It is true that many guns are designed for use against other humans. Handguns mostly, but also millitary weapons and such.
But there are many guns that are designed for hunting or the sport of target practice. Shotguns and rifles are a good example of these. 200 years ago in much of the United States a gun was necessary tool to hunt for food or to kill predators threatening your livestock. I agree that millitary weapons and handguns should have some controls, but lumping all guns together as "human killing machines" is naive and ignorant.
After reading the real article from the Uni of Bath site containing these few sentences...
The continual series of short bursts of light will not only dramatically affect technology - it will also advance physics by giving researchers the chance to look inside the atom. and
By sending the light in short bursts into an atom, they will be able to work out the movements of electrons, the tiny negatively charged particles that orbit the atom's nucleus. Heisenberg what?
Hrm..
Well the story seems to really be about the fact that they got a really phat grant for their optics research, but they appear to be really far away from doing anything new or building anything practical. So Im guessing that they really arent really trying to violate Heisenberg; it probably just PR grant-getting lingo (the whole article is littered with it...from atto-second to optical computing to medical lasers). Congrats on the grant, but Im sort of disappointed there is nothing newsworthy other than the fact that they got a grant.
I dont know if Mueller is truely responsible. The Patriot Act was a knee jerk law put together in response to 9/11 and seemingly granted broad powers to law enforcement with vague language. After all, Mueller is not the one who drafted, voted, or signed the Patriot Act. The parts of the law in question are still mostly open to interpertation, and there is no legal precedent for the stuff in question. Notice the language of the article. The FBI "misused" the law, they never say the FBI did something "illegal", becuase the matter of it being illegal or not depends on who you ask. Those truely responsible are the ones who couldnt take the time to figure out wtf they were voting on or signing (Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, we are looking at you).
So the FBI abused the law, but really its their job to bring justice to the fullest extent of the law. The problem is the Patriot Act extended these borders yet failed to define them. So really who is responsible? IMO the people who made the law vague and abusable are the ones who truely deserve the blame in this case.
First of all Americans are the hardest working people in the world. And every year we are increasing the hours in the average work week.
So I would agrue that Americans do have that drive, although not under the threat of ending up as a house cleaner. Americans are instead motivated by money, profit, and most of all materialism. Americans are some of the hardest working people in the world, espically compared to Europe and such places where they just stop in the middle of the day for nap time, or take 2 months off in the summer... And its not because we care about ending up with a shitty job. Even well off Americans will work hard because we want more money so we can buy more *stuff*. Or there are a lot of people out there who just want to have more than the other guys, or people who just like seeing big green numbers on the bottom line.
And dont forget its not just the current immigrants who are driven. Today's Americans are the products of immigrants 100 year ago who were driven, or even the Puritans 300 years ago (with their Puritan work ethic..idle hands lead to sin etc etc), and the work ethic they had has definatly been passed down to some extent.
In fact, I would argue that the motivation for Americans is greater than the immigrants'. A lot of people here would not be content to live in say South America and employ 2 servants and work 9-5 and live confortably. Americans want fancy cars, fancy TVs, a big bank account, and a big house. And there are a lot of Americans who will work their ass off to get what they want, and if they cant work enough they will take on massive debt, while at the same time if they cut their hours down and lived modestly within their means they would be very confortable. Materialism is one of the most powerful forces in this world.
What you are describing is a long step away from the type of control you need to control a game. The sensors are just measuring the intensity of your brain activity, nothing more. Basically you have a single input channel with variable intensity, sort of like the gas pedal on your car. But in order to drive your car you need a wheel and a brake as well. Or if you are playing madden 07, you need input channels for left/right, foreward/back, throw, catch, etc, and all nearly at the same time. It is a very significant step to actually monitor the data encoded in your brain waves and make sense of it, as opposed to just looking and seeing "oh there is a lot of activity now, and now there isnt that much". Its not going to be happening any time soon.
He gets shot walking out of a courthouse? I kinda thought he would have sacraficed himself for the greater good. Or died a glorious death in combat against the forces of evil. Pretty lame way to kill him off in my opinion.
When TFA says "hope for ps3" I thought that meant the price would come down 200 dollars, and 5 or 10 kickass games that take full advantage of the capabilities of the ps3 hardware are going to be released. All I saw in TFA was they ripped off Secondlife, rendered it all pretty with their uber hardware, and added adverts. Am I missing anything?
