few months back on Mars missions. It discussed several propulsion systems, including this plasma thingee.

On that note (Windows and the Navy):

http://www.sciam.com/1998/119 8issue/1198techbus2.html

..a somewhat dated article on Europa (a moon of Jupiter), and the probable existance of liquid water beneath it's surface .

Jello is vile stuff also.

Nobody is overthrowing the government with firearms.

Try Scientific American's report on "the new face of war"... specifically, the section "From 100 Men to the Presidency".

Nobody is overthrowing the government with firearms.

Try Scientific American's report on "the new face of war"... specifically, the section "From 100 Men to the Presidency".

Nobody is overthrowing the government with firearms.

Try Scientific American's report on "the new face of war"... specifically, the section "From 100 Men to the Presidency".

I was also stunned by article's implication that C > C.

If C is faster than was previously thought, does that mean that fusion & fission are more profitable than we thought? E=mc^2 still, so there is a lot more energy in the matter of reactors, bombs, and suns than we thought? Does that have implications for how old the sun is? Could it warp our understanding of how old the universe is (calculated based on the 'assumption' that light travels c fast)?

It is all pretty shady to me. I expect it will turn out to be some funky unrealized characteristic of photon tunneling... maybe a new medium in which tunneling can occur. See Scientific American for some more info.

Anybody know anything interesting about FC? I remember once downloading a FC pic viewer and looking at a demo photo of a ski jumper in the air. What was really impressive was that I could keep zooming in until I could see the snot oozing out of his nostril! An interesting thing about FC is that it can GENERATE detail that isn't stored in the image file. However, there is no gaurentee that it will match the actual detail.

Fractal compression is very cool. It's sort of like a vector format, in a way...it has no inherent size. It can also achieve insane levels of compression. There was a small article on it several years ago in Scientific American, written (IIRC) by the inventor. The examples were very impressive.

Unfortunately, patents bite us on the butt once again. The format is patented by its creator, who runs an image software business (Iterated Systems). I'm not sure when or if the patent will revert to the public domain, either, since it's a British patent and I know nothing about how Britain handles IP law.

In relation to that, there is a really cool article in the May issue of Scientific American regarding storage issues. One of the sidebars is about holographic storage ( yes, it's not just for Star Trek anymore... ). Imagine what you could do with a quantum computer and a holographic storage array.

The storage article is here.

Check this out. HP gets closer to the final goal.

Even more exciting is really dense stuff like HP's ATOMIC RESOLUTION STORAGE

Uh oh, they'll be having a little problem with the fact that the black and white headgear worn under the helmet are informally called "snoopys" by flight crew.

There's a nice two-page "Working Knowledge" article in the latest Scientific American about modern space suits.

[Hmm... the site doesn't appear to be fully functional... I need to make sure it's not my proxy.]

So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

Scientific American, February 2000, The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons page 43, 44, 46-47.

"In short, Io is tightly linked to the giant planet by what amounts to the largest electric circuit in the solar system."

The text of the article is available is available online, including a diagram of the Io flux tube and plasma torus.

So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

Scientific American, February 2000, The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons page 43, 44, 46-47.

"In short, Io is tightly linked to the giant planet by what amounts to the largest electric circuit in the solar system."

The text of the article is available is available online, including a diagram of the Io flux tube and plasma torus.

So what's next? The Jupiter-Io Flux or Deep Sea Vents on Europa?

Scientific American, February 2000, The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons page 43, 44, 46-47.

"In short, Io is tightly linked to the giant planet by what amounts to the largest electric circuit in the solar system."

The text of the article is available is available online, including a diagram of the Io flux tube and plasma torus.

The last time AI was la mode, which was about 15-20 years ago, one of the computational walls AI hit was in computer vision. So, 10 Moore's Law cycles later, ...

If a Web page knew you had a camera pointed at yourself, could it watch? As in, see what you're looking at, where you point (forget those mouses!), what you spend time reading?

So instead of "Big Brother is watching you!" we'd have Tim Berners-Lee is watching you!"

I think out of all the things out there, this has to be the coolest I've seen.

