But think how you would react if your country was invaded, even with the best of intentions.
You mean, think how I would react if I were not me and my country was not this country and everything else were different. Well! That really points a clear path, doesn't it! I guess that means the French should not be in Ivory Coast and the Canadians should not be in Afghanistan.
But approximately 0% of Iraqi voters voted for an American invasion.
I doubt that was on the ballot, but the fact is, many thousand Iraqis begged for U.S. military intervention over more than a decade. The idea that the militant terrorist action seen since then is simply the product of patriots defending their homeland is a bunch of Leftist nonsense. Many thousands of Iraqis gave their lives trying to get rid of Saddam and his Administration, a fact that is ignored by the likes of you.
These robots aren't intended to work alone. All that redundant vision you mention is fulfilled by the fact that more than one robot and several human soldiers are all covering the same area. And, as shown in the video in the article, each robot actually has a half-dozen cameras, fore and aft.
As for a "well-thrown egg," even if no one and nothing else were around to stop someone from doing that, the fact is, many of the militants in Iraq have really bad aim. That's why they turned to bombs in the first place; close is good enough with a big bomb.
"I wish one day these robots gets in the hands of real humans and used to distribute food and help in some drought affected african countries."
Why would you need a robot to do that? Humans can do that just as well and with less trouble. Now, if someone has a large building fall down on top of people, the robots could search for survivors, just like they did in New York City.
"Now the other guy needs to build his own stronger robot so that it can disable the US robot."
At this point, your story breaks down. None of those IED script kiddies would have a clue how to build a mobile robot, much less one that could take on a real battle scenario.
And, no one said the kill switch is an actual, external switch on the robot itself.
"is this the philosophy that led the americans to disband the iraqi army?"
Not as far as I can tell, though I haven't been able to find who the person was who made that decision. It was an order that was sent out in a memo without explanation, and no one challenged it. At the time, though, the news media explained that it was to prevent corruption in the new Iraqi force, by purging Saddam loyalists.
"what exactly was going to happen, then, if the military couldnt do the job of holding the country it had taken over? who was supposed to do that, if not the defense department? the 'keep the peace' department? oh the 'state department'?"
"Keeping the peace" is the job of civil officers, the police. The military is for attack and defense.
"if that is the case, then what manpower is the state department supposed to use? do you want a bunch of civilians swooping down on a post-war country, while the army goes home, job done?"
Why would the Army have to go home, just because police patrol the streets? The two are not exclusive. It is the job of the police to keep the peace, but the job of the military to attack and defend.
"and what is the state department supposed to do when armed militias try to blow up a building?"
That depends on when the militias are detected and how much power they have. Here in the U.S., the police have arrested several people who have tried to blow up things. Over the last few centuries, the national guard has been called out several times to put down riots. One time, we even sent out our Army to put down rebels, but that was a really tough case.
"but if state is supposed to be in charge, then why would you second guess a bunch of state department decisions, and mix and match between pentagon and state with various decisions going on after the country was taken over?"
The Iraqi state department is being phased in. First with a transitional government, then with a regular government. Iraqi police are being trained and their numbers expanded.
Actually, my earlier statement was a mistake. I meant to write, "...despite the authors' claim that polygyny benefits women..." That is, after all, what the authors claim in their third point.
As for the reason we have large brains, many researchers note that it is necessary for language skills. Our spatial skills and ability to imagine an outcome are strongly dependent on our brain capacity, too. Outwitting our mates probably is the least of our worries. And, BTW, that's another reason to have a large, strong male to guard the home; the home has more threats than just others of the same species. But, this all illustrates another point; when people want to make stories to explain why something is the way it is, they can imagine anything, and who is to say they are right or wrong? The stories usually are untestable, and can change as easily as a pair of socks. IOW, they usually don't mean anything. They are as useful as the blurbs on a newspaper astrology chart.
I saw a reference to this article on another forum I visit. I haven't had much respect for "Psychology Today" for about 13 years. Didn't some weird publication buy them out, some porn magazine or something? I think it was "Playboy" or something. The magazine was already a joke before that happened; that sale certainly didn't help it gain any scientific credibility.
