I agree with you completely! As a physics student, it would make my life so much nicer if I didn't have to explain to everyone why it is I want to study physics.
There is an emeritus professor at UCI working on educational physics. He was the guy who predicted and confirmed that a specific Mozart sonata stimulates different portions of your brain than most music (based on a brain communications model he was working on). Now he's making video games that train elementary school children to think visually and multidimensionally, and the puzzles are based on string theory mathmatics. It's pretty crazy, and it seems to be similar in philosophy to your site.
It's going to take a hell of a lot more than just getting He-3 to make Fusion work. Besides, China is part of the international effort. Fusion science has a history of cutting across political lines. It was one of the few projects that US and Soviet scientests were able to work on together.
I absolutely loved GTA, but what was really fun was the multiplayer. There's nothing like racing through a city with rocket launchers in the first GTA.
I don't remember if the second one didn't have multiplayer or didn't have good multiplayer, but I remember that it just wasn't the same.
I had the same opinions throughout the first section, but at the end, he points out that the Turing test will likely be won by a program which is no smarter "than a bucket of hammers," and that real AI will come from the academic research.
The main reason he likes Loebner is that he approves of his support of hobbyists and underdogs. At the same time he compares him to (the literary version of) Don Quixote, who was dangerous, silly, unreasonable and idiotic.
At the same time, he appears to dislike the standoffish nature of the academics who appear unable to come to grips with the slow development in their field... whatever, I can understand that. Ivory tower science is not something I'm a big fan of, and I'm a scientest.
My main problem with the article is that this all comes out in the last page. Kind of like "surprise, this is what I REALLY think".
Remember that light itself is electromagnetic radiation. The change in screen color (as suggested by one comment) might be enough to make some small amount of noise.
More likely, it's an induced response from the screen material to the changing charges across the screen. An LCD works by putting an electric field across a liquid crystal to allow/block light. As you redraw, those electric fields are changing. Those fields might have a small effect on actual material the LCD is made of. Those materials might have a small sensitivity to electric fields, and there is almost certainly some small charge even from dust on the screen.
So... after all that, it's my guess that the clicking noise (I've heard it too, you're not insane) is portions of the plastic on/in the screen either expanding out or contracting in with the field, essentially "popping" in an out.
Another thing it might be is electrically charged dust (dust does not have to be neutral) moving around on the screen. Try dusting your screen and seeing if that does anything.
I fail to see how suing a spammer in small claims court is "an eye for an eye". What exactly are you arguing against here?
This is just a lot of moral outrage obviously espoused by someone who spends very, very little time in the real world. There are victims created from good actions and bad actions. In life, usually someone wins and someone loses. Who decides who has been vicitmized?
There are actions and there are consequences. It's not ideal, but it's the truth.
What kind of giddy moral superiority do you get sitting at home criticizing people are out there actually trying to do something to make the world a better place?
The problem is you're using a program to do recovery. The people who did this were worried about hardware people could use to read your drives. An atomic force microscope can read a data from a drive that's had just about anything done to it (including writing 0s).
Melting it's a little extreme in my opinion, but it's one of a few methods where there is not even the theoretical chance someone could read your data.
You've asked some questions that sound simple, but are really complex.
1: As far as the shape of the universe and whether there is a center bulge... general relativity tells us that there is no "ultimate" reference frame, so there should be no "center" of the universe. Our observations actually support this, the universe doesn't look like it's expanding like an explosion (from a point), everything is expanding in every direction at once. We don't know even if the universe has an "edge" or if it wraps around on itself, or what.
2: Orbits can be approximated using Kepler and Newton to be planar. Remember though, those guys lived a long time ago. If we want to look at physics that is newer than 350 years old, we see something really different. The question of predicting orbits spawned the field of chaos theory. Orbits are generally planar and regular, but are easily "perturbed" into strange shapes. Most of the time, the reference plane which is used is "the elliptic". That would be just the plane defined by the earth's orbit. What you're used to seeing with just Neptune and Pluto noticably out of "the elliptic" is generally right.