Photons have *momentum*...not mass. The photon's momentum is not the classical formula p = mv, but instead p = hv/c, where h = plancks constant c = speed of light, and v is the frequency.
The experiment you are talking about is the momentum of the photon being transfered to the contraption. The way to understand it is that the energy from the photons is being transfered to the device, dont think in terms of classical momentum.
This sounds very similar to "psychohistory" as discussed in Asimov's Foundation series. Now if only we could predict what random nation Bush is going to invade next...
Suggested tag : psychohistory
The problem is that we are not applying our money is the right areas. Here in the US we educate EVERYONE until they are 18 (or actually 21 if you need it). That means we pay a ton of money for even the dumb people, and even mentally handicapped. While they too are deserving an education, in Europe they seperate students at an early age. By getting the dumb kids out of the classrooms the bright students can be challenged. But here in the US we believe that everyone should get the same education and students are all basically mixed together until the middle of high school.
Im sure Im not the only/.er who wanted to shoot myself when the teacher had kids read books out loud, and I had already finished the whole damn book while some kid was still stumbling through the first page. I remember spacing out during math and science class for years while they taught and retaught things I learned in the previous grade. And private school was really not an option for me because my parents didnt have an abundance of money at the time and would not have been able to save for college for me.
I believe the core of the problem is that students are not seperated like they are in Europe. If we took the money we waste on teaching kids english lit when all they really need to learn from high school is how to weld, and applied it for classrooms and teachers to challenge the college bound students from a very early age, it would go a long way towards improving our test scores.
Wow...its things like conservapedia that make me ashamed to admit I go to church. I dont even think there are many, if any, mainstream theologians who will claim the earth is 5000 years old. Most christians simply believe "God created" us, which is perfectly compatible with say...God being the "first cause" of the big bang, and planning that eventually the earth would form and evolution would take its course resulting in the existence of you and me. The problem is ignorant fools take the Bible literally and come up with horseshit like this and then are able to hide behind religion. And the church claims that they simply have a different interpertation and turn a blind eye towards it.
In fact it is border-line herasy to claim the "young earth" view. If the earth is only 5000 years old, then why do we percieve it by every mechanism of science to be 5 billion years old, and for life to be 3 billion years old? To claim that the earth is really only 5000 years old is to claim that God put dinosaur bones that can be carbon dated back millions of years here to decieved us. And calling God a deciever is a herasy.
We need religious leadership to speak out against crap like "conservapedia", because shit like that is exactly why many people refuse to attend church. It really bothers me to watch other christians alienate society with bogus interpertations of the Bible when we should be focused on reaching out and helping other people.
I dont know if you remember, but 9/11 happened BEFORE the Iraq war. The first WTC bombing happened around a time when Israel enjoyed much less support from the US than they do now (under Clinton). And I dont know how supporting Saudi Arabia is really encouraging terrorism (maybe because we allow the Saudis to turn a blind eye towards them? Perhaps someone could explain?). And yes, while Israel is often unjustified in their use of force, to break our alliance with them because of enemy actions is nothing short of cowardly. It would show weakness to the world, and it would give the terrorists motivation, determination, and recruits, as it would be seen as a victory by the terrorists. Appeasement would only encourage them (give a terrorist a cookie and...) Either way, 9/11 did not happen because of anything you have stated.
9/11 happened because Islamic fundamentalists hate free religion. They hate our culture. They hate our very existence. And they think by fighting us they get a free pass to Paradise. The only way to stop them is to either kill them all, or adopt Sharia as our constitution, profess our faith in Allah, and elect Osama bin Laden as Shiek of the United States. Well maybe not Osama, but honestly nothing short professing our belief in Allah would appease them.
Yes Iraq was a mistake. Yes we give way too much support for Israel. And yes, being a menace may increase the anti-American attitude and does add fuel to the fire. But this fire has been burning for 1000 years since the rise of Islam, jihads, crusades, etc etc. You are a fool to think "playing nice" with them is going to put it out.
After all is said and done...IMO the easy way out is to simply kill them all. Talking things over and learning to share with fundamentalists of any flavor sounds pretty damn hard to me.
One of graphene's simplest properties - that of being a perfectly flat 2D sheet - is the most mystifying of all, said Geim. In theory, thermal fluctuations should cause any perfect 2D crystal to vibrate out of the plane, with sufficient energy to break its bonds. Scientists had surmised that graphene could only appear both stable and perfectly flat because it was usually stabilised on a substrate.
