Light's color is a function of its frequency, which is inversely proportional to its wavelength.
...and of course laser frequency is determined by the bandgap of the lasing material. Remember kids, at the end of the day it all comes down to material science.
I agree it was a smart decision to go with red lasers, as they're much more mature. Nakamura's (sp?) work on nitrides notwithstanding, there's a long way to go before the material system is well understood.
P.S. Nakamura and the Nitrides - that sounds like a good name for a band.
"Canadian universities...there's no high-pressure entrance exam"
What about the Descartes exam, Sir Isaac Newton Physics and all the others? They're probably the only reason I got into uni (my HS marks sure didn't get me there!)
"It's easier to be a gay teenager, a member of a militia, an ex-Marine, a rabbit lover, a scientific researcher."
"Katz is one busy dude!"
ROTFLMAO - you owe me a new keyboard buddy, there's milk all over mine now. I dunno why, but that made me completely crack up after an enormously shitty day. Thanks dude.
Note to moderators: No, there's no insight or on-topic relevance here, I'm just highlighting one of the reasons that/. works for me - somebody from I_dunno_where writes an off-the-cuff comment that I happen to read several hours later and it immediately lightens what was a previously black mood.
Hey, wait a minute, it *is* on-topic! Maybe the net does bring people together in big ways and small ways too!
Nobody's explained how this will improve medicine to have a surgeon hundreds of miles away. Why not have them right there?
It's 'cuz specialists are uh...special (rare).
Consider an environment like Canada's North (heck - even southern Canada these days). It's fairly common to have a small but isolated community with a decent but small hospital and a couple of competent but not hot-shot general surgeons. A fat pipe connecting a local operating room to a specialist a thousand miles away (for at least remote observation - I'm not convinced about remote manipulation yet) would benefit all involved, and improve the level of treatment without the cost and stress of transporting the patient to a larger population centre for treatment.
As an added bonus - I believe (no cites handy) that there have been studies showing patient recovery is much better in familiar surroundings, close to home and family.
Of course, for the really serious stuff you'd have to ship your patients to a large centre for treatment, but a system like this could redefine what's considered "serious stuff"
Establishing shot of AMERICAN FLAG, waving in the breeze.
Cut to GEORGE W. BUSH, at podium.
"My fellow Americans,
I speak to you tonight as the President of the United States. Let me assure you that justice is on our side, and we will prevail. I'm sure millions of viewers out there are just wondering what it's like to wear the tights of justice. Well it's tingly and it's uncomfortable, but it gets the job done and oh, the job of it.
Over the past several weeks our military forces, along with the military forces of Great Britain and our other allies have been striking Taliban targets inside Afganistan. We have achieved air superiority, and our special forces are moving with impunity in the countryside. I warn you Mr. Bin Laden: don't make us bite you in hard-to-reach places.
The bravery of our soldiers, sailors and airmen is without question. In addition, American ingenuity, dedication and scientific might have armed our troops with the most technically advanced equipment the world has ever known. We should be proud of our soldiers, and of the job they're doing. We should also be proud of the technicians, engineers and scientists who have provided them with their equipment. However, with that pride comes the realization that not all science is used for good. As we cope with the recent anthrax outbreaks, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences... But the other head of science is bad! Oh, beware the other head of science! It bites!
I want to assure you, my countrymen, and the citizens of the rest of the world, that we, the American people will not rest until we have found the source of this anthrax, we will not relent until the Taliban have been destroyed, and we will not slumber until Osama Bin Laden has been brought to justice. Our cause is right, and we will prevail.
And so let me conclude my remarks tonight with this thought: may Evil beware and may Good dress warmly and eat lots of fresh vegetables. Thank you and good night."
Fade out over footage of USMC BAND playing The Star Spangled Banner.
Stallman (for all his faults and foibles) is the Martin Luther of the information age, and bill is the Pope. Quick - who can name the Pope who was in service when Luther nailed his manifesto to the door of the cathedral?
My good Lutheran mind has gone absolutely blank...Umm...Leo Ten?
Vegans worried about the effect of silver hailde and digital photography on animals...So you looked at your Pareto chart and decided that photography would give you the most bang for your (protesting vegan) buck?