I'm studying for a PhD in physics, and part of the reason I'm doing that is for answers to those type of questions. I figured someone would eventually tell me or show me how to figure it out, but really... not a lot of people know this. For all the stuff we do know, you'd be surprised at the stuff we don't.
I had a choice a year ago. Go to law school and be a patent attourney, or go to graduate school and be a physicist. It came down to that I actually wanted to produce something with my life.
Both my parents were lawyers, and now are judges, my father has been a state legislator. I have worked as a clerk in a courthouse, and I've seen first hand what the legal system is. There are individuals out there who study law the way it should be, to ensure rights and enforce just laws, I have tremendous respect for those people. If you are in it simply for the money, or because you couldn't attempt to actually produce something as I am trying to do, then I have no respect for you as a lawyer.
The simple fact of the matter IS that patent law is contrived to feed lawyers. The vast majority of politicians are either career politicians or lawyers. Even the most honest politian will hesitate before recommending reducing his power or influence. In politics, you will alwyas assume you are right until you are put in the opposite position.
The way you refute the negativity you see is by fighting to make the system right; by surrendering the power of YOUR vocation and admitting that you are not needed in an ideal world. Only from that point of view can you start to see why the rest of the world dislikes lawyers.
I have to ask, if patent law is not interesting, then why are you doing it? That should answer your question as to why people dislike patent lawyers.
At this point, there are very few major research tokamaks out there. In the US, there is only really one that is flexible enough to do a wide range of experiments on (at GA).
This isn't going to necessarily lead directly to a commercial design, it's still a research reactor, but there are a LOT of big questions in fusion that can be answered by this device, and it would be irresponsible of the US to not be a part of it (that is, as long as we want to at least look like we're trying to find clean energy). At the rate different things are going, fusion might not be the energy source of the future, but you never know, it's always worth trying. It's only through programs like this that we'll get there.
When the US first left the project it was because it was billed as a demo commercial reactor, which just wouldn't have worked. It might be able to get more energy out than you put in, but the cost of construction and upkeep is still too high for such large reactors. A major part of fusion research now is making the reactors more efficient, require less repair and have a smaller size. Oddly enough, we can't do that unless we build a larger research reactor.
"Drugs", if I remember correctly, refer to more than pot.
You need to tell the farmers in Columbia that those commercials are only opinion. They seem a little upset over there. There are real issues related to heroin and cocaine that I think the government is justified in publicizing.
If they want to include something that says "pot can inhibit your judgement", I have no problem with that. (You disagree?)
"Pot supports terrorists" (instead of "Drugs support terrorists")... is not one I've seen, but is one I would disagree with.
Um, you've gotten some really, really strange answers to your question.
Take it from a physicist, friction is all you need to disperse any extra energy if you're talking about dirt. The problem is that upon re-entry a dirt ant tunnel will collapse due to vibrations.
In the case of these ants, they're using a nutrient rich gel to tunnel through, so no problems there. I think it would be pretty cool to tunnel your own house out of a nutrient rich gel.
The difference is that food with the Organic label generally tastes better. I buy food from my local farmer's market because I like the taste of fresh food better, not because of politics. I don't mind the politics at all (ok, I do like the idea of buying directly from farmers), but my primary motivation is food quality.
I don't think I'd be interested in "clean" computer chips unless there was some increase in quality or price. There really is no way around a lot of the toxic chemicals that go into making those things. If you could get around some of them, it would make the chip much cheaper to produce anyway, and I would buy it.
1) A sufficient faraday cage would protect against an EMP. However, it's kind of hard to fire *out* of such a cage without ruining the properties it would need to have to stop a militarty grade weapon. The pulse would likely be strong enough to get through a thin layer of metal. If you do it right though, yeah stockpiling good enough faraday cages would protect what you want.
