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Clearly, the specific properties of the microwaves used (not just the heating) cause specific chemical changes in the plastic and rubber compound. Essentially, polymer chains are being broken up. But we as consumers are told not to worry about microwaves from cell phones, WiFi, or base stations.

Why? Well, the photon energy (Planck's constant times the microwave frequency) is too low to cause chemical changes. All microwaves are supposed to do to tissue is a small amount of heating. Yet clearly, other processes that damage polymers can go on as well. DNA is a polymer, and breaks in DNA induced by EM fields is exactly what Lai and Singh at Washington state university have found. Their work has been surpressed: http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/march05/w akeupcall01.html.

What do you mean when you say "notoriously insecure networks"?

http://students.washington.edu/tor528/full_letter. html

Don't people have to get to work somehow?

Telepresence. See the Wikipedia telepresence article.

"We must imagine a future without cars."
Designing a city without any cars.
Orson Scott Card on 'walking neighborhoods' (I first thought he was talking of some scifi idea, such as moving neighborhoods, haha.)
Carfree (?)
Monorail Opportunity in Seattle, Washington (1998)

From #19302663:

People got along for thousands of years without cars, so maybe you should consider getting rid of yours.

Also, from #10313790:

This is what I think... There won't be cars in the future. There will only be personalised vehicles to transport each individual. Roads, the larger they are, will not allow single vehicles. There has to be two or more (depending on the road) vehicles required to travel together. Probably the smallest road will allow individual vehicles to travel by themselves. As more vehicles travel together the overall fuel consumption will decrease and fuel efficiency will increase. Individual vehicles will be able to break off from this combined unit as they reach their destinations.

Creating car free cities dupe with >1k comments.

Post #5975896 gets it right:

Even with "emission free" cars, you still expend the energy to move the car to being with. Getting rid of pollution is an important goal, but the ultimate goal should be to conserve the environmental resources required to produce and operate cars. By creating a city in which cars are less necessary, you reduce the energy consumption of the average citizen, even after you factor in the energy required to operate the 24-hour mass transit systems.

Just an interesting tidbit here: "It's things like cars that take people out of public spaces and make a community less safe."
Arcosanti, an interesting experimental town supposedly as an alternative to urban sprawl.
Argument that car-free is too expensive.
An interesting problem in #5975908:

1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.
2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!

Apparently Venice is not the solution, either.
Small steps needed to make the change.
Pipes from Futurama? Or maybe, dare it be said, ...

Standing at the bow of a small open boat with an outboard motor with a non-exploding harpoon and a gun in your hand is probably one of the scariest experiences I can imagine. I've heard some really frightening tales from Eskimo whaling captains.

What is it with you and your "factory killing ships"? Are you some kind of nut? Or do you have Eskimo people confused with the Japanese "scientific" whaling expeditions?

Do some fucking research before you spout off with your nonsense. A Google search for "eskimo whaling techniques" brings up lots of good explanations on how whaling is done in modern Eskimo communities. From http://luna.pos.to/whale/iwc_chair06_6.html see "Regarding the Alaska Eskimo bowhead whale subsistence hunt, it was reported that subsistence hunters make every effort to dispatch the whale as quickly as possible to provide a humane death for the whale, to reduce the chance of losing the whale, and to reduce the amount of time hunters in small boats must spend in the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. It was further reported that the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission has undertaken an extensive program to upgrade the safety and humaneness of its traditional weapons used in the hunt."

Other sources of information to help with your prejudiced ignorance:
http://www.uark.edu/misc/jcdixon/Historic_Whaling/ Research/Multidisciplinary/Whaling_societies.htm
http://depts.washington.edu/rural/RURAL/advice/dte vukpaper.html
http://www.iwcoffice.org/index.htm

I found this site claiming that messages can be encoded into light particles and sent faster than the speed of light by the use of quantum mechanics. http://www.npl.washington.edu/av/altvw75.html Imagine the bandwidth. (Mmmm Bit Torrent)

Disclaimer: I am a physicist working in a quantum information group, and have taken a graduate level physics course on quantum information.

