Sorry I guess I find ethics a strong component of being a human being. A person who is unable to discern wrong from right will not be able to make a rational decision about dev tools either.
I agree that ethics is a very large component of being human (not just homo sapien). However, while I don't like M$ either, I disagree strongly with the equation you created:
disagreeing with you about M$==irrational
An inability "to discern wrong from right" is not automatically an inability to make rational decisions. There is no causal relation between the two, which is what seems to be implied by the use of "will not be able to make a rational decision..." instead of a more permissive wording like "will most likely be unable to make a rational decision..." Some people know "wrong from right" and choose wrong for some reason (personal gain, they're just evil, whatever).
Furthermore, choosing Micro$quish is NOT necessarily "wrong"! I have 'chosen' to use M$ operating systems for years because I am in the mechanical engineering field, and most engineering software is written for M$ alone (AutoCAD, Pro/E(I believe), Catia(I believe) ). My school bookstore, while it is a self-proclaimed "Mac-center", sells engineering software which is almost exclusively written for M$. (Correction: I haven't seen any engineering software for non-M$ other than Mathematica, but the Mathematica CD has installs for 3 OS's onboard. So they might be effectively all-M$.) I have installed and used Linux, and I really like it. But I don't have time to learn a new OS, find replacement programs, port my data, and still learn/get grades in school while sleeping more than four hours a night.
When I graduate in a few months, Linux is going on my old 486, and I'll dual-boot my new machine OpenBSD/NT (I still have to use those M$ engineering programs). I'm not a saint, but I don't think that using M$ is indicitave of a lack of ethics on my part.
Now, not paying for M$ programs, that becomes an interesting question. Should I be legal and pay, knowing that I'm supporting The Other Evil Empire, or should I illegally get software which I need for my job? Ah, ethics. It's fun because there are no answers everyone will agree on.
For small bars or very rigit bars, this looks almost instantenous, but for your example, it would actually take more than 2 years until the remote end moves.
It seems that the sound waves in the finitely-rigid bar are traveling at twice the speed of light. Alpha Centauri is about 4 light-years away, and if it took only 2 years for the wave to get there...
Cal Poly, San Luis Obsipo. The student section of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) has had gears on four of the last five T-shirts we have made.
Disclaimer: I was the Chair of the club last year.
Well, electrons are almost always faster than mechanical devices.
Take an infinitely rigid bar (or near-infinitely rigid) which is about four light-years long, and weighs almost nothing (a few pounds, maybe a few tons) and put it between Sol and Alpha Centauri. Wiggle it back and forth, and you have instantaneous morse code across four light-years.
It has to be nearly infinite in its rigidity or it will bend and the girl on the other side won't see movement, and it has to be light-weight or you will have trouble keeping it straight (a few pounds with a 2 light-year moment arm will be a pain to keep straight).
This is the best example I know of where mechanics wins over electronics/optics/sub-space/new-tech.
The problem with technological solutions is that they take time to implement.
Assume for a moment that we don't have to deal with corrupt politicians appointed to head the appropriate government agency (FAA to do the actual orders, FCC to provide technical backup, CIA/NSA/DIA/FBI to provide some ideas about terrorists using this for a weapon like SheldonYoung said) or the industries with a vested interest in maintianing the status-quo (lawyers, mainly). The only problem then is creating a quality solution, testing it, and implementing it.
Let's say that we have most of a quality solution already, what with the newer planes having Faraday cages and shielding, we only need to do a little more work on the design, call it a month. Then the 'solutions' must be tested in a lab, say 3-6 months depending on problems and facilities. After that there must be tests on real airplanes. First you put cell phones, PDAs, walkmen, CD players, computers, cell modems, CBs, and what-not in a test plane (a plane with no passengers) and a flight crew of test pilots. After a statistically significant set of tests in these somewhat controled conditions, the tests are expanded to a few real flights with special test flight crews. These tests are the first with real conditions: read RISK OF DEATH of the flying public.
I am not trying to troll or exagerate, but when you risk loss of control of an airplane, at any altitude, you risk the death of all aboard. There are usually ways to reduce risk, such as putting fly-by-wire controls in aircraft which use hydraulics, letting you switch from the wired controls to the hydraulics if the electronics go kaput when the cell phones are turned on. Eventually, you need to install the safety systems on aircraft which do not have non-electronic backups. This is the most risky step in the progression from idea to routine use; the design has been tried & tested, but there may still be a few tiny problems. Unfortunately, 'tiny' is usually easy to fix, but deadly until fixed.
All of this means that fixes are not easy to do. However, fixes should be made. Why the FAA hasn't mandated safety devices on all airliners is unknown to me (I could guess, but... ), but it should start a program to get a quality fix in place as soon as possible. The quality fix will be able to handle all of the current frequency and power ranges, and those which might be used in the future.
In short, for the FAA '... to dump those "RF on an airplane" rules, and mandate a technological solution.' is not easy to do, and it can not be done quickly for fear of loss of life.
Deform the shell. Put dents in the shell to provide the basis for oceans and mountains; dents protruding out of the sphere are oceans, dents into the sphere are mountains.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Re:Stupid questions: Gravity?
on
Orbitsville
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· Score: 1
A Dyson sphere need not have magical gravity generators, you can spin it like a Ringworld (Larry Niven), you just don't get artificial gravity everywhere. There will be an inhabitable ring at the equator of the sphere, where 'gravity' will be the maximum and where the air will settle. Not all bad, you can do micro-gravity research near the spin axis, and you can still take the train to work from your 0.9g home (fast train, but it's not impossible).
