Given than EUV is absorbed by pretty much all normal matter, why would it have trouble lighting up our light sensing cells, while at the same time microwaving our brains into mush? I'm pretty sure I could sense that.
I'm actually all for the home team advantage. If we are bleeding tech jobs in the US, then shut down the H1-Bs and save those jobs for Americans. If our startups are struggling because they can't find local talent, then increase the H1-Bs and let in the best talent the world has to offer. We benefit both ways. What we need to avoid is opening the flood gates on H1-Bs when American programmers are having trouble finding jobs, and also we need to avoid closing the flood gates on H1-Bs when American companies are struggling because they can't find the talent they need. Unfortunately, this is mostly a matter of politics, and you know how well that works...
I've had four stiff drinks, and I can tell you that captchas still piss me off. I've got some crazy stupid central vision loss disorder, which is a real pisser for a professional programmer, but at least I'm not a surgeon. Captchas should be replaced with simple questions that currently only humans answer reliably. For example, "What color is the sky on a clear sunny day?". My site occasionally gets wise-guys answering "pink... on Mars".
My company recently adopted a no H1-B visa policy because we're doing a bit of military work, or so I assume (they really don't tell me anything). We've had a rec open for a hot-shot algorithms geek since January, and trust me, the applicants are not beating a path to our door. This is a fantastic job for the right guy, and it kills me that we're having trouble finding someone to fill it.
The last super-algorithms programmer we hired was from IIT Madras. He's amazing. Before that, we hired an equally amazing white guy right out of college with a BS degree. Good talent is hard to find right now, which is why I think this class action lawsuit is doomed. Maybe it could have gotten some traction in 2010.
Shameless plug: if you're a super-geek, work well with others (so many of us don't), and live near RTP in NC, or Winston-Sallem, send me a resume.
While I agree with some of your points, including that the nuclear industry has promising solutions to most of the problems including price, I disagree that MSR is either more complex or more expensive. Quite the opposite, as the MSR experiments proved in the 60's. Are you confusing molten salt reactors with all the failed fast breeder reactor programs that we wasted so much money on? Also, we've never produced nuclear power in the US anywhere near as cheap as coal, though I wish we would. I'll grant you that MSR safety has not been proven. That can only be proven with large scale long term deployment, which is a major downside of nuclear power, and one reason we aren't moving quickly to change any of the proven core technology, even though it has proven not commercially viable.
One of the main things we need to do but can't because of stupid politics is reprocess nuclear waste. MSR's do this from the beginning. Also, you point about fission byproduct waste when thorium is used is misleading, if technically true. U233 doesn't generate significant amounts of trans-uranic waste like plutonium, and the radioactive byproducts it does produce have a low half-lives. The waste produced is far less dangerous. Now, burning thorium is a related but separate issue than doing research into molten salt reactors. I think we should do both, but there's no reason not to burn the uranium fuel that's available in a MSR. Breeding can come later.
I have to agree... this is one messed up car concept. The hard angle lines are clearly meant to look aggressive and appeal to men, but this tiny featherweight car would more naturally appeal to women. The Chevy Volt made the same mistake, just not quite as badly. Put those lines an a Camaro with a gas guzzling V8, and maybe it would sell.
While I'm also a fan of electric cars, I'm having trouble offering kudos to BMW. This car has some unique advances, and that's a good thing, but how did it ever get into production? I suspect that it is simply too hard to pull a major change, like going electric, in a big car company with a culture centered around big powerful metal slinging combustion engines. An electric car with a real chance at success would probably be killed off early at BMW. This version only got through because every electric car hater inside BMW knows this car is DOA. It's a car clearly designed to prove that electric cars are a bad idea.
It took Apple to innovate in cell phones because the large cell phone companies lost their ability to innovate as technology changed. They were too anchored in the past. Large computer companies, like Dell and HP are in the same boat, and it took Intel to force them to make ultrabooks. Car companies aren't much different. It's too bad Google can't force the car companies to design an innovative car they way Google forces cell phone companies to innovate. At least we've got Tesla out in Silicon Valley innovating. It's about freaking time.
You had enough solid points that I have to assume you know a thing or two... likely more than my couch potato knowledge of nuclear power. I haven't done a calculation to figure out the impact of disposing of nuclear weapons grade material by selling it to the nuclear power industry, but I'll take your word for it that it's a small part of the market. At least, I hope you're right.
I have to object to your statement that "MSR designs are even more complicated than "conventional" breeders". First, I'm not advocating restarting research with the goal of breeding, at least initially. I think we should restart molten salt reactor research, and work towards breeding, but initially, just burn conventional fuel. We did the whole first project in the 60's for about $10M. It was one of the cheapest nuclear power experiments ever, and it was entirely successful. We ran it for years, at 10MW thermal, proving it's potential reliability and cost effectiveness. I don't have any idea why you think it is more complicated, though they did have some serious big time nuclear physicists involved. One worry I have about MSRs is whether or not they can operate cheaply and safely without big brains involved, since they have to do real-time fuel reprocessing. Here in NC, we've got the Homer Simpson family running our local plant. As for breeding, they did prove it's possible with thorium, but they didn't take it much further than that. Given that fuel is a small part of the cost of nuclear energy in the US, I think we should focus on reducing the cost of the reactors. Nothing I've read about seems as cheap as MSR reactors, not by a long shot. Do you have reason to believe they are expensive?