2) Sure, any magnetic pulse (technically even a burst of light) can be considered an EMP, but to get one that would actually destroy something without needing to be millimeters away is very difficult to do. Most people who claim to be able to do it are talking out of thier ass, and don't understand how magnets work with high pulsed power... although It is possible (not with stuff from Frys or Radio Shack).
The coats could not be the same color and pattern. Coloring and placement of hair is not determined exclusively by genetics. There are a number of released chemicals which a biologist could explain to you.
The point is, these chemicals are part of a complex enough system that it is not deterministic, it is chaotic. You never know exactly what you're going to get. You do know that any stripes will be around the "skinny" part (have you ever seen a cat with stripes down it's tail? or a zebra with stripes running from head to foot?). And you can guess it will be similar asthetically to it's parents.
You can have two identical cloned cats, in the same surroundings, with the same exact things happening to them, and they will turn out looking differently because there are chaotic processes at work.
The same thing would happen with people. Identical twins look alike, but there are small differences between them.
Interesting article, it's not often you list science fiction in the credits of something trying to be scientific. The way I see it, "nanotechnology" will be its own field in a couple decades, much like computer science is today relative to physics and math.
The whole point is that tiny robots which can build anything are a very, very long way off. The only way it's going to happen is through this "hype and effort" that's going into "weak" nanotechnology.
As far as moving atoms around (including bonding, unbonding, exciting states) one at a time to make things... no problem. Dr. Ho can "see" and manipulate the electron clouds surrounding an atom (pretty damn cool if you ask me).
You can disagree with the tax cut, but it has absolutely nothing to do with state budget shortfalls.
This is also the most anti-coporate corruption idea proposed by a president in recent memory. It's effectively a tax increase for corporations and a tax break for people and investors.
My brother has around a 3.8 at Berkeley, which is quite good. I graduated with a 3.0 from UCSD, which is not as prestigious a school.
He's studying Political Science, and I got a degree in Physics.
While I would be excited to get a B in a physics class, he would claim that there must have been something wrong with the grading scheme for me to only get a B despite the work I put into the class, and the fact that I was proficient at the material (we've had many arguments on this).
At the same time the only A+'s I recieved came in Music and History classes which were supposed to be difficult, and I feel I did an average amount of work in.
I've got numerous friends (both scientests and not) in Ivy leage schools and other "top tier" schools, and I don't feel that they are necessarily any smarter than I am.
The article claims to have used the GRE general test in determining the top students though, and I do feel that the GRE is a good test for that, although I have trouble believing their numbers that 5-7% of test takers got 750 or better out of 2400.
It's not a factory, but taking a tour of the fusion reactor at General Atomics in San Diego is something I can't recommend enough for anyone able to appreciate it.
Universities use radioactive stuff for a lot of things. It's generally hard to get, but not that hard. Getting something weapons grade is out of the question, as is getting a whole lot of radioactive material.
So, yes, it is relatively easy for "some random University professor" to get Plutonium if he really wanted to study it. More than that, many of these "random University professors" could easily find out how to extract small quantities of (non-weapons grade) radioactive substances out of... say, dirt. Those are just some of the benefits when you have a PhD in physics.
Have no fear though, the government and all the other "random University professors" keep a close watch on work done involving radioactive substances. It's important for safety, and the advancement and trust of science that this kind of work doesn't lead to any thefts or public danger.
The LAST thing one of these "random University professors" would do is buy Plutonium on the black market.
Just picture something like that in Vegas, where you pay by the game and there's a payout for "winning". Everything is already set up there for just that kind of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you completely! As a physics student, it would make my life so much nicer if I didn't have to explain to everyone why it is I want to study physics.
There is an emeritus professor at UCI working on educational physics. He was the guy who predicted and confirmed that a specific Mozart sonata stimulates different portions of your brain than most music (based on a brain communications model he was working on). Now he's making video games that train elementary school children to think visually and multidimensionally, and the puzzles are based on string theory mathmatics. It's pretty crazy, and it seems to be similar in philosophy to your site.
