I'm almost in over my head on this, but standing on tip-toe I think I'm on good ground explaining this. (Dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer, not a nuclear chemist!)
Single hydrogen atoms have one empty position in their outermost electron shell, so are fairly reactive and quickly form diatomic hydrogen (H2) molecules. When this happens, each of the hydrogen atoms is sharing two electrons (one it brought to the pair, and the other from the other atom). This is enough to fill the innermost electron shell, which is also the outermost electron shell on hydrogen. It is probably pretty safe to assume that anti-hydrogen will form diatomic antihydrogen molecules.
With the two hydrogen atoms sharing the electrons, the electrons spend more time in the region between the two nuclei (exhibit a larger probability wave in that region, for you quantum physics wonks), and so the two ends of the molecule exhibit a very slight positive charge. In the case of diatomic anti-hydrogen there should be a slight negative charge at the two ends of the molecule. These charges are weak compared to a free electron/positron/proton/anti-proton, which is why I said in my first post that the charges "would (essentially) net out".
So if we mixed hydrogen gas and anti-hydrogen gas, what we would probably see is the slightly oppositely charged ends of the diatomic hydrogen and anti-hydrogen molecules attracting each other.
Trying to form a molcule from an anti-element and a normal element would probably not work very well, because elements combine into molecules through sharing electrons to fill the outermost electron shells of the atoms. Even if a positron could temporarily serve to fill an electron shell, eventually it's going to meet up with an electron from the normal atom, they both go away, and the bond between the two atoms breaks down. You'd be left with an ion and an antimatter ion.
Anti-water probably would work quite well in putting out a fire, just like dynamite is used to put out oil-well fires.
Well, 6.02e23 hydrogen atoms weigh 1 gram, so 1e6 hydrogen atoms should weigh 1.66e-18 grams. A standard paperclip weighs about a gram. If anti-matter exhibits anti-gravity, then it would weigh -1.66e-18 grams.
whether it's visible to the naked eye?
Even if you make it solid, no. Maybe if you had a few billion times more atoms and really good eyes...
how much energy it would give off if you mixed it with hydrogen
A million hydrogen atoms and a million anti-hydrogen atoms have a combined mass of 3.322e-18 grams. Converting total mass to energy (e = mc^2) gets an energy of.29859 g m^2/s^2, or 7.1317e-5 calories (not dietary Calories; those are different). This is enough to raise the temperature of one gram of water 0.0713 degrees Celsius.
how long it will be till someone makes a weapon out of it?
Well, according to the article some of the particles in the trap did not move when they exposed the particle trap to a magnetic field, and they are using this as the basis for the supposition. Since they put anti-protons (negative charge) and anti-electrons (positive charge) in the trap, the magnetic field should make all the free anti-protons move one direction and all the free anti-electrons (aka positrons) move the other direction. An anti-hydrogen atom (hydrogen anti-atom?) would have one anti-proton and one anti-electron which would (essentially) net out, and so should not move under the influence of the magnetic field.
To double-check this, they're going to run the experiment again, and do a spectral analysis of what they've got in the particle trap later this year. I guess they've already got a theory on how the spectral emission/absorption lines of anti-hydrogen will compare to those of hydrogen.
What about getting laws that say that unsolicitated mail is illegal? Shouldn't that do the trick? Anybody got some good reason for why laws like this shouldn't come true?
Who's going to pass this law? The United States? France? Antarctica? The problem with "getting a law" is that this "crime" is committed with the villian in one jurisdiction, and the victim in another. If the United States passes a law saying that UCE is illegal, how are they going to catch and punish somebody in China? And if a US law has active force over the activities of a Chinese citizen in China, doesn't China have just as much right to make laws that have force over what a US citizen does in the US? (Yes, I know, DeCSS; we've already had that, yada yada yada. You want to re-hash that, submit a different story; we're talking spam here.)
There are really only two solutions that could work and are similar to what you are proposing. First, a treaty between the United States (Canada/UK/EU/...) and the Asian countries banning UCE sent between the signing countries. However, allowing UCE brings currency into the economies of the countries that condone it, so I don't think they'd sign something like that unless the alternative was worse. (Cutting off their country's email might qualify as worse.)
