This depends on the LED - a normal LED, of course, produces an extremely sharp peak, since it's based on the bandgap of the diode. White LEDs use various tricks to break this peak down - the simplest being just to combine R, G and B LEDs (three peaks), but the best way uses an actual phosphor (YAG - yttrium aluminum garnet - or quantum dots, or whatever) to diffuse the monochromatic light from the LED into a real spectrum. Obviously this can get quite expensive, but "real" "warm" light seems to matter to consumers more than saving the environment...
I've been editing the Wikipedia "Evolution" article for years. For about a year now, a single individual has been repeatedly vandalizing the article (replacing its text with Genesis Chapter 1). As a result, the article usually lives in a locked state - only admins can edit it. We keep a user-editable version on a separate page linked from the article's discussion page; people edit that, and admins then transfer the edits to the main article. This is essentially what "Flagged Revisions" would do, so it's already in place, just in a very inconvenient non-software form.
We don't like locking articles, but we can do it already. Flagged Revisions is just another form of locking, and it's unfortunate, but there are assholes who have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for their favorite article to get unlocked so they can start vandalizing it again (like this guy). Whenever we try to unlock the article again (because, astonishingly, Wikipedia editors - and, contrary to what you might think, Wikipedia is very much run by its editors, it's far too vast to be effectively policed by any cabal) the vandalism starts again. We want to be able to deal with it in a way that's simple and fair to other editors. Flagged Revisions seems the best compromise, and it's hardly more Orwellian than locking the article to admin-only edits. Can you suggest a better solution to our problem?
Why don't you RTFA? There you will find discussion of, for example, China's 130 million-strong population of migrants and how they are the underclass forming the backbone of cities like Shenzen.
As a scientist (and one who works in evolutionary biology) I disagree. There is no concerted political attack on science - there is a diffuse one that has not even come close to penetrating through the shield of the pop-culture debate to affect science policy. And it probably never will, because there is a political and medical establishment that stands in the way that would never tolerate that kind of meddling. I NEVER have to worry about what some creationist thinks when I do my research, and my PI never has to worry about creationists when he is writing grants.
Your logic does not follow. A virus may be extremely successful at moving through a genetically uniform population, but that has almost no bearing on its success in a diverse population, especially one from a different species. Thus, the reason why no awful bird flu has killed us yet. The viruses bred in that situation have it easy; they are not robust, deadly viruses by human standards.
This is why the modern world sucks. The ancient world marveled at the night sky all the time. They wrote paeans to it. Us, we're willing to trade beauty for functionality. That's why the landscape is polluted with ugly wires, light, square-edged buildings, concrete barriers, asphalt roads, etc. That is depressing. What value does a beautiful landscape have to a society? An immeasurable quantity, so in dollar terms, none. But frankly I find it abhorrent that we're so obsessed with fungibles and don't give a shit about poetry.
You've apparently never studied any economics, or even arithmetic. This is how it works:
America requires X amount of oil. We can replace that with biofuels; however, to produce 1 gallon of oil equivalent for ethanol requires inputs of, say, 1.1 gallons of oil. This means, in order to have an entirely ethanol-based fleet, I need inputs of 1.1X amount of oil. This means by converting to an entirely ethanol-based fleet, I AM INCREASING MY DEPENDENCY ON OIL.
There are two ways to do this: either (1) you reduce your oil consumption outright (by, e.g., promoting efficiency of your vehicles), or (2) you develop a sound alternative energy source. Changing your fuel vector (ethanol, hydrogen, etc.) does not cut it.
P.S. I'll throw in some obligatory caveats - obviously inputs into ethanol production won't overlap entirely with oil - it'll require some natural gas, some coal, etc., but these things don't come any cheaper or less dear than oil.
Whether or not it's "very well known", it is STILL being pushed as sound policy. Obama sez: "[I] will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030."
Clinton sez: "60 billion gallons of home-grown biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030."
And none of these people are making caveats about how corn doesn't cut it, and we need to ensure the efficiency of the energy cycle, blah blah blah. So, since this IS being pursued as a good environmental policy choice in the US, perhaps it's worthwhile to critique it?
There are two orientations to consider: one is the orientation of your eyes, and the other the orientation of your face. You're right about the former, but for the latter you could easily place displays off to the side; you'd just have to look over to the left or right (eye-wise) to see 'em.
The paint theory is not credible. Anyway, it's definitely true that a big bag of unpressurized hydrogen in a thin skin is a dangerous quantity. The Hindenburg was an inevitable tragedy. Hydrogen is a bad idea in a dirigible.
