A plausible theory is that this ball serves the exact same purpose as the most of the special decorations on the entire site, which is to reduce interference, in this case to the Big Dish inside. Like the article says, the triangles of varying size can help to reduce interference caused by repeated patterns.
Or perhaps the "golf ball" is to prevent spy satelites from seeing exactly where that dish is pointed!
Think about it this way: If you are not in one of the half dozen "battleground" states, a vote for Ralph Nader (or any other third party) is not a wasted vote. The winner take all system of the electoral-college means that if Bush is going to
win your state anyway, a vote for _Gore_ is a wasted vote. Or if Gore is going to win your state then a vote for Ralph Nader won't hurt and you can be free to vote your hopes and dreams instead of your fears.
And let's not forget the "free" Gillette textbook book covers and Crest "oral hygine" propaganda. I swear, it's starting to look like we are living in Pohl's The Space Merchants...
Sorry for the OT, but you may be interested in checking out Jabber. It's a multi-platform, open-sourced XML based IM protocol which can talk to ICQ, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, IRC networks and potentially much, much more.
The current release is about stable enough for daily use, IMHO...
Recently I saw an interview with Jeff Hawkins (Founder of Palm) on Charlie Rose. It was a great interview and one part which stuck in my mind was where Hawkins explained why he thought the palm handhelds succeeded where other similar devices had failed:
They realized that they were not competing with the computer but with PAPER!
The document analogy may take quite a while to replace. It has, after all, been with us since the time of clay tablets...
Last night Charlie Rose interviewed Jeff Hawkins, the co-founder of Palm Computing and chairman of Handspring. While the entire interview was enthralling, one part stood out especially to me:
Hawkins pointed out that places of the world which haven't yet deployed traditional communications infrastructure (I think he was specifically refering to Africa and parts of Asia) probably never would!!!
Theories on the analog and digital natures of the brain date back to the 1950's work of J. Von Neumann's and Norbert Wiener (and others). In The Computer and the Brain Von Neuman compares the two and concludes that the brain must have an analog and digital nature. If you find this interesting you may also want to check out Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal which deals with everything from feedback loops to learning and self-reproducing machines to brain waves and self-organizing systems. Both are Highly Recomended.
I think the problem is that there are really two types of links. The first type links to another site, ie, people that post a href="http://www.slashdot.org". The second type posts a link DIRECTLY to a piece of content, ie href="http://download.sourceforge.net/slashcode/sl ash-1.0.4.tar.gz"
Nope, both are exactly the same. The first example is implicitly calling index.html (or index.htm or default.htm) Sorry if I seem to be picking nits here, but the bottom line is you are linking to a specific external resource over which you have no control.
As I understand it, the dopler effect is very important for explaining how cooling with laser light works:
Say you have a clump of particles which you want to cool. They will only interact with a specific frequency light. So you fire a laser at then with a frequency slightly lower than that. When a particle happens to be moving away from your light source (or in some lateral direction) there is no interaction BUT when the particle is moving towards the light, the light looks dopler shifted to a slightly higher frequency. And thus there is an interaction and the particle moves off in another direction with a different momentum and kinetic energy. If you have several laser sources all converging on one point you can trap the particles (as the particle begins to move off in another direction, it dopler interacts with another laser). The particles are nearly in one spot and moving very slowly and thus are very cold.
Granted, you have to have the particles slow and well localized to begin with, but you can use liquid nitrogen for that...
It's useful for making very stable frequency standards (low temperature==low doppler shift==very accurate frequency standard)
About three weeks ago I attended a colloqium given by Dr. William Phillips of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and the `97 Nobel Laureate in Physics on just this topic. The very reason that NIST researched laser cooling was for making super accurate clocks and I believe there have been prototypes made.
Unless I'm mistaken the vast majority of the Christians on this blue planet are Catholic and Catholics believe that Faith AND Good Works are necessary for salvation...
But you probably believe like my friend GW Bush and the entire faculty at Bob Jones University that Catholics are a "cult"....
The urban legend is that if you request to see your file and they do not have one open on you.. then they start one....
Free or otherwise markets
on
Nanomedicine
·
· Score: 1
If companies are freed from paternalistic regulation, they will be able to act in their own best interests. The principle of enlightened self-interest demonstrates that the consumer will benefit, because companies will do whatever most attracts consumers.
