Yeah, well when I was in aerospace engineering, I had a GTA who gave lab assignments once every 2 weeks, with a "required set of sections" that made each lab take about 50 pages.
Of course, everyone else just skipped the required sections, and put in "data" "results" and a short "conclusion". I did the full 50 pages, at about 1 hr per page.
In addition, there were supposed to be professionally done computer printouts that (at the time) only Harvard Graphics could handle. Since Harvard Graphics was expensive, I was the only one who wrote his own programs to produce the graphs. Most others used a pirate copy.
So I ended up spending 25 hrs/wk on these labs, turning them in 2 days late, while everyone else turned them in on time. The GTA kept delaying grading anything...
At the end of the course, he graded all of them 90, regardless of content, minus 10 points per day late. So I got a D in the course, having damaged my other grades in an effort to do well in what I thought was a very important part of my education. The administration upheld the GTA, perhaps because they decided it would be impolitic to fail 90% of the class based on their work...... and my pressure on the issue also ended up costing me recommendations...
I think my story outdoes your story.
But we live in the society we live in. Just desserts do come, but not always. C'est la vie.
I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member. ROTFL!
This oath itself is corrupt. And it is weightless.
This kindof reminds the UN agreement on human rights, which states that no human rights need apply at all, if they conflict with the goals of the UN.
In this case, knowledge should not be pursued if it is to the detriment of colleagues (how special they are)!
This is a case of what G.K. Chesterton calls "professionalism" -- giving a pass in corruption to people of one's own profession, where it would never otherwise be acceptable in society.
If anything, science is already far too professional (in the Chesterton sense). Theories that have good foundation are ignored if they aren't presented by a Ph.D. Papers that are utter nonsense or jargon are accepted to journals as academically acceptable. Nobel prizes (superconductivity, anyone?) are awarded to those who *did not* discover the science, because they happened to be on top of the local political structure at the time.
That's all nice and well, but for a counterpoint...
When I was in 6th grade, the math teacher gave a test on the first day of class; all students with a perfect score were given the option of working ahead on their own. As long as they kept ahead of the rest of the class, they could read the book, do the problems, and take the tests on their own.
There were about 12 of us to start with; by the end of the year, there were 5-6 of us. At that time, I ended up going through 2 math books (6th grade book and 7th grade math), and waiting for the 8th grade book for 2 months.
I'm glad I did -- when it came time to pick AP students in Jr. High, basically half of the students from the wealthy section of town were selected, while 3-4 nominal picks from the poorer sections were selected. Getting that extra year's worth of math made the difference for me. As a result, I got the best attention/teachers in high school, and did quite well (national merit scholarship) until college.
(addendum: Once I got to college, different rules applied. Having straight A's and being a National Merit winner didn't hold as much weight in getting a NASA internship, as being female or having family already working for NASA. The selection process under which this happens is called the "one day lifting of the hiring freeze". Not surprisingly, my grades did start to suffer when the attention patterns changed.)
Ummm... maybe, but not as you imply. As a black hole formed at the heart of our galaxy, a universe *was* being separated out, perhaps. You could call that initial event a universe being born. At that, as things fall down a black hole, they may generate more micro black holes, birthing very short-lived micro-universes. They'll actually only be short-lived on the macroscopic scale, though on their own scale, they may last nearly infinitely long because of time dialation.
Ummm... I don't think he was charging for the book. At the conferences he attended, he was giving it out for free to those who asked for one.
That said, there was a bit of a cost to producing the thing. At least he didn't go with the vanity publishers. Rather, he typeset it himself, produced the camera-ready copy, took it to a local printer, and had them glue/perfect bind it for him. Then he purchased an unused ISBN, and assigned it to the book.
Why he chose that method of publication, I couldn't say. He'd have to speak for himself.
As I remember, Ron Paul got more money from more individual Americans than any other Republican nominee.
So "follow the money" would indicate Paul.
