I read through the FIRST contest website. Definitely very interesting, and I think all the students and sponsors deserve a round of applause.
HOWEVER, if you look a little bit closer at preicsely where the teams are coming from, you will find that a disproportinate number come from schools in the immediate vicinity of high tech belts around major urband areas. (The San Francisco Bay Area appears to be the largest geographical segment). As such, this contest is quite similar to the long-running Wsstinghouse (now Intel) competition, where students in major urban areas working in collaboration with major researchers from academia and industry compete against kids who lack any support from sponsors, and whose only research tools are their local libraries and the web. While the FIRST website did not provide further demographics, I am quite willing to believe that its participants are similar to those of the Intel winners -- largely upper-middle-class to upper-class HS students from urban areas whose parents are college educated, often in the sciences.
What about the REST of the kids out there?
I think we should give serious thought as to what we are doing to encourage the REST of the kids out there to pursue math, science, and engineering careers. FIRST and Intel are great ideas, but I for one am skpetical that we are really targeting the students who need our attention the most -- those with genuine ability and inclination to pursue math and science, but who lack the support to make it to the FIRST competition in Florida, or who lack a sponsor to help them win Intel. I think many of us in science and engineering can point to a small number of folks who have had a major influence in supporting our careers; without that support, many of us would not be here today. The fact that we are turning our backs on large numbers of students with both the ability and the inclination to pursue science and engineering is a deeply disturbing notion that should give anyone pause.
The web is the universal medium of our age, which has broken down many geographical and class barriers. Can't we use it to reach the rest of the kids out there?
For full disclosure, I am a physics graduate student working in the astronomy department at Berkeley. Although I am not a cosmologist, I heard the latest on the supernova searches from one of the key investigators yesterday at an informal brown bag lunch. As a regular/. reader, I thought I would put in my own two cents worth of corrections and additional info.
First, the existence of a cosmological constant is NOT at all news. Prior observations by both the LBL group doing observations of supernovae type Ia (group page) and the BOOMERANG group doing observations of the cosmic microwave background (group page) verified the existence of a cosmological constant several years ago.
Second, as a previous poster has stated, the geometry of the universe is NOT necessarily open.
See especially this informative figure which shows the allowed region of parameter space based on both the SNIa and the BOOMERANG results. As you can easily see, the combined results are consistent with a flat universe with a cosmological constant, but the flat universe is a critical case, and one cannot exclude either an open or closed universe.
Third, what IS new is the detection of an extremely distant SN at redshift z = 1.6. The discovery, made largely by Adam Riess, who is now at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute, was largely serendipitous; it was detected in the Hubble Deep Field, and a number of prior observations allowed Riess to piece together a light curve from which he could infer the intrinsic luminosity. The NEW results are remarkable for two main reasons :
1) Critics have argued that a thin smattering of grey dust in intergalactic space could mimic the effect of a cosmological constant (ie, for a fixed redshift, objects seen are dimmer not due to an acceleration of the expansion of the universe, but instead due to obscuring dust along the line of sight, where the dust must absorb equally well at all frequencies). However, at very high redshift, the relative contribution of matter is higher, and so objects seen are BRIGHTER than what one expects in a freely coasting universe. This is not the trend predicted by the simplest dust model. So the recent evidence is one further advance for the non-zero cosmological constant model.
2) At such high redshifts, clocks appear to be moving faster because of the relative expansion of the universe since then (a photon wavelength is stretched out, but c remains constant, hence the photon frequency is also slowing in time in the universe, as are all clocks). The high redshift SNIa light curve exhibits this general relativistic time effect, and one cannot make sense of the curve without correcting for it.
Blatant cheating is rather unheard of in science circles in academia; important results are almost always confirmed with other expirments or calculations, and given that an erroneous result is enough to sink one's academic reputation, there is very little incentive to publish fradulent results. Slopiness and carelessness (like any other endeavor) are however common, and scientists with poor research quality often suffer damaged reputations as well.
Although the author is a bit vague on details, the example sounds very similar to the David Baltimore Case, which was the subject of much investigation and a recent book by noted science historian Daniel Kevles (author of science history classic "The Physicists"). Baltimore himself is a very well known scientist (he won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1975, and is currently the President of Caltech), which accounts for the attention the case received.
However, there is a key difference between the Baltimore case and that described by the author. A scientist named O'Toole trying to reproduce their experiments failed, and accused Baltimore and his student of fraud, with very little evidence to back up the claim. Baltimore and his graduate student were exhonerated, and most people believe it was O'Toole's race to brand Baltimore which lies at the root of the problem.
Baltimore may have read the papers in great detail (as the peer reviewers of the published publications certainly did), but the truth of the matter is that without having redone the experiment oneself, no one can spot every subtle flaw in another's work. That is a fact of life, and is a key reason why scientific results must be reproducible. In the end, quite unlike the teetering house of cards which the author alludes to, the scientific enterpise has been enormusly successful across the board, precisely because it builds on solid foundations which are checked and tested carefully.
The authors of the study claim that the magnetite samples found could _only_ have a 'biological' origin. Yet the Chronicle article points out that there were many magnetite crystals found in the rock sample, and only the ones with a presumed 'biological' origin were studied in detail.
This appears contradictory. If many magnetite crystals were found in addition to the 'biological' ones, then why (humor me for a moment) couldn't the 'biological' magnetite crystals also have a non-biological origin? A non-biological origin would seem to be a much simpler hypothesis.
When I go in to see a doctor and complain about stomach aches, the doctor begins down a list of common explanations -- flu virus, food poisoning, etc. He _doesn't_ simply leap to the conclusion that I have a demon in my belly which must be exorcized. This basic principle of simplicity of hypotheses is well-known, and is sometimes referred to as Occam's razor, or the 'Keep-it-Simple-Stupid' (KISS) principle. This paper, along with much of the recent work on water/life on Mars completely neglects this principle, which to me appears to be a very dangerous position to take.