A few thoughts on the article:
"Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)"
He cites some examples of women attempting to look blonde long ago or in isolated areas. Eh, so what? But, at least they are facts, meager as they are. Much worse is the explanation of why humanity in general wants women to be blonde (pretending that 2 examples proves a universal truth for all time): Blondes look younger. Women in cold regions hide their slender, young, nubile bodies under thick clothes impenetrable to male gaze, and so evolved blonde hair to signify they are young. Eh? What am I to make of such a claim? Northern women never exposed their bodies for thousands of years of pagan rituals? Human mating season is only in Winter? The rest of the world is populated by nudists?
"even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage."
The point in Christianity is not to be natural, but to be godly. Civilization is a highly unnatural state; humans are naturally savages. We like to have limited social groups, but we want all the resources we can get for ourselves. Monogamy was to reduce cruelty to women; despite the authors' claim that monogamy benefits women, because they could share a wealthy man, the reality is, this is not really a benefit.
Very few women Muslims become bombers, and in virtually every case, the woman is given the ultimatum of either redeeming her family's honor (after she was caught having an affair or committing some other sexual trespass) by becoming a bomber, or die by honor killing.
"What we found in talking to the [bombers'] families and people in the community--and I want to limit this to the women whose stories we looked into--all of them had very traumatic personal stories and issues. Those things, combined with the horrors of living under occupation, could have provoked them to act.
"What kind of personal problems?
"One [terrorist], for example, was the first female suicide bomber in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, Wafa Idris. She was married off at a very young age and could not have kids. In that society a woman, a wife, who can't have kids is considered worthless. The husband [divorced Wafa and] married someone else and had kids with her.
"Wafa also worked with a humanitarian organization on the West Bank where she saw a lot of carnage [from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]. You might say that she was a very depressed person."
"Riyashi is hailed as a courageous resistance fighter among Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank, but the truth about what drove her to such a terrible act is much more complex. Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli internal-security experts who studied the background of her case say Riyashi's husband had discovered that she was having an affair with a senior Hamas commander. Among conservative Palestinians, as in other parts of the Islamic world, an adulterous woman is often punished with death. Riyashi was given a second option: she could become a martyr.
"Behind the motives of religion and rage at Israeli occupation, Palestinian women, far more than men, tend to choose self-sacrifice as an exit from personal despair, while others are pushed into it for having broken taboos in strict Palestinian society."
As it happens, I am trying to find information on the effects of vibration from high-frequency machinery on bones, muscles and other structural members of the human body. A friend and I served aboard a Navy ship, in a space that housed our ship's steam-powered electric generators. These 400 kW generators each had a steam turbine that spun around 8k rpm. Some doctors suggest this high frequency vibration might damage bones through conduction.
Here is an article that discusses vibrations up to 100 Hz:
I've washed several keyboards over the last decade, and I've known about the dishwasher technique at least that long. I don't actually use my dishwasher, though, because I regard that as a waste of water and power. When I feel like washing a keyboard (which isn't very often), I take the whole thing apart and hose it down, first with water, then w/ some water-displacer, like circuit board cleaner.
I once had to wash my computer's motherboard, too, after my male cat sprayed it (the case was off, so the motherboard was exposed). I was amazed it worked at all after that, but it kept running for several more months, until the metal contacts began to corrode too badly.
"They're using a different technique to avoid needing line of sight"
No, they are not. Radio antennae transmit more than just line of sight; the wavelength determines the directionality. Radio transmitters have been transmitting power over hundreds of miles for a century.
"or be harmful to humans (the article even mentions the microwave beaming, and how you can also use it to cook a chicken - not really something you'd want in the home powering up those speakers, is it?)"
Magnetic induction is not necessarily any safer to human health than microwaves are. It could even be more dangerous; the medical community does not have enough information, yet. But, the CDC does have a FAQ sheet on it:
"Many studies report small increases in the rate of leukemia or brain cancer in groups of people living or working in high magnetic fields. Other studies have found no such increases. The most important data come from six recent studies of workers wearing EMF monitors to measure magnetic fields. All but one study found significantly higher cancer rates for men with average workday exposures above 4 milligauss. However, the results of these studies disagree in important ways such as the type of cancer associated with EMF exposures. So scientists cannot be sure whether the increased risks are caused by EMFs or by other factors. A few preliminary studies have also associated workplace EMFs with breast cancer, and one study has reported a possible link between occupational EMF exposure and Alzheimer s disease.