However, "follow the New Hampshire Primaries" and "follow the Nevada Caucus" indicates that Ron Paul can even get the votes of those who voted for him.
So I'd say that the scientific answer is "McCain".
That's already been proposed, but a major problem with the flywheels is explosions in case of accidents, or even when things go slightly wrong for other reasons. For this reason, though flywheels were developed for specifically that application, they've been rebranded as being for planting in concrete under a house to go along with (say) solar energy production or wind energy production.
It's not how many times this has happened. We couldn't know that. Since each universe would be isolated, you couldn't confirm whether it happened more than once. Rather, for the one time that we can determine that it has happened, many black hole formations have happened.
Just a bit of history on this. If you read Corrie Ten Boom's "In my Father's house", the girl guides (the girl's version of girl scouts in Holland) were started by a number of people there, including her. The original thrust was that the scouts were to be evangelical. They were formed out of concern for the girls' well being, and since the Christians of that time rightly understood that a person's well being must start with fitting in with God's reality, then they were doing their best to follow that.
The theme of Corrie's meetings, was "Christ in the middle". That is, they'd have some activity, and then a short Christian lesson of Bible reading, a bit of discussion, and then back to the activity. People were allowed to quietly drop out of the Christian lesson -- but not to interrupt it.
Fast forward about 10 years, and the leadership of the girl guides started talking about "evangelism by example, not word", and started saying that you couldn't preach. Corrie Ten Boom said okay, and left the organization, setting up yet another similar organization.
Well, the Scouts have moved more in the direction of militarism, and at the same time have essentially taken Christ out of it, but they still don't admit it. So that's why they won't let your atheist kid join, and yet at the same time say "well, lie about it." Christ isn't there. But the culture is. I suppose you could call it the worst of both worlds. Guess what -- I am Christian, and I won't let my kid join.
But if it were "Christ in the middle", where anyone can come, atheist, Hindu, or whatnot -- then I'd jump to send my kid.
Right now, though I am a Catholic, I prefer the Baptist Awanas club. I'm pretty sure they'll let your atheist son come.
My brother, Joseph D. Rudmin, expected to see this. He's done a lot of work with space tensors, and has basically concluded that space-time is 3x3t (6 dimensions), with the 3 time dimensions mistaken for one for massive objects (and, ironically, it's quite possible that low-mass objects like electrons can mistake the 3 space dimensions for one). Right now, he's trying to use these equations to calculate / predict the electron's charge/mass ratio. It's a huge calculation, so it's been taking him many years.
However, if I remember right, he regularly publishes at the Virginia Academy of Science annual meetings, and has also written a small (90 pg) book that he self published, just to get the ideas out there (ISBN 0976894726 - Thoughts on the Electron Mass).
To the point of what he's expected to see here: he's pointed out that if you have a galaxy at the center of a collapsing black hole, and are in the galaxy, you cannot tell the difference between that event and a big bang. Moreover, once the SC-radius has formed, you cannot tell whether you are inside the black hole, or outside it as the rest of the universe collapses into it's own black hole. Moreover, because light that goes out from the universe / black hole gets redirected back inwards, you cannot tell the boundary of a black hole from the boundary of a universe. They are, by dual definition, identical.
However, initial formations of the universe are seldom for every formation of a black hole. Therefore, it is more probable that our big bang was nothing more than the collapse of a black hole.
My Dad is a university Physics prof; I have an engineering degree (AOE/OE) that I never used.
Right now, I'm a layout tech at a concrete plant.
As my Dad says, we don't need more engineers here in America. We need more doctors, lawyers, politicians, and people sueing each other.
We don't pay engineers. And when the pay for engineers goes a tad above the pizza delivery guy, we quick publish "we need more engineers!" to get the price back down, and keep enough engineers unemployed. So we don't need more engineers.
What's currently paid well? That's what we need. We need more litigators, more doctors, more managers, more politicians, and more realtors (up until recently, anyhow.)
If Japan's the same, this headline should have been ignored.