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Hey! Why did they post this but decline my submission weeks earlier that had a link to a similar article from Scientific American?

Hey! Why did they post this but decline my submission weeks earlier that had a link to a similar article from Scientific American?

Take a look at QUANTUM DÈJÁ VU. It's the first example of a quantum nondemolition experiment conducted at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Basically, by being very careful how they took the measurement of the photon, they could ensure that particular properties, including the ones observed where not interfered with. Some of the quantum state would of course be disturbed, but not all of it. While this couldn't currently be used to eavesdrop on a quantum encryption link, it could form the basis for an attack.

How come if video games spur violence among the young, that violence among the young is dropping to its lowest levels since the depression.

There is an article in Scientific American that suggests that legalized abortion may have something to do with this. The most likely children to be aborted are probably the most likely to be neglected, and therefore most predisposed to criminal behavior. By aborting them, you get rid of a lot of potential criminals.

Good explanation, but there's a couple things that are missing. For a somewhat longer explanatory article, people can look at one from Scientific American a few years back.

The importance of the 7 qubits is mainly just the same as the importance of bits in a classical computer: this is essentially the memory capacity of the quantum computer. It is also very important to have extra bits since, as you say, you can use redundancies to keep your computer from decohering (becoming non-quantum). But I remember a talk by a guy using chloroform as the molecule (CHCl3, for 2 qubits), and talking about using Shur's factoring algorithm (the quantum algorithm to factor numbers very quickly) to factor a number like 4. Not very exciting from a mathematical standpoint.

The cute thing about using NMR with organic molecules this way is that different frequencies "talk" to different atoms in the molecule. So you can set or manipulate different qubits using different frequencies. The qubits talk to neighboring qubits as well, through the atomic interactions: this is actually a good thing- it's most of how your calculation gets done (the NMR is essentially I/O). Unfortunately, there's a problem with this approach: there's a physical limit to the size of these molecules (and thus the number of qubits). I think this is where the 15 bit limit came from. It is hard to imagine how you can find arbitrarily large organic molecules where each nuclear spin has an appreciably different resonance frequency, and where the atoms are spaced so that they only talk with

There may be some breakthrough with this latest announcement, but it looks to me like a straightforward extension of previous results.

Luckily there are some other approaches to quantum computers that (if they work) should scale up much more easily.

Regarding these new discoveries, it will be important to make sure that the discovered objects are actually members of the Orion GMC, and not more distant objects. Spectroscopic measurements will help to do this. The fate of stars/brown dwarfs/giant planets is determined primarily by their mass:
If Mass > 75 jupiters then Hydrogen fusion: Star
If 13 > Mass > 75 jupiters then Deuterium fusion: brown dwarf.
If Mass less than 13 jupiters then no fusion: planet.
At least that's one way to define the terms. The very informative Sci. Am. article mentioned above can be found here If you want to Create your own brown dwarfs, and see what their spectra look like, try this site. -chris

Neat website (http://cl-solutions.com), but...

I'm a little suspicious about any one-choice-fits-all approach though: this seems to be an aerobic species, which introduces limitations on applicability (specifically, you may need to add oxygen). Not every place in the world has lots of dissolved oxygen, indeed the nastiest sites are often anaerobic.

Far more interesting (but I have a bias here) is the anaerobic dechlorinator Dehalococcoides ethenogenes, which operates in the absence of oxygen.

"Yes, mathematicians are satisfied that Fermat's Last Theorem has been proved. Andrew Wiles's proof of the 'semistable modularity conjecture'--the key part of his proof--has been carefully checked and even simplified. It was already known before Wiles's proof that Fermat's Last Theorem would be a consequence of the modularity conjecture, combining it with another big theorem due to Ken Ribet and using key ideas from Gerhard Frey and Jean-Pierre Serre.

"Yes, mathematicians are satisfied that Fermat's Last Theorem has been proved. Andrew Wiles's proof of the 'semistable modularity conjecture'--the key part of his proof--has been carefully checked and even simplified. It was already known before Wiles's proof that Fermat's Last Theorem would be a consequence of the modularity conjecture, combining it with another big theorem due to Ken Ribet and using key ideas from Gerhard Frey and Jean-Pierre Serre.