Thanks for the well informed post. From what I've read, the MSR project was shut down simply because the government decided to focus all their research dollars on fast breeder reactors, which were popular back then among both republicans and democrats in congress. We'd spend all this money making nuclear bombs, and the political message that we can use the resulting technology to run the country's power grid practically forever, nearly for free, sold well. The MSR project was dirt cheap and produced exciting results, demonstrating that at least if you have the level of talent those guys had, you could run such a reactor cheaply and safely. They totally messed up the shutdown of the program, resulting in the most expensive super-fund sight cleanup ever up until that time.
Thorium isn't a solution looking for a problem, IMO. The problem is clear: horrifically expensive and somewhat dangerous nuclear plants all over the US, demonstrating every day that at least in the US, we have no freaking idea how to make cheap clean safe nuclear power. Everyone's losing money in nuclear power, which is why we haven't built any in a while. The MSR in the 60's demonstrated an economical path forward, and they did it on a shoestring budget. Given the billions we're investing in alternative energy, it would seem smart to me to restart the MSR research program, but I guess that's just not good politics. Good for Gates for funding at least some looking into it.
Some posters above made some inaccurate statements. No, the government doesn't pay for cleanup, but they do pay for nuclear waste disposal, which they're not doing, so instead they pay the utilities hundreds of millions to store it on-site. They also effectively insure the power plants so that the power companies are not responsible for damage caused by a nuclear accident. Also, they sell uranium on the cheap because they're disposing of nuclear weapons in Russia and the US. That is expected to end this year. Uranium prices may go up soon.
By the way, we're being quite loose with mixing molten salt reactors, and thorium reactors. MSRs just happen to be capable of breeding thorium into U233 which then can be used as fuel. I think we should be pursuing MSRs first, and worry about fueling them with thorium second, because MSRs have potential for delivering cheap electricity, even if it's using a plain old uranium fuel cycle.
That phrase stopped me cold. Seriously... Google could pull it off, which means they're probably secretly working on it. If they can go from zero to a million apps in a few years for phones, they should be able to replace the whole Windows ecosystem in short order. They tried this Chromebook nonsense, which IMO is a joke, because who develops apps for Chrome? What they need is a seriously awesome MacBook Air competitor. A Nexus Ultra? As we've seen many times now, innovation is not forthcoming from hardware vendors, so Google will have to once again build and sell their own laptop at first, just like they do with the other Nexus devices. Well... really just spec and brand - literally forcing innovation down some hardware vendor's throat.
If a smoking hot Android for Desktop Nexus Ultra touch laptop arrived capable of nothing more than providing a superior development platform for Android apps, they'd win. There are probably more Android developers now than Windows, but we all develop Android apps on Windows or Linux, and it sucks. The most important people to win over are the developers, and Google could do it. If they get developers on board, users will follow.
Just daydreaming here... specs I'd like to see in a Nexus Ultra:
- Tegra 4 or better quad-core ARM with smoking graphics - 64 gig of high speed flash or SSD, upgradable to more - 4 gig or more RAM - Only a low res user facing camera, but the best mic they can build - 13" or 14" high res and contrast touch screen. This would be for real work, and smaller screens than this suck for real work. - Thinner and lighter than a MacBook Air - Detachable screen usable as a monstrously over sized tablet, simply because it would be cool. - $1,000 or less. If they could do $500, I think they'd hit a very popular price point. - Excellent battery life - HDMI out so I can watch Netflix on my TV. Why didn't the Nexus 7 have this? - Awesome audio out for headphones, and some wimpy speakers like we see in tablets. - Micro-USB ports and a couple of USB adapters so we can plug in mice, external USB drives, and other devices. - Large responsive multi-touch touchpad like on the MacBook Air - The keyboard has to be outstanding, and backlit - Option for cellular connectivity for internet access - All the good tablet sensors: GPS, accelerometers, etc
For the desktop software, I'd want:
- Root access, of course - Android apps that run in overlapping windows - Able to run bash shells and various ports of popular command-line based free software to aid in development. Preferably, they'd stick to their jailed app model for command line apps, rather than allow every app to spew files throughout/usr and/etc. - Runs Eclipse for native Android development - Built-in aids for software publishing. - A free ebook publishing app without the kinds of strings attached that Apple added to theirs - Music creation/editing app - Video creation app, with ability to publish to youtube - Photo editing app - Native install of Google Docs or Libre Office, which sync to cloud rather than running in cloud - Voice input, like on our phones, usable in writing docs and emails - Built in remote desktop/VNC integrated with Skype, though Google Talk would probably have to suffice
So... it's hard and there's a lot of software to write. On the other hand, it might be worth untold billions. Do you think they might be up to something in this area?
