Do you have any evidence, or even any reason to believe, that there are in fact not seventeen dimensions and we just don't have the necessary organs to readily percieve them all as being distinct?
Do you have any evidence or reason to believe that there's not an _infinite_ number of dimensions? Why not? If you accept (with _no_ supporting evidence) 10 or 12 or 14 dimensions, why not go for 10,000 or so dimensions, or 10**80 or so dimensions. It makes no difference! It's all just imaginary, just conveniently approximate math to justify what the so-called "scientists" do with large amounts of public moneys, which they waste.
I'm no Luddite (a step-daughter did theoretical quantum physics until she transferred into astrophysics last year), but I'm skeptical.
Maybe they'll go back and rename the school correctly. Berkel. It is to laugh!
Surely. Isn't it properly spelled "Berzerkely?";-)
As for the theory, it doesn't seem plausible, but physics is full of implausible concepts that work out in real life.
True enough. Yet the more implausible they seem, the more I suspect them of being over-convoluted theories that just _happen_ to match the results. Some things that seem implausible from a macro (visible, Newtonian) point of view are believable, but a lot of the quantum-level theories are just guesswork, as far as I'm concerned. Physicists must publish _something_ to keep their jobs, and that's what I think drives too much of the recent scientific theorizing. Publish something! That's their bread and butter. And they can write up for grants to pursue Big Physics research... and jobs. For example, fusion research is all simply a massive boondoggle.
Since gravity is a manifestation of a warpage of space-time, does this also mean that he is claiming superconductors are equivalent to gravity wells?
Another interpretation is that the space-time warp of gravity is a big illusion... that gravity isn't about mass but about energy (and mass and energy are related, thus the illusion). Thus the photons which have no mass _do_ have its analog... energy, and thats what gravity acts upon to bend the path. There _must_ be a consistent explanation for both macro and quantum level interactions, and until we find it, we'll not be intellectually fit to travel into the cosmos. We've got time (depending on when the next major comet intersects Earth's orbit at the wrong moment), but we do really need to figure everything out before our time runs out for us here.
No doubt that the symmetry between Maxwell's equations and Einstein's equations is stark, but does this also mean that they are equivalent in meaning and applicability?
My intuition tells me that such mathematical symmetries are trying to tell us something, but we just haven't figured it all out well enough - yet. We need free thinkers in the physical sciences, but... the entire structure of academia is built to enforce conformity. Some few people survive it and think "outside the box" as it were (Feynmann comes to mind), but the majority are just buried in conformity. The best thing the politicians could do to advance science would be to grant all science graduate students Associate level pay with no obligations to serve their tenured colleagues, but maintaining their freedom to consult and even collaborate with them whenever they find it helpful. This would accelerate big science in a way that would make the last decades seem a backwater.
Though the article puts a dig into superstring theory at the end, isn't it exactly this type of theory that is needed to unify such disparate theories as gravity and electromagnetism? If there is a symmetry there, wouldn't it make sense that the two equations would derive from a common principle?
Yes. Superstring theories (there are several that are trying to agree, convolutedly) are all so very complex that they're ultimately not very credible. Sorry! (To a generation of theoretical physicists.) The Universe _must_ have some simple rules (Einstein would agree with this, I am sure), but you haven't figured them out, so far. Complex systems are the products of insufficient mentality in both science and large-scale software systems. The bottom line for me is that I'm not convinced that they're not just playing with irrelevant and really fantastic math that will never work right. When they go outside five dimensions (3 space, 1 time, 1 energy), I lose interest. Or maybe six (vector/spin). But you maybe will get my drift... ten, twelve, fourteen dimensions? Give it up already!
My elementary physics is no match for the mathematics in the paper.
Mine too.;-) But my scientific intuition is not satisfied by the embarrassing worldwide failure to integrate General Relativity with the Standard Model of Quantum Theory. It's an intellectual debacle that the so-called "best minds" of science haven't been able to work this out for going on a century here. It's also a shame that kids aren't going into science. Can we rehabilitate the Red Menace to get our politicians and educators back in gear here? That worked real well in the 50s and 60s, but raghead terrorists won't cut it.
Should people start lobbying the states/federal government to impose another penalty on M$: a boycott of Microsoft products?