You could blame piracy, sure, for the drop in media sales. But the reason the piracy was so successful was: the pirates were onto new technology right away. They were giving people music they liked, nearly instantaneously, in reasonably high quality (good enough for most college kids, anyway), and, to boot, for free.
In response, the music industry as a whole COMPLETELY failed to act. Even now, eight years later, there is essentially only one place to buy music online (the Apple iTunes store), which is a model of success. For the most part, the music industry has doggedly insisted on relying on traditional CD sales, even though probably ever CD sold is taken home, ripped to mp3, and put on an iPod right away. The CD is a relic of the 80s - it's the 21st century. Now people can build digital archives with thousands of albums, easily indexable and searchable. Why would ANYONE prefer CDs to this?
If the music industry just got with the program and provided a reliable means of getting albums in free file formats, I'm sure they'd find that sales would pick up instantly. People aren't downloading music because it's free; they're downloading music because downloading music and storing it in mp3 (etc.) files is far more convenient and enjoyable than a bunch of CDs. This same argument could also be made for the movie/TV industry.
In fact, from their perspective, they lose nothing by offering digital sales. The marginal cost is almost nothing, and they're only subtracting from the set of people who would otherwise resort to torrents. I know that when I have the means to watch content I want online (as with the new hulu service), I'd MUCH prefer it to torrenting, which is still a bit of a pain in the ass.
As to the idea that the music is crap: commercial music has always been crap, ever since the 50s. There's only ever a few gems buried in that dirt - just those are the ones we tend to remember.
You're absolutely wrong. No scientist is noted for promoting untestable theories. Einstein's theories were all immediately subjected to tests to confirm their validity. Otherwise they are mere conjectures - no one respects a proposition that has not been tested. That is not a scientific theory, it is a hypothesis. Only when it has explanatory power does it become science. The domain of science IS EXACTLY that which is empirically testable. Things outside that domain cannot, and never have been, called science.
No, you half-wit. The exact same thing happens that happens in any legal deliberation. The prosecution makes arguments providing evidence that it was racially motivated, and the defense makes arguments that it was not. This is the same kind of debate that goes on in ANY sentencing hearing. Read any capital punishment deliberation; intent and state-of-mind are always germane.
If you're going to make arguments about laws, you should know at least a little tiny bit about your subject.
It should be pointed out that the technology described is largely fictitious. The best labs haven't even managed to create a single artificial cell, and those technologies ALL use cobbled-together bits stolen from other lifeforms - nothing truly from scratch. There are a few good examples of proteins being engineered to specific functions (mostly DNA binding specificity), but we're ages away from being able to say, "Okay, I want to synthesize a protein that does this random function; here's how I would do it." And as for more complex lifeforms? Forget it. We don't even understand the development process of any multicellular organism in any detail, never mind being able to manufacture our own.
So, on the whole, I think this story is akin to worrying about who is going to get control of, say, shrink-ray technology. Scary when it happens, but it ain't happening any time soon.
This is probably not far above the level of trolling, and I can't believe it's been modded informative. Islam does NOT mean "oppression", it means "surrender", as in, surrender of the self to God.
Your judicious quoting of the Qu'ran is also absurd. Those four "interpretations" of Islam you mentioned are all schools of jurisprudence, devoted to reading the Qu'ran in its correct context. Much of the Qu'ran is contextual, and Muslim legal scholars have for centuries read it that way - most of the passages advocating war against the infidels, etc., that are frequently quoted are talking about SPECIFIC infidels, during specific instances in the history of the first Muslim community. They are NOT general exhortations to war against all non-believers, and no major Muslim group reads them this way.
This is not even funny on a meta level. "Ironic sexism" is still sexism. Seriously, get out of the nineteenth century, and stop dragging everyone else back there with you. I know girls who could kick your ass at linear algebra. And, by the way, until "girls don't belong here" stops being routine behavior in geek circles and women don't have to face a constant uphill battle to participate in geek online culture and, more importantly, to hold tech jobs, I think your sort of comment is far worse than trolling. I don't know about you, but personally I'd love to welcome women into this community. I think it would be 400% better for it.
Actually, this is not true. Dry cask storage is ONE method, but a great deal of spent fuel is stored in pools of water. Google 'spent fuel pool'. These are, in fact, INCREDIBLY dangerous. An accident involving these could result in a number of nightmare scenarios.
Didn't it occur to anyone that the reason DARPA might be interested in this is the hundreds of vets with missing limbs who have a need for better prosthetics? The military applications of this technology seems marginal at best. I'm sure DARPA is funding all sorts of military robotics research (in fact, I know they are), but this sure as hell isn't it.