/ObFlame: Fer cryin' out loud - you're on top of the food chain. Enjoy it!
"The thing about digital is that it is almost meant to be temporary. "
Ah sez "pardon"?
Ya it's easy to erase a digital photo, a little easier than setting fire to a print but not much. Try preserving a digital photo for 10,000 years vs copying a silver halide print by analog means - then tell me which storage scheme is "temporary".
"We cannot save the machines if there are no spare parts available, and we cannot save the software if no one is left who knows how to use it."
False argument. Sure it would be easier to fix a sundial than a punched card reader, but (expletive)! Assuming people in the future haven't devolved technically it shouldn't be that hard to figure out how the damn thing works and custom-build something to read the media and transfer it to whatever is state-of-the-art. That's a 4th year engineering project at worst. At best it'll be a highschool project.
Of course, if we devolve technologically it'll be a whole lot harder, but we (as a society) will likely have other things on our mind then (like remembering how to grow food).
"We do have a solution - we can keep the data files in an active file system. As technology progresses, we just copy from the old method of storage to the new. "
Ding ding ding, somebody mod this up - we have a winner.
Reading the posts in this thread it seems that a lot of posters miss the point. It's not about the medium that the digital image is stored on, it's the fact that the image is digital . So what if your 5 1/4" disks aren't readable in 10 more years. It's your data - take some responsiblilty and copy it to a new format. The copy will be perfect, indistinguishable from the origninal. Put it onto modern storage media (modern = 2030, 2197, 5248 AD, etc). Lather, rinse and repeat. Better yet, stick it on some sort of online storage system, and pay somebody to keep it up-to-date for you. It's not rocket science. The bits are there, it's just a matter of copying them.
Anybody want to lay a bet as to which lasts longer (and in a format truer to the original): the Zapruder (sp) film or the "taken from the observation deck of the WTC seconds before the plane crashed" fake photo?
"By that time, who would want to waste time on 2-D non-holographic static images? They'd be boring, you wouldn't be able to taste or smell anything..."
By the same token, why are we at all interested in the Bayeaux (sp?) tapestry. An old moldy thing, poor resolution, all those threads...
Betcha in the future there'll be an interest in digital static images with respect to the content as well as the technology used (if only as to how that technology relates to the society at the time)
"With Digital you just burn a couple of weeks photos onto a CD or stick it onto a fileserver and leave it there. "
Sure, more images are stored. It's quite possible that we could swing too far the other way though - drowning in a pile of digital images (Dubya waving at the crowd shot #2396...#2397). Storage with relevant descriptive tags - that's what we need. Trouble then is making sure that the images are filed with accuate tags (that's the sort of work that nobody likes to do). Contextual image recognition anybody? Of course then (answering my own question) any hardware powerful enough to look at an image, "recognize" what it is and write a human-readable description for it is also likely powerful enough to create (err...fake) any arbitrary image from nothing, thus diluting the power of photos.
There's lots of glass in the ground now, most of it dark.
Digging trenches and laying conduit is only part of the story. It is expensive to do, and costs enough that if you're digging in the first place it's not a whole lot more expensive to lay a hundred fibres as it is to lay one. It's cheaper to overprovision than it is to go back and dig up your trench in three years.
Laying the fibre is only part of the question. Getting the fibre into the ground costs (grasping at an arbitrary number) a quarter of the total cost to light it. All that fancy kit on either end and points in between costs lots of money and sucks a lot of power (not an issue in LA or NYC, but a major issue if you have to regenerate your signals somewhere in the middle of the Rocky Mountains).
Nortel and other systems providers will eventually start to make a decent income again selling equipment to light the dark fibre (or add wavelengths to partly lit fibre). It's Corning I'm worried about...
Slashdot Mirror
I feel old. Here's some shameless karma whoring for the benefit of those who weren't there at the time...
"after WWII the US got the better German V2 rocket scientists "
"My name is Wernher Von Braun. I reach for the stars, but sometimes I hit London..."
More Jim Carroll commentary for your enjoyment...
...I summon the vast power of certification!
Can't find the original Dilbert strip, but I think it ran Sept 2000.
If so, is it illegal to sing about Casey Jones?
Somewhere in Southern Ontario there is in fact one "Casey Jones P.Eng". I met him in a former career, while working at a municipal electric utility.
