Ah, so you meant a modern interchange system. But those are about as vulnerable to bombing as railroads. Anything beyond basic pavement is nice for commerce but does little in war conditions (remember how bridges were one of the primary bombing objectives in Serbia - an example which is both recent and televised). Not to mention that the first cloverleaf I was able to find reference to was built in 1929 in New Jersey by Edward Delano. I am guessing though that he did not invent flyover ramps and they were known before then. Moreover, the Romans did use overpasses.
Lastly, please tone down your sarcasm. At the very least it is unclear what you were trying to say, and any attempt to put meaning to your words yields theses which are wrong factually, conceptually, and historically.
You never ascribed roads to Hitler? To quote: "Highways were first thought up by Hitler [...]". It is unclear how a "modern highway system" is different from a well-paved road circa the Roman days. Just because cars are the means of transport and not chariots? But even then, that "idea" cannot have clicked in Hitler's head, else he would never have invaded the USSR.
Where did you claim Hitler to be a visionary of road building? Let me again, quote your post: "He correctly imagined that the bottleneck in modern industrial warfare was not in the factory at all but in the delivery in the goods to the battlefield." And again, his record shows that even if he imagined such a thing, it evaporated from his head before it could shape German policy.
Sorry, no. I never plagiarize (sic). I simply follow the slashdot submission box and whenever I come to the edge of the line I automatically hit Enter. Having grown up with typewriters, it is a natural reflex. You'll see that my posts aren't always formatted to the box size, because my instincts aren't 100%.
The idea of building roads to aid movement of military units and war-related shipments is rather old. The Romans built the roads in Europe for that purpose. Indeed, it was the Roman army that did most of the building. So ascribing this idea to Hitler is a bit much. In fact, had this been Hitler's thinking, he would have never invaded the Soviet Union, since that place had a lot of land and only a few very bad roads. Many of those roads would become impassable during rains so fall through spring the road system was terrible and merely usable in the summer. So no, Hitler as visionary of road building is kind of a laugh.
The hard limit is around 0.2 nanometers (the size of one atom in a crystal structure - very roughly of course). The real limit is that it gets more and more expensive to get closer and closer to the hard limit, so don't expect anything below 10 nm any time soon.
Oh, did I mention that you gain less and less from going smaller because more signal is wasted as heat. Also, solid state physics really changes around 30 nm (e.g. the concept of carrier mobility loses meaning - you have to treat each impurity self consistently). In short, going below even 30 nm is major money (compared with the currently developed 35-50 nm processes, which are themself a lot of money to put in production).
Well, I liked Santa Claws better (they outsourced making greeting cards into a prison and an inmate sent a card with this sig to some kid - true story seen on the news a while back). Anyhow, I am not annoyed when uneducated folks do it - I may disdain them for it, I may mentally spit in their face, but then again, I do not expect more out of some hicks. (All while I have an excuse for misspellings myself - English is not my native language:). But a website for an educated audience should be above this. If an average reader can easily run a dictionary attack against a password, then why can't the editors do a simple spell-check.
Yeah, my bad. Long day at work (just came home now so not much more coherent). Anways, my first version of the post was an off-the-top-of-my head estimate of $5000, then I did som eBay'ing and wrote that post and was like, "wow that's cheap":) Should have thought a bit before hitting submit. In any case, for something this industrial strength, I figure anything below $10K is cheap, and the setup is pretty easy. And most likely he doesn't need all 16 channels at once, just to select from so PCI bus should be fine. If not, then the same can be accomplished with 4 PCs and a final stitching/compositing PC. And anyways still fit under $10K.
1. Get 16 external TV tuners. I personally have one AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300 and it is small and does not get hot, so 16 should be fine when put side by side. Any brand will do. 2. Get 4 pci cards with 4 usb ports each, and a mobo with 4 or more pci slots. 3. Now just take the feeds and switch and crop and whatever in software. There are programmable usb remote controls. A USB TV tuner should be about $50 on eBay, a barebones PC on eBay is about $100, PCI cards are like $5 each, a USB remote control will be about $20. So something like $200-$300 plus some coding gets you what you want.
