The NIF laser "is essential to assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons," says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
Naturally I'm depressed that "civilian" research does not get the money which it needs to help solve many pressing problems, but on the other hand if this facility removes the need for live nuclear tests that would be a good thing.
How long this self-imposed testband will last if China or India decide they need to start testing weapons using live tests ?
why can't the kg, be based on a certain crystalline form of some material in a box shape with particular dimensions ?
I pick silicon. so using a particular crystalline form, create a cube which is x & y & z meters on a side.
there are x numbers of atoms, so now we know have a reproducible unit of mass.
here's another thought.
how accurately can gravity be measured ? how about a given amount of material which generates a particular force. ultimately this would be most relevant definition, since the curvature of space, i.e. gravity, and mass are so closely related.
From the article: "and how much of it has to do with optimistic investment in the path they thought the technology should take."
Pretty much all of it. It is very much a standard strategy to bet on a play, build up your IC and more importantly, patent portfolio, and then come out swinging.
You get a big jump on the competition.
This strategy is now starting to backfire as companies do this and then realize that while they are stuck in the standards process they aren't making any money. That means there only choice is to start selling product which isn't a standard.
Personally I'm actually very surprised that this hasn't already happened for UWB.
Isn't the real value of the power companies the right-of-way they possess for all of these power lines ?
Why would they install repeaters every 1 km ? I just can't believe that it would be that much cheaper to do that instead of just running fiber next to the power lines instead.
Then you'll get > 1GBs without even breathing hard, you'll only need a repeater about every 20km or so, and there will not be any RFI/EMI problems.
Power lines make _terrible_ communication channels.
For comparison pusposes positive carrier mobility in silicon is about 500 cm^2 V^-1 s^-1 and for negative charges (aka electrons) it is about 800. This means that this transparent dvice technology is on the order of 10 - 50 times slower than silicon. Not good for new CPU's:-) which is not the purpose of the research anyway.
What's of much more interest and is not mentioned in the abstract is what the gain of these devices are and what kind of current density they can handle.
The "drain current on-to-off ratio" is sort of an odd thing to put in the paper. I mean if the off current is 1pA then the on current is 10uA (woo-hoo). If they made an actual transistor they should be able to present very standard benchmark values like gain, cut-off frequency and breakdown voltages.
So I'm not actually convinced they created a bonafide device, but maybe just characterized the films for use as a potential semiconductor, in which case they have a long way to go. They need to dope the material, attach a gate, etc... all things which could cause all sorts of complications.
If you are doing a job and someone can do it for 1/3 as much, you are not competing against 1 person, you are competing against 3.
good luck with that work smarter plan.
here are the classes of jobs that won't get outsourced:
1.requires a security clearance (a form of govt intervention) 2.management above a certain level 3. a job which has to be done on location.
so maybe one day we'll all be CEO's. No wait, everyone in the country will work for the NSA. w.r.t. 3, you'll get displaced by insourcing, it's called an H1-B.
I think the free market will raise the living standards of other countries. However there is no reason why the standard of living in the US will continue to rise, it may very well (and probably will) fall.
This is certainy not an issue limited to pseudo-science.
It seems to me that schools don't do a very good job of teaching critical thinking.
Does what I am reading/seeing make sense ? How do I verify that what I'm someone is telling me is reasonably true and accurate ?
I think the author does a very nice job of pointing out that something like the face on mars is a great way to teach those skills with very specific examples.
It certainly should not be limited to science.
The ability to reason and think critically is also being severely hurt by the increasingly abusive marketing aimed at children, IMNSHO.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that this is in large part the cause of the political polarization in the US. Critical thinking includes taking in opposing views and trying to understand if they are valid or not.
Surely the following has been brought up before...
1. If I'm downloading copies of song which I already own on CD, then I'm not infringing, am I? Maybe I'm just too lazy to rip my own disks. I can think of other reasons why I might do that.
2. So if a high percentage (or even not so high percentage) of P2P users are downloading legitimate files, i.e. things they own or are otherwise allowed to access, doesn't this make it darn near impossible for the MPAA/RIAA/NSA/CIA/FBI to decide whose infringing and who is not ?