But in Nature this week, Geim's team also reveals that the supposedly flat sheet is in fact corrugated; tiny ripples of graphene crystallites make the sheets 3D when suspended in isolation The article explains that free standing graphene could not exist on its own if it was not intrinsiclly rippled. What they discovered was that graphene actually has a rippled structure when isolated which allows them to use it in such a fashion. So its my understanding that thermal fluctuations are not the cause of the ripples, instead something in the nature of graphene is. It would be nice it they would explain why it is rippled. Is it because of imperfections or simply the nature of the sp2 carbons? Anyone know?
Perfect graphene is flat. But any imperfections caused by a missing carbon or an extra carbon will cause it to bend slightly. Which would explain the ripples.
Source from wikipedia:
Perfect graphenes consist exclusively of hexagonal cells; pentagonal and heptagonal cells constitute defects. If an isolated pentagonal cell is present, then the plane warps into a cone shape; insertion of 12 pentagons would create a fullerene. Likewise, insertion of an isolated heptagon causes the sheet to become saddle-shaped. Controlled addition of pentagons and heptagons would allow a wide variety of shapes to be made.
Couldnt Dell just use hardware that is compatible with SUSE (the SUSE people probably have a list somewhere...), and then pass the burden of software support along to SUSE? If your program doesnt install correctly on your Dell, you call MS, not Dell. If your HD dies, then you call Dell. And I'm guessing that their customer base will not be needing that much support, because the people who buy a Dell with linux pre-installed are probably the same people who buy a computer preloaded with MS, nuke the drive, and install their favorite linux distro all by themselves. I dont understand why tech support would be the thing holding Dell back. Maybe this is a cop-out?
What's it going to take for mathematicians to get some mainstream coverage? A sex scandal?
Unfortunatly, yes. Because everyone knows about sex. Well, maybe that was a bit of an overstatement on this forum but still I bet most of us here at least paid attention in 7th grade health class cause we knew we were going to need all the help we could get:).
All joking aside though, I think its safe to say there are quite a few more people in the world who know about sex than there are people in the world who know what a "mock theta function" is. Even as a senior in EE/compE with substantial math training I would be hard pressed to even be able to figure what it is. Judging from the responses on the forum not many people here know either, and/. isnt exactly filled with math illerates. The problem with math is that is has progressed so much that in order to even be able to understand the existing problems left to be solved you probably need to be an advanced grad student.
So yeah, congrats to the people who solved this problem. Im sure you did a great job. What it is you solved I dont know, but hopefully someday, maybe even within your great grandchildrens' lifetimes, it will be relevant to some real world application. Now, if you will excuse me...back to DLing pr0n.
Also, there must be lots of artistic possiblities for LED-based lights that are not possible with incandescent or CFL.
I have always thought it would be really cool instead of drywall covering the whole ceiling of a room to take say the center piece of drywall and have it be a piece of 4x8 plastic/drywall that would be have an array of 50 or so of those white LEDs embedded into it all pointing at different angles. Doesnt have to be drywall it could even be a tile from one of those drop ceilings. Or maybe a fixture that had smoked glass globe or something to diffuse the light surrounding a hemispherical arrangement of LEDs. Or even a piece of molding that ran all the way around the room 4-5 feet off the ground that had LEDs every few inches pointed 10 degrees inward from vertial and every other one pointing down in the same respect. Maybe that wouldnt work so well in your house...but what about the office? When you have light bulbs that last 15 years or more, you dont need to put them in a standard light fixture because you arent going to be changing them often.
The only way I have seen LEDs used in lighting is to take 10 or 20 of them and pack them together all pointing the same direction and make a spotlight. Its great for outside lighting but not really good for indoors besides track lighting or spotlighting of something.
Does anyone know if there is a company out there that makes those sorts of things? If not...it sounds like a really good idea for a startup....It seems to me that with the current LED technology, the only thing stopping people from lighting the inside of an entire home or office with LEDs is creativity.
LEDs are better, but the problem is the technology is not there yet. They have the potential of being the best light source since electrons are converted into photons 1:1.
Super-bright LEDs were just invented in the past 5-10 years. And they are plenty bright for lighting purposes (maybe YOU should do some research). I have one of them on my key chain that is as bright as a small flashlight and very handy at night. And I have a flashlight with an array of them that is more powerful than most standard flashlights. There are traffic lights and turn signals on cars that use LEDs. Maybe 10 years ago LEDs werent very bright. But now-a-days, your statement is not true.
