It's well known that our view of the world around us was radically changed by Einstein, Heisenberg, and other scientists of their day. Einstein gave us relativity, and Heisenberg ushered in quantum mechanics (of course Einstein and his explanation of the photo-electric effect). Both of these thoeries led to radical departures from well established theories. However, there were, at the time, known physical effects that could not be explained by then current theories, i.e. the above mentioned photo-electric effect, blackbody radiation, Michelson's measurement of the speed of light, etc. etc. that make it clear in hindsight that the a profound shift in understanding was required.
My question is what, if any then, are the areas where we need similar paradigm shifts to answer current outstanding questions? It seems to me, at least, that maybe there aren't any, and today's scientists are left working harder and harder simply to add a few significant digits to existing theories. What are your thoughts?
Oh, get over yourself. Sure programming is hard, but "Harder than anything else in the physical world."? Please. Consider nuclear physics, piano concertos, foriegn policy, economic theory, and yes, even automotive engineering. According to you, cakewalks compared to programming.
Oh yeah, well I've got a processer that get's QUADRUPLE the battery life WITHOUT an external battery pack. Hang on, give me a minute, it's here somewhere...
In other words, I'll believe the specs, when I see them for myself.
How exactly is this insightful? It's a baseless flame and nothing more. Some of their stuff is good (you'll have to pry powerpoint from my cold dead hands) some is crap. The same is true for open source software.
Are you kidding? Ever since I discovered Firebird 0.5, I haven't looked back. It's small, it's lightweight, it's rock-solid, it has tabs. Version 0.6 only added more goodness. And since switching, I can't go to other people's computers and use IE anymore. How do people STAND the pop-ups!
Man, I find this news is really depressing. I really hope the Mozilla foundation is able to carry on with the excellent development of Firebird.
Parent doesn't strike me as a troll. The fact is that the XBox is being described as a computer in the NYT times article. A computer is a general purpose machine. In terms of general purpose use, the Walmart machine is propably a better computer, not to mention more powerful (twice as much RAM, heftier CPU). Since the article claims that the XBox is cheapier than a PC, this seems like a statement that bears correcting.
Now don't get me wrong... I love tabbed browsing. It is one of the many reasons that I use Firebird instead of Internet Exploiter.... But....
Why is tabbed browsing considered such a huge innovation? Programs with multiple documents in a single window have been around for eons. And tabs to distinguish multiple document are also nothing new. Many programs use this type of interface. WinEdt and Borland Delphi and C++ Builder are just a few that immediately pop to mind. So why do people think that multiple documents with tabs in a web browser are so innovative?
"Venture capitalists take risks on investments for the possibility of a large financial gain afterwards. "
You can not seriously be proposing to put research into the hands of venture capitilists!?!?! They don't understand research any more than you do; long term for them is a six month product cycle.
The day that venture capitilists become the driving force behind scientific research in the US is the end of scientific research in the US.
"What you propose however is handing millions and millions of dollars to research organizations that may or may not even find a viable alternative that can be implemented without the government forcing that down our throats as well."
This is a statement from a person who clearly does not understand basic scientific research. There are no guarentees that funding a particular project will produce results. That is the nature of the process. And yet, the position of the US in the world today is fundamentally because of the support of basic research in the US, in especially government funded labs and university programs.
The sort of research which is in most need of government support is exactly the sort of research which may or may not produce results in the short term because it is the riskiest and LEAST likely to be supported by industry, which by it's nature is very conservative in the research that it supports. And yet this is also the type of research with the biggest payoff.
As for your apparant infatuation with a free market - I am baffled that someone in the post Enron days could still have pull out the old saws about the free market being the most efficient way to produce results. Puh-leese. Having worked for the government, the military, and big industry, I can say that all three are ridden with beaurocrats. The primary result of an unregulated market is to allow the crooks to rise to the top that much easier.
The government did fund much of the computer revolution. Ever heard of the Internet? It was a government funded project from it's inception.
You are right. Many of the things we have today did not come from government funded projects. The solid state transistor, for example, came from Bell Labs, industrial labs. However, many more did. The semiconductor laser, the basis for your CD drive for example, saw large advances from groups at Lincoln Labs, a, God forbid, Government Funded Institution.
Your knee jerk reaction to "government funded projects" is rather overwrought. And in today's environment, calling the research into alternative energy sources to free the US from it's oil habit a "silly premise" amounts to wearing blinders of an extremely dangerous sort. Of course, you would probably tell me that all we need to do is drill for oil in Alaska; that will solve all our problems...