He seemed pretty sanguine about the whole thing...
Hear, hear!
Light's color is a function of its frequency, which is inversely proportional to its wavelength.
...and of course laser frequency is determined by the bandgap of the lasing material. Remember kids, at the end of the day it all comes down to material science.
I agree it was a smart decision to go with red lasers, as they're much more mature. Nakamura's (sp?) work on nitrides notwithstanding, there's a long way to go before the material system is well understood.
P.S. Nakamura and the Nitrides - that sounds like a good name for a band.
The other Ring shows my commitment to technology!
Upon your honour and cold iron?
"Though this is a fairly fragile 3 and a half ton object. It's not ias if it is a 3.5 ton lump of iron and nickel or solid rock."
What weighs more - a ton of lead or a ton of feathers?
"Canadian universities...there's no high-pressure entrance exam"
What about the Descartes exam, Sir Isaac Newton Physics and all the others? They're probably the only reason I got into uni (my HS marks sure didn't get me there!)
"It's easier to be a gay teenager, a member of a militia, an ex-Marine, a rabbit lover, a scientific researcher."
/. works for me - somebody from I_dunno_where writes an off-the-cuff comment that I happen to read several hours later and it immediately lightens what was a previously black mood.
"Katz is one busy dude!"
ROTFLMAO - you owe me a new keyboard buddy, there's milk all over mine now. I dunno why, but that made me completely crack up after an enormously shitty day. Thanks dude.
Note to moderators: No, there's no insight or on-topic relevance here, I'm just highlighting one of the reasons that
Hey, wait a minute, it *is* on-topic! Maybe the net does bring people together in big ways and small ways too!
Err..baseballs spin quite a bit, eh?
Sweet...Thank you Cambridge and Los Alamos!
Nobody's explained how this will improve medicine to have a surgeon hundreds of miles away. Why not have them right there?
It's 'cuz specialists are uh...special (rare).
Consider an environment like Canada's North (heck - even southern Canada these days). It's fairly common to have a small but isolated community with a decent but small hospital and a couple of competent but not hot-shot general surgeons. A fat pipe connecting a local operating room to a specialist a thousand miles away (for at least remote observation - I'm not convinced about remote manipulation yet) would benefit all involved, and improve the level of treatment without the cost and stress of transporting the patient to a larger population centre for treatment.
As an added bonus - I believe (no cites handy) that there have been studies showing patient recovery is much better in familiar surroundings, close to home and family.
Of course, for the really serious stuff you'd have to ship your patients to a large centre for treatment, but a system like this could redefine what's considered "serious stuff"
Establishing shot of AMERICAN FLAG, waving in the breeze.
Cut to GEORGE W. BUSH, at podium.
"My fellow Americans,
I speak to you tonight as the President of the United States. Let me assure you that justice is on our side, and we will prevail. I'm sure millions of viewers out there are just wondering what it's like to wear the tights of justice. Well it's tingly and it's uncomfortable, but it gets the job done and oh, the job of it.
Over the past several weeks our military forces, along with the military forces of Great Britain and our other allies have been striking Taliban targets inside Afganistan. We have achieved air superiority, and our special forces are moving with impunity in the countryside. I warn you Mr. Bin Laden: don't make us bite you in hard-to-reach places.
The bravery of our soldiers, sailors and airmen is without question. In addition, American ingenuity, dedication and scientific might have armed our troops with the most technically advanced equipment the world has ever known. We should be proud of our soldiers, and of the job they're doing. We should also be proud of the technicians, engineers and scientists who have provided them with their equipment. However, with that pride comes the realization that not all science is used for good. As we cope with the recent anthrax outbreaks, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences... But the other head of science is bad! Oh, beware the other head of science! It bites!
I want to assure you, my countrymen, and the citizens of the rest of the world, that we, the American people will not rest until we have found the source of this anthrax, we will not relent until the Taliban have been destroyed, and we will not slumber until Osama Bin Laden has been brought to justice. Our cause is right, and we will prevail.
And so let me conclude my remarks tonight with this thought: may Evil beware and may Good dress warmly and eat lots of fresh vegetables. Thank you and good night."
Fade out over footage of USMC BAND playing The Star Spangled Banner.