Actually, I think it's a pretty good idea. Here's why: the very same wings that can give lift when you want to use the vehicle as an airplane, can give extra downward force on the wheels when you want to use it as a car. That, in turn, will do two things: (1) increase the friction force correspondingly, and (2) cause upwash around the vehicle, thus decreasing the main source of drag: the ground/car bottom friction. So if designed correctly, the vehicle should be far more controlable in accidents *and* get better mileage.
The important thing is to keep the airplane and highway modes completely separate.
I'm just replying to book mark the comment. I have a coworker who believes something along those lines, and I'd like to see what the theory is. That said, I'll compare this theory to Darwin's theory: it seems to me that Darwin made a pretty good theory in his "Origin of the species". But when people (Sanger, H.G. Wells, Adolf Hitler) took his theory and made it into a religion, what resulted was a pretty rotten religion. Those who followed it well did some pretty rotten things, and then half the time eliminated themselves. I like Christianity a lot better: the worst crimes against humanity came not from those who followed it well, but those who followed it badly. But Darwin's theory is still pretty good.
As far as I can tell, people have also made this guy's theory into a religion. Shoot: maybe he did it himself. I don't know that any religion except Christianity is worth my time. But that doesn't mean that I can't look at the theory. Maybe he'll be able to predict an asteroid of which we had been unaware. I somehow doubt it, but it's worth looking at.
What I was actually thinking of was more along the lines of fractal compression and interpolation, rather than image-stacking. However, it's basically the same idea.
I rather suspect that the compression and interpolation would give a higher resolution interpolated image, especially if the video image is compressed as a 3-space pixel (d,d,t) set instead of a series of 2-space (d,d) (d,d)... pixel sets..
Suppose you went down to the thrift store, and got a bunch of those 0.3 MPx PenCams (as termed from the Linux driver that runs them). Those cams typically run about $2.50-$3.00 at the thrift store, though they run something like $20 new.
Then you pair them together like a pair of eyes.
Now, for every picture you download, you actually download a pair -- one from each camera.
If you want to view them, you view them through two polarized filters, one turned horizontally, and the other turned vertically. And you view them with glasses set the same way.
So now you have a total resolution of 0.3 MPx+0.3 Mpx= 0.6 Mpx, with 3-d imaging.
Of course, you could go with one of the newer VGA pencams instead, for 1.2+1.2 = 2.4 MPx.
With either of these, you need to maintain good lighting, of course.
But there is one other thought I have... couldn't you take successive images and combine them, to raise the resolution? As the targeted person moves, he's going to switch from one pixel to another, crossing pixel boundaries. So a good piece of software might be able to track that, and come up with a high resolution image from a whole series of low resolution images.
Just in case you, -- or others, and even hopefully members of China's government/ruling party -- do wish to dialogue, I've set up a journal where that can be done.
By all means, I don't understand Chinese law. Please don't do anything that might break that law, undermine it, or even bring you into a bad light under Chinese law or the authorities.
[Even in America, there is a difference between pleasing the authorities and following the law. It's often best to do both.]
But if this is possible, I'd love to open a discussion.
I seem to remember previous articles that showed that the Chinese government had sponsored a cyberwar/spamming/hacking network, and several times has tested it against the Pentagon's systems.
I also seem to remember that Russia had done the same about 4-5 years before.
Not real big news, actually. Although we probably don't do it through so-called hackers, we probably do have government researchers who probe adversary systems.
But (assuming my memory is correct) the fact remains that China's method was to use hackers, and to sponsor spamming as well. So the author validly wonders whether this is in fact the "Chinese Government Propaganda Machine".
I don't know that it really matters. In the end, even if it was a "Chinese Private Propaganda Machine", the views of Chinese are largely controlled by what they see. And what they see right now is that Chinese Supremacy is being challenged by the "Western Government Propaganda Machine", which today means CNN.
Arggh.
Over Here, we do have Propaganda Machines, but most people do not find it necessary to follow. I keep hearing that Over There, they do. Who knows.
