Think about this for a second, because it's really quite scary. Back in the day computers were the domain of technically skilled people, who understood how to pull out instructions when they couldn't figure something out. People who weren't scared that every mistake was going to be fatal. And most importantly, people who believed in learning how to use their expensive technical resources.
The only way to justify Salon.com's arguments is to recognize that everything that enters mainstream use is suddenly suppose to be idiot proof. The US has warning labels that coffee is hot for God sakes. For some reason many people think that everything they do in life should be fundementally intuitive. Making tools which are both intuitive and versatile is hard in any environment.
Perhaps what we really need is Windows Idiot Edition, with no powerful options and no allowance for 3rd party software. Just give them a word processor, browser, and instant messaging, and not worry about anything else. Make it as intuitive as possible and have instructions in baby language for anything that you can do with such a system. MS would love this strategy if they really could get away with having total control over software. But of course it would never work because the same idiots who don't want to actually learn about their computer, are also the idiots who will buy anything simply because you tell them its more powerful and versatile.
I don't always see the Open With option. But even when it works, it lists *all* applications, not just those relavant to the file extension or type.
A better solution would be to associate *multiple* applications to a given extension, and then have it list that set upon Open With (with the option of adding to the set from the entire pool of applications.)
I have multiple Windows boxes around me and Win ME does have that kind of functionality. Right-clicking (no shift) always produces an expandable "Open With ->" menu option. This option gives a list of all applications that have ever been used to open a file of this type, plus there is a selection at the bottom to get the list of all installed applications.
It's very useful. I've lost track of how often I've used it choose between Notepad, WYSIWYG editors, and Word for doing various HTML development.
I don't remember if Win2K has the same functionality, and I've yet to use XP so I don't know if it's included in the next generation, but I'd say ME does a pretty good job in this respect. (Now if only it could manage system resources worth a damn.)
The example he used was Joe Average, who want to use Real Player, but doesn't know how to change the association of.mp3,.wav, etc.
Perhaps, I'm just being cynical, but most of the time I encounter people who are interested in alternative software packages, they already know about file extensions.
The average user isn't horribly interested in Real Player so long as Windows Media opens the files. Joe Average seems to be too scared/ignorant/incompetent to want to even try finding and using alternative software, even when he's told of how much better it might be. The only time your average guy installs new software is when he wants to do something he doesn't know how to do right now, and sad as it is, Joe Average rarely thinks of things he wants to do that the Microsoft monopoly hasn't already provided for him.
On the other hand, if you are out of work then you might do some free development to pass the time. After all most people aren't spending every waking moment looking for the next job.
For the moment, I'm choosing to believe this is some freaky coincidence, but here's what happened.
I shut down extraneous programs, installed the new patches and several others from office.microsoft.com. After installing the patches it tells me I need to reboot, so I click on the happy little button. In the process of rebooting stuff starts to misbehave and hang. After killing several "not responding" processes, the computer does manage to shut itself down.
When it comes back on, I find that my keyboard is dead! Not only will the computer not accept keyboard input, but it appears like it has no power at all. The little Caps Lock, Num Lock, etc indicator lights are off and won't respond. Mouse and everything else appears to work fine. So now I shut down my computer entirely, unplug and replug the keyboard, and power it all back up. This time everything works with no problems.
Little freaky I must say. Never had anything quite like this happen before.
I wrote a brief essay on responding to the terrorist attack.
Attacking Afghanistan will provoke more anger, but you can deal with this by offering aid and rebuilding what we destroy. War with Afghanistan is not about ending terrorism, it's about forcing them to capitulate to our will. Once we have access to Afghanistan then we can go in and take out terrorist cells, track down known terrorists, etc. Ultimately to oppose terrorism we must eliminate all the environments worldwide where known terrorist cells can find shelter.
Al-Qaeda does not operate in a vacuum. It is a big business that needs to recruit and have property and locations to operate from.