Well, one wouldn't use the term "boycott" as it's rather loaded with left-wing connotations. But some professional IT managers in government agencies at all levels (Federal, State, and Local) are way ahead of you. Many of them are ticked-off at Microsoft's heavy-handed "marketing tactics" (i.e., character assassination and thinly veiled extortion) and the high costs of Microsoft's new annual software rental licensing and forced upgrades, and they are looking at alternatives, including especially Open Source.
Government MIS managers are a fairly buttoned-down bunch (they're civil service staff, after all), but if you listen to a convention of them talking about the escalating hassles and expenses of Microsoft software, you'll hear four common complaints: (1) security and stability problems, missing/late/buggy patches, and high maintenance labor costs, (2) arrogant sales reps going "over their heads" and denigrating their management judgement to their bosses at the first sign of hesitation about signing up for annual software rental licenses, (3) threats to force costly and disruptive software license audits if they don't toe the line, and (4) the high costs of Microsoft software licensing and support expenses. Many IT managers in government either can't afford to pay for annual software "upgrades" they don't really need or resent Microsoft's strong-arm approach, or both, and are looking for ways to reduce or even totally eliminate their dependance on Microsoft software. Lots of them are looking at Open Source for a way out.
So yes, lobbying government politicians to open up software procurement to competition, use public taxpayers' money to acquire Open Source software that is freely available and open for inspection, eliminate the software monoculture that enables security vulnerabilities and pandemic infections, discourage sole-source and no-bid software contracts, and reduce public software costs... might be very helpful to public IT management. Polite letters to legislators, board members, and the heads of agencies can help.
These academics typically skirted around an obvious main point of their analysis: that the biggest threat to the world Internet community WILL be the NATO governments themselves -- first and foremost the U.S. government -- at any time they feel like 'taking down' some people's public Internet infrastructure.
Well, they skirted many points (and since they have obvious tight connections to US weapons labs, one might be a little surprised they were even permitted to publish - it's sort of like printing up the to-do list for all kinds of nasty people). I was just bringing up one set of issues where the First World might be vulnerable to such Internet mischief.
I don't disagree with you that the US and European countries are cynical enough to employ such tactics (it's been called realpolitik since the Kaisers' time, as carried forward by such criminal characters as Stalin and Kissinger). But I don't think they'd use such means against any developed country - that would be too obvious and easy to nail, with a minimal set of network infrastructure sophistication. But the Second World should be worried... meaning the Middle East, Africa, South and East Asia (except Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea). India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea are both likely targets and potential sources of such attacks. Such things have already happened (albeit in crude, amateurish ways), and fairly recently too. Mainland China has every right to be paranoid about this sort of thing; it's why they're going to Linux now.
But the biggest (and oh-so diplomatically unsaid) conclusion of this paper is that companies, institutions, and individuals are _stupid_ to buy into the software monoculture of Microsoft systems. All their examples are of vulnerabilities in Microsoft crap (primarily IIS). The conclusion cries out to be drawn, but they don't say it. Typical academic "detachment" so as to avoid possibly offending a potential source of grant funding. Ultimately, the paper is gutless, both in it's conclusions and in it's grant-begging solutions.
Just because nobody has done it before doesn't mean it's not a threat.
Don't look now, but narrowly targeted cracks are going down all the time. A few days ago it was reported that complete credit files on 13,000 wealthy Experian (TRW) customers were hijacked with stolen Ford Motors Credit authorization keys. Just yesterday it was news that over 200,000 State employees in California had their personal data lifted, right out from under the noses of the Teale Data Center (big place, several large mainframes, lots of smaller Unix and Wintel systems too). Major potential for mischief there.
Now use your imagination and ratchet it up a notch above merely criminal activity (identity theft and ordinary credit fraud). The paper doesn't go into it (excellent though it is), but what part of the modern first-world economy is most critical and yet most vulnerable? It's the financial system, which moves billions of dollars in the markets each and every business day - from Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul, through Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, New York, to London, Paris, Berlin, and Geneva, etc. What happens when someone figures out how to game and disrupt that?
How many large banks, brokerages, companies, and/or big investors would one need to control in order to melt down the international financial markets? What if someone could unleash an orchestrated attack on the first world financial structure, meanwhile confusing and frustrating all efforts to reverse the damage by individuals and institutions with massive DDoS activity? What if someone was able to compromise lots of DNS servers and routers to enable attack traffic while denying all other requests? This is the sort of scary stuff the paper at hand lets glimmer without any explicit discussion.
