Oh, bother. Why did I think my previous contribution was lost in the interwebbial void and forgot to check if I had all comments loaded. Sorry about that everyone....
Actually... no. Atomic clocks work through measuring the frequency of photons created through electron transitions in an atom. This is an electromagnetic process and much the same as the process which make lasers work (and lasers do not use radioactive decay either, except in rare instances where it's used as a pumping source). Modern atomic clocks use Cesium or Rubidium atoms for this process. The clocks are shielded and the atoms are cooled to near absolute zero and be made to move in predictable ways so the photons they emit are all of the same frequency.
There is already suggested that fluctuations in emitted Neutrinos might cause the variation in decay which they measure. This is quite plausible because as far as I know, Neutrino radiation is the only radiation from the sun which can reach anything on Earth (including the samples) relatively unharmed, goes through matter (including all that other fusing or non-fusing Hydrogen and Helium gas in the sun) with very little interaction and is therefor first to arrive at Earth and does its interaction, if it does interact (almost entirely) through the Weak Nuclear Force. The force which also plays a significant role in radioactive decay. So -if- a solar flare is accompanied by a change in Neutrino radiation (or maybe even caused by it?), that will probably be the first thing we could notice about an upcoming solar flare.
However, Neutrinos do (almost... there are some theories it might do a very tiny bit) not interact with matter through the electromagnetic force. Because that's the force used in the 'Atomic clock process', Neutrinos do not measurably impact atomic clocks.
Ehm... no. Atomic clocks do not work by means of radioactive decay. They work by measuring specific electron transitions in atoms through the photon radiation this phenomenon emits. That process is actually quite akin to what happens in lasers (and lasers do not use radioactive decay, except in some very specific cases as a pumping power source). Atoms used for this process are for example Rubidium and Cesium. The 'art' here is to create electron transition produced photons of such precision that their frequencies differ only minutely and be able to precisely measure that frequency of course. Things that make the measurements not as reliable as could be and thus are tried to be avoided are, amongst other things, uncontrolled movement of the atoms (resulting in doppler shift) due to too high a sample temperature (which makes the atoms move quicker and give an increased chance of collisions) and external radiation (which would include almost any type of solar radiation and certainly any type that could be of influence). So modern atomic clocks are shielded, cooled to near absolute zero and their atoms used are tried to be made to move in a very predictable way.
I'm not a scientist in the field of natural physics. Only interested in it. (Full disclosure: I did study the subject for a year but was not quick enough with the math involved and too much interested in computers) It is very possible the oscillations in radioactive decay measured by the scientists is due to fluctuations in Neutrino emissions caused by or which also cause the solar flare. I wouldn't know any other type of solar radiation which could give an 'advanced' warning (because it is the 'first to arrive' due to going through almost everything with ease) and could influence radioactive decay even of (relatively) shielded samples.
Neutrino emissions do not (measurably) influence atomic clocks because the forces involved in the 'atomic clock process' are electromagnetic. Neutrinos only interact with atoms through the weak nuclear force which do play a role in radioactive decay.
What gives? As long as it's close enough...
on
The HP Memristor Debate
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· Score: 5, Insightful
'They' say it isn't a true memristor because its data deteriorates a bit over time. But... isn't that true of all other current basic electronic components as well? Capacitors have some leakage, making it a 'bit' a resistor. Inductors do not have a perfect Q. Even at its resonance point some energy is dissipated as heat, dampening the resonance circuit it is part of and making it a 'bit' a resistor as well. Resistors are most of the time at least 'half' a winding on a 'coil'... when alternating current passes through them with a high frequency, they act a 'bit' as an inductor. And they may have a parasitic capacitance with other components near it.
So, what gives if this HP invention is not the 'perfect' memristor. As long as it's close enough, it would do. In other words: if it quacks like a duck...
However... if you could just use a generic hardware broadcasting device and do all the patent-laden de/encoding in software... You'd have a blast in those large regions of the world where software patents don't hold much sway (Europe, for example... 'though lobbyists try to change that quite vigorously). And when the U.S. finally learns 'idea' patents only hamper innovation, there won't be a problem at all. It'll be 'just' software;)
Nope... RX/TX. If you'd read the article by the way, it should have been clear they wanted a SDR that goes both ways. Of course it doesn't really have an amplifier to speak of, so you can't just hook up an antennae to it and expect to work the world. Especially if you want to output multiple signals in multiple bands, as mentioned in the article, things can get very hairy at the transmission end. By the way, good, distortion free, broadband amplifiers aren't cheap as well and come with their own set of problems.
The idea might be nice, an 'open source' spectrum, and for the receiving end it's all fine and dandy. I'm not a proponent, of security through obfuscation/obscurity, so regulation of waves receiving: Governments, just grow up!
But even at low power conditions, for certain frequencies, you don't want to have transmission capabilities in the wrong hands (read: someone who hasn't at least got a a HAM Radio license. A degree in Electronics, Electromechanics, Physics might suffice as well... if it has covered the correct subjects). Things can turn out very nasty even at low power situations. Things like GPS will stop working, or other satellite signals jammed. Many satellites only transmit at an order of 10-100 watts. The amount of signal left when received on earth is miniscule. A little more power and things like Wifi and RC toys/remote controlls/bluetooth will be affected. Digital broadcasting is next I think... including mobile phones and portophone systems there isn't nearly as much robustness in there as there was with the old analogue signals... As they digitized the signals, they could cut bandwith and power requirements... Nice for energy savings and miniaturization of systems but it does mean it can be jammed easier, even if there is overhead in the protocol for error correction. Well.. you'll get the picture.
While I agree this sounds like a better deal for radio enthousiasts than the Ettus USRP and I'll be itching to get my hands on one of these, color me sceptic about the whole low power broadband broadcast 4 noobs vibe the Per Vices founders seem to transmit.