If we deny terrorism the ability to operate openly and in large groups then we will have accomplished something worthwhile. Terrorism will likely never be eradicated but as it becomes less frequent and less brutal, we will be able to forget and get on with our lives.
I just heard on the radio that the pentagon has predicted a close to 100% chance of terrorist response, and no one _cares_.
Similar reports have said there is essentially a 100% chance of future attacks on American soil by members of al-Qaeda if nothing was done to oppose them. All that changes is the timing and organization of those attacks. Terrorist cells will make further attacks but if they rush to respond hopefully more of them will trip up and be caught.
Ulitmately the stated reason for this war is to take away the support that makes terrorism on the US possible. IF we can make terrorism less feasible and less frequent then we will have accomplished something worthwhile, even if it means facing a greater threat in the immediate future.
Killing innocents is wrong. The terrorist attack on America can not be justified. Nor can killing Afghani civilians now be justified. The thousands or even millions of lives lost because of US arrogance or apathy are a horrible tragedy in themselves, but the do not justify more senseless loss of life.
The terrorists do act like errant children, they react by violence and sabotage. Adults practice passive resistance and find a voice for their grievances. If an argument is right then eventually you can convince enough people that things will change. Terrorists don't care to convince the world they are right, they want to force the world to accept their view because they carry with a big stick.
Light travels at constant speed relative to you. It is not affected by your velocity or the one of the source...
When measured in your reference frame the speed of light is constant, that doesn't mean it can skip over space if you put extra distance between you and it.
So long as photons leave in every possible direction, there is nothing creepy about it. If every direction is possible, then there must be some that follow just the right directions to end up being meant into the telescope on earth.
Let's look at this classically. The classical picture is not correct, but it can give some rough idea of how this is possible.
We have two objects moving apart in the early universe. Classically, the distance D between them will be the relatvive velocity, v, times the age of the universe at the time the light in question was emitted.
So lets say D = v*1 Gyr (10^9 years)
Now light from one get's emitted and starts travelling towards the other at the speed of light, c.
In order to see the light from the other source, it has to catch up to us. In other words c*t = v*t + D, where t is the time since the light was emitted.
Substituting for D and solving for v, we get v = c*t/(t+1 Gyr). Hence in a strictly classical approximation, the two objects must be travelling apart at a relative velocity of 0.93c, in reality relativity and cosmology would probably tell you they don't have to moving apart nearly that fast, but the idea is there.
If two objects are moving apart fast enough it will take the light from one a long time to catch up with the other.
It presumes the Big Bang, or something like it. Obviously you can't have young hydrogen-only stars unless the universe was different than it is today.
Either the universe exists into the arbitrarily distant past or it has some kind of a start. I've never heard a good hypothesis for a beggining to the universe that doesn't involve some sort of a big bang. Which premise is that book trying to sell? That we always existed?, or that we started from something other than a big bang?
You're right, you can't really tell the same story since the audience has already seen the Matrix and Neo has become what he was destined to be. You might however tell a different story in that universe. For instance the Matrix is still firmly covering the eyes of most of the population. The AIs, while perhaps having something to fear, are still the dominant player in the Matrix itself. The sequel might even try to offer more details about the "real" world they are living in.
My guess is that the sequel will be focused on the war between man and machine on a broader scale, and possibly the awakening of more of humanity. They can't tell the same stories, but they might still do a very good job if they find the right kind of story to tell in that universe.
If you read the part of the article about the lawsuit itself, you might note that he's been filing "notices of opposition" with the Australian trademark office in a timely manner over the last 4 years. This qualifies him to bring suit.
...fatal diseases (which bubonic plague always is if left untreated)...
Just a minor nitpick.
"Without prompt antibiotic treatment, plague is fatal in 50 percent to 90 percent of cases.
Even with appropriate antibiotics and hospital care, about 15 percent of plague patients in the United States die. Pneumonic plague is the most rapidly fatal form of plague, and most victims will die if they do not receive antibiotics within the first 18 hours after symptoms begin."
