"Experiments performed under properly controlled conditions reliably produce more heat than standard theory predicts. Nuclear products show up in about the right amounts to account for this excess heat. "
"Theory predicts that the fusion reaction should generate 24 million electron volts (MeV) of energy per helium-4 nucleus. An analysis by Michael McKubre of SRI International detected energy of 31 MeV- a match within the experimental uncertainty of plus or minus 13 MeV. Skeptics had doubted the reaction was possible, but Hagelstein says McKubre's analysis of the experiments, reported at last year's cold fusion meeting, shows that fusion of two deuterium to yield helium-4 "is not as nutty as it initially seemed."
They found 1 helium-4 atom?!? For some reason, wouldn't feel confident betting my career on ONE ATOM! And thats there best candidate out of 3000 papers?
Have you ever taken economics? The answer is normally called price tearing or price discrimination. The idea is to get people to pay as much as they are willing to pay for something.
This is why matinee movies exist. If you really don't want to pay $8 for a movie, go watch it in the afternoon for $4. The theatre makes $4 from you and $8 from the guy that wants to take his girlfriend on a date.
Same reason colleges give "scholarships" and financial aid.
Same reason Intel produced 486SXs by severing the MathCo on 486DXs and charged way less.
The widespread practice of adding non-free software to the GNU/Linux system is a major problem for our community. It teaches the users that non-free software is ok, and that using it is part of the spirit of "Linux".
Unless I misunderstand Stallman's intent here, "non-free software is bad".
It seems to me that many many Linux enthuisiasts are in some way putting bread on the table through some association with non-free software.
I'm all for OSS and its uses, but attempting to deprive so many of out livelihood is no way to win me over!
I found his webpage and based on it alone I think Stallman is an extremist and loony. GNU deserves props for everything they have, done which is a lot, but this is just plain scary. Stallman calls himself a saint in his own religion.
I think he turns people off because he turns this into a religious war. I think Linus has "converted" more people to OSS by taking the more practical approach.
If you don't think games can be addictive, you are sorely mistaken.
Look into the likes of Everquest (EQ) or other Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). People have committed suicide, some have experienced withdrawls, some people have gone without food and sleep for days on end, and many have been divorced or lost jobs, all because of this game. Search for EQ widows on the internet.
Most players of this game semi-jokingly refer to it as EverCrack, and speak of getting there "daily fix". While many think it is a joke, I personally believe that they sub-consciously feel otherwise. The EQ community is not an entirely small. Sony reports over 400,000 paying subscribers.
I have been interested in games research and have come across a number of studies that have been done on this one single game. I believe slashdot itself has linked at least two in the past.
Disclaimer: I devote about 20 hours/week in addition to my life with my wife and my full time job. I have played it ~3 years and have taken a number of 1+ month breaks from it.
A nice auto-merge would be nice. VSS does this fairly well. If it can't figure it out, it asks, which I think is far preferable than messing up my source. Lots of commercial tools don't do this terribly well.
Also, a utility that can handle branching and merging of source trees, would be nice. I haven't run into a single source control program that doesn't have its quirks in this area.
I support free software, but to suggest that software and other works should be forced into the public domain is ridiculous. The copywrited work, whether it is still sold or not, still has worth. When companies go bankrupt, sometimes the only assets they have are intellectual property. Sure, it would be nice if people placed the work into the public domain. Weakening copyright to some of the extremes proposed would decrease, sometimes drastically, the incentive to create such works, which is the whole point of copywrites and patents.
I've done this. I worked in a computer store where we warrantied equipment etc. It turned out that if you swaped a PS/2 keyboard while it was on, could damage the motherboard.
If any of you remember C64's, this could happen on the joyport as well.
It's the touchy CMOS stuff, or the current equivalent that might be the problem.
Some people mentioned that the magnitude of the force of electro-magnetism, and gravity both inversly vary with the square of the distance.
If I remember my calculous correctly, this is "because" the fields propogate in a spherical nature. At any given distance, the field is the same along the surface an a sphere, which grows at 4*PI*r^2, I think.
If you are able to get a true beam that never widens, then the cross section is constant, and thus the force never weakens.