Yeah... I've had this PoS X1 Carbon Touch for a couple of months now, and I still have to think about it carefully to hit the control key. If the machine actually worked properly, and if Lenovo support was better than worthless, my next biggest complaint with it would be the control key placement. In theory my fingers will eventually adapt...
All the software has to be rewritten to take advantage of touch. I feel kind of dirty, but I actually switched to Internet Explorer on my touch ultrabook, because pinch and zoom works so well. It's weird, because scrolling with my mouse wheel will be all laggy sometimes, but if I use my fingers on the screen, it's instant and butter smooth. My eyesight isn't that good, so maybe it's of more use to me than it would be to you, but I never want another laptop without a touch screen. Once all the software uses it, I think you'll like it. Zooming in on that spreadsheet cell will be butter smooth with touch at some point. Even things like drawing schematics will use it. It's pretty awesome when the software is written to use it.
The era of cheap netbooks is over and this Ultrabook + Windows 8 trend has brought plethora of very expensive devices to the market.:/
While my $1,900 crappy ThinkPad Carbon X1 Touch is a sore dissapointment, mostly due to Lenovo "support", I picked up a cheap 11" laptop for my son at Best Buy and have been pretty happy with it. It's a Asus touch ultrabook for $450. It's easily the nicest laptop I've used in this price category. I think we'll see lot's of reasonably priced touch ultrabooks soon.
You're buying the right way. Wait until a model has proven it is reliable, and then buy more than you need. If one fails, you replace it immediately, and no one minds if it takes a couple of months to get a repair. If you're lucky, and parts are in stock in Atlanta, you can get depot service that is decent. If you have to wait for Lenovo to acquire parts in China, just put the machine in a corner and forget about it for a few weeks. When I was in charge of laptop purchasing decisions for a small team of programmers, I would buy everyone a new machine at the same time, typically top of the line Inspirons from Dell, and I'd buy an extra laptop instead of extended warranties. I saved a ton of money and never had to deal with less than worthless "support" from their Indian call center.
The company I work at now still believes in good old fashion customer service, both to our customers and from our providers, so when they ran into the same crap from Dell's Indian support center that I did, the company banned all future purchases from Dell. HP has been pretty bad, but they haven't seriously pissed us off. It's pretty sad when the best company we can buy from has as their main selling point: "We suck less."
To be fair, it was Dell's consumer line support that pissed me off. Same thing at the next company I worked for. I think Dell's consumer line support has ruined the whole company, and the consumer side may drag the business side down with it. Lenovo has no such excuse for their ThinkPad line.
I'm writing this post on my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch ultrabook. The design is super cool. The company, Lenovo, sucks green greasy double jointed donkey dicks (I think that's how we insulted each other when I was 9). This is my third X1 Carbon Touch. I ordered it because I needed a touch screen Windows 8 machine with a SSD in January. That was the single biggest waste of my time related to any purchase in my life, other than having to refinance a house. The first Lenovo machine died the second day I had it. Of course, we had their best support and warranty, since we can't afford to sit on our hands for days while hardware gets fixed. So... 10 weeks later I got a replacement machine! It was dead on arrival, however. PC Connections saved my bacon and found a somewhat working PoS Lenovo X1 Carbon touch and got it to me, and that's what I'm still using. The wifi has to be reset about every two hours, and it does not come out of hibernation properly sometimes, so it feels a lot like running Linux, rather than Windows. I didn't think it was possible for a company to piss me off more than Dell has, but I was wrong.
Thomas Jefferson is often, and inaccurately, called an Atheist by wingnuts who would have his name removed from our already useless high school history text books. However, he did not believe in miracles, and even published his own version of the New Testament which excludes them. While spiritual, and apparently a believer in God, Jefferson's stubbornly insisted on holding beliefs backed by actual evidence. On his tome stone, Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, which mentions only three of his many accomplishments:
"Author of the declaration of American independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia"
By religious freedom, Jefferson meant quite specifically a secular government. He was the original author of America's "separation of church and state." So, when you hear wingnuts claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, typically they have in mind passing laws that tend to force their religion on everyone. If we could get them go read a bit of actual history, they'd find even Ben Franklin wanted Muslims to have as much right to preach their version of "the Truth" as anyone else.
So, I hope you can feel like we've already had a president with reasonable religious views. I think a woman would be next on my list, as they're roughly half of the population, and you'd think after 42 presidents we would have elected one by now.
"Better than SQL" ?!? That's like "Better than a root canal."
Not that new fangled NosSql will save the day anytime soon, but crap... did real people decide that SQL was a rational way to store data? Really? Were they zombies? Ever try to store an array of strings? Better to store it as one field and parse it in code!
While I agree with your points, I think the public is unfortunately pitifully trusting. This whole NSA spying stuff will pass through the news cycle and soon not be covered again. It's only making a big splash because Fox News likes making fun of the Obama administration, but before the public actually starts demanding their right to privacy, Fox News will bury the issue and convince their watchers that the government is not spying on them. All of the systems we have in common usage are total crap, and any security guy can point out the massive holes, yet our public just looks at that stupid lock on the bar in their browser and believes they are safe.
