There never should've been an ILOVEYOU virus
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Windows Rootkits
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· Score: 1
This is another instance of windows/Microsoft stupidity. You can forgive the original architects of ARPANet for not being able to predict security problems because they assumed everybody using the system would be good guys.
But after the first worms, everyone changed their methodology. "Security through Obscurity" changed in meaning from being "You're secure if no one can find you" to "You are not secure even if no one can find you". Everyone realized that there were people out there able to access the networks who were malicious, and unless they took careful precautions, great harm could be done.
Of course, everyone except Microsoft realized this. Even though they knew that their software would be deployed on a very large scale, they failed to anticipate even the simplest of security problems. I mean, what idiot would write software that would execute code that couldn't be trusted?
And don't tell me they didn't know about that kind of attack back then -- JavaScript was written with the idea that you should be able to run code written by hackers and not compromise the security of the system as a whole.
Microsoft should have been held responsible for the damage caused by the ILOVEYOU virus. They were *grossly* incompetent. They still are. You can see that because even though they mouth the words that "security is our number one priority", they have yet to take it seriously.
The internet is not supposed to be as fragile as it is.If Microsoft would adhere to the best practices in security, perhaps this wouldn't be the case.
This is why windows is stupid. You have to have a bleeding PhD in Windows technology to even figure out how to do basic stuff like locking down important files. How many people out there that use windows know how to do this? I still don't know, and I've used windows since DOS 3.1. (I stopped in 2000 when I discovered Linux).
Contrast that with Linux. Most, if not all, of the distributions default to a very secure install. You have to know what you are doing just to get FTP, HTTP, and other things to work. So if you are smart enough to screw something up, you are smart enough to fix it as well.
Sure, you won't be accidentally setting up web servers on Linux, but you don't have system-critical files in world-writable directories.
KDE gets it. There are a few pixels between the border and the button in Kicker, and it doesn't highlight quite right, but if you click, it will come up.
I don't care what people say about DirectX being superior to OpenGL. I firmly believe it is a load of crap. Ten years from now, DirectX (along with Microsoft Windows) will be dead, and OpenGL will be the standard.
The bottom line is that the API for DirectX is a giant kludge. Look at it if you got some time. It's like a combination of C and C++, using all the bad features of each. I've worked with DirectX 4, 5, and 6, over a year period, and the number of problems and quirks drove me to a stabler API. The next versions of DirectX aren't even compatible with previous versions! The MSDN documentation is incorrect and the code samples are horrible. What does that say about the software company as a whole?
Meanwhile, the API for OpenGL is clean and precise. You can tell they sacrificed a lot of features of C to get a clean API that is accessible from any programming language. The documentation is as perfect as you can get. The code examples provided with the documentation are solid and clear.
Having open standards mean that the community can get involved and there is an actual discussion over features. Programmers, hardware manufacturers, and gamers alike can get involved and discuss the pros and cons of every feature of the system. Sure, it takes time, but the end result is always far better than the hack jobs produced from close technology.
Having a closed standard means a few guys in the corner office decide what flavor of API they want to turn out that month, without a care in the world for what the developers or hardware manufacturers have to say. It means that if you don't like it, that's tough, you'll just have to bite the bullet and go along. And what if you don't want to upgrade from version 2.0 to 13.0? Well, that's too bad, because 2.0 is no longer supported.
And what features AREN'T accessible from OpenGL? Nobody has ever told me that. You can always build on top of the OpenGL foundation, and use the hardware specific, cutting edge stuff on top of that.
If you like having a tattered API that changes more often than your underwear, then go with DirectX. If you want a stable, solid API with great support on all platforms, then go with OpenGL.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
What part of "people" doesn't mean individual?
The important word here also is "infringed". That means that anything resembling the annullment of that right in any manner is not allowed.
Forcing people to own a certain type of gun is infringement.
The militia you are referring to is actually all able-bodied men. The states were originally in control of the militia, and the president would assume control when a war was declared by congress. If all the able-bodied men did not bear arms, then there would be no militia for the states or the president to call upon when needed.
Of course, this has all changed in practice since WWII, but the laws behind it has not changed. The constitution is still the way it was in that regard, and we are in fact living in violation of the constitution by having a standing federal army who can wage war without a declaration of war from congress.
Here are some immortal words of George Washington. See if you can find any problems with what he says.
...when firearms go, all goes...we need them every hour... Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. The church, the plow, the prairie wagon and citizens firearms are indelibly related... The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference... they deserve a place of honor with all that's good...From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable...
Businesses accept a certain level of risk when they invest their money in things to grow their business.
Technology is one of the most dangerous risks to take. Not only are you pouring money into something that has never been done before, but you are doing it for a product that has never been created before. Usually, the results of your investment will not be seen for several years or more.
Ben Stein is right on the money. Those things that liberals want to do -- uproot our society, change the way everyone lives over night, and throw away everything we built our country on -- means that the future is unpredictable.
Conservatives have had it right all along. We should be building on the past, not tearing it down and starting from scratch.
The real issue is property rights. Do land owners have the right to do whatever they want with their land? Of course not. But do they have the right to harvest their trees? Do they have the right to do what they want with those trees, and to sell them to whomever they like for whatever price they wish?
