From what I understand of quantum computing, the "implicit storage" would be storage used during the process of the calculation -- discrete data cannot be pumped in (beyond a classical 100 bit start state).
Say you have an algorithm that needs to store all numbers from 0 to 2^100, then the algorithm excludes sets of them until arriving at an answer. The algorithm might truly need 2^100 words of 100 bits each to proceed on a classical computer, but on a quantum computer the calculation chugs along on our implicit storage until it arrives at an answer. As long as we never know the states of the implicit storage as the calculation unfolds it works, but we have at most 100 bits to read at the end of the calculation, and can only store 100 bits before the calculation. But this is the ultimate parallel computation, because each step in our calculations is working on all the numbers in our "implicit storage" at one time. The trick is getting the numbers to settle down and converge on one classical answer that can be read. See things like the Shor algorithm for composite number factoring.
To fill our memory with every number before starting the calculation would take one hundred steps, each setting one bit in both on and off, but entangled with all other bits.
Sorry, no unlimited pr0n storage for/. users. In effect, every JPEG is in memory, you just can't view any of them. A decided disadvantage for pr0n:-)
The goal is similar, but the method is totally different. The first method was part of the cheap-better-faster mantra. The first mission would be akin to drilling for oil by hurling the oil-dereks from the sky at several hundred miles per hour The first mission involved no drilling, only the momentum of the crash to burrow some small distance underground. It was to rely on very hardened electronics to survive the crash, but no moving parts. There are electronics like this that are used in things like artillery shells that can scan the ground beneath them as they spin, and transmit a band of imagery back on rout to their target, the imagery useful for recon. So the original idea was not so outlandish, as we knew the probes could/should survive inpact, only they didn't for reasons unknown.
Half a million years is pretty long in this context, especially for organisms that can potentially reproduce quite frequently or have dozens if not hundreds of generations per year (even thousands).
This has huge scientific potential but not for the reasons most slashdotters are positing. For scientists studying the genome, it's largely about calibrating their evolutionary rulers, and less about super alien organisms.
Unlike large animals which can be geographically isolated and evolve undisturbed, free living microbes (as opposed to those that need a specific animal or plant host) probably range freely and easily by the fact that they carry easily on the wind or the skin of migrating animals or move with the major currents that circulate the globe. Even if only one microbe makes it to a local it can begin to reproduce, since it doesn't rely on sexual replication, it isn't inconvenienced by having to find a mate also flung into some far foreign environment.
All of this is to say, these microbes will have had what in microbe evolution is something fairly rare, an environment completely free from competition from other global varieties seeking to fill the same ecological niche. I doubt they will have mutated far from their other global cousins, but the rate of change of DNA is probably what really matters to scientists, as for long time periods we would only be making guesses about genomic drift in microbes.
Given the extreme environment these microbes inhabit, there may also be some extreamophile surprises for cold adaptation.
Another possible study will be how quickly the isolated community looses defenses to protozoa and other microscopic predators that may not now be present in their extremely isolated pocket of liquid water beneath the ice.
Having read the article (from Maddog Batty's copy), I'm struck by 3 things:
1. While the author proposes some marvelous cure based on treating spam as an organism, he just lists traits that any spam filter can use, and which most probably do, though he would suggest that most don't. I fail to see how the artificial-life observation improves spam non-spam determination from the list of traits he proposes filtering on.
2. The article reads like a sales pitch for the author's spam filter.
3. If 2 is true, and it is a sales pitch, then you have the irony of a very effect form of spam that makes it past the slashdot editors.
Here's a thought, make it the Star Trek: The Romulan Wars : A Trilogy. Ditch the preexisting numbering system. These would legitimately be episodes I-III anyway.
Star Trek II - IV were essentially a trilogy revolving around Spock's death and resurrection.
Episode I: the first meetings and skirmishes, forces set in motion, characters introduced, we briefly see a young Kirk set on a trajectory to join Star Fleet. Earth (Federation?) scientists given a mandate to create technologies that will be needed in what is seen as the looming battle to come (ala the Manhattan Project, with many of the same moral dilemmas)
Episode II: the Romulans posed to take over Earth, only support from Vulcans and other reluctant allies averts disaster.
Episode III: a valiant counterstrike that forces the Romulans to withdraw with plot twists leading the power balance between Romulans, Federation and Klingons in TOS.
Do it like LOTR and have the 3 episodes come out 1 a year as a planned, and make sure the fans know its all one story to be released as such, not a GEE-If-we-make-money-we'll-think-about-another-mov ie-in-3-years.
Don't obsess on continuity, just make it a good story that half way sets up the Star Trek universe we know.