As with many ideas in science and technology, the idea of supersonic jets flying at very high altitudes is not entirely new. During the 1950's, at the same time that NASA was pursuing the first manned spaceflights with the Mercury missions, the USAF was pursuing a completely separate X-plane program, designing and testing supersonic jets that approached high enough altitudes (~20 miles) that begun to approach the conventional notion of "space". (For comparison, Mercury MR-3, flown by Alan Shephard, went to about 120 miles.)
The X-15 plane (scroll down the page for program history), which flew for the first time in 1959, exceeded Mach 6, and flew over 100,000 ft.
The project was eventually cancelled, after a combination of spectacular crashes, exceedingly high costs, and the success of NASA's programs.
It is interesting that the X-plane pilots viewed themselves as the true masters of high-altitude and space flight. In their opinion, they were in control of their missions from start to finish, unlike the Mercury astronauts, who were simply strapped down on top of an explosive bottlerocket. Indeed, the first astronaut was a chimp!
I have several minor issues with this news announcement.
1. The astronomers involved failed to place their discovery in the larger picture. Molecular clouds have been observed in a wide variety of molecues (CO, CO_2, H_2O, CS, H_2CO, HCOOH, C_2H_6, CH_3CH_2OH, etc...) for about thirty years now. Every now and then a slightly more complex molecule is discovered for the first time, but given the complex gas phase chemistry, this is not at all surprising.
2. After failing to properly place the discovery in context, the article immediately leaps to the "origin of life" carrot.
Our educational system has failed to educate the public in basic science, mathematics, and technology. Hence, popular articles such as these
almost NEVER discuss the real scientific importance of discoveries (which would require a more thorough background than can be provided in a 1 minute soundbyte or a webpage -- not that the journalists themselves even have such a background themselves, mind you), scientific journalists continually dangles one of a handful of carrots in front of the dazzled, curious, though admittedly thoroughly ignorant populace :
I. Cure of diseas/disorder (fill in the blank -- cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's, etc.), elimination of world starvation and/or poverty
II. Faster computers, cleaner, more efficient automobiles, better toasters (or fill in favorite life-improvement gadget)
III. Life, the Universe, and Everything
In this case, carrot III was the most convenient.
GET REAL PEOPLE. These many be noble goals, but the truth of the matter is that most scientists are motivated to solve intricate little riddles which are often very involved, but infinitely fascinating. While not diminishing important secondary factors (career, prestige, etc.), in general, they pursue science for science's sake, and only pull out these lame carrots for journalists and popular explanations. (They never use them when discussing amongst themselves). The popular view of a scientist is by now completely distorted by the fact that almost no one, besides other scientists, have the slightest clue as to what scientists ACTUALLY do, and what ACTUALLY
motivates them to do what they do.
3. Lastly, I think the slashdot editors need to exercise better discretion in choosing science topics. This must be the dozenth time I've seen a relatively unimportant, superhyped scientific discovery receive a billing by./'s editors. If need be, they should put together a small volunteer board of experts in scientific disciplines to consult with before posting an article.
There are two serious problems with this sytem. One technical. One fundamental.
The technical problem involves authenticating the document content. If I am a researcher, how can I be certain that releasing my document to Docster will guarantee that a malicious user (my arch-nemesis scientist colleague competing with me for fame and fortune) will be unable to corrupt my article?
The second, more fundamental problem involves a company getting rich from the work of academics. Napster/Docster is not in this game out of the goodness of their own hearts If I am an academic who wishes the widest distribution of my article possible, I will put it on my home page for any and all to download free of charge at any time. Ultimately, I find it hard to believe that Docster would not eventually move to a substription-based service, similar to Napster. I personally find it very repulsive that a company might sit between myself and my colleagues, making money from our hard work. (Granted, this already occurs in print journals and conference proceedings, but I am hopeful their days are limited.)
I believe this is one place where government research agencies can actually make a great positive impact. Agencies funding research can require that authors archive their work (not just publications, but also data and computer programs) in a data archive accessible to anyone in the world. This is entirely commensurate with the fact that taxpayers were the ones who footed the bill to begin with, and they should be allowed to see what their investments have produced. Also, such a mandatory archive will help creater greater sharing between scientists, and avoid the kind of data hoarding that most scientists are inclined to practice.
While an interesting read, the Washington Post journalist writing this story seemed so boondogled by the hype issued by the Air Force that he lacked almost any level of critical assessment.
The article gives the WWII war in the Pacific as a prototypical "success" of wargaming. Yet it failed to point out that the largest engagement of the US military in the Cold War era -- Vietnam -- took the US military by shock. No one would have anticipated that a dedicated group of guerilla resistance fighters in a small Southeast Asian country, facing against up the US, with its superior firepower and complete dominance of the sky, could have kicked the pants off the US military and sent them scrambling back home with their tails between their legs.
The implicit assumption of the whole 'Space Wargame' concept is that space warfare will play a critical role in the next big US conflict, necessarily against another space-faring nation (almost certainly China or Russia). Yet the history of the Cold War has taught us that the most serious threats do not come from the other superpowers, but from the small guy. It was true for the US in Vietnam, and true for Russia in Afghanastan. Each of the large projects mentioned (missile defense, space plane, earth-based satellite defenses) will cost astronomical sums of money to develop. Yet their use in a full-scale conflict against a small nation would be of limited use. As critical-minded citizens, we should question whether such large ticket items will necessarily lead to greater security for the US, and greater stability for the world.
The whole story reminds me of the downfall of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. He had surrounded himself with the deepest layers of security against the prying eyes of powerful magic.Yet only in the last few moments, as two hobbits marched up Mount Doom, did he realize the futility of his decision...
You raise an excellent issue. I believe that you are correct in pointing out that the users should receive some compensation for the use of their hardware and bandwidth.
However, your estimation of the economics of the marketplace appears to be somewhat naive. Take a real world example, for instance, a broker who negotiates transactions for his clients and purchases and sells stocks for them. The agent's only role is to connect two people and negotiate a price for the transaction. In principle, the buyer and seller could carry this out on their own, but for a variety of reasons (lack of time and expertise, etc.), it just turns out to be far better for everyone to have the broker assist them. The same brokered concept is true in many other marketplces -- real estate agents, auctioneers, etc...
