I like how he leads off with an example of ONE asshole who removes Windows at every opportunity. Clearly, this is representative of the entire Linux community. (That was sarcasm.)
He then goes on to discuss the battle between Linux and Windows on the desktop. This is interesting, because regular readers of Slashdot know that it's the server market that is the battleground. Maybe we just don't know as much as good old Russ.
He points to projects like Gnome and KDE to support his claim that Linux developers hunger for the desktop. Well, this is arguable. However, he lambasts them by saying that these developers should spend their time "developing kick-ass development platforms". You know, Russ, more sophisticated window managers make it easier to use computers, even for hard-core developers. Isn't it nice to stop worrying about your window manager and the application base start worrying about doing something productive on your computer?
Somebody else take over here. I am sure I made some broad generalizations and I apologize, but Russ has his head so much farther up his ass than I.
I feel all warm and tingly. You should try some Russ bashing.
Yes, good, the rate at which energy is carried away from the other side is a limiting factor. The reason you might want to apply it to only specific areas is that this is very strange material, and very expensive to produce.
The key in these materials is that they conduct electricity very well, but conduct heat poorly. This is weird, as the two are usually linked. The electrons carry heat energy with them as they move through the crystal, and the random motions of the atoms transfer heat through the crystal as well. The electrons and the vibrations (phonons) interact, hence the link between the two kinds of heat conduction. You usually only hear about the atomic vibrations because that effect is many thousands of times stronger than the electronic heat conduction.
However, we can control the motion of the electrons. We cannot control the flow of the heat transfered by the random motion of atoms. The big idea is to create a material that impedes the flow of heat, but allows us to control the flow of electrons. As bizarre as this sounds, there are some naturally occurring minerals that have this property (skutterudites). These are exremely rare, and harder to synthesize than diamonds. There are strategies involving alternating layers of semiconductor, and that sounds like the plan in this article.
The point is that these materials are hard to make, and very expensive (high purity, many production steps). It turns out that only some parts of an IC generate huge amounts of heat (this is an issue when we mount optical devices on ICs). The dot idea is a clever trick to save on production costs. Those clever engineers.
If you live near a university, find the place where they surplus old stuff. At my university, University Surplus is part of the Property Control department, is only open one day a week, and hidden in some WWII military barracks on the South side of campus. You may have to look hard to find the one near you. Ask a custodian or somebody who works in a machine shop.
I go by regularly, and often see projection screens that are cheap. They sometimes have slide and flimstrip projectors. The prices are often lower than those on e-Bay because they are not trying to turn a profit, and you don't have to pay shipping.
It's true that the president does appoint the Attorney General. However, when did "the majority of Americans" ever come into the last presidential election?
Stop listening to the lies of the overprivileged. Are you overpriviliged, Croatian Sensation?
By the way, the government should fund the NEA for the same reason the government funds the NSF. Art and science are important parts of our cultural identity. However, it is often not profitable to fund scientific research and artistic expression. The NEA keeps art alive. If you don't think art needs to be kept alive, then you should read a book by Leonard Shlain called "Art and Physics". It talks about the parallels between the artistic world and the scientific world.
Good post. You managed to mix enough truth in to make me look twice.
They do get the atoms from a chemical decomposition, but not quite how you describe it.
Let my explain the atom trap.
The magnetic fields produce a spatial trap for the atoms (the most energetic leave, the least energetic settle in the region of lowest potential energy).
The lasers trap the atoms in momentum space. Here is how it is done. The allowed transition energies for the atoms used are well known. The experimenter takes a laser that lases at the corresponding frequency (E=hv). She (her name is Sharon) then de-tunes it so that the atoms do not absorb any energy when they are at rest. However, any atoms that are moving toward the laser will see the beam as blue-shifted to the right frequency and absorb a photon. This photon has a momentum opposite to that of the atom, so it is slowed. It then emits the photon in a random direction. The net effect is that the atoms lose momentum. They use six lasers, two for each of the three orghogonal space coordinates.
