Go with a visual programming language -- where they can see "fun" results right away, and that's age appropriate. What I just did with my 2 cousins (14 and 16 year old girls):
That's a *much* better way to start them off. It's equivalent to BASIC on an Apple II really, but even more fun.
Then you can start them off on something like a Facebook App, and then web pages with Perl/Javascript/HTML.
I'm a recent member of this group, so I'd like to put in my 2 cents.
1) This is a first -- no other group has achieved this before. yay! (after decades of work!)
2) This is hard for the following reasons:
a) since you are doing calculations near (or on/in) a black hole, you tend to get a lot of
infinities, which 1) crash your code and 2) exacerbate your errors
b) for most simulations, your grid remains fixed. For black holes though, they *deform* the
spacetime around them -- which means your grid points have to move (in a non-predictable
manner)!
c) what happens when two black holes merge is not well understood (ie, what should happen?),
so this is new science
d) initial data is hard to get and unreliable. If two black holes are far apart, you can
write an exact solution (at least within some error), but to get them close to where they
are interating, you pretty much need this kind of simulation anyways. This is such a large
problem that there are only a handful (a dozen or two?) initial data sets currently.
3) Everything is written in Fortran!:) (some competing groups use Cactus which is C++ based, although it also allows C and Fortran).
4) It runs on a variety of architectures (x86, Itanium, PA-RISC, Alpha, etc etc)...pretty much anything that supports ifc (faster) or gcc.
5) There are several approaches to some of the issues above, from puncture splitting (using a different spacetime metric like 1/r vs r to remove the singularity), excision (not evolving inside the event horizon, since that's not "interesting" anyways), and other methods. Our new method actually doesn't need any of those "tricks", which is pretty interesting.
6) This data helps drive the LISA and LIGO projects from a theoretical standpoint--basically knowing what kind of gravitional waves they should be seeing, and to correlate what they see and what their data may represent (ie, if you see a waveform like this, this means that it's two merging black holes, vs just co-rotating black holes). 6a) We study black holes b/c they are pretty much the only thing that'll generate detectable gravitational waves.
There were two cases covered on slashdot. One was a single mother of three who had no idea on how to even download songs from the internet illegally (although one of her children or their friends might have done so). The other one didn't own a computer (possibly ID fraud?).
The promise of the internet is that we all become publishers (if we choose)...from news, blogs, games, music, and movies....this is the "New Economy". The "Old Economy" is dominated by the gatekeepers, the middlemen--the ones that own the means of distribution, starting with railroads.
I'm sorry, but that is just wrong. I'm from China. I grew up there until age 8 (end of 2nd grade) when I moved to the US (1986)
Teachers were the *most* respected profession. Yes, higher level teachers (college vs high school vs whatever) were respected more, but every teacher is highly respected.
When I got home from school (this was typical), I did the homework given by my teacher, then the homework given by my mother, then more work because I was expected to do it. At that tender age I could do multiplying and dividing of fractions, long division, decimals, and basic algebra. Calculus is normally a 7th grade subject in China.
The mass doesn't come into play. As long as it has the same velocity as the earth, it has the same radius from the Sun.
(G = gravitational constant, M = mass of Sun, m = mass of orbiting object, v = linear velocity, r = radius) Force = (G*M*m)/r^2 = m*v^2/r the mass of the orbiting object, m, drops out and you have:
v = sqrt(G*M/r)
(you can substitute v=r*w where w is the angular velocity if you care).
This is obvious once you know that the moon orbits around the Sun and not the Earth (or rather the Sun exerts a much larger force on the Moon than the Earth does).
I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with you. The US does NOT care about democracies. Well, some Americans do, but the government in general does not. Iraq *was* going towards a democracy. We hired Saddam to assasinate the president. We (via the CIA) overthrew the *democratic* government of Iran and installed a ruthless dictator (the Shah). Chile had a democratically elected government. We overthrew that and install Pinochet.
Let me reinterate. We like *weak* democracies, the kind that will bow to us and let our corporations rape their resources and people. There is a word for this: imperialism. And we need colonies. That makes us rich. Or rather, it makes the 3% of the US population that holds 75% of the US wealth rich. This is why the rest of the world hates us.
1) Saudi Arabia has extra capacity, but not in light sweet crude, the kind the US uses (the other kind has too much sulfur for our refineries).
2) (to reply to the grandparent) Iraq *was* friendly to the US. In 84 (maybe 83), Rumsfeld visited Saddam as a US envoy. One of the things Saddam complained about was about Kuwait. Rumsfeld replied that it is his problem, and not a concern of the US's (ie, invade if you want, we don't care). Saddam canceled a Haliburton pipeline project in 1990. He invaded Kuwait in 1991. Any questions?