It's going to take a hell of a lot more than just getting He-3 to make Fusion work. Besides, China is part of the international effort. Fusion science has a history of cutting across political lines. It was one of the few projects that US and Soviet scientests were able to work on together.
I absolutely loved GTA, but what was really fun was the multiplayer. There's nothing like racing through a city with rocket launchers in the first GTA.
I don't remember if the second one didn't have multiplayer or didn't have good multiplayer, but I remember that it just wasn't the same.
Did you read the whole article?
I had the same opinions throughout the first section, but at the end, he points out that the Turing test will likely be won by a program which is no smarter "than a bucket of hammers," and that real AI will come from the academic research.
The main reason he likes Loebner is that he approves of his support of hobbyists and underdogs. At the same time he compares him to (the literary version of) Don Quixote, who was dangerous, silly, unreasonable and idiotic.
At the same time, he appears to dislike the standoffish nature of the academics who appear unable to come to grips with the slow development in their field... whatever, I can understand that. Ivory tower science is not something I'm a big fan of, and I'm a scientest.
My main problem with the article is that this all comes out in the last page. Kind of like "surprise, this is what I REALLY think".
Not quite true.
Remember that light itself is electromagnetic radiation. The change in screen color (as suggested by one comment) might be enough to make some small amount of noise.
More likely, it's an induced response from the screen material to the changing charges across the screen. An LCD works by putting an electric field across a liquid crystal to allow/block light. As you redraw, those electric fields are changing. Those fields might have a small effect on actual material the LCD is made of. Those materials might have a small sensitivity to electric fields, and there is almost certainly some small charge even from dust on the screen.
So... after all that, it's my guess that the clicking noise (I've heard it too, you're not insane) is portions of the plastic on/in the screen either expanding out or contracting in with the field, essentially "popping" in an out.
Another thing it might be is electrically charged dust (dust does not have to be neutral) moving around on the screen. Try dusting your screen and seeing if that does anything.
No one knows those guys names, and chances are, that's the way they like it.
It's the work and the ideas that are important, not necessarily who did it.
I fail to see how suing a spammer in small claims court is "an eye for an eye". What exactly are you arguing against here?
This is just a lot of moral outrage obviously espoused by someone who spends very, very little time in the real world. There are victims created from good actions and bad actions. In life, usually someone wins and someone loses. Who decides who has been vicitmized?
There are actions and there are consequences. It's not ideal, but it's the truth.
What kind of giddy moral superiority do you get sitting at home criticizing people are out there actually trying to do something to make the world a better place?
The problem is you're using a program to do recovery. The people who did this were worried about hardware people could use to read your drives. An atomic force microscope can read a data from a drive that's had just about anything done to it (including writing 0s).
Melting it's a little extreme in my opinion, but it's one of a few methods where there is not even the theoretical chance someone could read your data.
You've asked some questions that sound simple, but are really complex.
1: As far as the shape of the universe and whether there is a center bulge... general relativity tells us that there is no "ultimate" reference frame, so there should be no "center" of the universe. Our observations actually support this, the universe doesn't look like it's expanding like an explosion (from a point), everything is expanding in every direction at once. We don't know even if the universe has an "edge" or if it wraps around on itself, or what.
2: Orbits can be approximated using Kepler and Newton to be planar. Remember though, those guys lived a long time ago. If we want to look at physics that is newer than 350 years old, we see something really different. The question of predicting orbits spawned the field of chaos theory. Orbits are generally planar and regular, but are easily "perturbed" into strange shapes. Most of the time, the reference plane which is used is "the elliptic". That would be just the plane defined by the earth's orbit. What you're used to seeing with just Neptune and Pluto noticably out of "the elliptic" is generally right.
