Since the Columbia tragedy, I have also wondered which direction NASA should take with future missions. In the course of my investigation, I found this paper, commissioned by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in 2000, that claims that a space elevator is not only technologically feasible, but is possible to build within the next 15-20 years at a cost of approximately $40 billion US dollars. This would be a tremendous project, but on the same scale as other large American engineering feats. It seems that such a promising technology, which would not only decrease launch costs by orders of magnitude but also result in many 'spin-off' technologies, would be at the top of NASA's list of research topics. However, I can find no evidence that NASA has pursued the idea since. I am not advocating that we start building a space elevator tomorrow; however, I think it would be horrible for NASA to shelve a radical but potentially remarkable invention for another 50 years. How can we encourage NASA to, at the very least, begin a second round of research to independently and skeptically study the results of the first team and put together a plan to actually build this, if possible? Or is the American space program doomed to another 50 years of risky and minimally rewarding shuttle flights?
I have a hard time believing that that many people have paid to download music in the form of services such as PressPlay, Rhapsody, and others. The numbers? Ipsos-Reid claims that 60 million Americans download music, and 31% (about 18 million) "reported having paid for any of the music they have downloaded." Maybe I'm missing one, but I don't think that these relatively new services have reached nearly that subscription level yet. Instead, I think many people who answered yes to the "have you paid for music" question were confused in one of two ways: either they thought that their ISP fee pays for the music, or they are referring to music that they bought in CD/Tape/other physical form, and also have seperately downloaded to their PCs. Unfortunately, the Ipsos-Reid and TEMPO websites are short on details, such as the exact wording of questions asked. I did locate another TEMPO survey that a mere 27% of downloaders would prefer to pay for a music service if it were availabe (italics mine). All these data seem a bit inconsistant, and if you're doing anything valuable with this info, I wouldn't trust it much more than a Slashdot poll.
Why not take the 'Gilligan's Island' concept to it's logical conclusion: put the scientists on a remote island, not knowing their location or how much ocean surrounds them, with no supplies, and leave them there (with a camera crew of course). The scientists would have two challenges: survive off rudimentary supplies and the island's natural resources, and eventually escape to the mainland. The first scientific team to find their way to a major city wins. Of course, you could add in interesting challenges along the way such as those in this show or in Survivor, where the scientists could complete some useful task (dye a flag, as mentioned in the episode guide) in return for a tool or supply. THAT I would watch.
The GNU project is technically correct here, and I think very few people would argue that. However, the media and the community have settled on the name Linux by and large. This FAQ (which is quite extensive) seems like a tremendous waste of time. Anyway, don't these people have a kernel to be coding???
According to their homepage, DALnet boasts 140,000 concurrent users. I'm not sure how each of these networks are measuring their numbers, but maybe this isn't quite a world record...
I haven't seen the paper yet (slashdotted, go fig), but I'm guessing this doesn't have a big bearing on crypto systems or factoring. As the poster wrote, the algorithm is not optimized, and I imagine that it's _very_ inefficient. While P is faster than NP (for the most part), P!=Fast.... this algorithm could be polynomial on the length of input and still be exceedingly slow. Don't buy that quantum cryptography PCI card yet:-)
As far as I can tell, this text is copyright of Nature and the scientists who published it. How dare you steal their work and post it on Slashdot simply because you find Nature's way of publishing it inconvenient? You do not have the right to do with this text as you please; you have essentially stolen it. Although I suppose you do that with music all the time.
Note: this is not a troll. I mean it.
Re:split laser and manipulating end points
on
The Dot in .mars
·
· Score: 1
Here's my understanding of how this works: yes, we have been able to use such a technique to transfer information about a wave of light faster than the speed of light (look here). However, this experiment required a specially prepared chamber; I'm not sure if such a thing could be done through the void of space. At lease not yet.
All your Mars are belong to us.
I was facing this very dilemma about a year ago, as I enrolled in the University of Michigan. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
First, most schools don't make you declare a major until your Junior year (this can come quickly, however, if you enter school with a lot of AP credit). This will give you some time to take a sample engineering course and a sample CS course.