How long has Microsoft been giving the NSA zero-day exploits long before fixing them? The early 90's? How long have companies been overriding DNS and CA to spy on their worker's traffic (with some legit reasons)? How long have we known on Slashdot that AT&T built a major backbone into some huge NSA building that has it's own power plant? How is it that every time we try to secure e-mail by making encryption not only available, but the default, that our efforts get shot down? When we wanted "secure" Internet commerce, we quickly got the government hackable system we have today. How long have we been waiting for secure DNS, and do we really think the government isn't going to control the top level registrars? Actual security is easy compared to this hackable system we've built.
The government has the power to force Microsoft, Google, Apple, Cisco, Dell, HP, and the other big computing companies to leave the network entirely hackable. The fact that it is so MTM hackable is strong evidence that the government is doing exactly that. The fact that the public remains blissfully unaware and uncaring is evidence that we'll never get that actual security we wanted.
Dude... companies do this all the time, if for no other reason than to compress network traffic. They just buy boxes like this one. All you do is override DNS and CA. It's standard practice.
I think you have some misconceptions about the CPU cycles involved in encryption. It's basically free. It's just a few clock cycles per byte.
The part everyone is concerned about is key stretching, where a CPU needs to do about half a second worth of processing to hash a password. There is simply no reason to do key stretching on the server. That's a dumb architecture. Instead, make the clients do it. By default, Microsoft does the key stretching on the server, and it's only for about a millisecond, if that.
I think encryption provides more security than you suspect. If an attacker only has access for a short period of time, like an hour, then probably over 90% of your user accounts would be safe. It's one thing for an attacker to steal your backup media, or get ssh access and scp some files, and quite another for him to hack your server and monitor what goes on in memory in real time. Copying files can be done by anyone. Even the secretary or janitor is a potential leak. Getting root access and inserting a memory monitor around your application, and decoding what's going on requires a skilled programmer and a lot of effort. Guys in China who do this professionally maybe can do it in their sleep, but chance are that you and I would have to work pretty hard at it.
There are two problems I see happening all around that this law could help fix. First, companies always want full access to user data. No encryption is the standard knee jerk reaction at big companies, because they want to be able to do data-mining on user data. Apparently, there is no penalty of consequence to companies that lose control of user data, and clearly the user data is valuable to the company. Some companies even sell it. Because of this, we have a stupid level of non-encrypted data, even data that really isn't valuable for data mining, such as credit card info. The second problem I see a ton is that management just takes IT's word for it that they are secure, while IT mostly ignores management because management isn't capable of understanding security anyway. It's the nature of employees in every profession to be lazy about tasks that will never be checked, and it's the nature of management to consider their company above the rest in terms of how well they are run.
Just guessing... if this law is enforced, California could reduce user info leaks by maybe 100X. Probably 10X just for making management want user data encrypted, and another 10X for making employees care.
Is this law a good idea? Beats me... Why not just post a list of every data leak the way police have a crime blotter in the local news rags? If we could make users aware of how badly their data is managed, companies would come around to caring more about it.
Awe crud... it only factored 143. I factored 300+ bit numbers with custom algorithms in Python, which only sounds impressive until you find out what others have done. Still.. why are links to integer factorization by D-Wave machine being removed from Google results?
Google this: dwave integer factorization New Scientist
Do you see all the "New Scientist" links near the top? Click on one of them. Of course you don't see it. These links started to fade to obscurity while I was writing this short response. If you do find one, you'll find the link goes nowhere.
I just went googling for my old posts about how to do integer factorization with D-Wave. Guess what? GONE! I thought I'd posted it in enough hard to scrub places... Anyway, all this machine is does is minimize an energy equation. I found somebody who had integer factorization coded as an energy equation as the sum of squared terms, but with the D-Wave machine, it does that naturally, and you don't need to square anything. I've got a lot going on at work, my mother is being sued, and I'm doing some genetics stuff. Do I really need to go back and recreate the integer factoring equation?
Not too surprisingly, when a large US military contractor became a major purchaser of D-Wave equipment, all the company claims about being able to factor large integers vanished. D-Wave was going to have a blog series on it. I looked at it's architecture carefully, and yes, if the D-Wave machine has low enough noise, then a 512-qbit D-Wave machine should be able to factor integers close to 500 bits long. The next bigger machine could tackle 2,000 bit integers. The machine seems almost perfectly suited to this problem. The trick is dealing with noise. No one at D-Wave claims that their machine is perfectly coherent all the time during the annealing process. If 1 of the 512 bits suddenly drops out of quantum coherence, it will still act like a normal simulated annealing element until it re-enters coherence. Is noise like that enough to throw off detection of that one minimum solution? I don't know. I do feel that quantum effects will have a positive impact up to some temperature, after which it will just act like a normal annealing machine. I think there will be a phase change at some temperature where instead of qbits occasionally dropping out of coherence, just adding some noise to the solution, there will be so many out of quantum coherence that they will not be able to function at a chip-wide quantum level, and there will be no chance of finding that minimum energy solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Given than EUV is absorbed by pretty much all normal matter, why would it have trouble lighting up our light sensing cells, while at the same time microwaving our brains into mush? I'm pretty sure I could sense that.