They do have limitations right now, but give them some time and some clever people will figure out ways to address the problems. There is a lot of research going on in the field specifically to address the issues you mention. The potential is far and above CFLs, it will just take some time to develope
Well they are an IC blub, so that tells you that the light is being emmitted by passing current through a piece of wire which then glows. Normal IC blubs have tungsten fillaments, and when current is passed through these they emmit light mostly in the IR range (which you feel as heat). However tungsten also emmits about 5% of the energy in the visible spectrum (which you see as light). GE claims to have found a substance to use for wire which emmits 20% (4x efficiency FTA) of the energy as visible light. The rest of the energy will be in the UV and IR ranges. What that substance is or how it works they arent saying. I am guessing that it is still tungsten (because they claim it has the same yellowish color) but they have cut down the IR emmissions by adding some crap in with the tungsten.
So what if I and my fellow technocrats see wages drop to below $35,000 for starting college grads and proportionately lower for experienced programmers? If it means a more robust American economy and better cultural exchanges with the larger immigrant populations then I'm all for it.
Spoken like a true republican!
Unfortunatly as history has shown us, paying our middle class less money does not help our economy. Due to materialism and greed, trickle down economics do not work. Lower wages simply expand the profit margins of the wealthy, which means more money that is sitting stagnant in their bank accounts. The economy is driven by the consumerism of the middle and upper-middle class. Precisely the people you are talking about cutting pay from. When their pay drops, their spending drops. And when their spending drops our economy stagnates.
Also with unlimited immigration, there would be a social crisis in the US. There are only so many jobs here that take little education and little English. All those people coming here looking for better pay will soon find themselves unemployed. Without the massive ammounts of money it takes to get a college education in America, they would be dead weight here (as there are not too many scholarships for non-english speaking immigrants with marginal educational background and no outstanding talents). Are you going to be the one to pay for their food and rent, and food and rent and school for their 6 children? Or should we simply raise taxes and let the already underpaid middle class foot the bill?
I would support sending US citizens to to europe if they committed kidnapping of course. But when a person is acting as an agent of the government the law discriminates. If anyone should be extradited it should be officers in charge who ordered the detention (and this would likely go to the top levels of the pentagon and white house), not the individuals who are simply doing their jobs. And then it becomes a matter of diplomacy when the crime in question is a matter of government policy, not individual acts of crime. Unless they were acting outside their orders, then by all means the blame is on the individuals. But the issue in question here was that a private citizen committed a crime independant of any government oversight. Apples and oranges. Yeah I know its a double standard. Governments can pick and choose which laws they want to obey. But thats how human society has been for a long time now isnt it?
There is no way he would get 10 years for this. Given the fact that his motive was simply to distribute content freely to people without personal gain, and that the crime didnt involve any violence or harm other than perhaps monetary damages in lost sales for the software companies, depending on his past record (which is probably pretty clean) he would get near the minimum. With 3 years time served already I would guess he would get at most fines and probation.
If you steal something belonging to a US business (espically 50 million dollars worth of software FTFA)... The the US law definatly has an interest in the case. The law exists to protect its citizens.
If someone from another country stole 50 million dollars from me, I sure as hell epxect my government to track his punk ass down and put him in a US prison no matter where he lived. I wouldnt care if he was British and living in Austrailia or German living in Mexico or whatever. If he commits crimes in the US or against US citizens, the US has the right, moreover, the *obligation* to act to protect its citizens.
Well in order to have a self-sustaining population we are talking several thousand people, it not severals 10s of thousands. We are going to need a small city on this ark.
In ship like this there will be meaningful lives to live. Jobs would include crew for the ship, teachers, researchers, entertainment, garbage men, psychologists, leaders/politicians etc etc. There would be plenty of meaningful work to be done. And its not like they would be totally out of touch with earth, just lagged:) They can still send and recieve 1 way transmissions (like the latest movies or tv or computer games from earth, although they would be years late, you wouldnt know the difference). You could live a meaningful and happy life in an enviorment like that.
And if someone was not really interested in being part of society. With that many people, we could probably run 2 or 3 WoW servers locally. I dont know why they wouldnt be happy!