You are absolutely right. How dare the government use public money on a project that would have huge benefits in terms of the enviroment, cheap energy, independance from the middle east, national security, and on and on.
In all seriousness, that kind of comment makes me despair for the future. National spending on science research should be inreased many-fold, and research into alternative energy sources should be one of the major recipients. The thought of short-sighted republicans clutching at their little tax dollars while promising avenues of scientific research lie fallow should make every geek scream.
As you get the urge piss and moan that it is your money, not the government's, keep in mind that the tax burden on US citizens is lower now than it has been since world war II (at least that is what I heard on NPR, but you probably don't like them either because they are funded with public money). Furthermore, the US has one of the lowest tax burdens of all developed countrys, which ultimately comes at a cost that can't be measured.
G.W. Bush is NOT pushing for this. G.W. Bush makes fuzzy sounding promises about the hydrogen industry to curry favor with the public, but in reality, the amount of money he promised during his state of the union address is very small and spread over many years. In reality the amount of money he promised to develop hydrogen industry is less money than is needed to develop just a single new car model based on OIL.
Next time you think Dubya is promoting something for the good of the enviroment, smack yourself in the head with a sledgehammer, and then take another look.
Well, no, there wouldn't be a considerable difference. Both methods of leaking the source would be illegal, since as an employee of a copy, you officially sign away your legal rights to anything you create. Therefore if the company doesn't want the source released it doesn't matter whether the source is posted on an "official" website or not. The leak is illegal.
You are in the wrong room. This is over-zealous physics nerd discussion group. The over-zealous grammarians are across the hall.
Re:Mod this idiot down!
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I doubt this effect will work with continuous beams. The wavelength shift is based on the Doppler effect, i.e. the light shifts in frequency because the crystal is getting smaller. At some point the crystal has to get larger again, or be destroyed. If the crystal is driven by an acoustic wave, it will oscillate in size, and therefore, the frequency shift will have an oscillatory behaviour in time.
Um, I hate to be pendantic, but laser stands for Light Amplification from Stimulated Emission of Radiation. This effect has nothing to do with stimulated emission. There are many ways of producing single frequency light.
Take it easy on the hype there!
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This is certainly an interesting result, but its heavily hyped as well.
First of all, there are many many ways to shift the frequency of light, both up and down in frequency, with both linear and nonlinear means, - from the Raman effect in optical fibers (scattering off vibrations of silica molecules) to Optical Parametric Oscillators (nonlinear wave mixing), supercontinuum generation (using a multitude of nonlinear effects to generate broad bandwidth from a single laser) to simple OEO conversion (detect your light with a photodiode and use it to drive another laser at a different wavelength. Contrary to what this article implies, these effects work at modest power levels in todays optical fibers, and many are highly efficient, and work over extremely broad bandwidths. For example, supercontinuum generation can generate light sources with bandwidth covering the entire visible, UV and IR spectrum in one source! If you want to talk about bulk optic techniques for wavelength conversion, the list is even longer.
Now think a minute about what these guys are proposing. They have to shock the crystal. Initial experiments will destroy the sample. Maybe they can refine the technique down the line to nondestructively shock the sample, maybe they can't. Certainly, infinite bandwidth won't be available, since the amount of wavelength shift will depend on the amount of shock. A single shot technique for wavelength shifting, while interesting, isn't all that useful practically.
Second, they are using a shock, so conversion of CW light is out of the question, only pulses can be converted here, or you risk a time dependent wavelength shift, as your shock dies out.
Finally, claims of a completely new physical effect seem somewhat overblown. It is an interesting idea, but Doppler shifting off acoustic shocks, and photonic crystals are well known. Marrying the two together and finding a stable regime of operation is novel, but not quite the same as discovering a new physical princple like relativity or quantum mechanics, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
It's well known that our view of the world around us was radically changed by Einstein, Heisenberg, and other scientists of their day. Einstein gave us relativity, and Heisenberg ushered in quantum mechanics (of course Einstein and his explanation of the photo-electric effect). Both of these thoeries led to radical departures from well established theories. However, there were, at the time, known physical effects that could not be explained by then current theories, i.e. the above mentioned photo-electric effect, blackbody radiation, Michelson's measurement of the speed of light, etc. etc. that make it clear in hindsight that the a profound shift in understanding was required.