If you want to preserve the trees, go buy the land.
So, people will have a harder time finding a job doing menial tasks, but an easier time finding a job doing mental tasks? And this is bad how?
Sure, there might not be many technical jobs in RFID, but there will always be jobs in other technologies. How many different technologies does RFID rely on (Think software, hardware, etc...)? How many different technologies will this enable? And we will always have smart people working on the next generation of technology. We can and we will have a fully developed economy where no one has to break a sweat to make a buck.
Plus, as an added bonus, the cost of living drops, so you can get as much as you have now with a lower income. Or, if you are able to maintain (or, heaven forbid, *INCREASE*) your income, you will be all the wealthier.
If you don't have a thousand bucks to spend, you might want to try and give some of your time next election cycle.
Every candidate needs people to do phone calling. Every candidate needs people to go door-to-door. Every candidate needs people to wave signs. Candidates really need help in the technical department. Set up and administer a mailing list for them. Switch their webserver over to Linux and save them real money. Set up an office file server with Samba. Help them keep their computers running efficiently and securely. There is a lot you can do that will help them more than giving them money.
The best part about helping is that you get to actually meet the candidate, and who knows? You might become their friend. "Congresscritters" are more likely to ask for and act on your opinion if you are a personal friend. You may even find yourself in a technical role in the party of your choice, and you may find other candidates coming to you for answers. Just think of how much of a voice you will have then.
Just a personal example, I speak Korean fluently and I understand the Korean issues in my neighborhood (which is 10% Korean). I helped a candidate in my area understand the Koreans and their issues, and guess what? He changed his campaign message to reflect that. I had my opinions show up on billboards and flyers, and even on TV. It was incredible to realize that all of a sudden I wasn't just one voice -- I was the voice of a community. And I didn't give a red cent to the candidate, just my time.
How about we keep what we have written down in the amendments to the consitution? Allow us law-abiding citizens to bear arms, allow us to say what we want, meet wherever we want, and do basically anything we want.
Once someone crosses the line and breaks the law, prosecute them to the full extent of the law. Let's not go lenient on these people. But let's not violate the "not guilty until proven" idea.
If they are not a citizen of our country, let's treat their crimes a foreign threat. If several people from one country band together and try to blow up our buildings or citizens, then let's send airplanes and tanks to that country and explain that we don't like that. Let's stop being fools and closely examine every existing immigrant from that country -- especially the non-citizens.
Oh, by the way, people who are not citizens of the US should not be treated as such. If you come to my country, and you say things like "Hahaha. I laugh at your tragedy" you should be kicked out forever. However, a citizen has the right to say that, and even more dangerous things, up until they begin helping the enemy. It's like in a family. The husband and wife can say what they want, but if some guy walks in the house and isn't polite, they are going out the door.
And here's another idea: When a foreign invader attacks our homeland, let's wipe them off the face of the earth. Let's beat the crap out of them until they don't have the power to harm us anymore. I'll feel a lot safer when I know that China, Iraq, North Korea doesn't have nukes but countries like the USA, Great Britain, and our allies do. If Great Britain turns on us, let's put them on the "waiting list" along with Iraq and the others. Bottom line: You want guns, you'll have to show you are responsible enough to have them. As far as the US is concerned, we have left peace in the wake of our wars. You can't say that about very many other countries.
Anyone inside of our country who helped them should be tried according to the crime of "treason" if they are a citizen, and treated as a prisoner of war if they are not.
Heck, when a foreign power looks at us funny and makes threatening gestures, like building weapons of mass destruction and telling people they will use it to blow up America, let's wipe them out as if they carried out those gestures. Let's not play games with foreign policy.
Gee, let's just keep the laws that are on the books, especially the ones that do with immigration and citizen's rights.
We used a cleanroom like the following on the ATLAS Muon Detector project at the University of Washington. It was pretty low-tech, but it did a good job at keeping things clean. I don't remember the rating of the clean room, but all we had to do was wear a clean suit over our street clothes, latex gloves, shoes over our street shoes, and a cap. The clean suit, show covers, and caps were made from a special material. You can buy them in bulk from companies like 3M.
The room was constructed like any other room. The "airlock" was more like a changing room / entry way. There was a coat hook where we hung our clean suits, and a sticky floor that would get the majority of the grime off of our shoes. When the sticky floor got all dirty, we would peel off a layer. Inside the clean room and in the entry way, the walls were made of white plastic that didn't get electricaly charged and so wouldn'a allow lint to stick to it. The sections of wall were joined by aluminum strips about three inches wide.
The roof had several holes with air filters in them. One end of the room had a "wall fan" - the entire wall was a fan behind some air filters that would suck the air out of the room. So the air flow would come down through the roof filters and out the wall. The filters were better than the variety you might have in your house, but weren't super expensive. The floor was made of linoleum - a light color. Light colors help expose dirt and lint and such.
We mopped the floor every week as it would slowly accumulate dirt and gunk. The actual "clean room" was everything above our waist as the air below that couldn't be trusted as it wasn't being constantly filtered. As long as the air was flowing, we were pretty clean. We also made sure to stay out of the airflow of what we were working on. This means we couldn't lean over the parts and machines we were building.