There are a lot of ideas. My favorite is a more precise definition of the second (very low noise experiment, since the entire ensemble is in same state). Scientists need a better second. I'm not kidding.
Now that I have given you a practical answer, here is a more interesting one. The technological advances that have come about in the search for the BEC are astounding. One example is laser cooling (Nobel Prize, 1997).
From a physics standpoint, it answers a question that has been with us for more than 50 years (I don't remember when the condensate was postulated, but Einstein died in the 50s).
For more fun, it blurs the distinction between atomic and molecular physics and condensed matter physics. That's always fun!
I found myself in need of some special drive mounting brackets yesterday. I went nuts looking for some pieces of my old erector set. I finally gave up, grabbed a drill, a case blank, and a hack saw. It was more than nostalgia. It was necessity!
The proper order for great toys is:
Apple IIGS > Capsella > Erector > Lego
Capsella had those water kits. Those were just so damn cool!
Yes, but the only reason the modern electronics industry got off the ground is that people blatently violated those very patents. (I heard Jack Kilby say this in a recent talk.)
Second, the FET was patented in 1927, and it is this that makes modern computers go, not the BJT of which you speak. The original patent holder didn't make a damn dime. (Yes, it was because he couldn't make one, only design one.)
The transistor is a staple of modern electronics because it is superior technology. The concern about the W3C is that inferior technology will become standard as corporations push for profits. This isn't very far fetched (Microsoft), and that is why we Slashdotters are worried.
I agree. It costs a lot of money to buy a Senator. Furthermore, you have to be depositing the money INTO the Senator's personal bank account, not withholding it from a university.
You wouldn't hire a C student to make scientific or educational decisions, would you? Then why elect one?
Hey, don't knock kitchen science. Burn Teflon®. One of the reaction products is HF, which is deadly in only parts per million. Woo hoo!
(This is why you shouldn't run coaxial cable through heating ducts. It contains Teflon®. A fire will cause poison gas to be piped throughout the ventilation system. Again, I say, "Woo hoo!")
I liked the comment from the software developers. "Graham says SIAC converted to Linux quickly because of the software's open, flexible nature. "We were able to port our Artmail application in about two-and-a-half days," Graham said." This is the best argument against the MS FUD campaign I have heard in a long time. I hope a lot of business people take notice.
It's 50-100 microns in diameter. Most people have no idea what a micron is, and the article is a popular press item. I suspect that is also why they mentioned the AND, OR, and NOT gates instead of simply the functionally complete NAND gate.
Still, kudos to them for posting references to papers published by the research group.
First of all, Dr. Goodstein does not stare at Excel spreadsheets all day. Spreadsheets tend to be inadequate for serious analysis of large amounts of data. They are good for quick and dirty stuff, and nice for making presentations.
Enough with that rant.
Dr. Goodstein is talking about inspiring students. As a graduate student in physics, I have to say that I chose this career out of a large number of possibilities (electrical engineering, math, chemistry, and music). I picked physics because I was inspired by Dr. Goodstein's "Mechanical Universe" series when I was in high school. I was not born with an innate liking for the subject, I was inspired. If have teachers who do not excite and inspire students to study the sciences, then the number of scientists will remain small.
He is not looking for some magic method to make scientists out of all people. He is looking for some method to interest ordinary people in the sciences, not just those who would be scientists. I think his analogy to the important degrees of the 19th and 20th centuries is apt. Not everybody who studied the classics went on to become classical scholars. Instead, they took that knowledge with them into their professional lives, as lawyers, politicians, and physicians. In our increasingly technological world, it is important that ordinary people understand science and technology. One reliable method of doing that is to study the sciences in college.
Do not call Dr. Goodstein a pop-scientist until you have done a careful literature search. You will find that he is a real scientist.
