Slashdot Mirror

First manned flight=1783

• Magnus Effect
• Coriolis Effect

Actually, it is the voltage.

Since we're talking STATIC electricity, there is, by definition, NO current flow.

The problem with static charge buildup and FETs is called punchthrough. Electric field strength is measured in Volts per Meter (V/m) The gate thickness of a typical CMOS FET is on the order of nanometers (1x10^-9 m).

Our 15 kV static voltage produces in the gate region of the FET a field of (15kV)/(40x10^-9 m) = 375x10^9 V/m.

According to this link the dielectric strength of (Pyrex) glass 14x10^6 V/m. Applying a field stronger than this will cause ionization of the material: electrons will be literally knocked off their atoms! This ionization allows a current to flow through the (normally) insulative material, called dielectric breakdown. In a CMOS FET, gate insulator ionization leaves residual conduction paths, ruining the transistor (punchthrough).

CMOS FETS have very thin gate insulators to increase performance, but the side-effect is that they can tolerate only very small static gate voltages without damage.

1. This guy
2. This guy
3. This guy
4. This guy
5. This gal
6. CowboyNeal!

Retroviruses are being investigated for 3 reasons:

1) They can be used as vectors to transport genetic information into a host cell.

2) Reverse transcriptase can be used to isolate DNA sequences from a mRNA chain so that the gene can be manipulated through bioengineering techniques.

3) To find a way to genetically engineer a cure for AIDS. If the action of reverse transcriptase can be halted somehow, the HIV virus will have no way to spread its harm through the body and millions of lives could be saved.

more info

also, you can make a compass using a bowl of still water, a blade of grass, and a small sliver of ferrous metal. (like the hand of a watch)

The site does not describe computing before the 1900's. But there were ancient computing devices that do deserve recognition. Many ancient computing devices never had moving parts, so they could not be easily identified as machines. This shows how advanced they were for their time. Stonehenge is a great example.

Some links

Two timelines here and here which date well back into B.C.

There is even an ancient Greek clocklike machine over two thousand years old that can be found here.

For those who want links to every type of computing, even modern.

Copy of a message I sent the editor :) I can't believe they couldn't predate 1971 for AI (see Sci Fi Word List)

Hi Mike,

Science predates Science Fiction :) Next time I see him [JM], I'll mention it :)
Winton

AI or Artificial Intelligence

Coined by John McCarthy [in a SCIENCE setting, not SCI-FI!], 1956. Seems to be fairly unanimous.... concept goes way back.
" He [JM] invited them to Vermont for "The Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence." (reference)

1956 John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" as the topic of the Dartmouth Conference, the first conference devoted to the subject. (reference)

It's been around (what? 5 billion years?) a long time, I don't think humanity can destroy it in a little over two century.

It has actually been around about 4.6 billion years (age of the oldest rocks).

As other folks pointed out, we humans can't (yet? ever?) destroy the earth, but we can certainly make it unable to support our form of life.

One last thing: "theories" are generally accepted by the scientific community until they are disproven. The semantics of the word does not lessen the idea behind it. The "theory of plate techtonics" is just that: a theory -- but some plates keep subducting and causing active vulcanism nonetheless.

ah I see.

But the CD is *supposed* to play on a regular CD player. It seems to me that the recording industry is going to have to get into bed with the hardware manufactures to make sure they conform to their protection standard.

For example, there are regional codes on DVDs and DVD *players* to make sure they're only playable where they were released. Another hardware/software marriage was the 5-byte key to extract DVD info from a disk (later cracked).

So, it appears that regular CD players are going to have to undergo a change in order for any successful protection to work, since the CDRs (or new drivers) could emulate a cd player.

PS: got some info from here.

The first one I remember was This Mortal Coil's Blood, circa 1991.

I'd guess that they get the extra space by using Yellow Book Mode 2 (no ECC).

The reasons included a lack of support for SMPng - including a developer fall-off ratio of 15 to 1 - a desire to finish the PowerPC/Sparc64/IA64 architectures, and a general desire to robustly test the additions. The economic downturn even makes an appearance in the announcement."