I fear we don't; like a Mars landing, we've had the technology for decades but the political obstacles are insurmountable.

If you believe the most die-hard grassroots space advocates, the controversial question is no longer "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than money going directly to tax breaks on orbital R&D and industry?" the controversial question is "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than setting money on fire?"

It's horrifying that we're spending billions of dollars per year on Space Shuttle "operations", and a billion dollars on the worst submission (currently falling behind schedule, over weight, and over budget as you read this) for the X-33 project, while companies like Kistler Aerospace and Rotary Rocket are stalling on creating the world's first truely reusable orbital rockets because they can't raise a fraction of that money in investments.

It's shameful that they never bothered to even build a second DC-X rocket after NASA took over the program and crashed the first one.

On the one hand, NASA keeps lots of aerospace engineers employed doing something; on the other hand that something is arguably much less efficient than what they would be doing in more dynamic private companies.

On the one hand, NASA is a nice customer for the big commercial aerospace companies' rockets; on the other hand, the government is a hell of a competitor to explain to potential investors in aerospace start-up companies.

And now NASA says we don't have the technology to put an Earth Return Vehicle on Mars capable of lifting a few pounds of rocks, less than a month after Scientific American spent an article detailing plans (specifically Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct Plan outlined in The Case For Mars and NASA's Mars Semi-Direct modification) which would put humans on Mars (and leave infrastructure there, unlike Apollo) in this decade for less money than we spend on the Shuttle and ISS.

There's a smallish article in March's Scientific American about how Matthew Golombek, project scientist for Mars Pathfinder, was a science consultant for the 'Mission to Mars' film, along with two NASA astronauts.

The article isn't available online (although they've got lots of other fascinating stuff about Mars from the same issue), so I can't provide a link to it. Anyway, Golombek seems to have had doubts about many of the major plot points; but apparently he felt that 'the exaggerations do not detract from the real value of the film: to convey the sense of adventure in Mars exploration and, just maybe, to galvanise the public.'

Unfortunately, if the film's as bad as people are making out, perhaps we should expect massive funding cuts to anything Mars related in the immediate future...

Personally, I'd be embarrassed being involved in a science fiction film that ignores the science so much. One facet of good SF is the use of science to provide plot points and a rigid framework to work in - it's all the more enjoyable when there's that hint of plausibility in even the most fanatastical situations. Look at, say, Steven Baxter's 'Raft' and 'Flux' for examples of this.

I think I'll avoid the film when it eventually makes its way over the Atlantic...

I agree with you that trains can be noisy... if they used technology that is outdated by 40 years, as it is the case in the US. I took Caltrain, in Silicon Valley, and from personal experience I can say that it is difficult to board when you carry luggage or you have difficulties in walking (high, steep stairs), it is slow, and it is quite noisy.

However, there are some countries whose technology in the area is much more advanced than the American one, although the obstacles to modern trains in the US are more political than technological.

As explained in this Scientific American article, it is possible to build trains that reach high speeds without making too much noise, using aerodynamics and a clever profile for the track. Small details, such as how to conduct power from the feeder cables to the locomotive, are important.

The TGV has commercial speed around 300 km/h (180 mph). It departs from a city center at slow speed, revs up to cross the suburbs, departs from tracks shared with other trains and goes into some special track (with smooth curves). It then revs up to cruise speed. The reverse steps are taken at the end. Cities that high-speed tracks do not reach are not lost: the train simply goes at the speed of normal trains (100 mph for instance). On the latest generation of TGVs, the ride is extremely smooth: you barely feel any vibration.

A run of a shortened stock TGV reached more than 500 km/h in an 1990 experiment. Engineers are working on increasing the commercial speed to 400 km/h.

The idea is that trains run from city center to city center; no more clogged highways to reach airports dozens of miles outside of the city! A businessman going from Paris to Lyon takes the train a few metro stations from his office and arrives 2 hours later near the offices of his business partners.

I agree with you that trains can be noisy... if they used technology that is outdated by 40 years, as it is the case in the US. I took Caltrain, in Silicon Valley, and from personal experience I can say that it is difficult to board when you carry luggage or you have difficulties in walking (high, steep stairs), it is slow, and it is quite noisy.

