Yes, just dissemble the entire machine, purchase two specially manufactured, and different (one contains the SSD slot for example) boards and then reassemble the entire thing. However since nobody has ever produced the two custom designed cards you would need I return to my claim that the only way to upgrade the GPUs is to purchase a new machine.
All true, but the real question is also if they are losing the "Decision Makers".
It's not just the decision makers of today they seem to have lost but also those of the next generation. A few years ago when I looked at my students many would have mac laptops open with the rest a mix of different PCs. Now there are far fewer macs and it seems that many of the students who had deep enough pockets for a mac have Surface Books and Surface Pros. Since this was last term it also means that MS was beating Apple BEFORE the latest MacBook Pro disaster so I expect the trend will be even stronger next year.
While most computers don't get monumental improvement gains anymore
That is only true for the CPU not the GPU which has seen huge improvements over the past 4 years. Since the Mac Pro comes with its GPUs soldered to the board the ONLY way to upgrade them is to buy a new machine. A quick google (which admittedly did not return the most reliable looking of pages!) suggests that a single 1080 today is 50% more powerful that both the Mac Pro GPUs combined which, if true, would mean that a dual 1080 machine would have about three times the performance of the current MacPro. I'd call that a significant performance increase.
It's never legal to do something like this, but ethical? Absolutely. Different people have different ethics, you shouldn't push yours on other people.
The author of this ransomware is doing exactly that though: forcing others to accept his ethics. So using your own definition of ethical behaviour this is still unethical. Arguing that this is an ethical way to motivate learning is the same as arguing that spreading curable STDs is an ethical way to educate people into having safe sex.
Well Slashdot is quoting a science article from the Sun 'newspaper' so I think we are pretty much well beyond the Mountains of Madness now and heading out over the Seas of Stupidity.
Probably because they have job and leaving it to find work elsewhere is a huge risk without financial resources to cover the gap. However the article is defining "homelessness" as those families who share a home with another. This is not homelessness but a what a smart, resourceful person without financial means does when the housing prices are so high. Since the article mentions that many of the teachers are also sharing houses it seems that the teachers themselves are "homeless" too given the article's clearly wrong definition of the word.
...I live in Europe. Overbookiing is here forbidden...
No it is not and it does happen. The difference is that the compensation payout is much, much larger than what you get in North America thanks to the EU air passenger rights. I was on an Air Canada flight from London to Edmonton a few years ago which was over booked. They paid me just over $900 plus food and accommodation to take the flight the following day. A year before going in the opposite direction (Canada to Europe) they only offered $300 to take a flight which was 3 days later!
Rewriting the laws of physics is roughly as accurate as...
Not in this case. Our current laws of physics say that this is an impossible device IF it operates as claimed and is not due to some effect they have not accounted for (my money is on the latter). Hence this is one of those times when a rewrite really would be required. This device appears to violate some of the most fundamental symmetries of nature changes like that are huge...but need phenomenal evidence to support them which is so far very much lacking.
How exactly do you intend to use the thrust to produce energy ?
Think about the object the drive is attached to. When it starts to move that is because the thrust has done work which is converted into kinetic energy.
At the trust levels involved quantum effects will be involved
Not really. I have a colleague who pulls molecules apart with lasers using pico-newton forces. Milli-newton forces are a billion times larger so quantum effects are not likely to be significant. Even then quantum mechanics is symmetric under translations in time which is the symmetry which gives you conservation of energy.
Back to Feynman, if the results are reproducible and current theory cannot explain it, there must be laws we don't know about.
What you say is true but there are two very important caveats: the results have to be reproducible and unexplainable by current theory. So far 'cold fusion' type experiments fail on one of these criteria: there is considerable doubt about the reproducibility since not everyone seems to be able to produce the same effects. Perhaps the new results are reproducible, I don't know, but at this point the situation is the same as the fable of the boy who cried wolf. There have been many such claims of results in the past none of which have actually been reproducible and so now when they make new ones is it at all surprising they are met with a combination of indifference and derision?