In all seriousness though, MMORPG technology would be a great thing for these people. Without a larger society outside of their city to ineract with, having a "second life" to live out in simulation could provide that sense of purpose that they might be lacking (although being the first space travels of our species would be enough purpose for me). Not just for entertainment, but for their psychological well-being. The gratification of accomplishment is what makes MMOs so addicting. I dont think there would be a lack of purpose for these people.
If anything I think the main problems would be logistics. Food. Fuel. And supplies to repair ANYTHING that could possibly break. And then supplies to manufacture new parts/devices to upgrade old systems. They might have to tow asteroids of raw material... It would be an enormous logistical nightmare.
Slashdot Mirror
It is true that many guns are designed for use against other humans. Handguns mostly, but also millitary weapons and such.
But there are many guns that are designed for hunting or the sport of target practice. Shotguns and rifles are a good example of these. 200 years ago in much of the United States a gun was necessary tool to hunt for food or to kill predators threatening your livestock. I agree that millitary weapons and handguns should have some controls, but lumping all guns together as "human killing machines" is naive and ignorant.
I dont know if Mueller is truely responsible. The Patriot Act was a knee jerk law put together in response to 9/11 and seemingly granted broad powers to law enforcement with vague language. After all, Mueller is not the one who drafted, voted, or signed the Patriot Act. The parts of the law in question are still mostly open to interpertation, and there is no legal precedent for the stuff in question. Notice the language of the article. The FBI "misused" the law, they never say the FBI did something "illegal", becuase the matter of it being illegal or not depends on who you ask. Those truely responsible are the ones who couldnt take the time to figure out wtf they were voting on or signing (Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, we are looking at you).
So the FBI abused the law, but really its their job to bring justice to the fullest extent of the law. The problem is the Patriot Act extended these borders yet failed to define them. So really who is responsible? IMO the people who made the law vague and abusable are the ones who truely deserve the blame in this case.
First of all Americans are the hardest working people in the world. And every year we are increasing the hours in the average work week.
So I would agrue that Americans do have that drive, although not under the threat of ending up as a house cleaner. Americans are instead motivated by money, profit, and most of all materialism. Americans are some of the hardest working people in the world, espically compared to Europe and such places where they just stop in the middle of the day for nap time, or take 2 months off in the summer... And its not because we care about ending up with a shitty job. Even well off Americans will work hard because we want more money so we can buy more *stuff*. Or there are a lot of people out there who just want to have more than the other guys, or people who just like seeing big green numbers on the bottom line.
And dont forget its not just the current immigrants who are driven. Today's Americans are the products of immigrants 100 year ago who were driven, or even the Puritans 300 years ago (with their Puritan work ethic..idle hands lead to sin etc etc), and the work ethic they had has definatly been passed down to some extent.
In fact, I would argue that the motivation for Americans is greater than the immigrants'. A lot of people here would not be content to live in say South America and employ 2 servants and work 9-5 and live confortably. Americans want fancy cars, fancy TVs, a big bank account, and a big house. And there are a lot of Americans who will work their ass off to get what they want, and if they cant work enough they will take on massive debt, while at the same time if they cut their hours down and lived modestly within their means they would be very confortable. Materialism is one of the most powerful forces in this world.
What you are describing is a long step away from the type of control you need to control a game. The sensors are just measuring the intensity of your brain activity, nothing more. Basically you have a single input channel with variable intensity, sort of like the gas pedal on your car. But in order to drive your car you need a wheel and a brake as well. Or if you are playing madden 07, you need input channels for left/right, foreward/back, throw, catch, etc, and all nearly at the same time. It is a very significant step to actually monitor the data encoded in your brain waves and make sense of it, as opposed to just looking and seeing "oh there is a lot of activity now, and now there isnt that much". Its not going to be happening any time soon.
He gets shot walking out of a courthouse? I kinda thought he would have sacraficed himself for the greater good. Or died a glorious death in combat against the forces of evil. Pretty lame way to kill him off in my opinion.
When TFA says "hope for ps3" I thought that meant the price would come down 200 dollars, and 5 or 10 kickass games that take full advantage of the capabilities of the ps3 hardware are going to be released. All I saw in TFA was they ripped off Secondlife, rendered it all pretty with their uber hardware, and added adverts. Am I missing anything?
Photons have *momentum*...not mass. The photon's momentum is not the classical formula p = mv, but instead p = hv/c, where h = plancks constant c = speed of light, and v is the frequency.
The experiment you are talking about is the momentum of the photon being transfered to the contraption. The way to understand it is that the energy from the photons is being transfered to the device, dont think in terms of classical momentum.
