In this new study, Bowers, Brian Koch, a doctoral student, and others have used this platform to demonstrate electrically-pumped lasers emitting 40 billion pulses of light per second. Employing existing silicon technology would represent a potentially less expensive and more feasible way to mass-produce future-generation devices that would use both electrons and photons to process information, rather than just electrons as has been the case in the past.
I for one welcome our superfast silicon based laser CPU overlords
Arm Spirit, which is only distributed in Japan, lets gamers advance through 10 levels battling, among other opponents, a French maid, a drunken martial arts master and a Chihuahua before reaching the final showdown with a professional wrestler.
that would suck, get your arm snapped by a Chihuahua... what happens in Japan stays in Japan.
Can starbucks arrest everyone in their shop using it if they decide on a whim that they didn't actually mean anyone to unlawfully 'break into' their unsecured wireless network?
safest to assume that any connection secured or not is off limits unless said otherwise. so yes, if Starbucks decided they didn't want people on the connection people should fuck off. it isn't vital to anyone's survival that they get that connection and it won't hurt them a bit to at least check if it is ok for them to access the connection.
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karma's gonna burn but I don't care, it needs to be said anyway
a lot of objects in the solar system were liquid at some point and could grow very large until collisions broke the pieces apart. that and some solar system formation models predict the jovian worlds had migrated, it could very well be that something large did form before the jovian worlds disrupted the region where the asteroid belt is which could cause collisions to happen frequently enough to destroy a very large object.
so Monster had no way of preventing some set of IP addresses from downloading over a million entries? does that sort of thing happen alot and they didn't think it was unusual or what? it would just seem to me that if there were alot of servers downloading an unusual amount of entries that there should be some way to prevent that...
the problem is that it isn't below China and Iran to just block EVERYTHING that remotely resembles a method around the great firewalls they set up. the power to filter what people see overrides any consideration for getting legit emails/ads to the user. and unlike in many countries in the western world the government has no problem delving into technology to fix this little problem.
below the index in TFA it tells what the breaches were, how many were affected and where they happened. from what I can tell the vast majority if not all are in the USA. there are dozens of pages of them and at least some are the same people getting multiple breaches...
it will continue, as the consumer is not the one in a position to fix any of the problems that lead to identity theft
Yes, that will motivate banks to use better security but in the end it all comes down to the fact that people need to do their part to uphold the security that is already there. Protecting passwords, keeping information secret unless absolutely needed, understanding computer security enough to avoid keyloggers, trojans, spyware etc.. a lot of the security is the bank's responsibility but it is also Joe sickpack's responsibility not to do stupid things that break security systems already in place.
It would make a little more sense if this was college when you have an idea what you want to do with your life and realize it doesn't make sense to take calculus to finish out an art/language major. But really, a student that is not interested in going into the sciences is unlikely to use calculus or higher mathematics much, but that doesn't mean they should drop it just to boost their GPA.
One of the things that I really like about it is that it provides extra incentive for someone to be healthy. Want to save $50 / month? Get in shape
Obesity can be seen as a form of addiction and Smoking certainly is one. When people have an addiction like that money isn't one of their primary concerns. They will literally Smoke until they day it kills them and overeat until that last heart attack puts them 6-feet under. As for sugar levels and cholesterol, both are heavily affected by genetics, if your body has a gene involved in diabetes or overproduction of Cholesterol you end up taking drugs to treat the illness. But yes, I agree with you that it could encourage people without some very serious willpower problems to eat better, lose weight and stop smoking but the real benefit is that if these fees could offset some of the costs of obesity/smoking so that normal healthy people don't end up paying more then that is fine.
somewhat, a nuclear explosion in space would largely be radiation which also has momentum/kinetic energy and that in its self would do damage. on Earth, the radiation heats up air which expands rapidly adding to the explosion's effect. because the air is lighter [heat expands air which becomes less dense] it rises resulting in a mushroom cloud. But overall, there should be less bang and more heat/EM radiation getting to you if you were unfortunate enough to be close.