You didn't take Butterfly Effect into account.

Failing to take into acount a butterfly flapping its wings in the country called Elbonia could cause the delay of its release up to several month, even a year.

Microsoft isn't "HUGE" by any stretch of the imagination.

You couldn't be more wrong. Microsoft is worth $334 billion. They are the second biggest company in America. Only General Electric is bigger -- and MS even overtook them for a bit back in '98.

800 Gallons of Ethanol/acre

US & Canada = 18.8 million square miles

1 acre = 0.0015625 square mile

800 * 18,800,000 / 0.0015625 = 9,625,600,000,000 gallons

Now of course, ethanol isn't as dense as crude oil.

Crude Oil has 6 million BTUs/barrel, ethanol has 3.7 (From the same source, the US uses 1 million BTU every 1.1 days per capita.)

1 barrel = 42 gallons

So converting from gallons of ethanol to the equivalent barrels of oil:

9,625,600,000,000 * 3.7 / 6 / 42 = 141,328,253,968.254

the maximum average oil imports from February 1999 to February 2001 was 10,000 barrels / day.

This is 3,650,000 barrels per year. Or 0.002% of the theoretical maximum energy production of North America.

Of course, this doesn't allow any room for food, factories, homes, or people. Or account for mountains, lakes, and poor soil. But it is reassuring. Because if we were using more energy than we could ever produce in our wildest dreams, we would hit that wall extremely hard when the oil runs out.

Cloning may reduce genetic variability, Producing many clones runs the risk of creating a population that is entirely the same. This population would be susceptible to the same diseases, and one disease could devastate the entire population. One can easily picture humans being wiped out be a single virus, however, less drastic, but more probable events could occur from a lack of genetic diversity. For example, if a large percentage of an nation's cattle are identical clones, a virus, such as a particular strain of mad cow disease, could effect the entire population. The result could be catastrophic food shortages in that nation.

Cloning may cause people to settle for the best existing animals, not allowing for improvement of the species. In this way, cloning could potentially interfere with natural evolution.

Cloning is currently an expensive process. Cloning requires large amounts of money and biological expertise. Ian Wilmut and his associates required 277 tries before producing Dolly. A new cloning technique has recently been developed which is far more reliable. However, even this technique has 2-3% success rate.

There is a risk of disease transfer between transgenic animals and the animal from which the transgenes were derived. If an animal producing drugs in its milk becomes infected by a virus, the animal may transmit the virus to a patient using the drug.

Any research into human cloning would eventually need to be tested on human. The ability to clone humans may lead to the genetic tailoring of offspring. The heart of the cloning debate is concerned with the genetic manipulation of a human embryo before it begins development. It is conceivable that scientists could alter a baby's genetic code to give the individual a certain color of eyes or genetic resistance to certain diseases. This is viewed as inappropriate tampering with "Mother Nature" by many ethicists.

Because clones are derived from an existing adult cell, it has older genes. Will the clone's life expectancy be shorter because of this? Despite this concern, so far, all clones have appeared to be perfectly normal creatures.

A "genetic screening test" could be used to eliminate zygotes of a particular gender, without requiring a later abortion.

Cloning might be used to create a "perfect human," or one with above normal strength and sub-normal intelligence, a genetic underclass. Also, if cloning is perfected in humans, there would be no genetic need for men.

Cloning might have a detrimental effect on familial relationships. A child born from an adult DNA cloning of his father could be considered a delayed identical twin of one of his parents. It is unknown as to how a human might react if he or she knew he or she was an exact duplicate of an older individual.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C006300/main.htm

/*
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/

A good archive on the web is Ibiblio:

"Ibiblio is a diverse and expansive collection of information on the Internet, created and maintained by the public, for the public. It is the ultimate collection of freely available information, the future of Internet librarianship, and a collaboration between the former MetaLab.unc.edu (formerly known as SunSITE.unc.edu) and the Red Hat Center for Development."