However, there are some countries whose technology in the area is much more advanced than the American one, although the obstacles to modern trains in the US are more political than technological.

As explained in this Scientific American article, it is possible to build trains that reach high speeds without making too much noise, using aerodynamics and a clever profile for the track. Small details, such as how to conduct power from the feeder cables to the locomotive, are important.

The TGV has commercial speed around 300 km/h (180 mph). It departs from a city center at slow speed, revs up to cross the suburbs, departs from tracks shared with other trains and goes into some special track (with smooth curves). It then revs up to cruise speed. The reverse steps are taken at the end. Cities that high-speed tracks do not reach are not lost: the train simply goes at the speed of normal trains (100 mph for instance). On the latest generation of TGVs, the ride is extremely smooth: you barely feel any vibration.

A run of a shortened stock TGV reached more than 500 km/h in an 1990 experiment. Engineers are working on increasing the commercial speed to 400 km/h.

The idea is that trains run from city center to city center; no more clogged highways to reach airports dozens of miles outside of the city! A businessman going from Paris to Lyon takes the train a few metro stations from his office and arrives 2 hours later near the offices of his business partners.

(Hmm.. I aimed at Preview but hit Submit? Ouch.)

At the risk of souring public opinion, we should be advocating nuclear propulsion. Chemical propulsion has it's limits in terms of specific impulse and those limits will tell on the missions. More is better. The NERVA project proved the viability of a simple and direct application. The Scientific American article "How to go to Mars" had a nice write up on interesting electric propulsion engines, but they would of course require a power source.

Nuclear power must be de deamonized if advancements are going to happen. The risks have to be clearly stated and put into persective. The current irrational fear of all things radioactive will prevent utilization of all these propulsion sources.

And yes, we can go to Mars, right now. We just prefer to not build, and use, an Orion drive.

Yeah...that probably IS the reason NASA doesn't want to crash Galileo on Europa...they fear retribution! I did a research paper on Europa not too long ago and I have some links about Europa if anyone is interested.

here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
and here!
sorry if this drags on...some links may not be that great.

Yeah...that probably IS the reason NASA doesn't want to crash Galileo on Europa...they fear retribution! I did a research paper on Europa not too long ago and I have some links about Europa if anyone is interested.

here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
and here!
sorry if this drags on...some links may not be that great.

Check out Scientific American (from last year). This stuff looks more and more interesting everyday.

It's true that you can concoct a polynomial which will spew out any finite sequence of numbers, and that this means you can't *guarantee* you've got the formula for a sequence just by checking finitely many terms.

However, if you find a formula that "seems right", it may make it easier to prove that it *is* right, because now you're barking up the right tree.

An example of this happening in real life is the number 196884. It turned up in two seemingly unrelated places, in the character table of the Monster Group and in the expansion of the j function. This lead mathematicians to search for - and find - the connection between the two.

See Scientific American for a good article about this "Moonshine Conjecture".

• 1996: A Strong Advocate of the V-Chip Technology. Vice President Gore strongly supports the V-chip technology that will assist parents in controlling what their children watch on TV. Gore led the administration s efforts to pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which included a provision mandating the inclusion of the V-chip in new television sets.

Try the following thought experiment to reveal the true nature of V-chip supporters: Willingly embrace and implement the infernal thing, then immediately turn around and say hey, this is great! Now that we've got this protection for our kids, we can start putting adult content on cable! Bring on the naked sex violence! ... What? Oh, I see. You're not as confident about the effectiveness of the V-chip anymore...

So, at any rate -- Thumbs Down on the V-chip, Al. This was actually trumpeted in another bullet as well, but I'll limit it to a single count to be fair.