3) Since we 'betrayed' Saddam, he hated us. Which means any excess Iraqi oil capacity would go to China and Europe, not the US.
4) it is estimated that a $10 rise in the price per barrel of oil translates to a 5% drop in US GDP. Do you think the 3% of the US population that hold 75% of all the US wealth will stand for that?
In Feb 2000, Bill Richardson, energy secretary under Clinton, went on a tour of all of the OPEC member states except Iraq, Iran, and Libya. He found that they are all at maximum production -- ie, while they have more oil in the ground, they can't pump it up any faster.
The US will need 7.5 more million barrels of oil per day by 2020. The only excess oil we can find lies in these "unstable states" (ie, states that don't kowtow to the US). That is why we had to invade Iraq -- they have the worlds 2nd largest proven oil reserve, after Saudi Arabia (our other toady).
Remember, the CIA hired and trained Saddam Hussein to assasinate the then democratically elected president of Iraq. He failed, but when the CIA did succeed, we helped put him in power. One of the many reasons why Iraqi's don't trust the US.
Someone did connect the dots. A month before Sept 11th, a report was sent to Bush saying that terrorists were likely to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. He (or his staff -- Rumsfeld & Cheney) ignored it.
I think he meant that communism was fiscally ultraliberal and socially authoritarian.
Since he said that libertarianism is the opposite of that, he implies that libertarianism is fiscally ultraconservative and socially, uh, independent?
Which is what you said in you "correction"
Most vendors on Pricewatch (the first page or so of the lowest prices) are generally dishonest -- you'll get bad (or no) service if anything goes wrong, and they make up for their lower prices with overly high shipping costs ($40 or more for something that can be shipped for $10).
So lookup each vendor you are considering in Reseller ratings -- and don't just look at the number, read the reviews. It is generally not worthwhile to build a *whole* computer from scratch by yourself, unless you want: a) the best components b) to slowly upgrade it piece by piece over time.
Nowadays getting a computer from Dell or Gateway is cheaper (or just as cheap) as building it yourself (with the same components). You can also try walmart.com:)
Oh, and http://www.essencompu.com/ is pretty good -- they don't have the very best prices (but they are quite good), their shipping is actually in line with reality, and the service is excellent.
this reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Multiverse
on
P2P Roaming Chat
·
· Score: 2
The Multiverse is a virtual reality world -- you can "buy" real estate in it, and code your own piece of land. Everything ran using the Multiverse protocol, so that they can interact. A few large corps hosted the backbones, from whom you purchased prime virtual real estate. This project sounds like something similar -- individuals can program their own little lands that others can see.
If you have direct line of sight, a directed 802.11b link can go for miles. There have been several articles on slashdot about that.
Another possibility is ordering a dry line (just a copper line) from your work to your home -- security companies like ADT generally use this, so it is available. Set up a pair of routers on each end, and you're in business. There was another slashdot article about that a year ago.
What we need are some brave souls to do the following: 1) Intercept a shipment of DVDs and/or CDs. 2) Call the local & national press to cover the following: 3) Have a protest while dumping said shipment of DVDs and/or CDs in the sea (or local river).
Note: This is illegal. You will be fined and/or jailed for this. So do this in a liberal community. Boston would work best. Note 2: Try to make it so that the DVDs & CDs are easily retrievable so you don't pollute the river.:)
Re:Charge for it in geometrically increasing sums
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
Yes, but the point of making it increase geometically vs linearly is that it become too expensive for *anyone* after a certain time......400 euros is pocket change, especially to coporations, publishers, etc. This is more for copyrights (like say for books, music, ideas) than patents, since patents have a limited lifetime anyways (I believe 17 years in US, 20 in UK). Right now in the US, copyrights last till death of the author + 70 years, which gets extended every 20 years by 20 years! So it never expires. We want to encourge people financially to implement their ideas, but we also want it back into the public domain after they are "done" with it.
Public Domain is not GPL -- you don't have to release the source code for modifications. So suppose you base you app on some public domain code + modifications -- you can copyright that. Now if someone else comes along and makes another app that is also based on the same PD code, and you sue them for copyright infringement, a judge would have to compare the 2 sets of code minus the PD core that both contains. Of course, eventually it will no longer be economically viable to keep the copyright on your modifications, and the whole kit & caboodle will have to go to the public domain. That does not neccessary mean that you have to make it publically available -- it just means that you no longer have rights to sue someone for making a similar product.