For honest users this isn't half as scary as things like the usbank scam
Where http://www.infousbanupdate.com/internetBanking/
Claims to be a link to usbank in your email, the link brings up your browser
And if it is a default IE, a Javascript or ActiveX overwrites the URL with a bogus www.usbank.com URL when it is really www.infousbanupdate.com, if done from the link in your mail it is flawless except for the secure lock symbol, which they spoof by
Just putting a picture in the main page rather than on the brower's bottom border.
The whole purpose to steal ID PINS and Passwords.
If you are a usbank member, beware any mail claiming need you to log in for some security check.
I think your analogy is a bit strained for a few reasons. In the 80's while monochrome monitors might have had slightly higher native resolutions in some cases, the addition of color vastly improved the ability of good app designers to direct attention quickly to where it was needed with color clues.
Going 3D in most cases for text actually reduces readability, as most 2D fonts are carefully crafted to look good on the discrete pixels that make up a raster image. Anti-aliasing helps, but is not a panacea. I find that I do my own zooming operation manually with my head (moving it closer and farther away) as I look around my monitor at work. The idea of automatically shrinking non-focus windows 70% is kind of interesting (if the fonts still looked good at 70%), but doesn't require 3D.
I have a large projection screen monitor at home (8 foot wide) and can drive it a Quad-XGA (2048x1536), I find it great for 3D games and Movies, but not so good for most other applications. I was puzzled by this, but I think it is because you can't change your perspective quickly by leaning in and out or moving your head.
I suspect that 3D will one day be the norm, but only once we have monitors blasting out more pixels than we can easily differentiate across a field of view of more than 90 degrees. I'm not going to do the math, but I suspect that would be something like 6000x30000 or 18 mega pixels. Once we cross that boundary, then 3D starts to make a lot of sense, as the scaling and rotation do not unduly degrade text information even on small fonts, and starts to add information and ease organization. This assumes that moving the apps and text around is intuitive and easier, similar in ease to the way I move my head around when staring at my monitor at work today.
450 may not sound like a lot, until
you have to generate it for yourself years on end.
Your little computer is a lot bigger if you include the size of the Power Station it is attached to through a long peice of wire.
Someone should calculate how the amount of coal or oil that would
be needed to provide power for Cassini if it weren't nuclear. Or the size of solar cells needed at that distance from the sun (and their wieight).
I hate to be a wet blanket here, but does winning the X-Prize really get us any closer to privatization of space? The real question here is if having achieved the X-Prize, can the winning entry be modified to lead directly to LEO -- I suspect not. Most notably missing is the ability to survive the extreme thermal stress from the much higher velocities on reentry.
As is mentioned in the parent post here, the X15 rocket plane essentially met the X-prize goals back in the 60's, but it never led to a LEO rocket plane. Granted it provided a lot of data that is used in spacecraft design, but it ended up being essentially a dead end.
I'm all for design of new methods of getting into space, and this doesn't really take up that many tax dollars, but I doubt it will lead directly to a private space plane.
I for one would have curtailed our manned effort (though not completely stopped it) before the ISS. The ISS should have awaited a real advance in getting to orbit, in fact it should have been predicated on it. Instead of making empty political statements about going to Mars, we should be investing in a catapult type infrastructure. A space cannon for bulk supplies like water and fuel. And a maglev assist launcher for manned and unmanned craft to get to mach 2 or 3. Even if we get Scram Jets working, they would benefit from not having to get above mach 2 or 3 with conventional rockets or jets.
This project would me a Mega-Project along the lines of the Panama Canal. A suitable place closer to the equator should be acquired (purchased not leased) and be designed to be brought online in stages, with additional land being reserved for additional (larger) launch slings once the concept proves itself.
This sentence pretty much tells you this is another perpetual motion hoax:
With the help of magnetic propulsion, it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device. Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent.
Wooo-Hooo we can replace coal, oil and nuclear by just string these things together like Christmas tree bulbs!
The other clue that this is a scam is the entourage of bankers and investors to the demos, not physicists and engineers.
Joining us are a middle-aged banker and his entourage from Osaka and accounting and finance consultant Yukio Funai. The banker is doing a quick review for an investment, while the rest of us just want to see if Minato's magnetic motors really work. A prototype car air conditioner cooler sitting on a bench looks like it would fit into a Toyota Corolla and quickly catches our attention
I imagine it would have to be a closed air exchange system (though the article doesn't say), the returning air would still have to be cooled by other means - passive, adiobatic, pizoelectric, even liquid (though no longer right up against the processor).
I guess the Slashdot attitude is "we hate censorship and will censor anyone who advocates censorship of any kind".