Second: At my school, the CS program is located in the Liberal Arts College, while the CE program is in the Engineering College. This may not be true at your university, but it illustrates an important difference: here at UMich, 75% of the classes a CS major takes are in other fields: math, physical sciences, and humanities and english. On the other hand, 75% of the classes a CE major takes are Engineering courses: both electrical and computer engineering, and general engin. courses. A much smaller fraction of CE classes are outside the field.
This leads to a third point: it's not that CS is more software and CE is more hardware, but CS is more theory and CE is more practice. While you will take both theory and applied classes with either major, once in the workforce a CE major is more likely to be involved with building products for the real world, while CS majors focus on research. You need to think about which of these career paths is more appealing to you.
With the criteria above, I personally chose to go CS, as I wanted a broader education and wanted the opportunity to take a lot of non-CS classes. However, a lot of the info I have provided is specific to my university; your best bet is to check with the advisors at whatever school you enter. As I said before, they probably won't make you declare a major the day you enroll, so you'll have some time to meet with advisors, professors, and fellow students.
One final note: consider your school's prestiege in each field. For example, if your university seperates the two fields into two different colleges (as here at UMich), it is likely that the different schools will give different degrees (i.e. Bachelor of Engin. vs. Bachelor of Science). Look at college and career guides to see which of these schools is more highly ranked. Here at UMich (unfortunately for me) the Engineering School is a little more prestigious than the Liberal Arts School. This may also be a factor in your decision.
I love this Slashdot Darwinian idea that "all the stupid M$ Windoze users will get their comeuppance for supporting Satan himself Bill Gate$ and see the shining light that is Linux", but the fact is that the average PC user doesn't think twice about networks and couldn't tell you what NetBIOS is. I know this seems like a crime from the hacker point of view, but its true: most people don't have the time to care. This is a major security hole in Windows and I hope MS takes action against it. The problem here is not stupid users, nor is it evil software written by evil port scanners. Its a hole in Windows, an otherwise excellent OS.
This is bullsh*t. Recorded music belongs to the people who recorded it: the artists and their record companies. To allow its sale without permission is simple theft on the part of the government. You may not like the fact that you can't but music online; neither do I. But the purpose of legislation is not to change companies who inconveniance you. Let the free market seperate the companies who embrace the Net from the dinosaurs who don't. Because if we allow the government to start stealing, they won't stop.
While I did bite the bullet and vote Dubya (I wanted to vote Harry Browne but Gore scared me too much), I think politicians from both parties are equally likely to regulate the net because they don't understand it. Typical knee-jerk government reaction. And to do this they will seize on cases of kiddie porn, violence, and copyright violations (aside: What's wrong with enforcing copyright laws? The Napster user with 1800 MP3's he doesn't own is the criminal, not the company or artist who wants to protect their copyright). The only way we as netizens (does anyone use that word anymore? I bet Katz does) can ward off the Feds is to be good. Don't give them a reason to regulate. Instead, show the Net for its virtues: freedom of speech, ease of communications, business benefits. There will always be bad apples, but if we don't do our best to police ourselves, Big Brother will.
Your use of the word 'loyalty' is funny. If anything, Mac users are the epitome of loyalty. I use Windows, not MacOS or Linux, because I believe it is a superior platform (ease of use combined with software and hardware support). I don't use PCs out of loyalty, I use them b/c they're the best product. That's the same reason far more PCs sell than Macs - they're better. Loyalty is talking up whatever innovation or slogan Apple comes up with without analyzing it.
I guessed it might be the largest prime, but I don't know, and neither would they. The most arbitrary aspect of it is the use of superscript text to indicate a power. Two new math operations in one step... kinda stupid. Are the following pages of the message available? I would be curious to see them.
While I'm sure that there are legitimate scientific reasons to go to Pluto, the money going to this mission would be better directed toward a manned Mars landing. NASA does have (and should have) limited funding, and these dollars should be invested in the much more valuable and landmark Mars program. We'll get to Pluto eventually, but lets take a better look at our part of the Solar System first.