Napster is a broker. Nothing more, nothing less. While in principle there is nothing preventing your "skinny earringed punk" to learn about your extensive mp3 collection, connect to your machine, and begin downloading your songs, in practice he would have never known about your mp3s. As such, Napster is providing a brokered transaction and is entitled to charge the downloader for its services. I agree that you should be entitled to some fraction of that charge in remuneration.
The real question will be whether the average user will switch to another P2P format. My guess, based on the level of techical expertise of the average user, is quite simply, no.
First, I think you are correct in pointing out that exponential growth cannot strictly apply for very long before the system becomes "starved" for resources. This is true in natural populations, and we expect the same should apply here.
However, your order estimates are incorrect.
This means that for any grid area n^2, there are(n+2)^2 adjacent squares.
Yes, and the rate of growth is determined by the difference between these two, which is O (n), not O(n^2).
Because of this fact, I don't see how these things can achieve any more than a O(n^2) growth rate, because the adjacent resources available to these bots would be O(n^2).
In fact, it is O (n). To easily visualize this, imagine the system in 1D for a moment. After the first unit assembles its nearest neighbors, each additional unit builds the next unit at the end of the line of units. This leads to a constant rate of growth. In 2D, the rate of growth is determined by the rate of change of the area, not length, which leads to O (n). In 3D, the rate of growth is determined by the rate of change of the volume, which leads to O (n^2). The result in each case is easy to visualize : it is limited by the boundary of the N-D volume the units have already filled.
All this said, I think this whole discussion doesn't emphasize that even an O (n) growth rate can be vastly enormous for large enough n. The main problem is that it appears much slower to start up than a truly exponential process, which could be realized for a longer duration if the newly built units were "mixed" randomly into the grid. This could be the case if each unit could be assigned to move some random distance under its own power, after each building cycle. Eventually, however, the exponential rate of growth will turn over when the system's capacity is reached.
TOKYO (Reuters)- After discussing plans for the Playstation 3, which will pack 1,000 times the power of the Playstation 2, Sony described plans for the next- generation Aibo robot, nicknamed the Verisimulutude Automonous Poochlike-Organism Robot, or VAPOR.
VAPOR will also carry 1,000 times the computational and mechanical ability of Aibo. Sporting highly powerful servomotors which Sony is currently developing, VAPOR will be able to reach peak running speeds of 120 miles per hour and maximum jumping heights of 20 feet, and be capable of a steel-like bite of over 3,000 pounds per square inch. Said one unnamed engineer assigned to the project, "It will surely strike terror into the hearts of burglars and postal workers alike."
In addition, its sleek metallic form will sport enormous computational capability, using a teraflops-scale processor which Sony is planning to begin planning very soon. Furthermore, VAPOR will utilize Autonomous Intelligence (AI) and a special hardware port to connect directly with the planned Playstation 3 to provide little children and hapless twenty-somethings without friends with formidable video game competitors.
Lastly, VAPOR will be able to connect directly to the internet and download songs released by Sony Records in its proprietary ATRAC digital music format and bark along with the lyrics to provide its owners with hours of listening pleasure.
Said Sony Corp's President and CEO, Noboyuki Idei, "We see a convergence in the home security system, attack dog, and home entertainment markets. Leveraging our unique position as a corporate juggernaut, we plan to corner this growing segment of the consumer electronics marketplace."
I take it back : there is a proposed concept in place. I just noticed that on Stallman's summary of the project, he states
But what happens if some pages are erroneous, or even deceptive? We cannot assume this won't happen. But the corrective is for other articles to point out the error. Instead of having "quality control" by one privileged organization, we will have review by various groups, which will earn respect by their own policies and actions. In a world where no one is infalliable, this is the best we can do.
This seems like a community-based system similar to that used by slashdot. However, I think particularly for very detailed technical articles, allowing everyone in the world to decide who will earn their "respect" (quantified as a numerical value like slashdot kharma?) may be quite problematic at best, and fundamentally flawed at worst. The truth of the matter is that democracy does not work in polling the entire world about intellectual matters. Polling 10 million Americans about two conflicting articles about Elementary Particle Physics will not produce a more accurate result that polling 2 or 3 expert High Energy Physicists. Who decides whether those individuals are experts? A slightly larger, though still small, community of peers.
First, let me say that I think this is a REALLY great idea. An extremely high-quality encyclopedia made freely available through the GNU license would be a gift of immeasurable valuable to the intellectual heritage of the world. However, there are some serious problems with the described encylopedia that could seriously degrade its quality, and render it much less valuable as an intellectual resource.
As you can see, the working method is very simple. People send us articles, and we add them to the encyclopedia. That's all.
Really? No peer review? What about multiple entries? Who will determine which articles get published, and what criteria will be used? Who will check the validity of the factual information presented, and who will check the checkers?
As best as I can tell, the only answer that the GNUpedia page gives is
Although there are lot of things waiting to be defined. We want to hear from you....just send it to hf@gnu.org. He'll post it on the enclopedia.
I tip my hat to Mr. Arena, who has taken charge of a potentially very important project. However, neither he nor any other single individual is qualified to judge the content value of the entire sphere of human knowledge. The world of the intellect is not a democracy, and not every writer's entry will be of equal value when it comes to mastery of the subject and ability to convey ideas. Without a moderation system, this project could be fatally doomed to posting poor, or worse yet, signficantly inaccurate material.
I read Ender's Game a few months ago, and although like most readers, I could see the climactic moment of the novel a LONG time in advance, I still thought it was a very good novel, particularly for its time. The subplot with Peter and Valentine, which involved using pseudonyms on a word-wide computer network to gain real political influence, must have been extremely novel at the time.
