It wouldn't work. They're using the gas pipes as a waveguide, which requires a conducting tube.
Gas lines weren't designed as waveguides. My gut feeling is that won't be economically viable for more than a handful of customers. I'd expect in most cases the attenuation would be too great to be useful without repeater stations.
The theory looks sound, but I need convincing about the engineering.
In my current area of research (mathematical evolutionary biology), editors are indeed working for free (or for the glory/reputation). They are ordinary academics who volunteer some of their time. These are the select-the-reviewers, make-the-publish-or-not-decision editors. I presume that typesetting and layout are done by employees of the journal. So, of course, the content is not entirely free to the journal, nor is the infrastructure.
Commonly there are page charges - the researcher pays money to have their paper published. This all seems fair and acceptable, until we come to publishers like the (IMHO justifiably) much maligned Elsevier, who charge many thousands of dollars per year for modestly sized journals. (I don't know whether Elsevier pays their academic editors or has page charges.)
A new model is "open access" journals, most prominently those from the Public Library of Science. These typically have significantly higher page charges. Some journals have a mixed model - the researcher can pay extra to make their article open access.
So you extract stem cells from an embryo, and allow the embryo to come to term, so now you have a baby and a stem cell line. The baby grows up. What rights does this person have over the stem cell line? Can they demand (e.g.) that the cells be used only thereputically, not for research? Can they charge a licensing fee to use them?
From my astronomy days, I ranked the journals in order of how often I needed to consult them: ApJ, A&A, AJ and MNRAS, PASP, perhaps ApSS next. This ordering values volume over quality.
ApJ Lett. is as good as it comes in astronomy. ApJ is the most significant journal in astronomy, followed by Astronomy and Astrophysics. Partly this is on volume (ApJ is huge) - I don't know how the impact factors compare. ApJ Lett. presumably has higher impact factor than ApJ as a whole.
It has managed to survive the increase in solar luminosity for the last 3-4 billion years. Life should be OK until near the end of the main sequence, unless there is a Venus-like runaway greenhouse. Stellar evolution I know about, the planetary stuff I don't.
That was pretty much my thought when I read the story.
Bacteria are no less evolved than us. They've had the same 3-4 billion years, with more intense selection pressure* and much shorter generation times. They are exceedingly well optimised, and are the dominant branch of life on Earth.
* The larger a population, the more effective evolution is. This is standard nearly-neutral population genetics, demonstrated by Kimura.
Remember those museum displays labeled "Age of bacteria", "Age of Fish", "Age of Amphibians", "Age of Dinosaurs", "Age of Mammals"? They should have read "Age of Bacteria", "Age of Bacteria (plus a few multicellular marine organisms)", "Age of Bacteria (plus a few multicellular marine and land organisms)". Bacteria dominated the past, they dominate the present, and will be thriving when vertebrates are extinct.
Consider (as is commonly done) the history of life on Earth as a day (but ending with the end of life on Earth, rather than ending with today.) The Earth will be sterilised by the red-giant phase of the sun, in about 5 billion years. Taking life as starting 3 billion years ago, the Age of Bacteria lasts 8 billion years, and on our 24 hour time scale, that means it is now about 9am.
Cue music from "Hair":
This is mid-morning of the Age of Bacteria The Age of Bactera Bacteria! Bacteria!
Lights out for Intel?
on
IBM Opts for AMD
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Intel are still ahead in market share, and have just released some very competitive chips.
I'm an AMD supporter, but the near future is them trying to hold the ground they've recently taken, not expanding further.
(And Intel probably the reserves to stuff up again, be uncompetitive for a few years, and still make a comeback with the next generation of chips.)
The article discusses this. Intel want to put it on the MB, the drive manufacturers want to put it in the drive. A third option is to attach it separately and externally (e.g. a USB flash drive.) A final option would be to (e.g.) have a compact-flash-card (or similar) socket on the hard-drive, and users provide their own flash.
To my mind, the logical place to put it is on the drive. This is where the useful caching information is most easily available. (Which sectors are read/written how often? Which reads are often delayed by waiting for the disk to spin up?) This is also where you can make the process most transparent. The drive's firmware can make the system "just work", like a standard HD, but faster - whatever the OS, no drivers needed. (Although you'd possibly like to have drivers to give the OS more control over what is flash-cached.)