Well.. PC Perspective had to benchmark this card with some sort of drivers... Guess what; those probably were written by AMD personell. It's already faster than the competitors offering. If it had any major defects they surely would have mentioned it in the article. So if that's total garbage, it can only improve, no? I'm not that afraid the cards will be usable only as badly designed space heaters. Because apparently that's something they do badly... having a similar thermal envelope as the previous gen cards. The developers of high power PSUs will be the least pleased with this new product:P
Actually I try to filter my adds through adblock to not block the unobtrusive text based adds (which Google became 'famous' for). If this option is able to do the filter work for me instead of me opting out every single add I find annoying manually, I'd actually very much like the option. If it has this as intention, I'm willing to try it out, see if it can get the job done. I can always put back my original filter list, can I?
Maybe... But if you see the Nominations list, there wasn't even a choice of nominees this year. Unlike last year where there were several 'minor' Epic Fails, this year there Could Only Be One(tm). It was the Epic Fails of Epic-est Fail-ness. And Sony rightfully got credited for it.
Disclaimer: I'm a bit biased of course, who isn't? The last Sony item I bought was a 'high quality' headphones a year ago that broke within a couple of months due to material fatigue that broke the braces that connected the ear cups with the head band. Well... nothing some epoxy can't handle. It's still semi-usable. However, it's not that experience that put me off spending money on anything Sony related since (Except, maybe, through the optical media standards they co-developed).
Could it possibly be, the Netherlands still have plenty brick and mortar bookshops and no Amazon, because Dutch and Flemmish language books can't be sold for a price below a publisher set, government regulated sales price, unless a book is more than 3 years old or is 'damaged'? Amazon can't sell those books for bargain prices on the Dutch and Flemmish market because they will be hauled to court and possibly put out of business. Brick and mortar bookshops don't compete on prices (they can compete on service of course) and the only discount shops we know contain titles over 3 years old and those 'damaged' books (which sometimes happens not by accident, if the publisher and author want to sell of part of their stock quickly/cheaply).
I do buy at Amazon, by the way. But only for English-original titles. Amazon.co.uk no longer includes shipping charges to many parts of Europe, when ordering for 25+ GBP and their prices are altogether reasonable for books and audiovisual media. No import duties and a harmonized VAT system ordering from within Europe by the way.
Well... I dare to contend that. It didn't happen with LotRO. A Free to Play player there can reach the level cap entirely without paying a single cent (although it will be a helluva grind because you basically have to level on monsterkills and the epic questline or you have to do every deed in the areas you have full access to on, on at least three characters to get all the 'virtual currency' for free to buy off the most annoying restrictions and all quest packs) They have (limited to one message every 5 seconds or so) use of all the chat channels. Goldselling is prevented by a 2 gold per character level cap (which is sufficient to be able to do almost everything in game except buy a house or a special reputation horse mount or the expensive stuff on the auction houses) They can buy on the AH what they can afford but not sell on it. They can unlock quest packs and all the other stuff that differentiates them and subscribers by single payments of a 'virtual currency' (Turbine points) which you can buy with hard cash OR by actually playing the game. And if you spend real money(tm) at least once (subscribe for a month, for example, of buy virtual currency once) most of the restrictions on your account are broadened or completely lifted. (5 gold cap, ability to sell 5 items on the auction per character, no more chat restrictions, etc.) I think that kind of restrictions give people plenty of ways to play for 'free' and still be a contributing character, unlike what I read about the WOW Free to Play options. Also I have alts who level through the starter areas at the moment and do not notice an increase in goldselling and chat spamming. I do notice an occational ninja-fellowship-invite and the odd 'rude' player but not noticably more if you keep in mind how many more people are actually playing in those starter areas nowadays. In the kin I'm in (the second oldest on that server; Iluvatarian Knights, Gilrain) there are a couple of free to play players and they start to notice some really annoying restrictions only when they are already half way to the level cap. Then they can decide if it's worth their money to skip a bit of grinding or start an extra character and get enough 'virtual currency' that way to pay for quest packs. Also it opened the way for those of us willing, to experiment with a second account without immediately spending for a second subscription. We also have a multiboxer in our kin who has (beside a couple of subscriptions) a free-to-play multibox account group. He runs great barrows with six rune-keepers for the fun of whatever multiboxers percieve as being fun (it's not my thing:P ). Each of them have different reasons not to pay for a subscription. It might shock you how many people can't get a creditcard (or simply can't afford to spend any money at all) and thus can't easilly subscribe but have tons of free time to spend on a game. Underaged, people with low income, people with variable income, people paying off debt (who don't have access to their own bank accounts), people who don't have access to their own accounts for other reasons (which can be plenty), people in countries with a 'difficult' financial relationship to the USA, people in countries with an alltogether 'difficult' relationship to the USA. And then there are ofcourse the people who very much like to play... a few hours in the month, when they have a day off between working and raising their kids. They are never gonna pay a whopping 15 dollars/month for a subscription but they might once in a while invest in a quest pack. And lastly there are also people who are not willing to pay anyways on principle. I don't know what Turbine made after making LotRO free to play, but the rumours say it's a tidy sum and it did make the servers and especially the starter areas a lot more lively.
Religion at its lowest, human level have everything to do with morality. Whether it's a fixed set of morals passed down to you from previous generations or the interaction of you with your fellow human beings which makes you learn that being a social being has its benefits for you as much as for anyone else, or preferably both. It gives you a reference of judgment you can build upon even if you later reject that religion for whatever circumstance. In that sense, being brought up with a certain religion is indistinguishable from being brought up with a less (or non-) religious but similar system of beliefs and morals like Buddhism, Socialism or Humanitarianism. Your parents/teachers give you this system of morals and eventually you base your own system of morals on what you have been thought mixed with your own experiences. If you're a 'good' human being (sorry for my use of the word 'good' here... for lack of a better word) that means when you're grown up you have been able to evolve your own personal system of morals because you have been given the chance to do so, working from that base that was passed down to you, to something you can live comfortably with both yourself and with all human beings you interact with. Religion at its lowest, human level, I think is an extremely good thing (now I do mean good as GOOD!) whether some of its believes are rather fantastical and unscientific or not. It's only when things get institutionalized and people who are supposed to be shepherds turn out to be wolfs that things go horribly wrong. But I honestly think that's something that can happen with any social system of beliefs and morals.