Keeping the air 'down' near the people might be hard. Take your wok (I know you have one:) and put a little water in it, just covering the bottom half inch (1 cm). Now swirl the water around, keeping the water level at some specific height. Notice how hard it is to keep the water right at that height? That's pretty much what will happen to the air in the Dyson sphere as it rotates: tiny perturbations will move the 'edge' of the air around. A wall to keep the air in place might be appropriate. Maybe a few kilometers high is all that would be needed, depending on whether or not people were going to live near this wall. The closer people want to live to the wall, the higher it will have to be to keep in enough air to have normal air pressure. (To get normal atmospheric pressure of 101kPa, if you have constant Earth-normal gravity, you need air about 8.4 km high.)
The problem most people will have with Dyson spheres will be that the 'down' you feel won't be directly into the sphere when you are a large distance from the inhabitable ring. At 45 degrees lattitude, 'gravity' would be 6.94 m/s^2 (you're feeling 9.81 m/s^2 right now), 70% of the maximum. (The 'gravity' felt varies as the sine of the lattitude.) And the direction of that force of 'gravity' would be at a 45 degree angle, not down. Everything will have to built at an angle to the ground if you want to walk with 'down' toward the floor.
The spin you have to give it is kinda fast, one complete revolution every 34 hours. This is a sphere which has a radius as big as the distance from the Sun to the Earth, so the fastest parts of the sphere are traveling at 1,213 kilometers per second; the Earth orbits at 29.9 kilometers per second. Really fast. Really, really fast. The fastest parts of the sphere travel at 0.4% of the speed of light. That is how fast you are traveling when you stand at the equator of a Dyson sphere. Don't worry about the relativistic effects, they show up in the sixth decimal place.
I'd tell you what kind of stress that several centimeter thick shell has to withstand, but I can't find a formula for the mass-moment of inertia of a thin shell. I'm lazy today, sorry.
Light doesn't reflect perfectly from any surface I know of, so the laser is absorbed a little by each mirror it reflects off of. The laser beam would slowly dim, until it was so dim that you couldn't perceive it if it went straight into your eye. This is why people do research on mirrors & coatings for astronomy: you dont' want to absorb one of the five photons which strike the mirror of your telescope. (I don't know if photon count is this low, but some observations are so dim that counting photons is easier than calculating lumens.)
BTW, is there an androgenous term of respect? I used 'Sir' because in English, when the sex is unknown, the default is the masculine pronoun. (Don't blame me, I think it's imprecise: implying that I know the sex of the person in question when I actually don't.) I don't know if cheese_wallet is male, female, Kzinti, or Klingon, but I know that I want to speak with respect.
We teach math to enable students to live in our society. Beyond that, it's just frosting on the cake. Some people (like my mom, who teaches math to junior high kids [11-14 years old]) maintain that kids do not have abstract thinking ability before ~13, for the most part. So teaching it would be hard in elementary school.
1)
Of all the subjects which is the most important for the development of the student? That is, which subject gives the most skills to the student beyond the actual information taught? Why?
Reading. Period. After that, she can teach herself. But "A, B, C" isn't enough, which is why English classes are so key, they give practice in reading. English class doesn't teach anything about reading; for that see "How to Read A Book" by Mortimer J. Adler.
2)
What is the goal of teaching Math to children?
So that "the future of America" will be able to live in the "America of the Future(TM)".
3)
Is it to give them skills to manipulate numbers or does it accomplish something else (or maybe both)? What are those skills?
Again, until high school, it's just coping skills. Then, higher thinking is slowly introduced. Slowly.
4)
People often say that math teaches abstract reasoning. Is this so, how and why? Could there be a better way to accomplish this?
Math teaches abstract reasoning, arithmetic does not.
Arithmetic n The study of the positive integers (1,2,3,4,5,...) under the operations of addition, subtraction,multiplication, and division, and the use of the results of these studies in everyday life.
Mathematics n The logical study of shape, arrangemant, quantity, and many related concepts. Mathematics often is divided into three fields: _algebra, _analysis, and _geometry. However, no clear divisions can be made, since these branches have become thoroughly intermingled. Roughly, algebra involves numbers and their abstractions, analysis involves continuity and limits, and geometry is concerned with space and related concepts.
Thought that I would clear the definitions up a bit. Basically, you don't hit mathematics until high-school. So elementary 'math' doesn't teach abstract reasoning, though it may teach reasoning on some level.
5)
With the development of small computers and calculators do you see the role of math education declining? Why or why not?
You always need a gut-level check of whatever you are doing. If you don't know that 1882*1000 should be bigger than 1.9, you won't realize that you divided instead of multiplying.
In engineering we occasionaly finish a complex analysis which has many possibilities for making mistakes by doing a "sanity check" where we use a less precise but simpler method to check our answer. Stress analysis of a spring using elasticity methods is a good example. I had a 3/4" stack of paper for my analysis, with the pages covered in calculus and static analysis. When I was all done, I checked my spring constant equations against a handbook equation, and I was close. So I assume that I was 'right'. Without the sanity check, I wouldn't really know.
6)
Why are children often forced to memorize multiplication tables and do long division?