I'm studying for a PhD in physics, and part of the reason I'm doing that is for answers to those type of questions. I figured someone would eventually tell me or show me how to figure it out, but really... not a lot of people know this. For all the stuff we do know, you'd be surprised at the stuff we don't.
I had a choice a year ago. Go to law school and be a patent attourney, or go to graduate school and be a physicist. It came down to that I actually wanted to produce something with my life.
Both my parents were lawyers, and now are judges, my father has been a state legislator. I have worked as a clerk in a courthouse, and I've seen first hand what the legal system is. There are individuals out there who study law the way it should be, to ensure rights and enforce just laws, I have tremendous respect for those people. If you are in it simply for the money, or because you couldn't attempt to actually produce something as I am trying to do, then I have no respect for you as a lawyer.
The simple fact of the matter IS that patent law is contrived to feed lawyers. The vast majority of politicians are either career politicians or lawyers. Even the most honest politian will hesitate before recommending reducing his power or influence. In politics, you will alwyas assume you are right until you are put in the opposite position.
The way you refute the negativity you see is by fighting to make the system right; by surrendering the power of YOUR vocation and admitting that you are not needed in an ideal world. Only from that point of view can you start to see why the rest of the world dislikes lawyers.
I have to ask, if patent law is not interesting, then why are you doing it? That should answer your question as to why people dislike patent lawyers.
oh God, that sounds awfull!
At this point, there are very few major research tokamaks out there. In the US, there is only really one that is flexible enough to do a wide range of experiments on (at GA).
This isn't going to necessarily lead directly to a commercial design, it's still a research reactor, but there are a LOT of big questions in fusion that can be answered by this device, and it would be irresponsible of the US to not be a part of it (that is, as long as we want to at least look like we're trying to find clean energy). At the rate different things are going, fusion might not be the energy source of the future, but you never know, it's always worth trying. It's only through programs like this that we'll get there.
When the US first left the project it was because it was billed as a demo commercial reactor, which just wouldn't have worked. It might be able to get more energy out than you put in, but the cost of construction and upkeep is still too high for such large reactors. A major part of fusion research now is making the reactors more efficient, require less repair and have a smaller size. Oddly enough, we can't do that unless we build a larger research reactor.
"Drugs", if I remember correctly, refer to more than pot.
You need to tell the farmers in Columbia that those commercials are only opinion. They seem a little upset over there. There are real issues related to heroin and cocaine that I think the government is justified in publicizing.
If they want to include something that says "pot can inhibit your judgement", I have no problem with that. (You disagree?)
"Pot supports terrorists" (instead of "Drugs support terrorists")... is not one I've seen, but is one I would disagree with.
Um, you've gotten some really, really strange answers to your question.
Take it from a physicist, friction is all you need to disperse any extra energy if you're talking about dirt. The problem is that upon re-entry a dirt ant tunnel will collapse due to vibrations.
In the case of these ants, they're using a nutrient rich gel to tunnel through, so no problems there. I think it would be pretty cool to tunnel your own house out of a nutrient rich gel.
The difference is that food with the Organic label generally tastes better. I buy food from my local farmer's market because I like the taste of fresh food better, not because of politics. I don't mind the politics at all (ok, I do like the idea of buying directly from farmers), but my primary motivation is food quality.
I don't think I'd be interested in "clean" computer chips unless there was some increase in quality or price. There really is no way around a lot of the toxic chemicals that go into making those things. If you could get around some of them, it would make the chip much cheaper to produce anyway, and I would buy it.
And the fact that he's managed to convince a large part of the government to follow him shows that he has no power?
I don't get it, you complain that Bush is not "leading" anything and then list a string of issues that would not exist were he not to lead them.
No one said he's being agreeable, they're just saying he has a lot of power and he's doing something with it.