We've already seen massive Puts on airlines just prior to 9/11 as well as high volumes of trading through WTC firms that morning. (Though those may have been US government insiders (CIA, etc.) just picking up some pocket change on the coat-tails of what Bush was going to play dumb about in order to justify his dynastic authoritarian imperial superpower agenda.) But the potential for some real harm caused by seriously hostile intentions for the international financial structure is huge. This is major scary stuff.
None of these schemes will work because the US flag is _physical thing_, i.e., a piece of cloth with certain color components and proportional dimension relationships. A _picture_ of a US flag is not the flag itself. Nor is any computer file (JPEG, GIF, whatever) that can be interpreted to present a picture of the US flag itself a US flag.
aren't very hard to find. There are some online at the Mandrake website here and others elsewhere (use Google).
Microsoft can't force you to upgrade your existing software, so take your time. Set up a couple of test Linux desktop systems (KDE looks/works like Windows) with OpenOffice 1.0 or StarOffice 6.0 (if you want/need things like templates) and Netscape 6.2 maybe, Gabber for instant-messaging, and look into Evolution if you need a Microsoft email/calendar workalike.
Then setup Wine (or CrossOver Office) for the few specialized applications and get them working well. Clone your desktop system for a few recruits (managers, if possible) and do some hand holding, er... training, until they're comfortable.
After that, it shouldn't be too painful to move the rest of the company onto all-Linux desktops. If you can avoid future rounds of Microsoft taxes for WindowsXP/OfficeXP (and later) this way, you will save about $700/user, or almost $35,000 _per year_. You'll save more if you replace those Sun machines with Linux, too, instead of upgrades.
They claim to have invented a highly efficient (~80%) Peltier device ("CoolChip") using "quantum electronic tunneling" across a near-perfect temperature insulating "gap" of nanoscale width. They claim heat-transfer capabilities on the order of 500w/cm**2 (theoretically, but there aren't any _measurements_ yet, that they have, er... published).
It's difficult to attack these claims, simply because they haven't _explained_ the physics or materials or construction beyond trendy buzzwords and, by the way, they seem not to have actually _built_ any devices. This is typical of bunco artists hyping seemingly wonderful new technology. See all the "zero point energy" hucksters, for example.
However, a little common-sense physics is enough to demolish this scam. I'd like to hear their answers to the following questions and objections. But, I bet they won't do it.
There is no such thing as a near-perfect (or even really good) temperature insulating solid material - the only pretty good temperature insulation is... a vacuum. Any decent vacuum over a nano-scale gap is going to close the gap, real quick (especially if there is the strong electroforce attraction between negative and positive semiconductors helping); that's Strike One.
Such a Peltier-like device has to work by pumping electrons into the cold side and removing them from the hot side. But injecting electrons into the cold side _excites_ the existing n-doped semiconductor's electron-states, and it's only the rapid migration of those excited electrons away from that layer that removes heat (and the device has to pull away unbound electrons marginally faster than they are injected to provide cooling). It's impossible to extract more electrons than are added without entirely stripping the substrate eventually, and long before that happened you'd see _reverse_ tunneling of electrons into the very depleted cold substrate; here's Strike Two.
Then there's the claimed energy transfer. At the rate of 500w/cm**2, the hot substrate is going to start generating _photons_ (which have no charge, so they're not going to be bashful about moving _back_ across the "insulating" gap) and they will carry... heat; ergo, Strike Three.
Sure, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" [A.C. Clarke], and great technological leaps are desireable. But the only "magic" these people have in mind is moving significant amounts of money from scientifically naive, greedy, and gullible investors into their own pockets. But, it were ever thus: caveat emptor.
The author is an academic and lawyer who had a hand in drafting US anti-biowarfare laws - he knows the history, the players, and the reasons related to US biowar activities, the Gulf War Syndrome, strangely convenient anthrax attacks on the US Congress, and well-founded suspicions about what's going on here. It's authoritative and frightening.
Why on earth do people freak so badly over this concept? A clone (theoretically) is no different than an identical twin.
Let me put this in perspective for you. Research with animal clones has shown them to be less hardy, prone to obsedity and other syndromes, and overall less healthy and shorter-lived. Now, ask yourself if you would really want to do this to... yourself. I personally think its unethical to do this even with animals. Even animals deserve dignity.