Because it is actually useful. Not just for engineering students like me, but for checking the high-school dropout who is ringing up your groceries: if he puts the decimal in the wrong place, your loaf of bread is $10, not $1. That is much easier to check if you know that $10 is 10 times $1, and that multiplication by 10 can be done by moving the decimal point. An ability to do basic arithmetic cannot be thought unnecessary when our society is ruled more and more by numbers. (Politicians use polls, we all use prices, homeowners use mortgages, nearly everyone uses credit cards. To understand all of this, we must understand arithmetic so well that we don't have to check to see if we did it right; arithmetic must be nearly second nature.)
7)
Why is it that students who have some deficiency in math are stigmatized as "not so bright" more often than children who fail to do well in other subjects? Conversely, why are children who excel at math considered gifted (more so than other subjects)?"
Because it seems that our society thinks that math is hard (to quote Barbie), so if you can do math, you must be smart. That one is mostly societal.
BTW, Are the people in your class primarily from the sciences or the humanities? I ask because I have noticed a trend at my university that the students who use math in class regularly (physics, engineering, chemistry, etc.) think that math is an essential life skill for everyone to know, and the students in the humanities (psychology, english, history, etc.) see math as useful in balancing a checkbook, but beyond that, it seems to have little point. "Why did I have to take algebra? I've never used it?" When this comes up, the science types insist that math is an essential skill, but are hard pressed to find "real life" examples of how algebra or geometry could be useful. And we aren't even up to basic Calculus in the discussion! I would like to find a way to convince people that math is useful, not just arithmetic.
A great school attracts great students, great teachers [I am using the word 'teacher' because what matters is the ability to convey the material, which is teaching; professing is to "declare or claim":)], and great supporters (businesses, professionals, retirees).
But "Ivy League schools" are not the best option for everyone. And I'm not refering to those who couldn't get in anyway, I'm refering to the high schooler who is trying to decide between engineering at Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford. (Yes, I'm from California. Bit of a bias, but I am also looking at the U.S. News ranking of the best undergraduate engineering schools with Ph.D. programs. Sometimes 'best' needs to be defined in terms of what you want. If you want an education which emphasizes practical, hands-on, do it yourself, go out to the shop and weld yourself a bike, you might not get as much as you want at an Ivy League school as you would at others.
I know, I go to a great school. Cal Poly was ranked 4th in the nation for the best undergraduate engineering schools without Ph.D. programs, ie. we concentrate on teaching undergraduate engineering. To compare, the US service academies (West Point, Annapolis, and US Air Force Academy) all rank below us, and they are considered world-class. Our graduates are known for being good engineers the first week on the job, quality contributors, intelligent people.
Here is an article in Mechanical Engineering about electronic control of diesels. It covers the Volkswagen TDI, fuel economy, emmisions, and what various companies (Ford, Toyota, Lucas Diesel, VW) are doing in diesel.
We have solar water heaters to preheat the water which enters the hot water heater. It's not very high tech, and it sure ain't tech-sexy, but it does what I think you want.
Check your power bill to see how much gas/electricity you use each month, and compare that to the ratings on your hot water heater, dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, and home heating/cooling system. Those five items use a large percentage of your energy, don't they? Preheating the water entering your water heater will reduce the energy necessary to heat your water to a good temperature. (The energy to heat something is proportional to the difference between the initial and final temperatures; q=hA(Ti-Tf) for convection.) BTW, you might want to turn down the output temperature of your hot water heater to the temperature your dishwasher needs for the hot cycle. That is the hottest almost anybody needs any water in their homes, and heating the water above the "dishwasher temperature" is a waste of energy.
Don't get me wrong, I like electricity from the sun, but it isn't the only way to harness the sun. And I don't think it is the most efficient. Alas, I can't find any examples of solar power conversion efficiencies in my Thermodynamics or Heat Transfer textbooks, so I can't compare numbers. You might want to check out Mr. Solar for some more ideas.
The "trojan" was actually my beta of Netscape 6. Norton Internet Security was reporting a trojan whenever I tried to go to Asynchronies site, so I assumed it was on their site. (The *.jsp made me suspicious.) But it was a file in Netscape which was offending Mr. Norton.
Sorry about the misleading information.
I'm still wondering about the 's' in "https:". Does anybody know why the change?
91. Our allegiance is to ourselves -- our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.
I "joined" Slashdot in February, and I now consider myself to be part of this community. I listen to those who post. I give posters more benefit of a larger doubt than I do most people I run into (including the trolls, sometimes they're funny). When I engage in conversation here (post and read) I make more effort than I do elsewhere, in part because I'll sound like an idiot if I don't, and partly because I respect your time and I know that you respect mine. I read the referenced web page, and often pages it references, and I look for other sources, before I post a disagreement. When I am making a point, I try to present easily accessible backup.
Since when is RSA nothing but code? RSA is an encryption algorithm. The source code is an implementation of that algorithm (a.k.a. process). RSA can be described without a scrap of source code. It is a mathematical algorithm.
Yes, but I think that a mathematical algorithm can be considered speech, in that it often shows the character of the author, and it can be more or less elegant/hackish/novel than an "equivilant" algorithm.
Say that I have an idea for a story, and I fill out the plot, characters, and background in my head. But I didn't write the story, I just made sure that I had a good grasp of what the elements were. I can't do anything with my story until I implement it as code: written words.
There is a huge gray area here, because implementation seems to be the province of patents, while ideas seem to be the province of copyrights. But now the idea is merging with the implementation of the idea such that the two cannot be easily seperated, if they can be seperated at all. I have an idea for a story, but I can't copyright it until I implement it as written English. But if I do that with an idea for a program, the program seems to no longer be an idea, but a process/implementation. (As far as I can see, the only current distinction is that source code isn't implementation, but the compiled code is. What's magical about a compiler?)