This won't work. The article doesn't give details, but by googling the scientist, I found this proposal, and immediately recognized the flaw in the experiment. He's trying to use a quantum eraser (wiki of quantum eraser, and link to good article on them) to change the image of the downconverted photons on a camera, but that simply cannot be done. The image on a screen can be changed using a nonlocal eraser, but only when you look at conincidences of the two photons. This is a common proposal for FTL communication, I just can't believe no one ever told this guy why it wouldn't work.

The quantum eraser (linked above) can be pretty tough to get your head around. It combines interference, entanglement, and nonlocality, all tough nonclassical phenomena. Feel free to ask if you read the article and don't understand something.

Is a Professor of Physics: Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/

Is a very well written author who has appeared countless times in Analog as a science columnist. I highly recommend reading his articles as he is extremely capable of getting the idea across without swamping the reader in unfamiliar math or terms.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/av_index_sub.html

Is a published hard science fiction author. I've read both of his novels and find them very good. He takes plausable science and extends it. While it is unfortunate to science fiction fans that he has not written more books his other work is more important.

Here is a list of his accomplishments.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/

Is a Professor of Physics: Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/

Is a very well written author who has appeared countless times in Analog as a science columnist. I highly recommend reading his articles as he is extremely capable of getting the idea across without swamping the reader in unfamiliar math or terms.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/av_index_sub.html

Is a published hard science fiction author. I've read both of his novels and find them very good. He takes plausable science and extends it. While it is unfortunate to science fiction fans that he has not written more books his other work is more important.

Here is a list of his accomplishments.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/

Is a Professor of Physics: Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/

Is a very well written author who has appeared countless times in Analog as a science columnist. I highly recommend reading his articles as he is extremely capable of getting the idea across without swamping the reader in unfamiliar math or terms.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/av_index_sub.html

Is a published hard science fiction author. I've read both of his novels and find them very good. He takes plausable science and extends it. While it is unfortunate to science fiction fans that he has not written more books his other work is more important.

Here is a list of his accomplishments.
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/

Look? John Cramer..., Cosmo Kramer, I don't think so...
But strangely there's some resemblance to the "real" Kenny Kramer (which the character Cosmo Kramer was based on)...

This prohibition against superluminal communication, as stated above, is a part of standard quantum mechanics. However, this prohibition is broken if quantum mechanics is allowed to be slightly "non-linear", a technical term meaning that when quantum waves are superimposed they may generate a small cross-term not present in the standard formalism. Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate for his theoretical work in unifying the electromagnetic and weak interactions, investigated a theory which introduces small non-linear corrections to standard quantum mechanics [13]. The onset of non-linear behavior is seen in other areas of physics, e.g., laser light in certain media, and, he suggested, might also be present but unnoticed in quantum mechanics. Weinberg's non-linear QM subtly alters certain properties of the standard theory, producing new physical effects that can be detected through precise measurements.

If you really want to understand what John Cramer is talking about, read his article here. John Gribbin also his a good description of John Cramer's theory in his book Schrodinger's Kittens.

If the USPTO wants to start dealing with software more, they are going to need to change their bizarre rules for who can sit the patent bar.

Currently, the USPTO only allows attorneys with certain undergraduate degrees to sit the bar. Many are engineering degrees: electrical engineering, civil engineering, ceramic engineering, etc. Some are more general: biology, general chemistry, food technology, etc.

Computer science is also one of the degrees listed, but there is an asterisk next to it. CS is the only degree which the USPTO requires accreditation on. Why is this significant?

Because most of the best CS schools in the country don't even have accredited CS programs. I ran down this list one time. Out of the top four CS schools only two, MIT and Berkeley, were accredited. Only 3 out of the top 10 were accredited and 6 out of the top 20. Most CS departments feel that accreditation is absolutely worthless. Employers don't care, the accreditation process doesn't focus on CS education as much as other non-majored courses students must take, it is expensive, and it is not valuable to the student.