We assembled a table that had a stainless steel surface. It was easy to keep clean with lint-free wipes and alcohol, but rarely needed it unless we spilled something.
We also made sure the parts were meticulously cleaned before being admitted into the clean room. Once in the clean room, we would clean them again.
Our clean room didn't have a machine that would count the number of impurities in the air, but I once worked in one that did. However, that clean room was much more strict and had the fans under the floor. We had to wear full body suits and face masks for that. That was the clean room for the Sudbury Neutrino project. They assembled the nickel tube detectors in that one.
Spectral analysis is also used to determine a star's distance and velocity.
Very fast objects will emit light at lower frequencies -- a redshift. This is because objects travelling very fast will experience time dilation (1 second takes longer to tick) and so light emitted will be at a lower frequency.
Light observed from stars has traveled through incredible distances of near vacuum. The material in space absorbs some of the light, so missing or weakened bands in the spectrum give clues as to how far the light has travelled.
A lot of linux users don't know or have forgotten how to install a new kernel. A long time ago, the installers that came with the distributions couldn't hide much of that process from you, but nowadays, you can click through a couple of pages and get a working system.
Simple instructions on how to take your working Linux system, allocate a couple of gigs of your hard drive for testing, install your favorite distro on top of that, and then replace the kernel with the 2.5 one would go a long ways to getting people to try it out. Also, some pointers on what to look for while testing would be useful, and perhaps instructions on where to report problems so that they get handled would be nice. Where can we find this information if it already exists?
And isn't there some way to test a linux kernel without rebooting? I have heard of something like this, but it has been so long I don't know any of the details. It would be useful if someone could explain / point to that as well.
In short, it's not that we don't *want* to help, it's that we don't know *how*.
Because of gross insecurities in Windows, the internet is now under a real threat. When the net finally crashes, it will doubtless be due to Microsoft leaving security holes you can drive mac trucks through.
This brings a whole new dimensions to linux and free software advocacy. "Use free software, or see the net we love disappear!" could be our new slogan.
You misunderstand the bible. Do you know who or what Molech is?
Let me describe for those of you who don't know.
Molech is a brass idol that is hollow inside. He has outstretched arms. You are supposed to build a fire inside until the entire statue becomes very hot. The way to worship Molech is then to take a baby, preferrably a male, and "pass it through" Molech. That means to put your baby on the searing brass. The baby then is burnt up into charcoal.
There are other gods the natives worshipped, but Molech is the most disturbing.
When God gave Moses and Joshua, and later leaders of the Israelites orders to murder and destroy whole cities, he did for the same reason he flooded the earth: they were beyond help.
You can't convince someone who loves to burn his babies up to change his ways. If you can't change him, what chance does their children have of becoming much better than their parents?
And so, you have to start over, with a clean slate.
Remember, when the Israelites began to serve Molech and the other gods, God sent down disease, destruction, and ultimately brought the Babylonians in to remove them.
Sounds fair to me. God didn't favor the Israelites because they had a cool name -- he liked them because they were a good people. They enjoyed raising their children and building farms, and they despised murder, rape, and baby-burning. When that all changed, God didn't seem to care whether they died or not. In fact, he encouraged foreign leaders to bring their armies down and purge the land from the Israelites.
The stuff you wrote above is pure nonsense. Here's my proof.
How many countries did Japan invade before and during WWII? How many people did they torture, murder, experiment on? How many women did they rape until they bled to death?
Now, ever since we took up the sword, and made it our business to kill as many Japanese as we could, and ever since we destroyed their navy, their colonies, and turned two of their industrial cities into smoking glass, how many countries have they invaded? How many people have they tortured and murdered and experimented on? How many women have they raped?
In fact, today, wouldn't you rank Japan as one of the most peaceful societies in the world -- perhaps even more peaceful than the USA? Gee, I wonder why that is... Just 60 years ago, they were considered by all of their neighbors as blood-thirsty conquerors and barbarians. Now they are a peace-loving and kind nation. What happened? Violence happened, in an unprecedented scale.
See, violence IS the answer in certain situations. It was the answer in the Revolutionary War, it was the answer in the Civil War, it was the answer in World War I and World War II, and it will be the answer to some of the world's worst problems in the future. Violence is also the answer to Al Qaeda, Saddam Husseim, and dare I mention it - Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists. Violence -- or the threat of it at least -- brought down the Berlin Wall, and violence is a force that brings North Korea to the tables, and is making China rethink its foreign policies.
Ever since ancient times, man has known that you literally have to fight fire with fire. If a man is terrorizing someone, the best way to handle it is to kick the crap out of him, or to end his life. That is all still applicable today. You couldn't negotiate with bloodthirsty tyrants then, and you still can't today.
I learned when I was a kid taking piano lessons to keep the wrists up, and let the fingers fall naturally to the keyboard. Interestingly enough, I heard the same message when I took a typing class.
Do you think maybe the experience of millions of people who have been using keyboards for hundreds of years may be right?
Everytime I find my wrists hurting, it is due to bad form, and practicing good form is what makes the pain go away.
It only depends on how "opaque" the plates are to the light at those frequencies, and has nothing to do with charge. Photons are unaffected by charge.