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This depends on the LED - a normal LED, of course, produces an extremely sharp peak, since it's based on the bandgap of the diode. White LEDs use various tricks to break this peak down - the simplest being just to combine R, G and B LEDs (three peaks), but the best way uses an actual phosphor (YAG - yttrium aluminum garnet - or quantum dots, or whatever) to diffuse the monochromatic light from the LED into a real spectrum. Obviously this can get quite expensive, but "real" "warm" light seems to matter to consumers more than saving the environment...
We don't like locking articles, but we can do it already. Flagged Revisions is just another form of locking, and it's unfortunate, but there are assholes who have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for their favorite article to get unlocked so they can start vandalizing it again (like this guy). Whenever we try to unlock the article again (because, astonishingly, Wikipedia editors - and, contrary to what you might think, Wikipedia is very much run by its editors, it's far too vast to be effectively policed by any cabal) the vandalism starts again. We want to be able to deal with it in a way that's simple and fair to other editors. Flagged Revisions seems the best compromise, and it's hardly more Orwellian than locking the article to admin-only edits. Can you suggest a better solution to our problem?
For those who missed it, since it's not linked, a relevant story about researchers creating atom-thick graphene balloons that can hold several atmospheres of pressure. Made with Scotch tape. Yowza! http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/08/192227&from=rss
Why don't you RTFA? There you will find discussion of, for example, China's 130 million-strong population of migrants and how they are the underclass forming the backbone of cities like Shenzen.
As a scientist (and one who works in evolutionary biology) I disagree. There is no concerted political attack on science - there is a diffuse one that has not even come close to penetrating through the shield of the pop-culture debate to affect science policy. And it probably never will, because there is a political and medical establishment that stands in the way that would never tolerate that kind of meddling. I NEVER have to worry about what some creationist thinks when I do my research, and my PI never has to worry about creationists when he is writing grants.
Your logic does not follow. A virus may be extremely successful at moving through a genetically uniform population, but that has almost no bearing on its success in a diverse population, especially one from a different species. Thus, the reason why no awful bird flu has killed us yet. The viruses bred in that situation have it easy; they are not robust, deadly viruses by human standards.
This is why the modern world sucks. The ancient world marveled at the night sky all the time. They wrote paeans to it. Us, we're willing to trade beauty for functionality. That's why the landscape is polluted with ugly wires, light, square-edged buildings, concrete barriers, asphalt roads, etc. That is depressing. What value does a beautiful landscape have to a society? An immeasurable quantity, so in dollar terms, none. But frankly I find it abhorrent that we're so obsessed with fungibles and don't give a shit about poetry.
You've apparently never studied any economics, or even arithmetic. This is how it works: America requires X amount of oil. We can replace that with biofuels; however, to produce 1 gallon of oil equivalent for ethanol requires inputs of, say, 1.1 gallons of oil. This means, in order to have an entirely ethanol-based fleet, I need inputs of 1.1X amount of oil. This means by converting to an entirely ethanol-based fleet, I AM INCREASING MY DEPENDENCY ON OIL. There are two ways to do this: either (1) you reduce your oil consumption outright (by, e.g., promoting efficiency of your vehicles), or (2) you develop a sound alternative energy source. Changing your fuel vector (ethanol, hydrogen, etc.) does not cut it. P.S. I'll throw in some obligatory caveats - obviously inputs into ethanol production won't overlap entirely with oil - it'll require some natural gas, some coal, etc., but these things don't come any cheaper or less dear than oil.
Whether or not it's "very well known", it is STILL being pushed as sound policy. Obama sez: "[I] will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030." Clinton sez: "60 billion gallons of home-grown biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030." And none of these people are making caveats about how corn doesn't cut it, and we need to ensure the efficiency of the energy cycle, blah blah blah. So, since this IS being pursued as a good environmental policy choice in the US, perhaps it's worthwhile to critique it?
.forward, at least?
We don't "have" breeder reactors, we could build breeder reactors.
This is wrong. Craig Venter had his own genome sequenced, but the HGP used random, anonymous samples.
Someone needs to tell this to my WoW-addicted roommate, who never leaves his room.
There are two orientations to consider: one is the orientation of your eyes, and the other the orientation of your face. You're right about the former, but for the latter you could easily place displays off to the side; you'd just have to look over to the left or right (eye-wise) to see 'em.
The paint theory is not credible. Anyway, it's definitely true that a big bag of unpressurized hydrogen in a thin skin is a dangerous quantity. The Hindenburg was an inevitable tragedy. Hydrogen is a bad idea in a dirigible.