Yeah, IT managers who have now been given a new option for software purchases (emphasis on OPTION) will bail out from quality, tested applications to the uncertain open-source world. And then all those IT managers will be fired.
A company where nobody is empowered to make leadership decisoins? I can't wait to see them vote themselves into bankruptcy. They'll self-destruct very quickly; its these romantic notions that call into question the legitimacy of the whole open source movement.
Whoa...how is Microsoft using government force?? If anything Oracle, Netscape, Sun, etc. have been trying to use the DOJ to get their rival. Microsoft has been accused of anti-competative practices, and attempting to swallow up their rivals or put them out of buisness. Yet now Oracle focuses its efforts on stealing secrets from a competitor (they were digging through trash, what do you think they were hoping to find?) and its no big deal. Ellison needs to read some of the propaganda put out by Gates and Ballmer: he might learn a thing or two about innovation.
I was just as excited as everyone else when Mozilla was open sourced, but now, two years later, it's been a spectacular failure. I've attempted many times over the course of development to use one of the nightly builds or milestone releases, and every single one has been slow, memory-hogging, and has quickly crashed. Why bother guys?? At the risk of setting myself up here, I've been using IE for those two years and it has been quick, stable, and full-featured.
Hate to break it to you....corporations and "The People," as you put it, don't just exist...they don't just spring out of the ocean one day and start being rich. Microsoft is the perfect example of what an American corporation is: kid with an idea writes a software program, 20 years later (a relatively short period of time) he's the wealthiest man alive. Gates is no entrenched established corporation, and he's certainly no friend of the government.
I was a little confused by the language of the article....is this program being run by the N.C. state government, or by Pinkerton??? Either way, it is a facist, Orwellan, etc., program, but if Pinkerton Security Systems, a private corporation, is conducting the program without tax dollars, then it is quite constitutional, for both children and adults.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the Columbia tragedy, I have also wondered which direction NASA should take with future missions. In the course of my investigation, I found this paper, commissioned by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in 2000, that claims that a space elevator is not only technologically feasible, but is possible to build within the next 15-20 years at a cost of approximately $40 billion US dollars. This would be a tremendous project, but on the same scale as other large American engineering feats.
It seems that such a promising technology, which would not only decrease launch costs by orders of magnitude but also result in many 'spin-off' technologies, would be at the top of NASA's list of research topics. However, I can find no evidence that NASA has pursued the idea since. I am not advocating that we start building a space elevator tomorrow; however, I think it would be horrible for NASA to shelve a radical but potentially remarkable invention for another 50 years. How can we encourage NASA to, at the very least, begin a second round of research to independently and skeptically study the results of the first team and put together a plan to actually build this, if possible? Or is the American space program doomed to another 50 years of risky and minimally rewarding shuttle flights?
I have a hard time believing that that many people have paid to download music in the form of services such as PressPlay, Rhapsody, and others. The numbers? Ipsos-Reid claims that 60 million Americans download music, and 31% (about 18 million) "reported having paid for any of the music they have downloaded." Maybe I'm missing one, but I don't think that these relatively new services have reached nearly that subscription level yet. Instead, I think many people who answered yes to the "have you paid for music" question were confused in one of two ways: either they thought that their ISP fee pays for the music, or they are referring to music that they bought in CD/Tape/other physical form, and also have seperately downloaded to their PCs. Unfortunately, the Ipsos-Reid and TEMPO websites are short on details, such as the exact wording of questions asked.
I did locate another TEMPO survey that a mere 27% of downloaders would prefer to pay for a music service if it were availabe (italics mine). All these data seem a bit inconsistant, and if you're doing anything valuable with this info, I wouldn't trust it much more than a Slashdot poll.
Why not take the 'Gilligan's Island' concept to it's logical conclusion: put the scientists on a remote island, not knowing their location or how much ocean surrounds them, with no supplies, and leave them there (with a camera crew of course). The scientists would have two challenges: survive off rudimentary supplies and the island's natural resources, and eventually escape to the mainland. The first scientific team to find their way to a major city wins. Of course, you could add in interesting challenges along the way such as those in this show or in Survivor, where the scientists could complete some useful task (dye a flag, as mentioned in the episode guide) in return for a tool or supply. THAT I would watch.