As someone who has done plenty of STM an nano work in his life, I can tell you two things: 1. I do not believe they have proven the wheels roll. They think they have proven it but their STM work is embarassingly bad (for starters, clean Au-111 surface has herringbone reconstruction which is not seen in their images, the car is not resolved with anything close to atomic resolution, temperature drift is atrocious etc.) 2. The surface of gold is very "soft" even at room temperature. Heating it to 100 C often is enough to restore herringbone reconstruction to a mechanically randomized surface. By 200 C the surface is essentially a liquid though gold's partial pressure is still negligible meaning that this liquid does not yet evaporate. Everything I see in their paper shows to me that the molecules do not roll, but rather diffuse or surf along with the surface. Certainly many buckyballs are seen near step edges, something that happens to all crap diffusing on the surface because it is energetically favorable to assemble there.
In short, there is no evidence of science or even engineering here. Slashdot bought into the PR of the kind of nano project that made nanotechnology into a dirty word among the leading research groups in the area. BTW, I am not doing STM research and am not planning to so I am not speaking as a competitor. More like: this is why I moved on from nano-work, so i don't have to deal with crap-meisters like this.
Curiously I am entirely unfamiliar with the Superman mythos (didn't grow up in the US). I am however living in California and I have seen plenty of talk about a major earthquake and how it could cause a tsunami and wipe out most stuff to the south of Mojave.In any case, I was just giving a hypothetical example. I guess examples don't work for some people. Let's generalise. A large complex structure is vulnerable to: 1. Geological changes - earthquakes etc. 2. Climate changes - imagine Nevada become hurricane land or tornado land 3. Planetary-scale changes - e.g. major meteor hit 4. Man-made changes - wars, looting, etc. 5. Erosion 6. Wildlife infestation The list goes on.
This guy's clock is a copout anyways. The galaxy will still be rotating around its center 10000 years from now so a large scale clock is already there. The key is readout. How do you make something people will read 10000 years from now. No answer so far. He is still thinking. Basically his prototypes are useless because the hardest point is yet to be addressed.
Uh-huh. That's what Egyptians thought and look what their pyramids went through. Here's one scenario: Californian earthquake, major parts of California break off and fall into the ocean, the waves swamp much of southern West coast covering it in deep mud. And that's just taking what FEMA already projects to happen soon and making it a bit more apocalyptic.
You want another example: nuclear war with Russia or China or both. Doesn't take much imagination to see Nevada covered in sand and dust.
Again, that's just something we can see in the next few years. Now think 10000 years ahead.
Yep: "A sunbeam striking a precisely angled lens at noon triggers a reset by heating, expanding, and buckling a captive band of metal." My guess is that this will not last even a century. Certainly this device sounds like it won't survive being submerged in sand and mud for a while. The pyramids did survive under sand but they had no function other than being giant man-made warts.
Well, more often than not the natives do get civilized in the end. Europe wouldn't be the same without the Roman empire, Russian empire would not have happened had they not been conquered by the Mongols. India owes its unity to being conquered first by Mongols then Brits (the latter also screwed India in the very end by splitting out what became Pakistan and Bangladesh, and getting out of Afganistan which could have also been Indian). Let's not forget the Chinese who had at least one dinasty of emperors from conquering nation (Manchuria I believe, also Mongols for a while). And the whole imperative to develop an effective state came from the horror of being conquered by the Japanese. Did I mention Britain which got conquered by Saxons and became the definition of civilized nation. I could go on... What it comes to is that conquerors need unity to rule effectively. Sure they often wipe out or change local culture, but they create a more monolithic state with better technology (realpolitik meets darwinism). The natives often get something out of it in the end provided they do not get mostly wiped out like what happened in America.
Article is junk, so here is the real reason people don't go into engineering and science: money. I am a postdoc, but despite that advanced degree (PhD) I am making 35 K per year. When I continue as a professor it'll be 60-70 K per year. The job is in many ways like that of a lawyer (read books, figure out what happened before you, and develop stuff on top of that), the pay is at least 2-3 times less. I am in it because in some ways I feel like doing anything else is a waste of time (translation: doing science is the menaing of life), but for most people this is a foreign thought so no wonder they don't go into science. Want more engineers and scientists in the US? Easy. Raise salaries 2-3 times. Make sure starting salaries for engineers are six digits and you'll have plenty to choose from within 5-6 years.