The data from all of these studies are too limited for scientists to draw conclusions. However, a national research effort is under way, and more study results are expected in a few years."
"'How cute they lit a light bulb.' Right. Its exactly the same because the end result is the same."
The end result is not the same. Several decades ago, engineers were able to beam 500 times more energy a distance 750 times greater and with twice the efficiency as this experiment at MIT.
"That could go for pretty much any story here, right?"
No.
"Faster processor? 'Bah, we were crunching numbers in the 50s. Whats the big deal here?'"
Yeah, we were crunching numbers a *billion times slower* in the 50s. The advance in processor technology is obvious. You and everyone else have failed to show any advance in this design in terms of power transmission. It is wonderful that they were able to make magnetic inductance work so well across such a distance, but that merely makes this a lab curiosity, of no more than academic interest.
"Now someone comes up with a remarkable breakthrough and you're bitching because it vaguely sounds like something you've heard of, except that you haven't bothered to RTFA to see why it's completely different."
I read the article. What is remarkable about this? What is the breakthrough? Even the article says that the breakthrough is merely that they had "followed through" what had been talked about previously. Which, frankly, is still really, really, wrong.
Here, have a look at this:
"William C. Brown... demonstrated in 1964, on the CBS Walter Cronkite News, a microwave powered helicopter that received all the power needed for flight from a microwave beam.... In the 1969 to 1975 time period, Mr. Brown managed a program that increased the overall efficiency, or ratio of DC power out to DC power in, to a JPL certified efficiency of 54%, several times greater than generally expected. He was also technical director of a JPL Raytheon program that beamed power over a distance of one mile to a rectenna which intercepted a portion of the beam and converted it to 30 kilowatts of DC power with 84% efficiency."
Actually, our Universe could be inside the event horizon of a black hole. What is more, as the Universe spreads, the rate of retreat increases; eventually, objects retreat fast enough that light cannot travel between them. It has been speculated that in several billion years, our local group of galaxies will find itself alone, forever isolated from the galaxies we see today.
About a decade ago, I worked in the IT Department of a medium-sized hospital of a city in East Texas. As the new guy, I worked the overnight shift, which was fine by me.
Sometime after midnight, I was walking through the data center, when my left cheek had an itch. I scratched the itch, then dropped my hand to my side. As my hand fell, it struck the power switch that was located on the top of one of the hospital's servers. You would be amazed how many people are using hospital terminals at 1 in the morning, and how fast they can all call the IT Department phone number.
My boss laughed about it, saying that everyone in the department had done the same thing at some time. Another co-worker asked me how it happened. When I re-enacted what had happened, I narrowly missed hitting the power button a second time.
A few months later, the hospital bought all new servers. I was glad to see that the power buttons where all located in recessed cavities, behind plastic protective plates, about 6 inches above the floor.
What would a "reasoned criticism of modern evolutionary biology" look like? I would suppose it would have to include a discussion of all the major fossil finds around the world over the last several decades, at least. It would also have to discuss chromosomal research (which, incidentally, is sometimes at odds with fossil research). It would have to discuss the science actually conducted, a science which is funded by several billions of dollars in grants every year, just in the U.S. IOW, I would suppose this would amount to a very large book. No one has written such a book, though it would be a good idea for someone to do so. Preferably, not an evolution evangelist shilling out the science.
I read "Darwin's Black Box" a few years ago. The author's biographical info states that he is an evolutionist. "Intelligent Design" does not presuppose God, only an intelligent designer. The book states that this designer could be any sort of intelligent being. Then, the book makes its case for claiming that current evolutionary theory is unable to explain certain features seen in Earth's creatures.