Second, declaring that the UN or some other international governing body has jurisdication over this matter and can set criminal penalties. Personally, I despise the thought of giving more power to any international governing body; if you can't abide by what a country's government is doing, you have the option of leaving that country and moving to another. What could you do if you couldn't stand the world government? (I hear the nights are cold on Mars...) I would prefer to avoid anything that looks like it's taking us closer to this possibility (such as enforcing US laws on citizens in another country...)
All that said, I don't think that the final solution to this problem will be resolved in the legal arena. This is a technology problem, and will most likely be resolved with a technical solution, such as a total re-working of the internet mail protocols. The black-listing of entire Asian regions is just a stop-gap measure that probably won't really work for long.
According to your reasoning, laws punishing killers take away my freedom to shoot who I want legally.
Nice textbook example of a strawman argument there. It has no real connection with my post, but I'll address it anyway. You are overlooking the point that you do not have the inherent right to shoot somebody you want. Now, if they are attempting to infringe on your right to life (i.e. they are trying to kill you) you have the definite right to shoot them (to preserve your right to life); however, you don't have the right to deprive them of their right to life just becuase you want to. You seem to claim that I am advocating anarchy; I am doing no such thing. I am pointing out the fact that the wording of the UN Declation of Human Rights places the interests of the UN ahead of the rights of an individual. As such, how can they really be considered rights?
There's a big difference between the UN Declaration and the rights as laid out in the US Declaration of Independence. In the US document, government is to give way to individual rights ("...that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..." From memory, so it might be a little off). According to the UN document, as I quote again below, individual rights give way to the governing body, i.e. the UN.
The passage you quoted only enforces the entire Declaration; it simply says that the articles above (being of good intent) cannot be used for malicious intent.
The passage I quoted ("These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.") says nothing about malicious intent; you are making the assumption that the purposes and principles of the UN are not malicious to anybody. As soon as the purposes and principles of the UN are malicious to anybody, your statement of what that passage says ceases to be true. My statement in this case still remains valid: the UN is declaring that its interests supercede individual rights.
To save you some trouble; yes, there are laws in the United States with which I disagree and think violate human rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence.
Not according to that very document you point at. If you look down at the bottom, all the way in Article 29, you'll see Paragraph 3. 29(3) reads:
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
So, according to the UN, they're not really human rights, they're just what they're willing to let you do as long as you don't get in the way of what the UN wants to do. They just call them "Human Rights" in hopes that you won't realize there's not really anything of substance left at the end. As an example, if the UN decides that part of its purpose is to rid the world of firearms, their granting you a "right" of privacy (Article 12) goes right out the window.
(Boy, I can't wait to see the moderations on this one.)
When I beta tested, all beta testers got the software when it went into release. (Including all updates.)
Ahhh... Good; renumeration. If your beta test agreement states that they will get release copies and upgrades at no change to them in exchange for their beta testing, then I would think that you would have a very strong argument that any suggestions that they came up with qualify as work for hire. (You are compensating them by giving them something valuable in exchange for their work product, i.e. bug reports and enhancement suggestions) As work for hire, since you did the hiring, you own the work product. This is why, for instance, IBM owns the patents for inventions that their scientists develop, instead of those scientists owning the patents.
I would warn you, however, that I am not licensed to practice law in any state (drunk or sober).
Yet we keep hearing the fatalistic "all code has bugs, we're all gonna die anyway!" chants and nobody takes the simple first steps to fix bugs or eliminate the worst of their personal habits.
Every point you make is quite valid. However, there is a distiction between "all code has bugs" and "bugs in code are inevitable". If a program has a bug in it, it's in the vast majority. There should be little stigma in admitting that there was a bug and fixing it, instead of ignoring it and hoping that not many people will notice. Perhaps I should have said, "All software... have bugs; that's not unusual. Admit them, correct them..." instead of "All software... have bugs; that's simply life. Admit them, correct them..." We'll just chalk it up to a bug in my previous post, which will be fixed in the next release. I was trying to state the current status of reality, not an attitude of being resigned to rampant bugs being unavoidable.
By the way, correctness proofs only demonstrate that the code correctly implements the algorithm specified and still doesn't handle the problem of selecting or designing the correct algorithm. They therefore attack only one point in the development process where bugs can enter. (You already know this; just letting the others in on the fact that there's no silver bullet.) Full compiler warnings are a good thing; another thing I would insist upon is that a programmer use a debugger to step through every line of code affected by a change, and make sure that the program execution flow is what they had intended. It's amazing how many bugs I've caught this way.