However, today, with video games and computer networks prevelant throughout society, Ender's Game simply doesn't look so fresh anymore. If one went to see a movie based on it, and didn't know it was originally written in 1977, one would probably end up thinking it was an unsuccessful attempt by a Hollywood hack writer to combine Columbine, Playstation 2, and the WWW into a single plot...
Yeah, I can maybe see one small reason why this wouldn't work...
Cut to Quake player 1, completely out of ammo, hawling ass around a tight corner, emerging into a chamber, when he turns to face the wall, looking up to see an ENORMOUS billboard of a bikini-clad woman advertising a radio station...
[Quake Player 1] Whoaah... Dude!
Cut to an over-the-shoulder shot of a manacing player, carrying a fully-loaded rocket launcher, slowly walking up behind Player 1...
[Quake Player 2] Foolish hormone-laden homo sapiens adolescent...
Quake Player 1 turns around, face an image of sheer terror...
[Quake Player 1] Nooooo!
BLAM! Gibblets are scattered throughout a hundred meter radius...
I find it amazing that the moderators rated this posting all the way up to 4, since the poster evidently did not read the original article.
Part of the idea of a black hole is that I can't really see it in front of me, since it's black.
This is a common misconception. You don't see matter after it has passed through the event horizon. What you see is matter spiralling down through an accretion disk, where it is heated to extremely high temperatures, and emits X-trays.
The authors followed the X-rays emitted by a stream of matter accreting onto the black hole in time. If there were a 'hard surface', like on a neutron star, then the matter should have smacked onto it and generated an acrretion shock. However, since this was not detected, the inference is that an event horizon must have been present. The authors compare this effect to water going over a waterfall, and out of one's sight.
What you say about laws applying everywhere is absolutely meaningless.
Not quite. One of Newton's most remarkable achievements was to explain the motion of the planets using a Universal Law of Gravity that was identical to that which explained the motion of the moon and falling bodies on Earth. When people observed binary star systems, they found the same Law of Gravity is consistent with observation.
The key point here is that the concept of the 'Universality' of physical laws is a testable one; the laws make predictions, and these have been tested over and over again, with remarkable success. It is always conceivable that someday we will find a region of space that doesn't obey our known laws, but Oczam's razor suggests Universality of Physical Laws is a good assumption, until we find direct evidence to the contrary.
This is a step in the right direction, but not quite the beginning of the Diamond Age. Note that the layers only become useful once they were about 30 microns across -- quite large in comparison to the finest scale structures of less than a micron available in today's state-of-the-art silicon microelectronics.
Stephenson envisioned building diamond atom-by-atom all the way up to macroscopic dimensions. In principle, such techniques would eliminate defects entire, but this method is a far cry from it.
This will probably cost a LOT more than $26,000
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Space Tourism
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(*) Assuming an average person weighs about 150 pounds, and carries no additional weight, this launch cost translates to about $170/pound.
(*) The current cost per pound is about $5,000 per pound (See this excellent National Academy of Sciences Report). Assuming no improvement in launch technologies, the launch cost for a typical person would be more like $1 Million.
(*) According the the same NAS report, the cost may go down to hundreds of dollars by 2020. This improvement would be necessary to get the ticket price down into the range suggested. However, the report emphasizes that revolutionary breakthroughs are needed.
Note that if the only purpose of these launches would be to ferry civilians into space, the gross amount of revenue per launch, at $26,000 a head, would be only about $1 M total for all 50 passengers. This is comparable (to within a factor a few) of the gross amount of revenue of a single large overseas jet flight. However, there are a LOT, LOT more people able to pay about $500 - $1,000 for such a flight than $26,000 for a space flight, even if revolutionary breakthroughs happen. With none of the enormous research and development involved, the ordinary overseas airline business is a much better business to be in. This is basically the same reason why supersonic airline travel is still today no more commonplace than twenty years ago, and why the next generation of SST jets have been largely orphaned in the research phase.
>> In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
The problem is not the speed of computing, but the relative efficiency of Java versus other languages. Just because a brand-spanking new computer available today is much faster than its 1990 counterpart doesn't mean than gaming companies can slack off. The competition is often (though not always) to obtain the best graphics and gameplay by squeezing as much performance out of a box as poassible. The reason why Java is not feasible today is that C++ is much better for highly computationally intesive projects.
I'd agree with you that if Java can overcome that obstacle, AND it doesn't fall prey to standards prolilferation, it would be an enormous boon to computing in general -- not just gaming.
Not a crash... but a metamorphic transformation.
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I think the article points out one essential fact... that too many incompatible hardware platforms (and not even listing Indrema) will inevitably lead to some companies finding themselves with dwindling market share.
However, the gaming companies primarily make money off _liscensing_ and _games_, and not the boxes themselves. At some point, a company like Sega, which is known for developing incredibly high quality innovative games will realize they stand to maintain much higher profit margins by dumping their hardware development and going purely with software on other platforms, where they will have a much wider audience to sell to.
I don't envision a crash in a few years so much a transformation in which most of the hardware companies will go software, or be bought out by the bigger players.
The two software paradigms of open source and proprietary closed source are fundamentally irreconcilable. The whole power of the open source movement is to build massive endeavors based on the contributions of many, many developers. It is crucial to note that these armies of developers are often motivated by non-tangible reasons -- often the primary motivation is the challenge of the task, which will benefit a wide community of like-minded individuals. In Eric Raymond's terminology -- the open source community is fundamentally based on "gift-giving". I would doubt that these same developers would suddenly leap onto a MS toolkit ported to Linux if it were proprietary, which it will be in all likelihood.
Moreover, the less that MS complies with the open source philosophy, the fewer applications and utilities will be available for the hypothetical MS/Linux hybrid OS. Throwing away X, for instance, would throw away an enormous volume of X applications, which MS could never afford to replace. Which OS would you choose to install : a bare-bones MS/Linux hybrid OS, or a full-featured "classic" linux distro with hoardes of available software?
This development is trubling, but is what you expect when the information submitted was made available under a non-open license. (BTW : I don't expect even the Google cache to be around much longer if the CRC lawyers are diligent enough.)