There is another factor - noise. I'm looking to buy a new GPU soon, and top of my list is the 7600GS. The overriding factor in this choice is the availability of passively cooled cards (without warrantee-voiding aftermarket extra cost heatsinks.) It is the low power consumption which permits passive cooling. (My computer has only one fan, and I don't want to add a second for the GPU.)
I agree. It is (assuming the claims stand up) a very significant discovery. It is a new layer of subtilty around gene expression and constraints on the DNA sequences. It is *not* a "second code" - there is no extra information, everything can be derived from the genome DNA sequence.
Driving 250 miles in a really zippy car followed by waiting 3 hours to recharge isn't most people's idea of a good strategy for long distance driving. (This is one place where hydrogen fuel cells have a big advantage over batteries: you can refill a hydrogen tank quickly. I'll not go into the disadvantages of hydrogen here.)
On the positive side: if you have a large installed base of batteries plugged into the power grid (recharging electric cars) then you have the possibility to use them to even out power fluctuations from wind/wave generation. On windy days, power is cheap an everyone tops up their batteries. On windless days, power prices rise, and many people sell back some of that power for a profit.
From the judgement: 'Exceptional circumstances include such situations as where a plantiff makes a practice of repeatedly bringing claims and then dismissing with prejudice "after inflicting substantial litigation costs on the opposing party and the judicial system." In the instant action, there is no evidence that the plaintiffs have engaged in any practice that would constitute exceptional circumstances justifying an award of attorneys' fees under the provisions of Rule 41(a)(2).'
So the court can and will start awarding fees in dropped cases if they get too numerous - but this has not happened yet (or this particular court has not been shown the evidence.) This could change in future.
By my reading (I am still not a lawyer) the quote above is dismissing the possibility of a fees award under general rules, but after that, rules specific to copyright claims kick in, which the court finds do leave the door open for a fees award.
Actually, rereading the story, it is accurate. It is the early/. comments which are seeing a victory where it does not exist. I have erred by placing blame for inaccuracy in the wrong place.
RIAA initially sued the mother. When the mother said it was not her, but her daughter who had done the downloading, they sued the daughter instead *and won*. (by default - this was not defended.)
This is just about tidying up the suit against the mother. The RIAA asked to be allowed to drop the suit, and was allowed to do so (with prejudice - i.e. they have lost). The court finds that the mother is "eligible" for costs, at the court's discretion, but "such eligibility does not equate to entitlement" and "attorney fees are not to be awarded routinely or as a matter of course." The court has not yet decided on fees, it has just not yet rejected the idea - the mother can apply for an award of fees, and the matter will be decided then.
I concur. I'm an atheist. (At times I've been a "card carrying atheist", having membership in an atheist organization.) I don't like excessive violence or (to a lesser extend) excessive swearing. I often avoid movies specifically because of their violence. While I wouldn't go so far as to buy one of these edited movies, if a DVD came with a 'reduced violence and swearing' option, I would usually activate it. If I have kids, a "less scary" option will also be useful.
It looks to me like the wing sail is permanently fixed to the boat - so you can't reduce sail area in heavy winds. IANAS, but I'd think this would make the system impractical for real-world use.
Slashdot Mirror
It wouldn't work. They're using the gas pipes as a waveguide, which requires a conducting tube.
Gas lines weren't designed as waveguides. My gut feeling is that won't be economically viable for more than a handful of customers. I'd expect in most cases the attenuation would be too great to be useful without repeater stations.
The theory looks sound, but I need convincing about the engineering.
Those people must have real problems with going outside, where the sunlight is about 5800K colour temperature.
The day an employer asks me for a blood test is the day they get my resignation letter*.
And the strongest non-medicinal drugs I take is sometimes a soft-drink with caffine in it. (No tea, coffee or alcohol.)
* Actually, I probably wouldn't let them off so easily. I'd probably refuse, and look to sue for unjustified dismisal if they fired me for it.