Besides, having a charge on the plates means you are going to get a force between the plates -- attractive or repulsive, depending on the charge -- that is inversely proportional to the distance squared.
The Casimir force is inversely proportional to the distance to the fourth power, and so the electric force will become insignificant as the distance becomes very small.
Casimir and Infinite Energy
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The Casimir Effect
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· Score: 3, Informative
Yes. That is exactly what is happening.
However gathering energy from such a source is going to be almost impossible. Just like thermodynamics breaks down on a very small level, so does quantum mechanics. You get to a point where nothing can be predicted, things are being created and destroyed, conservation of energy is violated constantly, and all the laws of physics are turned upside down and become meaningless traffic laws.
But if you scoot back and look at the larger picture, you'll see that there is a pattern to this madness. You see how a photon was created and destroyed, but how it really was "moving" from one localized area to the next, and it really was a "real" photon, transferring energy from one spot to the next. It has a life beyond the small localized areas. While at this level, things aren't as predictable as you hope (which hole did the photon travel through?), it is still predictable to a large degree.
Then you scoot back some more, and the probablities begin to add up, and things begin to become predictable with high accuracy. The laser beam doesn't change course, the people around you don't vanish and reappear, and you can be sure that there is going to be a sunrise tomorrow.
The point is, even in thermodynamics, you can get violations of energy conservation -- or so it seems. The problem is that you were only looking too close at what was happening, and by looking to close, things don't make "sense" anymore. Things are truly random. However, the rolling of those millions and billions of dice end up with predictable results.
Gathering energy from these statistical anomolies is going to be as possible as predicting with high accuracy the roll of a die. Until you can sit on the throne of Einstein's God who doesn't roll dice, it will be impossible.
The forces between two plates in a non-vacuum are difficult to predict, at best. At that scale, the laws of thermodynamics begin to become inapplicable.
However, you can use the ideal gas equation to get an idea of what is happening:
PV = nRT
P is the Pressure, V is the Volume, n the number of molecules of gas, R the Rhydberg constant, and T the temperature. If you hold the temperature and the number of molecules constant and then decrease the volume (the case you mentioned above, where a single hydrogen atom has gotten in between the plates), the pressure will begin to grow linearly.
Because you are moving the plates together, the volume reduces in proportion to the distance between the plates. This means the pressure rises in proportion to the distance between the plates. I'll also make an assumption (a dangerous thing) that the temperature will remain constant because we'll give it time to cool off, and the number of particles remain the same. The last assumption is due to the plates being much larger than the distance between them, so only a very few number of particles on the edges will ever get to escape.
The force on the plates due to pressure is only the area of the plates times the pressure. As the pressure rises, the force rises proportionally.
Because the plates are attracted by the Casimir effect, and the casimir force grows quadratically as the plates draw nearer, eventually, even the pressure will be insignificant compared to the Casimir force. I think that's a pretty good conclusion using rough estimates.
In reality, you can't control the number of particles in the system unless you build some sort of box to hold stuff in between the plates. Also, the laws of thermodynamics depend on there being a large number (millions) of particles, so you can't use them with nay degree of reliability in these kind of situations. My conclusion is suspect, because it is really only an educational guess.
It is much easier to make a vacuum, thus making the problem a lot easier.
Re:forces between objects?
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The Casimir Effect
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· Score: 4, Informative
Physicists are able to take into account all the forces interacting between two objects. It is exactly this precise accounting that led Casimir to investigate the experimental results that were contrary to their predictions.
Gravity is proportonal 1/d^2, while the Casimir force is proportional 1/d^4. Therefore, the Casimir force is much stronger at smaller distances, but practically non-existant at larger distances. As you halve the distance between two objects, the gravity increases by 4 times, but the Casimir force increases by 16 times.
The other force they mentioned is the Van der Waals force, which is really an electric force caused by the polarization of atoms and molecules at very small distances.
At the scale they were dealing with, the mass of the objects was so small and the distances so short that the Van der Waals force and the Casimir force was much much greater (>>) than the force of gravity.
My dad has been modding his cars since he was in high school. He kept his tools around, and his common sense with how things work together. Now we are adding to his tool collection, modding our own cars, and just experimenting with whatever we get our hands on.
Get a real garage in your house, spend a couple of bucks each month getting nice tools, and learn how to fix everything in your car. Start with learning how to change the oil, then move up to transmission fluid, then the spark plugs. Learn how to tune the engine. Eventually, you'll understand how each part of the car works, and what you can do to increase performance. It might help to get an older american car. The import folks tend to know less about how their car works.
It takes a lot of experience, and a lot of cash. You can accumulate both at a steady, slow rate.
We have a 450 Chevy into a Nissan Truck. It wouldn't be possible to maintain a car like that unless we knew how to work with each part, and had the tools to do so as well. We haven't gone to the tracks with it yet, as we are investigating how to keep the rear tires on the ground.
I got a nice job offer, a 40% salaray increase, plus I was going to finally get my foot into the C/C++ software development industry, coming out of a Linux/Apache/mod_perl background.
I told my employer that I was going to leave, and they took me out to a nice restaurant, told me that I had to stay, and offered me 10% above them. So I stayed.
Six months later, they let me go because they couldn't afford me.