Slogan. Slogan. Slogan. I think I'm going to move on to a different topic.
I'd love to open a dialogue with you, simply because it is difficult to speak to the topics with the chinese people I would run into today.
That poem isn't a dialogue: it's a series of slogans. There's partial truth in it, but there's also much that is a lie because the issues are given so little consideration. I'd much rather have a dialogue, in which both parties are looking for truth. That way, opinions can change, trust can be built, and falsehoods can be eliminated.
My position: I'm an American; I've been in other countries, including Lithuania for 3 years. While there, due to police corruption and my refusal to pay bribes, I became an illegal alien, and so spent 6 months back in America, reapplying (with that which the police wrongly refused to accept), and then returned.
Here in America, I work with some who are probably illegal aliens. I favor the position of aliens, documented or not -- and partly because undocumented aliens sometimes become slave laborers here in America. To this end, I wish that we allowed anyone in for purposes of employment.
I don't hate the thought of the Chinese or Mexicans stealing jobs. However, I do hate the "free trade for corporations, but not for laborers" that WTO plus restricted immigration produces. When a traded product (labor) is limited to some traders but not others, the net result is to take money from the restricted traders, and give it for free to the unrestricted traders. In other words, allowing free trade for corporations but not for laborers seems to me to drive down wages on both sides of the border.
Now, as to my problems with China: First, I can't see how China Government = China People. I don't hold the views of my government, and they don't hold mine. Yet all media references, and even your comment, seem to say that for the Chinese, this is usually true. Am I misunderstanding something here? Does this apply only to Chinese in China, or does it apply to the Chinese in the restaurant, the Chinese at grad school, and even Chinese people working as slave labor in a Los Angeles sweatshop (and yes, I am aware it does happen)?
Second: I am more a Roman Catholic Christian, in some ways, than I am an American (though I am a US citizen). I see the Chinese efforts to suppress Christianity and other religions as doomed, and enormously destructive to Chinese people. Somehow, it seems to me that there needs to be freedom of thought and speech in some fashion, or human rights attrocities will be commonplace because there will be nobody to say "stop". That doesn't mean that I deify freedom (indeed, my brother noted that the Tianamen Square protest was doomed the moment they brought out the 'goddess liberty'.) But it is hard for any truth to be learned, if communication is prevented.
Third: I hear about the Chinese government corruption as being extreme, including the chinese use of prisoners as a source of spare parts for organ transplants, including the abuse of laborers, including supporting African genocide in Sudan, and including the aggression against foreigners. None of this is unique to China. But I decry it in all its forms -- including our own Iraq war, our torture of prisoners of war, our original sponsorship of every terrorist nation that has come back to bite us (Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were both once CIA babies). Why is it so especially offensive that I decry it in the behavior of China's government as well?
Fourth: I find Chinese products so often substitute toxic ingredients for safe ones, that I avoid Chinese products whenever possible. This is tied in with Chinese corruption. With some -- such as wooden "Thomas the Tank" toys, the publicity was enough that I can tell which ones are safe, and we go with the safe ones. With others, I try to avoid the product (red paints, vinyl or PVC plastics, are all more likely to have lead).
However, I also avoid other non-chinese things that I find are often toxic, including a garden plot that I leased, and s
Even when the OS was significant, there would have been good reason to use all three.
The Mac has long excelled as a desktop publishing machine, for example. So you would expect the advertisers and some of the manual writers to use it.
On the other hand, for information that is internal, you probably would want to use TeX and LaTex a majority of the time. For that, I'd suggest Linux.
Likewise, Linux makes a good server system. It is more easily and cheaply repairable than other systems, and can be expanded as necessary (and as new hardware becomes available). It is also good for quickly testing out new ideas. So lab computers and servers should probably be Linux.
Finally, Windows is good for government compliance (yes, see, we're using a Windows system over there, right next to the desk fan. If we need to use windows, we have that too.) Basically, Microsoft gave their OS to the government and educational systems as a way of forcing others to use it. So by all means, every business should have at least one copy.