Thanks for the article reference. In the Ars Technica article, the author says
Let's consider the case of a watch. If someone were to make an old-fashioned Swiss watch with gears and such, and give it to me under the assumption that I'm going to take it apart and learn to make Swiss watches, is the watch a form of speech? Before you answer, consider also the following case. Someone makes a Swiss watch and drops it in the park. I pick it up, bring it home, and take it apart. Once I get it apart, I figure out how to make Swiss watches. Was the second watch a form of speech?
For me, either watch is a form of speech, because I can find bit's of the "author's" personality in the watch; I'm a Mechanical Engineer. If he chooses to use a 4-bar mechanism, that tells me that he likes elegant solutions which aren't always easy to find. If she uses 'normal' watch parts, I know that she prefers a tried and true design.
This tells me that "speech" as I consider it is almost anything from which information about the creator can be infered.
The fact that a medium of expression has a functional capacity should not preclude constitutional protection. Rather, the appropriate consideration of the medium's functional capacity is in the analysis of
permittedgovernment regulation.
Emphasis added.
Besides, the 6th Circuit Court (not the Supreme Court, we still have to see what they will say; it ain't over yet, flyboy) said that code is FREE AS IN SPEECH, NOT Free As In Beer. The DMCA might still be interpreted as making the code property (you can exercise free speech in an interview with the local TeleVision station, but they own the tape of the interview). Don't ask me how that might happen, I thought that DMCA-type laws would be thrown out by the second or third judge.
So now the First Amendment applies. But, the first amendment doesn't give us carte blanche to just say whatever we want, there are certain limitations. (Too many limitations, IMO, but I just want to know what this means in practical terms for DMCA, UCITA, and MPAA & RIAA, et al.) I cannot say untrue things about a public figure if I know them to be untrue, that is libelous (slander?). I can't yell "Fire" in a theater, but I can yell it in my home. There are many common-sense limitations to the First Amendment, and many silly/stupid/~evil limitations too, so we must not take this as a signal to "Copy, Distribute, and Be Merry." It's a good win, but the war isn't over, and we cannot afford to look like outlaws or script kiddies or crackers or any other stereotype. If we look even remotely like a stereotype, those who don't know us will assume that the media and the government are right about us, and we will lose support.
/Begin Rant
And it's about time that non-tech-heads realized this basic truth: geeks and nerds comunicate in ways different from most of "mainstream society", and many of these methods are hard/impossible for a layman to understand. I'm graduating with my degree in Mechanical Engineering this year, and I speak 2 languages fluently: american English, and Math. Example: business types describe the Gini Coefficient (an economic measurement) as a ratio of areas involving two curves; I think of it as G = 1-(2*Integral[f(x),x,0,1)])/(x*h) and that tells me exactly what I need to know, with no ambiguities. Just because what I 'say' isn't in English (or German, or Russian, or American Sign Language), doesn't mean that it isn't 'speech'. The expression of an idea in Code or Math is very dependant upon the author (especialy for large and/or complicated matters). I've been moved more by Shakespeare than by 'speech' in Math, but it's close; I've seen some beautiful Math. It is much like marveling at a particularly ingenious hack; it is so elegant, so efficient, so novel that the experience is emotional.
I'm an engineering student and I love this applet! My classes in vibrations (I've taken the one required and two extras) and controls are now ways to play. BTW, for those not in the know, a positive feedback is when the system 'blows up'; negative feedback is the control term for a system that goes to equilibrium.
It seems that regular geometric shapes which have been overconstrained (supports from one node going to many other nodes) are nearly stable. The ones I've played with only change shape when they are pushed over a certain energy/position limit. Pretty darn cool. It reminds me of contol systems, vibrations, mechanisms (vice grips and the good-ol-fashioned four bar mechanism), and energy theories of all types.
I want this applet on my computer, with a Save option. Sigh, more code to drool over.
Nice. For the top level of Lick Observatories, go to http://www.ucolick.org, but the engineering facility I worked for is here http://www.ucolick.org/~loen. BTW, UCOLick is the University of California Observatories/Lick Observatories. And Keck is a joint effort between UCOLick and Caltech? (I can't remember if it is really Caltech, don't trust that.)
The Keck telescopes (10 meter main reflecting mirrors) are located in Hawaii, on top of Mauna Kea mountain, at 14,000 feet. When people from our lab went to install equipment, they had to write down what tools they were going into another room for, because the lack of oxygen would cause short term memory loss. It takes a few days to acclimate, which is about the time it takes to do an installation. So they left about the time they were ready to work normally.
We must remember that the new political method of getting the public on your side is to scare them, never mind the truth. I can see the following being said by a politician very soon.
These dangerous hackers are going to get into your computer and look at the secret emails you hide from your wife, they will look at your company secrets, they will take over your bank account and leave you penniless, they will put your favorite music artists out of business and you will never hear them in concert again, they will put Hollywood out of business and you will never see Lethal Weapon 43. We are in a state of crisis, and we need to crack down now, or our children will not know the wonders of freedom as we do. Please stand with us, if not for yourself, then for your childern.
Many people desire security (or the appearance of security) over self-determination and freedom. These people won't be upset when restrictions are placed on the net to "protect us". They don't know the truth, they don't know who to trust (There are some real crack-pots out there, and telling the real from those who are just being labeled as such can be difficult. And in our case, the crackers, script kiddies, and warez d00dz hurt us.) and it's starting to seem like other political things. "It's too hard to tell them apart. I don't like either side. I'll just ignore it and let it work itself out."