I'm actually all for the home team advantage. If we are bleeding tech jobs in the US, then shut down the H1-Bs and save those jobs for Americans. If our startups are struggling because they can't find local talent, then increase the H1-Bs and let in the best talent the world has to offer. We benefit both ways. What we need to avoid is opening the flood gates on H1-Bs when American programmers are having trouble finding jobs, and also we need to avoid closing the flood gates on H1-Bs when American companies are struggling because they can't find the talent they need. Unfortunately, this is mostly a matter of politics, and you know how well that works...
I've had four stiff drinks, and I can tell you that captchas still piss me off. I've got some crazy stupid central vision loss disorder, which is a real pisser for a professional programmer, but at least I'm not a surgeon. Captchas should be replaced with simple questions that currently only humans answer reliably. For example, "What color is the sky on a clear sunny day?". My site occasionally gets wise-guys answering "pink... on Mars".
My company recently adopted a no H1-B visa policy because we're doing a bit of military work, or so I assume (they really don't tell me anything). We've had a rec open for a hot-shot algorithms geek since January, and trust me, the applicants are not beating a path to our door. This is a fantastic job for the right guy, and it kills me that we're having trouble finding someone to fill it.
The last super-algorithms programmer we hired was from IIT Madras. He's amazing. Before that, we hired an equally amazing white guy right out of college with a BS degree. Good talent is hard to find right now, which is why I think this class action lawsuit is doomed. Maybe it could have gotten some traction in 2010.
Shameless plug: if you're a super-geek, work well with others (so many of us don't), and live near RTP in NC, or Winston-Sallem, send me a resume.
While I agree with some of your points, including that the nuclear industry has promising solutions to most of the problems including price, I disagree that MSR is either more complex or more expensive. Quite the opposite, as the MSR experiments proved in the 60's. Are you confusing molten salt reactors with all the failed fast breeder reactor programs that we wasted so much money on? Also, we've never produced nuclear power in the US anywhere near as cheap as coal, though I wish we would. I'll grant you that MSR safety has not been proven. That can only be proven with large scale long term deployment, which is a major downside of nuclear power, and one reason we aren't moving quickly to change any of the proven core technology, even though it has proven not commercially viable.
One of the main things we need to do but can't because of stupid politics is reprocess nuclear waste. MSR's do this from the beginning. Also, you point about fission byproduct waste when thorium is used is misleading, if technically true. U233 doesn't generate significant amounts of trans-uranic waste like plutonium, and the radioactive byproducts it does produce have a low half-lives. The waste produced is far less dangerous. Now, burning thorium is a related but separate issue than doing research into molten salt reactors. I think we should do both, but there's no reason not to burn the uranium fuel that's available in a MSR. Breeding can come later.
I have to agree... this is one messed up car concept. The hard angle lines are clearly meant to look aggressive and appeal to men, but this tiny featherweight car would more naturally appeal to women. The Chevy Volt made the same mistake, just not quite as badly. Put those lines an a Camaro with a gas guzzling V8, and maybe it would sell.
While I'm also a fan of electric cars, I'm having trouble offering kudos to BMW. This car has some unique advances, and that's a good thing, but how did it ever get into production? I suspect that it is simply too hard to pull a major change, like going electric, in a big car company with a culture centered around big powerful metal slinging combustion engines. An electric car with a real chance at success would probably be killed off early at BMW. This version only got through because every electric car hater inside BMW knows this car is DOA. It's a car clearly designed to prove that electric cars are a bad idea.
It took Apple to innovate in cell phones because the large cell phone companies lost their ability to innovate as technology changed. They were too anchored in the past. Large computer companies, like Dell and HP are in the same boat, and it took Intel to force them to make ultrabooks. Car companies aren't much different. It's too bad Google can't force the car companies to design an innovative car they way Google forces cell phone companies to innovate. At least we've got Tesla out in Silicon Valley innovating. It's about freaking time.
You had enough solid points that I have to assume you know a thing or two... likely more than my couch potato knowledge of nuclear power. I haven't done a calculation to figure out the impact of disposing of nuclear weapons grade material by selling it to the nuclear power industry, but I'll take your word for it that it's a small part of the market. At least, I hope you're right.
I have to object to your statement that "MSR designs are even more complicated than "conventional" breeders". First, I'm not advocating restarting research with the goal of breeding, at least initially. I think we should restart molten salt reactor research, and work towards breeding, but initially, just burn conventional fuel. We did the whole first project in the 60's for about $10M. It was one of the cheapest nuclear power experiments ever, and it was entirely successful. We ran it for years, at 10MW thermal, proving it's potential reliability and cost effectiveness. I don't have any idea why you think it is more complicated, though they did have some serious big time nuclear physicists involved. One worry I have about MSRs is whether or not they can operate cheaply and safely without big brains involved, since they have to do real-time fuel reprocessing. Here in NC, we've got the Homer Simpson family running our local plant. As for breeding, they did prove it's possible with thorium, but they didn't take it much further than that. Given that fuel is a small part of the cost of nuclear energy in the US, I think we should focus on reducing the cost of the reactors. Nothing I've read about seems as cheap as MSR reactors, not by a long shot. Do you have reason to believe they are expensive?