Disclaimer: I've been brought up in a non-strict roman catholic belief system. My parents left me lots of room for individual choices, which does include I haven't been seeing a church inside for years, 'though I was a very active member (as in helping find texts for the masses as part of a liturgy group) and still think of those years fondly. I turned away at a time the conservative forces began squashing laymen influences as I got the impression human interaction and constructive dialog about hot moral topics was becoming less and less a priority. I do still value the christian moral core though, so I'm probably quite biased.
For that, they invented TPM, HDMI and various other consumer experience impeding technologies. If you can demand the whole chain is signed -bios, operating system, drivers and display hardware (via HDMI)- you can make 'sure' (unless an exploring and fearless hacker shows otherwise - risking a criminal offense per DCMA) the movie is only played when you want to. And I think the MPAA won't allow TV tuner hardware to decode this 'premium' content before they 'cum in their mandatory TPM wet dream'.
but from what I read you make it seem like no healthcare system is good
I don't know if you mean by this 1) "Not having a health care system is good", or 2) "None of either the American or European health care systems are any good". Ambiguity can be a b*tch. If it's 1), I meant exactly the opposite in my earlier post. If it's 2) you're somewhat correct. It's just like democracy. It's not the 'ideal' system (if there is one... I guess it would be no-one ever becoming ill...) It's just the best we have. Most European countries have full government regulated health care systems. In my country commercial insurance companies sell the health care packages but the government decides the basic package which includes all emergency and essential care, generic medicine, brand medicine if there is no generic alternative, dental care for minors and limited non-essential health care. Prices are about 90 euros/month per adult. Children of minor age are included at no cost. Insurance companies may sell you more expensive packages if you want things like full dental care but they must give you at least the basic package and you may choose which insurance company you want to sign up with and be free to switch once a year or when the insurance company changes the contract. Every person of adult age must sign on to a health care plan. (I repeat: It's mandatory. Yes I can understand that strikes fear into a republican heart. Sorry for that.)
Who is paying for this? Part of it is subsidized by the government (as in: we pay for it anyway by means of various taxes). In recent years more so because of our country getting a higher percentage of people of age. Older people require more health care. Of course this issue is debated because it raises prices for everyone. There are left wing politics and right wing politics solutions to this problem but so far we still have decent health care for everyone. Another (large) part is payed by every one that works. My employer keeps part of my wage every month and gives it to the government. It's part of our income tax system. The first part of tax is for the health care and social benefits (disability benefit and limited unemployment benefit). Then when you earn more money, more of the tax flows directly into the treasury with which the government pays for neat things like good roads and education and lesser neat things like Joint Strike Fighters (note: your perception of neat and lesser neat may vary, as may be the amount of tax the government should spend anyways) This part also is debated because employers want to give employees less wage so they can have cheaper labour. One 'solution' (the quotes are intentional) is asking the government for less taxes so employers spend less, employees get about the same and the country becomes poorer. The last part is payed by the avg. 90 euros package price. People who can't pay for this (because they have an extremely low income, less than about 1000 euro's/month which is minimum wage) are compensated for this. For them, health care essentialy is free. Still there are some individuals who refuse to pay this money. Because it's a criminal offense to deny a person emergency health care, here, and some hospitals get financial problems with helping those people and not receiving money from an insurance company for it, the government is working on legislation to remedy this problem. So, also this part is debated.
So much for this essay about the public health care system of a small European country. Most countries in Europe have comparable health care systems but the details may widely vary. As you could read, it isn't an ideal system. There are people who misuse it, there is political debate, it might become too expensive in the future (when even a higher percentage of people get to old age) but still it's a very neat thing to have. No signing of papers and doubt if someone can afford treatment in the emergency ward because the hospitals know they will get the money (most of the time). Government and com
Disclaimer: I live in a small country in the northwestern part of Europe.
weÃ(TM)re in a deep recession here and now isnÃ(TM)t the most appropriate time to start spending billions
Who says anything about spending? They are drafting a proposal and they want a public health care system. Good. It's 10 years overdue. Every time I read about 'republican' opposition they are screaming 'Obama is spending too much' or 'democrats are going to make this country a new communist state'. Well if I look at recent history I know what 8 years of spending has done to the United States: No good and (the seeds of) a global recession.
Now, I'm not saying the northwestern part of Europe or the U.S. is a better place to live in. But for public health care: Take a look how it's done in most European countries and then calculate medical spending per capita for an average European and an average American (Hint: You pay more and get less). Some popular (maybe too popular for some tastes) American documentary maker even made a film out of it. Google for 'Sicko'. It might not be to your liking but it also might give you another perspective.
Another (again expected) observation is that the lack of (un)register_filesystem identifiers in the modules which only provides services to others: dlm, lockd, fat, and jbd2/jbd2.
Yes I did read the article and thought it was very interesting. For one thing the fact that in earlier kernel releases file system drivers used to use more or less the same set of external symbols and in recent releases they more often used exclusive external symbols. If that's a good or a bad thing I don't know because I'm not an expert in file systems. It may indicate file system kernel module writers are re-using code less or do no longer compare their work that much anymore or it could mean file systems are now functioning more efficiently because they use more specialized external functions now... or maybe it means nothing or something completely else... I don't know really....