How would _you_ like to be a clone? Imagine growing up knowing, or finding out later, that you're a replicant, and your death-clock is ticking faster than others'. Haven't you ever seen Blade Runner? I think outlaw researchers cloning humans should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity (their "products"), placed against a wall, and shot.
Hire someone else to build the boxes... and warranty them. Find 2 or 3 white-box builders in your area, and give them a competitive RFP, with specifications to guide them but loose enough to let them propose adequate but inexpensive components. Don't promise to necessarily give any of them the work. Require the winning bidder to build one pilot machine for testing before you commit to ordering the rest. If you can recycle everything but the mainboard, processor, memory, and vidcard, you should be able to get 1 Ghz Duron systems with 256MB memory and good 2D video for $300 or thereabouts. Pick a solid white-box assembler (no garage shop) who's willing to offer a warranty, and you can likely replace all your desktops at once for about $20K or less.
I bet you could even get Slashdot posters to help you write your RFP.
The japanese computer has MILLIONS of processors. Google doesn't even come close to 1/100th of the size.
Wrong, on several counts. The japanese machine is 640 nodes containing 5,104 processers - a little over half Google's size in terms of number of CPUs. And the NEC processors in it are _vector_ processors, as opposed to the scalar processors in Google and US supercomputers (mostly, except for some older Cray machines). Also, Google is a database machine, a very different beast than a scientific supercomputer.
is that the CA Dept. of Information Technology (DoIT) that committed this colossal blunder was established just a few years ago precisedly to eliminate IT mismanagement and waste in State Agencies. I'm surprised Cortez (DoIT Director) still has a job, but that might not be true much longer. The legislature is considering abolishing the DoIT.
I imagine had he dropped his defense, you would be railing about how the AG's office ISN'T protecting the children and ignoring laws that the previous President signed.
Not at all. I'd regard that as a (usually lacking) sign of good sense in the current DoJ.
But Ashcroft & shills are up to their eyeballs when it comes to looking the other way about the Microsoft antitrust case and Enron conflicts of interest and undue influence in the current Administration. They're so afraid of how the Enron trail will lead directly to them that they're (uncharacteristically) ignoring what went on during the previous Administration. That's telling.
now they're getting slashdotted, then they'll likely get DDoS'd (similar, but worse)... and then they'll probably get hacked. Repeatedly. Serves 'em right. Intrusive f*ckers.
I wonder why people haven't gone after the BSA, due to their Gestapo tactics: "Hi, we're your friendly BSA - just ignore those big goons with us - you won't mind _proving_ that all your software _is_ licensed, will you? It'll only take a few days/weeks and then we'll be on our way!" Without a _valid warrant_, don't let the BSA a**holes inside.
Has anyone ever _sued_ the BSA for the costs of a software audit that found no problems? If not, someone should. Or is everyone guilty until proven innocent now? And have to pay to prove it. Pretty soon it's going to be... "Well, we realize you bought all those Win2K licenses, but, um... you didn't upgrade them as required, so we're afraid you're in violation of the vendor's current licensing terms. Would you prefer to pay for those again and then buy the new licenses... or go to jail?" Ex post facto licenses, just you wait...
Re:I want a version of this...
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 2
... for reporting spam.
Just forward the offending missive to: uce@ftc.gov . Works for me.
The Scientologists have a right to practice their religion as they see fit.
I do agree, in principle, that people have a right to practice their religion, whatever that might be. I have respect for all of the faiths - Christian, Jewish, Islam - all varieties.
But Scientology isn't a religion - it's a con, a scam, a fraud. It's not about spiritual matters, but all about extracting the maximum dollars from it's convert dupes, giving them _nothing_ of any spiritual value, filling their heads with garbage, leaving them the same as before, only poorer. Scientology scammers should be hunted down like rabid dogs.
The story is true. However, the statute of limitations has expired. But I meant what I said, at the time, and I'll still shoot any Scientologist that f*cks with me, no question.
They would be around to file any lawsuits, would they? That's the sort of argument that backed them off. I'd recommend it to anyone who's harrassed by Scientology.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have any evidence, or even any reason to believe, that there are in fact not seventeen dimensions and we just don't have the necessary organs to readily percieve them all as being distinct?