Why expose your bias by stating that belief in Creationism is alarming? Why worry that the U.S. will lose its technological lead if biological evolution is not wholeheartedly embraced by most of the public? Based on the statements many evolution-supporters make, one would think that biology gave us the technological marvels of our world, instead of physics. The threat to our nation's technological edge is not because people don't embrace evolutionary theory--though a lot of evolutionists want us to think it is. Rather, we are at risk because people don't know how to read, write, perform advanced mathematics and understand physics and chemistry and related technologies.
Biology is an infant science. It has few equations to describe its processes. In fact, it has very little mathematical modeling at all, particularly compared to the most mature science, physics. This means that biology is a field offering much opportunity for those who want to make a name for themselves as pioneers in the field, but that is in pure science, not in technological application. It will take biology a century to reach the maturity of modern physics, never mind the applications to come from it.
twiddlingbits: "Name me a mainstream CPU with a phototransistor on-board."
Who said it had to be a mainstream CPU chip? Who said the phototransistor had to be on the CPU chip itself? The article is vague on such details.
"Lightfleet said new servers it plans to begin selling next summer, which will use 32 dual-processor chips from Intel Corp., can do such feats easily....
"... Each microprocessor is installed with a laser transmitter and a set of devices that receive beams of light..."
Now, it is already well-known that Intel has announced an all-silicon laser for operation in exactly this environment. Even/. has run a few stories about it (as have a half-dozen other techy news sites). See " Intel Researchers Build Laser on Chip" and " Intel Announces Lasers On a Chip" for a few/. articles.
The news story doesn't say receivers are on the CPU, just that each CPU comes with a set of devices that decode the beam. Current technology would be for them to put the receivers on the same board as the CPU.
No, alignment is not difficult at all. Actually, the beams are projected wide-angle, so a wide number of devices from a wide viewing angle can all read the beam at the same time.
No, this is not really all that simular to a DLP chip. A DLP chip merely reflects light (by swinging little mirrors back and forth). DLP projects an image on a screen. It does not encode digital data on a beam of light--and it would be slow at it if it were adapted to such a use--much less decode it.
But, you were correct that this is not a completely new idea. I have copies of research notes in my personal library that depict such devices, which have been experimentally prototyped in lab environments for more than a decade.
camperdave: "The setup looks like the kind of setup you'd use for holography. Split the beam, part goes to the object, part gets used as a reference."
The holographic setup you describe is a special case of optical interferometers using path difference. However, despite the schematic simularity of the illustration used in the press release to the holographic setup you mentioned, the simularity is superficial. As far as I can tell, the optic setup used by Dr. Howell is not for the purpose of causing holographic interference, but is for the purpose of promoting the quantum entanglement of photons. My guess is, this storage device is just a small piece of a bigger puzzle on which Dr. Howell is working; it is a stepping-stone towards his goal of achieving the perfect cloning of the quantum state of photons, for use in optical computation.... I don't actually understand what all of that means. I only have a vague grasp of the general ideas.
camperdave: "Anyways, the researcher is delaying the arrival of the photon by 100 nanoseconds (my guess is that this is the time it takes to traverse the cesium gas chamber as compared to it not being there."
Quite so.
camperdave: "He is not storing the photon in any reasonable definition of the word storage. It merely gets delayed by its passage through the gas."
Delay, storage--to a computer scientist, these are the same thing, at least inside the computational circuitry. I recall that the British still might use the term in a way related to this (though I don't recall what made me think of that just now).
I would also like to point out that he is able to vary the amount of delay, by changing the temperature of the cesium atoms. This makes his device tuneable. I don't know why that is such an advantage.
Slashdot Mirror
But think how you would react if your country was invaded, even with the best of intentions.
You mean, think how I would react if I were not me and my country was not this country and everything else were different. Well! That really points a clear path, doesn't it! I guess that means the French should not be in Ivory Coast and the Canadians should not be in Afghanistan.
But approximately 0% of Iraqi voters voted for an American invasion.
I doubt that was on the ballot, but the fact is, many thousand Iraqis begged for U.S. military intervention over more than a decade. The idea that the militant terrorist action seen since then is simply the product of patriots defending their homeland is a bunch of Leftist nonsense. Many thousands of Iraqis gave their lives trying to get rid of Saddam and his Administration, a fact that is ignored by the likes of you.