exploding nuclear weapons from a distance only works if the asteroid is fairly solid, like the metallic [M-type] asteroids. The more porous asteroids [there seem to be many] don't seem to respond as well to such explosions. As for the Armageddon-type way of dealing with asteroids, you just made a single asteroid into a hail of dangerous shrapnel. Although if we exploded a nuclear charge [a smaller one] that only tosses up a part of the asteroid and direct the shrapnel away from Eath, the shrapnel would go in one direction [wherever your plan dictates] and the asteroid generally goes in the opposing direction, knocking it off course. over a period of several years even a small orbital change will result in Earth being safe for now. [hopefully we have that much time if not start sipping your favorite alcoholic beverage:) ]
"There are often confrontations at border crossings with suspected illegal aliens or drug runners," Lieberman says. "You don't want to hurt or kill them, just take them into custody. With this," he smiles, "they don't need to know English to comply."
and This fall, in Phase 2, researchers at Pennsylvania State University will test the LED Incapacitator on volunteers at the school's Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology. Intelligent Optical Systems will use the test results to evaluate design features and tweak the strobe's pattern and colors. "There's one wavelength that gets everybody," says Lieberman. "Vlad calls it the evil color." Further tests are scheduled for the fall, and production could begin by December. By 2010, the LED Incapacitator could be in the hands of thousands of policemen, border agents, and National Guardsmen.
Why do we assume aliens would be interested in us? We could easily just be yet another primitive planet that no one cares about,
well who is to say there are no alien Indiana Jones type characters in the universe or alien historians interested in the technological dfevelopment of pre-technological singularity species? I mean it is kind of like someone being interestwed in the Civil war but not wanting to be stuck in that time period [like the Daleks] It is one thing to want to learn about history/primitive civilizations but at the same time not be interested in being confined to the time period/technological dark age.
I think that the point was that the reason the "top minds" think radio is a good place to start is that it is basically the easiest one for us to search. it isn't so much that aliens are likely using it [they probably aren't, it's too primitive] we just are fairly good at searching the radio bands. Although there are plans to expand into the higher spectrum [visible, UV etc.] eventually, looking for pulses of light and such but it takes a technological leap for us to be as good at detecting these bands. now if they are talking, we would likely only know about the kind of transmissions that we ourselves are capable of transmitting [so when the aliens to decide to send us that fruitcake they'll have to do it with something we can understand and use ourselves] intersteller communication is both ways, the signals they use to talk to each other would ideally be similar to what they use for first contact but in the real universe they probably are not, this means either we find them first [they talk to each other in something we can understand] or they contact us first in something we understand. so basically, we will be limited in our scope of alien civilization to what we can detect and right now we can detect radio the easiest way. very very unikely that we find any that still use it though.
in less than 20 years we will have the technology to detect life on other planets, what are the chances that a technologically advanced civilization capable of going into space wouldn't have the technology to find our life with or without us being significant or not? chances are if they are still around they are far more advanced than us [assuming they are space capable etc.] and would find it a trivial problem to find species like ourselves. but you are probably correct in that this being true, they either haven't searched this part of the galaxy, can't see our signals, dont really care we are here or haven't contacted/gotten to us yet [assuming that UFOs are not them]
reminds me of a quote Grissom had on CSI about aliens: "I am sure if there is something out there looking down on us from somewhere else in the universe, they're wise enough to stay away from us."
not only that but mass extinctions happened a lot earlier than that and with a far less predictable pattern. which leaves us to wonder why this cycle is this recent? why isn't there a cycle like this stretching back over a billion years? presumably the nature of the sun's orbit around the galaxy we should see this happen a lot longer than half a billion years and with many extinctions not following the pattern, the explanation seems a bit weak.
so basically they are building a library that works a lot like Wikipedia but it is like an online library [creative commons I presume] how do they incorporate editing into the system without it having the same problems that wikipedia has? what does the project do that couldn't just as easily be done by expanding Wikipedia? any thoughts?
is this going to work out anything like google image tag game did? so people classify these galaxies and with like 3 or 4 classifying the same galaxy, seeing which tags/classifications are agreed upon?