Thanks! I try to make it a point to download as many copies of DeCSS as possible. Remember the prime number implementation? (It was on Slashdot a few months ago.) So far, that one is my favorite.
When writing code is outlawed, only outlaws will write code.
You can have my keyboard when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Cliches aside, I have been thinking for a while that geeks and the NRA now have a lot in common. The key to the issue is an interpretation of the constitution. Many of us believe that the DMCA is an abridgement of our first amendment rights. Let's do what the NRA does, let's lobby. Maybe we don't have the time or money to go to Washington, but we U.S. citizens can slashdot our senators and our representatives. My one e-mail may not make the difference, but if we all send a polite e-mail expressing our concerns, we can make a difference. Contact your senators and representative. Let them know. They are becomming aware that there is a growing population of the technologically savvy. If they hear from enough of us, they will listen.
Posted so late, I doubt that anyone will read this. However, my favorite comic strip in the whole world was pertinent, and I thought you might like to see it.
There is a group of people who are attempting to put some pressure on hardware manufacturers in that time honored tradition, a petition. The petition is short, to the point, and does not throw insults. There is also a way to add hardware manufacturers to the list of potential recipients.
You apply conservation of energy to a fluid (like a body of water) to derive Bernoulli's equation.
In the case of the canoe, you can model the water as an energy source for the canoe. The key is that the energy has to come from somewhere, and it has to go somewhere. In the case of a non-resonant excitation, most of the energy is lost due to dissipation. In the case of resonance, most of the energy goes into the motion of the system.
Good question. It's a subtle point, but it is mentioned once in the article. When you vibrate something, there are two things going on. First, the driving oscillations introduce energy into the system. The system responds by vibrating at the driving frequency. Everything has a resonant frequency, a preferred frequency of oscillation. If you drive the system at any other frequency, you encounter a great deal of resistance. However, if you drive it at resonance, you encounter a negligable amount of resistance. This means that nearly all the energy put into the system results in the mechanical motion of the system.
For the canoe, the designers were clever and harnessed this motion to propell the craft. In the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (a.k.a. Galloping Gertie), the energy provided by the wind shook the structure to pieces. (It literally shook to pieces. Search for video of the thing, you will be amazed.)
Usually, engineers design to avoid disasters like Galloping Gertie. However, this wastes a lot of energy.
The resonance they are discussing here is a classical phenomenon, so does not involve anything like quarks.
On a wholly unrelated point, I have a problem with the "Canoe Experts." They poo-pooed the canoe as "primarily an engineering project," stating that they have years of research behind them. Yeah, well, their years of research began with engineering projects. Are those guys really scientists and engineers? They don't sound like it. They sound like marketing bozos--very safe, very pussy. What a couple of twits. I bet they haven't come up with a single original engineering or scientific idea in their lives.
Of course, that is just the humble opinion of a physics graduate student with an B.S. in engineering.
It's stories like these that make the rumors of Linux being dead on the desktop sound hollow. It's apps like these that can really mainstream Linux, and I am proud to own Matrox products. Just add one more to the list of Linux supporting hardware vendors (Adaptec, Znyx, Transmeta,..., Matrox).
By the way, did anyone happen to notice if there were plans to include support for the Millennium series of cards?
GE introduced the first diesel-electric hybrid in the 1920s in trains. That was the technology that allowed them to replace the steam engine. It turns out that only an electric motor could provide the tremendous starting torque necessary to replace the steam engine. The diesel engine acted as little more than a generator. Stop singing the praises of "new" hybrids. Chances are that you have been looking at them for years.
Also, CARB (California Air Resource Board) is comprised of a bunch of fucking idiots. They also want to rid southern California of the riding lawnmower and the outdoor grill. It was nice to finally see an article that did not completely kowtow to these environmental anti-scientists.
Slashdot Mirror
I like how he leads off with an example of ONE asshole who removes Windows at every opportunity. Clearly, this is representative of the entire Linux community. (That was sarcasm.)