Stallman (for all his faults and foibles) is the Martin Luther of the information age, and bill is the Pope. Quick - who can name the Pope who was in service when Luther nailed his manifesto to the door of the cathedral?
My good Lutheran mind has gone absolutely blank...Umm...Leo Ten?
Jon Katz, of course...
[ducking and running for cover]
Vegans worried about the effect of silver hailde and digital photography on animals...So you looked at your Pareto chart and decided that photography would give you the most bang for your (protesting vegan) buck?
/ObFlame: Fer cryin' out loud - you're on top of the food chain. Enjoy it!
"The thing about digital is that it is almost meant to be temporary. "
Ah sez "pardon"?
Ya it's easy to erase a digital photo, a little easier than setting fire to a print but not much.
Try preserving a digital photo for 10,000 years vs copying a silver halide print by analog means - then tell me which storage scheme is "temporary".
"We cannot save the machines if there are no spare parts available, and we cannot save the software if no one is left who knows how to use it."
False argument. Sure it would be easier to fix a sundial than a punched card reader, but (expletive)! Assuming people in the future haven't devolved technically it shouldn't be that hard to figure out how the damn thing works and custom-build something to read the media and transfer it to whatever is state-of-the-art. That's a 4th year engineering project at worst. At best it'll be a highschool project.
Of course, if we devolve technologically it'll be a whole lot harder, but we (as a society) will likely have other things on our mind then (like remembering how to grow food).
"We do have a solution - we can keep the data files in an active file system. As technology progresses, we just copy from the old method of storage to the new. "
Ding ding ding, somebody mod this up - we have a winner.
Reading the posts in this thread it seems that a lot of posters miss the point. It's not about the medium that the digital image is stored on, it's the fact that the image is digital . So what if your 5 1/4" disks aren't readable in 10 more years. It's your data - take some responsiblilty and copy it to a new format. The copy will be perfect, indistinguishable from the origninal. Put it onto modern storage media (modern = 2030, 2197, 5248 AD, etc). Lather, rinse and repeat. Better yet, stick it on some sort of online storage system, and pay somebody to keep it up-to-date for you. It's not rocket science. The bits are there, it's just a matter of copying them.
Anybody want to lay a bet as to which lasts longer (and in a format truer to the original): the Zapruder (sp) film or the "taken from the observation deck of the WTC seconds before the plane crashed" fake photo?
"By that time, who would want to waste time on 2-D non-holographic static images? They'd be boring, you wouldn't be able to taste or smell anything..."
By the same token, why are we at all interested in the Bayeaux (sp?) tapestry. An old moldy thing, poor resolution, all those threads...
Betcha in the future there'll be an interest in digital static images with respect to the content as well as the technology used (if only as to how that technology relates to the society at the time)
"With Digital you just burn a couple of weeks photos onto a CD or stick it onto a fileserver and leave it there. "
Sure, more images are stored. It's quite possible that we could swing too far the other way though - drowning in a pile of digital images (Dubya waving at the crowd shot #2396...#2397).
Storage with relevant descriptive tags - that's what we need. Trouble then is making sure that the images are filed with accuate tags (that's the sort of work that nobody likes to do). Contextual image recognition anybody? Of course then (answering my own question) any hardware powerful enough to look at an image, "recognize" what it is and write a human-readable description for it is also likely powerful enough to create (err...fake) any arbitrary image from nothing, thus diluting the power of photos.
There's lots of glass in the ground now, most of it dark.
Digging trenches and laying conduit is only part of the story. It is expensive to do, and costs enough that if you're digging in the first place it's not a whole lot more expensive to lay a hundred fibres as it is to lay one. It's cheaper to overprovision than it is to go back and dig up your trench in three years.
Laying the fibre is only part of the question. Getting the fibre into the ground costs (grasping at an arbitrary number) a quarter of the total cost to light it. All that fancy kit on either end and points in between costs lots of money and sucks a lot of power (not an issue in LA or NYC, but a major issue if you have to regenerate your signals somewhere in the middle of the Rocky Mountains).
Nortel and other systems providers will eventually start to make a decent income again selling equipment to light the dark fibre (or add wavelengths to partly lit fibre). It's Corning I'm worried about...