I work in particle physics and e-prints (electronic preprints) have been the standard
way of communicating work for the past few years.
( See http://xxx.lanl.gov/ ). It's still usual to submit to a paper journal, but after the e-print submission. The paper journals do still perform a usefull service however, because the submissions are then sent out for peer review, so the final
paper version may be of higher quality (although
the changed versions are usually re-submitted to
the e-print archive). It also looks better on future jobs applications to have papers accepted
by established journals.
The one example I know of an all-electronic
refereed journal is http://jhep.mse.jhu.edu/
but it hasn't really managed to build up it's
reputation to the level that it needs to compete
with the paper journals.
I've recently ordered a Linux box from VA and, after some delay, it arrived at the beginning of the week. Or at least the box did. The monitor, however, is nowhere to be seen. Is this just a mistake, or does VA believe 'real coders use teletype'? :-)
ps. If the latter is the case, can I have a teletype please?
There are *no* areas in Classical General Relativity when time ceases to exist.
If somebody has a relative velocity with respect to you near the speed of light (only massless things can actually have a relative velocity of the speed of light) the you will percieve time to move slower for that person, just as they will percieve time to move slower for you.
Again you will percieve time to move slower for sombody that is closer to a strong gravitational field than you are. If you take the limit of infinite space-time curvature then this looks like time stops. (But also the theory breaks down - while you can learn a lot by modelling black-holes etc by singularities, a singularity in the thoery does mean that you are applying it outside it's range of strict applicability).
Neither of these is time *not existing*, at the most looking like it's stopped, but the concept still makes sense. Even if there is something 'more fundemental' explanation of what time is, the evidence for the current models is so strong that that the new explanation will have to look just like the old one in most situations we can observe (just like special rel looks like newtonian mechanics if you move slowly enough).
What I don't understand is why any Government would want to do this.
It doesn't make sense if some particular person or group of people is targeted - it would always be much simpler just to tap their *connection* to the internet, which is probably already covered by the telephony legislation.
The only other alternative I can see is automated 'eavesdropping' looking for keywords etc.. To do this the tapping must be widespread enough get a fair proportion of the packets from any one message. This would be prohibitevly complicated/expensive.
The Standard model of particle physics contains two types of particles bosons and fermions. To a first approximation fermions can be thought of as 'stuff' and the bosons carry the fundemental forces between various bits of 'stuff'. (For example an electron is a fermion that feels electromagnetic forces when it interacts with a photon). The fundemental forces of interest here are the weak and strong forces.
The fermions that feel the strong force are called the quarks and are individually named up, down, *strange* (so called because it wasn't expected at the time it was discovered), charm, bottom and top. The gluons (bosons for the strong force) interact very strongly with both the quarks and each other to such a degree that the quarks are actually bound together (nobody has ever experimentally observed a free quark) into groups of either three or two quarks, like the proton (two ups and a down) and the neutron (two downs and an up).
Strange matter is a grouping a quarks that include the strange quark. The reason why you haven't heard about strange matter before (but have heard about neutrons and protons I hope:) is that the strange quark can decay via the weak force into the up and down quarks (mainly the up) and will do so because it's heavier and therefore it's bound states are heavier and things will always decay to a state with lower energy if they have the chance (remember E=mc^2 so heavier things have more energy).
The idea behind Stranglets is that the strange quark may actually form bound states that are energetically favourable, but that these states take a lot of energy to form (actually ripping the current bound states appart and re-arranging them is hard, but once you do it the state has lower energy). So RHIC might have a high enough energy to form them at which point they would start converting evreything they touch into stranglet including big particle accelerators, planets etc..
This idea just seems to be plain wrong. The calculation that the idea is based on is dubious, and as mentioned previously, if such energetically favourable states *could* be formed it's hard to see why they haven't already be formed as cosmic rays interact with the upper atmosphere.
So, there you go, I'm almost 99% certain that RHIC won't destroy the planet. What more could you ask for?
The info was already on the web, and any damages the people responsible could have paid would be insignificant to Lego. They had nothing more to lose by 'allowing' the info to stay up, only extra customers to gain.
In constrast a few years ago it became popular to call a certain way of displaying data about high energy particle decays a 'lego' plot because of it's lego-block like appearance. Lego actually took legal action over this (presumably to protect the brand name).
While I'm not sure which cluster is refered to in the anouncement, I do know that FermiLab is planning to use a pc cluster for *Theoretical* Lattice QCD calculations (as opposed to the direct analysis of the experimental data from the particle collider, which is the other possible need for such a cluster).
They seem confident that they can overcome the communications problems, which aren't *huge* for LQCD - most, but not all, of the time only nearest neighbour communications are needed - but also cannot be neglected.
To be competative today, they would have to be able to generate of the order of 500 GFLOPS (the current cutting edge lattice QCD computer is probably the QCDSP at Brookhaven National Lab, which runs at 600 GFLOPS, using a dedicated machine with 12,000 processor nodes - the individual cpu's are very low powered though, and don't run linux).
One problem with filtering the posts by score is that, as - if I'm reading the article correctly - only 20-30 percent of the posts are moderated, many good posts will be missed by somebody who sets their preference to 2 (say). If the average score of a users post is to be kept track of, however, perhaps this should effect the default score in some way. One simple way to do this is to round the average to the nearest integer and use this value as the default (or take the leading digit of the average to avoid promotion of an average score of 1.51 to a default score of 2).
Slashdot Mirror
I work in particle physics and e-prints (electronic preprints) have been the standard
way of communicating work for the past few years.