Why does the word "FUCK" need to be said in broadcast media? Freedom of speech used to mean the ability to freely disseminate any idea without fear of reprisal; now it means vocal minorities have the right to have their words forced into our ears. Other than discussion of the use of the word "FUCK" what ideas are censored by not being able to use the word "FUCK" on network feeds, which as this poster notes are seen and listened to by children?
It would seem the average slashdotter has no problem with strangers going up to other peoples' children and using any string of obscenities they want.
Maybe the FCC has gone too far, maybe it hasn't, but it sickens me to see how quickly the knee jerk liberal Slashdot bias is enforced by moderators who clearly didn't have enough time to ready the article in question before modding this comment down.
Other than pre-recording and screening all TV-programming how are parents supposed to ensure their children receive wholesome fare? You may not think the word "FUCK" is harmful for a young child to hear (or other words or images), but that would only be your opinion not a provable fact.
I'm sure if Jason Timberlake hadn't just exposed Janet Jackson's boob, but actually torn all her clothes off and sodomized her for fifteen minutes with extreme camera close-ups and slow motion replay -- that too would be just fine with a great many as well.
Still, I went from the slashdot link to the graph,
from there to "Science Fiction", then to "How to Cite"
These pages did not mention the "no need to cite" clause.
I feel a little embarrassed in that I had seen this site once before from a slashdot posting long ago, and now remember the "no need to cite" from back then.
It would seem someone should have the definitive glossary of attributable coinage, and it might help if this site linked to it. No doubt they are being barraged right now with unneeded words that they consider of known origin (mine included).
Oh the shame!
BTW, can anyone give a reference to killbot
before Furturama? I'm betting it's out there somewhere.
No entry for Robot yet.
This was easy enough to get as a google search (having seen the origin before)
The 1920 story/play
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
Czech Author: Karel Capek, however his brother Josef is credited with coining the word.
I am unable to cite this correctly, not having the original publication, but am sending it off in any event.
It would seem even the simplest SciFi words should be considered for submission. So rack your brains then do a search.
(from the play, English translation, page 1):
On the right-hand wall
are fastened printed placards:
"CHEAP LABOR. ROSSUM'S ROBOTS."
"ROBOTS FOR THE TROPICS. 150 DOLLARS EACH."
"EVERYONE SHOULD BUY HIS OWN ROBOT."
"DO YOU WANT TO CHEAPEN YOUR OUTPUT?
ORDER ROSSUM'S ROBOTS":
It isn't just Evil Web Sites and and Evil Email, but evil movie DVDs
I mentioned this story sometime back (but will trot it out again).
I made the mistake of clicking on DVD Friendly or some other such evil
thing to "enhance" my DVD player on my PC when playing a movie DVD on my
PC. It broke my sound drivers, and not just for the stupid DVD Friendly player
but for the DELL built in DVD player. I had a heck of a time getting this thing fixed.
Disney similarly thinks they need to alter your default DVD player, mostly to hype
web links.
Had this been my Dad's computer, he would have had to wait until I fixed it. I'm
sure many wouldn't be able to fix these things without profession help.
They don't intend to break your computer, but it is the same driving force as spam,
an urge to over-aggressively push their presence on to your computer.
From the article: Lai and Singh hypothesize that exposure to magnetic fields affects the balance of iron in certain cells, leading to an increase in free iron within the cell.
Here is where these kind of risk studies often go astray.
We go looking for a problem (one likely to alarm the public), say our research has found one, then propose
some dubious mechanism that was never part of the original study. Without
some cause to explain the results, the results look dubious. Proposing a cause, even
an outlandish one, seems to add substance to the study (at least to the general public).
The real trick would be nailing down the cause of the damage -- most likely experimental
error in this case.
I assure you I am just voicing options that are being considered in the pentagon.
If Polar orbit satellites take too long to get "on station", then other types of satellites
might be used. While Polar Orbits can reach every spot on earth, other orbits might be more effective
for certain trouble spots at certain latitudes. In any event Multiple Polar Orbit satellites could
slash the "on station time" to any fraction of what one satellite could.
Human resources and planes cannot not be reduced in this fashion, short
of opening up multiple air-bases around the world (again that pesky political fallout issue),
and having the planes constantly fueled, loaded, and manned.
In fact I'm sure the Pentagon sees this type of satellite bombing as a cost saver of sorts, reducing the
need for many foreign bases of operation.
As to the good luck with those 'missile launch killer' satellites, I doubt much you are in any position
to really evaluate their potential. A lot of anti-star-wars rhetoric was really just number pushing to discourage
an agenda that pacifists don't like. The same can be said of overly optimistic estimates made by pentagon hawks.