I think an Open World of Mathematics would be an ideal GPL'ed open project to pursue. Fundamental mathemaics does not change significantly over time, and it should be possible to create a database of several hundred key topics, worked on by a comparable number of contributors, in categories organized by editors who review submissions for completeness and accuracy. Eric put in a massive amount of work, but if the work is split up into several hundreds to thousands of chunks, then each chunk is quite managable. Such an Open World of Mathematics would be a lasting contribution to the Net, much like Project Gutenberg is for world literature.
This was an interesting little blurb. It's too bad that under the current scheme of things, artists signing on to major labels don't even own their own music, much less decide over such issues as whether music should be 'free'. Even if you hate the RIAA (as I do), you have to realize that they hold vastly greater influence over the future of music than the musicians themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
I read through the FIRST contest website. Definitely very interesting, and I think all the students and sponsors deserve a round of applause.
HOWEVER, if you look a little bit closer at preicsely where the teams are coming from, you will find that a disproportinate number come from schools in the immediate vicinity of high tech belts around major urband areas. (The San Francisco Bay Area appears to be the largest geographical segment). As such, this contest is quite similar to the long-running Wsstinghouse (now Intel) competition, where students in major urban areas working in collaboration with major researchers from academia and industry compete against kids who lack any support from sponsors, and whose only research tools are their local libraries and the web. While the FIRST website did not provide further demographics, I am quite willing to believe that its participants are similar to those of the Intel winners -- largely upper-middle-class to upper-class HS students from urban areas whose parents are college educated, often in the sciences.
What about the REST of the kids out there?
I think we should give serious thought as to what we are doing to encourage the REST of the kids out there to pursue math, science, and engineering careers. FIRST and Intel are great ideas, but I for one am skpetical that we are really targeting the students who need our attention the most -- those with genuine ability and inclination to pursue math and science, but who lack the support to make it to the FIRST competition in Florida, or who lack a sponsor to help them win Intel. I think many of us in science and engineering can point to a small number of folks who have had a major influence in supporting our careers; without that support, many of us would not be here today. The fact that we are turning our backs on large numbers of students with both the ability and the inclination to pursue science and engineering is a deeply disturbing notion that should give anyone pause.
The web is the universal medium of our age, which has broken down many geographical and class barriers. Can't we use it to reach the rest of the kids out there?
For full disclosure, I am a physics graduate student working in the astronomy department at Berkeley. Although I am not a cosmologist, I heard the latest on the supernova searches from one of the key investigators yesterday at an informal brown bag lunch. As a regular /. reader, I thought I would put in my own two cents worth of corrections and additional info.
First, the existence of a cosmological constant is NOT at all news. Prior observations by both the LBL group doing observations of supernovae type Ia (group page) and the BOOMERANG group doing observations of the cosmic microwave background (group page) verified the existence of a cosmological constant several years ago.
Second, as a previous poster has stated, the geometry of the universe is NOT necessarily open.
See especially this informative figure which shows the allowed region of parameter space based on both the SNIa and the BOOMERANG results. As you can easily see, the combined results are consistent with a flat universe with a cosmological constant, but the flat universe is a critical case, and one cannot exclude either an open or closed universe.
Third, what IS new is the detection of an extremely distant SN at redshift z = 1.6. The discovery, made largely by Adam Riess, who is now at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute, was largely serendipitous; it was detected in the Hubble Deep Field, and a number of prior observations allowed Riess to piece together a light curve from which he could infer the intrinsic luminosity. The NEW results are remarkable for two main reasons :
1) Critics have argued that a thin smattering of grey dust in intergalactic space could mimic the effect of a cosmological constant (ie, for a fixed redshift, objects seen are dimmer not due to an acceleration of the expansion of the universe, but instead due to obscuring dust along the line of sight, where the dust must absorb equally well at all frequencies). However, at very high redshift, the relative contribution of matter is higher, and so objects seen are BRIGHTER than what one expects in a freely coasting universe. This is not the trend predicted by the simplest dust model. So the recent evidence is one further advance for the non-zero cosmological constant model.
2) At such high redshifts, clocks appear to be moving faster because of the relative expansion of the universe since then (a photon wavelength is stretched out, but c remains constant, hence the photon frequency is also slowing in time in the universe, as are all clocks). The high redshift SNIa light curve exhibits this general relativistic time effect, and one cannot make sense of the curve without correcting for it.
Blatant cheating is rather unheard of in science circles in academia; important results are almost always confirmed with other expirments or calculations, and given that an erroneous result is enough to sink one's academic reputation, there is very little incentive to publish fradulent results. Slopiness and carelessness (like any other endeavor) are however common, and scientists with poor research quality often suffer damaged reputations as well.
Although the author is a bit vague on details, the example sounds very similar to the David Baltimore Case, which was the subject of much investigation and a recent book by noted science historian Daniel Kevles (author of science history classic "The Physicists"). Baltimore himself is a very well known scientist (he won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1975, and is currently the President of Caltech), which accounts for the attention the case received.
However, there is a key difference between the Baltimore case and that described by the author. A scientist named O'Toole trying to reproduce their experiments failed, and accused Baltimore and his student of fraud, with very little evidence to back up the claim. Baltimore and his graduate student were exhonerated, and most people believe it was O'Toole's race to brand Baltimore which lies at the root of the problem.
Baltimore may have read the papers in great detail (as the peer reviewers of the published publications certainly did), but the truth of the matter is that without having redone the experiment oneself, no one can spot every subtle flaw in another's work. That is a fact of life, and is a key reason why scientific results must be reproducible. In the end, quite unlike the teetering house of cards which the author alludes to, the scientific enterpise has been enormusly successful across the board, precisely because it builds on solid foundations which are checked and tested carefully.
The authors of the study claim that the magnetite samples found could _only_ have a 'biological' origin. Yet the Chronicle article points out that there were many magnetite crystals found in the rock sample, and only the ones with a presumed 'biological' origin were studied in detail.