Do you have any evidence or reason to believe that there's not an _infinite_ number of dimensions? Why not? If you accept (with _no_ supporting evidence) 10 or 12 or 14 dimensions, why not go for 10,000 or so dimensions, or 10**80 or so dimensions. It makes no difference! It's all just imaginary, just conveniently approximate math to justify what the so-called "scientists" do with large amounts of public moneys, which they waste.
I'm no Luddite (a step-daughter did theoretical quantum physics until she transferred into astrophysics last year), but I'm skeptical.
Maybe they'll go back and rename the school correctly. Berkel. It is to laugh!
;-)
;-) But my scientific intuition is not satisfied by the embarrassing worldwide failure to integrate General Relativity with the Standard Model of Quantum Theory. It's an intellectual debacle that the so-called "best minds" of science haven't been able to work this out for going on a century here. It's also a shame that kids aren't going into science. Can we rehabilitate the Red Menace to get our politicians and educators back in gear here? That worked real well in the 50s and 60s, but raghead terrorists won't cut it.
Surely. Isn't it properly spelled "Berzerkely?"
As for the theory, it doesn't seem plausible, but physics is full of implausible concepts that work out in real life.
True enough. Yet the more implausible they seem, the more I suspect them of being over-convoluted theories that just _happen_ to match the results. Some things that seem implausible from a macro (visible, Newtonian) point of view are believable, but a lot of the quantum-level theories are just guesswork, as far as I'm concerned. Physicists must publish _something_ to keep their jobs, and that's what I think drives too much of the recent scientific theorizing. Publish something! That's their bread and butter. And they can write up for grants to pursue Big Physics research... and jobs. For example, fusion research is all simply a massive boondoggle.
Since gravity is a manifestation of a warpage of space-time, does this also mean that he is claiming superconductors are equivalent to gravity wells?
Another interpretation is that the space-time warp of gravity is a big illusion... that gravity isn't about mass but about energy (and mass and energy are related, thus the illusion). Thus the photons which have no mass _do_ have its analog... energy, and thats what gravity acts upon to bend the path. There _must_ be a consistent explanation for both macro and quantum level interactions, and until we find it, we'll not be intellectually fit to travel into the cosmos. We've got time (depending on when the next major comet intersects Earth's orbit at the wrong moment), but we do really need to figure everything out before our time runs out for us here.
No doubt that the symmetry between Maxwell's equations and Einstein's equations is stark, but does this also mean that they are equivalent in meaning and applicability?
My intuition tells me that such mathematical symmetries are trying to tell us something, but we just haven't figured it all out well enough - yet. We need free thinkers in the physical sciences, but... the entire structure of academia is built to enforce conformity. Some few people survive it and think "outside the box" as it were (Feynmann comes to mind), but the majority are just buried in conformity. The best thing the politicians could do to advance science would be to grant all science graduate students Associate level pay with no obligations to serve their tenured colleagues, but maintaining their freedom to consult and even collaborate with them whenever they find it helpful. This would accelerate big science in a way that would make the last decades seem a backwater.
Though the article puts a dig into superstring theory at the end, isn't it exactly this type of theory that is needed to unify such disparate theories as gravity and electromagnetism? If there is a symmetry there, wouldn't it make sense that the two equations would derive from a common principle?
Yes. Superstring theories (there are several that are trying to agree, convolutedly) are all so very complex that they're ultimately not very credible. Sorry! (To a generation of theoretical physicists.) The Universe _must_ have some simple rules (Einstein would agree with this, I am sure), but you haven't figured them out, so far. Complex systems are the products of insufficient mentality in both science and large-scale software systems. The bottom line for me is that I'm not convinced that they're not just playing with irrelevant and really fantastic math that will never work right. When they go outside five dimensions (3 space, 1 time, 1 energy), I lose interest. Or maybe six (vector/spin). But you maybe will get my drift... ten, twelve, fourteen dimensions? Give it up already!
My elementary physics is no match for the mathematics in the paper.
Mine too.
Should people start lobbying the states/federal government to impose another penalty on M$: a boycott of Microsoft products?
Well, one wouldn't use the term "boycott" as it's rather loaded with left-wing connotations. But some professional IT managers in government agencies at all levels (Federal, State, and Local) are way ahead of you. Many of them are ticked-off at Microsoft's heavy-handed "marketing tactics" (i.e., character assassination and thinly veiled extortion) and the high costs of Microsoft's new annual software rental licensing and forced upgrades, and they are looking at alternatives, including especially Open Source.