I must disagree. It is true that companies will do whatever is in their self-interest but this is not always the same as the best-interests of consumers, quite often counter to the best-interests of labor, and nearly always counter to the "interests" of the environment. Without regulation it is easier and cheaper for a company to trick, disceve, and otherwise screw-over other parties than to act in "enlightened self-interest".
The free market seems to benefit a few of us in the first world but harms a great many less fortunate. If you are interested, here are some links about what the free market is doing to other countries right now:
Well sure. But depending on your application, it might not be important. If your program is "parallelizable" enough you may not even need ethernet speed connections between your nodes (think distributed.net).
Many types of scientific models which don't need fast communication spring to mind, like modeling individual photons traveling through a substance- here you would get more speed if you had a computer for each photon- not faster interconnections between nodes.
Slashdot Mirror
But unfortunately, as history has shown us, you don't need amazing technology and clones to enslave a people.
/joeyo
Or perhaps the "golf ball" is to prevent spy satelites from seeing exactly where that dish is pointed!
"No, thanks I'm trying to give them up." :) The goon show was great!
Which makes me wonder if they also sell a service which blocks the anti-anti-telemarketer-service-service....
/joeyo
The current release is about stable enough for daily use, IMHO...
/joeyo
Can someone comment on flywheels. Wouldnt the gyroscopic effects of having a massive spinning wheel in your hood cause problems going around corners?
/joeyo
YHBT! HAND!
/joeoy
/joeyo
They realized that they were not competing with the computer but with PAPER!
The document analogy may take quite a while to replace. It has, after all, been with us since the time of clay tablets...
/joeyo
Yes, Jupiter has rings.
Hawkins pointed out that places of the world which haven't yet deployed traditional communications infrastructure (I think he was specifically refering to Africa and parts of Asia) probably never would!!!
/joeyo
/joeyo
Nope, both are exactly the same. The first example is implicitly calling index.html (or index.htm or default.htm) Sorry if I seem to be picking nits here, but the bottom line is you are linking to a specific external resource over which you have no control.
Say you have a clump of particles which you want to cool. They will only interact with a specific frequency light. So you fire a laser at then with a frequency slightly lower than that. When a particle happens to be moving away from your light source (or in some lateral direction) there is no interaction BUT when the particle is moving towards the light, the light looks dopler shifted to a slightly higher frequency. And thus there is an interaction and the particle moves off in another direction with a different momentum and kinetic energy. If you have several laser sources all converging on one point you can trap the particles (as the particle begins to move off in another direction, it dopler interacts with another laser). The particles are nearly in one spot and moving very slowly and thus are very cold.
Granted, you have to have the particles slow and well localized to begin with, but you can use liquid nitrogen for that...
/joeyo
About three weeks ago I attended a colloqium given by Dr. William Phillips of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and the `97 Nobel Laureate in Physics on just this topic. The very reason that NIST researched laser cooling was for making super accurate clocks and I believe there have been prototypes made.
/joeyo
Version 1.0 seems to have a Story Queue that anyone can browse... Hmm don't see that on Slashdot...
Unless I'm mistaken the vast majority of the Christians on this blue planet are Catholic and Catholics believe that Faith AND Good Works are necessary for salvation...
But you probably believe like my friend GW Bush and the entire faculty at Bob Jones University that Catholics are a "cult"....
YHBT HAND!
The urban legend is that if you request to see your file and they do not have one open on you.. then they start one....
I must disagree. It is true that companies will do whatever is in their self-interest but this is not always the same as the best-interests of consumers, quite often counter to the best-interests of labor, and nearly always counter to the "interests" of the environment. Without regulation it is easier and cheaper for a company to trick, disceve, and otherwise screw-over other parties than to act in "enlightened self-interest".
The free market seems to benefit a few of us in the first world but harms a great many less fortunate. If you are interested, here are some links about what the free market is doing to other countries right now:
Corporate Watch
Global Exchange
Campaign for Labor Rights
/joeyo
I misread the techweb article. If anyone is intersted there is another (slightly more technical) article here
there is a little bit of discussion on kuro5hin already. ...
/joeyo
Many types of scientific models which don't need fast communication spring to mind, like modeling individual photons traveling through a substance- here you would get more speed if you had a computer for each photon- not faster interconnections between nodes.
/joeyo