Thanks for the well informed post. From what I've read, the MSR project was shut down simply because the government decided to focus all their research dollars on fast breeder reactors, which were popular back then among both republicans and democrats in congress. We'd spend all this money making nuclear bombs, and the political message that we can use the resulting technology to run the country's power grid practically forever, nearly for free, sold well. The MSR project was dirt cheap and produced exciting results, demonstrating that at least if you have the level of talent those guys had, you could run such a reactor cheaply and safely. They totally messed up the shutdown of the program, resulting in the most expensive super-fund sight cleanup ever up until that time.
Thorium isn't a solution looking for a problem, IMO. The problem is clear: horrifically expensive and somewhat dangerous nuclear plants all over the US, demonstrating every day that at least in the US, we have no freaking idea how to make cheap clean safe nuclear power. Everyone's losing money in nuclear power, which is why we haven't built any in a while. The MSR in the 60's demonstrated an economical path forward, and they did it on a shoestring budget. Given the billions we're investing in alternative energy, it would seem smart to me to restart the MSR research program, but I guess that's just not good politics. Good for Gates for funding at least some looking into it.
Some posters above made some inaccurate statements. No, the government doesn't pay for cleanup, but they do pay for nuclear waste disposal, which they're not doing, so instead they pay the utilities hundreds of millions to store it on-site. They also effectively insure the power plants so that the power companies are not responsible for damage caused by a nuclear accident. Also, they sell uranium on the cheap because they're disposing of nuclear weapons in Russia and the US. That is expected to end this year. Uranium prices may go up soon.
By the way, we're being quite loose with mixing molten salt reactors, and thorium reactors. MSRs just happen to be capable of breeding thorium into U233 which then can be used as fuel. I think we should be pursuing MSRs first, and worry about fueling them with thorium second, because MSRs have potential for delivering cheap electricity, even if it's using a plain old uranium fuel cycle.
Android for desktops
That phrase stopped me cold. Seriously... Google could pull it off, which means they're probably secretly working on it. If they can go from zero to a million apps in a few years for phones, they should be able to replace the whole Windows ecosystem in short order. They tried this Chromebook nonsense, which IMO is a joke, because who develops apps for Chrome? What they need is a seriously awesome MacBook Air competitor. A Nexus Ultra? As we've seen many times now, innovation is not forthcoming from hardware vendors, so Google will have to once again build and sell their own laptop at first, just like they do with the other Nexus devices. Well... really just spec and brand - literally forcing innovation down some hardware vendor's throat.
If a smoking hot Android for Desktop Nexus Ultra touch laptop arrived capable of nothing more than providing a superior development platform for Android apps, they'd win. There are probably more Android developers now than Windows, but we all develop Android apps on Windows or Linux, and it sucks. The most important people to win over are the developers, and Google could do it. If they get developers on board, users will follow.
Just daydreaming here... specs I'd like to see in a Nexus Ultra:
- Tegra 4 or better quad-core ARM with smoking graphics
- 64 gig of high speed flash or SSD, upgradable to more
- 4 gig or more RAM
- Only a low res user facing camera, but the best mic they can build
- 13" or 14" high res and contrast touch screen. This would be for real work, and smaller screens than this suck for real work.
- Thinner and lighter than a MacBook Air
- Detachable screen usable as a monstrously over sized tablet, simply because it would be cool.
- $1,000 or less. If they could do $500, I think they'd hit a very popular price point.
- Excellent battery life
- HDMI out so I can watch Netflix on my TV. Why didn't the Nexus 7 have this?
- Awesome audio out for headphones, and some wimpy speakers like we see in tablets.
- Micro-USB ports and a couple of USB adapters so we can plug in mice, external USB drives, and other devices.
- Large responsive multi-touch touchpad like on the MacBook Air
- The keyboard has to be outstanding, and backlit
- Option for cellular connectivity for internet access
- All the good tablet sensors: GPS, accelerometers, etc
For the desktop software, I'd want:
- Root access, of course /usr and /etc.
- Android apps that run in overlapping windows
- Able to run bash shells and various ports of popular command-line based free software to aid in development. Preferably, they'd stick to their jailed app model for command line apps, rather than allow every app to spew files throughout
- Runs Eclipse for native Android development
- Built-in aids for software publishing.
- A free ebook publishing app without the kinds of strings attached that Apple added to theirs
- Music creation/editing app
- Video creation app, with ability to publish to youtube
- Photo editing app
- Native install of Google Docs or Libre Office, which sync to cloud rather than running in cloud
- Voice input, like on our phones, usable in writing docs and emails
- Built in remote desktop/VNC integrated with Skype, though Google Talk would probably have to suffice
So... it's hard and there's a lot of software to write. On the other hand, it might be worth untold billions. Do you think they might be up to something in this area?
Yeah... I've had this PoS X1 Carbon Touch for a couple of months now, and I still have to think about it carefully to hit the control key. If the machine actually worked properly, and if Lenovo support was better than worthless, my next biggest complaint with it would be the control key placement. In theory my fingers will eventually adapt...