If it is mostly public domain, then it cannot be patented or copyrighted (which I believe is current law...ie, I cannot patent the idea of the 20-wheeler truck...at least I hope not!) So I cannot copyright "Mickey Mouse" forever...I *can* copyright "Mickey Mouse", "Minny Mouse", "Micey Mouse", but when I let go of the copyright for "Mickey Mouse" it goes to the public domain, and others can base their works on it.
Re:I REALLY like this idea!
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
thanks:) Multiplying by a percentage of royalties received would require resources to track each copyright/patent, and that would potentially dwarf all revenues from this. Also, we don't want to "punish" success -- we just want some simple economic force to push things into the Public Domain.
Why pay $799 (or less) for a Mac? Most of these schools already have hundreds of PCs set up (that's why they are being audited). The are (gasp) leveraging their existing infrustructure.:)
Charge for it in geometrically increasing sums
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
For the holder of the copyright / patent: For the first year, pay $1. For the second, pay $2. For the third, pay $4. Then $8, $16, $32, etc.... After 10 years, you would have paid >$1,000. After 20 years, you would have paid >$1,000,000. For different industries, you can set different starting points (so a $1 starting point could be good for books, maybe $1000 for software patents, etc). So short term, anyone can benefit, and long term, more things will go back into the public domain. That way, if it is still economically sound for you to hold your copyright/patent, you still can. If not, it goes into the public domain. The money collected could help fund basic research. Oh, and this should be applied retroactively to all current copyrights/patents (take that Disney!).
Also, maybe allow copyrights be to held by coporations, but say every 5 years, it has to go back to the person/people who created it. Allow them the option of re-licensing it back to a company though.
alpha is the coupling constant for the electromagnetic force.
In other words, it determines the "strengh" of the electromagnetic force. It is important because
a) it has no units (it's just a number, approximately 1/137)
b) it is easy to measure to a great degree of accuracy
c) it can be measured using a variety of different experiments
d) many fundamental phyiscal constants (such as c - the speed of light in a vacuum, e - the charge of an electron, and h - the Planck constant.
So a change in alpha would mean a change in one of the fundamental constants of physics.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a *much* better way to start them off. It's equivalent to BASIC on an Apple II really, but even more fun.
Then you can start them off on something like a Facebook App, and then web pages with Perl/Javascript/HTML.
I'm a recent member of this group, so I'd like to put in my 2 cents.
:) (some competing groups use Cactus which is C++ based, although it also allows C and Fortran).
1) This is a first -- no other group has achieved this before. yay! (after decades of work!)
2) This is hard for the following reasons:
a) since you are doing calculations near (or on/in) a black hole, you tend to get a lot of
infinities, which 1) crash your code and 2) exacerbate your errors
b) for most simulations, your grid remains fixed. For black holes though, they *deform* the
spacetime around them -- which means your grid points have to move (in a non-predictable
manner)!
c) what happens when two black holes merge is not well understood (ie, what should happen?),
so this is new science
d) initial data is hard to get and unreliable. If two black holes are far apart, you can
write an exact solution (at least within some error), but to get them close to where they
are interating, you pretty much need this kind of simulation anyways. This is such a large
problem that there are only a handful (a dozen or two?) initial data sets currently.
3) Everything is written in Fortran!
4) It runs on a variety of architectures (x86, Itanium, PA-RISC, Alpha, etc etc)...pretty much
anything that supports ifc (faster) or gcc.
5) There are several approaches to some of the issues above, from puncture splitting (using a
different spacetime metric like 1/r vs r to remove the singularity), excision (not evolving
inside the event horizon, since that's not "interesting" anyways), and other methods. Our
new method actually doesn't need any of those "tricks", which is pretty interesting.
6) This data helps drive the LISA and LIGO projects from a theoretical standpoint--basically
knowing what kind of gravitional waves they should be seeing, and to correlate what they see
and what their data may represent (ie, if you see a waveform like this, this means that it's
two merging black holes, vs just co-rotating black holes).
6a) We study black holes b/c they are pretty much the only thing that'll generate detectable
gravitational waves.
so yay!
There were two cases covered on slashdot. One was a single mother of three who had no idea on how to even download songs from the internet illegally (although one of her children or their friends might have done so). The other one didn't own a computer (possibly ID fraud?).
The promise of the internet is that we all become publishers (if we choose)...from news, blogs, games, music, and movies....this is the "New Economy". The "Old Economy" is dominated by the gatekeepers, the middlemen--the ones that own the means of distribution, starting with railroads.