Along with a huge Linux FTP archive, it hosts a few hundred 'collections' of information off the web.

Disclaimer: I'm not entirely impartial here because I'm currently moving my website, Astrobiology: The Living Universe, to the Ibiblio servers. At the moment we're still setting it up at its new home (www.ibiblio.org/astrobiology) and implementing a new interface. The working version is at http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763.

here and here

safety Sorry No. Go down and have a look at the 'murder' columns, shows a value of deaths per 100k. US ends up w/ double digits with countries like the USSR, Latvia & Brazil - Drastically higher than sub 2 values of star performers like Canada, Belgium, Greece and Japan..

freedom Sorry No. Have a look at the Corruption Index (Scroll to Table 1), American Imperialism (and here), McArthyism.. I wont bother with the links: DMCA, Marijuana Prohibition, Prostitution, Collusive Monopolies (RIAA/MPAA), The Cuban Embargo, Kent State Massacre, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra Affair, Watergate, Assassinations of John/Bobby Kennedy & MLK, Invasion of Granada, The War on Drugs, Internet Censorship in Schools/Libraries, Consumerism, Work holism, Invasion of Dominican Republic, Gulf War, Systemic Racism (weak gay rights)... etc etc

quality of life Sorry No. Canada has the highest Standard of Living on the planet - 7 years running...

I went to Chicago for NewYears eve to visit some friends. On the way home we heard a news reporter 'lead out of a story' by saying "...and after all; we are the richest and most powerful people in the world." What I began to think is that Americans have begun to treat their 'democracy' (*ahem*) like a Religion. There is no debate. They have enjoyed a very good 150 years - and like all successful civilizations; it will eventually end. If America didnt have such a large piece of 'virgin' North America to exploit for natural resources, and did host a World War (or two) Im betting the world would be a very different place. The 'success' of America dosnt prove the 'rightness' of Capitalism - so get that out of your head. America's 'success' is not success at all! (See adbusters.org about consumerism and mindlessness). America would do itself a favour and learn a little collective humility. Surely the last election has taught you something...

The system has been horribly corrupt by politicians and business people 'on the take'. Their is no longer anyone in Washington who intends to lead Americans. To help America lead and become better global citizens - and try their best to help set a good example - and take examples from those who are already doing good. No person on this planet should be without the rights described in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the US Constitution (or similar documents written or yet-to-be written). Like it or not this is a Global Village and we should be working together for the good of us all.

I refuse to become cynical and jadded. People will respond that this is 'The Real World' - to that I suggest people decide what we are choosing to make this 'Real World' become? Like it or not our collective action/inaction everyday sets the course for the future. We need to stop the 'present' America from setting the course that it is now (and using arms/propaganda to force others into capitulating). (I wont bother with the globalization/imperialist/enslavement/end-of-the-p lanet scenario that is our current future).

Please American PEOPLE do something about your government.

Why is water so important? It's an excellent solvent for which reactions can take place in, it has plenty of unique properties and it is also involved in many biochemical reactions itself.

So the presence of water is a strong indication that life *might* be on water-holding planets.

So what? Many people don't care if there's life out there. The fact is, if we discovered life on Mars, Ganymede and Europa, then it's pretty much a dead cert that life is *everywhere* in the universe. If that implication doesn't bother you, I don't think I know what does.

(1) I said 'As far as we know', because while it's true that most experts agree that water is necessary for life, not all of them do.

It's universally agreed that water is required for our kind of life, i.e. cellular based life, but what about other types of life that you see depicted in some of the more realistic SF novels? Those hydrogen gas-bags in Clarke's 2001 series aren't completely implausible.

I recently interviewed Dr. Jack Cohen from Warwick University about the plausibility of extra-terrestrial life, including whether water was a prequisite for my site Astrobiology: The Living Universe. You can read the interview here.

Why is water so important? It's an excellent solvent for which reactions can take place in, it has plenty of unique properties and it is also involved in many biochemical reactions itself.