All the software has to be rewritten to take advantage of touch. I feel kind of dirty, but I actually switched to Internet Explorer on my touch ultrabook, because pinch and zoom works so well. It's weird, because scrolling with my mouse wheel will be all laggy sometimes, but if I use my fingers on the screen, it's instant and butter smooth. My eyesight isn't that good, so maybe it's of more use to me than it would be to you, but I never want another laptop without a touch screen. Once all the software uses it, I think you'll like it. Zooming in on that spreadsheet cell will be butter smooth with touch at some point. Even things like drawing schematics will use it. It's pretty awesome when the software is written to use it.
The era of cheap netbooks is over and this Ultrabook + Windows 8 trend has brought plethora of very expensive devices to the market. :/
While my $1,900 crappy ThinkPad Carbon X1 Touch is a sore dissapointment, mostly due to Lenovo "support", I picked up a cheap 11" laptop for my son at Best Buy and have been pretty happy with it. It's a Asus touch ultrabook for $450. It's easily the nicest laptop I've used in this price category. I think we'll see lot's of reasonably priced touch ultrabooks soon.
You're buying the right way. Wait until a model has proven it is reliable, and then buy more than you need. If one fails, you replace it immediately, and no one minds if it takes a couple of months to get a repair. If you're lucky, and parts are in stock in Atlanta, you can get depot service that is decent. If you have to wait for Lenovo to acquire parts in China, just put the machine in a corner and forget about it for a few weeks. When I was in charge of laptop purchasing decisions for a small team of programmers, I would buy everyone a new machine at the same time, typically top of the line Inspirons from Dell, and I'd buy an extra laptop instead of extended warranties. I saved a ton of money and never had to deal with less than worthless "support" from their Indian call center.
The company I work at now still believes in good old fashion customer service, both to our customers and from our providers, so when they ran into the same crap from Dell's Indian support center that I did, the company banned all future purchases from Dell. HP has been pretty bad, but they haven't seriously pissed us off. It's pretty sad when the best company we can buy from has as their main selling point: "We suck less."
To be fair, it was Dell's consumer line support that pissed me off. Same thing at the next company I worked for. I think Dell's consumer line support has ruined the whole company, and the consumer side may drag the business side down with it. Lenovo has no such excuse for their ThinkPad line.
I'm writing this post on my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch ultrabook. The design is super cool. The company, Lenovo, sucks green greasy double jointed donkey dicks (I think that's how we insulted each other when I was 9). This is my third X1 Carbon Touch. I ordered it because I needed a touch screen Windows 8 machine with a SSD in January. That was the single biggest waste of my time related to any purchase in my life, other than having to refinance a house. The first Lenovo machine died the second day I had it. Of course, we had their best support and warranty, since we can't afford to sit on our hands for days while hardware gets fixed. So... 10 weeks later I got a replacement machine! It was dead on arrival, however. PC Connections saved my bacon and found a somewhat working PoS Lenovo X1 Carbon touch and got it to me, and that's what I'm still using. The wifi has to be reset about every two hours, and it does not come out of hibernation properly sometimes, so it feels a lot like running Linux, rather than Windows. I didn't think it was possible for a company to piss me off more than Dell has, but I was wrong.
Thomas Jefferson is often, and inaccurately, called an Atheist by wingnuts who would have his name removed from our already useless high school history text books. However, he did not believe in miracles, and even published his own version of the New Testament which excludes them. While spiritual, and apparently a believer in God, Jefferson's stubbornly insisted on holding beliefs backed by actual evidence. On his tome stone, Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, which mentions only three of his many accomplishments:
"Author of the declaration of American independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia"
By religious freedom, Jefferson meant quite specifically a secular government. He was the original author of America's "separation of church and state." So, when you hear wingnuts claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, typically they have in mind passing laws that tend to force their religion on everyone. If we could get them go read a bit of actual history, they'd find even Ben Franklin wanted Muslims to have as much right to preach their version of "the Truth" as anyone else.
So, I hope you can feel like we've already had a president with reasonable religious views. I think a woman would be next on my list, as they're roughly half of the population, and you'd think after 42 presidents we would have elected one by now.
I'd mod you up if I had mod points... I'm no fan of SQL, but I likely will use postgres on my next project where I have the freedom to choose.
"Better than SQL" ?!? That's like "Better than a root canal."
Not that new fangled NosSql will save the day anytime soon, but crap... did real people decide that SQL was a rational way to store data? Really? Were they zombies? Ever try to store an array of strings? Better to store it as one field and parse it in code!
While I agree with your points, I think the public is unfortunately pitifully trusting. This whole NSA spying stuff will pass through the news cycle and soon not be covered again. It's only making a big splash because Fox News likes making fun of the Obama administration, but before the public actually starts demanding their right to privacy, Fox News will bury the issue and convince their watchers that the government is not spying on them. All of the systems we have in common usage are total crap, and any security guy can point out the massive holes, yet our public just looks at that stupid lock on the bar in their browser and believes they are safe.