• 1997 & 1999: Working to Foster a Family Friendly Internet. Al Gore has been a leader in ensuring that the Internet is a safe place to visit for all families. At the White House "Internet Online Summit for Kids", Gore called upon the industry to make tools that block unwanted materials, words or pictures easier to use, more effective and more available to parents. The Vice President also announced a "CyberTip Line" for parents to report suspicious activity, and a public awareness campaign, "Think Then Link" to help educate parents on ways of ensuring children s safety online. In 1999, the Vice President announced the "Parents' Protection Page" initiative. The initiative is a commitment by 15 leading Internet companies to help parents and kids safely surf the net and provide access to tools and safety tips.

So, I'll have to stay neutral and go with Thumbs sideways on this one. Feel free to comment with details if you've got them.

• 1998: Vice President Gore Called for an Electronic Bill of Rights to Protect Personal Privacy On-line. In May 1998, Vice President Gore has called for initiatives that will protect the medical and financial information that can easily be intercepted and abused by others. Gore called for the creation of an Electronic Bill of Rights that would allow citizens to choose whether personal information is disclosed when they use the Internet. It would also grant citizens a right to know how and when that information is used and ensure that they would be able to have access to their own information so they can verify it's accuracy. After the Vice President raised this issue, Congress passed a bill to prevent identity theft and to protect children's privacy.

So I go with Thumbs Up to Al on this one, even though it got mangled in Congress. This one needs to be continually hammered home, and battles are being fought as we speak (Doubleclick, anyone?).

• 1998: Cracking Down on Software Piracy. Vice President Gore stated that the Administration had "declare(d) war on software piracy&intellectual property must be protected." It is estimated that in the U.S. more than 27 percent of all software is pirated and abroad estimated rates soar from 60 to 90 percent, translating into a loss of at least $11 billion to the industry. Gore announced in October of 1998 an Executive Order declaring war on piracy both in the federal government as well as directing trade officials to pursue agreements with foreign government protecting intellectual property rights of software developers.

A resounding Thumbs Down on this one Al, because the ramifications have not been clearly thought out, especially as they pertain to the protection Open Source developers.

• 1998: Re-Defining Encryption Policy. Vice President Gore announced in October that the Administration would relax export controls for encryption software. The initiative applied to insurance companies, health and medical organizations and online merchants. The new policy which was praised by the high-tech industry, will allow American companies to sell and use stronger encryption products to protect their product and customers from potential violations of personal and national security.

Since any relaxation of the export controls on crypto are a good thing, but Al seems a bit out of touch with the more fundamental issues, I say Thumbs Sideways on this one.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look too good on the privacy front for Al. My tally was:

• 2 Thumbs Down
• 2 Thumbs Sideways
• 1 Thumbs Up

• 1983: Gore Cosponsored the High Technology Trade Act.
• 1984: Investing in Educational Technology.
• 1986: Gore Sponsored the Supercomputer Network Act of 1986.
• 1989 & 1991: Gore Sponsored Bill Investing in Early Research Networks.
• 1992: Gore Authored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992.
• 1994: Called for the Creation of a New Global Information Infrastructure (GII).
• 1996: Fought for the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
• 1996: Launched the Administration s Initiative to Wire Every Classroom for the Internet.
• 1996: Increased High Technology Trade with Asian Pacific Nations.
• 1996: Fighting for Faster Internet Connections.
• 1996: A Strong Advocate of the V-Chip Technology.
• 1997: Promoted Growth of Electronic Commerce.
• 1997 & 1999: Working to Foster a Family Friendly Internet.
• 1998: Vice President Gore Called for an Electronic Bill of Rights to Protect Personal Privacy On-line.
• 1998: Cracking Down on Software Piracy.
• 1998: Gore Led Administration Efforts to Promote Development of the Next Generation Internet.
• 1998: Promoting Internet Tax Freedom for Global Economic Growth.
• 1998: Re-Defining Encryption Policy.
• 1999: Gore Called for Substantial Increase in Information Technology Funding.
• 1999: Gore Calling For Boosting Information Technology in the Next Millennium.
  • Establishing a Permanent Tax Credit for Research and Development.
  • Expand the Global Marketplace.
  • Increase Investment in Information Technology.

• Experts Give Credit to Gore for Leadership on the Internet. Vinton Cerf, nicknamed the "Father of the Internet," stated, "I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator." Cerf is currently a senior vice president with MCI Worldcom.
• Early Designers of the Defense Department Network Credit Gore. Robert E. Kahn, who helped design early Internet network for Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1969, stated that by popularizing the term "Information Superhighway," Gore raised awareness about the Internet's potential.