yes. bacteria can be killed by bacteriophages which the Russians had used a lot due to antibiotics being less available and the viruses constantly evolve along side the bacteria. when the bacteria evolve to fight the virus, the viruses evolve back- a constant tug of war beween them that has managed to work for the last well, several billion years. as for making better targets that the bacteria like better than us, that is a very good idea. in fact, those sort of experiments may be taking place here in a few years or so to test if that idea actually works. in this case, instead of cockroaches and small dogs we'll probably be trying other bacteria or single cell life forms as better targets. modify the cell membrane receptors/cell biochemistry and voila! the bacteria ignore us and go after our little baited bacteria traps. [these traps would naturally have some enzyme or something capable of killing the bacteria]
so the drugs prevent genetic transer through the sex pilli so that the bacteria can not share genes and recombine them into new genes/phenotypes. that isnt a cure, it will slow thigns down but really I doubt all the drug resistant bacteria are suceptable to it and even if they were it will eventually be overcome and as a defense, become meaningless. now if we found a way to make bacteriophages induce this effect in bacteria THEN we might have a chance. viruses mutate and evolve along with their hosts and might actually put a damper on the epidemic. there are however, other ways of transferring DNA, the most important of which in this case is DNA transferred by way of bacteriophage. the phages don't do it "intentionally" it is just a consequence of their reproduction. in this case, if the drugs do work, they will fail in preventing DNA transfer through other mechanisms [there are a lot of ways this can happen]
Just to take one example: if a system of license plate readers can detect a plate that has been flagged by some agency and prevents one, e.g., car bombing, why is that not a valid mechanism to use?
Just because it can be abused?
sometime, some day people are going to realize that trading freedom for security gets neither. it is no longer the case where there is a potential for abuse, it IS being abused. your house can be searched without warrent, your calls logged and now an overabundance of security cameras. all of this because some batshit terrorists decided the WTC had to go and now we all pay for it with our freedoms. I am sorry but to me it is plain stupid to sacrifice what made america great just to feel safe against something that has a lower probability of killing people than chocking on food.
But Kelly said last week that the department had since obtained $25 million toward the estimated $90 million cost of the plan. While $15 million came from Homeland Security grants, he said, another $10 million came from the city, more than enough to install 116 license plate readers in fixed and mobile locations, including cars and helicopters, in the coming months.
The readers have been ordered, and Kelly said he hoped the rest of the money would come from additional federal grants.
The license plate readers would check the plates' numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan is approved, the police will most likely collect information from those readers too, Kelly said.
they don't have the money to build it so they plan to make us charge for our own surveillance using the very technology it is paying for in the first place. this is getting carried away, people need to start waking up and start voting these people out of here.
Slashdot Mirror
a lot of objects in the solar system were liquid at some point and could grow very large until collisions broke the pieces apart. that and some solar system formation models predict the jovian worlds had migrated, it could very well be that something large did form before the jovian worlds disrupted the region where the asteroid belt is which could cause collisions to happen frequently enough to destroy a very large object.
so Monster had no way of preventing some set of IP addresses from downloading over a million entries? does that sort of thing happen alot and they didn't think it was unusual or what? it would just seem to me that if there were alot of servers downloading an unusual amount of entries that there should be some way to prevent that...
the problem is that it isn't below China and Iran to just block EVERYTHING that remotely resembles a method around the great firewalls they set up. the power to filter what people see overrides any consideration for getting legit emails/ads to the user. and unlike in many countries in the western world the government has no problem delving into technology to fix this little problem.
below the index in TFA it tells what the breaches were, how many were affected and where they happened. from what I can tell the vast majority if not all are in the USA. there are dozens of pages of them and at least some are the same people getting multiple breaches...
http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/DataBreaches2006-A nalysis.htm
human/software incompetence took up 44% in the public sector, hackers 52% in higher education and theft(s) were 55 and 57% for private and medical respectively
It would make a little more sense if this was college when you have an idea what you want to do with your life and realize it doesn't make sense to take calculus to finish out an art/language major. But really, a student that is not interested in going into the sciences is unlikely to use calculus or higher mathematics much, but that doesn't mean they should drop it just to boost their GPA.
somewhat, a nuclear explosion in space would largely be radiation which also has momentum/kinetic energy and that in its self would do damage. on Earth, the radiation heats up air which expands rapidly adding to the explosion's effect. because the air is lighter [heat expands air which becomes less dense] it rises resulting in a mushroom cloud. But overall, there should be less bang and more heat/EM radiation getting to you if you were unfortunate enough to be close.