Anyhow, that's how I ran our small business back in the 90's thru 2002, and it worked fine.
Aside from that, having a windows system allowed me to complain. I find there's nothing more frustrating than hearing "how's it going", and having to say "Can't complain."
Of course, that presupposes that you have just two tennis players. On the other hand, if some Japanese terrorist group wishes to go through lane two in the LAX-JFK flight, and they send two women wearing burkhas through lane three in the LAX-Las Vegas flight (won, free, from unknown sponsors), then they convince the ARMOR unit to randomly send police over to lane three with a 99% probability. Then give them a prize package that is completely innocent -- but contents unknown, and they guarantee a bit of a delay and a lot of attention in the wrong direction...
Sounds to me like these programmers don't understand random, or unpredictability.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well when I was in aerospace engineering, I had a GTA who gave lab assignments once every 2 weeks, with a "required set of sections" that made each lab take about 50 pages.
Of course, everyone else just skipped the required sections, and put in "data" "results" and a short "conclusion". I did the full 50 pages, at about 1 hr per page.
In addition, there were supposed to be professionally done computer printouts that (at the time) only Harvard Graphics could handle. Since Harvard Graphics was expensive, I was the only one who wrote his own programs to produce the graphs. Most others used a pirate copy.
So I ended up spending 25 hrs/wk on these labs, turning them in 2 days late, while everyone else turned them in on time. The GTA kept delaying grading anything...
At the end of the course, he graded all of them 90, regardless of content, minus 10 points per day late. So I got a D in the course, having damaged my other grades in an effort to do well in what I thought was a very important part of my education. The administration upheld the GTA, perhaps because they decided it would be impolitic to fail 90% of the class based on their work... ... and my pressure on the issue also ended up costing me recommendations...
I think my story outdoes your story.
But we live in the society we live in. Just desserts do come, but not always. C'est la vie.
I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member.
ROTFL!
This oath itself is corrupt.
And it is weightless.
This kindof reminds the UN agreement on human rights, which states that no human rights need apply at all, if they conflict with the goals of the UN.
In this case, knowledge should not be pursued if it is to the detriment of colleagues (how special they are)!
This is a case of what G.K. Chesterton calls "professionalism" -- giving a pass in corruption to people of one's own profession, where it would never otherwise be acceptable in society.
If anything, science is already far too professional (in the Chesterton sense). Theories that have good foundation are ignored if they aren't presented by a Ph.D. Papers that are utter nonsense or jargon are accepted to journals as academically acceptable. Nobel prizes (superconductivity, anyone?) are awarded to those who *did not* discover the science, because they happened to be on top of the local political structure at the time.
That's all nice and well, but for a counterpoint...
When I was in 6th grade, the math teacher gave a test on the first day of class; all students with a perfect score were given the option of working ahead on their own. As long as they kept ahead of the rest of the class, they could read the book, do the problems, and take the tests on their own.
There were about 12 of us to start with; by the end of the year, there were 5-6 of us. At that time, I ended up going through 2 math books (6th grade book and 7th grade math), and waiting for the 8th grade book for 2 months.
I'm glad I did -- when it came time to pick AP students in Jr. High, basically half of the students from the wealthy section of town were selected, while 3-4 nominal picks from the poorer sections were selected. Getting that extra year's worth of math made the difference for me. As a result, I got the best attention/teachers in high school, and did quite well (national merit scholarship) until college.
(addendum: Once I got to college, different rules applied. Having straight A's and being a National Merit winner didn't hold as much weight in getting a NASA internship, as being female or having family already working for NASA. The selection process under which this happens is called the "one day lifting of the hiring freeze". Not surprisingly, my grades did start to suffer when the attention patterns changed.)
I guess you'd have to go to the fair and balanced source. Try this link: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/06/13/mccain-guantanamo-ruling-one-of-the-worst-decisions-in-history/ You could get the whole article there, but the link says it all.