I'm all for wind and solar but you might want to remember the fact those two aren't continuously available. Solar has a 24h cycle with roughly half of it producing no power at all. And... well, the answer to the other one... is blowing in the wind. Don't give me the battery crap to manage low yield hours. Battery storage is fine for emergencies. It's not fine for large scale use because it's wholly inefficient and materials consuming (to make them, and keep making them to replace degraded ones). Same goes for long distance power lines. Either you lose quite a lot of energy in transport or you lose it because you cool your superconducting lines over too long a distance, unless you make a mega research project for spanning the globe with a large scale efficient superconducting power line which will cost you comparable billions and comparable international cooperation. A third option is making hydrogen of the spare electricity in high yield hours. But before that is efficient enough and researched through I think we have better options. So we need some stable energy sources beside wind and solar. Hydro is good, in those areas where it can be available, reliably. But those areas are small and not always near places where people want to live. Besides, hydro also can have quite an environmental impact. (China, three gorges anyone?) So we're left with the polluting forms energy generation for a stable grid. Which are: -Gas: Relatively clean on the CO2 front, easily distributable for use in small 'neighborhood' serving power plants. But it could be better used for, for example, cooking. Besides there is a limited amount of it in fossil form. -Oil: Out of the question. Oil is much too useful for making products to waste it on electricity generation. -Coal: Say bye bye to the coastal plains because they are gonna flood if we keep going on as we are doing now. -Fission: In it's current form with all its problems: Wholly inadequate, but we might have to stick to it, if we don't research fusion and get something good out of it. Only thing I see this become a better option is going the breeder reactor way and burn ALL the uranium (including the U238), take the risk and say 'Nuclear weapons proliferation up my a**'. To have a cleaner way of fission also requires quite some research. Especially in how to get those hot reactors safer than they were in the past. There are a lot more of dangerous isotopes we have to handle this way, but when done wisely it will ultimately lead in far less radioactive polutants than the current way we use nuclear fission. -Fusion: It's complex, it's hard to do. Every shortcut we tried up to now failed miserably. The only way we think it might reliably work is the way of ITER. We owe it to our (grand) children to at least try it once. Give it a good chance before we 'pull the plug'. A couple of billion is nothing compared to the wealth of knowledge it will surely enrich the scientific community with and the chance we have for this being the prelude to something marvelous.
These fines are peanuts compared to the E.U. and E.U. member states budgets, and you know it because the U.S. of A. is a comparable '1st world' economy with comparable government spending (although it might lay emphasis on different topics)... We're talking about multiple hundreds of billions of euros here, per larger country of the E.U. (U.K., France, Germany) and 120 billion euro (in 2007) of budget for the E.U. itself. Combined it could be a few trillions, allthough I'm guessing here... So to see the 1 billion euro fine for iNtel and what's to come for Microsoft as a significant 'monopoly tax' or '"Let the Americans pay our bills" tax' is a bit of an exaggeration.
Now for companies fined by E.U. anti-trust laws; We are talking about the multinationals out here. Local companies breaking these laws are punished nationally (like, in recent history, half the building sector in the Netherlands, the 'Bouwfraude' scandal which triggered a parliamentary inquiry) This is a list of some of the more significant cases:
iNtel: 1.06 billion euros. (Illegal sales practices) Otis, Kone, Schindler, ThyssenKrupp: 992 million euros. (Cartel of installation and maintaining elevators) Hoffman-La Roche (and others): 790 million euros. (Price fixing of vitamin products) Siemens, Toshiba (and others): 750 million euros. (Cartel of gas insulator switches) (nine oil companies): 676 million euros. (Price fixing of parafine wax) Bayer, Shell, Dow (and others): 519 million euros. (Price fixing of synthetic rubber) Microsoft: 497 million euros. (Monopoly abuse) Saint Gobain (and others): 486 million euros. (price fixing of flat glass) Akzo Nobel, Solvay (and others): 388 million euros. (price fixing of hydrogen peroxide) (five producers): 344 million euros. (price fixing of acryllic glass) Heineken, Grolsch, Bavaria: 273 million euros. (Dutch beer market cartel)
Sources are all over the web, but I used this one because it had a nice list with fined amounts and company names and checked the data here.
This is a log of recent (this year) cases As you can see, the list is quite diverse but indeed does include both iNtel and Microsoft. Quite a few cases involve whole industrial sectors, not individual companies. Understandable if you know that anti-trust includes discussing set prices with your competitors. A link at the bottom of that page points to earlier cases.
In the end, this is the risk of doing business in the E.U.. You should play by the E.U. anti-trust rules. If you don't, you can be caught, and just like me when I'd be speeding or ignore a red traffic light you can be fined an amount appropriate to the offense.
Where do they get the power to run this thing anyway? Thats where batteries are for... probably a huge array. Or capacitors, or a spinning object storing a huge load of kinetic energy or any other form of energy storage. It's the same way as KEMA (an electronics testing and certification institute I live near) stores it's energy for huge lightning bolts and power overloads they use to test kilovolt transformers, massive power breakers and other high voltage equipment. They could store the energy for those 200 femtoseconds. Notice it's only 200 femtoseconds... so if you load an array for 1 second with only 1*10^-10th of all the power all U.S. powerplants are producing in that timeframe you hold all the energy needed to fire the laser... neglecting any transfer losses.
As far as I know 14,524 MHz indeed is not a legal frequency. But it might be he's transmitting on 2 Meter and there is a 10* switch somewhere or the last digit simply isn't shown on the frequency generator (if it's indeed that)? 145,240 MHz is smack in the middle of the 2 meter amateur band.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, bother. Why did I think my previous contribution was lost in the interwebbial void and forgot to check if I had all comments loaded. Sorry about that everyone....
Actually... no. Atomic clocks work through measuring the frequency of photons created through electron transitions in an atom. This is an electromagnetic process and much the same as the process which make lasers work (and lasers do not use radioactive decay either, except in rare instances where it's used as a pumping source).