After all, 100% of Iraqi voters voted for Saddam in the last election before the Coalition took him out of power. He must have been popular!
These robots aren't intended to work alone. All that redundant vision you mention is fulfilled by the fact that more than one robot and several human soldiers are all covering the same area. And, as shown in the video in the article, each robot actually has a half-dozen cameras, fore and aft.
As for a "well-thrown egg," even if no one and nothing else were around to stop someone from doing that, the fact is, many of the militants in Iraq have really bad aim. That's why they turned to bombs in the first place; close is good enough with a big bomb.
"I wish one day these robots gets in the hands of real humans and used to distribute food and help in some drought affected african countries."
Why would you need a robot to do that? Humans can do that just as well and with less trouble. Now, if someone has a large building fall down on top of people, the robots could search for survivors, just like they did in New York City.
"Now the other guy needs to build his own stronger robot so that it can disable the US robot."
At this point, your story breaks down. None of those IED script kiddies would have a clue how to build a mobile robot, much less one that could take on a real battle scenario.
And, no one said the kill switch is an actual, external switch on the robot itself.
"is this the philosophy that led the americans to disband the iraqi army?"
Not as far as I can tell, though I haven't been able to find who the person was who made that decision. It was an order that was sent out in a memo without explanation, and no one challenged it. At the time, though, the news media explained that it was to prevent corruption in the new Iraqi force, by purging Saddam loyalists.
"what exactly was going to happen, then, if the military couldnt do the job of holding the country it had taken over? who was supposed to do that, if not the defense department? the 'keep the peace' department? oh the 'state department'?"
"Keeping the peace" is the job of civil officers, the police. The military is for attack and defense.
"if that is the case, then what manpower is the state department supposed to use? do you want a bunch of civilians swooping down on a post-war country, while the army goes home, job done?"
Why would the Army have to go home, just because police patrol the streets? The two are not exclusive. It is the job of the police to keep the peace, but the job of the military to attack and defend.
"and what is the state department supposed to do when armed militias try to blow up a building?"
That depends on when the militias are detected and how much power they have. Here in the U.S., the police have arrested several people who have tried to blow up things. Over the last few centuries, the national guard has been called out several times to put down riots. One time, we even sent out our Army to put down rebels, but that was a really tough case.
"but if state is supposed to be in charge, then why would you second guess a bunch of state department decisions, and mix and match between pentagon and state with various decisions going on after the country was taken over?"
The Iraqi state department is being phased in. First with a transitional government, then with a regular government. Iraqi police are being trained and their numbers expanded.
"Thank you! thats why cheating evolved."
Actually, my earlier statement was a mistake. I meant to write, "...despite the authors' claim that polygyny benefits women..." That is, after all, what the authors claim in their third point.
As for the reason we have large brains, many researchers note that it is necessary for language skills. Our spatial skills and ability to imagine an outcome are strongly dependent on our brain capacity, too. Outwitting our mates probably is the least of our worries. And, BTW, that's another reason to have a large, strong male to guard the home; the home has more threats than just others of the same species. But, this all illustrates another point; when people want to make stories to explain why something is the way it is, they can imagine anything, and who is to say they are right or wrong? The stories usually are untestable, and can change as easily as a pair of socks. IOW, they usually don't mean anything. They are as useful as the blurbs on a newspaper astrology chart.
I saw a reference to this article on another forum I visit. I haven't had much respect for "Psychology Today" for about 13 years. Didn't some weird publication buy them out, some porn magazine or something? I think it was "Playboy" or something. The magazine was already a joke before that happened; that sale certainly didn't help it gain any scientific credibility.
A few thoughts on the article:
"Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)"
He cites some examples of women attempting to look blonde long ago or in isolated areas. Eh, so what? But, at least they are facts, meager as they are. Much worse is the explanation of why humanity in general wants women to be blonde (pretending that 2 examples proves a universal truth for all time): Blondes look younger. Women in cold regions hide their slender, young, nubile bodies under thick clothes impenetrable to male gaze, and so evolved blonde hair to signify they are young. Eh? What am I to make of such a claim? Northern women never exposed their bodies for thousands of years of pagan rituals? Human mating season is only in Winter? The rest of the world is populated by nudists?