Have fun, folks. Be vigilant, and if you want more policy, politics, and legalities surrounding technology and privacy, check out technocrat.net.

Mojotoad

I think the real reason computers are a pain to use is the paradigm we use when designing user interfaces: today's user interfaces are about telling the computer how you want it to do something, not what you want it to do, but most users are interested in results, not the process of getting those results.

In The Beginning, computers didn't have a lot of power, so the user interface meant you had to tell it how to get from point A to point B in excruciating detail. We wound up with systems like Unix's command line shell, which gives you a small number of commands and the means to pipe the output from one to the input of the next until you build a composite command that does what you want - but to build that command you have to tell the computer what to do at each step in between. If the end result you want is "get rid of all the files belonging to the user named 'Joe'", what you have to tell the computer is "list all the files, pipe that result into a filter that looks for 'Joe' and rearranges the output a bit (awk or perl), pipe those results into a command executor (xargs), and pipe that output into the command that removes files."

Windowed interfaces are largely more of the same - if you want to get rid of all the files belonging to Joe, you would go about executing a sequence of commands using the mouse: open a folder, sort by user, select a block of files, and drag to the trash can. It's essentially the same thing you did with Unix, just expressed a bit differently. In both cases, you're still telling the computer how to get to what you want, not what you want itself.

I'm beginning to think that the real trick to getting computers that are easy to use is to shift paradigms - to begin thinking in terms of an interface where you tell the computer what you want and it figures out how to get there, as opposed to the more familiar concept of stringing together primitive commands.

What would such an interface look like? It would have to have a large input vocabulary, so you could express all the possible goals you might be interested in - which probably rules out point and click. Beyond that, I suspect it starts looking more like AI than anything else, or at least like a system with a very large rules base and a pretty fancy abstraction system.

It would make a very interesting research project for someone to create such a system that takes typed natural language commands from the keyboard and translates to Unix shell commands.

I found out about Oxygen through Scientific American. Here's a link to the online summary: http://www.sciam.com/1999/0899issue/0899quicksumma ry.html . The actual issue has quite a bit of info. Here's another link, this one to the MIT web site: http://www.lcs.mit.edu/news/releases/oxygen040799 .

The cost of interplanetary travel drops tremendously when you don't have to take all of the fuel for the trip off the planet with you.

So you set up a mining operation on the moon. Mine Aluminium and Oxygen. Voila - cheap (if nasty) propellents.

From the Moon, launch your propellents (using any number of exotic techniques from linear accelerators through chemical rockets through orbiting catapults, slingshots or tethers) into low Earth orbit.

Then all the fuel you need to start an interplanetary mission is what it takes to get off the ground and into Low Earth Orbit.

Of course, the catch with a Low-Earth-Orbit tether is getting the payload onto the tether, which will be moving at several hundred km/h. On the moon, the tether could touch the ground at one point, and be rotated at the appropriate speed such that the end-point of the techter isn't moving in relation to the surface. Doing this with a much longer tether in Low Earth Orbit may be possible, but I bags not being the first human to test that ferris-wheel!

The cost of interplanetary travel drops tremendously when you don't have to take all of the fuel for the trip off the planet with you.

So you set up a mining operation on the moon. Mine Aluminium and Oxygen. Voila - cheap (if nasty) propellents.

From the Moon, launch your propellents (using any number of exotic techniques from linear accelerators through chemical rockets through orbiting catapults/slingshots/tet hers) into low Earth orbit.

Then all the fuel you need to start an interplanetary mission is what it takes to get off the ground and into Low Earth Orbit.

Of course, the catch with a Low-Earth-Orbit tether is getting the payload onto the tether, which will be moving at several hundred km/h. On the moon, the tether could touch the ground at one point, and be rotated at the appropriate speed such that the end-point of the techter isn't moving in relation to the surface. Doing this with a much longer tether in Low Earth Orbit may be possible, but I bags not being the first human to test that ferris-wheel!