Modern atomic clocks use Cesium or Rubidium atoms for this process. The clocks are shielded and the atoms are cooled to near absolute zero and be made to move in predictable ways so the photons they emit are all of the same frequency.
There is already suggested that fluctuations in emitted Neutrinos might cause the variation in decay which they measure. This is quite plausible because as far as I know, Neutrino radiation is the only radiation from the sun which can reach anything on Earth (including the samples) relatively unharmed, goes through matter (including all that other fusing or non-fusing Hydrogen and Helium gas in the sun) with very little interaction and is therefor first to arrive at Earth and does its interaction, if it does interact (almost entirely) through the Weak Nuclear Force. The force which also plays a significant role in radioactive decay. So -if- a solar flare is accompanied by a change in Neutrino radiation (or maybe even caused by it?), that will probably be the first thing we could notice about an upcoming solar flare.
However, Neutrinos do (almost ... there are some theories it might do a very tiny bit) not interact with matter through the electromagnetic force. Because that's the force used in the 'Atomic clock process', Neutrinos do not measurably impact atomic clocks.
Ehm ... no. Atomic clocks do not work by means of radioactive decay. They work by measuring specific electron transitions in atoms through the photon radiation this phenomenon emits. That process is actually quite akin to what happens in lasers (and lasers do not use radioactive decay, except in some very specific cases as a pumping power source). Atoms used for this process are for example Rubidium and Cesium. The 'art' here is to create electron transition produced photons of such precision that their frequencies differ only minutely and be able to precisely measure that frequency of course. Things that make the measurements not as reliable as could be and thus are tried to be avoided are, amongst other things, uncontrolled movement of the atoms (resulting in doppler shift) due to too high a sample temperature (which makes the atoms move quicker and give an increased chance of collisions) and external radiation (which would include almost any type of solar radiation and certainly any type that could be of influence). So modern atomic clocks are shielded, cooled to near absolute zero and their atoms used are tried to be made to move in a very predictable way.
I'm not a scientist in the field of natural physics. Only interested in it. (Full disclosure: I did study the subject for a year but was not quick enough with the math involved and too much interested in computers)
It is very possible the oscillations in radioactive decay measured by the scientists is due to fluctuations in Neutrino emissions caused by or which also cause the solar flare. I wouldn't know any other type of solar radiation which could give an 'advanced' warning (because it is the 'first to arrive' due to going through almost everything with ease) and could influence radioactive decay even of (relatively) shielded samples.
Neutrino emissions do not (measurably) influence atomic clocks because the forces involved in the 'atomic clock process' are electromagnetic. Neutrinos only interact with atoms through the weak nuclear force which do play a role in radioactive decay.
'They' say it isn't a true memristor because its data deteriorates a bit over time. But ... isn't that true of all other current basic electronic components as well? Capacitors have some leakage, making it a 'bit' a resistor. Inductors do not have a perfect Q. Even at its resonance point some energy is dissipated as heat, dampening the resonance circuit it is part of and making it a 'bit' a resistor as well. Resistors are most of the time at least 'half' a winding on a 'coil'... when alternating current passes through them with a high frequency, they act a 'bit' as an inductor. And they may have a parasitic capacitance with other components near it.
So, what gives if this HP invention is not the 'perfect' memristor. As long as it's close enough, it would do. In other words: if it quacks like a duck...
However ... if you could just use a generic hardware broadcasting device and do all the patent-laden de/encoding in software... You'd have a blast in those large regions of the world where software patents don't hold much sway (Europe, for example... 'though lobbyists try to change that quite vigorously). ;)
And when the U.S. finally learns 'idea' patents only hamper innovation, there won't be a problem at all. It'll be 'just' software
Technical Specifications and Support:
Nope ... RX/TX. If you'd read the article by the way, it should have been clear they wanted a SDR that goes both ways. Of course it doesn't really have an amplifier to speak of, so you can't just hook up an antennae to it and expect to work the world. Especially if you want to output multiple signals in multiple bands, as mentioned in the article, things can get very hairy at the transmission end. By the way, good, distortion free, broadband amplifiers aren't cheap as well and come with their own set of problems.
The idea might be nice, an 'open source' spectrum, and for the receiving end it's all fine and dandy. I'm not a proponent, of security through obfuscation/obscurity, so regulation of waves receiving: Governments, just grow up!
But even at low power conditions, for certain frequencies, you don't want to have transmission capabilities in the wrong hands (read: someone who hasn't at least got a a HAM Radio license. A degree in Electronics, Electromechanics, Physics might suffice as well... if it has covered the correct subjects). Things can turn out very nasty even at low power situations. Things like GPS will stop working, or other satellite signals jammed. Many satellites only transmit at an order of 10-100 watts. The amount of signal left when received on earth is miniscule. A little more power and things like Wifi and RC toys/remote controlls/bluetooth will be affected. Digital broadcasting is next I think... including mobile phones and portophone systems there isn't nearly as much robustness in there as there was with the old analogue signals... As they digitized the signals, they could cut bandwith and power requirements... Nice for energy savings and miniaturization of systems but it does mean it can be jammed easier, even if there is overhead in the protocol for error correction. Well .. you'll get the picture.
While I agree this sounds like a better deal for radio enthousiasts than the Ettus USRP and I'll be itching to get my hands on one of these, color me sceptic about the whole low power broadband broadcast 4 noobs vibe the Per Vices founders seem to transmit.
73. PG8W.
Of course, he should be! It's the best thing since sliced bread.
And I should know, being Dutch. What good would sliced bread be without an abundance of cheese?
MP3 player? I want a Pip-boy with 'em tiny tubes!
And a reservation for a room in Vault 101 to go with it.