So basically we're back to the guilty and proven innocent mindset which is becoming all-too-common in the Corporate States of America (TM)
I saw an article a while back about mechanical imprint lithography. A picture in the article demonstrated feature sizes of ~ 20nm. Here is the thing that really amazed me. There were imperfections in the "mask" which were much smaller than 20nm. Those imperfections had been faithfully reproduced !
It seems to me that NASA is after things with a low volatility index.
Why don't they put the object in question in a closed container and then cycle the air through a mass spectrometer to see what's in there and in what concentration.
Actually, I'm not sure if the mass spec can tell you concentration, but I'm pretty sure it can.
You will then have a qualitative and repeatable method of testing.
"The single greatest free software problem in the 21st century is how to return the electromagnetic spectrum to use by sharing rather than use-by-propertization."
Spectrum can be made a _public_ thoroughfare again.
Anarchy will not rule. There is nothing wrong with putting limits on power and spectrum. What Mr Moglen is talking about is that vast majority of the spectrum is, currently, financially and politically controlled, basically by being allocated to corporations.
More spectrum needs to be allocated to citizens for free use.
I was using 430MHz as a stand-in for the frequency of operation of the keyfob.
There are actually several different frequencies which are allowed for operation.
My point was that unintended RF effects,.e.g. distortion and related effects could cause problems even though the operator was not specifically transmitting on frequency.
Now that I think about it, it's also very likely that the keyfob itself could generate some distortion of it's own if there were strong transmitters nearby...
It would be interesting to see how many of the fob's were older. The SAW's used in FOB's drift in frequency over time. It's possible that they are operating marginally, and so even a little interference would affect performance.
In addition to the usual military radio use which could interfere, ham's could also cause problems even if they are not operating directly on frequency.
If some ham operator doesn't know his power amplifier has decided to start distorting for one reason or another, you could get intermittent distortion which lands @ ~ 430MHz, and again you have a problem.
Or maybe it's just that the batteries were faulty.
It's sort of don't care, except for the truly stupid involvement of homeland security.
Which is more valuable to you - the citizen ? The spectrum GIVEN to corporate broadcasters, or the spectrum given to the ISM bands and therefore (with some regulation) to you ?
If the FCC really wants to do something right for a change it will open up even more spectrum for use by us mere mortals.
802.11b, microFM, Ham, a competitive cellular system, and more...
Wouldn't it be great if you could hack your own RF device using whatever modulation you wanted ? What kind of cool uses would we see ? Imagine if someone clever came up with something to replace designed-by-committee bluetooth, or 802.11b for that matter.
A lot of it can be done in the ISM bands, but more is better, especially since it is MY spectrum, not the government's.
And there is still the burden of FCC approval. That really needs to be made less onerous.
If you shouldn't run your business that way then why is it so successful ?
bluetooth is too complicated a solution
on
Is Bluetooth Dead?
·
· Score: 1
blue tooth was supposed to be a wire replacement, not a mini-lan solution.
Anybody who knows anything about bluetooth implementation knows that it grew way beyond it's original purpose and this made it too complicated and therefore too expensive to be useful.
Many of the functions which bluetooth is being used for can be accomplished by much cheaper and just as effective methods.
If I hear another stupid fucking comment about how I have to innovate and work smarter to out-perform my Indian and Chinese counterparts I'm going to scream.
It's not about being innovative. It's about being cheap.
I can't compete with 3 people who are just as smart as I am and work for 1/10 my wages. And I'm not so fucking arrogant as to think that I am in the top.001% of the world's population in IQ.
So I guess that means I should just work at the Gap for a living right (if I'm lucky) ?
The only answer is a rebalancing of the capital flow. The standard of living in this country country will fall, and it will fall, while it goes up in other countries.
That's fine with me. A higher standard of living for those in less developed countries is a good thing (there is an environmental cost but that's a nother discussion).