"even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage."
The point in Christianity is not to be natural, but to be godly. Civilization is a highly unnatural state; humans are naturally savages. We like to have limited social groups, but we want all the resources we can get for ourselves. Monogamy was to reduce cruelty to women; despite the authors' claim that monogamy benefits women, because they could share a wealthy man, the reality is, this is not really a benefit.
"Same thing with Mexico -- don't build a wall, build up Mexico so no one wants to leave."
You cannot build up a corrupt society. The corruption must be dealt with, first.
Very few women Muslims become bombers, and in virtually every case, the woman is given the ultimatum of either redeeming her family's honor (after she was caught having an affair or committing some other sexual trespass) by becoming a bomber, or die by honor killing.
"What we found in talking to the [bombers'] families and people in the community--and I want to limit this to the women whose stories we looked into--all of them had very traumatic personal stories and issues. Those things, combined with the horrors of living under occupation, could have provoked them to act.
"What kind of personal problems?
"One [terrorist], for example, was the first female suicide bomber in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, Wafa Idris. She was married off at a very young age and could not have kids. In that society a woman, a wife, who can't have kids is considered worthless. The husband [divorced Wafa and] married someone else and had kids with her.
"Wafa also worked with a humanitarian organization on the West Bank where she saw a lot of carnage [from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]. You might say that she was a very depressed person."
National Geographic: Female Suicide Bombers: Dying to Kill
"Riyashi is hailed as a courageous resistance fighter among Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank, but the truth about what drove her to such a terrible act is much more complex. Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli internal-security experts who studied the background of her case say Riyashi's husband had discovered that she was having an affair with a senior Hamas commander. Among conservative Palestinians, as in other parts of the Islamic world, an adulterous woman is often punished with death. Riyashi was given a second option: she could become a martyr.
"Behind the motives of religion and rage at Israeli occupation, Palestinian women, far more than men, tend to choose self-sacrifice as an exit from personal despair, while others are pushed into it for having broken taboos in strict Palestinian society."
Time: Palestinian Moms Becoming Martyrs
As it happens, I am trying to find information on the effects of vibration from high-frequency machinery on bones, muscles and other structural members of the human body. A friend and I served aboard a Navy ship, in a space that housed our ship's steam-powered electric generators. These 400 kW generators each had a steam turbine that spun around 8k rpm. Some doctors suggest this high frequency vibration might damage bones through conduction.
Here is an article that discusses vibrations up to 100 Hz:
FASB Journal: Bone cell responses to high-frequency vibration stress: does the nucleus oscillate within the cytoplasm?
I've washed several keyboards over the last decade, and I've known about the dishwasher technique at least that long. I don't actually use my dishwasher, though, because I regard that as a waste of water and power. When I feel like washing a keyboard (which isn't very often), I take the whole thing apart and hose it down, first with water, then w/ some water-displacer, like circuit board cleaner.
I once had to wash my computer's motherboard, too, after my male cat sprayed it (the case was off, so the motherboard was exposed). I was amazed it worked at all after that, but it kept running for several more months, until the metal contacts began to corrode too badly.
"They're using a different technique to avoid needing line of sight"
No, they are not. Radio antennae transmit more than just line of sight; the wavelength determines the directionality. Radio transmitters have been transmitting power over hundreds of miles for a century.
"or be harmful to humans (the article even mentions the microwave beaming, and how you can also use it to cook a chicken - not really something you'd want in the home powering up those speakers, is it?)"
Magnetic induction is not necessarily any safer to human health than microwaves are. It could even be more dangerous; the medical community does not have enough information, yet. But, the CDC does have a FAQ sheet on it:
"Many studies report small increases in the rate of leukemia or brain cancer in groups of people living or working in high magnetic fields. Other studies have found no such increases. The most important data come from six recent studies of workers wearing EMF monitors to measure magnetic fields. All but one study found significantly higher cancer rates for men with average workday exposures above 4 milligauss. However, the results of these studies disagree in important ways such as the type of cancer associated with EMF exposures. So scientists cannot be sure whether the increased risks are caused by EMFs or by other factors. A few preliminary studies have also associated workplace EMFs with breast cancer, and one study has reported a possible link between occupational EMF exposure and Alzheimer s disease.