Well .. PC Perspective had to benchmark this card with some sort of drivers... Guess what; those probably were written by AMD personell. It's already faster than the competitors offering. If it had any major defects they surely would have mentioned it in the article. So if that's total garbage, it can only improve, no? :P
I'm not that afraid the cards will be usable only as badly designed space heaters. Because apparently that's something they do badly... having a similar thermal envelope as the previous gen cards. The developers of high power PSUs will be the least pleased with this new product
Actually I try to filter my adds through adblock to not block the unobtrusive text based adds (which Google became 'famous' for). If this option is able to do the filter work for me instead of me opting out every single add I find annoying manually, I'd actually very much like the option. If it has this as intention, I'm willing to try it out, see if it can get the job done. I can always put back my original filter list, can I?
Maybe ... But if you see the Nominations list, there wasn't even a choice of nominees this year. Unlike last year where there were several 'minor' Epic Fails, this year there Could Only Be One(tm). It was the Epic Fails of Epic-est Fail-ness. And Sony rightfully got credited for it.
Disclaimer: I'm a bit biased of course, who isn't? The last Sony item I bought was a 'high quality' headphones a year ago that broke within a couple of months due to material fatigue that broke the braces that connected the ear cups with the head band. Well ... nothing some epoxy can't handle. It's still semi-usable. However, it's not that experience that put me off spending money on anything Sony related since (Except, maybe, through the optical media standards they co-developed).
Lets not forget that Holland has no Amazon
Could it possibly be, the Netherlands still have plenty brick and mortar bookshops and no Amazon, because Dutch and Flemmish language books can't be sold for a price below a publisher set, government regulated sales price, unless a book is more than 3 years old or is 'damaged'?
Amazon can't sell those books for bargain prices on the Dutch and Flemmish market because they will be hauled to court and possibly put out of business. Brick and mortar bookshops don't compete on prices (they can compete on service of course) and the only discount shops we know contain titles over 3 years old and those 'damaged' books (which sometimes happens not by accident, if the publisher and author want to sell of part of their stock quickly/cheaply).
I do buy at Amazon, by the way. But only for English-original titles. Amazon.co.uk no longer includes shipping charges to many parts of Europe, when ordering for 25+ GBP and their prices are altogether reasonable for books and audiovisual media. No import duties and a harmonized VAT system ordering from within Europe by the way.
Well ... I dare to contend that. It didn't happen with LotRO. :P ). ... a few hours in the month, when they have a day off between working and raising their kids. They are never gonna pay a whopping 15 dollars/month for a subscription but they might once in a while invest in a quest pack. And lastly there are also people who are not willing to pay anyways on principle.
A Free to Play player there can reach the level cap entirely without paying a single cent (although it will be a helluva grind because you basically have to level on monsterkills and the epic questline or you have to do every deed in the areas you have full access to on, on at least three characters to get all the 'virtual currency' for free to buy off the most annoying restrictions and all quest packs)
They have (limited to one message every 5 seconds or so) use of all the chat channels. Goldselling is prevented by a 2 gold per character level cap (which is sufficient to be able to do almost everything in game except buy a house or a special reputation horse mount or the expensive stuff on the auction houses) They can buy on the AH what they can afford but not sell on it.
They can unlock quest packs and all the other stuff that differentiates them and subscribers by single payments of a 'virtual currency' (Turbine points) which you can buy with hard cash OR by actually playing the game. And if you spend real money(tm) at least once (subscribe for a month, for example, of buy virtual currency once) most of the restrictions on your account are broadened or completely lifted. (5 gold cap, ability to sell 5 items on the auction per character, no more chat restrictions, etc.)
I think that kind of restrictions give people plenty of ways to play for 'free' and still be a contributing character, unlike what I read about the WOW Free to Play options. Also I have alts who level through the starter areas at the moment and do not notice an increase in goldselling and chat spamming. I do notice an occational ninja-fellowship-invite and the odd 'rude' player but not noticably more if you keep in mind how many more people are actually playing in those starter areas nowadays.
In the kin I'm in (the second oldest on that server; Iluvatarian Knights, Gilrain) there are a couple of free to play players and they start to notice some really annoying restrictions only when they are already half way to the level cap. Then they can decide if it's worth their money to skip a bit of grinding or start an extra character and get enough 'virtual currency' that way to pay for quest packs. Also it opened the way for those of us willing, to experiment with a second account without immediately spending for a second subscription. We also have a multiboxer in our kin who has (beside a couple of subscriptions) a free-to-play multibox account group. He runs great barrows with six rune-keepers for the fun of whatever multiboxers percieve as being fun (it's not my thing
Each of them have different reasons not to pay for a subscription. It might shock you how many people can't get a creditcard (or simply can't afford to spend any money at all) and thus can't easilly subscribe but have tons of free time to spend on a game. Underaged, people with low income, people with variable income, people paying off debt (who don't have access to their own bank accounts), people who don't have access to their own accounts for other reasons (which can be plenty), people in countries with a 'difficult' financial relationship to the USA, people in countries with an alltogether 'difficult' relationship to the USA. And then there are ofcourse the people who very much like to play
I don't know what Turbine made after making LotRO free to play, but the rumours say it's a tidy sum and it did make the servers and especially the starter areas a lot more lively.
Religion at its lowest, human level have everything to do with morality. Whether it's a fixed set of morals passed down to you from previous generations or the interaction of you with your fellow human beings which makes you learn that being a social being has its benefits for you as much as for anyone else, or preferably both. It gives you a reference of judgment you can build upon even if you later reject that religion for whatever circumstance. In that sense, being brought up with a certain religion is indistinguishable from being brought up with a less (or non-) religious but similar system of beliefs and morals like Buddhism, Socialism or Humanitarianism. Your parents/teachers give you this system of morals and eventually you base your own system of morals on what you have been thought mixed with your own experiences. If you're a 'good' human being (sorry for my use of the word 'good' here ... for lack of a better word) that means when you're grown up you have been able to evolve your own personal system of morals because you have been given the chance to do so, working from that base that was passed down to you, to something you can live comfortably with both yourself and with all human beings you interact with.