1) A sufficient faraday cage would protect against an EMP. However, it's kind of hard to fire *out* of such a cage without ruining the properties it would need to have to stop a militarty grade weapon. The pulse would likely be strong enough to get through a thin layer of metal. If you do it right though, yeah stockpiling good enough faraday cages would protect what you want.
2) Sure, any magnetic pulse (technically even a burst of light) can be considered an EMP, but to get one that would actually destroy something without needing to be millimeters away is very difficult to do. Most people who claim to be able to do it are talking out of thier ass, and don't understand how magnets work with high pulsed power... although It is possible (not with stuff from Frys or Radio Shack).
The coats could not be the same color and pattern. Coloring and placement of hair is not determined exclusively by genetics. There are a number of released chemicals which a biologist could explain to you.
The point is, these chemicals are part of a complex enough system that it is not deterministic, it is chaotic. You never know exactly what you're going to get. You do know that any stripes will be around the "skinny" part (have you ever seen a cat with stripes down it's tail? or a zebra with stripes running from head to foot?). And you can guess it will be similar asthetically to it's parents.
You can have two identical cloned cats, in the same surroundings, with the same exact things happening to them, and they will turn out looking differently because there are chaotic processes at work.
The same thing would happen with people. Identical twins look alike, but there are small differences between them.
Interesting article, it's not often you list science fiction in the credits of something trying to be scientific. The way I see it, "nanotechnology" will be its own field in a couple decades, much like computer science is today relative to physics and math.
The whole point is that tiny robots which can build anything are a very, very long way off. The only way it's going to happen is through this "hype and effort" that's going into "weak" nanotechnology.
As far as moving atoms around (including bonding, unbonding, exciting states) one at a time to make things... no problem. Dr. Ho can "see" and manipulate the electron clouds surrounding an atom (pretty damn cool if you ask me).
You can disagree with the tax cut, but it has absolutely nothing to do with state budget shortfalls.
This is also the most anti-coporate corruption idea proposed by a president in recent memory. It's effectively a tax increase for corporations and a tax break for people and investors.
You bring up a good point.
My brother has around a 3.8 at Berkeley, which is quite good. I graduated with a 3.0 from UCSD, which is not as prestigious a school.
He's studying Political Science, and I got a degree in Physics.
While I would be excited to get a B in a physics class, he would claim that there must have been something wrong with the grading scheme for me to only get a B despite the work I put into the class, and the fact that I was proficient at the material (we've had many arguments on this).
At the same time the only A+'s I recieved came in Music and History classes which were supposed to be difficult, and I feel I did an average amount of work in.
I've got numerous friends (both scientests and not) in Ivy leage schools and other "top tier" schools, and I don't feel that they are necessarily any smarter than I am.
The article claims to have used the GRE general test in determining the top students though, and I do feel that the GRE is a good test for that, although I have trouble believing their numbers that 5-7% of test takers got 750 or better out of 2400.
I don't know, I'm teaching an electronics lab right now, and there are a whole bunch of budding EEs and CEs who don't seem to get it.
It's not a factory, but taking a tour of the fusion reactor at General Atomics in San Diego is something I can't recommend enough for anyone able to appreciate it.
Universities use radioactive stuff for a lot of things. It's generally hard to get, but not that hard. Getting something weapons grade is out of the question, as is getting a whole lot of radioactive material.
So, yes, it is relatively easy for "some random University professor" to get Plutonium if he really wanted to study it. More than that, many of these "random University professors" could easily find out how to extract small quantities of (non-weapons grade) radioactive substances out of... say, dirt. Those are just some of the benefits when you have a PhD in physics.
Have no fear though, the government and all the other "random University professors" keep a close watch on work done involving radioactive substances. It's important for safety, and the advancement and trust of science that this kind of work doesn't lead to any thefts or public danger.
The LAST thing one of these "random University professors" would do is buy Plutonium on the black market.
Just picture something like that in Vegas, where you pay by the game and there's a payout for "winning". Everything is already set up there for just that kind of thing.
Wow. I would be broke.