exploding nuclear weapons from a distance only works if the asteroid is fairly solid, like the metallic [M-type] asteroids. The more porous asteroids [there seem to be many] don't seem to respond as well to such explosions. As for the Armageddon-type way of dealing with asteroids, you just made a single asteroid into a hail of dangerous shrapnel. Although if we exploded a nuclear charge [a smaller one] that only tosses up a part of the asteroid and direct the shrapnel away from Eath, the shrapnel would go in one direction [wherever your plan dictates] and the asteroid generally goes in the opposing direction, knocking it off course. over a period of several years even a small orbital change will result in Earth being safe for now. [hopefully we have that much time if not start sipping your favorite alcoholic beverage :) ]
I think that the point was that the reason the "top minds" think radio is a good place to start is that it is basically the easiest one for us to search. it isn't so much that aliens are likely using it [they probably aren't, it's too primitive] we just are fairly good at searching the radio bands. Although there are plans to expand into the higher spectrum [visible, UV etc.] eventually, looking for pulses of light and such but it takes a technological leap for us to be as good at detecting these bands. now if they are talking, we would likely only know about the kind of transmissions that we ourselves are capable of transmitting [so when the aliens to decide to send us that fruitcake they'll have to do it with something we can understand and use ourselves] intersteller communication is both ways, the signals they use to talk to each other would ideally be similar to what they use for first contact but in the real universe they probably are not, this means either we find them first [they talk to each other in something we can understand] or they contact us first in something we understand. so basically, we will be limited in our scope of alien civilization to what we can detect and right now we can detect radio the easiest way. very very unikely that we find any that still use it though.
in less than 20 years we will have the technology to detect life on other planets, what are the chances that a technologically advanced civilization capable of going into space wouldn't have the technology to find our life with or without us being significant or not? chances are if they are still around they are far more advanced than us [assuming they are space capable etc.] and would find it a trivial problem to find species like ourselves. but you are probably correct in that this being true, they either haven't searched this part of the galaxy, can't see our signals, dont really care we are here or haven't contacted/gotten to us yet [assuming that UFOs are not them]
reminds me of a quote Grissom had on CSI about aliens: "I am sure if there is something out there looking down on us from somewhere else in the universe, they're wise enough to stay away from us."
not only that but mass extinctions happened a lot earlier than that and with a far less predictable pattern. which leaves us to wonder why this cycle is this recent? why isn't there a cycle like this stretching back over a billion years? presumably the nature of the sun's orbit around the galaxy we should see this happen a lot longer than half a billion years and with many extinctions not following the pattern, the explanation seems a bit weak.
so basically they are building a library that works a lot like Wikipedia but it is like an online library [creative commons I presume] how do they incorporate editing into the system without it having the same problems that wikipedia has? what does the project do that couldn't just as easily be done by expanding Wikipedia? any thoughts?
is this going to work out anything like google image tag game did? so people classify these galaxies and with like 3 or 4 classifying the same galaxy, seeing which tags/classifications are agreed upon?
yes. bacteria can be killed by bacteriophages which the Russians had used a lot due to antibiotics being less available and the viruses constantly evolve along side the bacteria. when the bacteria evolve to fight the virus, the viruses evolve back- a constant tug of war beween them that has managed to work for the last well, several billion years. as for making better targets that the bacteria like better than us, that is a very good idea. in fact, those sort of experiments may be taking place here in a few years or so to test if that idea actually works. in this case, instead of cockroaches and small dogs we'll probably be trying other bacteria or single cell life forms as better targets. modify the cell membrane receptors/cell biochemistry and voila! the bacteria ignore us and go after our little baited bacteria traps. [these traps would naturally have some enzyme or something capable of killing the bacteria]
so the drugs prevent genetic transer through the sex pilli so that the bacteria can not share genes and recombine them into new genes/phenotypes. that isnt a cure, it will slow thigns down but really I doubt all the drug resistant bacteria are suceptable to it and even if they were it will eventually be overcome and as a defense, become meaningless. now if we found a way to make bacteriophages induce this effect in bacteria THEN we might have a chance. viruses mutate and evolve along with their hosts and might actually put a damper on the epidemic. there are however, other ways of transferring DNA, the most important of which in this case is DNA transferred by way of bacteriophage. the phages don't do it "intentionally" it is just a consequence of their reproduction. in this case, if the drugs do work, they will fail in preventing DNA transfer through other mechanisms [there are a lot of ways this can happen]