Slashdot Mirror
This is another instance of windows/Microsoft stupidity. You can forgive the original architects of ARPANet for not being able to predict security problems because they assumed everybody using the system would be good guys.
But after the first worms, everyone changed their methodology. "Security through Obscurity" changed in meaning from being "You're secure if no one can find you" to "You are not secure even if no one can find you". Everyone realized that there were people out there able to access the networks who were malicious, and unless they took careful precautions, great harm could be done.
Of course, everyone except Microsoft realized this. Even though they knew that their software would be deployed on a very large scale, they failed to anticipate even the simplest of security problems. I mean, what idiot would write software that would execute code that couldn't be trusted?
And don't tell me they didn't know about that kind of attack back then -- JavaScript was written with the idea that you should be able to run code written by hackers and not compromise the security of the system as a whole.
Microsoft should have been held responsible for the damage caused by the ILOVEYOU virus. They were *grossly* incompetent. They still are. You can see that because even though they mouth the words that "security is our number one priority", they have yet to take it seriously.
The internet is not supposed to be as fragile as it is.If Microsoft would adhere to the best practices in security, perhaps this wouldn't be the case.
This is why windows is stupid. You have to have a bleeding PhD in Windows technology to even figure out how to do basic stuff like locking down important files. How many people out there that use windows know how to do this? I still don't know, and I've used windows since DOS 3.1. (I stopped in 2000 when I discovered Linux).
Contrast that with Linux. Most, if not all, of the distributions default to a very secure install. You have to know what you are doing just to get FTP, HTTP, and other things to work. So if you are smart enough to screw something up, you are smart enough to fix it as well.
Sure, you won't be accidentally setting up web servers on Linux, but you don't have system-critical files in world-writable directories.
KDE gets it. There are a few pixels between the border and the button in Kicker, and it doesn't highlight quite right, but if you click, it will come up.
I noticed that KDE has some of the features mentioned. I don't know about GNOME, but Mozilla doesn't have these.
- Sub-menus won't open if you move towards an already opened one.
- When you type, the cursor is hidden.
I think there might be a few old mac users on the KDE team.
I don't care what people say about DirectX being superior to OpenGL. I firmly believe it is a load of crap. Ten years from now, DirectX (along with Microsoft Windows) will be dead, and OpenGL will be the standard.
The bottom line is that the API for DirectX is a giant kludge. Look at it if you got some time. It's like a combination of C and C++, using all the bad features of each. I've worked with DirectX 4, 5, and 6, over a year period, and the number of problems and quirks drove me to a stabler API. The next versions of DirectX aren't even compatible with previous versions! The MSDN documentation is incorrect and the code samples are horrible. What does that say about the software company as a whole?
Meanwhile, the API for OpenGL is clean and precise. You can tell they sacrificed a lot of features of C to get a clean API that is accessible from any programming language. The documentation is as perfect as you can get. The code examples provided with the documentation are solid and clear.
Having open standards mean that the community can get involved and there is an actual discussion over features. Programmers, hardware manufacturers, and gamers alike can get involved and discuss the pros and cons of every feature of the system. Sure, it takes time, but the end result is always far better than the hack jobs produced from close technology.
Having a closed standard means a few guys in the corner office decide what flavor of API they want to turn out that month, without a care in the world for what the developers or hardware manufacturers have to say. It means that if you don't like it, that's tough, you'll just have to bite the bullet and go along. And what if you don't want to upgrade from version 2.0 to 13.0? Well, that's too bad, because 2.0 is no longer supported.
And what features AREN'T accessible from OpenGL? Nobody has ever told me that. You can always build on top of the OpenGL foundation, and use the hardware specific, cutting edge stuff on top of that.
If you like having a tattered API that changes more often than your underwear, then go with DirectX. If you want a stable, solid API with great support on all platforms, then go with OpenGL.
What part of "people" doesn't mean individual?
The important word here also is "infringed". That means that anything resembling the annullment of that right in any manner is not allowed.
Forcing people to own a certain type of gun is infringement.
The militia you are referring to is actually all able-bodied men. The states were originally in control of the militia, and the president would assume control when a war was declared by congress. If all the able-bodied men did not bear arms, then there would be no militia for the states or the president to call upon when needed. Of course, this has all changed in practice since WWII, but the laws behind it has not changed. The constitution is still the way it was in that regard, and we are in fact living in violation of the constitution by having a standing federal army who can wage war without a declaration of war from congress.
Here are some immortal words of George Washington. See if you can find any problems with what he says.
Businesses accept a certain level of risk when they invest their money in things to grow their business.
Technology is one of the most dangerous risks to take. Not only are you pouring money into something that has never been done before, but you are doing it for a product that has never been created before. Usually, the results of your investment will not be seen for several years or more.
Ben Stein is right on the money. Those things that liberals want to do -- uproot our society, change the way everyone lives over night, and throw away everything we built our country on -- means that the future is unpredictable.
Conservatives have had it right all along. We should be building on the past, not tearing it down and starting from scratch.
The real issue is property rights. Do land owners have the right to do whatever they want with their land? Of course not. But do they have the right to harvest their trees? Do they have the right to do what they want with those trees, and to sell them to whomever they like for whatever price they wish? If you want to preserve the trees, go buy the land.