Ummm... maybe, but not as you imply. As a black hole formed at the heart of our galaxy, a universe *was* being separated out, perhaps. You could call that initial event a universe being born. At that, as things fall down a black hole, they may generate more micro black holes, birthing very short-lived micro-universes. They'll actually only be short-lived on the macroscopic scale, though on their own scale, they may last nearly infinitely long because of time dialation.
Ummm... I don't think he was charging for the book. At the conferences he attended, he was giving it out for free to those who asked for one.
That said, there was a bit of a cost to producing the thing. At least he didn't go with the vanity publishers. Rather, he typeset it himself, produced the camera-ready copy, took it to a local printer, and had them glue/perfect bind it for him. Then he purchased an unused ISBN, and assigned it to the book.
Why he chose that method of publication, I couldn't say. He'd have to speak for himself.
As I remember, Ron Paul got more money from more individual Americans than any other Republican nominee.
So "follow the money" would indicate Paul.
However, "follow the New Hampshire Primaries" and "follow the Nevada Caucus" indicates that Ron Paul can even get the votes of those who voted for him.
So I'd say that the scientific answer is "McCain".
That's already been proposed, but a major problem with the flywheels is explosions in case of accidents, or even when things go slightly wrong for other reasons. For this reason, though flywheels were developed for specifically that application, they've been rebranded as being for planting in concrete under a house to go along with (say) solar energy production or wind energy production.
Okay, I searched "Joseph D. Rudmin", and "Joseph Rudmin thoughts electron mass".
A google search turns up this:
A poster session, describes some of the equations, conclusions, and sources.
http://physics.fau.edu/Events/PastEvents/Gulf_Coast_2006/Talks/Rudmin/POSTER0H.PDF
The book is here:
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780976894728/Joseph_D_Rudmin/Thoughts_On_The_Electron_Mass.html
Other searches yield paper abstracts:
http://csma31.csm.jmu.edu/physics/mattson/csaaptvip/CSAAPT-VIP%20Fall%202006%20Talks.html
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/SES06/Event/55517
In a Wikibooks talk section, Joe writes about Kaluza's theory, which is the basis of Joe's work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Talk:Kaluza-Klein_theory
Yes, I am aware that things can be published on the web. Do a search of Rudmin Arthur Cerdic, and the first thing that comes up on Microsoft's live search is:
http://www.celtic-twilight.com/camelot/rudmin/arthur_cerdic_c7.htm
That was published on the web. But not everything is.
It's not how many times this has happened. We couldn't know that. Since each universe would be isolated, you couldn't confirm whether it happened more than once. Rather, for the one time that we can determine that it has happened, many black hole formations have happened.
Just a bit of history on this. If you read Corrie Ten Boom's "In my Father's house", the girl guides (the girl's version of girl scouts in Holland) were started by a number of people there, including her. The original thrust was that the scouts were to be evangelical. They were formed out of concern for the girls' well being, and since the Christians of that time rightly understood that a person's well being must start with fitting in with God's reality, then they were doing their best to follow that.
The theme of Corrie's meetings, was "Christ in the middle". That is, they'd have some activity, and then a short Christian lesson of Bible reading, a bit of discussion, and then back to the activity. People were allowed to quietly drop out of the Christian lesson -- but not to interrupt it.
Fast forward about 10 years, and the leadership of the girl guides started talking about "evangelism by example, not word", and started saying that you couldn't preach. Corrie Ten Boom said okay, and left the organization, setting up yet another similar organization.
Well, the Scouts have moved more in the direction of militarism, and at the same time have essentially taken Christ out of it, but they still don't admit it. So that's why they won't let your atheist kid join, and yet at the same time say "well, lie about it." Christ isn't there. But the culture is. I suppose you could call it the worst of both worlds. Guess what -- I am Christian, and I won't let my kid join.
But if it were "Christ in the middle", where anyone can come, atheist, Hindu, or whatnot -- then I'd jump to send my kid.