What I object to is MY government helping the process along by the ridiculous visa system, and by providing incentives for companies to move overseas. I also seriously object to the fucking hypocritical CEO's (like CRAIG BARRET OF INTEL AND TJ ROGERS OF CYPRESS) claiming they can't find the right people when really what they mean is they can't find the right people and pay them what they want.
Everybody loves capitalism until it works against them.
Let them send my job overseas, just don't use MY fucking tax dollars to help them.
The dipsticks who claim they're just going to out-compete the millions of educated people in other countries obviously have secure jobs.
As copyright terms become longer, innovation becomes irrelevant as companies continue to try and wring every last cent out of existing copyright material.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm unclear as to how energy is conserved in this case.
Clearly the energy of the reflected photon must be less than the incident photon.
Since the energy of the photon is inversely proportional to the frequency, does the frequency of the light change after it is reflected ?
From TFA
The NIF laser "is essential to assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons," says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
Naturally I'm depressed that "civilian" research does not get the money which it needs to help solve many pressing problems, but on the other hand if this facility removes the need for live nuclear tests that would be a good thing.
How long this self-imposed testband will last if China or India decide they need to start testing weapons using live tests ?
we have a very refined measurement for a meter.
we can measure atomic spacing very accurately.
why can't the kg, be based on a certain crystalline form of some material in a box shape with particular dimensions ?
I pick silicon. so using a particular crystalline form, create a cube which is x & y & z meters on a side.
there are x numbers of atoms, so now we know have a reproducible unit of mass.
here's another thought.
how accurately can gravity be measured ? how about a given amount of material which generates a particular force. ultimately this would be most relevant definition, since the curvature of space, i.e. gravity, and mass are so closely related.
From the article: "and how much of it has to do with optimistic investment in the path they thought the technology should take."
Pretty much all of it. It is very much a standard strategy to bet on a play, build up your IC and more importantly, patent portfolio, and then come out swinging.
You get a big jump on the competition.
This strategy is now starting to backfire as companies do this and then realize that while they are stuck in the standards process they aren't making any money. That means there only choice is to start selling product which isn't a standard.
Personally I'm actually very surprised that this hasn't already happened for UWB.
Isn't the real value of the power companies the right-of-way they possess for all of these power lines ?
Why would they install repeaters every 1 km ? I just can't believe that it would be that much cheaper to do that instead of just running fiber next to the power lines instead.
Then you'll get > 1GBs without even breathing hard, you'll only need a repeater about every 20km or so, and there will not be any RFI/EMI problems.
Power lines make _terrible_ communication channels.
From the abstract :
:-) which is not the purpose of the research anyway.
Transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) with an amorphous zinc tin oxide channel layer formed via rf magnetron sputter deposition are demonstrated. Field-effect mobilities of 5-15 and 20-50 cm^2 V^-1 s^-1 are obtained for devices post-deposition annealed at 300 and 600 C, respectively. TTFTs processed at 300 and 600 C yield devices with turn-on voltage of 0-15 and -5-5 V, respectively. Under both processing conditions, a drain current on-to-off ratio greater than 10^7 is obtained. Zinc tin oxide is one example of a new class of high performance TTFT channel materials involving amorphous oxides composed of heavy-metal cations with (n-1)^d10 ns^0 (n>=4) electronic configurations. ©2005 American Institute of Physics
For comparison pusposes positive carrier mobility in silicon is about 500 cm^2 V^-1 s^-1 and for negative charges (aka electrons) it is about 800. This means that this transparent dvice technology is on the order of 10 - 50 times slower than silicon. Not good for new CPU's
What's of much more interest and is not mentioned in the abstract is what the gain of these devices are and what kind of current density they can handle.
The "drain current on-to-off ratio" is sort of an odd thing to put in the paper. I mean if the off current is 1pA then the on current is 10uA (woo-hoo). If they made an actual transistor they should be able to present very standard benchmark values like gain, cut-off frequency and breakdown voltages.
So I'm not actually convinced they created a bonafide device, but maybe just characterized the films for use as a potential semiconductor, in which case they have a long way to go. They need to dope the material, attach a gate, etc... all things which could cause all sorts of complications.