Don't confuse me for an advocate of weaponizing space, nor an opponent either. These are options and scenarios that
our government must consider, because I assure you other governments are.
Well there you have it, "Doesn't_Comment_Code" says it isn't cost effective, might as well pack it in.
There are more than just monetary costs when figuring in the art of war, there are political costs and human lives costs, though the former usually trumps the latter.
You can drop a bomb from a plane, but there is risk to the plane and pilot, and
political fall out if the plain is downed (look up Gary Power).
Armed planes can take a long time to get a mission planned an executed. We tried to bomb where Saddam was, but he wasn't there. Missing him might have just been the time in getting the bombing mission together.
There are pros and cons to having the ability to follow up a targeting opportunity quickly. All in all if any nation is to have this ability, I would prefer it to be America.
You can be sure that since 911, America has considered enforcing a monopoly on space based weapon systems, even against China. I'm not saying this is a good idea, but it is being considered by those in power. It is hard to say how the future will play out, there may be an arms race in space; treaties may hold against the weaponizing of space; America (or some other nation) may assert some type of space hegemony.
Space holds special unique military advantages to those that use it, and with the proper systems in place, one nation could keep all other nations out of space. If your missile launch killers are the only ones in space, no one is going to
disrupt your monopoly.
As I speculated a couple of weeks ago about our new Moon-Mars space initiatives, these may just be civilian cover for dramatically ramping up military activities in space.
So where is all the high value aluminum trinkets not obtained through bauxite processing?
Aluminum use to be a precious metal, and now it isn't. I'm sure naturally occurring aluminum has
some crystalline properties that processed aluminum doesn't, and yet there is no market for "natural aluminum".
The resorting of finding ways to distinguish crystalline properties, is just a stalling tactic on the part of the
diamond industry. I doubt the public cares about minute differences in the crystalline structure if all other properties
are identical (which is not the case for say cubic-zirconium).
Should the public care, then eventually technology will find a way to make the diamonds the same on even this level. More
likely synthetic diamonds will exceed natural diamonds in purity and regularity of structure. The diamond cartel will try to convince the public (unsuccessfully) that they want inferior natural diamonds, and the whole thing will collapse.
For a while the two may exist side by side, much like the cultured pearl industry and natural pearls, but it will have a depressive effect on the price of natural diamonds.
So after liberating some (all) of the hydrogen we are left
with C2 and O I would assume it would pick up O2 from the air
and make C02 as a by product, with potentially some water also.
Last time I checked C02 was a greenhouse gas. It doesn't add
to CO2 levels if (big if) the sources for ethanol production
extract the CO2 from the atmosphere at the same rate. Keep in mind
it isn't just the raw materials, but energy needed to process and create
the ethanol, which may cause pollution in the process.
I would have expected CNN to give the actual chemical by-products,
and not just summarize as "no greenhouse gasses" which is extremely
misleading. I would also be interested to know how many of the
H6 get truly extracted, and what remainder go into water (which would
say something about efficiency and power density). Or whether some
more exotic compounds are left behind that just C02 and H20 (even if
only in trace amounts). A molecule here, a molecule there, and sometimes
things aren't as benign as one might first assume.
Good news in any event, just wish there where more details.
The submitter's coworkers must all be under the age of 40. The Russian rovers were no secret; I'm 45 and remember a Johnny Carson joke that circulated widely, something to the effect, "boy those Russians will do anything to erase those foot prints"
Deriding the American educational system for not having kids memorize every event in space history is a bit harsh. To be fair there is quite a bit of space history, and this feat while impressive was clearly not as impressive as walking on the moon, and came second. I also doubt there is some dark sinister nationalism at fault, as also seems to be hinted at.
Lets deride the American education system for failing to teach reading and math, not obscure space trivia.
CUT AND PASTE MISTAKE!
IGNORE PREVIOUS POST -- here is the correct response:
There seems to be an even split on slashdot between scrapping and saving. I for one am for saving. Perhaps I am a little more biased because my 11 birthday was when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
For people under the age of 40, landing on the Moon may not seem like such a big deal, but for those of us that remember the 60's it was HUGE. So huge in fact
that I can't imagine we wouldn't preserve every scrap of relevant hardware in connection with it. An unused Saturn V laying on its side is impressive, but it never made the journey. The Launch pad itself is where the Journey started. Phallic symbol jokes aside, it should be restored to it's original configuration, and has near to its original site as possible, to inspire those that wish to make the pilgrimage to its base and look up longingly and remember the now dim echos of pride and promise of an earlier age.