This appears contradictory. If many magnetite crystals were found in addition to the 'biological' ones, then why (humor me for a moment) couldn't the 'biological' magnetite crystals also have a non-biological origin? A non-biological origin would seem to be a much simpler hypothesis.
When I go in to see a doctor and complain about stomach aches, the doctor begins down a list of common explanations -- flu virus, food poisoning, etc. He _doesn't_ simply leap to the conclusion that I have a demon in my belly which must be exorcized. This basic principle of simplicity of hypotheses is well-known, and is sometimes referred to as Occam's razor, or the 'Keep-it-Simple-Stupid' (KISS) principle. This paper, along with much of the recent work on water/life on Mars completely neglects this principle, which to me appears to be a very dangerous position to take.
Laiks was the first cosmonaut. :-)
The X-15 plane (scroll down the page for program history), which flew for the first time in 1959, exceeded Mach 6, and flew over 100,000 ft.
The project was eventually cancelled, after a combination of spectacular crashes, exceedingly high costs, and the success of NASA's programs.
It is interesting that the X-plane pilots viewed themselves as the true masters of high-altitude and space flight. In their opinion, they were in control of their missions from start to finish, unlike the Mercury astronauts, who were simply strapped down on top of an explosive bottlerocket. Indeed, the first astronaut was a chimp!
Bob
I have several minor issues with this news announcement.
./'s editors. If need be, they should put together a small volunteer board of experts in scientific disciplines to consult with before posting an article.
1. The astronomers involved failed to place their discovery in the larger picture. Molecular clouds have been observed in a wide variety of molecues (CO, CO_2, H_2O, CS, H_2CO, HCOOH, C_2H_6, CH_3CH_2OH, etc...) for about thirty years now. Every now and then a slightly more complex molecule is discovered for the first time, but given the complex gas phase chemistry, this is not at all surprising.
2. After failing to properly place the discovery in context, the article immediately leaps to the "origin of life" carrot.
Our educational system has failed to educate the public in basic science, mathematics, and technology. Hence, popular articles such as these
almost NEVER discuss the real scientific importance of discoveries (which would require a more thorough background than can be provided in a 1 minute soundbyte or a webpage -- not that the journalists themselves even have such a background themselves, mind you), scientific journalists continually dangles one of a handful of carrots in front of the dazzled, curious, though admittedly thoroughly ignorant populace :
I. Cure of diseas/disorder (fill in the blank -- cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's, etc.), elimination of world starvation and/or poverty
II. Faster computers, cleaner, more efficient automobiles, better toasters (or fill in favorite life-improvement gadget)
III. Life, the Universe, and Everything
In this case, carrot III was the most convenient.
GET REAL PEOPLE. These many be noble goals, but the truth of the matter is that most scientists are motivated to solve intricate little riddles which are often very involved, but infinitely fascinating. While not diminishing important secondary factors (career, prestige, etc.), in general, they pursue science for science's sake, and only pull out these lame carrots for journalists and popular explanations. (They never use them when discussing amongst themselves). The popular view of a scientist is by now completely distorted by the fact that almost no one, besides other scientists, have the slightest clue as to what scientists ACTUALLY do, and what ACTUALLY
motivates them to do what they do.
3. Lastly, I think the slashdot editors need to exercise better discretion in choosing science topics. This must be the dozenth time I've seen a relatively unimportant, superhyped scientific discovery receive a billing by
Bob
There are two serious problems with this sytem. One technical. One fundamental.
The technical problem involves authenticating the document content. If I am a researcher, how can I be certain that releasing my document to Docster will guarantee that a malicious user (my arch-nemesis scientist colleague competing with me for fame and fortune) will be unable to corrupt my article?
The second, more fundamental problem involves a company getting rich from the work of academics. Napster/Docster is not in this game out of the goodness of their own hearts If I am an academic who wishes the widest distribution of my article possible, I will put it on my home page for any and all to download free of charge at any time. Ultimately, I find it hard to believe that Docster would not eventually move to a substription-based service, similar to Napster. I personally find it very repulsive that a company might sit between myself and my colleagues, making money from our hard work. (Granted, this already occurs in print journals and conference proceedings, but I am hopeful their days are limited.)
I believe this is one place where government research agencies can actually make a great positive impact. Agencies funding research can require that authors archive their work (not just publications, but also data and computer programs) in a data archive accessible to anyone in the world. This is entirely commensurate with the fact that taxpayers were the ones who footed the bill to begin with, and they should be allowed to see what their investments have produced. Also, such a mandatory archive will help creater greater sharing between scientists, and avoid the kind of data hoarding that most scientists are inclined to practice.
what your favorite breakfast cereal is.
While an interesting read, the Washington Post journalist writing this story seemed so boondogled by the hype issued by the Air Force that he lacked almost any level of critical assessment.
The article gives the WWII war in the Pacific as a prototypical "success" of wargaming. Yet it failed to point out that the largest engagement of the US military in the Cold War era -- Vietnam -- took the US military by shock. No one would have anticipated that a dedicated group of guerilla resistance fighters in a small Southeast Asian country, facing against up the US, with its superior firepower and complete dominance of the sky, could have kicked the pants off the US military and sent them scrambling back home with their tails between their legs.
The implicit assumption of the whole 'Space Wargame' concept is that space warfare will play a critical role in the next big US conflict, necessarily against another space-faring nation (almost certainly China or Russia). Yet the history of the Cold War has taught us that the most serious threats do not come from the other superpowers, but from the small guy. It was true for the US in Vietnam, and true for Russia in Afghanastan. Each of the large projects mentioned (missile defense, space plane, earth-based satellite defenses) will cost astronomical sums of money to develop. Yet their use in a full-scale conflict against a small nation would be of limited use. As critical-minded citizens, we should question whether such large ticket items will necessarily lead to greater security for the US, and greater stability for the world.
The whole story reminds me of the downfall of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. He had surrounded himself with the deepest layers of security against the prying eyes of powerful magic.Yet only in the last few moments, as two hobbits marched up Mount Doom, did he realize the futility of his decision...