The problem here is not the response of mainstream science it is the irresponsible claims which this field seems to make on an almost regular basis. It is not belief in existing scientific models which is the cause of the negative response but rather a disbelief that the people making the claims have properly checked that the results really are reproducible. If we do miss a real effect here it will not be attitude of mainstream science which is to blame.
The UK will not leave the EU until 2 years after Article 50 is triggered.
...or an agreement is reached before that deadline. However since it has been 6 months from the referendum result and the government still hasn't even decided what to negotiate for yet I suspect we don't have to worry about it happening before the two year limit.
The C and P symmetries violations in weak interactions is not enough to explain why there is No detectable antimatter in the Universe.
Actually it is the combined CP symmetry which is the important one to test. The C and P symmetries individually are already known to be broken in both weak and EM interactions. For example the different electric charge for anti-matter breaks the C symmetry for EM.
Also the CP violation in the weak force might actually be enough to explain the universe if there is enough of it in the neutrino sector as well and if the neutrino is a majorana particle. These models are called leptogenesis and could explain the observed asymmetry. However that does not mean we should not look for CP violation elsewhere: we know it exists for the weak force, it could easily exist for the strong force but does not seem to (something called the strong CP problem) and so we really should test the EM interactions to see whether there is any effect there which is what this experiment does to a high degree of precision.
Actually it is a bit more specific than that because we already know that matter and anti-matter behave differently under some circumstances. The effect is called 'CP violation" but it only happens for one of the fundamental forces of nature called the weak force which is the one which causes nuclear beta decay.
The atomic spectrum of anti-hydrogen is dependent almost entirely on EM interactions and any slight difference will have a measurable effect on the wavelengths emitted. Hence this gives a very good way to do a high precision test of the EM force for anti-matter to see whether it is at all different.
I agree there are ways around this but these should be relatively easy to test e.g. does the reaction only occur in certain surface configurations like the tips. Interestingly though this will also make it far, far less useful as a power source because even if you can scale it up the energy input to get the reaction will be huge and ~50% of the energy released will be needed to sustain the reaction which IIRC is around the efficiency of heat based power plants so it does not leave much extra for power generation.
Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.
True but widespread consensus amongst scientists working on the problem has historically been shown to be the absolute best indication of scientific fact. When the ancient greek philosophers first suggested that the world was a sphere and then managed to measure its radius the population listened, learnt and based on the scientific consensus changed their mind. So the exact reverse is true: had there been an ancient greek Donaldus Trumpus opposing the idea that the world was a sphere we might still believe that the world was flat (although probably not because at some point the evidence is just too overwhelming).
The problem with global warming being caused by green house gas emissions is that there is a huge impact on the economy from doing something about it. Hence the debate now is really a political one about what should we do about it. Those who stand to lose financially want to do nothing and just deal with the issues of rising temperatures. However they know that people will not go for this if they know we are causing global warming so the only way they can achieve the goal of doing nothing is to deny the science motivating action. I don't for a second believe that Mr. Trump and his friends really disbelieve in global warming, it's just the only argument they have to achieve their goal.
This isn't the only dodgy thing about this theory the whole electron-mass argument seems dubious looked at from a simple energy standpoint. They are claiming that the electrons in the metal hydride have a mass of well over an MeV for this to work. This is a HUGE amount of energy, about 6 orders of magnitude higher than any chemical energy. Basic energy conservation requires this mass to come from somewhere so where does it come from? Energies that large (by the time you have multiplied it by the number of electrons) are usually pretty obvious - it should be about 5-6 orders of magnitude higher than the energy stored in a battery of the same size.
...and this would convince you? Just like the 'proof' that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction? Sadly the US government has little credibility left when it comes to proof because it seems that they decide what the facts should be and then find the evidence to support this and while they may not go as far as manufacturing that evidence anything suggesting a dissenting set of events seems to get buried.
Besides the US president himself tried to interfere in the UK EU referendum, albeit by overt rather than covert threats, so even if what he says is true perhaps he should not be so outraged that the Russian president tried to interfere in a US election.
And you aren't concerned that a foreign country directly altered the outcome of an election here?
Yes but my concern was earlier in the year when Obama tried to influence the Brexit referendum and look how that backfired for everyone. If you don't like foreign countries influencing your election perhaps you should start by not trying to influence other country's votes?