( See http://xxx.lanl.gov/ ). It's still usual to submit to a paper journal, but after the e-print submission. The paper journals do still perform a usefull service however, because the submissions are then sent out for peer review, so the final
paper version may be of higher quality (although
the changed versions are usually re-submitted to
the e-print archive). It also looks better on future jobs applications to have papers accepted
by established journals.
The one example I know of an all-electronic
refereed journal is http://jhep.mse.jhu.edu/
but it hasn't really managed to build up it's
reputation to the level that it needs to compete
with the paper journals.
except by then we'll all be using
64bit watches
I've recently ordered a Linux box from VA and, after some delay, it arrived at the beginning of the week. Or at least the box did. The monitor, however, is nowhere to be seen. Is this just a mistake, or does VA believe 'real coders use teletype'?
:-)
ps. If the latter is the case, can I have a teletype please?
There are *no* areas in Classical General Relativity when time ceases to exist.
If somebody has a relative velocity with respect to you near the speed of light (only massless things can actually have a relative velocity of the speed of light) the you will percieve time to move slower for that person, just as they will percieve time to move slower for you.
Again you will percieve time to move slower for sombody that is closer to a strong gravitational field than you are. If you take the limit of infinite space-time curvature then this looks like time stops. (But also the theory breaks down - while you can learn a lot by modelling black-holes etc by singularities, a singularity in the thoery does mean that you are applying it outside it's range of strict applicability).
Neither of these is time *not existing*, at the most looking like it's stopped, but the concept still makes sense. Even if there is something 'more fundemental' explanation of what time is, the evidence for the current models is so strong that that the new explanation will have to look just like the old one in most situations we can observe (just like special rel looks like newtonian mechanics if you move slowly enough).
Sorry for being so pedantic.
What I don't understand is why any Government would want to do this.
.. To do this the tapping must be widespread enough get a fair proportion of the packets from any one message. This would be prohibitevly complicated/expensive.
It doesn't make sense if some particular person or group of people is targeted - it would always be much simpler just to tap their *connection* to the internet, which is probably already covered by the telephony legislation.
The only other alternative I can see is automated 'eavesdropping' looking for keywords etc
The Standard model of particle physics contains two types of particles bosons and fermions. To a first approximation fermions can be thought of as 'stuff' and the bosons carry the fundemental forces between various bits of 'stuff'. (For example an electron is a fermion that feels electromagnetic forces when it interacts with a photon). The fundemental forces of interest here are the weak and strong forces.
:) is that the strange quark can decay via the weak force into the up and down quarks (mainly the up) and will do so because it's heavier and therefore it's bound states are heavier and things will always decay to a state with lower energy if they have the chance (remember E=mc^2 so heavier things have more energy).
The fermions that feel the strong force are called the quarks and are individually named up, down, *strange* (so called because it wasn't expected at the time it was discovered), charm, bottom and top. The gluons (bosons for the strong force) interact very strongly with both the quarks and each other to such a degree that the quarks are actually bound together (nobody has ever experimentally observed a free quark) into groups of either three or two quarks, like the proton (two ups and a down) and the neutron (two downs and an up).
Strange matter is a grouping a quarks that include the strange quark. The reason why you haven't heard about strange matter before (but have heard about neutrons and protons I hope
The idea behind Stranglets is that the strange quark may actually form bound states that are energetically favourable, but that these states take a lot of energy to form (actually ripping the current bound states appart and re-arranging them is hard, but once you do it the state has lower energy). So RHIC might have a high enough energy to form them at which point they would start converting evreything they touch into stranglet including big particle accelerators, planets etc..
This idea just seems to be plain wrong. The calculation that the idea is based on is dubious, and as mentioned previously, if such energetically favourable states *could* be formed it's hard to see why they haven't already be formed as cosmic rays interact with the upper atmosphere.
So, there you go, I'm almost 99% certain that RHIC won't destroy the planet. What more could you ask for?
>This a 'Merkin site, we use 'Merkin units. Find >yourself a fahrenheit-celsius converter and come >back.
I'm Englishman in America (definetly a minority), and you just repressed me! Prepare to be sued.
The info was already on the web,
and any damages the people
responsible could have paid would
be insignificant to Lego. They had
nothing more to lose by 'allowing' the
info to stay up, only extra customers to
gain.
In constrast a few years ago it became
popular to call a certain way of displaying
data about high energy particle decays
a 'lego' plot because of it's
lego-block like appearance. Lego
actually took legal action over this
(presumably to protect the brand name).
While I'm not sure which cluster
is refered to in the anouncement,
I do know that FermiLab is
planning to use a pc cluster
for *Theoretical* Lattice QCD
calculations (as opposed to the
direct analysis of the experimental
data from the particle collider,
which is the other possible need
for such a cluster).
They seem confident that they can
overcome the communications problems,
which aren't *huge* for LQCD - most,
but not all, of the time only nearest
neighbour communications are needed -
but also cannot be neglected.
To be competative today, they would
have to be able to generate of the
order of 500 GFLOPS (the current
cutting edge lattice QCD computer is
probably the QCDSP at Brookhaven
National Lab, which runs at 600 GFLOPS,
using a dedicated machine with
12,000 processor nodes - the individual
cpu's are very low powered though,
and don't run linux).
One problem with filtering the posts by score is
that, as - if I'm reading the article
correctly - only 20-30 percent of the posts are moderated, many good posts will be missed by somebody who sets their preference to 2 (say). If the average score of a users post is to be kept track of, however, perhaps this should effect the
default score in some way.
One simple way to do this is to round the average to the nearest integer and use this value as the default (or take the leading digit of the average to avoid promotion of an average score of 1.51 to a default score of 2).