This sounds very similar to "psychohistory" as discussed in Asimov's Foundation series. Now if only we could predict what random nation Bush is going to invade next... Suggested tag : psychohistory
The problem is that we are not applying our money is the right areas. Here in the US we educate EVERYONE until they are 18 (or actually 21 if you need it). That means we pay a ton of money for even the dumb people, and even mentally handicapped. While they too are deserving an education, in Europe they seperate students at an early age. By getting the dumb kids out of the classrooms the bright students can be challenged. But here in the US we believe that everyone should get the same education and students are all basically mixed together until the middle of high school.
Im sure Im not the only /.er who wanted to shoot myself when the teacher had kids read books out loud, and I had already finished the whole damn book while some kid was still stumbling through the first page. I remember spacing out during math and science class for years while they taught and retaught things I learned in the previous grade. And private school was really not an option for me because my parents didnt have an abundance of money at the time and would not have been able to save for college for me.
I believe the core of the problem is that students are not seperated like they are in Europe. If we took the money we waste on teaching kids english lit when all they really need to learn from high school is how to weld, and applied it for classrooms and teachers to challenge the college bound students from a very early age, it would go a long way towards improving our test scores.
Wow...its things like conservapedia that make me ashamed to admit I go to church. I dont even think there are many, if any, mainstream theologians who will claim the earth is 5000 years old. Most christians simply believe "God created" us, which is perfectly compatible with say...God being the "first cause" of the big bang, and planning that eventually the earth would form and evolution would take its course resulting in the existence of you and me. The problem is ignorant fools take the Bible literally and come up with horseshit like this and then are able to hide behind religion. And the church claims that they simply have a different interpertation and turn a blind eye towards it. In fact it is border-line herasy to claim the "young earth" view. If the earth is only 5000 years old, then why do we percieve it by every mechanism of science to be 5 billion years old, and for life to be 3 billion years old? To claim that the earth is really only 5000 years old is to claim that God put dinosaur bones that can be carbon dated back millions of years here to decieved us. And calling God a deciever is a herasy. We need religious leadership to speak out against crap like "conservapedia", because shit like that is exactly why many people refuse to attend church. It really bothers me to watch other christians alienate society with bogus interpertations of the Bible when we should be focused on reaching out and helping other people.
I dont know if you remember, but 9/11 happened BEFORE the Iraq war. The first WTC bombing happened around a time when Israel enjoyed much less support from the US than they do now (under Clinton). And I dont know how supporting Saudi Arabia is really encouraging terrorism (maybe because we allow the Saudis to turn a blind eye towards them? Perhaps someone could explain?). And yes, while Israel is often unjustified in their use of force, to break our alliance with them because of enemy actions is nothing short of cowardly. It would show weakness to the world, and it would give the terrorists motivation, determination, and recruits, as it would be seen as a victory by the terrorists. Appeasement would only encourage them (give a terrorist a cookie and...) Either way, 9/11 did not happen because of anything you have stated.
9/11 happened because Islamic fundamentalists hate free religion. They hate our culture. They hate our very existence. And they think by fighting us they get a free pass to Paradise. The only way to stop them is to either kill them all, or adopt Sharia as our constitution, profess our faith in Allah, and elect Osama bin Laden as Shiek of the United States. Well maybe not Osama, but honestly nothing short professing our belief in Allah would appease them.
Yes Iraq was a mistake. Yes we give way too much support for Israel. And yes, being a menace may increase the anti-American attitude and does add fuel to the fire. But this fire has been burning for 1000 years since the rise of Islam, jihads, crusades, etc etc. You are a fool to think "playing nice" with them is going to put it out.
After all is said and done...IMO the easy way out is to simply kill them all. Talking things over and learning to share with fundamentalists of any flavor sounds pretty damn hard to me.
FT*2nd*A:
One of graphene's simplest properties - that of being a perfectly flat 2D sheet - is the most mystifying of all, said Geim. In theory, thermal fluctuations should cause any perfect 2D crystal to vibrate out of the plane, with sufficient energy to break its bonds. Scientists had surmised that graphene could only appear both stable and perfectly flat because it was usually stabilised on a substrate. But in Nature this week, Geim's team also reveals that the supposedly flat sheet is in fact corrugated; tiny ripples of graphene crystallites make the sheets 3D when suspended in isolation The article explains that free standing graphene could not exist on its own if it was not intrinsiclly rippled. What they discovered was that graphene actually has a rippled structure when isolated which allows them to use it in such a fashion. So its my understanding that thermal fluctuations are not the cause of the ripples, instead something in the nature of graphene is. It would be nice it they would explain why it is rippled. Is it because of imperfections or simply the nature of the sp2 carbons? Anyone know?Perfect graphene is flat. But any imperfections caused by a missing carbon or an extra carbon will cause it to bend slightly. Which would explain the ripples.