Consider this: a lawyer with a CS degree from Pacific Lutheran or St. Cloud State (ranked sub-100 in computer science) can sit the patent bar, a lawyer with a CS degree from Stanford or Carnegie-Mellon (top 4 schools) cannot.

John Cramer has been writing science articles for the science fiction magazine Analog for some time. They are available online here: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV

This guy isn't crazy, the idea of using advanced waves goes all the way back to Feynman (see Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory which is what this is based upon). This merely another interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. All he's trying to do is see if we can experimentally verify it as producing different results than the "standard" interpretations. It's called science people, look into it. Sometimes crazy ideas turn out to be true, you don't know until, you know, you run experiments. As crazy ideas go, this one isn't that off the wall, it's based on actual physics. There's no FTL involved, the transactions all occur at the speed of light through advanced and retarded waves.

http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/ti_over/ ti_over.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_ toc.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/no de2.html

This guy isn't crazy, the idea of using advanced waves goes all the way back to Feynman (see Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory which is what this is based upon). This merely another interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. All he's trying to do is see if we can experimentally verify it as producing different results than the "standard" interpretations. It's called science people, look into it. Sometimes crazy ideas turn out to be true, you don't know until, you know, you run experiments. As crazy ideas go, this one isn't that off the wall, it's based on actual physics. There's no FTL involved, the transactions all occur at the speed of light through advanced and retarded waves.

http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/ti_over/ ti_over.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_ toc.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/no de2.html

This guy isn't crazy, the idea of using advanced waves goes all the way back to Feynman (see Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory which is what this is based upon). This merely another interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. All he's trying to do is see if we can experimentally verify it as producing different results than the "standard" interpretations. It's called science people, look into it. Sometimes crazy ideas turn out to be true, you don't know until, you know, you run experiments. As crazy ideas go, this one isn't that off the wall, it's based on actual physics. There's no FTL involved, the transactions all occur at the speed of light through advanced and retarded waves.

http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/ti_over/ ti_over.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_ toc.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/no de2.html

http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/

Captcha: micros

This page at University of Washington has a link to the original SIGGRAPH paper (PDF) which describes in rather general terms the mechansim by which Photo Tourism (the first shot at Photosynth) works. That paper (and its references should get you started.)

This page at University of Washington has a link to the original SIGGRAPH paper (PDF) which describes in rather general terms the mechansim by which Photo Tourism (the first shot at Photosynth) works. That paper (and its references should get you started.)

This one for liftoff from Earth (exhaust is not radioactive), and in-system work, and this one for deep-space missions. We can move thousands of tons around with these, cheaply and safely. (Note: neither of these is an Orion type, which is another option.)

there's a demo that is OS agnostic (java applet) on the washington Phototourism page.

It's kind of amusing how the original research demo is in Java, so it runs on anything. The microsoft demo of course is Windows XP/Vista only. At least they ported the plugin from ActiveX to work in Firefox.

i'm pretty sure this started on linux, at the very least. check the long video linked on the photo tourism page: http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/

This system was demoed a while ago, I think at siggraph 2006. There are some videos on the original university of washington "PhotoTourism" research page. Also here's a repost of the same video on that page on youTube.

Also there's microsoft's photosynth page, which has the demo (it's been up for months). It seems to have some longer videos.

Non-newness and marketing hype aside, this software is frickin' awesome. It lets you view and tag photos organized in a 3D environment that reflects where the photos were taken. It should be particularly useful once cameras have GPS built in. It could be used by a single person, but it's definitely well suited to large collections such as flickr. I imagine the reason the software is still in the demo phase is because it's very difficult to take a large number of photos and reliably figure out where they were all taken from. For the demo purposes, Microsoft probably hand corrected a lot of the placements. Even so, everyone I've shown this to thinks its awesome (even non-slashdot readers!).