I don't see this as the financial responsibility of NASA to do the restoration.
Government should vote the funds to do the restoration off of NASA's budget --
especially so people don't carp about how much money is squandered on NASA. I don't think Americans in general realize how much prestige and honor and admiration America garnered by going to the Moon. By side effect, the financial rewards were enormous. But regardless, this should be done because this is one of perhaps a dozen of the most defining moment in history. How could you not preserve
where it all started?
I don't know about "every problem", but what are the alternatives?
You just seem to dislike open markets. Am I to infer Central Planning is more effective?
You imply laws are passed in a open market fashion, and they maybe after a fashion this is so by side effect of effective lobbying, but no one suggests that this is a correct solution.
You dislike the idea of pollution credits obviously, but fail to show how pollution is increased by use of pollution credits, or fails in its intent to redress certain inequities in the patch work of pollution regulation we have. You just have a gut feeling people shouldn't be given permission to pollute, but this is what regulation is all about, how much and to what end.
Spam is an example of "the tragedy of the commons"
Some type of barrier to access is the only way to solve it. By making it an open market everyone has access, but they indulge their use as makes economic sense. The beauty of open markets is that they are self regulating. Call it an emergent behavior from enlightened self interest.
I am not saying these gentleman have the correct solution for spam, but to just denigrate it because it has open market as a model
is unfair. Open or Free markets work well in many situations, they also fail in many situations. Many times failures attributed to open or free markets are really failure of regulation, that only free certain aspects of a market but leave others restricted.
The only thing we should be concerned with is does the solution work and is it fair. Lets not discard it simply because you dislike open markets, and may I also infer capitalism?
Slashdot Mirror
Say you have an algorithm that needs to store all numbers from 0 to 2^100, then the algorithm excludes sets of them until arriving at an answer. The algorithm might truly need 2^100 words of 100 bits each to proceed on a classical computer, but on a quantum computer the calculation chugs along on our implicit storage until it arrives at an answer. As long as we never know the states of the implicit storage as the calculation unfolds it works, but we have at most 100 bits to read at the end of the calculation, and can only store 100 bits before the calculation. But this is the ultimate parallel computation, because each step in our calculations is working on all the numbers in our "implicit storage" at one time. The trick is getting the numbers to settle down and converge on one classical answer that can be read. See things like the Shor algorithm for composite number factoring.
To fill our memory with every number before starting the calculation would take one hundred steps, each setting one bit in both on and off, but entangled with all other bits.
Sorry, no unlimited pr0n storage for /. users. In effect, every JPEG is in memory, you just can't view any of them. A decided disadvantage for pr0n :-)
The goal is similar, but the method is totally different. The first method was part of the cheap-better-faster mantra. The first mission would be akin to drilling for oil by hurling the oil-dereks from the sky at several hundred miles per hour The first mission involved no drilling, only the momentum of the crash to burrow some small distance underground. It was to rely on very hardened electronics to survive the crash, but no moving parts. There are electronics like this that are used in things like artillery shells that can scan the ground beneath them as they spin, and transmit a band of imagery back on rout to their target, the imagery useful for recon. So the original idea was not so outlandish, as we knew the probes could/should survive inpact, only they didn't for reasons unknown.
This has huge scientific potential but not for the reasons most slashdotters are positing. For scientists studying the genome, it's largely about calibrating their evolutionary rulers, and less about super alien organisms.
Unlike large animals which can be geographically isolated and evolve undisturbed, free living microbes (as opposed to those that need a specific animal or plant host) probably range freely and easily by the fact that they carry easily on the wind or the skin of migrating animals or move with the major currents that circulate the globe. Even if only one microbe makes it to a local it can begin to reproduce, since it doesn't rely on sexual replication, it isn't inconvenienced by having to find a mate also flung into some far foreign environment.
All of this is to say, these microbes will have had what in microbe evolution is something fairly rare, an environment completely free from competition from other global varieties seeking to fill the same ecological niche. I doubt they will have mutated far from their other global cousins, but the rate of change of DNA is probably what really matters to scientists, as for long time periods we would only be making guesses about genomic drift in microbes.
Given the extreme environment these microbes inhabit, there may also be some extreamophile surprises for cold adaptation.
Another possible study will be how quickly the isolated community looses defenses to protozoa and other microscopic predators that may not now be present in their extremely isolated pocket of liquid water beneath the ice.
1. While the author proposes some marvelous cure based on treating spam as an organism, he just lists traits that any spam filter can use, and which most probably do, though he would suggest that most don't. I fail to see how the artificial-life observation improves spam non-spam determination from the list of traits he proposes filtering on.