-Source
It's not totally fatal, though those that survive often have permanent scaring. After all some infected people managed to live through it even back in the European dark ages. Of course it's more than bad enough that I wouldn't ever want to encounter it.
In a previous post on a different story, I attepted to compare the energy content of liquid hydrogen to gasoline. My rather hasty analysis seems to indicate that given the equipment to compress and cool hydrogen into a liquid, it becomes a MORE efficient energy storage medium than gasoline.
If this result is correct, and the added efficiency is enough to offset the increases in equipment weight and storage, it might be practical for airplanes. Of course gasoline is not quite jet fuel so the comparision might not still hold, and the changes in design and infrastructure to handle liquid H2 would be enormous.
Equipment to produce and manage liquid hydrogen is too complex and expensive for small operations such as cars, but given the already large costs of a commercial airliner, I wouldn't think the cost would be not unreasonable for them.
Without Windows and IIS, the Mac simply wasn't meeting the evil corporation standard for security holes. After all the virus market needs corporate welfare like this is they are ever going to be an accepted player on minority platforms.
Incidently, I was told that if Fermilab loses confinement on their Tevatron beam, it hits the ring with the force of a big rig hitting a wall. Hopefully the lost beam is distributed over a large enough section not to cause serious damage, but even then you get to hear an audible "WWHHuuuummmpp". The idea that a bunch of particles can get themselves heard is a little frightening when you think about it.
The main reassurance we have is that cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere do get to highly energies than we've ever created. Hence if those energies can create mini black holes, then it must happen naturally in the upper atmosphere. Mini black holes from the upper atmosphere have yet to the destroy the Earth, so there is good reason to believe that nothing created in the accelerator will either.
No neither had a Nobel prize, though they did convince some intial supporters with one. In fact both Fleischmann and Pons were electro-chemists rather than nuclear physists, so they were somewhat outside their area.
As was pointed out by physicists after their announcement there were several good reasons to disbelieve it was fusion. Perhaps the most telling was that they were still alive; standard fusion theories would have expected that level of energy output to fatally irradiate everyone in the room.
The proof in question to which I was refering is the independant lab test for Helium in the Pd cathode. All the cold fusion people expected to find significant amounts of trapped He produced by all the fusion. They were so confident that He would be found, that they had scheduled a press conference for the day the results were due. The results were negative, they cancelled the press conference, and no longer spoke to the public about cold fusion.
The peak of the energy produced is in the infrared, with x-ray production just 9% above the baseline in a lead cave, and gamma-ray production only 2% above a lead cave's background levels.
This is wonderfully convenient. Care to offer a theory why? Last time I checked no one actually had a good reason why the energy released is incredibly different than what would be expected from fusion. It's lucky for the researchers though. If that original cell actually produced as much energy as they said, you would expect the cell to be hot as Hades. Not only would it have killed everyone in the room, but it should have still be hot enough to fatally irradiate everyone at the press conferences and tv interviews where they showed it off.
While were at it, where is the Helium? If it works, I expect your fusion apparatus to make helium right? There was no He found in the original cell and to the best knowledge no independant lab has ever found He embedded in a Pd cathode where the cold fusion people say it should be.
Maybe I'm totally wrong about cold fusion, but at this point I think you're going to have to come along with a marketable product before I going to believe it. BTW, if it works, why wasn't it on the market almost immediately? Codeposition on spongy Pd didn't take that long to think up.
I recently earned a BS in physics and am now taking a year off before going to grad school (deferred admission to Berkeley). Fusion research is not my specialty, but I do know people that work in this area, and I think I can offer some insight into the issue.
Let me start by saying that cold fusion != fusion research. Cold fusion as popularly described has been debunked. The researchers in question were good people who were mistaken about what they observed, unfortunately when they were given proof of their mistake they chose to disappear from the public eye rather than admit their mistake. No low temperature fusion has ever been verified, though occasionally you will see new proposals for how it might be possible.