Other countries are implementing policies like this.
If the company had been "Canadian Express" they would have to offer just short of a year off per family which can be split between parents almost as desired (the mother must take some minimum)...and they would have been doing this for well over a decade. So well done American Express for finally managing to catch up with late 20th century employment conditions only a few more decades to go...
Given the form-factors isn't the better comparison between a Surface and an iPad rather than a laptop? A Surface is not going to beat a laptop but, as a current Mac and iPad user I am planning to switch to Windows (albeit with a Dell XPS 15 when they release the updated version) and Surface looks like a good iPad replacement: it seems to be able to do a lot more and the price isn't that different vs. an iPad Pro.
What is this H-1B you speak of? Do you come from the land recently taken over by the Orange Goblin and his evil minions? If so I suggest a spell of emigration but aim it north, not east lest you end up in a land rule by a wicked witch who is intent on summoning a demon called Brexit.
Actually it is you who needs to pay attention. The article claims that temperatures have plummeted since the middle of this year. It is not multi-year comparison if you are comparing to the same year. They go on to describe this as due to a "la nina" event which is happening now and so would make no sense to use this as an explanation if you were averaging over multiple years. What the article is talking about is this year's weather, not climate.
it has been fifty years in the future for the last fifty years. Given the recent success of renewables and advancing battery and storage technology, fusion is unlikely to ever see the light of day.
Actually it has been 50 years in the future for more like the past 70 years. However while fusion power is nowhere close to infinite and, given the complexity of the reactor unlikely to be cheap, it would still be very worthwhile to have. Renewable energy sources have limited capacities and require a lot of area which means they have a limited ability to fill our energy needs so while their capacity can certainly be increased going all renewable is unlikely any time soon.
This may not be much of an issue in North America but in places like Europe finding enough area for all the solar, wind and wave power needed is unlikely to happen because people do not want to live next to a wind turbine or even in sight of one. Building wave power schemes has similar issues as people complain about the environmental impact. Battery technology is also a very long way from being able to cope with the massive storage requirements to counter the variability which would then require enormous numbers of pumped storage schemes. So having a pollution free alternative to coal and gas will still be extremely useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, just dissemble the entire machine, purchase two specially manufactured, and different (one contains the SSD slot for example) boards and then reassemble the entire thing. However since nobody has ever produced the two custom designed cards you would need I return to my claim that the only way to upgrade the GPUs is to purchase a new machine.
All true, but the real question is also if they are losing the "Decision Makers".
It's not just the decision makers of today they seem to have lost but also those of the next generation. A few years ago when I looked at my students many would have mac laptops open with the rest a mix of different PCs. Now there are far fewer macs and it seems that many of the students who had deep enough pockets for a mac have Surface Books and Surface Pros. Since this was last term it also means that MS was beating Apple BEFORE the latest MacBook Pro disaster so I expect the trend will be even stronger next year.
While most computers don't get monumental improvement gains anymore
That is only true for the CPU not the GPU which has seen huge improvements over the past 4 years. Since the Mac Pro comes with its GPUs soldered to the board the ONLY way to upgrade them is to buy a new machine. A quick google (which admittedly did not return the most reliable looking of pages!) suggests that a single 1080 today is 50% more powerful that both the Mac Pro GPUs combined which, if true, would mean that a dual 1080 machine would have about three times the performance of the current MacPro. I'd call that a significant performance increase.
It's never legal to do something like this, but ethical? Absolutely. Different people have different ethics, you shouldn't push yours on other people.
The author of this ransomware is doing exactly that though: forcing others to accept his ethics. So using your own definition of ethical behaviour this is still unethical. Arguing that this is an ethical way to motivate learning is the same as arguing that spreading curable STDs is an ethical way to educate people into having safe sex.
Well Slashdot is quoting a science article from the Sun 'newspaper' so I think we are pretty much well beyond the Mountains of Madness now and heading out over the Seas of Stupidity.
Why do poor people continue to stay there?