So, people will have a harder time finding a job doing menial tasks, but an easier time finding a job doing mental tasks? And this is bad how?
Sure, there might not be many technical jobs in RFID, but there will always be jobs in other technologies. How many different technologies does RFID rely on (Think software, hardware, etc...)? How many different technologies will this enable? And we will always have smart people working on the next generation of technology. We can and we will have a fully developed economy where no one has to break a sweat to make a buck.
Plus, as an added bonus, the cost of living drops, so you can get as much as you have now with a lower income. Or, if you are able to maintain (or, heaven forbid, *INCREASE*) your income, you will be all the wealthier.
That sounds like a fair deal to me.
If you don't have a thousand bucks to spend, you might want to try and give some of your time next election cycle.
Every candidate needs people to do phone calling. Every candidate needs people to go door-to-door. Every candidate needs people to wave signs. Candidates really need help in the technical department. Set up and administer a mailing list for them. Switch their webserver over to Linux and save them real money. Set up an office file server with Samba. Help them keep their computers running efficiently and securely. There is a lot you can do that will help them more than giving them money.
The best part about helping is that you get to actually meet the candidate, and who knows? You might become their friend. "Congresscritters" are more likely to ask for and act on your opinion if you are a personal friend. You may even find yourself in a technical role in the party of your choice, and you may find other candidates coming to you for answers. Just think of how much of a voice you will have then.
Just a personal example, I speak Korean fluently and I understand the Korean issues in my neighborhood (which is 10% Korean). I helped a candidate in my area understand the Koreans and their issues, and guess what? He changed his campaign message to reflect that. I had my opinions show up on billboards and flyers, and even on TV. It was incredible to realize that all of a sudden I wasn't just one voice -- I was the voice of a community. And I didn't give a red cent to the candidate, just my time.
How about we keep what we have written down in the amendments to the consitution? Allow us law-abiding citizens to bear arms, allow us to say what we want, meet wherever we want, and do basically anything we want.
Once someone crosses the line and breaks the law, prosecute them to the full extent of the law. Let's not go lenient on these people. But let's not violate the "not guilty until proven" idea.
If they are not a citizen of our country, let's treat their crimes a foreign threat. If several people from one country band together and try to blow up our buildings or citizens, then let's send airplanes and tanks to that country and explain that we don't like that. Let's stop being fools and closely examine every existing immigrant from that country -- especially the non-citizens.
Oh, by the way, people who are not citizens of the US should not be treated as such. If you come to my country, and you say things like "Hahaha. I laugh at your tragedy" you should be kicked out forever. However, a citizen has the right to say that, and even more dangerous things, up until they begin helping the enemy. It's like in a family. The husband and wife can say what they want, but if some guy walks in the house and isn't polite, they are going out the door.
And here's another idea: When a foreign invader attacks our homeland, let's wipe them off the face of the earth. Let's beat the crap out of them until they don't have the power to harm us anymore. I'll feel a lot safer when I know that China, Iraq, North Korea doesn't have nukes but countries like the USA, Great Britain, and our allies do. If Great Britain turns on us, let's put them on the "waiting list" along with Iraq and the others. Bottom line: You want guns, you'll have to show you are responsible enough to have them. As far as the US is concerned, we have left peace in the wake of our wars. You can't say that about very many other countries.
Anyone inside of our country who helped them should be tried according to the crime of "treason" if they are a citizen, and treated as a prisoner of war if they are not.
Heck, when a foreign power looks at us funny and makes threatening gestures, like building weapons of mass destruction and telling people they will use it to blow up America, let's wipe them out as if they carried out those gestures. Let's not play games with foreign policy.
Gee, let's just keep the laws that are on the books, especially the ones that do with immigration and citizen's rights.
We used a cleanroom like the following on the ATLAS Muon Detector project at the University of Washington. It was pretty low-tech, but it did a good job at keeping things clean. I don't remember the rating of the clean room, but all we had to do was wear a clean suit over our street clothes, latex gloves, shoes over our street shoes, and a cap. The clean suit, show covers, and caps were made from a special material. You can buy them in bulk from companies like 3M.
The room was constructed like any other room. The "airlock" was more like a changing room / entry way. There was a coat hook where we hung our clean suits, and a sticky floor that would get the majority of the grime off of our shoes. When the sticky floor got all dirty, we would peel off a layer. Inside the clean room and in the entry way, the walls were made of white plastic that didn't get electricaly charged and so wouldn'a allow lint to stick to it. The sections of wall were joined by aluminum strips about three inches wide.
The roof had several holes with air filters in them. One end of the room had a "wall fan" - the entire wall was a fan behind some air filters that would suck the air out of the room. So the air flow would come down through the roof filters and out the wall. The filters were better than the variety you might have in your house, but weren't super expensive. The floor was made of linoleum - a light color. Light colors help expose dirt and lint and such.
We mopped the floor every week as it would slowly accumulate dirt and gunk. The actual "clean room" was everything above our waist as the air below that couldn't be trusted as it wasn't being constantly filtered. As long as the air was flowing, we were pretty clean. We also made sure to stay out of the airflow of what we were working on. This means we couldn't lean over the parts and machines we were building.