You raise an excellent issue. I believe that you are correct in pointing out that the users should receive some compensation for the use of their hardware and bandwidth.
However, your estimation of the economics of the marketplace appears to be somewhat naive. Take a real world example, for instance, a broker who negotiates transactions for his clients and purchases and sells stocks for them. The agent's only role is to connect two people and negotiate a price for the transaction. In principle, the buyer and seller could carry this out on their own, but for a variety of reasons (lack of time and expertise, etc.), it just turns out to be far better for everyone to have the broker assist them. The same brokered concept is true in many other marketplces -- real estate agents, auctioneers, etc...
Napster is a broker. Nothing more, nothing less. While in principle there is nothing preventing your "skinny earringed punk" to learn about your extensive mp3 collection, connect to your machine, and begin downloading your songs, in practice he would have never known about your mp3s. As such, Napster is providing a brokered transaction and is entitled to charge the downloader for its services. I agree that you should be entitled to some fraction of that charge in remuneration.
The real question will be whether the average user will switch to another P2P format. My guess, based on the level of techical expertise of the average user, is quite simply, no.
However, your order estimates are incorrect.
This means that for any grid area n^2, there are(n+2)^2 adjacent squares.
Yes, and the rate of growth is determined by the difference between these two, which is O (n), not O(n^2).
Because of this fact, I don't see how these things can achieve any more than a O(n^2) growth rate, because the adjacent resources available to these bots would be O(n^2).
In fact, it is O (n). To easily visualize this, imagine the system in 1D for a moment. After the first unit assembles its nearest neighbors, each additional unit builds the next unit at the end of the line of units. This leads to a constant rate of growth. In 2D, the rate of growth is determined by the rate of change of the area, not length, which leads to O (n). In 3D, the rate of growth is determined by the rate of change of the volume, which leads to O (n^2). The result in each case is easy to visualize : it is limited by the boundary of the N-D volume the units have already filled.
All this said, I think this whole discussion doesn't emphasize that even an O (n) growth rate can be vastly enormous for large enough n. The main problem is that it appears much slower to start up than a truly exponential process, which could be realized for a longer duration if the newly built units were "mixed" randomly into the grid. This could be the case if each unit could be assigned to move some random distance under its own power, after each building cycle. Eventually, however, the exponential rate of growth will turn over when the system's capacity is reached.
VAPOR will also carry 1,000 times the computational and mechanical ability of Aibo. Sporting highly powerful servomotors which Sony is currently developing, VAPOR will be able to reach peak running speeds of 120 miles per hour and maximum jumping heights of 20 feet, and be capable of a steel-like bite of over 3,000 pounds per square inch. Said one unnamed engineer assigned to the project, "It will surely strike terror into the hearts of burglars and postal workers alike."
In addition, its sleek metallic form will sport enormous computational capability, using a teraflops-scale processor which Sony is planning to begin planning very soon. Furthermore, VAPOR will utilize Autonomous Intelligence (AI) and a special hardware port to connect directly with the planned Playstation 3 to provide little children and hapless twenty-somethings without friends with formidable video game competitors.
Lastly, VAPOR will be able to connect directly to the internet and download songs released by Sony Records in its proprietary ATRAC digital music format and bark along with the lyrics to provide its owners with hours of listening pleasure.
Said Sony Corp's President and CEO, Noboyuki Idei, "We see a convergence in the home security system, attack dog, and home entertainment markets. Leveraging our unique position as a corporate juggernaut, we plan to corner this growing segment of the consumer electronics marketplace."
But what happens if some pages are erroneous, or even deceptive? We cannot assume this won't happen. But the corrective is for other articles to point out the error. Instead of having "quality control" by one privileged organization, we will have review by various groups, which will earn respect by their own policies and actions. In a world where no one is infalliable, this is the best we can do.
This seems like a community-based system similar to that used by slashdot. However, I think particularly for very detailed technical articles, allowing everyone in the world to decide who will earn their "respect" (quantified as a numerical value like slashdot kharma?) may be quite problematic at best, and fundamentally flawed at worst. The truth of the matter is that democracy does not work in polling the entire world about intellectual matters. Polling 10 million Americans about two conflicting articles about Elementary Particle Physics will not produce a more accurate result that polling 2 or 3 expert High Energy Physicists. Who decides whether those individuals are experts? A slightly larger, though still small, community of peers.
As you can see, the working method is very simple. People send us articles, and we add them to the encyclopedia. That's all.
Really? No peer review? What about multiple entries? Who will determine which articles get published, and what criteria will be used? Who will check the validity of the factual information presented, and who will check the checkers?
As best as I can tell, the only answer that the GNUpedia page gives is
Although there are lot of things waiting to be defined. We want to hear from you....just send it to hf@gnu.org. He'll post it on the enclopedia.
I tip my hat to Mr. Arena, who has taken charge of a potentially very important project. However, neither he nor any other single individual is qualified to judge the content value of the entire sphere of human knowledge. The world of the intellect is not a democracy, and not every writer's entry will be of equal value when it comes to mastery of the subject and ability to convey ideas. Without a moderation system, this project could be fatally doomed to posting poor, or worse yet, signficantly inaccurate material.
20 years ago.
I read Ender's Game a few months ago, and although like most readers, I could see the climactic moment of the novel a LONG time in advance, I still thought it was a very good novel, particularly for its time. The subplot with Peter and Valentine, which involved using pseudonyms on a word-wide computer network to gain real political influence, must have been extremely novel at the time.
However, today, with video games and computer networks prevelant throughout society, Ender's Game simply doesn't look so fresh anymore. If one went to see a movie based on it, and didn't know it was originally written in 1977, one would probably end up thinking it was an unsuccessful attempt by a Hollywood hack writer to combine Columbine, Playstation 2, and the WWW into a single plot...
Cut to Quake player 1, completely out of ammo, hawling ass around a tight corner, emerging into a chamber, when he turns to face the wall, looking up to see an ENORMOUS billboard of a bikini-clad woman advertising a radio station...