Now the real stuff. This means high temperature, high pressures, and almost exclusively isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). There are three successful ways that man has produced fusion: Hydrogen bombs which are heated by one or more fission bombs, confined plasma (ie. tokomaks), and pulsed laser pellet experiments.
H-bombs are pretty useless because there is no way to make a small controllable explosion. All you can ever get is really big ones that would be impractical as a power source.
Pulsed laser experiments experiments involve using arrays of uber lasers to heat and compress solid hydrogen pellets so fast that they reach the point of fusion before the gas can dissipate. People in the physics community generally see this tech as a dead end because the technical requirements seem to scale exponentially with linear increases in power output. There is still research being done, but the power consumption of the lasers is orders of magnitude more than what little energy the fusion generates right now, so it's unlikely to see this being practical in the next half century.
Tokomaks are the standard in confined plasma fusion, though there are a couple alternatives that have some physicists excited. Tokomaks work; they just don't work very well. Right now we have machines that about break even, ie. they generate enough energy to run themselves. Given how much energy is involved just running the machine, if you can get another factor of 10 out of the best machines of today, you'd have enough for a useful small-medium scale power plant.
Confined plasma fusion is alluring for a number of reasons. The source hydrogen is easy to obtain or make (tritium is often created in fission reactors by exposing deuterium to nuetrons). The radiation is very safe compared to fission reactions. In both fission and fusion the components of the reactor itself will pick up some radioactivity, but the real concern in fission is all the spent fuel. You can't keep it where it is because it's no good as a fuel source and you don't want to dump it anywhere else either. In fusion reactors, the spent fuel is typically less rather than more dangerous when compared to the fuel itself, and contains no mid-range decay lifetime isotopes of the type which are most troublesome in fission reactors. Lastly, confined plasma can't have a "melt down", if the plasma gets too hot or electricity is turned off, the fusion reaction stops itself.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not just output that's a problem, the things are very large and complicated. I remember a story I heard about a group who spent 2 months taking apart, fixing, and putting their machine back together again, despite knowing at the start what piece had broken. If it's going to be profitable you need technology that is stable, long-term and easily repairable. Right now, fusion is none of these. Part of the drive for smaller machines is that they should be easier to maintain and less prone to fail. The trade off is that smaller machines need tighter confinement than their large cousins and thus are harder to engineer.
Two decades is somewhat optimistic for commercial appliations, but the state of technology is such that the next generation machines by the end of the decade should be a good 20% or so above break even (not wide scale useful but something to notice). If we can keep progressing at the current rate (and there is enough inventiveness and creativity in the field to suggest that's possible) then I would think prototypes for small power plant type models might be ready by 2040 or so.
Of course then again I'm a physicist and we have a horrible track record in predicting the rise of fusion technology.
The kinds of watches you are talking about still exist, but they are something of a specialty item. Embedded tritium provides energy to cause phosporus paint to glow. The faint glow is just enough in dark environments but not really noticable in lighted rooms, etc. The glow can last for decades and is impervious to lots of effects that would damage an indiglo type systems.
IIRC one of the uses is deep sea diving, where you want things to be as robust as possible and having an always on display is considered a plus. The radiation in question is such that the glass cover stops all but what is considered a "neglible" amount.
If you're going to build something where you only have one and it has to work the first time, then you pay for experienced people to do the best job possible. Or so the theory goes. In reality not everything needs to be the very best imaginable, but do you want to be the guy they point to if the cheap alternative fails?
For example NASA was doing a robotics project for one of the missions, and a particular section was budgeted at a little over $1 million. A group of poorly paid students at my university built equipment to the same specs for around $50,000. It may be cheaper, but without the serious credentials no one is going to want to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Most users are tech illiterate.