Religion at its lowest, human level, I think is an extremely good thing (now I do mean good as GOOD!) whether some of its believes are rather fantastical and unscientific or not.
It's only when things get institutionalized and people who are supposed to be shepherds turn out to be wolfs that things go horribly wrong. But I honestly think that's something that can happen with any social system of beliefs and morals.
Disclaimer: I've been brought up in a non-strict roman catholic belief system. My parents left me lots of room for individual choices, which does include I haven't been seeing a church inside for years, 'though I was a very active member (as in helping find texts for the masses as part of a liturgy group) and still think of those years fondly. I turned away at a time the conservative forces began squashing laymen influences as I got the impression human interaction and constructive dialog about hot moral topics was becoming less and less a priority. I do still value the christian moral core though, so I'm probably quite biased.
For that, they invented TPM, HDMI and various other consumer experience impeding technologies.
If you can demand the whole chain is signed -bios, operating system, drivers and display hardware (via HDMI)- you can make 'sure' (unless an exploring and fearless hacker shows otherwise - risking a criminal offense per DCMA) the movie is only played when you want to. And I think the MPAA won't allow TV tuner hardware to decode this 'premium' content before they 'cum in their mandatory TPM wet dream'.
but from what I read you make it seem like no healthcare system is good
I don't know if you mean by this 1) "Not having a health care system is good", or 2) "None of either the American or European health care systems are any good". Ambiguity can be a b*tch. If it's 1), I meant exactly the opposite in my earlier post. If it's 2) you're somewhat correct. It's just like democracy. It's not the 'ideal' system (if there is one... I guess it would be no-one ever becoming ill...) It's just the best we have.
Most European countries have full government regulated health care systems. In my country commercial insurance companies sell the health care packages but the government decides the basic package which includes all emergency and essential care, generic medicine, brand medicine if there is no generic alternative, dental care for minors and limited non-essential health care. Prices are about 90 euros/month per adult. Children of minor age are included at no cost. Insurance companies may sell you more expensive packages if you want things like full dental care but they must give you at least the basic package and you may choose which insurance company you want to sign up with and be free to switch once a year or when the insurance company changes the contract. Every person of adult age must sign on to a health care plan. (I repeat: It's mandatory. Yes I can understand that strikes fear into a republican heart. Sorry for that.)
Who is paying for this? Part of it is subsidized by the government (as in: we pay for it anyway by means of various taxes). In recent years more so because of our country getting a higher percentage of people of age. Older people require more health care. Of course this issue is debated because it raises prices for everyone. There are left wing politics and right wing politics solutions to this problem but so far we still have decent health care for everyone.
Another (large) part is payed by every one that works. My employer keeps part of my wage every month and gives it to the government. It's part of our income tax system. The first part of tax is for the health care and social benefits (disability benefit and limited unemployment benefit). Then when you earn more money, more of the tax flows directly into the treasury with which the government pays for neat things like good roads and education and lesser neat things like Joint Strike Fighters (note: your perception of neat and lesser neat may vary, as may be the amount of tax the government should spend anyways) This part also is debated because employers want to give employees less wage so they can have cheaper labour. One 'solution' (the quotes are intentional) is asking the government for less taxes so employers spend less, employees get about the same and the country becomes poorer.
The last part is payed by the avg. 90 euros package price. People who can't pay for this (because they have an extremely low income, less than about 1000 euro's/month which is minimum wage) are compensated for this. For them, health care essentialy is free. Still there are some individuals who refuse to pay this money. Because it's a criminal offense to deny a person emergency health care, here, and some hospitals get financial problems with helping those people and not receiving money from an insurance company for it, the government is working on legislation to remedy this problem. So, also this part is debated.
So much for this essay about the public health care system of a small European country. Most countries in Europe have comparable health care systems but the details may widely vary. As you could read, it isn't an ideal system. There are people who misuse it, there is political debate, it might become too expensive in the future (when even a higher percentage of people get to old age) but still it's a very neat thing to have. No signing of papers and doubt if someone can afford treatment in the emergency ward because the hospitals know they will get the money (most of the time). Government and com
Disclaimer: I live in a small country in the northwestern part of Europe.
weÃ(TM)re in a deep recession here and now isnÃ(TM)t the most appropriate time to start spending billions
Who says anything about spending? They are drafting a proposal and they want a public health care system. Good. It's 10 years overdue. Every time I read about 'republican' opposition they are screaming 'Obama is spending too much' or 'democrats are going to make this country a new communist state'. Well if I look at recent history I know what 8 years of spending has done to the United States: No good and (the seeds of) a global recession.
Now, I'm not saying the northwestern part of Europe or the U.S. is a better place to live in. But for public health care: Take a look how it's done in most European countries and then calculate medical spending per capita for an average European and an average American (Hint: You pay more and get less). Some popular (maybe too popular for some tastes) American documentary maker even made a film out of it. Google for 'Sicko'. It might not be to your liking but it also might give you another perspective.
How is it possible to create a file system driver which does not call "register_filesystem" ?
If you 'rtfa'... it stated:
Another (again expected) observation is that the lack of (un)register_filesystem identifiers in the modules which only provides services to others: dlm, lockd, fat, and jbd2/jbd2.
Yes I did read the article and thought it was very interesting. For one thing the fact that in earlier kernel releases file system drivers used to use more or less the same set of external symbols and in recent releases they more often used exclusive external symbols. If that's a good or a bad thing I don't know because I'm not an expert in file systems. It may indicate file system kernel module writers are re-using code less or do no longer compare their work that much anymore or it could mean file systems are now functioning more efficiently because they use more specialized external functions now... or maybe it means nothing or something completely else ... I don't know really ....