The data from all of these studies are too limited for scientists to draw conclusions. However, a national research effort is under way, and more study results are expected in a few years."
CDC: EMFs In The Workplace
"'How cute they lit a light bulb.' Right. Its exactly the same because the end result is the same."
The end result is not the same. Several decades ago, engineers were able to beam 500 times more energy a distance 750 times greater and with twice the efficiency as this experiment at MIT.
"That could go for pretty much any story here, right?"
No.
"Faster processor? 'Bah, we were crunching numbers in the 50s. Whats the big deal here?'"
Yeah, we were crunching numbers a *billion times slower* in the 50s. The advance in processor technology is obvious. You and everyone else have failed to show any advance in this design in terms of power transmission. It is wonderful that they were able to make magnetic inductance work so well across such a distance, but that merely makes this a lab curiosity, of no more than academic interest.
"Now someone comes up with a remarkable breakthrough and you're bitching because it vaguely sounds like something you've heard of, except that you haven't bothered to RTFA to see why it's completely different."
... demonstrated in 1964, on the CBS Walter Cronkite News, a microwave powered helicopter that received all the power needed for flight from a microwave beam. ... In the 1969 to 1975 time period, Mr. Brown managed a program that increased the overall efficiency, or ratio of DC power out to DC power in, to a JPL certified efficiency of 54%, several times greater than generally expected. He was also technical director of a JPL Raytheon program that beamed power over a distance of one mile to a rectenna which intercepted a portion of the beam and converted it to 30 kilowatts of DC power with 84% efficiency."
I read the article. What is remarkable about this? What is the breakthrough? Even the article says that the breakthrough is merely that they had "followed through" what had been talked about previously. Which, frankly, is still really, really, wrong.
Here, have a look at this:
"William C. Brown
IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S): Bill Brown's Distinguished Career
What did the MIT group do? They lit a light bulb. How cute.
Sometimes, MIT gets in the news just because it is MIT.
"Given their microscopic size (they're just made of a small number of atoms smashed together), wouldn't they just evaporate right away?"
In 10^-42 seconds, according to this article: A black hole ate my planet
"Perhaps the biologists should just combine mitochondria and chromosomes too, you know, to simplify the math?"
Funny man... cytologists don't use math!
Anyway, as for cosmic rays creating black holes, you might have a look at: Physical Review Online Archive Physical Review Online Archive: Black Hole Production by Cosmic Rays
About a decade ago, I worked in the IT Department of a medium-sized hospital of a city in East Texas. As the new guy, I worked the overnight shift, which was fine by me.
Sometime after midnight, I was walking through the data center, when my left cheek had an itch. I scratched the itch, then dropped my hand to my side. As my hand fell, it struck the power switch that was located on the top of one of the hospital's servers. You would be amazed how many people are using hospital terminals at 1 in the morning, and how fast they can all call the IT Department phone number.
My boss laughed about it, saying that everyone in the department had done the same thing at some time. Another co-worker asked me how it happened. When I re-enacted what had happened, I narrowly missed hitting the power button a second time.
A few months later, the hospital bought all new servers. I was glad to see that the power buttons where all located in recessed cavities, behind plastic protective plates, about 6 inches above the floor.
What would a "reasoned criticism of modern evolutionary biology" look like? I would suppose it would have to include a discussion of all the major fossil finds around the world over the last several decades, at least. It would also have to discuss chromosomal research (which, incidentally, is sometimes at odds with fossil research). It would have to discuss the science actually conducted, a science which is funded by several billions of dollars in grants every year, just in the U.S. IOW, I would suppose this would amount to a very large book. No one has written such a book, though it would be a good idea for someone to do so. Preferably, not an evolution evangelist shilling out the science.