"We must lead the industry to a whole new level of Trustworthiness in computing." - Bill Gates internal memo, 15 January 2002.
Hasn't this already been accomplished? I'd feel a lot better if it had stated that this would be a higher level of trustworthiness. All software (other than a "hello world" program, TeX and anything I write;-D ) have bugs; that's simply life. Admit them, correct them, and move on instead of trying to ignore and bury them, and people would feel a lot more trusting of the products. The same applies for "gee-whiz" features that end up being security holes; admit that they were bad ideas and remove them (or at least disable them by default)
Bottom line is, words are easy. I'm going to wait to see the action.
link about AOL/TW lawsuit on a site owned by AOL/TW? Subtle.
All right, if you want subtle, how about a link about the AOL/TW lawsuit on [msnbc.com]? Maybe the fact that CNN and NBC are both new companies, and this qualifies as news?
i would have to loved to have been a fly on the wall in the oracle engineering department the day ellison announced that their software was unbreakable.
Well, here's how the conversation went:
Dilbert: Hey, Wally! Larry just announced that 9i's unbreakable! I guess this means we can stop working on those bug-fixes.
Wally: Way ahead of you there.
When you have a publically accessible medium of communication you are implicitly agreeing that anyone may attempt to contact you at least once.
No, I'm not making that implicit agreement. You might be assuming that, but I'm not implying that. Unless I explicitly ask for e-mail to be sent to an address, it is unsolicited.
Let's look at it this way. There's a street that runs right next to your house, and so standing on that street with a bull-horn is a "publically accessible medium of communication". By having that street next to your house, are you claiming that you are agreeing that anybody can stand on that street and send you a message through a bull-horn at least once?
if I repeatedly send you a mail trying to sell you something, and I've forged the headers so that you cannot contact me, and my unsubscribe link does not work, am I spamming you?
Yes, as spam falls into two categories: UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email) and UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). Most spam seems to hit both but your example only hits UCE, and would even if you didn't forge any headers and the links all worked. The key in common with both is unsolicited. From dictionary.com: unsolicited: Not looked for or requested; unsought: an unsolicited manuscript; unsolicited opinions.
I've never seen any missile defense plans that have anything to do with stopping an asteroid. Asteroids are much faster, coming from farther out and much bigger than rogue ICBMs.
Hmmm... You make a good case for pursuing a missile defense system. Since we do have to learn to walk before we can learn to run, solving the easier problem of a missile defense system does looks like an essential step towards a goal of building an asteroid defense system.
Meanwhile, a group from Norway has announced a Linux port to the 500 euro note.
Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) has announced release of Windows BankNote XP for January 1, 2001. They dismiss reports of "blue screens of death" from the beta testers as of little consequence, only restricting the access to the bill for a few minutes while it automatically re-boots. Windows BNXP licences for 500 Euro notes are projected to start at 550 Euros.
A CERT (www.cert.org) advisory notes that there are already four viruses circulating for Windows BNXP, three of which make the affected note report that it is in Russian rubles, and not Euros. The fourth virus makes the bill report that it is a small purple camel. Microsoft is currently working on a patch to prevent the spread of these viruses, and meanwhile advises to not let uninfected bills come in contact with bills that might be affected.
Doh! I lost track of who was where on the argument; that's what I get for reading Slashdot between license tests.
I would be impressed if Sony is making $100 profit on each PS2 unit sold. If we assume a 40% retail markup and that Sony is doing the wholesaling (i.e. no middleman between Sony and the retailer), then Sony has a revenue of $179.97 on each unit. (My sole retail experience was in a different sector, so the retail markup on consumer electronics might be lower, which makes things easier for Sony.) With $100 profit, that would mean that the manufacturing cost is right at $80 per unit. Spreding the $2B cost of the fabrication facilities over 100M units (your numbers from a few posts up) gives $20 from each unit going to cover the facilities, leaving $60 per unit to cover raw materials, wages, and other design costs. It might be possible, but I don't think so. But they should be able to cover their costs with $160 per unit.
Found this.pdf. As of 2001/9/30, PSX total sales are 88.25M units, PS2 19.57M units; PSX software 802M units, PS2 72.5M units. So it looks like there are 9 games sold for each PSX, and 3.7 games sold per PS2...but the PS2 also plays PSX games. That'll make things harder to track. The game division is claiming a $34M operating income in the quarter that ended 2001/9/30, but that's different from a profit. With 4.62M PS2 units shipped in that quarter, $100 profit per would be $462M. Drat, now I've got to figure out where those numbers should fall on a balance sheet.