This system was demoed a while ago, I think at siggraph 2006. There are some videos on the original university of washington "PhotoTourism" research page. Also here's a repost of the same video on that page on youTube.

Also there's microsoft's photosynth page, which has the demo (it's been up for months). It seems to have some longer videos.

Non-newness and marketing hype aside, this software is frickin' awesome. It lets you view and tag photos organized in a 3D environment that reflects where the photos were taken. It should be particularly useful once cameras have GPS built in. It could be used by a single person, but it's definitely well suited to large collections such as flickr. I imagine the reason the software is still in the demo phase is because it's very difficult to take a large number of photos and reliably figure out where they were all taken from. For the demo purposes, Microsoft probably hand corrected a lot of the placements. Even so, everyone I've shown this to thinks its awesome (even non-slashdot readers!).

This system was demoed a while ago, I think at siggraph. There are some videos on the original university of washington PhotoTourism page.. Also here's a repost of the video on youTube.

Also there's microsoft's page, which has the demo (I don't think that's new either). It seems to have some longer videos

Non-newness and marketing hype aside, this software is frickin' awesome. It lets you view and tag photos organized in a 3D environment that reflects where the photos were taken. It should be particularly useful once cameras have GPS built in.

I imagine the reason the software is still in the demo phase is because it's very difficult to take a large number of photos and reliably figure out where they were all taken from. For the demo purposes, Microsoft probably hand corrected a lot of the placements. Even so, everyone I've shown this too thinks its often (even non-slashdot readers!)

>and why the "carrot" is often so bogus

It might be bogus and it might not be bogus.

The patent system went way overboard over the last 20 years to strengthen patents because of the lack if investment in R&D in the 70's.

Now with the pendulum swinging the other way the question is will it hurt R&D spending again and thus economic growth (innovation is the impetus for growth).

"
In the late 1970's, U.S. industry believed
that Japan had beaten the U.S. in terms of technology
innovation. The Japanese system, policies,
and corporations were seen as very successful. The
U.S. keenly realized that they needed systematic
reform to regain international competitiveness.
Towards the end of the Carter Administration, the
government and private sector reached a consensus
that the U.S. was in an "innovation crisis" and that
U.S. technology innovation had slowed down. In
such an environment, a variety of reforms were
carried out. These included the establishment of
the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
(CAFC), reform of the patent laws, strengthening
of the United States Patent and Trade Office
(USPTO), enlargement of the scope of patent protection,
transfer of federal R&D results to the private
sector, and integration of trade and patent policy.
These reforms might not have been carried out if
U.S. industry had not recognized that it was in an
economic crisis.
"
http://www.law.washington.edu/casrip/newsletter/Vo l7/newsv7i1Kihara.pdf

Can you say "stagflation"?

In fact, I did an experiment on this particular topic, using a catchall on a subdomain. (Actually it's about spamcrawlers' regexes, but whatever.) The results are somewhat interesting.

A third view is the "many worlds" theory.

Rolands article has links to the

Main Seal project homepage

Movies and pictures of it in action

Don't just dismiss Roland, I found the popsci link rather lacking in comparison.

Rolands article has links to the

Main Seal project homepage

Movies and pictures of it in action

Don't just dismiss Roland, I found the popsci link rather lacking in comparison.

Since you consider Wikipedia Soviet apologist propoganda:
Monument to Estonian SS Veterans put up and removed
Simon Wiesenthal war crimes campaign in Baltics
Report on the Holocaust in the Baltics

I'm done. Take care

Just to mention my old major...

http://www.ischool.washington.edu/informatics/over view.aspx

The only way to both allow binary drivers and maintain stability is with a microkernel based design, where the drivers run sandboxed and can fail without taking down the whole kernel. Monolithic kernels will never have that sort of stability, but they are faster and far easier to understand. So it's a trade-off.