Without popular support, we will lose. We need to motivate the public and let them see our point of view.
While I disagree with much of what the author said, I believe he skated around a possible problem: the lack of curiosity in the general population. While the general population (those who don't realize that the 'whoosh' of the starship Enterprise flying through space isn't real) doesn't do the science or engineering, and may not motivate said work, they do pay for some of it. The astonomy that I am familiar with (I was an engineering intern for an instrument shop for Lick Observatories in California) is paid for publically. "Big physics" has a large public portion in the funding, and much aerospace engineering is sponsored by NASA or the DoD. The problem I see is that "they" (the general public) may not want to pay for science and engineering that doesn't benefite them now and in an obvious way. People are complaining about the expense of space systems now, while they watch the weather (pictures provided by a weather satellite) and talk on the phone to their friend on another continent (the voice data bouncing off of a communications satellite), after getting directions in their car from a GPS system. Never underestimate the power of stupidity, and the superior power of stupidity in numbers.
Two things are needed: ways to make space more exciting, and ways to insulate important science and engineering from the general public and politicians. The former is likely people in space on a regular basis, and the opportunity for the general public to get into space, or near-space. (Near-space being looking out the window of a Trans-Pacific flight and seeing the stars from 100,000 feet. "Wow, Margaret, you've got to see this.") To insulate sci/engr from the public and politicians could mean private space firms, many governments involved in space exploration (so that the public in any one country won't ruin it for the species), a self-sustaining base (I know that it's not a near-term solution, but if there is a self-sustaining base when people decide to pull the plug, there might be hope) or some great benefit from the work in space (an orbital solar power station providing 20% of the power for the nation would be good).
This won't be easy, but we can get ourselves into space in meaningful ways, and it can be done soon. I'm a graduating Mechanical Engineer, and I know that I'm going to be working on this for the rest of my life. Space is our next frontier, we just need a motivation to go there. (All other frontier work was motivated in some way: gold, self-determination, escape from something, or a chance for a new start with no baggage from your old life.)
Joe Haldeman wrote of a similar system in Forever Peace (ISBN: 0-441-00566-7). The requirements for a human interface are fascinating, especially if the remote is bipedal. I want one.
A 'clothesline' sounds good for a quality conduit setup, but if you have tight turns or a large bundle of wire going through a section, you will have to pull hard. And a 'clothesline' anchor might come out of the stud, especially if you use a standard 'screw it into the wood' hook.
When I did that cable run (another thread) I was occasionally putting most of my (substantial) body weight on the bundle I was pulling, even though my partner was feeding the wires as nicely as they would go. As far as I can tell, that only happens with tight turns or large bundles.
If you are building your house, you can avoid those problems by making your conduit large (2 inches sounds good, off the top of my head), and keeping those curves large and smooth. And each piece of conduit should connect to each other piece, with no gaps in between for little twists to catch on. This will prevent snagging and yanking, like cr0sh said earlier.
And walkie-talkies will keep the neighbors from hearing you yell to your partner in the basement from your perch in the attic.
When/if genetics and bio-engineering are advanced enough, what laws would prevent a doctor from sampling my genetic material and using it for his own purposes? If I have a strong resistance to HIV, he might be able to make money using my genes in research or in finding a cure. Or, if I were a Nobel Prize winning Olympic Decathelete (I wish), he could use my genes to make 'better' children for wealthy parents.
Specifically: would a personal patent on my genetic structure be enough to stop this? And if he did sample me, could I sue for rights, money, a share of the companies, etc.?
Your children may not have to pay for the use of your genetic material, because it isn't strictly your genetic material they have, it is a unique combination of yours and your spouse's.
BTW, the way copyrights are going, I wouldn't be surprised if patent life were extended in the next few years. I love it when people misunderstand the intent of a law; intentional misunderstanding or not.;)
Any ideas on how expensive it would be to patent myself?
And does this mean that (assuming the patent comes through), future patents on "common" genetic material/structure/code/etc. will be invalid due to a previous patent?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that ethics is a very large component of being human (not just homo sapien). However, while I don't like M$ either, I disagree strongly with the equation you created:
An inability "to discern wrong from right" is not automatically an inability to make rational decisions. There is no causal relation between the two, which is what seems to be implied by the use of "will not be able to make a rational decisionFurthermore, choosing Micro$quish is NOT necessarily "wrong"! I have 'chosen' to use M$ operating systems for years because I am in the mechanical engineering field, and most engineering software is written for M$ alone (AutoCAD, Pro/E(I believe), Catia(I believe) ). My school bookstore, while it is a self-proclaimed "Mac-center", sells engineering software which is almost exclusively written for M$. (Correction: I haven't seen any engineering software for non-M$ other than Mathematica, but the Mathematica CD has installs for 3 OS's onboard. So they might be effectively all-M$.) I have installed and used Linux, and I really like it. But I don't have time to learn a new OS, find replacement programs, port my data, and still learn/get grades in school while sleeping more than four hours a night.
When I graduate in a few months, Linux is going on my old 486, and I'll dual-boot my new machine OpenBSD/NT (I still have to use those M$ engineering programs). I'm not a saint, but I don't think that using M$ is indicitave of a lack of ethics on my part.