Think about this for a second, because it's really quite scary. Back in the day computers were the domain of technically skilled people, who understood how to pull out instructions when they couldn't figure something out. People who weren't scared that every mistake was going to be fatal. And most importantly, people who believed in learning how to use their expensive technical resources.
The only way to justify Salon.com's arguments is to recognize that everything that enters mainstream use is suddenly suppose to be idiot proof. The US has warning labels that coffee is hot for God sakes. For some reason many people think that everything they do in life should be fundementally intuitive. Making tools which are both intuitive and versatile is hard in any environment.
Perhaps what we really need is Windows Idiot Edition, with no powerful options and no allowance for 3rd party software. Just give them a word processor, browser, and instant messaging, and not worry about anything else. Make it as intuitive as possible and have instructions in baby language for anything that you can do with such a system. MS would love this strategy if they really could get away with having total control over software. But of course it would never work because the same idiots who don't want to actually learn about their computer, are also the idiots who will buy anything simply because you tell them its more powerful and versatile.
I don't always see the Open With option. But even when it works, it lists *all* applications, not just those relavant to the file extension or type.
A better solution would be to associate *multiple* applications to a given extension, and then have it list that set upon Open With (with the option of adding to the set from the entire pool of applications.)
I have multiple Windows boxes around me and Win ME does have that kind of functionality. Right-clicking (no shift) always produces an expandable "Open With ->" menu option. This option gives a list of all applications that have ever been used to open a file of this type, plus there is a selection at the bottom to get the list of all installed applications.
It's very useful. I've lost track of how often I've used it choose between Notepad, WYSIWYG editors, and Word for doing various HTML development.
I don't remember if Win2K has the same functionality, and I've yet to use XP so I don't know if it's included in the next generation, but I'd say ME does a pretty good job in this respect. (Now if only it could manage system resources worth a damn.)
The example he used was Joe Average, who want to use Real Player, but doesn't know how to change the association of .mp3, .wav, etc.
Perhaps, I'm just being cynical, but most of the time I encounter people who are interested in alternative software packages, they already know about file extensions.
The average user isn't horribly interested in Real Player so long as Windows Media opens the files. Joe Average seems to be too scared/ignorant/incompetent to want to even try finding and using alternative software, even when he's told of how much better it might be. The only time your average guy installs new software is when he wants to do something he doesn't know how to do right now, and sad as it is, Joe Average rarely thinks of things he wants to do that the Microsoft monopoly hasn't already provided for him.
On the other hand, if you are out of work then you might do some free development to pass the time. After all most people aren't spending every waking moment looking for the next job.
For the moment, I'm choosing to believe this is some freaky coincidence, but here's what happened.
I shut down extraneous programs, installed the new patches and several others from office.microsoft.com. After installing the patches it tells me I need to reboot, so I click on the happy little button. In the process of rebooting stuff starts to misbehave and hang. After killing several "not responding" processes, the computer does manage to shut itself down.
When it comes back on, I find that my keyboard is dead! Not only will the computer not accept keyboard input, but it appears like it has no power at all. The little Caps Lock, Num Lock, etc indicator lights are off and won't respond. Mouse and everything else appears to work fine. So now I shut down my computer entirely, unplug and replug the keyboard, and power it all back up. This time everything works with no problems.
Little freaky I must say. Never had anything quite like this happen before.
I wrote a brief essay on responding to the terrorist attack.
Attacking Afghanistan will provoke more anger, but you can deal with this by offering aid and rebuilding what we destroy. War with Afghanistan is not about ending terrorism, it's about forcing them to capitulate to our will. Once we have access to Afghanistan then we can go in and take out terrorist cells, track down known terrorists, etc. Ultimately to oppose terrorism we must eliminate all the environments worldwide where known terrorist cells can find shelter.
Al-Qaeda does not operate in a vacuum. It is a big business that needs to recruit and have property and locations to operate from.