If my phone had a VGA out and the ability to run Powerpoint or Impress or some such (with embedded full speed video and complex transition effects - note that my videos are circa 1 Gb in size each so you figure 10 Gb of fast storage) then I guess I'd consider giving up my laptop. Actually no, I also edit my presentations before conferences so I'd need things like Adobe Illustrator and Matlab to run. So I guess I'd need a full desktop OS with 50 to 100 Gb HDD and a processor equivalent of 2.8 GhZ P4. Oh, it also better be able to read CD and DVD (and soon Blu-Ray as my lab is buying that as soon as it comes out). So no, the more I think about it, the less I like the idea of everything on a cell phone. In fact most people need to be able to read CDs or DVDs so this idea seems rather inadequate.
My lab recently did this. We got a huge (> 10 kVA) UPS and set some outlets to be on this UPS. Not all outlets, but even that is very tricky. Basically grounding arrangements are very difficult to get up to even national electrical code, and you also got to worry about local regulations. Basically, if you do want to do this, the UPS itself (even the beefy powerware models purchased at full price) will likely be the least of your expense. The rest will go to licensed electricians for installation.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, so you meant a modern interchange system.
But those are about as vulnerable to bombing
as railroads. Anything beyond basic pavement
is nice for commerce but does little in
war conditions (remember how bridges were one
of the primary bombing objectives in Serbia -
an example which is both recent and televised).
Not to mention that the first cloverleaf I was
able to find reference to was built in 1929 in
New Jersey by Edward Delano. I am guessing
though that he did not invent flyover ramps
and they were known before then.
Moreover, the Romans did use overpasses.
Lastly, please tone down your sarcasm. At the
very least it is unclear what you were trying
to say, and any attempt to put meaning to
your words yields theses which are wrong
factually, conceptually, and historically.
You never ascribed roads to Hitler? To quote: "Highways were first
thought up by Hitler [...]". It is unclear how a "modern highway
system" is different from a well-paved road circa the Roman days.
Just because cars are the means of transport and not chariots?
But even then, that "idea" cannot have clicked in Hitler's head, else
he would never have invaded the USSR.
Where did you claim Hitler to be a visionary of road building? Let me
again, quote your post: "He correctly imagined that the bottleneck
in modern industrial warfare was not in the factory at all but in the
delivery in the goods to the battlefield." And again, his record shows
that even if he imagined such a thing, it evaporated from his head
before it could shape German policy.
Sorry, no. I never plagiarize (sic). I simply follow the slashdot
submission box and whenever I come to the edge of the line I
automatically hit Enter. Having grown up with typewriters, it is
a natural reflex. You'll see that my posts aren't always formatted
to the box size, because my instincts aren't 100%.
The idea of building roads to aid movement of military units and
war-related shipments is rather old. The Romans built the roads
in Europe for that purpose. Indeed, it was the Roman army that
did most of the building. So ascribing this idea to Hitler is a bit
much. In fact, had this been Hitler's thinking, he would have never
invaded the Soviet Union, since that place had a lot of land and only
a few very bad roads. Many of those roads would become impassable
during rains so fall through spring the road system was terrible
and merely usable in the summer. So no, Hitler as visionary of road
building is kind of a laugh.
The hard limit is around 0.2 nanometers (the size of one atom in
a crystal structure - very roughly of course). The real limit is
that it gets more and more expensive to get closer and closer to
the hard limit, so don't expect anything below 10 nm any time
soon.
Oh, did I mention that you gain less and less from going smaller
because more signal is wasted as heat. Also, solid state physics
really changes around 30 nm (e.g. the concept of carrier mobility
loses meaning - you have to treat each impurity self consistently).
In short, going below even 30 nm is major money (compared with
the currently developed 35-50 nm processes, which are themself a lot
of money to put in production).