We assembled a table that had a stainless steel surface. It was easy to keep clean with lint-free wipes and alcohol, but rarely needed it unless we spilled something.
We also made sure the parts were meticulously cleaned before being admitted into the clean room. Once in the clean room, we would clean them again.
Our clean room didn't have a machine that would count the number of impurities in the air, but I once worked in one that did. However, that clean room was much more strict and had the fans under the floor. We had to wear full body suits and face masks for that. That was the clean room for the Sudbury Neutrino project. They assembled the nickel tube detectors in that one.
Spectral analysis is also used to determine a star's distance and velocity.
Very fast objects will emit light at lower frequencies -- a redshift. This is because objects travelling very fast will experience time dilation (1 second takes longer to tick) and so light emitted will be at a lower frequency.
Light observed from stars has traveled through incredible distances of near vacuum. The material in space absorbs some of the light, so missing or weakened bands in the spectrum give clues as to how far the light has travelled.
A lot of linux users don't know or have forgotten how to install a new kernel. A long time ago, the installers that came with the distributions couldn't hide much of that process from you, but nowadays, you can click through a couple of pages and get a working system.
Simple instructions on how to take your working Linux system, allocate a couple of gigs of your hard drive for testing, install your favorite distro on top of that, and then replace the kernel with the 2.5 one would go a long ways to getting people to try it out. Also, some pointers on what to look for while testing would be useful, and perhaps instructions on where to report problems so that they get handled would be nice. Where can we find this information if it already exists?
And isn't there some way to test a linux kernel without rebooting? I have heard of something like this, but it has been so long I don't know any of the details. It would be useful if someone could explain / point to that as well.
In short, it's not that we don't *want* to help, it's that we don't know *how*.
Because of gross insecurities in Windows, the internet is now under a real threat. When the net finally crashes, it will doubtless be due to Microsoft leaving security holes you can drive mac trucks through.
This brings a whole new dimensions to linux and free software advocacy. "Use free software, or see the net we love disappear!" could be our new slogan.
You misunderstand the bible. Do you know who or what Molech is?
Let me describe for those of you who don't know.
Molech is a brass idol that is hollow inside. He has outstretched arms. You are supposed to build a fire inside until the entire statue becomes very hot. The way to worship Molech is then to take a baby, preferrably a male, and "pass it through" Molech. That means to put your baby on the searing brass. The baby then is burnt up into charcoal.
There are other gods the natives worshipped, but Molech is the most disturbing.
When God gave Moses and Joshua, and later leaders of the Israelites orders to murder and destroy whole cities, he did for the same reason he flooded the earth: they were beyond help.
You can't convince someone who loves to burn his babies up to change his ways. If you can't change him, what chance does their children have of becoming much better than their parents?
And so, you have to start over, with a clean slate.
Remember, when the Israelites began to serve Molech and the other gods, God sent down disease, destruction, and ultimately brought the Babylonians in to remove them.
Sounds fair to me. God didn't favor the Israelites because they had a cool name -- he liked them because they were a good people. They enjoyed raising their children and building farms, and they despised murder, rape, and baby-burning. When that all changed, God didn't seem to care whether they died or not. In fact, he encouraged foreign leaders to bring their armies down and purge the land from the Israelites.
The stuff you wrote above is pure nonsense. Here's my proof.
How many countries did Japan invade before and during WWII? How many people did they torture, murder, experiment on? How many women did they rape until they bled to death?
Now, ever since we took up the sword, and made it our business to kill as many Japanese as we could, and ever since we destroyed their navy, their colonies, and turned two of their industrial cities into smoking glass, how many countries have they invaded? How many people have they tortured and murdered and experimented on? How many women have they raped?
In fact, today, wouldn't you rank Japan as one of the most peaceful societies in the world -- perhaps even more peaceful than the USA? Gee, I wonder why that is... Just 60 years ago, they were considered by all of their neighbors as blood-thirsty conquerors and barbarians. Now they are a peace-loving and kind nation. What happened? Violence happened, in an unprecedented scale.
See, violence IS the answer in certain situations. It was the answer in the Revolutionary War, it was the answer in the Civil War, it was the answer in World War I and World War II, and it will be the answer to some of the world's worst problems in the future. Violence is also the answer to Al Qaeda, Saddam Husseim, and dare I mention it - Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists. Violence -- or the threat of it at least -- brought down the Berlin Wall, and violence is a force that brings North Korea to the tables, and is making China rethink its foreign policies.
Ever since ancient times, man has known that you literally have to fight fire with fire. If a man is terrorizing someone, the best way to handle it is to kick the crap out of him, or to end his life. That is all still applicable today. You couldn't negotiate with bloodthirsty tyrants then, and you still can't today.
I learned when I was a kid taking piano lessons to keep the wrists up, and let the fingers fall naturally to the keyboard. Interestingly enough, I heard the same message when I took a typing class.
Do you think maybe the experience of millions of people who have been using keyboards for hundreds of years may be right?
Everytime I find my wrists hurting, it is due to bad form, and practicing good form is what makes the pain go away.
Happy hacking!
It only depends on how "opaque" the plates are to the light at those frequencies, and has nothing to do with charge. Photons are unaffected by charge.