2. The article reads like a sales pitch for the author's spam filter.
3. If 2 is true, and it is a sales pitch, then you have the irony of a very effect form of spam that makes it past the slashdot editors.
It's ALIVE!!!!
Episode I: the first meetings and skirmishes, forces set in motion, characters introduced, we briefly see a young Kirk set on a trajectory to join Star Fleet. Earth (Federation?) scientists given a mandate to create technologies that will be needed in what is seen as the looming battle to come (ala the Manhattan Project, with many of the same moral dilemmas)
Episode II: the Romulans posed to take over Earth, only support from Vulcans and other reluctant allies averts disaster.
Episode III: a valiant counterstrike that forces the Romulans to withdraw with plot twists leading the power balance between Romulans, Federation and Klingons in TOS.
Do it like LOTR and have the 3 episodes come out 1 a year as a planned, and make sure the fans know its all one story to be released as such, not a GEE-If-we-make-money-we'll-think-about-another-mov ie-in-3-years.
Don't obsess on continuity, just make it a good story that half way sets up the Star Trek universe we know.
The whole purpose to steal ID PINS and Passwords.
If you are a usbank member, beware any mail claiming need you to log in for some security check.
Going 3D in most cases for text actually reduces readability, as most 2D fonts are carefully crafted to look good on the discrete pixels that make up a raster image. Anti-aliasing helps, but is not a panacea. I find that I do my own zooming operation manually with my head (moving it closer and farther away) as I look around my monitor at work. The idea of automatically shrinking non-focus windows 70% is kind of interesting (if the fonts still looked good at 70%), but doesn't require 3D.
I have a large projection screen monitor at home (8 foot wide) and can drive it a Quad-XGA (2048x1536), I find it great for 3D games and Movies, but not so good for most other applications. I was puzzled by this, but I think it is because you can't change your perspective quickly by leaning in and out or moving your head.
I suspect that 3D will one day be the norm, but only once we have monitors blasting out more pixels than we can easily differentiate across a field of view of more than 90 degrees. I'm not going to do the math, but I suspect that would be something like 6000x30000 or 18 mega pixels. Once we cross that boundary, then 3D starts to make a lot of sense, as the scaling and rotation do not unduly degrade text information even on small fonts, and starts to add information and ease organization. This assumes that moving the apps and text around is intuitive and easier, similar in ease to the way I move my head around when staring at my monitor at work today.
Your little computer is a lot bigger if you include the size of the Power Station it is attached to through a long peice of wire.
Someone should calculate how the amount of coal or oil that would be needed to provide power for Cassini if it weren't nuclear. Or the size of solar cells needed at that distance from the sun (and their wieight).
As is mentioned in the parent post here, the X15 rocket plane essentially met the X-prize goals back in the 60's, but it never led to a LEO rocket plane. Granted it provided a lot of data that is used in spacecraft design, but it ended up being essentially a dead end.
I'm all for design of new methods of getting into space, and this doesn't really take up that many tax dollars, but I doubt it will lead directly to a private space plane.
I for one would have curtailed our manned effort (though not completely stopped it) before the ISS. The ISS should have awaited a real advance in getting to orbit, in fact it should have been predicated on it. Instead of making empty political statements about going to Mars, we should be investing in a catapult type infrastructure. A space cannon for bulk supplies like water and fuel. And a maglev assist launcher for manned and unmanned craft to get to mach 2 or 3. Even if we get Scram Jets working, they would benefit from not having to get above mach 2 or 3 with conventional rockets or jets.
This project would me a Mega-Project along the lines of the Panama Canal. A suitable place closer to the equator should be acquired (purchased not leased) and be designed to be brought online in stages, with additional land being reserved for additional (larger) launch slings once the concept proves itself.
"This Side Towards Enemy"
This sentence pretty much tells you this is another perpetual motion hoax:
With the help of magnetic propulsion, it is feasible to attach a generator to the motor and produce more electric power than was put into the device. Minato says that average efficiency on his motors is about 330 percent.
Wooo-Hooo we can replace coal, oil and nuclear by just string these things together like Christmas tree bulbs!
The other clue that this is a scam is the entourage of bankers and investors to the demos, not physicists and engineers.
Joining us are a middle-aged banker and his entourage from Osaka and accounting and finance consultant Yukio Funai. The banker is doing a quick review for an investment, while the rest of us just want to see if Minato's magnetic motors really work. A prototype car air conditioner cooler sitting on a bench looks like it would fit into a Toyota Corolla and quickly catches our attention
Why does the word "FUCK" need to be said in broadcast media? Freedom of speech used to mean the ability to freely disseminate any idea without fear of reprisal; now it means vocal minorities have the right to have their words forced into our ears. Other than discussion of the use of the word "FUCK" what ideas are censored by not being able to use the word "FUCK" on network feeds, which as this poster notes are seen and listened to by children?