This is pretty hard to do, however, and there is likely to be some widening of a beam, however over a small enough sampling with a large enough margin of error, this could seem like the force does not vary with the distance.
That's my 2 cents. I've been out of multivariable calc for 6 years, so I might have something wrong. Anyone care to comment?
Does anyone else have any well written, concise letters to politicians? I could write my own, but I'm sure others are far more elquent than I could ever be. And, yes, I'm a lazy SoB. Most of us are. If anyone feels they have a good letter, please post it (and email one to me too).
Thanks
Adam Tegen (ategen@centurytel.net)
I feel sorry for the poor guy who is in jail. BUT, I can't think of a better example of how the DMCA as it is, should not be law. If he is released before trial, all this energy and frustration will being to disapate, at least somewhat.
I hope this continues to court. I hope it continues to get attention. I hope the jury nullifies it, and if they don't that we all rally together and do whatever we can to get this situation fixed. As someone else said, all Rosa Parks did was sit down. Well gentleman (and ladies), now we have someone to rally behind. Someone who hasn't just been threaten, but has been taken into custody. Let's get together and fight this unjust law.
To that end, protests will help. It seems like those are being organized. Programmer unions might not hurt to make our voices heard. For those of us in that stats, what about letters to our senators and representatives?
We need to do all we can. If there ever was a cause that I could rally behind it is this one. Let's all stop talking and whining and actually do something.
Is anyone organizing anything but these protests? Is anyone getting us together as a nation and a world organized? We have someone to rally behind. We have the spirit. We need a leader. Who will step up for us - for this cause? Who will represent us? Who will help us get organized so that we all start acting instead of talking?
First of all, the page with the story was down, so I didn't get the jist of it.
But, for the argument, it I might guess that the challenger's intent was to post an insoluble problem: submit a program (or algoritm, again I didn't read the story because it was down) that is guarenteed to compress ANY random data of an arbitrary size.
The problem is this: If you can compress a single bit out of truly random data, your result is truly random, thus you could compress an arbitrary length sequence to 0 or 1 bits. Obviously this is impossible. You can't represent something with nothing.
At test of this is simple. The challengee could not compress a file with a single bit of 0 and a single bit of 1, if each were in a vacuum.
Thats my 2 cents.
There is already something posted from GaTech, but I thought that I would elaborate.
First of, I graduated with a BS in CS 2 years ago. I'm adding my opinion because my thoughts are different since I applied all the knowledge I learned. Plus, YMMV.
The main difference, that I could tell, was that CS was software. Lots of it. Functional programming(LISP), Procedural Programming (C,PASCAL), Object Oriental Programming(C++,SmallTalk), and Logical Programming (Prolog).
So what does that mean, you might ask. IF you paid attention, you should be able to pick up ANY language, and its subtleties very quickly. You've learned all the fundamentals, with languages in mind.
You also learn lots of theory. I didn't know a single person who didn't complain about the theory. Boring !@#%. But, after having working in the real world, its VERY useful. Too many people program don't have a clue, and there code works on test cases, but dogs in real environments.
You also might learn about design. Depends on the school I think. Design is KEY to a maintainable and scalable system. I've coded more than I would like, where C code is slapped together to make a program. If you weren't the original author, you better be wary of any big changes.
I also had only 2 hardware classes. Just enough to understand the implications of my programming for the chips, etc. If I had to make devices, I would be MUCH less qualified than a CompE.
As far as Math, it varies. At GaTech, CS was almost a discrete math minor. 3 years of Math, or more, I think. But CompE's had more calculus, FFT's, etc.
The average CompE isdefinately more qualified for Hardware then a CS. But there are specialties.
I'd like to say that CS majors are more qualified to code, but that's ridiculous. First of all, I've known a lot of extremely bright and qualified CompE's. Anyone can code. Ok not anyone. But there is a huge difference between coding and designing and authoring maintainable code. There is definately and art to it.
If you want the best of both worlds. Double major in CS and CompE, or even CS and EE.