Now, not paying for M$ programs, that becomes an interesting question. Should I be legal and pay, knowing that I'm supporting The Other Evil Empire, or should I illegally get software which I need for my job? Ah, ethics. It's fun because there are no answers everyone will agree on.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
It seems that the sound waves in the finitely-rigid bar are traveling at twice the speed of light. Alpha Centauri is about 4 light-years away, and if it took only 2 years for the wave to get there ...
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Disclaimer: I was the Chair of the club last year.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Take an infinitely rigid bar (or near-infinitely rigid) which is about four light-years long, and weighs almost nothing (a few pounds, maybe a few tons) and put it between Sol and Alpha Centauri. Wiggle it back and forth, and you have instantaneous morse code across four light-years.
It has to be nearly infinite in its rigidity or it will bend and the girl on the other side won't see movement, and it has to be light-weight or you will have trouble keeping it straight (a few pounds with a 2 light-year moment arm will be a pain to keep straight).
This is the best example I know of where mechanics wins over electronics/optics/sub-space/new-tech.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Assume for a moment that we don't have to deal with corrupt politicians appointed to head the appropriate government agency (FAA to do the actual orders, FCC to provide technical backup, CIA/NSA/DIA/FBI to provide some ideas about terrorists using this for a weapon like SheldonYoung said) or the industries with a vested interest in maintianing the status-quo (lawyers, mainly). The only problem then is creating a quality solution, testing it, and implementing it.
Let's say that we have most of a quality solution already, what with the newer planes having Faraday cages and shielding, we only need to do a little more work on the design, call it a month. Then the 'solutions' must be tested in a lab, say 3-6 months depending on problems and facilities. After that there must be tests on real airplanes. First you put cell phones, PDAs, walkmen, CD players, computers, cell modems, CBs, and what-not in a test plane (a plane with no passengers) and a flight crew of test pilots. After a statistically significant set of tests in these somewhat controled conditions, the tests are expanded to a few real flights with special test flight crews. These tests are the first with real conditions: read RISK OF DEATH of the flying public.
I am not trying to troll or exagerate, but when you risk loss of control of an airplane, at any altitude, you risk the death of all aboard. There are usually ways to reduce risk, such as putting fly-by-wire controls in aircraft which use hydraulics, letting you switch from the wired controls to the hydraulics if the electronics go kaput when the cell phones are turned on. Eventually, you need to install the safety systems on aircraft which do not have non-electronic backups. This is the most risky step in the progression from idea to routine use; the design has been tried & tested, but there may still be a few tiny problems. Unfortunately, 'tiny' is usually easy to fix, but deadly until fixed.
All of this means that fixes are not easy to do. However, fixes should be made. Why the FAA hasn't mandated safety devices on all airliners is unknown to me (I could guess, but ... ), but it should start a program to get a quality fix in place as soon as possible. The quality fix will be able to handle all of the current frequency and power ranges, and those which might be used in the future.
In short, for the FAA ' ... to dump those "RF on an airplane" rules, and mandate a technological solution.' is not easy to do, and it can not be done quickly for fear of loss of life.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Keeping the air 'down' near the people might be hard. Take your wok (I know you have one :) and put a little water in it, just covering the bottom half inch (1 cm). Now swirl the water around, keeping the water level at some specific height. Notice how hard it is to keep the water right at that height? That's pretty much what will happen to the air in the Dyson sphere as it rotates: tiny perturbations will move the 'edge' of the air around. A wall to keep the air in place might be appropriate. Maybe a few kilometers high is all that would be needed, depending on whether or not people were going to live near this wall. The closer people want to live to the wall, the higher it will have to be to keep in enough air to have normal air pressure. (To get normal atmospheric pressure of 101kPa, if you have constant Earth-normal gravity, you need air about 8.4 km high.)
The problem most people will have with Dyson spheres will be that the 'down' you feel won't be directly into the sphere when you are a large distance from the inhabitable ring. At 45 degrees lattitude, 'gravity' would be 6.94 m/s^2 (you're feeling 9.81 m/s^2 right now), 70% of the maximum. (The 'gravity' felt varies as the sine of the lattitude.) And the direction of that force of 'gravity' would be at a 45 degree angle, not down. Everything will have to built at an angle to the ground if you want to walk with 'down' toward the floor.
The spin you have to give it is kinda fast, one complete revolution every 34 hours. This is a sphere which has a radius as big as the distance from the Sun to the Earth, so the fastest parts of the sphere are traveling at 1,213 kilometers per second; the Earth orbits at 29.9 kilometers per second. Really fast. Really, really fast. The fastest parts of the sphere travel at 0.4% of the speed of light. That is how fast you are traveling when you stand at the equator of a Dyson sphere. Don't worry about the relativistic effects, they show up in the sixth decimal place.
I'd tell you what kind of stress that several centimeter thick shell has to withstand, but I can't find a formula for the mass-moment of inertia of a thin shell. I'm lazy today, sorry.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Light doesn't reflect perfectly from any surface I know of, so the laser is absorbed a little by each mirror it reflects off of. The laser beam would slowly dim, until it was so dim that you couldn't perceive it if it went straight into your eye. This is why people do research on mirrors & coatings for astronomy: you dont' want to absorb one of the five photons which strike the mirror of your telescope. (I don't know if photon count is this low, but some observations are so dim that counting photons is easier than calculating lumens.)
BTW, is there an androgenous term of respect? I used 'Sir' because in English, when the sex is unknown, the default is the masculine pronoun. (Don't blame me, I think it's imprecise: implying that I know the sex of the person in question when I actually don't.) I don't know if cheese_wallet is male, female, Kzinti, or Klingon, but I know that I want to speak with respect.