If we deny terrorism the ability to operate openly and in large groups then we will have accomplished something worthwhile. Terrorism will likely never be eradicated but as it becomes less frequent and less brutal, we will be able to forget and get on with our lives.
I just heard on the radio that the pentagon has predicted a close to 100% chance of terrorist response, and no one _cares_.
Similar reports have said there is essentially a 100% chance of future attacks on American soil by members of al-Qaeda if nothing was done to oppose them. All that changes is the timing and organization of those attacks. Terrorist cells will make further attacks but if they rush to respond hopefully more of them will trip up and be caught.
Ulitmately the stated reason for this war is to take away the support that makes terrorism on the US possible. IF we can make terrorism less feasible and less frequent then we will have accomplished something worthwhile, even if it means facing a greater threat in the immediate future.
Killing innocents is wrong. The terrorist attack on America can not be justified. Nor can killing Afghani civilians now be justified. The thousands or even millions of lives lost because of US arrogance or apathy are a horrible tragedy in themselves, but the do not justify more senseless loss of life.
The terrorists do act like errant children, they react by violence and sabotage. Adults practice passive resistance and find a voice for their grievances. If an argument is right then eventually you can convince enough people that things will change. Terrorists don't care to convince the world they are right, they want to force the world to accept their view because they carry with a big stick.
Light travels at constant speed relative to you. It is not affected by your velocity or the one of the source...
When measured in your reference frame the speed of light is constant, that doesn't mean it can skip over space if you put extra distance between you and it.
Drat it.
...
...to end up being BENT into
Should always preview first...
So long as photons leave in every possible direction, there is nothing creepy about it. If every direction is possible, then there must be some that follow just the right directions to end up being meant into the telescope on earth.
Let's look at this classically. The classical picture is not correct, but it can give some rough idea of how this is possible.
We have two objects moving apart in the early universe. Classically, the distance D between them will be the relatvive velocity, v, times the age of the universe at the time the light in question was emitted.
So lets say D = v*1 Gyr (10^9 years)
Now light from one get's emitted and starts travelling towards the other at the speed of light, c.
In order to see the light from the other source, it has to catch up to us. In other words c*t = v*t + D, where t is the time since the light was emitted.
Substituting for D and solving for v, we get v = c*t/(t+1 Gyr). Hence in a strictly classical approximation, the two objects must be travelling apart at a relative velocity of 0.93c, in reality relativity and cosmology would probably tell you they don't have to moving apart nearly that fast, but the idea is there.
If two objects are moving apart fast enough it will take the light from one a long time to catch up with the other.
It presumes the Big Bang, or something like it. Obviously you can't have young hydrogen-only stars unless the universe was different than it is today.
Either the universe exists into the arbitrarily distant past or it has some kind of a start. I've never heard a good hypothesis for a beggining to the universe that doesn't involve some sort of a big bang. Which premise is that book trying to sell? That we always existed?, or that we started from something other than a big bang?
You're right, you can't really tell the same story since the audience has already seen the Matrix and Neo has become what he was destined to be. You might however tell a different story in that universe. For instance the Matrix is still firmly covering the eyes of most of the population. The AIs, while perhaps having something to fear, are still the dominant player in the Matrix itself. The sequel might even try to offer more details about the "real" world they are living in.
My guess is that the sequel will be focused on the war between man and machine on a broader scale, and possibly the awakening of more of humanity. They can't tell the same stories, but they might still do a very good job if they find the right kind of story to tell in that universe.
If you read the part of the article about the lawsuit itself, you might note that he's been filing "notices of opposition" with the Australian trademark office in a timely manner over the last 4 years. This qualifies him to bring suit.
...fatal diseases (which bubonic plague always is if left untreated)...
Just a minor nitpick.
"Without prompt antibiotic treatment, plague is fatal in 50 percent to 90 percent of cases.
Even with appropriate antibiotics and hospital care, about 15 percent of plague patients in the United States die. Pneumonic plague is the most rapidly fatal form of plague, and most victims will die if they do not receive antibiotics within the first 18 hours after symptoms begin."