Probably because they have job and leaving it to find work elsewhere is a huge risk without financial resources to cover the gap. However the article is defining "homelessness" as those families who share a home with another. This is not homelessness but a what a smart, resourceful person without financial means does when the housing prices are so high. Since the article mentions that many of the teachers are also sharing houses it seems that the teachers themselves are "homeless" too given the article's clearly wrong definition of the word.
...I live in Europe. Overbookiing is here forbidden...
No it is not and it does happen. The difference is that the compensation payout is much, much larger than what you get in North America thanks to the EU air passenger rights. I was on an Air Canada flight from London to Edmonton a few years ago which was over booked. They paid me just over $900 plus food and accommodation to take the flight the following day. A year before going in the opposite direction (Canada to Europe) they only offered $300 to take a flight which was 3 days later!
Rewriting the laws of physics is roughly as accurate as...
Not in this case. Our current laws of physics say that this is an impossible device IF it operates as claimed and is not due to some effect they have not accounted for (my money is on the latter). Hence this is one of those times when a rewrite really would be required. This device appears to violate some of the most fundamental symmetries of nature changes like that are huge...but need phenomenal evidence to support them which is so far very much lacking.
How exactly do you intend to use the thrust to produce energy ?
Think about the object the drive is attached to. When it starts to move that is because the thrust has done work which is converted into kinetic energy.
At the trust levels involved quantum effects will be involved
Not really. I have a colleague who pulls molecules apart with lasers using pico-newton forces. Milli-newton forces are a billion times larger so quantum effects are not likely to be significant. Even then quantum mechanics is symmetric under translations in time which is the symmetry which gives you conservation of energy.
Back to Feynman, if the results are reproducible and current theory cannot explain it, there must be laws we don't know about.
What you say is true but there are two very important caveats: the results have to be reproducible and unexplainable by current theory. So far 'cold fusion' type experiments fail on one of these criteria: there is considerable doubt about the reproducibility since not everyone seems to be able to produce the same effects. Perhaps the new results are reproducible, I don't know, but at this point the situation is the same as the fable of the boy who cried wolf. There have been many such claims of results in the past none of which have actually been reproducible and so now when they make new ones is it at all surprising they are met with a combination of indifference and derision?
The problem here is not the response of mainstream science it is the irresponsible claims which this field seems to make on an almost regular basis. It is not belief in existing scientific models which is the cause of the negative response but rather a disbelief that the people making the claims have properly checked that the results really are reproducible. If we do miss a real effect here it will not be attitude of mainstream science which is to blame.
The UK will not leave the EU until 2 years after Article 50 is triggered.
The C and P symmetries violations in weak interactions is not enough to explain why there is No detectable antimatter in the Universe.
Actually it is the combined CP symmetry which is the important one to test. The C and P symmetries individually are already known to be broken in both weak and EM interactions. For example the different electric charge for anti-matter breaks the C symmetry for EM.
Also the CP violation in the weak force might actually be enough to explain the universe if there is enough of it in the neutrino sector as well and if the neutrino is a majorana particle. These models are called leptogenesis and could explain the observed asymmetry. However that does not mean we should not look for CP violation elsewhere: we know it exists for the weak force, it could easily exist for the strong force but does not seem to (something called the strong CP problem) and so we really should test the EM interactions to see whether there is any effect there which is what this experiment does to a high degree of precision.
Actually it is a bit more specific than that because we already know that matter and anti-matter behave differently under some circumstances. The effect is called 'CP violation" but it only happens for one of the fundamental forces of nature called the weak force which is the one which causes nuclear beta decay.
The atomic spectrum of anti-hydrogen is dependent almost entirely on EM interactions and any slight difference will have a measurable effect on the wavelengths emitted. Hence this gives a very good way to do a high precision test of the EM force for anti-matter to see whether it is at all different.
I agree there are ways around this but these should be relatively easy to test e.g. does the reaction only occur in certain surface configurations like the tips. Interestingly though this will also make it far, far less useful as a power source because even if you can scale it up the energy input to get the reaction will be huge and ~50% of the energy released will be needed to sustain the reaction which IIRC is around the efficiency of heat based power plants so it does not leave much extra for power generation.
Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.