So the presence of water is a strong indication that life *might* be on water-holding planets.

So what? Many people don't care if there's life out there. The fact is, if we discovered life on Mars, Ganymede and Europa, then it's pretty much a dead cert that life is *everywhere* in the universe. If that implication doesn't bother you, I don't think I know what does.

(1) I said 'As far as we know', because while it's true that most experts agree that water is necessary for life, not all of them do.

It's universally agreed that water is required for our kind of life, i.e. cellular based life, but what about other types of life that you see depicted in some of the more realistic SF novels? Those hydrogen gas-bags in Clarke's 2001 series aren't completely implausible.

I recently interviewed Dr. Jack Cohen from Warwick University about the plausibility of extra-terrestrial life, including whether water was a prequisite for my site Astrobiology: The Living Universe. You can read the interview here.

If we could use the sense of smell, we could put in the smell of the sea or something. I think that we will be able to do this in ten or twenty years.

We will be able to do this tomorrow. Literally. DigiScents has prototypes (and perhaps production devices by now) for the iSmell product. They also have a "ScentTracker" (You Amigans should love that name) 'for the creation of "scent scores" for movies, music, and interactive games', a player, a mixer (for making smells), and more. You want more hilarity? They're creating the web's first scent-enabled portal, at www.snortal.com. Yes, that's right. Snortal.

I did not attend the showing of the iSmell device (at GDC last year) but I did talk quite a bit with a couple of their developers, and inhaled some of the rising aroma of the little glass jars, such as ozone, gunfire, damp earth, swamp, and the ubiquitous banana. The smells were all spot on.

As you probably know, your sense of smell is a fairly complicated thing, but there are only so many chemicals that we can detect.

Amusingly enough, there was another company at GDC the same year with a prototype second generation smell-o-vision. I didn't talk to them much, though; They weren't nearly accessible.

No, that doesn't follow at all.

I just looked it up; the 286 apparently had 24 address bits; 2^24 == 16 MB.

Also, I seem to remember that under normal circumstances (real mode => backwards compatibility) you could only use 20 bits, which would bring you back down to 1 MB. But I could be wrong...

The 386 actually did have 32 address bits, though, which gives us the current 4GB limit...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I'm not one to argue for the sanity of the US BUT as most night owl NRA infomercial watchers will tell you the UK (effectivly) gave up the right to bear arms faster than the US will (wakey wakey CA) and it seems they have (in a way) given up the right to confidential DNA first as well. I would LIKE to keep my DNA a secret until I can go halves on a "clone" wi a nice girl and we see what we get on our spin of the punnet square.

gattaca

Black Holes and Beyond

Black Holes: Mystery of the Cosmos

Black Hole: The Death of a Star

Shit Load of Links

This Internet timeline mentions Davies as early as 1967. So does This one. There are few people who could have claimed to have been around the Internet scene for as long as 37 years. Most people don't even realize that it goes back that far.

Hrm. I could be wrong, but... this page, titled "Zero-Sum Two Person Games of Perfect Information" starts off by saying "The almost perfect example of this type of games is chess."
--

Actually the fax machine began in 1843 and was in use in France in 1856.

Mary Annings was born in 1799, I believe. Her discovery of the Ichthyosaur, at Lyme Regis, was in 1811. As for what she's doing now, not a lot, I'd guess. :)

All of her discoveries were made at the beach of Lyme Regis, which has blue-green mud cliffs. These cliffs house an amazing collection of fossil treasures, but are extremely dangerous to approach. (Mud slides are frequent - as in every few minutes.) However, this has the advantage that new fossils are forever being brought out to the surface. It's a rare day that you can't walk along the beach and find a hundred or so fossils of every kind. And there's always that chance that yet another new species is in there, somewhere, waiting to be found.

Some resources on Mary Annings:

• Summary of Mary Annings' life
• Mary Annings' Treasures (book)
• Mary Anning's Dinosaur Discovery (book)
• Ichthyosaurs - Virtual Classroom
• Pleiosaurus