My question is what, if any then, are the areas where we need similar paradigm shifts to answer current outstanding questions? It seems to me, at least, that maybe there aren't any, and today's scientists are left working harder and harder simply to add a few significant digits to existing theories. What are your thoughts?
"Proper sentence structure is for the mentally straight jacketed."
True.
But getting your point across isn't.
"The real reasons music isn't selling as much as it used to, and not a lot to do with file sharing."
Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if we could all visualize complete sentences?
Sigh
Oh, get over yourself. Sure programming is hard, but "Harder than anything else in the physical world."? Please. Consider nuclear physics, piano concertos, foriegn policy, economic theory, and yes, even automotive engineering. According to you, cakewalks compared to programming.
bleh.
Oh yeah, well I've got a processer that get's QUADRUPLE the battery life WITHOUT an external battery pack. Hang on, give me a minute, it's here somewhere...
In other words, I'll believe the specs, when I see them for myself.
How exactly is this insightful? It's a baseless flame and nothing more. Some of their stuff is good (you'll have to pry powerpoint from my cold dead hands) some is crap. The same is true for open source software.
Are you kidding? Ever since I discovered Firebird 0.5, I haven't looked back. It's small, it's lightweight, it's rock-solid, it has tabs. Version 0.6 only added more goodness. And since switching, I can't go to other people's computers and use IE anymore. How do people STAND the pop-ups!
Man, I find this news is really depressing. I really hope the Mozilla foundation is able to carry on with the excellent development of Firebird.
Parent doesn't strike me as a troll. The fact is that the XBox is being described as a computer in the NYT times article. A computer is a general purpose machine. In terms of general purpose use, the Walmart machine is propably a better computer, not to mention more powerful (twice as much RAM, heftier CPU). Since the article claims that the XBox is cheapier than a PC, this seems like a statement that bears correcting.
Does anybody else find it funny that the first sentence in the description of the computer, sold on Walmart's website, reads
"Note: Linux operating systems may not be compatible with some dial-up Internet services, such as AOL or Wal-Mart Connect."
Hilarious! You can't by a Walmart computer over the internet with a Walmart computer.
Now don't get me wrong... I love tabbed browsing. It is one of the many reasons that I use Firebird instead of Internet Exploiter.... But....
Why is tabbed browsing considered such a huge innovation? Programs with multiple documents in a single window have been around for eons. And tabs to distinguish multiple document are also nothing new. Many programs use this type of interface. WinEdt and Borland Delphi and C++ Builder are just a few that immediately pop to mind. So why do people think that multiple documents with tabs in a web browser are so innovative?
"Venture capitalists take risks on investments for the possibility of a large financial gain afterwards. "
You can not seriously be proposing to put research into the hands of venture capitilists!?!?! They don't understand research any more than you do; long term for them is a six month product cycle.
The day that venture capitilists become the driving force behind scientific research in the US is the end of scientific research in the US.
"What you propose however is handing millions and millions of dollars to research organizations that may or may not even find a viable alternative that can be implemented without the government forcing that down our throats as well."
This is a statement from a person who clearly does not understand basic scientific research. There are no guarentees that funding a particular project will produce results. That is the nature of the process. And yet, the position of the US in the world today is fundamentally because of the support of basic research in the US, in especially government funded labs and university programs.
The sort of research which is in most need of government support is exactly the sort of research which may or may not produce results in the short term because it is the riskiest and LEAST likely to be supported by industry, which by it's nature is very conservative in the research that it supports. And yet this is also the type of research with the biggest payoff.
As for your apparant infatuation with a free market - I am baffled that someone in the post Enron days could still have pull out the old saws about the free market being the most efficient way to produce results. Puh-leese. Having worked for the government, the military, and big industry, I can say that all three are ridden with beaurocrats. The primary result of an unregulated market is to allow the crooks to rise to the top that much easier.
The government did fund much of the computer revolution. Ever heard of the Internet? It was a government funded project from it's inception.
You are right. Many of the things we have today did not come from government funded projects. The solid state transistor, for example, came from Bell Labs, industrial labs. However, many more did. The semiconductor laser, the basis for your CD drive for example, saw large advances from groups at Lincoln Labs, a, God forbid, Government Funded Institution.
Your knee jerk reaction to "government funded projects" is rather overwrought. And in today's environment, calling the research into alternative energy sources to free the US from it's oil habit a "silly premise" amounts to wearing blinders of an extremely dangerous sort. Of course, you would probably tell me that all we need to do is drill for oil in Alaska; that will solve all our problems...