Well, I liked Santa Claws better (they outsourced making greeting cards :). But a website for an educated audience should be
into a prison and an inmate sent a card with this sig to some kid -
true story seen on the news a while back). Anyhow, I am not annoyed when
uneducated folks do it - I may disdain them for it, I may mentally spit
in their face, but then again, I do not expect more out of some hicks.
(All while I have an excuse for misspellings myself - English is not
my native language
above this. If an average reader can easily run a dictionary attack
against a password, then why can't the editors do a simple spell-check.
Slashdot - nues four nurds, stuf thad maters.
Yeah, my bad. Long day at work (just came :) Should have thought a
home now so not much more coherent).
Anways, my first version of the post
was an off-the-top-of-my head estimate
of $5000, then I did som eBay'ing and
wrote that post and was like, "wow
that's cheap"
bit before hitting submit.
In any case, for something this industrial
strength, I figure anything below $10K
is cheap, and the setup is pretty easy.
And most likely he doesn't need all
16 channels at once, just to select from
so PCI bus should be fine. If not, then
the same can be accomplished with 4 PCs
and a final stitching/compositing PC.
And anyways still fit under $10K.
1. Get 16 external TV tuners. I personally have one AVerMedia UltraTV USB 300 and it is small and does not get hot, so 16 should be fine
when put side by side. Any brand will do.
2. Get 4 pci cards with 4 usb ports each, and a mobo with 4 or more
pci slots.
3. Now just take the feeds and switch and crop and whatever in
software. There are programmable usb remote controls. A USB TV tuner
should be about $50 on eBay, a barebones PC on eBay is about $100,
PCI cards are like $5 each, a USB remote control will be about $20.
So something like $200-$300 plus some coding gets you what you want.
Is that a time period or a body condition?
Personal judgements aside (for me Lem > Strugatskys), Stalker
is not quite a space movie. Sci-fi - yes, space - no.
The original Solaris could well be the best movie of all time.
Bar none. Period. Certainly no other space movie stands close.
Uhm, IMHO, of course.
As someone who has done plenty of STM an nano work in his life,
I can tell you two things:
1. I do not believe they have proven the wheels roll. They think they
have proven it but their STM work is embarassingly bad
(for starters, clean Au-111 surface has herringbone reconstruction
which is not seen in their images, the car is not resolved with anything
close to atomic resolution, temperature drift is atrocious etc.)
2. The surface of gold is very "soft" even at room temperature. Heating
it to 100 C often is enough to restore herringbone reconstruction to
a mechanically randomized surface. By 200 C the surface is essentially
a liquid though gold's partial pressure is still negligible meaning
that this liquid does not yet evaporate. Everything I see in their
paper shows to me that the molecules do not roll, but rather diffuse
or surf along with the surface. Certainly many buckyballs are seen
near step edges, something that happens to all crap diffusing on the
surface because it is energetically favorable to assemble there.
In short, there is no evidence of science or even engineering here.
Slashdot bought into the PR of the kind of nano project that made
nanotechnology into a dirty word among the leading research groups
in the area. BTW, I am not doing STM research and am not planning
to so I am not speaking as a competitor. More like: this is why I
moved on from nano-work, so i don't have to deal with crap-meisters
like this.
Curiously I am entirely unfamiliar with the
Superman mythos (didn't grow up in the US).
I am however living in California and I have
seen plenty of talk about a major earthquake
and how it could cause a tsunami and wipe
out most stuff to the south of Mojave.In any
case, I was just giving a hypothetical
example.
I guess examples don't work for some people.
Let's generalise. A large complex structure
is vulnerable to:
1. Geological changes - earthquakes etc.
2. Climate changes - imagine Nevada become hurricane land or tornado land
3. Planetary-scale changes - e.g. major meteor hit
4. Man-made changes - wars, looting, etc.
5. Erosion
6. Wildlife infestation
The list goes on.
This guy's clock is a copout anyways. The
galaxy will still be rotating around its
center 10000 years from now so a large scale
clock is already there. The key is readout.
How do you make something people will read
10000 years from now. No answer so far. He is
still thinking. Basically his prototypes are
useless because the hardest point is yet to
be addressed.