In my current area of research (mathematical evolutionary biology), editors are indeed working for free (or for the glory/reputation). They are ordinary academics who volunteer some of their time. These are the select-the-reviewers, make-the-publish-or-not-decision editors. I presume that typesetting and layout are done by employees of the journal. So, of course, the content is not entirely free to the journal, nor is the infrastructure.
Commonly there are page charges - the researcher pays money to have their paper published. This all seems fair and acceptable, until we come to publishers like the (IMHO justifiably) much maligned Elsevier, who charge many thousands of dollars per year for modestly sized journals. (I don't know whether Elsevier pays their academic editors or has page charges.)
A new model is "open access" journals, most prominently those from the Public Library of Science. These typically have significantly higher page charges. Some journals have a mixed model - the researcher can pay extra to make their article open access.
So you extract stem cells from an embryo, and allow the embryo to come to term, so now you have a baby and a stem cell line. The baby grows up. What rights does this person have over the stem cell line? Can they demand (e.g.) that the cells be used only thereputically, not for research? Can they charge a licensing fee to use them?
From my astronomy days, I ranked the journals in order of how often I needed to consult them: ApJ, A&A, AJ and MNRAS, PASP, perhaps ApSS next. This ordering values volume over quality.
ApJ Lett. is as good as it comes in astronomy. ApJ is the most significant journal in astronomy, followed by Astronomy and Astrophysics. Partly this is on volume (ApJ is huge) - I don't know how the impact factors compare. ApJ Lett. presumably has higher impact factor than ApJ as a whole.
...the National Institutes of Health ... will check to see if it does, indeed, have painkilling properties, as [the researchers] suspect.
/. ran an article on every promising drug candidate this early in development, we'd probably be getting a dozen a day.
So it hasn't even been demonstrated to be effective, yet alone safe, non-addictive and economic.
If
You Forth (heart) if honk then
It has managed to survive the increase in solar luminosity for the last 3-4 billion years. Life should be OK until near the end of the main sequence, unless there is a Venus-like runaway greenhouse. Stellar evolution I know about, the planetary stuff I don't.
No - ask them to hold and then give the phone to a toddler (should you be so fortunate as to have one handy.)
That was pretty much my thought when I read the story.
Bacteria are no less evolved than us. They've had the same 3-4 billion years, with more intense selection pressure* and much shorter generation times. They are exceedingly well optimised, and are the dominant branch of life on Earth.
* The larger a population, the more effective evolution is. This is standard nearly-neutral population genetics, demonstrated by Kimura.
Remember those museum displays labeled "Age of bacteria", "Age of Fish", "Age of Amphibians", "Age of Dinosaurs", "Age of Mammals"? They should have read "Age of Bacteria", "Age of Bacteria (plus a few multicellular marine organisms)", "Age of Bacteria (plus a few multicellular marine and land organisms)". Bacteria dominated the past, they dominate the present, and will be thriving when vertebrates are extinct.
Consider (as is commonly done) the history of life on Earth as a day (but ending with the end of life on Earth, rather than ending with today.) The Earth will be sterilised by the red-giant phase of the sun, in about 5 billion years. Taking life as starting 3 billion years ago, the Age of Bacteria lasts 8 billion years, and on our 24 hour time scale, that means it is now about 9am.
Cue music from "Hair":
This is mid-morning of the Age of Bacteria
The Age of Bactera
Bacteria! Bacteria!
Intel are still ahead in market share, and have just released some very competitive chips.
I'm an AMD supporter, but the near future is them trying to hold the ground they've recently taken, not expanding further.
(And Intel probably the reserves to stuff up again, be uncompetitive for a few years, and still make a comeback with the next generation of chips.)
It surprised me. I thought the issue was dead, and RAMBUS had succeeded in their dirty tactics.
If I interpret this correctly, their share price is down 25% on the news.
How much did the container weigh compared to the radioactive material inside? For sending the stuff up in a rocket, this matters hugely.
The article discusses this. Intel want to put it on the MB, the drive manufacturers want to put it in the drive. A third option is to attach it separately and externally (e.g. a USB flash drive.) A final option would be to (e.g.) have a compact-flash-card (or similar) socket on the hard-drive, and users provide their own flash.