Ok. So I've read a lot of posts. I've been concerned about this topic for a while. What really concerns me is that so many SlashDot readers think this is all a non issue. Ok, my thoughts are that there are SO many ways and reasons for people to mis-use the technology. Not only that but if it was used right, there are a TON of social consequences that are non-too-pleasant. But consider this: What if some of data that is collected is wrong. How many generations will it take to find a non-domininant gene that CAUSES disease or other problems? Will it be too late by then? Even with EVERYONE having good intentions (which is absurd) we can still to fairly permenant damage to the human race if this gets on a very wide scale. How do you DEBUG the genetic code? A release-cycle on the order of even 5-10 years could be devistating if something comes along to wipe us out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Experiments performed under properly controlled conditions reliably produce more heat than standard theory predicts. Nuclear products show up in about the right amounts to account for this excess heat. "
"Theory predicts that the fusion reaction should generate 24 million electron volts (MeV) of energy per helium-4 nucleus. An analysis by Michael McKubre of SRI International detected energy of 31 MeV- a match within the experimental uncertainty of plus or minus 13 MeV. Skeptics had doubted the reaction was possible, but Hagelstein says McKubre's analysis of the experiments, reported at last year's cold fusion meeting, shows that fusion of two deuterium to yield helium-4 "is not as nutty as it initially seemed."
They found 1 helium-4 atom?!? For some reason, wouldn't feel confident betting my career on ONE ATOM! And thats there best candidate out of 3000 papers?
Have you ever taken economics? The answer is normally called price tearing or price discrimination. The idea is to get people to pay as much as they are willing to pay for something.
This is why matinee movies exist. If you really don't want to pay $8 for a movie, go watch it in the afternoon for $4. The theatre makes $4 from you and $8 from the guy that wants to take his girlfriend on a date.
Same reason colleges give "scholarships" and financial aid.
Same reason Intel produced 486SXs by severing the MathCo on 486DXs and charged way less.
I think he turns people off because he turns this into a religious war. I think Linus has "converted" more people to OSS by taking the more practical approach.
If you don't think games can be addictive, you are sorely mistaken.
Look into the likes of Everquest (EQ) or other Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). People have committed suicide, some have experienced withdrawls, some people have gone without food and sleep for days on end, and many have been divorced or lost jobs, all because of this game. Search for EQ widows on the internet.
Most players of this game semi-jokingly refer to it as EverCrack, and speak of getting there "daily fix". While many think it is a joke, I personally believe that they sub-consciously feel otherwise. The EQ community is not an entirely small. Sony reports over 400,000 paying subscribers.
I have been interested in games research and have come across a number of studies that have been done on this one single game. I believe slashdot itself has linked at least two in the past.
Disclaimer: I devote about 20 hours/week in addition to my life with my wife and my full time job. I have played it ~3 years and have taken a number of 1+ month breaks from it.
A nice auto-merge would be nice. VSS does this fairly well. If it can't figure it out, it asks, which I think is far preferable than messing up my source. Lots of commercial tools don't do this terribly well.
Also, a utility that can handle branching and merging of source trees, would be nice. I haven't run into a single source control program that doesn't have its quirks in this area.
I support free software, but to suggest that software and other works should be forced into the public domain is ridiculous. The copywrited work, whether it is still sold or not, still has worth. When companies go bankrupt, sometimes the only assets they have are intellectual property. Sure, it would be nice if people placed the work into the public domain. Weakening copyright to some of the extremes proposed would decrease, sometimes drastically, the incentive to create such works, which is the whole point of copywrites and patents.
If any of you remember C64's, this could happen on the joyport as well.
It's the touchy CMOS stuff, or the current equivalent that might be the problem.
If I remember my calculous correctly, this is "because" the fields propogate in a spherical nature. At any given distance, the field is the same along the surface an a sphere, which grows at 4*PI*r^2, I think.
If you are able to get a true beam that never widens, then the cross section is constant, and thus the force never weakens.
This is pretty hard to do, however, and there is likely to be some widening of a beam, however over a small enough sampling with a large enough margin of error, this could seem like the force does not vary with the distance.
That's my 2 cents. I've been out of multivariable calc for 6 years, so I might have something wrong. Anyone care to comment?