He then goes on to discuss the battle between Linux and Windows on the desktop. This is interesting, because regular readers of Slashdot know that it's the server market that is the battleground. Maybe we just don't know as much as good old Russ.
He points to projects like Gnome and KDE to support his claim that Linux developers hunger for the desktop. Well, this is arguable. However, he lambasts them by saying that these developers should spend their time "developing kick-ass development platforms". You know, Russ, more sophisticated window managers make it easier to use computers, even for hard-core developers. Isn't it nice to stop worrying about your window manager and the application base start worrying about doing something productive on your computer?
Somebody else take over here. I am sure I made some broad generalizations and I apologize, but Russ has his head so much farther up his ass than I.
I feel all warm and tingly. You should try some Russ bashing.
Yes, good, the rate at which energy is carried away from the other side is a limiting factor. The reason you might want to apply it to only specific areas is that this is very strange material, and very expensive to produce.
The key in these materials is that they conduct electricity very well, but conduct heat poorly. This is weird, as the two are usually linked. The electrons carry heat energy with them as they move through the crystal, and the random motions of the atoms transfer heat through the crystal as well. The electrons and the vibrations (phonons) interact, hence the link between the two kinds of heat conduction. You usually only hear about the atomic vibrations because that effect is many thousands of times stronger than the electronic heat conduction.
However, we can control the motion of the electrons. We cannot control the flow of the heat transfered by the random motion of atoms. The big idea is to create a material that impedes the flow of heat, but allows us to control the flow of electrons. As bizarre as this sounds, there are some naturally occurring minerals that have this property (skutterudites). These are exremely rare, and harder to synthesize than diamonds. There are strategies involving alternating layers of semiconductor, and that sounds like the plan in this article.
The point is that these materials are hard to make, and very expensive (high purity, many production steps). It turns out that only some parts of an IC generate huge amounts of heat (this is an issue when we mount optical devices on ICs). The dot idea is a clever trick to save on production costs. Those clever engineers.
If you live near a university, find the place where they surplus old stuff. At my university, University Surplus is part of the Property Control department, is only open one day a week, and hidden in some WWII military barracks on the South side of campus. You may have to look hard to find the one near you. Ask a custodian or somebody who works in a machine shop.
I go by regularly, and often see projection screens that are cheap. They sometimes have slide and flimstrip projectors. The prices are often lower than those on e-Bay because they are not trying to turn a profit, and you don't have to pay shipping.
It's true that the president does appoint the Attorney General. However, when did "the majority of Americans" ever come into the last presidential election?
Stop listening to the lies of the overprivileged. Are you overpriviliged, Croatian Sensation?
By the way, the government should fund the NEA for the same reason the government funds the NSF. Art and science are important parts of our cultural identity. However, it is often not profitable to fund scientific research and artistic expression. The NEA keeps art alive. If you don't think art needs to be kept alive, then you should read a book by Leonard Shlain called "Art and Physics". It talks about the parallels between the artistic world and the scientific world.
Good post. You managed to mix enough truth in to make me look twice.
They do get the atoms from a chemical decomposition, but not quite how you describe it.
Let my explain the atom trap.
The magnetic fields produce a spatial trap for the atoms (the most energetic leave, the least energetic settle in the region of lowest potential energy).
The lasers trap the atoms in momentum space. Here is how it is done. The allowed transition energies for the atoms used are well known. The experimenter takes a laser that lases at the corresponding frequency (E=hv). She (her name is Sharon) then de-tunes it so that the atoms do not absorb any energy when they are at rest. However, any atoms that are moving toward the laser will see the beam as blue-shifted to the right frequency and absorb a photon. This photon has a momentum opposite to that of the atom, so it is slowed. It then emits the photon in a random direction. The net effect is that the atoms lose momentum. They use six lasers, two for each of the three orghogonal space coordinates.
There are a lot of ideas. My favorite is a more precise definition of the second (very low noise experiment, since the entire ensemble is in same state). Scientists need a better second. I'm not kidding.