Government MIS managers are a fairly buttoned-down bunch (they're civil service staff, after all), but if you listen to a convention of them talking about the escalating hassles and expenses of Microsoft software, you'll hear four common complaints: (1) security and stability problems, missing/late/buggy patches, and high maintenance labor costs, (2) arrogant sales reps going "over their heads" and denigrating their management judgement to their bosses at the first sign of hesitation about signing up for annual software rental licenses, (3) threats to force costly and disruptive software license audits if they don't toe the line, and (4) the high costs of Microsoft software licensing and support expenses. Many IT managers in government either can't afford to pay for annual software "upgrades" they don't really need or resent Microsoft's strong-arm approach, or both, and are looking for ways to reduce or even totally eliminate their dependance on Microsoft software. Lots of them are looking at Open Source for a way out.
So yes, lobbying government politicians to open up software procurement to competition, use public taxpayers' money to acquire Open Source software that is freely available and open for inspection, eliminate the software monoculture that enables security vulnerabilities and pandemic infections, discourage sole-source and no-bid software contracts, and reduce public software costs... might be very helpful to public IT management. Polite letters to legislators, board members, and the heads of agencies can help.
These academics typically skirted around an obvious main point of their analysis: that the biggest threat to the world Internet community WILL be the NATO governments themselves -- first and foremost the U.S. government -- at any time they feel like 'taking down' some people's public Internet infrastructure.
Well, they skirted many points (and since they have obvious tight connections to US weapons labs, one might be a little surprised they were even permitted to publish - it's sort of like printing up the to-do list for all kinds of nasty people). I was just bringing up one set of issues where the First World might be vulnerable to such Internet mischief.
I don't disagree with you that the US and European countries are cynical enough to employ such tactics (it's been called realpolitik since the Kaisers' time, as carried forward by such criminal characters as Stalin and Kissinger). But I don't think they'd use such means against any developed country - that would be too obvious and easy to nail, with a minimal set of network infrastructure sophistication. But the Second World should be worried... meaning the Middle East, Africa, South and East Asia (except Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea). India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea are both likely targets and potential sources of such attacks. Such things have already happened (albeit in crude, amateurish ways), and fairly recently too. Mainland China has every right to be paranoid about this sort of thing; it's why they're going to Linux now.
But the biggest (and oh-so diplomatically unsaid) conclusion of this paper is that companies, institutions, and individuals are _stupid_ to buy into the software monoculture of Microsoft systems. All their examples are of vulnerabilities in Microsoft crap (primarily IIS). The conclusion cries out to be drawn, but they don't say it. Typical academic "detachment" so as to avoid possibly offending a potential source of grant funding. Ultimately, the paper is gutless, both in it's conclusions and in it's grant-begging solutions.
Just because nobody has done it before doesn't mean it's not a threat.
Don't look now, but narrowly targeted cracks are going down all the time. A few days ago it was reported that complete credit files on 13,000 wealthy Experian (TRW) customers were hijacked with stolen Ford Motors Credit authorization keys. Just yesterday it was news that over 200,000 State employees in California had their personal data lifted, right out from under the noses of the Teale Data Center (big place, several large mainframes, lots of smaller Unix and Wintel systems too). Major potential for mischief there.
Now use your imagination and ratchet it up a notch above merely criminal activity (identity theft and ordinary credit fraud). The paper doesn't go into it (excellent though it is), but what part of the modern first-world economy is most critical and yet most vulnerable? It's the financial system, which moves billions of dollars in the markets each and every business day - from Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul, through Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, New York, to London, Paris, Berlin, and Geneva, etc. What happens when someone figures out how to game and disrupt that?
How many large banks, brokerages, companies, and/or big investors would one need to control in order to melt down the international financial markets? What if someone could unleash an orchestrated attack on the first world financial structure, meanwhile confusing and frustrating all efforts to reverse the damage by individuals and institutions with massive DDoS activity? What if someone was able to compromise lots of DNS servers and routers to enable attack traffic while denying all other requests? This is the sort of scary stuff the paper at hand lets glimmer without any explicit discussion.
We've already seen massive Puts on airlines just prior to 9/11 as well as high volumes of trading through WTC firms that morning. (Though those may have been US government insiders (CIA, etc.) just picking up some pocket change on the coat-tails of what Bush was going to play dumb about in order to justify his dynastic authoritarian imperial superpower agenda.) But the potential for some real harm caused by seriously hostile intentions for the international financial structure is huge. This is major scary stuff.