Source from wikipedia :
Perfect graphenes consist exclusively of hexagonal cells; pentagonal and heptagonal cells constitute defects. If an isolated pentagonal cell is present, then the plane warps into a cone shape; insertion of 12 pentagons would create a fullerene. Likewise, insertion of an isolated heptagon causes the sheet to become saddle-shaped. Controlled addition of pentagons and heptagons would allow a wide variety of shapes to be made.Couldnt Dell just use hardware that is compatible with SUSE (the SUSE people probably have a list somewhere...), and then pass the burden of software support along to SUSE? If your program doesnt install correctly on your Dell, you call MS, not Dell. If your HD dies, then you call Dell. And I'm guessing that their customer base will not be needing that much support, because the people who buy a Dell with linux pre-installed are probably the same people who buy a computer preloaded with MS, nuke the drive, and install their favorite linux distro all by themselves. I dont understand why tech support would be the thing holding Dell back. Maybe this is a cop-out?
Today, on the lawn of the white house, onlookers noticed a crudely written message in honey that read "So long and thanks for all the pollen."
P.S. love how this got tagged bug :)
Unfortunatly, yes. Because everyone knows about sex. Well, maybe that was a bit of an overstatement on this forum but still I bet most of us here at least paid attention in 7th grade health class cause we knew we were going to need all the help we could get :).
All joking aside though, I think its safe to say there are quite a few more people in the world who know about sex than there are people in the world who know what a "mock theta function" is. Even as a senior in EE/compE with substantial math training I would be hard pressed to even be able to figure what it is. Judging from the responses on the forum not many people here know either, and /. isnt exactly filled with math illerates. The problem with math is that is has progressed so much that in order to even be able to understand the existing problems left to be solved you probably need to be an advanced grad student.
So yeah, congrats to the people who solved this problem. Im sure you did a great job. What it is you solved I dont know, but hopefully someday, maybe even within your great grandchildrens' lifetimes, it will be relevant to some real world application. Now, if you will excuse me...back to DLing pr0n.
I have always thought it would be really cool instead of drywall covering the whole ceiling of a room to take say the center piece of drywall and have it be a piece of 4x8 plastic/drywall that would be have an array of 50 or so of those white LEDs embedded into it all pointing at different angles. Doesnt have to be drywall it could even be a tile from one of those drop ceilings. Or maybe a fixture that had smoked glass globe or something to diffuse the light surrounding a hemispherical arrangement of LEDs. Or even a piece of molding that ran all the way around the room 4-5 feet off the ground that had LEDs every few inches pointed 10 degrees inward from vertial and every other one pointing down in the same respect. Maybe that wouldnt work so well in your house...but what about the office? When you have light bulbs that last 15 years or more, you dont need to put them in a standard light fixture because you arent going to be changing them often.
The only way I have seen LEDs used in lighting is to take 10 or 20 of them and pack them together all pointing the same direction and make a spotlight. Its great for outside lighting but not really good for indoors besides track lighting or spotlighting of something.
Does anyone know if there is a company out there that makes those sorts of things? If not...it sounds like a really good idea for a startup....It seems to me that with the current LED technology, the only thing stopping people from lighting the inside of an entire home or office with LEDs is creativity.
LEDs are better, but the problem is the technology is not there yet. They have the potential of being the best light source since electrons are converted into photons 1:1.
Super-bright LEDs were just invented in the past 5-10 years. And they are plenty bright for lighting purposes (maybe YOU should do some research). I have one of them on my key chain that is as bright as a small flashlight and very handy at night. And I have a flashlight with an array of them that is more powerful than most standard flashlights. There are traffic lights and turn signals on cars that use LEDs. Maybe 10 years ago LEDs werent very bright. But now-a-days, your statement is not true.