To my mind, the logical place to put it is on the drive. This is where the useful caching information is most easily available. (Which sectors are read/written how often? Which reads are often delayed by waiting for the disk to spin up?) This is also where you can make the process most transparent. The drive's firmware can make the system "just work", like a standard HD, but faster - whatever the OS, no drivers needed. (Although you'd possibly like to have drivers to give the OS more control over what is flash-cached.)
There is a very simple, risk-free and tax-free way to invest the money: pay off your student loan.
Typically you get taxed on interest from investments, but you don't get taxed on the interest you no longer have to pay on your loan.
The risk is as close to zero as you can get. I suppose if the loan intrest rate is fixed, hyper-inflation could make your repayments irrelevant.
Normally loans have higher interest rates than low-risk investments, so you get a better effective interest rate than putting it in term deposit.
If you have some special subsidised low interest loan, the final point may not apply to you.
There is another factor - noise. I'm looking to buy a new GPU soon, and top of my list is the 7600GS. The overriding factor in this choice is the availability of passively cooled cards (without warrantee-voiding aftermarket extra cost heatsinks.) It is the low power consumption which permits passive cooling. (My computer has only one fan, and I don't want to add a second for the GPU.)
I agree. It is (assuming the claims stand up) a very significant discovery. It is a new layer of subtilty around gene expression and constraints on the DNA sequences. It is *not* a "second code" - there is no extra information, everything can be derived from the genome DNA sequence.
Driving 250 miles in a really zippy car followed by waiting 3 hours to recharge isn't most people's idea of a good strategy for long distance driving. (This is one place where hydrogen fuel cells have a big advantage over batteries: you can refill a hydrogen tank quickly. I'll not go into the disadvantages of hydrogen here.)
On the positive side: if you have a large installed base of batteries plugged into the power grid (recharging electric cars) then you have the possibility to use them to even out power fluctuations from wind/wave generation. On windy days, power is cheap an everyone tops up their batteries. On windless days, power prices rise, and many people sell back some of that power for a profit.
From the judgement:
'Exceptional circumstances include such situations as where a plantiff makes a practice of repeatedly bringing claims and then dismissing with prejudice "after inflicting substantial litigation costs on the opposing party and the judicial system." In the instant action, there is no evidence that the plaintiffs have engaged in any practice that would constitute exceptional circumstances justifying an award of attorneys' fees under the provisions of Rule 41(a)(2).'
So the court can and will start awarding fees in dropped cases if they get too numerous - but this has not happened yet (or this particular court has not been shown the evidence.) This could change in future.
By my reading (I am still not a lawyer) the quote above is dismissing the possibility of a fees award under general rules, but after that, rules specific to copyright claims kick in, which the court finds do leave the door open for a fees award.
Actually, rereading the story, it is accurate. It is the early /. comments which are seeing a victory where it does not exist. I have erred by placing blame for inaccuracy in the wrong place.
IANAL, but I have read the judgement.
RIAA initially sued the mother. When the mother said it was not her, but her daughter who had done the downloading, they sued the daughter instead *and won*. (by default - this was not defended.)
This is just about tidying up the suit against the mother. The RIAA asked to be allowed to drop the suit, and was allowed to do so (with prejudice - i.e. they have lost). The court finds that the mother is "eligible" for costs, at the court's discretion, but "such eligibility does not equate to entitlement" and "attorney fees are not to be awarded routinely or as a matter of course." The court has not yet decided on fees, it has just not yet rejected the idea - the mother can apply for an award of fees, and the matter will be decided then.
I concur. I'm an atheist. (At times I've been a "card carrying atheist", having membership in an atheist organization.) I don't like excessive violence or (to a lesser extend) excessive swearing. I often avoid movies specifically because of their violence. While I wouldn't go so far as to buy one of these edited movies, if a DVD came with a 'reduced violence and swearing' option, I would usually activate it. If I have kids, a "less scary" option will also be useful.
It looks to me like the wing sail is permanently fixed to the boat - so you can't reduce sail area in heavy winds. IANAS, but I'd think this would make the system impractical for real-world use.