The GNU project is technically correct here, and I think very few people would argue that. However, the media and the community have settled on the name Linux by and large. This FAQ (which is quite extensive) seems like a tremendous waste of time. Anyway, don't these people have a kernel to be coding???
According to their homepage, DALnet boasts 140,000 concurrent users. I'm not sure how each of these networks are measuring their numbers, but maybe this isn't quite a world record...
Here's the actual Salon story:/ 29/googl e_watch/print.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08
Come on guys. 3rd grade grammar: Voyager's Legacy in Pictures.
I haven't seen the paper yet (slashdotted, go fig), but I'm guessing this doesn't have a big bearing on crypto systems or factoring. As the poster wrote, the algorithm is not optimized, and I imagine that it's _very_ inefficient. While P is faster than NP (for the most part), P!=Fast .... this algorithm could be polynomial on the length of input and still be exceedingly slow. Don't buy that quantum cryptography PCI card yet :-)
Isn't this the same thing. Come on guys, this was 4 days ago
As far as I can tell, this text is copyright of Nature and the scientists who published it. How dare you steal their work and post it on Slashdot simply because you find Nature's way of publishing it inconvenient? You do not have the right to do with this text as you please; you have essentially stolen it. Although I suppose you do that with music all the time. Note: this is not a troll. I mean it.
Here's my understanding of how this works: yes, we have been able to use such a technique to transfer information about a wave of light faster than the speed of light (look here). However, this experiment required a specially prepared chamber; I'm not sure if such a thing could be done through the void of space. At lease not yet. All your Mars are belong to us.
I was facing this very dilemma about a year ago, as I enrolled in the University of Michigan. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
First, most schools don't make you declare a major until your Junior year (this can come quickly, however, if you enter school with a lot of AP credit). This will give you some time to take a sample engineering course and a sample CS course.
Second: At my school, the CS program is located in the Liberal Arts College, while the CE program is in the Engineering College. This may not be true at your university, but it illustrates an important difference: here at UMich, 75% of the classes a CS major takes are in other fields: math, physical sciences, and humanities and english. On the other hand, 75% of the classes a CE major takes are Engineering courses: both electrical and computer engineering, and general engin. courses. A much smaller fraction of CE classes are outside the field.
This leads to a third point: it's not that CS is more software and CE is more hardware, but CS is more theory and CE is more practice. While you will take both theory and applied classes with either major, once in the workforce a CE major is more likely to be involved with building products for the real world, while CS majors focus on research. You need to think about which of these career paths is more appealing to you.
With the criteria above, I personally chose to go CS, as I wanted a broader education and wanted the opportunity to take a lot of non-CS classes. However, a lot of the info I have provided is specific to my university; your best bet is to check with the advisors at whatever school you enter. As I said before, they probably won't make you declare a major the day you enroll, so you'll have some time to meet with advisors, professors, and fellow students.
One final note: consider your school's prestiege in each field. For example, if your university seperates the two fields into two different colleges (as here at UMich), it is likely that the different schools will give different degrees (i.e. Bachelor of Engin. vs. Bachelor of Science). Look at college and career guides to see which of these schools is more highly ranked. Here at UMich (unfortunately for me) the Engineering School is a little more prestigious than the Liberal Arts School. This may also be a factor in your decision.
Hope I could help you out.
I love this Slashdot Darwinian idea that "all the stupid M$ Windoze users will get their comeuppance for supporting Satan himself Bill Gate$ and see the shining light that is Linux", but the fact is that the average PC user doesn't think twice about networks and couldn't tell you what NetBIOS is. I know this seems like a crime from the hacker point of view, but its true: most people don't have the time to care. This is a major security hole in Windows and I hope MS takes action against it. The problem here is not stupid users, nor is it evil software written by evil port scanners. Its a hole in Windows, an otherwise excellent OS.