It would seem the average slashdotter has no problem with strangers going up to other peoples' children and using any string of obscenities they want.
Maybe the FCC has gone too far, maybe it hasn't, but it sickens me to see how quickly the knee jerk liberal Slashdot bias is enforced by moderators who clearly didn't have enough time to ready the article in question before modding this comment down.
Other than pre-recording and screening all TV-programming how are parents supposed to ensure their children receive wholesome fare? You may not think the word "FUCK" is harmful for a young child to hear (or other words or images), but that would only be your opinion not a provable fact.
I'm sure if Jason Timberlake hadn't just exposed Janet Jackson's boob, but actually torn all her clothes off and sodomized her for fifteen minutes with extreme camera close-ups and slow motion replay -- that too would be just fine with a great many as well.
Is there really no line at all?
Still, I went from the slashdot link to the graph, from there to "Science Fiction", then to "How to Cite"
These pages did not mention the "no need to cite" clause.
I feel a little embarrassed in that I had seen this site once before from a slashdot posting long ago, and now remember the "no need to cite" from back then.
It would seem someone should have the definitive glossary of attributable coinage, and it might help if this site linked to it. No doubt they are being barraged right now with unneeded words that they consider of known origin (mine included).
Oh the shame!
BTW, can anyone give a reference to killbot before Furturama? I'm betting it's out there somewhere.
This was easy enough to get as a google search (having seen the origin before)
The 1920 story/play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Czech Author: Karel Capek, however his brother Josef is credited with coining the word.
I am unable to cite this correctly, not having the original publication, but am sending it off in any event.
It would seem even the simplest SciFi words should be considered for submission. So rack your brains then do a search.
(from the play, English translation, page 1):
On the right-hand wall are fastened printed placards:
"CHEAP LABOR. ROSSUM'S ROBOTS."
"ROBOTS FOR THE TROPICS. 150 DOLLARS EACH."
"EVERYONE SHOULD BUY HIS OWN ROBOT."
"DO YOU WANT TO CHEAPEN YOUR OUTPUT? ORDER ROSSUM'S ROBOTS":
I mentioned this story sometime back (but will trot it out again).
I made the mistake of clicking on DVD Friendly or some other such evil thing to "enhance" my DVD player on my PC when playing a movie DVD on my PC. It broke my sound drivers, and not just for the stupid DVD Friendly player but for the DELL built in DVD player. I had a heck of a time getting this thing fixed. Disney similarly thinks they need to alter your default DVD player, mostly to hype web links.
Had this been my Dad's computer, he would have had to wait until I fixed it. I'm sure many wouldn't be able to fix these things without profession help.
They don't intend to break your computer, but it is the same driving force as spam, an urge to over-aggressively push their presence on to your computer.
Here is where these kind of risk studies often go astray. We go looking for a problem (one likely to alarm the public), say our research has found one, then propose some dubious mechanism that was never part of the original study. Without some cause to explain the results, the results look dubious. Proposing a cause, even an outlandish one, seems to add substance to the study (at least to the general public).
The real trick would be nailing down the cause of the damage -- most likely experimental error in this case.
It all smacks of "fund my study" type research.
In fact I'm sure the Pentagon sees this type of satellite bombing as a cost saver of sorts, reducing the need for many foreign bases of operation.
As to the good luck with those 'missile launch killer' satellites, I doubt much you are in any position to really evaluate their potential. A lot of anti-star-wars rhetoric was really just number pushing to discourage an agenda that pacifists don't like. The same can be said of overly optimistic estimates made by pentagon hawks.
Don't confuse me for an advocate of weaponizing space, nor an opponent either. These are options and scenarios that our government must consider, because I assure you other governments are.
There are more than just monetary costs when figuring in the art of war, there are political costs and human lives costs, though the former usually trumps the latter.
You can drop a bomb from a plane, but there is risk to the plane and pilot, and political fall out if the plain is downed (look up Gary Power).
Armed planes can take a long time to get a mission planned an executed. We tried to bomb where Saddam was, but he wasn't there. Missing him might have just been the time in getting the bombing mission together.
There are pros and cons to having the ability to follow up a targeting opportunity quickly. All in all if any nation is to have this ability, I would prefer it to be America.
You can be sure that since 911, America has considered enforcing a monopoly on space based weapon systems, even against China. I'm not saying this is a good idea, but it is being considered by those in power. It is hard to say how the future will play out, there may be an arms race in space; treaties may hold against the weaponizing of space; America (or some other nation) may assert some type of space hegemony.