True but widespread consensus amongst scientists working on the problem has historically been shown to be the absolute best indication of scientific fact. When the ancient greek philosophers first suggested that the world was a sphere and then managed to measure its radius the population listened, learnt and based on the scientific consensus changed their mind. So the exact reverse is true: had there been an ancient greek Donaldus Trumpus opposing the idea that the world was a sphere we might still believe that the world was flat (although probably not because at some point the evidence is just too overwhelming).
The problem with global warming being caused by green house gas emissions is that there is a huge impact on the economy from doing something about it. Hence the debate now is really a political one about what should we do about it. Those who stand to lose financially want to do nothing and just deal with the issues of rising temperatures. However they know that people will not go for this if they know we are causing global warming so the only way they can achieve the goal of doing nothing is to deny the science motivating action. I don't for a second believe that Mr. Trump and his friends really disbelieve in global warming, it's just the only argument they have to achieve their goal.
But what about the gamma? No explanation there.
This isn't the only dodgy thing about this theory the whole electron-mass argument seems dubious looked at from a simple energy standpoint. They are claiming that the electrons in the metal hydride have a mass of well over an MeV for this to work. This is a HUGE amount of energy, about 6 orders of magnitude higher than any chemical energy. Basic energy conservation requires this mass to come from somewhere so where does it come from? Energies that large (by the time you have multiplied it by the number of electrons) are usually pretty obvious - it should be about 5-6 orders of magnitude higher than the energy stored in a battery of the same size.
They really need to publish some proof
Besides the US president himself tried to interfere in the UK EU referendum, albeit by overt rather than covert threats, so even if what he says is true perhaps he should not be so outraged that the Russian president tried to interfere in a US election.
And you aren't concerned that a foreign country directly altered the outcome of an election here?
Yes but my concern was earlier in the year when Obama tried to influence the Brexit referendum and look how that backfired for everyone. If you don't like foreign countries influencing your election perhaps you should start by not trying to influence other country's votes?
Other countries are implementing policies like this.
If the company had been "Canadian Express" they would have to offer just short of a year off per family which can be split between parents almost as desired (the mother must take some minimum)...and they would have been doing this for well over a decade. So well done American Express for finally managing to catch up with late 20th century employment conditions only a few more decades to go...
It hasn't just lost it's way it so bad you have to wonder if it is using it's own Apple Maps to navigate.
Given the form-factors isn't the better comparison between a Surface and an iPad rather than a laptop? A Surface is not going to beat a laptop but, as a current Mac and iPad user I am planning to switch to Windows (albeit with a Dell XPS 15 when they release the updated version) and Surface looks like a good iPad replacement: it seems to be able to do a lot more and the price isn't that different vs. an iPad Pro.
What is this H-1B you speak of? Do you come from the land recently taken over by the Orange Goblin and his evil minions? If so I suggest a spell of emigration but aim it north, not east lest you end up in a land rule by a wicked witch who is intent on summoning a demon called Brexit.
Actually it is you who needs to pay attention. The article claims that temperatures have plummeted since the middle of this year. It is not multi-year comparison if you are comparing to the same year. They go on to describe this as due to a "la nina" event which is happening now and so would make no sense to use this as an explanation if you were averaging over multiple years. What the article is talking about is this year's weather, not climate.
it has been fifty years in the future for the last fifty years. Given the recent success of renewables and advancing battery and storage technology, fusion is unlikely to ever see the light of day.
Actually it has been 50 years in the future for more like the past 70 years. However while fusion power is nowhere close to infinite and, given the complexity of the reactor unlikely to be cheap, it would still be very worthwhile to have. Renewable energy sources have limited capacities and require a lot of area which means they have a limited ability to fill our energy needs so while their capacity can certainly be increased going all renewable is unlikely any time soon.
This may not be much of an issue in North America but in places like Europe finding enough area for all the solar, wind and wave power needed is unlikely to happen because people do not want to live next to a wind turbine or even in sight of one. Building wave power schemes has similar issues as people complain about the environmental impact. Battery technology is also a very long way from being able to cope with the massive storage requirements to counter the variability which would then require enormous numbers of pumped storage schemes. So having a pollution free alternative to coal and gas will still be extremely useful.