Anyway, I agree with you that the PS2 is probably profitable, although I doubt the $100 per unit figure. I apoligize for mis-remembering what position you were taking in the discussion, and losing track of your thesis. Take care.
Sorry, I'm afraid that this just doesn't stand up. To "prove" that Sony can't be covering its costs to manufacture, promote and distribute the PS2 platform, you start with the assumption that the manufacturing cost of the unit is equal to the retail cost of the unit. Since the retail cost includes end-seller mark up, by this assumption you are assuring that you will "show" Sony is taking a loss on the PS2. To put it simply, you are using the logical fallicy of circular reasoning: you are assuming the very thing that you are setting out to prove.
Provide some factual basis for the manufactuing cost that Sony encurs for the PS2, and try this again.
One of the problems you're probably thinking of is selecting the kth largest item out of a list of n items. If you do it by sorting the elements and selecting from the sorted list, then your worst-case bound is O(n lg n). However, there is a kth largest selection methodology that has a worst-case O(16n).
(And, no, before anybody asks, you can't use it to make a linear search by selecting the first largest, then second largest, etc. You'd have to perform the selection n times, so your worst case would be O(16n^2), much worse than O(n lg n).)
Great, now I've got visuals of the next Pixar hit, Tomb Tater rolling around my head for the rest of the day. Mrs. Potato Head swinging across on a rope vine to rescue Woody, pulling out her spud gun and shooting Al in the beak...
Slashdot Mirror
Single hydrogen atoms have one empty position in their outermost electron shell, so are fairly reactive and quickly form diatomic hydrogen (H2) molecules. When this happens, each of the hydrogen atoms is sharing two electrons (one it brought to the pair, and the other from the other atom). This is enough to fill the innermost electron shell, which is also the outermost electron shell on hydrogen. It is probably pretty safe to assume that anti-hydrogen will form diatomic antihydrogen molecules.
With the two hydrogen atoms sharing the electrons, the electrons spend more time in the region between the two nuclei (exhibit a larger probability wave in that region, for you quantum physics wonks), and so the two ends of the molecule exhibit a very slight positive charge. In the case of diatomic anti-hydrogen there should be a slight negative charge at the two ends of the molecule. These charges are weak compared to a free electron/positron/proton/anti-proton, which is why I said in my first post that the charges "would (essentially) net out".
So if we mixed hydrogen gas and anti-hydrogen gas, what we would probably see is the slightly oppositely charged ends of the diatomic hydrogen and anti-hydrogen molecules attracting each other.
Trying to form a molcule from an anti-element and a normal element would probably not work very well, because elements combine into molecules through sharing electrons to fill the outermost electron shells of the atoms. Even if a positron could temporarily serve to fill an electron shell, eventually it's going to meet up with an electron from the normal atom, they both go away, and the bond between the two atoms breaks down. You'd be left with an ion and an antimatter ion.
Anti-water probably would work quite well in putting out a fire, just like dynamite is used to put out oil-well fires.
Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
To double-check this, they're going to run the experiment again, and do a spectral analysis of what they've got in the particle trap later this year. I guess they've already got a theory on how the spectral emission/absorption lines of anti-hydrogen will compare to those of hydrogen.
Chris Beckenbach
There are really only two solutions that could work and are similar to what you are proposing. First, a treaty between the United States (Canada/UK/EU/...) and the Asian countries banning UCE sent between the signing countries. However, allowing UCE brings currency into the economies of the countries that condone it, so I don't think they'd sign something like that unless the alternative was worse. (Cutting off their country's email might qualify as worse.)
Second, declaring that the UN or some other international governing body has jurisdication over this matter and can set criminal penalties. Personally, I despise the thought of giving more power to any international governing body; if you can't abide by what a country's government is doing, you have the option of leaving that country and moving to another. What could you do if you couldn't stand the world government? (I hear the nights are cold on Mars...) I would prefer to avoid anything that looks like it's taking us closer to this possibility (such as enforcing US laws on citizens in another country...)
All that said, I don't think that the final solution to this problem will be resolved in the legal arena. This is a technology problem, and will most likely be resolved with a technical solution, such as a total re-working of the internet mail protocols. The black-listing of entire Asian regions is just a stop-gap measure that probably won't really work for long.