I'm all for wind and solar but you might want to remember the fact those two aren't continuously available. Solar has a 24h cycle with roughly half of it producing no power at all. And ... well, the answer to the other one... is blowing in the wind.
Don't give me the battery crap to manage low yield hours. Battery storage is fine for emergencies. It's not fine for large scale use because it's wholly inefficient and materials consuming (to make them, and keep making them to replace degraded ones). Same goes for long distance power lines. Either you lose quite a lot of energy in transport or you lose it because you cool your superconducting lines over too long a distance, unless you make a mega research project for spanning the globe with a large scale efficient superconducting power line which will cost you comparable billions and comparable international cooperation. A third option is making hydrogen of the spare electricity in high yield hours. But before that is efficient enough and researched through I think we have better options.
So we need some stable energy sources beside wind and solar. Hydro is good, in those areas where it can be available, reliably. But those areas are small and not always near places where people want to live. Besides, hydro also can have quite an environmental impact. (China, three gorges anyone?)
So we're left with the polluting forms energy generation for a stable grid. Which are:
-Gas: Relatively clean on the CO2 front, easily distributable for use in small 'neighborhood' serving power plants. But it could be better used for, for example, cooking. Besides there is a limited amount of it in fossil form.
-Oil: Out of the question. Oil is much too useful for making products to waste it on electricity generation.
-Coal: Say bye bye to the coastal plains because they are gonna flood if we keep going on as we are doing now.
-Fission: In it's current form with all its problems: Wholly inadequate, but we might have to stick to it, if we don't research fusion and get something good out of it. Only thing I see this become a better option is going the breeder reactor way and burn ALL the uranium (including the U238), take the risk and say 'Nuclear weapons proliferation up my a**'. To have a cleaner way of fission also requires quite some research. Especially in how to get those hot reactors safer than they were in the past. There are a lot more of dangerous isotopes we have to handle this way, but when done wisely it will ultimately lead in far less radioactive polutants than the current way we use nuclear fission.
-Fusion: It's complex, it's hard to do. Every shortcut we tried up to now failed miserably. The only way we think it might reliably work is the way of ITER. We owe it to our (grand) children to at least try it once. Give it a good chance before we 'pull the plug'. A couple of billion is nothing compared to the wealth of knowledge it will surely enrich the scientific community with and the chance we have for this being the prelude to something marvelous.
I do hope only a voltage differential will move those crystalline iron nanoparticles and they stay in place after they have been 'written' to...
Although... the digital memory storage equivalent of an Etch-a-Sketch might have its uses when the **AA/IFPI comes knocking at your door.
These fines are peanuts compared to the E.U. and E.U. member states budgets, and you know it because the U.S. of A. is a comparable '1st world' economy with comparable government spending (although it might lay emphasis on different topics) ... We're talking about multiple hundreds of billions of euros here, per larger country of the E.U. (U.K., France, Germany) and 120 billion euro (in 2007) of budget for the E.U. itself. Combined it could be a few trillions, allthough I'm guessing here... So to see the 1 billion euro fine for iNtel and what's to come for Microsoft as a significant 'monopoly tax' or '"Let the Americans pay our bills" tax' is a bit of an exaggeration.
Now for companies fined by E.U. anti-trust laws; We are talking about the multinationals out here. Local companies breaking these laws are punished nationally (like, in recent history, half the building sector in the Netherlands, the 'Bouwfraude' scandal which triggered a parliamentary inquiry)
This is a list of some of the more significant cases:
iNtel: 1.06 billion euros. (Illegal sales practices)
Otis, Kone, Schindler, ThyssenKrupp: 992 million euros. (Cartel of installation and maintaining elevators)
Hoffman-La Roche (and others): 790 million euros. (Price fixing of vitamin products)
Siemens, Toshiba (and others): 750 million euros. (Cartel of gas insulator switches)
(nine oil companies): 676 million euros. (Price fixing of parafine wax)
Bayer, Shell, Dow (and others): 519 million euros. (Price fixing of synthetic rubber)
Microsoft: 497 million euros. (Monopoly abuse)
Saint Gobain (and others): 486 million euros. (price fixing of flat glass)
Akzo Nobel, Solvay (and others): 388 million euros. (price fixing of hydrogen peroxide)
(five producers): 344 million euros. (price fixing of acryllic glass)
Heineken, Grolsch, Bavaria: 273 million euros. (Dutch beer market cartel)
Sources are all over the web, but I used this one because it had a nice list with fined amounts and company names and checked the data here.
This is a log of recent (this year) cases As you can see, the list is quite diverse but indeed does include both iNtel and Microsoft. Quite a few cases involve whole industrial sectors, not individual companies. Understandable if you know that anti-trust includes discussing set prices with your competitors. A link at the bottom of that page points to earlier cases.
In the end, this is the risk of doing business in the E.U.. You should play by the E.U. anti-trust rules. If you don't, you can be caught, and just like me when I'd be speeding or ignore a red traffic light you can be fined an amount appropriate to the offense.
OOo - Internet Exporer
MS Word - Netscape Navigator
Yes, but a decade later.
Now where did that market share go to?
If they don't learn, history is bound to repeat itself... again... and again... 'till they do learn (IBM, Mozilla), or become fossils.
So much for RFC 1149 and 2549 ... Guess I need to upgrade then. Now where did I leave that 300bd modem. It should somewhere over ...[CARRIER SHOT]
They could store the energy for those 200 femtoseconds. Notice it's only 200 femtoseconds
As far as I know 14,524 MHz indeed is not a legal frequency. But it might be he's transmitting on 2 Meter and there is a 10* switch somewhere or the last digit simply isn't shown on the frequency generator (if it's indeed that)? 145,240 MHz is smack in the middle of the 2 meter amateur band.
... *gasp* that IS some skill!
However