According to it, St. Elmo's Fire always stays attached to an object, while ball lightning can "drift around like a soap bubble".

Another page with lots of Ball Lightning resources is here: http://www.sciam.com/askexper t/physics/physics30.html

According to it, St. Elmo's Fire always stays attached to an object, while ball lightning can "drift around like a soap bubble".

Another page with lots of Ball Lightning resources is here: http://www.sciam.com/askexper t/physics/physics30.html

Go on - flame me, but I think The Amateur Scientist article series from Scientific American can provide you with more interesting cool things to play with.

Not to mention Klein Bottle.

Regards,

January

P.S. Yes, I used to play with Lego. And chemicals. Rockets. And old radios. Transistors. Repairing things. And so on. Any kind of toy which had screws in it.

Go on - flame me, but I think The Amateur Scientist article series from Scientific American can provide you with more interesting cool things to play with.

Not to mention Klein Bottle.

Regards,

January

P.S. Yes, I used to play with Lego. And chemicals. Rockets. And old radios. Transistors. Repairing things. And so on. Any kind of toy which had screws in it.

1. A commercial enterprise is a legal structure combining various resources (natural, human, financial) to produce a stream of profits through sale of goods (widgets), services (time/talent) or risks (more complex financial/information derivatives)
   
2. A company can be funded through debt (savings or historical under-consumption) or equity (claim to future profits capitalised through a public share market)
   
3. Think of the market as a massive parallel machine evaluating the likely returns (time-discounted future cashflow) from allocating capital
   
4. From this you can see that a share price is the equilibrium between willing/informed buyers and sellers in an open forum (assuming you are not momentum buying
   
5. Options are a way of adjusting the risks (volatility) and forms part of a repetoire for the market as price discovery and liquidity mechanisms
   
6. The sophisticated players have complex systems like derivatives to work out the comparative advantages of various financial instruments such as bonds, equity indexes, etc based on economic indicators
   
7. Thus the share price is a measure of the assets (intellectual in the case of high-tech) and the stream of suckers ... err .... customers :-) willing to pay to access that embedded expertise
   
8. The option (from the point of the board of directors) is thus a proxy measure of the economic value added (due to the time delay of vesting) and is commonly used as an incentive scheme to reward employee behaviour that helps the company's mission (though it can be easily abused) and thus grow the enterprise's profitability
   
9. However, the market evalutes this compared with many other financial instruments, in particular the risk-free interest from government bonds and (assuming efficient market operation ... a big academic debate by itself) increases the capitalisation of companies that perform above average and conversely punishes (ie removes funds or reduces willingness to purchase) those that don't meet their (admittedly amoral) criteria of capital growth/formation
   
10. Now some tech companies (the proverbial 800 pound gorilla) use this pricing information as signals to decide when to purchase others in an effort to either thin out opposition (rationalisation), fill product lineups (synergies), or protect an existing customer base
    
11. Hence an IPO and resulting buzz can be viewed as a cheap way of advertising your capabilities to potential suitors as a trade sale and a way of pricing your product better than any patent office
    
12. The speculative market (ie NOT long-term investors) has picked up on this and is willing (for the moment) to give a take-over premium to likely blue-sky candidates in the expectation that a rich (but stupid) competitor is willing to fork over real cash to overcome any time disadvantage in the technology arms-race
    

The recently announced Oxygen Project at MIT refers to the RAW processor as part of its design. The chip will rewrite its internal wiring using logic gates and microcode, compiled in some HLL. Sounds like chips are getting so big that it isn't worth the effort to customized them anymore. Just install FPGAs in everything and change the configurations as needed.

If those aren't enough, here's the Scientific American Higgs link.

It's always indicative when someone resorts to the tired rhetorical device of complaining about "political correctness." In this case, your interpretation of the circumstances of Turing's demise is speculative, Eric. See for example this exchange in the letters section of a recent Scientific American. There is no disputing, however, the persecution he was subjected to by the British authorities, which may or may not have had a direct bearing on his death.

But all this is aside from the main point, which is Turing's indisputable professional and scientific contributions. That is where the emphasis should properly be placed.

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