Here we go again with the just work smarter plan.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
If you are doing a job and someone can do it for 1/3 as much, you are not competing against 1 person, you are competing against 3.
good luck with that work smarter plan.
here are the classes of jobs that won't get outsourced:
1.requires a security clearance (a form of govt intervention)
2.management above a certain level
3. a job which has to be done on location.
so maybe one day we'll all be CEO's.
No wait, everyone in the country will work for the NSA.
w.r.t. 3, you'll get displaced by insourcing, it's called an H1-B.
I think the free market will raise the living standards of other countries. However there is no reason why the standard of living in the US will continue to rise, it may very well (and probably will) fall.
Enjoy it while you've got it.
like a lot of slashdot readers I build my own computers.
my #1 problem has always been RAM.
I remember an interview with Larry Augustin of VALinux (remember them ?) when they were still building Linux PC's.
And he said the number one thing they had problems with was RAM.
I've had RAM which could pass all day long on a so-called memory tester, put it into a PC and the thing couldn't even finish POST.
Now that MMORPG's are a "genre", making your version stand out from the crowd has got to be a challenge.
So is it 1% perspiration and 99% inspiration, the opposite, or somewhere in-between ?
"whose energy storage they estimate will be roughly 360 kiloamperes per cubic meter"
Yet another example of bad science reporting.
360 kA/m^3 is not a measure of energy storage.
It's a measure of the peak current capacity.
The energy storage must be specified in J/m^3 or W-s/m^3.
It's an important disintinction. Peak current is fairly meaningless without knowing the associated voltage and time.
I seem to remember that in THX-1138 all decisions were economic decisions.
;-)
The final "chase" wall called off because it had gone over budget.
Maybe we're heading for a THX-1138 world where all decisions are based on economics.
Could be we'll elect a "grand nagus" someday
This is certainy not an issue limited to pseudo-science.
It seems to me that schools don't do a very good job of teaching critical thinking.
Does what I am reading/seeing make sense ?
How do I verify that what I'm someone is telling me is reasonably true and accurate ?
I think the author does a very nice job of pointing out that something like the face on mars is a great way to teach those skills with very specific examples.
It certainly should not be limited to science.
The ability to reason and think critically is also being severely hurt by the increasingly abusive marketing aimed at children, IMNSHO.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that this is in large part the cause of the political polarization in the US. Critical thinking includes taking in opposing views and trying to understand if they are valid or not.
Surely the following has been brought up before...
1. If I'm downloading copies of song which I already own on CD, then I'm not infringing, am I? Maybe I'm just too lazy to rip my own disks. I can think of other reasons why I might do that.
2. So if a high percentage (or even not so high percentage) of P2P users are downloading legitimate files, i.e. things they own or are otherwise allowed to access, doesn't this make it darn near impossible for the MPAA/RIAA/NSA/CIA/FBI to decide whose infringing and who is not ?
So basically we're back to the guilty and proven innocent mindset which is becoming all-too-common in the Corporate States of America (TM)
Here's some information :
2 2
http://www.eetimes.com/semi/news/OEG20021220S00
I saw an article a while back about mechanical imprint lithography. A picture in the article demonstrated feature sizes of ~ 20nm. Here is the thing that really amazed me. There were imperfections in the "mask" which were much smaller than 20nm. Those imperfections had been faithfully reproduced !
Smells are all about molecules becoming airborne.
It seems to me that NASA is after things with a low volatility index.
Why don't they put the object in question in a closed container and then cycle the air through a mass spectrometer to see what's in there and in what concentration.
Actually, I'm not sure if the mass spec can tell you concentration, but I'm pretty sure it can.
You will then have a qualitative and repeatable method of testing.
"The single greatest free software problem in the 21st century is how to return the electromagnetic spectrum to use by sharing rather than use-by-propertization."
Spectrum can be made a _public_ thoroughfare again.
Anarchy will not rule. There is nothing wrong with putting limits on power and spectrum. What Mr Moglen is talking about is that vast majority of the spectrum is, currently, financially and politically controlled, basically by being allocated to corporations.
More spectrum needs to be allocated to citizens for free use.
once again an excellent example of the absurdity of the DMCA.