Now that I have given you a practical answer, here is a more interesting one. The technological advances that have come about in the search for the BEC are astounding. One example is laser cooling (Nobel Prize, 1997).
From a physics standpoint, it answers a question that has been with us for more than 50 years (I don't remember when the condensate was postulated, but Einstein died in the 50s).
For more fun, it blurs the distinction between atomic and molecular physics and condensed matter physics. That's always fun!
I found myself in need of some special drive mounting brackets yesterday. I went nuts looking for some pieces of my old erector set. I finally gave up, grabbed a drill, a case blank, and a hack saw. It was more than nostalgia. It was necessity!
The proper order for great toys is:
Apple IIGS > Capsella > Erector > Lego
Capsella had those water kits. Those were just so damn cool!
Yes, but the only reason the modern electronics industry got off the ground is that people blatently violated those very patents. (I heard Jack Kilby say this in a recent talk.)
Second, the FET was patented in 1927, and it is this that makes modern computers go, not the BJT of which you speak. The original patent holder didn't make a damn dime. (Yes, it was because he couldn't make one, only design one.)
The transistor is a staple of modern electronics because it is superior technology. The concern about the W3C is that inferior technology will become standard as corporations push for profits. This isn't very far fetched (Microsoft), and that is why we Slashdotters are worried.
I agree. It costs a lot of money to buy a Senator. Furthermore, you have to be depositing the money INTO the Senator's personal bank account, not withholding it from a university.
You wouldn't hire a C student to make scientific or educational decisions, would you? Then why elect one?
You have been scooped. This article from The Onion shows Hawking's deep commitment to the process of using technology to improve the human condition.
Hey, don't knock kitchen science. Burn Teflon®. One of the reaction products is HF, which is deadly in only parts per million. Woo hoo!
(This is why you shouldn't run coaxial cable through heating ducts. It contains Teflon®. A fire will cause poison gas to be piped throughout the ventilation system. Again, I say, "Woo hoo!")
Time to get another canary...
I liked the comment from the software developers. "Graham says SIAC converted to Linux quickly because of the software's open, flexible nature. "We were able to port our Artmail application in about two-and-a-half days," Graham said." This is the best argument against the MS FUD campaign I have heard in a long time. I hope a lot of business people take notice.
"Open source stifles innovation" my ass!
Try defining a new particle.
It's 50-100 microns in diameter. Most people have no idea what a micron is, and the article is a popular press item. I suspect that is also why they mentioned the AND, OR, and NOT gates instead of simply the functionally complete NAND gate.
Still, kudos to them for posting references to papers published by the research group.
First of all, Dr. Goodstein does not stare at Excel spreadsheets all day. Spreadsheets tend to be inadequate for serious analysis of large amounts of data. They are good for quick and dirty stuff, and nice for making presentations. Enough with that rant.
Dr. Goodstein is talking about inspiring students. As a graduate student in physics, I have to say that I chose this career out of a large number of possibilities (electrical engineering, math, chemistry, and music). I picked physics because I was inspired by Dr. Goodstein's "Mechanical Universe" series when I was in high school. I was not born with an innate liking for the subject, I was inspired. If have teachers who do not excite and inspire students to study the sciences, then the number of scientists will remain small.
He is not looking for some magic method to make scientists out of all people. He is looking for some method to interest ordinary people in the sciences, not just those who would be scientists. I think his analogy to the important degrees of the 19th and 20th centuries is apt. Not everybody who studied the classics went on to become classical scholars. Instead, they took that knowledge with them into their professional lives, as lawyers, politicians, and physicians. In our increasingly technological world, it is important that ordinary people understand science and technology. One reliable method of doing that is to study the sciences in college.
Do not call Dr. Goodstein a pop-scientist until you have done a careful literature search. You will find that he is a real scientist.