Let freedom ring!
Remember: "I don't know what the new programming language of 2050 will be, but I know it will be called Fortran" :)
I'm sorry, but that is just wrong. I'm from China. I grew up there until age 8 (end of 2nd grade) when I moved to the US (1986) Teachers were the *most* respected profession. Yes, higher level teachers (college vs high school vs whatever) were respected more, but every teacher is highly respected. When I got home from school (this was typical), I did the homework given by my teacher, then the homework given by my mother, then more work because I was expected to do it. At that tender age I could do multiplying and dividing of fractions, long division, decimals, and basic algebra. Calculus is normally a 7th grade subject in China.
Typical slashdot nerd. He has a quantum computer, but still connects via modem!
The mass doesn't come into play. As long as it has the same velocity as the earth, it has the same radius from the Sun.
(G = gravitational constant, M = mass of Sun, m = mass of orbiting object, v = linear velocity, r = radius)
Force = (G*M*m)/r^2 = m*v^2/r
the mass of the orbiting object, m, drops out and you have:
v = sqrt(G*M/r)
(you can substitute v=r*w where w is the angular velocity if you care).
This is obvious once you know that the moon orbits around the Sun and not the Earth (or rather the Sun exerts a much larger force on the Moon than the Earth does).
I'm sorry, but I completely disagree with you. The US does NOT care about democracies. Well, some Americans do, but the government in general does not. Iraq *was* going towards a democracy. We hired Saddam to assasinate the president. We (via the CIA) overthrew the *democratic* government of Iran and installed a ruthless dictator (the Shah). Chile had a democratically elected government. We overthrew that and install Pinochet.
Let me reinterate. We like *weak* democracies, the kind that will bow to us and let our corporations rape their resources and people. There is a word for this: imperialism. And we need colonies. That makes us rich. Or rather, it makes the 3% of the US population that holds 75% of the US wealth rich. This is why the rest of the world hates us.
1) Saudi Arabia has extra capacity, but not in light sweet crude, the kind the US uses (the other kind has too much sulfur for our refineries). 2) (to reply to the grandparent) Iraq *was* friendly to the US. In 84 (maybe 83), Rumsfeld visited Saddam as a US envoy. One of the things Saddam complained about was about Kuwait. Rumsfeld replied that it is his problem, and not a concern of the US's (ie, invade if you want, we don't care). Saddam canceled a Haliburton pipeline project in 1990. He invaded Kuwait in 1991. Any questions? 3) Since we 'betrayed' Saddam, he hated us. Which means any excess Iraqi oil capacity would go to China and Europe, not the US. 4) it is estimated that a $10 rise in the price per barrel of oil translates to a 5% drop in US GDP. Do you think the 3% of the US population that hold 75% of all the US wealth will stand for that?
In Feb 2000, Bill Richardson, energy secretary under Clinton, went on a tour of all of the OPEC member states except Iraq, Iran, and Libya. He found that they are all at maximum production -- ie, while they have more oil in the ground, they can't pump it up any faster. The US will need 7.5 more million barrels of oil per day by 2020. The only excess oil we can find lies in these "unstable states" (ie, states that don't kowtow to the US). That is why we had to invade Iraq -- they have the worlds 2nd largest proven oil reserve, after Saudi Arabia (our other toady). Remember, the CIA hired and trained Saddam Hussein to assasinate the then democratically elected president of Iraq. He failed, but when the CIA did succeed, we helped put him in power. One of the many reasons why Iraqi's don't trust the US.
Someone did connect the dots. A month before Sept 11th, a report was sent to Bush saying that terrorists were likely to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. He (or his staff -- Rumsfeld & Cheney) ignored it.
I think he meant that communism was fiscally ultraliberal and socially authoritarian. Since he said that libertarianism is the opposite of that, he implies that libertarianism is fiscally ultraconservative and socially, uh, independent? Which is what you said in you "correction"
What's with all this hooplah with 3D? I say, "been there, done that"....Let's go straight to 4D!!!!
Most vendors on Pricewatch (the first page or so of the lowest prices) are generally dishonest -- you'll get bad (or no) service if anything goes wrong, and they make up for their lower prices with overly high shipping costs ($40 or more for something that can be shipped for $10).
:)
So lookup each vendor you are considering in Reseller ratings -- and don't just look at the number, read the reviews.
It is generally not worthwhile to build a *whole* computer from scratch by yourself, unless you want:
a) the best components
b) to slowly upgrade it piece by piece over time.