Maybe I should learn Esperanto. ;)
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
1)
Reading. Period. After that, she can teach herself. But "A, B, C" isn't enough, which is why English classes are so key, they give practice in reading. English class doesn't teach anything about reading; for that see "How to Read A Book" by Mortimer J. Adler.2)
So that "the future of America" will be able to live in the "America of the Future(TM)".3)
Again, until high school, it's just coping skills. Then, higher thinking is slowly introduced. Slowly.4)
Math teaches abstract reasoning, arithmetic does not.From "Mathematics Dictionary" 5th Ed.
Thought that I would clear the definitions up a bit. Basically, you don't hit mathematics until high-school. So elementary 'math' doesn't teach abstract reasoning, though it may teach reasoning on some level.5)
You always need a gut-level check of whatever you are doing. If you don't know that 1882*1000 should be bigger than 1.9, you won't realize that you divided instead of multiplying.In engineering we occasionaly finish a complex analysis which has many possibilities for making mistakes by doing a "sanity check" where we use a less precise but simpler method to check our answer. Stress analysis of a spring using elasticity methods is a good example. I had a 3/4" stack of paper for my analysis, with the pages covered in calculus and static analysis. When I was all done, I checked my spring constant equations against a handbook equation, and I was close. So I assume that I was 'right'. Without the sanity check, I wouldn't really know.
6)
Because it is actually useful. Not just for engineering students like me, but for checking the high-school dropout who is ringing up your groceries: if he puts the decimal in the wrong place, your loaf of bread is $10, not $1. That is much easier to check if you know that $10 is 10 times $1, and that multiplication by 10 can be done by moving the decimal point. An ability to do basic arithmetic cannot be thought unnecessary when our society is ruled more and more by numbers. (Politicians use polls, we all use prices, homeowners use mortgages, nearly everyone uses credit cards. To understand all of this, we must understand arithmetic so well that we don't have to check to see if we did it right; arithmetic must be nearly second nature.)7)
Because it seems that our society thinks that math is hard (to quote Barbie), so if you can do math, you must be smart. That one is mostly societal.BTW,
Are the people in your class primarily from the sciences or the humanities? I ask because I have noticed a trend at my university that the students who use math in class regularly (physics, engineering, chemistry, etc.) think that math is an essential life skill for everyone to know, and the students in the humanities (psychology, english, history, etc.) see math as useful in balancing a checkbook, but beyond that, it seems to have little point. "Why did I have to take algebra? I've never used it?" When this comes up, the science types insist that math is an essential skill, but are hard pressed to find "real life" examples of how algebra or geometry could be useful. And we aren't even up to basic Calculus in the discussion! I would like to find a way to convince people that math is useful, not just arithmetic.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
But "Ivy League schools" are not the best option for everyone. And I'm not refering to those who couldn't get in anyway, I'm refering to the high schooler who is trying to decide between engineering at Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford. (Yes, I'm from California. Bit of a bias, but I am also looking at the U.S. News ranking of the best undergraduate engineering schools with Ph.D. programs. Sometimes 'best' needs to be defined in terms of what you want. If you want an education which emphasizes practical, hands-on, do it yourself, go out to the shop and weld yourself a bike, you might not get as much as you want at an Ivy League school as you would at others.
I know, I go to a great school. Cal Poly was ranked 4th in the nation for the best undergraduate engineering schools without Ph.D. programs, ie. we concentrate on teaching undergraduate engineering. To compare, the US service academies (West Point, Annapolis, and US Air Force Academy) all rank below us, and they are considered world-class. Our graduates are known for being good engineers the first week on the job, quality contributors, intelligent people.
Basically, you don't need Ivy to be great.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
We have solar water heaters to preheat the water which enters the hot water heater. It's not very high tech, and it sure ain't tech-sexy, but it does what I think you want.
Check your power bill to see how much gas/electricity you use each month, and compare that to the ratings on your hot water heater, dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, and home heating/cooling system. Those five items use a large percentage of your energy, don't they? Preheating the water entering your water heater will reduce the energy necessary to heat your water to a good temperature. (The energy to heat something is proportional to the difference between the initial and final temperatures; q=hA(Ti-Tf) for convection.) BTW, you might want to turn down the output temperature of your hot water heater to the temperature your dishwasher needs for the hot cycle. That is the hottest almost anybody needs any water in their homes, and heating the water above the "dishwasher temperature" is a waste of energy.
Don't get me wrong, I like electricity from the sun, but it isn't the only way to harness the sun. And I don't think it is the most efficient. Alas, I can't find any examples of solar power conversion efficiencies in my Thermodynamics or Heat Transfer textbooks, so I can't compare numbers. You might want to check out Mr. Solar for some more ideas.
Good luck.
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
The "trojan" was actually my beta of Netscape 6. Norton Internet Security was reporting a trojan whenever I tried to go to Asynchronies site, so I assumed it was on their site. (The *.jsp made me suspicious.) But it was a file in Netscape which was offending Mr. Norton.
Sorry about the misleading information.
I'm still wondering about the 's' in "https:". Does anybody know why the change?
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Essentially, I enjoy and respect this community.
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Say that I have an idea for a story, and I fill out the plot, characters, and background in my head. But I didn't write the story, I just made sure that I had a good grasp of what the elements were. I can't do anything with my story until I implement it as code: written words.