Thanks! I try to make it a point to download as many copies of DeCSS as possible. Remember the prime number implementation? (It was on Slashdot a few months ago.) So far, that one is my favorite.
You can have my keyboard when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Cliches aside, I have been thinking for a while that geeks and the NRA now have a lot in common. The key to the issue is an interpretation of the constitution. Many of us believe that the DMCA is an abridgement of our first amendment rights. Let's do what the NRA does, let's lobby. Maybe we don't have the time or money to go to Washington, but we U.S. citizens can slashdot our senators and our representatives. My one e-mail may not make the difference, but if we all send a polite e-mail expressing our concerns, we can make a difference. Contact your senators and representative. Let them know. They are becomming aware that there is a growing population of the technologically savvy. If they hear from enough of us, they will listen.
Posted so late, I doubt that anyone will read this. However, my favorite comic strip in the whole world was pertinent, and I thought you might like to see it.
I was expecting a Ronald Reagan action figure. Hey, with our current president, we may see a sequel.
Unfortunately, on re-reading the petition page, the petition has now been closed. Damn, I wish it had been Slashdotted earlier.
There is a group of people who are attempting to put some pressure on hardware manufacturers in that time honored tradition, a petition. The petition is short, to the point, and does not throw insults. There is also a way to add hardware manufacturers to the list of potential recipients.
You apply conservation of energy to a fluid (like a body of water) to derive Bernoulli's equation.
In the case of the canoe, you can model the water as an energy source for the canoe. The key is that the energy has to come from somewhere, and it has to go somewhere. In the case of a non-resonant excitation, most of the energy is lost due to dissipation. In the case of resonance, most of the energy goes into the motion of the system.
Good question. It's a subtle point, but it is mentioned once in the article. When you vibrate something, there are two things going on. First, the driving oscillations introduce energy into the system. The system responds by vibrating at the driving frequency. Everything has a resonant frequency, a preferred frequency of oscillation. If you drive the system at any other frequency, you encounter a great deal of resistance. However, if you drive it at resonance, you encounter a negligable amount of resistance. This means that nearly all the energy put into the system results in the mechanical motion of the system.
For the canoe, the designers were clever and harnessed this motion to propell the craft. In the case of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (a.k.a. Galloping Gertie), the energy provided by the wind shook the structure to pieces. (It literally shook to pieces. Search for video of the thing, you will be amazed.) Usually, engineers design to avoid disasters like Galloping Gertie. However, this wastes a lot of energy.
The resonance they are discussing here is a classical phenomenon, so does not involve anything like quarks.
On a wholly unrelated point, I have a problem with the "Canoe Experts." They poo-pooed the canoe as "primarily an engineering project," stating that they have years of research behind them. Yeah, well, their years of research began with engineering projects. Are those guys really scientists and engineers? They don't sound like it. They sound like marketing bozos--very safe, very pussy. What a couple of twits. I bet they haven't come up with a single original engineering or scientific idea in their lives.
Of course, that is just the humble opinion of a physics graduate student with an B.S. in engineering.
It's stories like these that make the rumors of Linux being dead on the desktop sound hollow. It's apps like these that can really mainstream Linux, and I am proud to own Matrox products. Just add one more to the list of Linux supporting hardware vendors (Adaptec, Znyx, Transmeta, ..., Matrox).
By the way, did anyone happen to notice if there were plans to include support for the Millennium series of cards?
GE introduced the first diesel-electric hybrid in the 1920s in trains. That was the technology that allowed them to replace the steam engine. It turns out that only an electric motor could provide the tremendous starting torque necessary to replace the steam engine. The diesel engine acted as little more than a generator. Stop singing the praises of "new" hybrids. Chances are that you have been looking at them for years.
Also, CARB (California Air Resource Board) is comprised of a bunch of fucking idiots. They also want to rid southern California of the riding lawnmower and the outdoor grill. It was nice to finally see an article that did not completely kowtow to these environmental anti-scientists.