Wow. I didn't know people on /. still bought up trolls like batteries on Dec 31, 1999.
This is bullsh*t. Recorded music belongs to the people who recorded it: the artists and their record companies. To allow its sale without permission is simple theft on the part of the government. You may not like the fact that you can't but music online; neither do I. But the purpose of legislation is not to change companies who inconveniance you. Let the free market seperate the companies who embrace the Net from the dinosaurs who don't. Because if we allow the government to start stealing, they won't stop.
While I did bite the bullet and vote Dubya (I wanted to vote Harry Browne but Gore scared me too much), I think politicians from both parties are equally likely to regulate the net because they don't understand it. Typical knee-jerk government reaction. And to do this they will seize on cases of kiddie porn, violence, and copyright violations (aside: What's wrong with enforcing copyright laws? The Napster user with 1800 MP3's he doesn't own is the criminal, not the company or artist who wants to protect their copyright). The only way we as netizens (does anyone use that word anymore? I bet Katz does) can ward off the Feds is to be good. Don't give them a reason to regulate. Instead, show the Net for its virtues: freedom of speech, ease of communications, business benefits. There will always be bad apples, but if we don't do our best to police ourselves, Big Brother will.
Your use of the word 'loyalty' is funny. If anything, Mac users are the epitome of loyalty. I use Windows, not MacOS or Linux, because I believe it is a superior platform (ease of use combined with software and hardware support). I don't use PCs out of loyalty, I use them b/c they're the best product. That's the same reason far more PCs sell than Macs - they're better. Loyalty is talking up whatever innovation or slogan Apple comes up with without analyzing it.
I guessed it might be the largest prime, but I don't know, and neither would they. The most arbitrary aspect of it is the use of superscript text to indicate a power. Two new math operations in one step... kinda stupid. Are the following pages of the message available? I would be curious to see them.
While I'm sure that there are legitimate scientific reasons to go to Pluto, the money going to this mission would be better directed toward a manned Mars landing. NASA does have (and should have) limited funding, and these dollars should be invested in the much more valuable and landmark Mars program. We'll get to Pluto eventually, but lets take a better look at our part of the Solar System first.
Yeah, IT managers who have now been given a new option for software purchases (emphasis on OPTION) will bail out from quality, tested applications to the uncertain open-source world. And then all those IT managers will be fired.
A company where nobody is empowered to make leadership decisoins? I can't wait to see them vote themselves into bankruptcy. They'll self-destruct very quickly; its these romantic notions that call into question the legitimacy of the whole open source movement.
Whoa...how is Microsoft using government force?? If anything Oracle, Netscape, Sun, etc. have been trying to use the DOJ to get their rival. Microsoft has been accused of anti-competative practices, and attempting to swallow up their rivals or put them out of buisness. Yet now Oracle focuses its efforts on stealing secrets from a competitor (they were digging through trash, what do you think they were hoping to find?) and its no big deal. Ellison needs to read some of the propaganda put out by Gates and Ballmer: he might learn a thing or two about innovation.
I was just as excited as everyone else when Mozilla was open sourced, but now, two years later, it's been a spectacular failure. I've attempted many times over the course of development to use one of the nightly builds or milestone releases, and every single one has been slow, memory-hogging, and has quickly crashed. Why bother guys?? At the risk of setting myself up here, I've been using IE for those two years and it has been quick, stable, and full-featured.
Hate to break it to you....corporations and "The People," as you put it, don't just exist...they don't just spring out of the ocean one day and start being rich. Microsoft is the perfect example of what an American corporation is: kid with an idea writes a software program, 20 years later (a relatively short period of time) he's the wealthiest man alive. Gates is no entrenched established corporation, and he's certainly no friend of the government.
I was a little confused by the language of the article....is this program being run by the N.C. state government, or by Pinkerton??? Either way, it is a facist, Orwellan, etc., program, but if Pinkerton Security Systems, a private corporation, is conducting the program without tax dollars, then it is quite constitutional, for both children and adults.