There is a huge gray area here, because implementation seems to be the province of patents, while ideas seem to be the province of copyrights. But now the idea is merging with the implementation of the idea such that the two cannot be easily seperated, if they can be seperated at all. I have an idea for a story, but I can't copyright it until I implement it as written English. But if I do that with an idea for a program, the program seems to no longer be an idea, but a process/implementation. (As far as I can see, the only current distinction is that source code isn't implementation, but the compiled code is. What's magical about a compiler?)
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
This tells me that "speech" as I consider it is almost anything from which information about the creator can be infered.
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Emphasis added.
Besides, the 6th Circuit Court (not the Supreme Court, we still have to see what they will say; it ain't over yet, flyboy) said that code is FREE AS IN SPEECH, NOT Free As In Beer. The DMCA might still be interpreted as making the code property (you can exercise free speech in an interview with the local TeleVision station, but they own the tape of the interview). Don't ask me how that might happen, I thought that DMCA-type laws would be thrown out by the second or third judge.
So now the First Amendment applies. But, the first amendment doesn't give us carte blanche to just say whatever we want, there are certain limitations. (Too many limitations, IMO, but I just want to know what this means in practical terms for DMCA, UCITA, and MPAA & RIAA, et al.) I cannot say untrue things about a public figure if I know them to be untrue, that is libelous (slander?). I can't yell "Fire" in a theater, but I can yell it in my home. There are many common-sense limitations to the First Amendment, and many silly/stupid/~evil limitations too, so we must not take this as a signal to "Copy, Distribute, and Be Merry." It's a good win, but the war isn't over, and we cannot afford to look like outlaws or script kiddies or crackers or any other stereotype. If we look even remotely like a stereotype, those who don't know us will assume that the media and the government are right about us, and we will lose support.
And it's about time that non-tech-heads realized this basic truth: geeks and nerds comunicate in ways different from most of "mainstream society", and many of these methods are hard/impossible for a layman to understand. I'm graduating with my degree in Mechanical Engineering this year, and I speak 2 languages fluently: american English, and Math. Example: business types describe the Gini Coefficient (an economic measurement) as a ratio of areas involving two curves; I think of it as G = 1-(2*Integral[f(x),x,0,1)])/(x*h) and that tells me exactly what I need to know, with no ambiguities. Just because what I 'say' isn't in English (or German, or Russian, or American Sign Language), doesn't mean that it isn't 'speech'. The expression of an idea in Code or Math is very dependant upon the author (especialy for large and/or complicated matters). I've been moved more by Shakespeare than by 'speech' in Math, but it's close; I've seen some beautiful Math. It is much like marveling at a particularly ingenious hack; it is so elegant, so efficient, so novel that the experience is emotional.
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
It seems that regular geometric shapes which have been overconstrained (supports from one node going to many other nodes) are nearly stable. The ones I've played with only change shape when they are pushed over a certain energy/position limit. Pretty darn cool. It reminds me of contol systems, vibrations, mechanisms (vice grips and the good-ol-fashioned four bar mechanism), and energy theories of all types.
I want this applet on my computer, with a Save option. Sigh, more code to drool over.
Louis Wu
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
The Keck telescopes (10 meter main reflecting mirrors) are located in Hawaii, on top of Mauna Kea mountain, at 14,000 feet. When people from our lab went to install equipment, they had to write down what tools they were going into another room for, because the lack of oxygen would cause short term memory loss. It takes a few days to acclimate, which is about the time it takes to do an installation. So they left about the time they were ready to work normally.
Hope that this helps, Louis Wu.
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Without popular support, we will lose. We need to motivate the public and let them see our point of view.
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Two things are needed: ways to make space more exciting, and ways to insulate important science and engineering from the general public and politicians. The former is likely people in space on a regular basis, and the opportunity for the general public to get into space, or near-space. (Near-space being looking out the window of a Trans-Pacific flight and seeing the stars from 100,000 feet. "Wow, Margaret, you've got to see this.") To insulate sci/engr from the public and politicians could mean private space firms, many governments involved in space exploration (so that the public in any one country won't ruin it for the species), a self-sustaining base (I know that it's not a near-term solution, but if there is a self-sustaining base when people decide to pull the plug, there might be hope) or some great benefit from the work in space (an orbital solar power station providing 20% of the power for the nation would be good).
This won't be easy, but we can get ourselves into space in meaningful ways, and it can be done soon. I'm a graduating Mechanical Engineer, and I know that I'm going to be working on this for the rest of my life. Space is our next frontier, we just need a motivation to go there. (All other frontier work was motivated in some way: gold, self-determination, escape from something, or a chance for a new start with no baggage from your old life.)
I'll see you on the Moon.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
Louis Wu
Thinking is one of hardest types of work.
When I did that cable run (another thread) I was occasionally putting most of my (substantial) body weight on the bundle I was pulling, even though my partner was feeding the wires as nicely as they would go. As far as I can tell, that only happens with tight turns or large bundles.
If you are building your house, you can avoid those problems by making your conduit large (2 inches sounds good, off the top of my head), and keeping those curves large and smooth. And each piece of conduit should connect to each other piece, with no gaps in between for little twists to catch on. This will prevent snagging and yanking, like cr0sh said earlier.
And walkie-talkies will keep the neighbors from hearing you yell to your partner in the basement from your perch in the attic.
BTW, the way copyrights are going, I wouldn't be surprised if patent life were extended in the next few years. I love it when people misunderstand the intent of a law; intentional misunderstanding or not. ;)
And does this mean that (assuming the patent comes through), future patents on "common" genetic material/structure/code/etc. will be invalid due to a previous patent?
Go girl!