You could blame piracy, sure, for the drop in media sales. But the reason the piracy was so successful was: the pirates were onto new technology right away. They were giving people music they liked, nearly instantaneously, in reasonably high quality (good enough for most college kids, anyway), and, to boot, for free. In response, the music industry as a whole COMPLETELY failed to act. Even now, eight years later, there is essentially only one place to buy music online (the Apple iTunes store), which is a model of success. For the most part, the music industry has doggedly insisted on relying on traditional CD sales, even though probably ever CD sold is taken home, ripped to mp3, and put on an iPod right away. The CD is a relic of the 80s - it's the 21st century. Now people can build digital archives with thousands of albums, easily indexable and searchable. Why would ANYONE prefer CDs to this? If the music industry just got with the program and provided a reliable means of getting albums in free file formats, I'm sure they'd find that sales would pick up instantly. People aren't downloading music because it's free; they're downloading music because downloading music and storing it in mp3 (etc.) files is far more convenient and enjoyable than a bunch of CDs. This same argument could also be made for the movie/TV industry. In fact, from their perspective, they lose nothing by offering digital sales. The marginal cost is almost nothing, and they're only subtracting from the set of people who would otherwise resort to torrents. I know that when I have the means to watch content I want online (as with the new hulu service), I'd MUCH prefer it to torrenting, which is still a bit of a pain in the ass. As to the idea that the music is crap: commercial music has always been crap, ever since the 50s. There's only ever a few gems buried in that dirt - just those are the ones we tend to remember.
WEP doesn't use key exchange. It uses a n-bit key and a stream cipher (RC4). It is not a public key protocol.
You're absolutely wrong. No scientist is noted for promoting untestable theories. Einstein's theories were all immediately subjected to tests to confirm their validity. Otherwise they are mere conjectures - no one respects a proposition that has not been tested. That is not a scientific theory, it is a hypothesis. Only when it has explanatory power does it become science. The domain of science IS EXACTLY that which is empirically testable. Things outside that domain cannot, and never have been, called science.
No, you half-wit. The exact same thing happens that happens in any legal deliberation. The prosecution makes arguments providing evidence that it was racially motivated, and the defense makes arguments that it was not. This is the same kind of debate that goes on in ANY sentencing hearing. Read any capital punishment deliberation; intent and state-of-mind are always germane. If you're going to make arguments about laws, you should know at least a little tiny bit about your subject.
The ghosts are in the book, dude.
It should be pointed out that the technology described is largely fictitious. The best labs haven't even managed to create a single artificial cell, and those technologies ALL use cobbled-together bits stolen from other lifeforms - nothing truly from scratch. There are a few good examples of proteins being engineered to specific functions (mostly DNA binding specificity), but we're ages away from being able to say, "Okay, I want to synthesize a protein that does this random function; here's how I would do it." And as for more complex lifeforms? Forget it. We don't even understand the development process of any multicellular organism in any detail, never mind being able to manufacture our own. So, on the whole, I think this story is akin to worrying about who is going to get control of, say, shrink-ray technology. Scary when it happens, but it ain't happening any time soon.
This is probably not far above the level of trolling, and I can't believe it's been modded informative. Islam does NOT mean "oppression", it means "surrender", as in, surrender of the self to God.
Your judicious quoting of the Qu'ran is also absurd. Those four "interpretations" of Islam you mentioned are all schools of jurisprudence, devoted to reading the Qu'ran in its correct context. Much of the Qu'ran is contextual, and Muslim legal scholars have for centuries read it that way - most of the passages advocating war against the infidels, etc., that are frequently quoted are talking about SPECIFIC infidels, during specific instances in the history of the first Muslim community. They are NOT general exhortations to war against all non-believers, and no major Muslim group reads them this way.
This is not even funny on a meta level. "Ironic sexism" is still sexism. Seriously, get out of the nineteenth century, and stop dragging everyone else back there with you. I know girls who could kick your ass at linear algebra. And, by the way, until "girls don't belong here" stops being routine behavior in geek circles and women don't have to face a constant uphill battle to participate in geek online culture and, more importantly, to hold tech jobs, I think your sort of comment is far worse than trolling. I don't know about you, but personally I'd love to welcome women into this community. I think it would be 400% better for it.
Actually, this is not true. Dry cask storage is ONE method, but a great deal of spent fuel is stored in pools of water. Google 'spent fuel pool'. These are, in fact, INCREDIBLY dangerous. An accident involving these could result in a number of nightmare scenarios.
Didn't it occur to anyone that the reason DARPA might be interested in this is the hundreds of vets with missing limbs who have a need for better prosthetics? The military applications of this technology seems marginal at best. I'm sure DARPA is funding all sorts of military robotics research (in fact, I know they are), but this sure as hell isn't it.