Chris Beckenbach
There's a big difference between the UN Declaration and the rights as laid out in the US Declaration of Independence. In the US document, government is to give way to individual rights ("...that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..." From memory, so it might be a little off). According to the UN document, as I quote again below, individual rights give way to the governing body, i.e. the UN.
The passage I quoted ("These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.") says nothing about malicious intent; you are making the assumption that the purposes and principles of the UN are not malicious to anybody. As soon as the purposes and principles of the UN are malicious to anybody, your statement of what that passage says ceases to be true. My statement in this case still remains valid: the UN is declaring that its interests supercede individual rights.To save you some trouble; yes, there are laws in the United States with which I disagree and think violate human rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence.
Chris Beckenbach
Anyway, congrats, Taco.
Chris Beckenbach
(Boy, I can't wait to see the moderations on this one.)
Chris Beckenbach
I would warn you, however, that I am not licensed to practice law in any state (drunk or sober).
Chris Beckenbach
By the way, correctness proofs only demonstrate that the code correctly implements the algorithm specified and still doesn't handle the problem of selecting or designing the correct algorithm. They therefore attack only one point in the development process where bugs can enter. (You already know this; just letting the others in on the fact that there's no silver bullet.) Full compiler warnings are a good thing; another thing I would insist upon is that a programmer use a debugger to step through every line of code affected by a change, and make sure that the program execution flow is what they had intended. It's amazing how many bugs I've caught this way.
Chris Beckenbach
Bottom line is, words are easy. I'm going to wait to see the action.
Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
(Serious apologies to non-fluent English speakers.)
Let's look at it this way. There's a street that runs right next to your house, and so standing on that street with a bull-horn is a "publically accessible medium of communication". By having that street next to your house, are you claiming that you are agreeing that anybody can stand on that street and send you a message through a bull-horn at least once?
Yes, as spam falls into two categories: UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email) and UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email). Most spam seems to hit both but your example only hits UCE, and would even if you didn't forge any headers and the links all worked. The key in common with both is unsolicited. From dictionary.com: unsolicited: Not looked for or requested; unsought: an unsolicited manuscript; unsolicited opinions.Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
A CERT (www.cert.org) advisory notes that there are already four viruses circulating for Windows BNXP, three of which make the affected note report that it is in Russian rubles, and not Euros. The fourth virus makes the bill report that it is a small purple camel. Microsoft is currently working on a patch to prevent the spread of these viruses, and meanwhile advises to not let uninfected bills come in contact with bills that might be affected.
Chris Beckenbach
Chris Beckenbach
I would be impressed if Sony is making $100 profit on each PS2 unit sold. If we assume a 40% retail markup and that Sony is doing the wholesaling (i.e. no middleman between Sony and the retailer), then Sony has a revenue of $179.97 on each unit. (My sole retail experience was in a different sector, so the retail markup on consumer electronics might be lower, which makes things easier for Sony.) With $100 profit, that would mean that the manufacturing cost is right at $80 per unit. Spreding the $2B cost of the fabrication facilities over 100M units (your numbers from a few posts up) gives $20 from each unit going to cover the facilities, leaving $60 per unit to cover raw materials, wages, and other design costs. It might be possible, but I don't think so. But they should be able to cover their costs with $160 per unit.
Found this .pdf. As of 2001/9/30, PSX total sales are 88.25M units, PS2 19.57M units; PSX software 802M units, PS2 72.5M units. So it looks like there are 9 games sold for each PSX, and 3.7 games sold per PS2...but the PS2 also plays PSX games. That'll make things harder to track. The game division is claiming a $34M operating income in the quarter that ended 2001/9/30, but that's different from a profit. With 4.62M PS2 units shipped in that quarter, $100 profit per would be $462M. Drat, now I've got to figure out where those numbers should fall on a balance sheet.
Anyway, I agree with you that the PS2 is probably profitable, although I doubt the $100 per unit figure. I apoligize for mis-remembering what position you were taking in the discussion, and losing track of your thesis. Take care.
Chris Beckenbach
Provide some factual basis for the manufactuing cost that Sony encurs for the PS2, and try this again.
Chris Beckenbach
(And, no, before anybody asks, you can't use it to make a linear search by selecting the first largest, then second largest, etc. You'd have to perform the selection n times, so your worst case would be O(16n^2), much worse than O(n lg n).)
Chris Beckenbach
I see dead HTML markup tags!
Chris Beckenbach