Nice post, but I have a quick comment about the above. Check out the Nooks research project out of the University of Washington: http://nooks.cs.washington.edu/

They managed to sandbox Linux drivers using page protection techniques. A driver cannot, under most circumstances, bring down the kernel.

I'm not sure if the guidelines vary by country, but the U.S. guideline was 15 compressions for every 2 breaths (5 + 1 if two people are working). The guidelines were changed to 30 + 2 at the end of 2005. The reason for the change, as others have mentioned, is that the circulation of blood is most important. Rescue breathing takes time, is harder to do correctly than chest compressions, and takes time (consider it an operational overhead). Also, the compression of the chest causes some air movement on its own, though it is shallow.

check out SAGE: http://modular.math.washington.edu/sage/

You got me curious, so I did a little math.

Cost of the war so far (not counting amount we'll waste before this blunder is done with): $420B.
Cost of superconducting maglev track per mile in the US for long distances: $15-20M. Let's say 20M.
Miles we could build: 21,000
Distance across continental America, east to west: ~2500 mi
Distance across continental America, north to south: ~1250 mi

For that money, we could build ~5 east-west cross-country routes and ~7 north-south routes, or 4 and 9, or whatever. Another way to put it: we could add almost half of our entire length of interstate highways in superconducting maglev. Other methods, like inductrac, could be much cheaper and cover more miles.

Or, we could use the money to kill a bunch of brown people overseas for no good reason. Either way works, I suppose.

Wikipedia gives a brief introduction> but the main paper is quite readable.

To me it just seems right. The Copenhagen interpretation seems to be driving itself into an unsatisfactory corner. And which is more likely? We've got a tweisted view of it for 70 years, or the universe can do something unexpected with time travelling waves? Just that one little mental hurdle to cross, and everything else falls into place. No more spooky actions at a distance. No more photons knowing which slit was closed after they had gone past it.

Bohm's interpretation isn't the only alternative to the standard Copenhagen interpretaion. The "many worlds" interpretation is popular with science fiction (such as Stargate SG-1). There is also a "transactional interpretation" by John Cramer. It invokes interactions between the future and the present, just as there are also ordinary interactions between the past and the present. And here is something that calls itself (only at the end of the file) an "aethereal interpretation". It starts by talking about all those "virtual particles in the vacuum", and saying, let's call that thing "the aether"... and goes from there.

I use WebPine instead. PINE is more useful for when connections are intermittent, however.

Here are some sounds of Jovian "radio storms":

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/radiojove_ sbursts.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/radiojove_ lbursts.htm

And my favorite: a University of Washington professor used temperature variations in the cosmic background radiation to create the "sound of the Big Bang." This allows us to hear the first 760 thousand years of the universe. Of course the frequencies are boosted because the actual Big Bang frequencies are far too low to be heard by humans. Amazing stuff.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound.html

Looks to me this is the same thing that Robert M. Winglee was doing back in 2001 with Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2)

http://www.ess.washington.edu/Space/M2P2/

Both a dumb writeup and a dumb researcher.

More like a dumb /. poster who takes a dumb writeup at face value.

Hint: you don't get tenure at the 5th ranked CS school in the country by being "dumb".

He kills his own cause and make OBSD look like a playground for schoolyard bullies.

What do you mean "like"? Have you ever been on an OpenBSD list? If you post a question that you don't know the answer to already then you are wrong. No. Stop. Fuck you. Moron. Newbie. Loser.

Never mind that you checked the docs best you can, if you don't understand it as well as the maintainer, you suck. Cock bite. Bastard. Fucker.

OK, they aren't a bunch of assholes with Tourette Syndrome. Tourettes is a diseased marked by involuntary actions. These people have the (fairly normal) urge to hate their fellow beings, but rather than just spout off at other drivers, they found a place they can do it electronically. Their minds are weak, or they'd fight their urges instead of finding a forum for them.

You have just described the Personal Rapid Transit concept. Though most PRT proposals have the rails raised above the ground, not buried in tunnels.