Nowadays getting a computer from Dell or Gateway is cheaper (or just as cheap) as building it yourself (with the same components). You can also try walmart.com
Oh, and http://www.essencompu.com/ is pretty good -- they don't have the very best prices (but they are quite good), their shipping is actually in line with reality, and the service is excellent.
The Multiverse is a virtual reality world -- you can "buy" real estate in it, and code your own piece of land. Everything ran using the Multiverse protocol, so that they can interact. A few large corps hosted the backbones, from whom you purchased prime virtual real estate. This project sounds like something similar -- individuals can program their own little lands that others can see.
If you have direct line of sight, a directed 802.11b link can go for miles. There have been several articles on slashdot about that. Another possibility is ordering a dry line (just a copper line) from your work to your home -- security companies like ADT generally use this, so it is available. Set up a pair of routers on each end, and you're in business. There was another slashdot article about that a year ago.
What we need are some brave souls to do the following:
:)
1) Intercept a shipment of DVDs and/or CDs.
2) Call the local & national press to cover the following:
3) Have a protest while dumping said shipment of DVDs and/or CDs in the sea (or local river).
Note: This is illegal. You will be fined and/or jailed for this. So do this in a liberal community. Boston would work best.
Note 2: Try to make it so that the DVDs & CDs are easily retrievable so you don't pollute the river.
Yes, but the point of making it increase geometically vs linearly is that it become too expensive for *anyone* after a certain time......400 euros is pocket change, especially to coporations, publishers, etc.
This is more for copyrights (like say for books, music, ideas) than patents, since patents have a limited lifetime anyways (I believe 17 years in US, 20 in UK).
Right now in the US, copyrights last till death of the author + 70 years, which gets extended every 20 years by 20 years! So it never expires.
We want to encourge people financially to implement their ideas, but we also want it back into the public domain after they are "done" with it.
Public Domain is not GPL -- you don't have to release the source code for modifications.
So suppose you base you app on some public domain code + modifications -- you can copyright that.
Now if someone else comes along and makes another app that is also based on the same PD code, and you sue them for copyright infringement, a judge would have to compare the 2 sets of code minus the PD core that both contains.
Of course, eventually it will no longer be economically viable to keep the copyright on your modifications, and the whole kit & caboodle will have to go to the public domain.
That does not neccessary mean that you have to make it publically available -- it just means that you no longer have rights to sue someone for making a similar product.
If it is mostly public domain, then it cannot be patented or copyrighted (which I believe is current law...ie, I cannot patent the idea of the 20-wheeler truck...at least I hope not!)
So I cannot copyright "Mickey Mouse" forever...I *can* copyright "Mickey Mouse", "Minny Mouse", "Micey Mouse", but when I let go of the copyright for "Mickey Mouse" it goes to the public domain, and others can base their works on it.
thanks :)
Multiplying by a percentage of royalties received would require resources to track each copyright/patent, and that would potentially dwarf all revenues from this.
Also, we don't want to "punish" success -- we just want some simple economic force to push things into the Public Domain.
Why pay $799 (or less) for a Mac? :)
Most of these schools already have hundreds of PCs set up (that's why they are being audited).
The are (gasp) leveraging their existing infrustructure.
For the holder of the copyright / patent:
For the first year, pay $1.
For the second, pay $2.
For the third, pay $4.
Then $8, $16, $32, etc....
After 10 years, you would have paid >$1,000.
After 20 years, you would have paid >$1,000,000.
For different industries, you can set
different starting points (so a $1 starting point could be good for books, maybe $1000 for software patents, etc).
So short term, anyone can benefit, and long term, more things will go back into the public domain.
That way, if it is still economically sound for you to hold your copyright/patent, you still can.
If not, it goes into the public domain.
The money collected could help fund basic research.
Oh, and this should be applied retroactively to all current copyrights/patents (take that Disney!).
Also, maybe allow copyrights be to held by coporations, but say every 5 years, it has to go back to the person/people who created it. Allow them the option of re-licensing it back to a company though.
alpha is the coupling constant for the electromagnetic force.
In other words, it determines the "strengh" of the electromagnetic force. It is important because
a) it has no units (it's just a number, approximately 1/137)
b) it is easy to measure to a great degree of accuracy
c) it can be measured using a variety of different experiments
d) many fundamental phyiscal constants (such as c - the speed of light in a vacuum, e - the charge of an electron, and h - the Planck constant.
So a change in alpha would mean a change in one of the fundamental constants of physics.
For more information, you can read NIST's wonderful description.