You are absolutely right. How dare the government use public money on a project that would have huge benefits in terms of the enviroment, cheap energy, independance from the middle east, national security, and on and on.
In all seriousness, that kind of comment makes me despair for the future. National spending on science research should be inreased many-fold, and research into alternative energy sources should be one of the major recipients. The thought of short-sighted republicans clutching at their little tax dollars while promising avenues of scientific research lie fallow should make every geek scream.
As you get the urge piss and moan that it is your money, not the government's, keep in mind that the tax burden on US citizens is lower now than it has been since world war II (at least that is what I heard on NPR, but you probably don't like them either because they are funded with public money). Furthermore, the US has one of the lowest tax burdens of all developed countrys, which ultimately comes at a cost that can't be measured.
G.W. Bush is NOT pushing for this. G.W. Bush makes fuzzy sounding promises about the hydrogen industry to curry favor with the public, but in reality, the amount of money he promised during his state of the union address is very small and spread over many years. In reality the amount of money he promised to develop hydrogen industry is less money than is needed to develop just a single new car model based on OIL.
Next time you think Dubya is promoting something for the good of the enviroment, smack yourself in the head with a sledgehammer, and then take another look.
I checked out the suse computers on the Wal-mart site. At the bottom was this little disclaimer:
"Note: Linux operating systems may not be compatible with some dial-up Internet services, such as AOL or Wal-Mart Connect."
Not that I care in the least about making use of Wal-Mart Connect, but it is a delicious little piece of irony.
no no.
It's dzd, for Data Zero Distribution, the new paradigm shift in network topology! Coming soon...
Well, no, there wouldn't be a considerable difference. Both methods of leaking the source would be illegal, since as an employee of a copy, you officially sign away your legal rights to anything you create. Therefore if the company doesn't want the source released it doesn't matter whether the source is posted on an "official" website or not. The leak is illegal.
Sue Hawking? I didn't realize that was his wife's name!
go to http://erik.selwerd.nl/monthy-python.html all shall be revealed.
You are in the wrong room. This is over-zealous physics nerd discussion group. The over-zealous grammarians are across the hall.
I doubt this effect will work with continuous beams. The wavelength shift is based on the Doppler effect, i.e. the light shifts in frequency because the crystal is getting smaller. At some point the crystal has to get larger again, or be destroyed. If the crystal is driven by an acoustic wave, it will oscillate in size, and therefore, the frequency shift will have an oscillatory behaviour in time.
Yes, but coherence can be maintained through nonlinear processes, such as these, if the light you start out with was coherent.
Um, I hate to be pendantic, but laser stands for Light Amplification from Stimulated Emission of Radiation. This effect has nothing to do with stimulated emission. There are many ways of producing single frequency light.
This is certainly an interesting result, but its heavily hyped as well.
First of all, there are many many ways to shift the frequency of light, both up and down in frequency, with both linear and nonlinear means, - from the Raman effect in optical fibers (scattering off vibrations of silica molecules) to Optical Parametric Oscillators (nonlinear wave mixing), supercontinuum generation (using a multitude of nonlinear effects to generate broad bandwidth from a single laser) to simple OEO conversion (detect your light with a photodiode and use it to drive another laser at a different wavelength. Contrary to what this article implies, these effects work at modest power levels in todays optical fibers, and many are highly efficient, and work over extremely broad bandwidths. For example, supercontinuum generation can generate light sources with bandwidth covering the entire visible, UV and IR spectrum in one source! If you want to talk about bulk optic techniques for wavelength conversion, the list is even longer.
Now think a minute about what these guys are proposing. They have to shock the crystal. Initial experiments will destroy the sample. Maybe they can refine the technique down the line to nondestructively shock the sample, maybe they can't. Certainly, infinite bandwidth won't be available, since the amount of wavelength shift will depend on the amount of shock. A single shot technique for wavelength shifting, while interesting, isn't all that useful practically.
Second, they are using a shock, so conversion of CW light is out of the question, only pulses can be converted here, or you risk a time dependent wavelength shift, as your shock dies out.
Finally, claims of a completely new physical effect seem somewhat overblown. It is an interesting idea, but Doppler shifting off acoustic shocks, and photonic crystals are well known. Marrying the two together and finding a stable regime of operation is novel, but not quite the same as discovering a new physical princple like relativity or quantum mechanics, for example.