If the picture is being reprinted without permission then it's copyright violation.
If the modified pciture is being made to appear as fact then it's libel (or is it slander ?).
The DMCA is once again demonstrated to be unnecessary.
I was truly slack.
.e.g. distortion and related effects could cause problems even though the operator was not specifically transmitting on frequency.
I was using 430MHz as a stand-in for the frequency of operation of the keyfob.
There are actually several different frequencies which are allowed for operation.
My point was that unintended RF effects,
Now that I think about it, it's also very likely that the keyfob itself could generate some distortion of it's own if there were strong transmitters nearby...
It would be interesting to see how many of the fob's were older. The SAW's used in FOB's drift in frequency over time. It's possible that they are operating marginally, and so even a little interference would affect performance.
In addition to the usual military radio use which could interfere, ham's could also cause problems even if they are not operating directly on frequency.
If some ham operator doesn't know his power amplifier has decided to start distorting for one reason or another, you could get intermittent distortion which lands @ ~ 430MHz, and again you have a problem.
Or maybe it's just that the batteries were faulty.
It's sort of don't care, except for the truly stupid involvement of homeland security.
Right on the money about open spectrum.
Which is more valuable to you - the citizen ? The spectrum GIVEN to corporate broadcasters, or the spectrum given to the ISM bands and therefore (with some regulation) to you ?
If the FCC really wants to do something right for a change it will open up even more spectrum for use by us mere mortals.
802.11b, microFM, Ham, a competitive cellular system, and more...
Wouldn't it be great if you could hack your own RF device using whatever modulation you wanted ? What kind of cool uses would we see ? Imagine if someone clever came up with something to replace designed-by-committee bluetooth, or 802.11b for that matter.
A lot of it can be done in the ISM bands, but more is better, especially since it is MY spectrum, not the government's.
And there is still the burden of FCC approval. That really needs to be made less onerous.
Spam is a classic case of the tragedy of the commons.
As long as sending millions of e-mails relatively cheaply is possible, spam will NEVER cease to be a serious problem.
You have to break the economic back which supports spam.
It has to cost something to send an e-mail.
True, it will not disappear, but the volume will drop dramatically perhaps even to the point where e-mail will become useful again.
I guess I will point out the obvious.
If you shouldn't run your business that way
then why is it so successful ?
blue tooth was supposed to be a wire replacement, not a mini-lan solution.
Anybody who knows anything about bluetooth implementation knows that it grew way beyond it's original purpose and this made it too complicated and therefore too expensive to be useful.
Many of the functions which bluetooth is being used for can be accomplished by much cheaper and just as effective methods.
I hope it's dead - and good riddance.
It's a lesson in feature creep.
If I hear another stupid fucking comment about how I have to innovate and work smarter to out-perform my Indian and Chinese counterparts I'm going to scream.
.001% of the world's population in IQ.
It's not about being innovative. It's about being cheap.
I can't compete with 3 people who are just as smart as I am and work for 1/10 my wages. And I'm not so fucking arrogant as to think that I am in the top
So I guess that means I should just work at the Gap for a living right (if I'm lucky) ?
The only answer is a rebalancing of the capital flow. The standard of living in this country country will fall, and it will fall, while it goes up in other countries.
That's fine with me. A higher standard of living for those in less developed countries is a good thing (there is an environmental cost but that's a nother discussion).
What I object to is MY government helping the process along by the ridiculous visa system, and by providing incentives for companies to move overseas. I also seriously object to the fucking hypocritical CEO's (like CRAIG BARRET OF INTEL AND TJ ROGERS OF CYPRESS) claiming they can't find the right people when really what they mean is they can't find the right people and pay them what they want.
Everybody loves capitalism until it works against them.
Let them send my job overseas, just don't use MY fucking tax dollars to help them.
The dipsticks who claim they're just going to out-compete the millions of educated people in other countries obviously have secure jobs.
There is no such things as free trade.
Think about it.
As copyright terms become longer, innovation
becomes irrelevant as companies continue
to try and wring every last cent out of existing
copyright material.