Besides, having a charge on the plates means you are going to get a force between the plates -- attractive or repulsive, depending on the charge -- that is inversely proportional to the distance squared.
The Casimir force is inversely proportional to the distance to the fourth power, and so the electric force will become insignificant as the distance becomes very small.
Yes. That is exactly what is happening. However gathering energy from such a source is going to be almost impossible. Just like thermodynamics breaks down on a very small level, so does quantum mechanics. You get to a point where nothing can be predicted, things are being created and destroyed, conservation of energy is violated constantly, and all the laws of physics are turned upside down and become meaningless traffic laws. But if you scoot back and look at the larger picture, you'll see that there is a pattern to this madness. You see how a photon was created and destroyed, but how it really was "moving" from one localized area to the next, and it really was a "real" photon, transferring energy from one spot to the next. It has a life beyond the small localized areas. While at this level, things aren't as predictable as you hope (which hole did the photon travel through?), it is still predictable to a large degree. Then you scoot back some more, and the probablities begin to add up, and things begin to become predictable with high accuracy. The laser beam doesn't change course, the people around you don't vanish and reappear, and you can be sure that there is going to be a sunrise tomorrow. The point is, even in thermodynamics, you can get violations of energy conservation -- or so it seems. The problem is that you were only looking too close at what was happening, and by looking to close, things don't make "sense" anymore. Things are truly random. However, the rolling of those millions and billions of dice end up with predictable results. Gathering energy from these statistical anomolies is going to be as possible as predicting with high accuracy the roll of a die. Until you can sit on the throne of Einstein's God who doesn't roll dice, it will be impossible.
The forces between two plates in a non-vacuum are difficult to predict, at best. At that scale, the laws of thermodynamics begin to become inapplicable.
However, you can use the ideal gas equation to get an idea of what is happening:
PV = nRT
P is the Pressure, V is the Volume, n the number of molecules of gas, R the Rhydberg constant, and T the temperature. If you hold the temperature and the number of molecules constant and then decrease the volume (the case you mentioned above, where a single hydrogen atom has gotten in between the plates), the pressure will begin to grow linearly.
Because you are moving the plates together, the volume reduces in proportion to the distance between the plates. This means the pressure rises in proportion to the distance between the plates. I'll also make an assumption (a dangerous thing) that the temperature will remain constant because we'll give it time to cool off, and the number of particles remain the same. The last assumption is due to the plates being much larger than the distance between them, so only a very few number of particles on the edges will ever get to escape.
The force on the plates due to pressure is only the area of the plates times the pressure. As the pressure rises, the force rises proportionally.
Because the plates are attracted by the Casimir effect, and the casimir force grows quadratically as the plates draw nearer, eventually, even the pressure will be insignificant compared to the Casimir force. I think that's a pretty good conclusion using rough estimates.
In reality, you can't control the number of particles in the system unless you build some sort of box to hold stuff in between the plates. Also, the laws of thermodynamics depend on there being a large number (millions) of particles, so you can't use them with nay degree of reliability in these kind of situations. My conclusion is suspect, because it is really only an educational guess.
It is much easier to make a vacuum, thus making the problem a lot easier.
Physicists are able to take into account all the forces interacting between two objects. It is exactly this precise accounting that led Casimir to investigate the experimental results that were contrary to their predictions.
Gravity is proportonal 1/d^2, while the Casimir force is proportional 1/d^4. Therefore, the Casimir force is much stronger at smaller distances, but practically non-existant at larger distances. As you halve the distance between two objects, the gravity increases by 4 times, but the Casimir force increases by 16 times.
The other force they mentioned is the Van der Waals force, which is really an electric force caused by the polarization of atoms and molecules at very small distances.
At the scale they were dealing with, the mass of the objects was so small and the distances so short that the Van der Waals force and the Casimir force was much much greater (>>) than the force of gravity.
God? How would you server the papers? And what lawyer would take on God? Well... I take that last one back.
My dad has been modding his cars since he was in high school. He kept his tools around, and his common sense with how things work together. Now we are adding to his tool collection, modding our own cars, and just experimenting with whatever we get our hands on.
Get a real garage in your house, spend a couple of bucks each month getting nice tools, and learn how to fix everything in your car. Start with learning how to change the oil, then move up to transmission fluid, then the spark plugs. Learn how to tune the engine. Eventually, you'll understand how each part of the car works, and what you can do to increase performance. It might help to get an older american car. The import folks tend to know less about how their car works.
It takes a lot of experience, and a lot of cash. You can accumulate both at a steady, slow rate.
We have a 450 Chevy into a Nissan Truck. It wouldn't be possible to maintain a car like that unless we knew how to work with each part, and had the tools to do so as well. We haven't gone to the tracks with it yet, as we are investigating how to keep the rear tires on the ground.
I got a nice job offer, a 40% salaray increase, plus I was going to finally get my foot into the C/C++ software development industry, coming out of a Linux/Apache/mod_perl background.
I told my employer that I was going to leave, and they took me out to a nice restaurant, told me that I had to stay, and offered me 10% above them. So I stayed.
Six months later, they let me go because they couldn't afford me.
Don't stay! Jump ship!