They do have limitations right now, but give them some time and some clever people will figure out ways to address the problems. There is a lot of research going on in the field specifically to address the issues you mention. The potential is far and above CFLs, it will just take some time to develope
.Well they are an IC blub, so that tells you that the light is being emmitted by passing current through a piece of wire which then glows. Normal IC blubs have tungsten fillaments, and when current is passed through these they emmit light mostly in the IR range (which you feel as heat). However tungsten also emmits about 5% of the energy in the visible spectrum (which you see as light). GE claims to have found a substance to use for wire which emmits 20% (4x efficiency FTA) of the energy as visible light. The rest of the energy will be in the UV and IR ranges. What that substance is or how it works they arent saying. I am guessing that it is still tungsten (because they claim it has the same yellowish color) but they have cut down the IR emmissions by adding some crap in with the tungsten.
Spoken like a true republican!
Unfortunatly as history has shown us, paying our middle class less money does not help our economy. Due to materialism and greed, trickle down economics do not work. Lower wages simply expand the profit margins of the wealthy, which means more money that is sitting stagnant in their bank accounts. The economy is driven by the consumerism of the middle and upper-middle class. Precisely the people you are talking about cutting pay from. When their pay drops, their spending drops. And when their spending drops our economy stagnates.
Also with unlimited immigration, there would be a social crisis in the US. There are only so many jobs here that take little education and little English. All those people coming here looking for better pay will soon find themselves unemployed. Without the massive ammounts of money it takes to get a college education in America, they would be dead weight here (as there are not too many scholarships for non-english speaking immigrants with marginal educational background and no outstanding talents). Are you going to be the one to pay for their food and rent, and food and rent and school for their 6 children? Or should we simply raise taxes and let the already underpaid middle class foot the bill?
I would support sending US citizens to to europe if they committed kidnapping of course. But when a person is acting as an agent of the government the law discriminates. If anyone should be extradited it should be officers in charge who ordered the detention (and this would likely go to the top levels of the pentagon and white house), not the individuals who are simply doing their jobs. And then it becomes a matter of diplomacy when the crime in question is a matter of government policy, not individual acts of crime. Unless they were acting outside their orders, then by all means the blame is on the individuals. But the issue in question here was that a private citizen committed a crime independant of any government oversight. Apples and oranges. Yeah I know its a double standard. Governments can pick and choose which laws they want to obey. But thats how human society has been for a long time now isnt it?
There is no way he would get 10 years for this. Given the fact that his motive was simply to distribute content freely to people without personal gain, and that the crime didnt involve any violence or harm other than perhaps monetary damages in lost sales for the software companies, depending on his past record (which is probably pretty clean) he would get near the minimum. With 3 years time served already I would guess he would get at most fines and probation.
If you steal something belonging to a US business (espically 50 million dollars worth of software FTFA)... The the US law definatly has an interest in the case. The law exists to protect its citizens. If someone from another country stole 50 million dollars from me, I sure as hell epxect my government to track his punk ass down and put him in a US prison no matter where he lived. I wouldnt care if he was British and living in Austrailia or German living in Mexico or whatever. If he commits crimes in the US or against US citizens, the US has the right, moreover, the *obligation* to act to protect its citizens.
Well in order to have a self-sustaining population we are talking several thousand people, it not severals 10s of thousands. We are going to need a small city on this ark. In ship like this there will be meaningful lives to live. Jobs would include crew for the ship, teachers, researchers, entertainment, garbage men, psychologists, leaders/politicians etc etc. There would be plenty of meaningful work to be done. And its not like they would be totally out of touch with earth, just lagged :) They can still send and recieve 1 way transmissions (like the latest movies or tv or computer games from earth, although they would be years late, you wouldnt know the difference). You could live a meaningful and happy life in an enviorment like that.
And if someone was not really interested in being part of society. With that many people, we could probably run 2 or 3 WoW servers locally. I dont know why they wouldnt be happy!
In all seriousness though, MMORPG technology would be a great thing for these people. Without a larger society outside of their city to ineract with, having a "second life" to live out in simulation could provide that sense of purpose that they might be lacking (although being the first space travels of our species would be enough purpose for me). Not just for entertainment, but for their psychological well-being. The gratification of accomplishment is what makes MMOs so addicting. I dont think there would be a lack of purpose for these people.
If anything I think the main problems would be logistics. Food. Fuel. And supplies to repair ANYTHING that could possibly break. And then supplies to manufacture new parts/devices to upgrade old systems. They might have to tow asteroids of raw material... It would be an enormous logistical nightmare.