None of these schemes will work because the US flag is _physical thing_, i.e., a piece of cloth with certain color components and proportional dimension relationships. A _picture_ of a US flag is not the flag itself. Nor is any computer file (JPEG, GIF, whatever) that can be interpreted to present a picture of the US flag itself a US flag.
Microsoft can't force you to upgrade your existing software, so take your time. Set up a couple of test Linux desktop systems (KDE looks/works like Windows) with OpenOffice 1.0 or StarOffice 6.0 (if you want/need things like templates) and Netscape 6.2 maybe, Gabber for instant-messaging, and look into Evolution if you need a Microsoft email/calendar workalike.
Then setup Wine (or CrossOver Office) for the few specialized applications and get them working well. Clone your desktop system for a few recruits (managers, if possible) and do some hand holding, er... training, until they're comfortable.
After that, it shouldn't be too painful to move the rest of the company onto all-Linux desktops. If you can avoid future rounds of Microsoft taxes for WindowsXP/OfficeXP (and later) this way, you will save about $700/user, or almost $35,000 _per year_. You'll save more if you replace those Sun machines with Linux, too, instead of upgrades.
They claim to have invented a highly efficient (~80%) Peltier device ("CoolChip") using "quantum electronic tunneling" across a near-perfect temperature insulating "gap" of nanoscale width. They claim heat-transfer capabilities on the order of 500w/cm**2 (theoretically, but there aren't any _measurements_ yet, that they have, er... published).
It's difficult to attack these claims, simply because they haven't _explained_ the physics or materials or construction beyond trendy buzzwords and, by the way, they seem not to have actually _built_ any devices. This is typical of bunco artists hyping seemingly wonderful new technology. See all the "zero point energy" hucksters, for example.
However, a little common-sense physics is enough to demolish this scam. I'd like to hear their answers to the following questions and objections. But, I bet they won't do it.
There is no such thing as a near-perfect (or even really good) temperature insulating solid material - the only pretty good temperature insulation is... a vacuum. Any decent vacuum over a nano-scale gap is going to close the gap, real quick (especially if there is the strong electroforce attraction between negative and positive semiconductors helping); that's Strike One.
Such a Peltier-like device has to work by pumping electrons into the cold side and removing them from the hot side. But injecting electrons into the cold side _excites_ the existing n-doped semiconductor's electron-states, and it's only the rapid migration of those excited electrons away from that layer that removes heat (and the device has to pull away unbound electrons marginally faster than they are injected to provide cooling). It's impossible to extract more electrons than are added without entirely stripping the substrate eventually, and long before that happened you'd see _reverse_ tunneling of electrons into the very depleted cold substrate; here's Strike Two.
Then there's the claimed energy transfer. At the rate of 500w/cm**2, the hot substrate is going to start generating _photons_ (which have no charge, so they're not going to be bashful about moving _back_ across the "insulating" gap) and they will carry... heat; ergo, Strike Three.
Sure, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" [A.C. Clarke], and great technological leaps are desireable. But the only "magic" these people have in mind is moving significant amounts of money from scientifically naive, greedy, and gullible investors into their own pockets. But, it were ever thus: caveat emptor.
...did you know that for most HP laserjets (if not all) the printing mechanic is manufactured by canon?
HP is not really in the printer business anymore: they're in the ink and toner cartridge business, and it's _very_ profitable.
is here
The author is an academic and lawyer who had a hand in drafting US anti-biowarfare laws - he knows the history, the players, and the reasons related to US biowar activities, the Gulf War Syndrome, strangely convenient anthrax attacks on the US Congress, and well-founded suspicions about what's going on here. It's authoritative and frightening.
Why on earth do people freak so badly over this concept? A clone (theoretically) is no different than an identical twin.
Let me put this in perspective for you. Research with animal clones has shown them to be less hardy, prone to obsedity and other syndromes, and overall less healthy and shorter-lived. Now, ask yourself if you would really want to do this to... yourself. I personally think its unethical to do this even with animals. Even animals deserve dignity.
How would _you_ like to be a clone? Imagine growing up knowing, or finding out later, that you're a replicant, and your death-clock is ticking faster than others'. Haven't you ever seen Blade Runner? I think outlaw researchers cloning humans should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity (their "products"), placed against a wall, and shot.