Space holds special unique military advantages to those that use it, and with the proper systems in place, one nation could keep all other nations out of space. If your missile launch killers are the only ones in space, no one is going to disrupt your monopoly.
As I speculated a couple of weeks ago about our new Moon-Mars space initiatives, these may just be civilian cover for dramatically ramping up military activities in space.
The resorting of finding ways to distinguish crystalline properties, is just a stalling tactic on the part of the diamond industry. I doubt the public cares about minute differences in the crystalline structure if all other properties are identical (which is not the case for say cubic-zirconium).
Should the public care, then eventually technology will find a way to make the diamonds the same on even this level. More likely synthetic diamonds will exceed natural diamonds in purity and regularity of structure. The diamond cartel will try to convince the public (unsuccessfully) that they want inferior natural diamonds, and the whole thing will collapse.
For a while the two may exist side by side, much like the cultured pearl industry and natural pearls, but it will have a depressive effect on the price of natural diamonds.
The writing is on the wall my friend.
So after liberating some (all) of the hydrogen we are left with C2 and O I would assume it would pick up O2 from the air and make C02 as a by product, with potentially some water also.
Last time I checked C02 was a greenhouse gas. It doesn't add to CO2 levels if (big if) the sources for ethanol production extract the CO2 from the atmosphere at the same rate. Keep in mind it isn't just the raw materials, but energy needed to process and create the ethanol, which may cause pollution in the process.
I would have expected CNN to give the actual chemical by-products, and not just summarize as "no greenhouse gasses" which is extremely misleading. I would also be interested to know how many of the H6 get truly extracted, and what remainder go into water (which would say something about efficiency and power density). Or whether some more exotic compounds are left behind that just C02 and H20 (even if only in trace amounts). A molecule here, a molecule there, and sometimes things aren't as benign as one might first assume.
Good news in any event, just wish there where more details.
Deriding the American educational system for not having kids memorize every event in space history is a bit harsh. To be fair there is quite a bit of space history, and this feat while impressive was clearly not as impressive as walking on the moon, and came second. I also doubt there is some dark sinister nationalism at fault, as also seems to be hinted at.
Lets deride the American education system for failing to teach reading and math, not obscure space trivia.
IGNORE PREVIOUS POST -- here is the correct response:
There seems to be an even split on slashdot between scrapping and saving. I for one am for saving. Perhaps I am a little more biased because my 11 birthday was when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
For people under the age of 40, landing on the Moon may not seem like such a big deal, but for those of us that remember the 60's it was HUGE. So huge in fact that I can't imagine we wouldn't preserve every scrap of relevant hardware in connection with it. An unused Saturn V laying on its side is impressive, but it never made the journey. The Launch pad itself is where the Journey started. Phallic symbol jokes aside, it should be restored to it's original configuration, and has near to its original site as possible, to inspire those that wish to make the pilgrimage to its base and look up longingly and remember the now dim echos of pride and promise of an earlier age.
I don't see this as the financial responsibility of NASA to do the restoration. Government should vote the funds to do the restoration off of NASA's budget -- especially so people don't carp about how much money is squandered on NASA. I don't think Americans in general realize how much prestige and honor and admiration America garnered by going to the Moon. By side effect, the financial rewards were enormous. But regardless, this should be done because this is one of perhaps a dozen of the most defining moment in history. How could you not preserve where it all started?
You just seem to dislike open markets. Am I to infer Central Planning is more effective?
You imply laws are passed in a open market fashion, and they maybe after a fashion this is so by side effect of effective lobbying, but no one suggests that this is a correct solution.
You dislike the idea of pollution credits obviously, but fail to show how pollution is increased by use of pollution credits, or fails in its intent to redress certain inequities in the patch work of pollution regulation we have. You just have a gut feeling people shouldn't be given permission to pollute, but this is what regulation is all about, how much and to what end.
Spam is an example of "the tragedy of the commons"
Some type of barrier to access is the only way to solve it. By making it an open market everyone has access, but they indulge their use as makes economic sense. The beauty of open markets is that they are self regulating. Call it an emergent behavior from enlightened self interest.
I am not saying these gentleman have the correct solution for spam, but to just denigrate it because it has open market as a model is unfair. Open or Free markets work well in many situations, they also fail in many situations. Many times failures attributed to open or free markets are really failure of regulation, that only free certain aspects of a market but leave others restricted. The only thing we should be concerned with is does the solution work and is it fair. Lets not discard it simply because you dislike open markets, and may I also infer capitalism?