-Source
It's not totally fatal, though those that survive often have permanent scaring. After all some infected people managed to live through it even back in the European dark ages. Of course it's more than bad enough that I wouldn't ever want to encounter it.
In a previous post on a different story, I attepted to compare the energy content of liquid hydrogen to gasoline. My rather hasty analysis seems to indicate that given the equipment to compress and cool hydrogen into a liquid, it becomes a MORE efficient energy storage medium than gasoline.
If this result is correct, and the added efficiency is enough to offset the increases in equipment weight and storage, it might be practical for airplanes. Of course gasoline is not quite jet fuel so the comparision might not still hold, and the changes in design and infrastructure to handle liquid H2 would be enormous.
Equipment to produce and manage liquid hydrogen is too complex and expensive for small operations such as cars, but given the already large costs of a commercial airliner, I wouldn't think the cost would be not unreasonable for them.
Without Windows and IIS, the Mac simply wasn't meeting the evil corporation standard for security holes. After all the virus market needs corporate welfare like this is they are ever going to be an accepted player on minority platforms.
Incidently, I was told that if Fermilab loses confinement on their Tevatron beam, it hits the ring with the force of a big rig hitting a wall. Hopefully the lost beam is distributed over a large enough section not to cause serious damage, but even then you get to hear an audible "WWHHuuuummmpp". The idea that a bunch of particles can get themselves heard is a little frightening when you think about it.
See this story.
The main reassurance we have is that cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere do get to highly energies than we've ever created. Hence if those energies can create mini black holes, then it must happen naturally in the upper atmosphere. Mini black holes from the upper atmosphere have yet to the destroy the Earth, so there is good reason to believe that nothing created in the accelerator will either.
No neither had a Nobel prize, though they did convince some intial supporters with one. In fact both Fleischmann and Pons were electro-chemists rather than nuclear physists, so they were somewhat outside their area.
As was pointed out by physicists after their announcement there were several good reasons to disbelieve it was fusion. Perhaps the most telling was that they were still alive; standard fusion theories would have expected that level of energy output to fatally irradiate everyone in the room.
The proof in question to which I was refering is the independant lab test for Helium in the Pd cathode. All the cold fusion people expected to find significant amounts of trapped He produced by all the fusion. They were so confident that He would be found, that they had scheduled a press conference for the day the results were due. The results were negative, they cancelled the press conference, and no longer spoke to the public about cold fusion.
The peak of the energy produced is in the infrared, with x-ray production just 9% above the baseline in a lead cave, and gamma-ray production only 2% above a lead cave's background levels.
This is wonderfully convenient. Care to offer a theory why? Last time I checked no one actually had a good reason why the energy released is incredibly different than what would be expected from fusion. It's lucky for the researchers though. If that original cell actually produced as much energy as they said, you would expect the cell to be hot as Hades. Not only would it have killed everyone in the room, but it should have still be hot enough to fatally irradiate everyone at the press conferences and tv interviews where they showed it off.
While were at it, where is the Helium? If it works, I expect your fusion apparatus to make helium right? There was no He found in the original cell and to the best knowledge no independant lab has ever found He embedded in a Pd cathode where the cold fusion people say it should be.
Maybe I'm totally wrong about cold fusion, but at this point I think you're going to have to come along with a marketable product before I going to believe it. BTW, if it works, why wasn't it on the market almost immediately? Codeposition on spongy Pd didn't take that long to think up.
I recently earned a BS in physics and am now taking a year off before going to grad school (deferred admission to Berkeley). Fusion research is not my specialty, but I do know people that work in this area, and I think I can offer some insight into the issue.
Let me start by saying that cold fusion != fusion research. Cold fusion as popularly described has been debunked. The researchers in question were good people who were mistaken about what they observed, unfortunately when they were given proof of their mistake they chose to disappear from the public eye rather than admit their mistake. No low temperature fusion has ever been verified, though occasionally you will see new proposals for how it might be possible.