Does anyone else have any well written, concise letters to politicians? I could write my own, but I'm sure others are far more elquent than I could ever be. And, yes, I'm a lazy SoB. Most of us are. If anyone feels they have a good letter, please post it (and email one to me too). Thanks Adam Tegen (ategen@centurytel.net)
I hope this continues to court. I hope it continues to get attention. I hope the jury nullifies it, and if they don't that we all rally together and do whatever we can to get this situation fixed. As someone else said, all Rosa Parks did was sit down. Well gentleman (and ladies), now we have someone to rally behind. Someone who hasn't just been threaten, but has been taken into custody. Let's get together and fight this unjust law.
To that end, protests will help. It seems like those are being organized. Programmer unions might not hurt to make our voices heard. For those of us in that stats, what about letters to our senators and representatives?
We need to do all we can. If there ever was a cause that I could rally behind it is this one. Let's all stop talking and whining and actually do something.
Is anyone organizing anything but these protests? Is anyone getting us together as a nation and a world organized? We have someone to rally behind. We have the spirit. We need a leader. Who will step up for us - for this cause? Who will represent us? Who will help us get organized so that we all start acting instead of talking?
First of all, the page with the story was down, so I didn't get the jist of it. But, for the argument, it I might guess that the challenger's intent was to post an insoluble problem: submit a program (or algoritm, again I didn't read the story because it was down) that is guarenteed to compress ANY random data of an arbitrary size. The problem is this: If you can compress a single bit out of truly random data, your result is truly random, thus you could compress an arbitrary length sequence to 0 or 1 bits. Obviously this is impossible. You can't represent something with nothing. At test of this is simple. The challengee could not compress a file with a single bit of 0 and a single bit of 1, if each were in a vacuum. Thats my 2 cents.
First of, I graduated with a BS in CS 2 years ago. I'm adding my opinion because my thoughts are different since I applied all the knowledge I learned. Plus, YMMV.
The main difference, that I could tell, was that CS was software. Lots of it. Functional programming(LISP), Procedural Programming (C,PASCAL), Object Oriental Programming(C++,SmallTalk), and Logical Programming (Prolog).
So what does that mean, you might ask. IF you paid attention, you should be able to pick up ANY language, and its subtleties very quickly. You've learned all the fundamentals, with languages in mind.
You also learn lots of theory. I didn't know a single person who didn't complain about the theory. Boring !@#%. But, after having working in the real world, its VERY useful. Too many people program don't have a clue, and there code works on test cases, but dogs in real environments.
You also might learn about design. Depends on the school I think. Design is KEY to a maintainable and scalable system. I've coded more than I would like, where C code is slapped together to make a program. If you weren't the original author, you better be wary of any big changes.
I also had only 2 hardware classes. Just enough to understand the implications of my programming for the chips, etc. If I had to make devices, I would be MUCH less qualified than a CompE.
As far as Math, it varies. At GaTech, CS was almost a discrete math minor. 3 years of Math, or more, I think. But CompE's had more calculus, FFT's, etc.
The average CompE isdefinately more qualified for Hardware then a CS. But there are specialties.
I'd like to say that CS majors are more qualified to code, but that's ridiculous. First of all, I've known a lot of extremely bright and qualified CompE's. Anyone can code. Ok not anyone. But there is a huge difference between coding and designing and authoring maintainable code. There is definately and art to it.
If you want the best of both worlds. Double major in CS and CompE, or even CS and EE.
I have to say that I've consulted this way and have had computer law classes that discussed this specifically. This guy is absolutely right.
Ok. So I've read a lot of posts. I've been concerned about this topic for a while. What really concerns me is that so many SlashDot readers think this is all a non issue. Ok, my thoughts are that there are SO many ways and reasons for people to mis-use the technology. Not only that but if it was used right, there are a TON of social consequences that are non-too-pleasant. But consider this: What if some of data that is collected is wrong. How many generations will it take to find a non-domininant gene that CAUSES disease or other problems? Will it be too late by then? Even with EVERYONE having good intentions (which is absurd) we can still to fairly permenant damage to the human race if this gets on a very wide scale. How do you DEBUG the genetic code? A release-cycle on the order of even 5-10 years could be devistating if something comes along to wipe us out.