[Quake Player 1] Whoaah... Dude!
Cut to an over-the-shoulder shot of a manacing player, carrying a fully-loaded rocket launcher, slowly walking up behind Player 1...
[Quake Player 2] Foolish hormone-laden homo sapiens adolescent...
Quake Player 1 turns around, face an image of sheer terror...
[Quake Player 1] Nooooo!
BLAM! Gibblets are scattered throughout a hundred meter radius...
Part of the idea of a black hole is that I can't really see it in front of me, since it's black.
This is a common misconception. You don't see matter after it has passed through the event horizon. What you see is matter spiralling down through an accretion disk, where it is heated to extremely high temperatures, and emits X-trays.
The authors followed the X-rays emitted by a stream of matter accreting onto the black hole in time. If there were a 'hard surface', like on a neutron star, then the matter should have smacked onto it and generated an acrretion shock. However, since this was not detected, the inference is that an event horizon must have been present. The authors compare this effect to water going over a waterfall, and out of one's sight.
What you say about laws applying everywhere is absolutely meaningless.
Not quite. One of Newton's most remarkable achievements was to explain the motion of the planets using a Universal Law of Gravity that was identical to that which explained the motion of the moon and falling bodies on Earth. When people observed binary star systems, they found the same Law of Gravity is consistent with observation. The key point here is that the concept of the 'Universality' of physical laws is a testable one; the laws make predictions, and these have been tested over and over again, with remarkable success. It is always conceivable that someday we will find a region of space that doesn't obey our known laws, but Oczam's razor suggests Universality of Physical Laws is a good assumption, until we find direct evidence to the contrary.
This is a step in the right direction, but not quite the beginning of the Diamond Age. Note that the layers only become useful once they were about 30 microns across -- quite large in comparison to the finest scale structures of less than a micron available in today's state-of-the-art silicon microelectronics.
Stephenson envisioned building diamond atom-by-atom all the way up to macroscopic dimensions. In principle, such techniques would eliminate defects entire, but this method is a far cry from it.
(*) The current cost per pound is about $5,000 per pound (See this excellent National Academy of Sciences Report). Assuming no improvement in launch technologies, the launch cost for a typical person would be more like $1 Million.
(*) According the the same NAS report, the cost may go down to hundreds of dollars by 2020. This improvement would be necessary to get the ticket price down into the range suggested. However, the report emphasizes that revolutionary breakthroughs are needed.
Note that if the only purpose of these launches would be to ferry civilians into space, the gross amount of revenue per launch, at $26,000 a head, would be only about $1 M total for all 50 passengers. This is comparable (to within a factor a few) of the gross amount of revenue of a single large overseas jet flight. However, there are a LOT, LOT more people able to pay about $500 - $1,000 for such a flight than $26,000 for a space flight, even if revolutionary breakthroughs happen. With none of the enormous research and development involved, the ordinary overseas airline business is a much better business to be in. This is basically the same reason why supersonic airline travel is still today no more commonplace than twenty years ago, and why the next generation of SST jets have been largely orphaned in the research phase.
Bob
>> In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
The problem is not the speed of computing, but the relative efficiency of Java versus other languages. Just because a brand-spanking new computer available today is much faster than its 1990 counterpart doesn't mean than gaming companies can slack off. The competition is often (though not always) to obtain the best graphics and gameplay by squeezing as much performance out of a box as poassible. The reason why Java is not feasible today is that C++ is much better for highly computationally intesive projects.
I'd agree with you that if Java can overcome that obstacle, AND it doesn't fall prey to standards prolilferation, it would be an enormous boon to computing in general -- not just gaming.
I think the article points out one essential fact... that too many incompatible hardware platforms (and not even listing Indrema) will inevitably lead to some companies finding themselves with dwindling market share.
However, the gaming companies primarily make money off _liscensing_ and _games_, and not the boxes themselves. At some point, a company like Sega, which is known for developing incredibly high quality innovative games will realize they stand to maintain much higher profit margins by dumping their hardware development and going purely with software on other platforms, where they will have a much wider audience to sell to.
I don't envision a crash in a few years so much a transformation in which most of the hardware companies will go software, or be bought out by the bigger players.
Bob
The two software paradigms of open source and proprietary closed source are fundamentally irreconcilable. The whole power of the open source movement is to build massive endeavors based on the contributions of many, many developers. It is crucial to note that these armies of developers are often motivated by non-tangible reasons -- often the primary motivation is the challenge of the task, which will benefit a wide community of like-minded individuals. In Eric Raymond's terminology -- the open source community is fundamentally based on "gift-giving". I would doubt that these same developers would suddenly leap onto a MS toolkit ported to Linux if it were proprietary, which it will be in all likelihood.
Moreover, the less that MS complies with the open source philosophy, the fewer applications and utilities will be available for the hypothetical MS/Linux hybrid OS. Throwing away X, for instance, would throw away an enormous volume of X applications, which MS could never afford to replace. Which OS would you choose to install : a bare-bones MS/Linux hybrid OS, or a full-featured "classic" linux distro with hoardes of available software?
Bob
This development is trubling, but is what you expect when the information submitted was made available under a non-open license. (BTW : I don't expect even the Google cache to be around much longer if the CRC lawyers are diligent enough.)
I think an Open World of Mathematics would be an ideal GPL'ed open project to pursue. Fundamental mathemaics does not change significantly over time, and it should be possible to create a database of several hundred key topics, worked on by a comparable number of contributors, in categories organized by editors who review submissions for completeness and accuracy. Eric put in a massive amount of work, but if the work is split up into several hundreds to thousands of chunks, then each chunk is quite managable. Such an Open World of Mathematics would be a lasting contribution to the Net, much like Project Gutenberg is for world literature.
Bob
This was an interesting little blurb. It's too bad that under the current scheme of things, artists signing on to major labels don't even own their own music, much less decide over such issues as whether music should be 'free'. Even if you hate the RIAA (as I do), you have to realize that they hold vastly greater influence over the future of music than the musicians themselves.
Bob