Now the real stuff. This means high temperature, high pressures, and almost exclusively isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). There are three successful ways that man has produced fusion: Hydrogen bombs which are heated by one or more fission bombs, confined plasma (ie. tokomaks), and pulsed laser pellet experiments.
H-bombs are pretty useless because there is no way to make a small controllable explosion. All you can ever get is really big ones that would be impractical as a power source.
Pulsed laser experiments experiments involve using arrays of uber lasers to heat and compress solid hydrogen pellets so fast that they reach the point of fusion before the gas can dissipate. People in the physics community generally see this tech as a dead end because the technical requirements seem to scale exponentially with linear increases in power output. There is still research being done, but the power consumption of the lasers is orders of magnitude more than what little energy the fusion generates right now, so it's unlikely to see this being practical in the next half century.
Tokomaks are the standard in confined plasma fusion, though there are a couple alternatives that have some physicists excited. Tokomaks work; they just don't work very well. Right now we have machines that about break even, ie. they generate enough energy to run themselves. Given how much energy is involved just running the machine, if you can get another factor of 10 out of the best machines of today, you'd have enough for a useful small-medium scale power plant.
Confined plasma fusion is alluring for a number of reasons. The source hydrogen is easy to obtain or make (tritium is often created in fission reactors by exposing deuterium to nuetrons). The radiation is very safe compared to fission reactions. In both fission and fusion the components of the reactor itself will pick up some radioactivity, but the real concern in fission is all the spent fuel. You can't keep it where it is because it's no good as a fuel source and you don't want to dump it anywhere else either. In fusion reactors, the spent fuel is typically less rather than more dangerous when compared to the fuel itself, and contains no mid-range decay lifetime isotopes of the type which are most troublesome in fission reactors. Lastly, confined plasma can't have a "melt down", if the plasma gets too hot or electricity is turned off, the fusion reaction stops itself.
Contrary to popular belief, it's not just output that's a problem, the things are very large and complicated. I remember a story I heard about a group who spent 2 months taking apart, fixing, and putting their machine back together again, despite knowing at the start what piece had broken. If it's going to be profitable you need technology that is stable, long-term and easily repairable. Right now, fusion is none of these. Part of the drive for smaller machines is that they should be easier to maintain and less prone to fail. The trade off is that smaller machines need tighter confinement than their large cousins and thus are harder to engineer.
Two decades is somewhat optimistic for commercial appliations, but the state of technology is such that the next generation machines by the end of the decade should be a good 20% or so above break even (not wide scale useful but something to notice). If we can keep progressing at the current rate (and there is enough inventiveness and creativity in the field to suggest that's possible) then I would think prototypes for small power plant type models might be ready by 2040 or so.
Of course then again I'm a physicist and we have a horrible track record in predicting the rise of fusion technology.
The kinds of watches you are talking about still exist, but they are something of a specialty item. Embedded tritium provides energy to cause phosporus paint to glow. The faint glow is just enough in dark environments but not really noticable in lighted rooms, etc. The glow can last for decades and is impervious to lots of effects that would damage an indiglo type systems.
IIRC one of the uses is deep sea diving, where you want things to be as robust as possible and having an always on display is considered a plus. The radiation in question is such that the glass cover stops all but what is considered a "neglible" amount.
Paying PhD engineers to build custom parts.
If you're going to build something where you only have one and it has to work the first time, then you pay for experienced people to do the best job possible. Or so the theory goes. In reality not everything needs to be the very best imaginable, but do you want to be the guy they point to if the cheap alternative fails?
For example NASA was doing a robotics project for one of the missions, and a particular section was budgeted at a little over $1 million. A group of poorly paid students at my university built equipment to the same specs for around $50,000. It may be cheaper, but without the serious credentials no one is going to want to use it.