How long has Microsoft been giving the NSA zero-day exploits long before fixing them? The early 90's? How long have companies been overriding DNS and CA to spy on their worker's traffic (with some legit reasons)? How long have we known on Slashdot that AT&T built a major backbone into some huge NSA building that has it's own power plant? How is it that every time we try to secure e-mail by making encryption not only available, but the default, that our efforts get shot down? When we wanted "secure" Internet commerce, we quickly got the government hackable system we have today. How long have we been waiting for secure DNS, and do we really think the government isn't going to control the top level registrars? Actual security is easy compared to this hackable system we've built.
The government has the power to force Microsoft, Google, Apple, Cisco, Dell, HP, and the other big computing companies to leave the network entirely hackable. The fact that it is so MTM hackable is strong evidence that the government is doing exactly that. The fact that the public remains blissfully unaware and uncaring is evidence that we'll never get that actual security we wanted.
Dude... companies do this all the time, if for no other reason than to compress network traffic. They just buy boxes like this one. All you do is override DNS and CA. It's standard practice.
I think you have some misconceptions about the CPU cycles involved in encryption. It's basically free. It's just a few clock cycles per byte.
The part everyone is concerned about is key stretching, where a CPU needs to do about half a second worth of processing to hash a password. There is simply no reason to do key stretching on the server. That's a dumb architecture. Instead, make the clients do it. By default, Microsoft does the key stretching on the server, and it's only for about a millisecond, if that.
I think encryption provides more security than you suspect. If an attacker only has access for a short period of time, like an hour, then probably over 90% of your user accounts would be safe. It's one thing for an attacker to steal your backup media, or get ssh access and scp some files, and quite another for him to hack your server and monitor what goes on in memory in real time. Copying files can be done by anyone. Even the secretary or janitor is a potential leak. Getting root access and inserting a memory monitor around your application, and decoding what's going on requires a skilled programmer and a lot of effort. Guys in China who do this professionally maybe can do it in their sleep, but chance are that you and I would have to work pretty hard at it.
There are two problems I see happening all around that this law could help fix. First, companies always want full access to user data. No encryption is the standard knee jerk reaction at big companies, because they want to be able to do data-mining on user data. Apparently, there is no penalty of consequence to companies that lose control of user data, and clearly the user data is valuable to the company. Some companies even sell it. Because of this, we have a stupid level of non-encrypted data, even data that really isn't valuable for data mining, such as credit card info. The second problem I see a ton is that management just takes IT's word for it that they are secure, while IT mostly ignores management because management isn't capable of understanding security anyway. It's the nature of employees in every profession to be lazy about tasks that will never be checked, and it's the nature of management to consider their company above the rest in terms of how well they are run.
Just guessing... if this law is enforced, California could reduce user info leaks by maybe 100X. Probably 10X just for making management want user data encrypted, and another 10X for making employees care.
Is this law a good idea? Beats me... Why not just post a list of every data leak the way police have a crime blotter in the local news rags? If we could make users aware of how badly their data is managed, companies would come around to caring more about it.
Awe crud... it only factored 143. I factored 300+ bit numbers with custom algorithms in Python, which only sounds impressive until you find out what others have done. Still.. why are links to integer factorization by D-Wave machine being removed from Google results?
By the way, the title of the New Scientist article should be "Controversial quantum computer beats factoring record"
Google this: dwave integer factorization New Scientist
Do you see all the "New Scientist" links near the top? Click on one of them. Of course you don't see it. These links started to fade to obscurity while I was writing this short response. If you do find one, you'll find the link goes nowhere.
I just went googling for my old posts about how to do integer factorization with D-Wave. Guess what? GONE! I thought I'd posted it in enough hard to scrub places... Anyway, all this machine is does is minimize an energy equation. I found somebody who had integer factorization coded as an energy equation as the sum of squared terms, but with the D-Wave machine, it does that naturally, and you don't need to square anything. I've got a lot going on at work, my mother is being sued, and I'm doing some genetics stuff. Do I really need to go back and recreate the integer factoring equation?
Not too surprisingly, when a large US military contractor became a major purchaser of D-Wave equipment, all the company claims about being able to factor large integers vanished. D-Wave was going to have a blog series on it. I looked at it's architecture carefully, and yes, if the D-Wave machine has low enough noise, then a 512-qbit D-Wave machine should be able to factor integers close to 500 bits long. The next bigger machine could tackle 2,000 bit integers. The machine seems almost perfectly suited to this problem. The trick is dealing with noise. No one at D-Wave claims that their machine is perfectly coherent all the time during the annealing process. If 1 of the 512 bits suddenly drops out of quantum coherence, it will still act like a normal simulated annealing element until it re-enters coherence. Is noise like that enough to throw off detection of that one minimum solution? I don't know. I do feel that quantum effects will have a positive impact up to some temperature, after which it will just act like a normal annealing machine. I think there will be a phase change at some temperature where instead of qbits occasionally dropping out of coherence, just adding some noise to the solution, there will be so many out of quantum coherence that they will not be able to function at a chip-wide quantum level, and there will be no chance of finding that minimum energy solution.