I read "Darwin's Black Box" a few years ago. The author's biographical info states that he is an evolutionist. "Intelligent Design" does not presuppose God, only an intelligent designer. The book states that this designer could be any sort of intelligent being. Then, the book makes its case for claiming that current evolutionary theory is unable to explain certain features seen in Earth's creatures.
Why expose your bias by stating that belief in Creationism is alarming? Why worry that the U.S. will lose its technological lead if biological evolution is not wholeheartedly embraced by most of the public? Based on the statements many evolution-supporters make, one would think that biology gave us the technological marvels of our world, instead of physics. The threat to our nation's technological edge is not because people don't embrace evolutionary theory--though a lot of evolutionists want us to think it is. Rather, we are at risk because people don't know how to read, write, perform advanced mathematics and understand physics and chemistry and related technologies.
Biology is an infant science. It has few equations to describe its processes. In fact, it has very little mathematical modeling at all, particularly compared to the most mature science, physics. This means that biology is a field offering much opportunity for those who want to make a name for themselves as pioneers in the field, but that is in pure science, not in technological application. It will take biology a century to reach the maturity of modern physics, never mind the applications to come from it.
twiddlingbits: "Name me a mainstream CPU with a phototransistor on-board."
/. has run a few stories about it (as have a half-dozen other techy news sites). See " Intel Researchers Build Laser on Chip" and " Intel Announces Lasers On a Chip" for a few /. articles.
Who said it had to be a mainstream CPU chip? Who said the phototransistor had to be on the CPU chip itself? The article is vague on such details.
"Lightfleet said new servers it plans to begin selling next summer, which will use 32 dual-processor chips from Intel Corp., can do such feats easily....
"... Each microprocessor is installed with a laser transmitter and a set of devices that receive beams of light..."
Now, it is already well-known that Intel has announced an all-silicon laser for operation in exactly this environment. Even
The news story doesn't say receivers are on the CPU, just that each CPU comes with a set of devices that decode the beam. Current technology would be for them to put the receivers on the same board as the CPU.
No, alignment is not difficult at all. Actually, the beams are projected wide-angle, so a wide number of devices from a wide viewing angle can all read the beam at the same time.
No, this is not really all that simular to a DLP chip. A DLP chip merely reflects light (by swinging little mirrors back and forth). DLP projects an image on a screen. It does not encode digital data on a beam of light--and it would be slow at it if it were adapted to such a use--much less decode it.
But, you were correct that this is not a completely new idea. I have copies of research notes in my personal library that depict such devices, which have been experimentally prototyped in lab environments for more than a decade.
"That said, sure, just ban bulbs which are less than 90% efficient."
FYI, all human-made forms of lighting produce more heat than light, and so are less than 50% efficient in converting input energy into visible light.
camperdave: "The setup looks like the kind of setup you'd use for holography. Split the beam, part goes to the object, part gets used as a reference."
... I don't actually understand what all of that means. I only have a vague grasp of the general ideas.
The holographic setup you describe is a special case of optical interferometers using path difference. However, despite the schematic simularity of the illustration used in the press release to the holographic setup you mentioned, the simularity is superficial. As far as I can tell, the optic setup used by Dr. Howell is not for the purpose of causing holographic interference, but is for the purpose of promoting the quantum entanglement of photons. My guess is, this storage device is just a small piece of a bigger puzzle on which Dr. Howell is working; it is a stepping-stone towards his goal of achieving the perfect cloning of the quantum state of photons, for use in optical computation.
camperdave: "Anyways, the researcher is delaying the arrival of the photon by 100 nanoseconds (my guess is that this is the time it takes to traverse the cesium gas chamber as compared to it not being there."
Quite so.
camperdave: "He is not storing the photon in any reasonable definition of the word storage. It merely gets delayed by its passage through the gas."
Delay, storage--to a computer scientist, these are the same thing, at least inside the computational circuitry. I recall that the British still might use the term in a way related to this (though I don't recall what made me think of that just now).
I would also like to point out that he is able to vary the amount of delay, by changing the temperature of the cesium atoms. This makes his device tuneable. I don't know why that is such an advantage.