Hire someone else to build the boxes... and warranty them. Find 2 or 3 white-box builders in your area, and give them a competitive RFP, with specifications to guide them but loose enough to let them propose adequate but inexpensive components. Don't promise to necessarily give any of them the work. Require the winning bidder to build one pilot machine for testing before you commit to ordering the rest. If you can recycle everything but the mainboard, processor, memory, and vidcard, you should be able to get 1 Ghz Duron systems with 256MB memory and good 2D video for $300 or thereabouts. Pick a solid white-box assembler (no garage shop) who's willing to offer a warranty, and you can likely replace all your desktops at once for about $20K or less.
I bet you could even get Slashdot posters to help you write your RFP.
The japanese computer has MILLIONS of processors. Google doesn't even come close to 1/100th of the size.
Wrong, on several counts. The japanese machine is 640 nodes containing 5,104 processers - a little over half Google's size in terms of number of CPUs. And the NEC processors in it are _vector_ processors, as opposed to the scalar processors in Google and US supercomputers (mostly, except for some older Cray machines). Also, Google is a database machine, a very different beast than a scientific supercomputer.
is that the CA Dept. of Information Technology (DoIT) that committed this colossal blunder was established just a few years ago precisedly to eliminate IT mismanagement and waste in State Agencies. I'm surprised Cortez (DoIT Director) still has a job, but that might not be true much longer. The legislature is considering abolishing the DoIT.
I imagine had he dropped his defense, you would be railing about how the AG's office ISN'T protecting the children and ignoring laws that the previous President signed.
Not at all. I'd regard that as a (usually lacking) sign of good sense in the current DoJ.
But Ashcroft & shills are up to their eyeballs when it comes to looking the other way about the Microsoft antitrust case and Enron conflicts of interest and undue influence in the current Administration. They're so afraid of how the Enron trail will lead directly to them that they're (uncharacteristically) ignoring what went on during the previous Administration. That's telling.
where's Ashcroft when he's needed to "protect the children?"
Um... still railing about the Supreme Court's 6-3 refusal to gut the First Amendment with respect to pr0n anime.
But these are just big business commercials aimed (with subtlety) at young children - so that must be alright then.
now they're getting slashdotted, then they'll likely get DDoS'd (similar, but worse)... and then they'll probably get hacked. Repeatedly. Serves 'em right. Intrusive f*ckers.
I wonder why people haven't gone after the BSA, due to their Gestapo tactics: "Hi, we're your friendly BSA - just ignore those big goons with us - you won't mind _proving_ that all your software _is_ licensed, will you? It'll only take a few days/weeks and then we'll be on our way!" Without a _valid warrant_, don't let the BSA a**holes inside.
Has anyone ever _sued_ the BSA for the costs of a software audit that found no problems? If not, someone should. Or is everyone guilty until proven innocent now? And have to pay to prove it. Pretty soon it's going to be... "Well, we realize you bought all those Win2K licenses, but, um... you didn't upgrade them as required, so we're afraid you're in violation of the vendor's current licensing terms. Would you prefer to pay for those again and then buy the new licenses... or go to jail?" Ex post facto licenses, just you wait...
Just forward the offending missive to: uce@ftc.gov . Works for me.
I couldn't agree with you more. Peace be with you.
The Scientologists have a right to practice their religion as they see fit.
I do agree, in principle, that people have a right to practice their religion, whatever that might be. I have respect for all of the faiths - Christian, Jewish, Islam - all varieties.
But Scientology isn't a religion - it's a con, a scam, a fraud. It's not about spiritual matters, but all about extracting the maximum dollars from it's convert dupes, giving them _nothing_ of any spiritual value, filling their heads with garbage, leaving them the same as before, only poorer. Scientology scammers should be hunted down like rabid dogs.
As I recall, it was just a Ruger 10/22. Not the Win 300 Mag (which would be a hazard). Just a little .22.
The story is true. However, the statute of limitations has expired. But I meant what I said, at the time, and I'll still shoot any Scientologist that f*cks with me, no question.
They didn't, a**hole. They went away, as cowards.
They would be around to file any lawsuits, would they? That's the sort of argument that backed them off. I'd recommend it to anyone who's harrassed by Scientology.
Most Xientology idiots are better off dead.