Uh-huh. That's what Egyptians thought and look what their pyramids
went through.
Here's one scenario: Californian earthquake, major parts of California
break off and fall into the ocean, the waves swamp much of southern
West coast covering it in deep mud. And that's just taking what FEMA
already projects to happen soon and making it a bit more apocalyptic.
You want another example: nuclear war with Russia or China or both.
Doesn't take much imagination to see Nevada covered in sand and dust.
Again, that's just something we can see in the next few years. Now think
10000 years ahead.
Yep:
"A sunbeam striking a precisely angled lens at noon triggers a reset by heating, expanding, and buckling a captive band of metal."
My guess is that this will not last even a century. Certainly this
device sounds like it won't survive being submerged in sand and mud
for a while. The pyramids did survive under sand but they had no
function other than being giant man-made warts.
White Power certified???
Is Cupertino like uh KKK country?
Well, more often than not the natives do get civilized in the end.
Europe wouldn't be the same without the Roman empire, Russian
empire would not have happened had they not been conquered by the
Mongols. India owes its unity to being conquered first by Mongols then
Brits (the latter also screwed India in the very end by splitting
out what became Pakistan and Bangladesh, and getting out of
Afganistan which could have also been Indian). Let's not forget the
Chinese who had at least one dinasty of emperors from conquering
nation (Manchuria I believe, also Mongols for a while). And the whole
imperative to develop an effective state came from the horror of being
conquered by the Japanese.
Did I mention Britain which got conquered by Saxons and
became the definition of civilized nation. I could go on...
What it comes to is that conquerors need unity to rule effectively.
Sure they often wipe out or change local culture, but they create
a more monolithic state with better technology (realpolitik meets
darwinism). The natives often get something out of it in the end
provided they do not get mostly wiped out like what happened in
America.
Weird, it does not include the best codec out there (hmm, well, imho):
Lagarith. Dunno why, it's a free codec.
I guess we know what rtfa stands for: read the fine articel :)
Article is junk, so here is the real reason people don't go into
engineering and science: money. I am a postdoc, but despite that
advanced degree (PhD) I am making 35 K per year. When I continue
as a professor it'll be 60-70 K per year. The job is in many ways
like that of a lawyer (read books, figure out what happened before
you, and develop stuff on top of that), the pay is at least 2-3
times less. I am in it because in some ways I feel like doing anything
else is a waste of time (translation: doing science is the menaing
of life), but for most people this is a foreign thought so no wonder
they don't go into science. Want more engineers and scientists in the
US? Easy. Raise salaries 2-3 times. Make sure starting salaries for
engineers are six digits and you'll have plenty to choose from within
5-6 years.
If my phone had a VGA out and the ability to run Powerpoint or
Impress or some such (with embedded full speed video and complex
transition effects - note that my videos are circa 1 Gb in size
each so you figure 10 Gb of fast storage) then I guess I'd
consider giving up my laptop.
Actually no, I also edit my presentations before conferences so
I'd need things like Adobe Illustrator and Matlab to run. So
I guess I'd need a full desktop OS with 50 to 100 Gb HDD and
a processor equivalent of 2.8 GhZ P4. Oh, it also better be able
to read CD and DVD (and soon Blu-Ray as my lab is buying that as
soon as it comes out).
So no, the more I think about it, the less I like the idea of
everything on a cell phone. In fact most people need to be able
to read CDs or DVDs so this idea seems rather inadequate.
To produce anything you need a blueprint. Whether or not it is in a
compressed format is irrelevant.
Life is:
1. Ability to store information.
2. Ability to process stored information to make
replicas of oneself.
3. Metabolism (to power the above).
My lab recently did this. We got a huge (> 10 kVA) UPS and
set some outlets to be on this UPS. Not all outlets, but even that
is very tricky. Basically grounding arrangements are very
difficult to get up to even national electrical code,
and you also got to worry about local regulations. Basically,
if you do want to do this, the UPS itself (even the beefy
powerware models purchased at full price) will likely be the
least of your expense. The rest will go to licensed electricians
for installation.