Right now, though I am a Catholic, I prefer the Baptist Awanas club. I'm pretty sure they'll let your atheist son come.
My brother, Joseph D. Rudmin, expected to see this. He's done a lot of work with space tensors, and has basically concluded that space-time is 3x3t (6 dimensions), with the 3 time dimensions mistaken for one for massive objects (and, ironically, it's quite possible that low-mass objects like electrons can mistake the 3 space dimensions for one). Right now, he's trying to use these equations to calculate / predict the electron's charge/mass ratio. It's a huge calculation, so it's been taking him many years.
However, if I remember right, he regularly publishes at the Virginia Academy of Science annual meetings, and has also written a small (90 pg) book that he self published, just to get the ideas out there (ISBN 0976894726 - Thoughts on the Electron Mass).
To the point of what he's expected to see here: he's pointed out that if you have a galaxy at the center of a collapsing black hole, and are in the galaxy, you cannot tell the difference between that event and a big bang. Moreover, once the SC-radius has formed, you cannot tell whether you are inside the black hole, or outside it as the rest of the universe collapses into it's own black hole. Moreover, because light that goes out from the universe / black hole gets redirected back inwards, you cannot tell the boundary of a black hole from the boundary of a universe. They are, by dual definition, identical.
However, initial formations of the universe are seldom for every formation of a black hole. Therefore, it is more probable that our big bang was nothing more than the collapse of a black hole.
Are you trying to say that they could get more free energy by powering the trains with exercycles?
"Okay, all aboard... Now pedel. Pedal. Push. Push. One and two and one and a two and pick up the pace now, one two three four."
My Dad is a university Physics prof; I have an engineering degree (AOE/OE) that I never used.
Right now, I'm a layout tech at a concrete plant.
As my Dad says, we don't need more engineers here in America. We need more doctors, lawyers, politicians, and people sueing each other.
We don't pay engineers. And when the pay for engineers goes a tad above the pizza delivery guy, we quick publish "we need more engineers!" to get the price back down, and keep enough engineers unemployed. So we don't need more engineers.
What's currently paid well? That's what we need. We need more litigators, more doctors, more managers, more politicians, and more realtors (up until recently, anyhow.)
If Japan's the same, this headline should have been ignored.
Can someone explain why the prototype pinto crashing and burning, and causing two fatalities, is funny?
Actually, I think it's a pretty good idea. Here's why: the very same wings that can give lift when you want to use the vehicle as an airplane, can give extra downward force on the wheels when you want to use it as a car. That, in turn, will do two things: (1) increase the friction force correspondingly, and (2) cause upwash around the vehicle, thus decreasing the main source of drag: the ground /car bottom friction. So if designed correctly, the vehicle should be far more controlable in accidents *and* get better mileage.
The important thing is to keep the airplane and highway modes completely separate.
I'm just replying to book mark the comment. I have a coworker who believes something along those lines, and I'd like to see what the theory is. That said, I'll compare this theory to Darwin's theory: it seems to me that Darwin made a pretty good theory in his "Origin of the species". But when people (Sanger, H.G. Wells, Adolf Hitler) took his theory and made it into a religion, what resulted was a pretty rotten religion. Those who followed it well did some pretty rotten things, and then half the time eliminated themselves. I like Christianity a lot better: the worst crimes against humanity came not from those who followed it well, but those who followed it badly. But Darwin's theory is still pretty good.
As far as I can tell, people have also made this guy's theory into a religion. Shoot: maybe he did it himself. I don't know that any religion except Christianity is worth my time. But that doesn't mean that I can't look at the theory. Maybe he'll be able to predict an asteroid of which we had been unaware. I somehow doubt it, but it's worth looking at.
What I was actually thinking of was more along the lines of fractal compression and interpolation, rather than image-stacking. However, it's basically the same idea.
I rather suspect that the compression and interpolation would give a higher resolution interpolated image, especially if the video image is compressed as a 3-space pixel (d,d,t) set instead of a series of 2-space (d,d) (d,d)... pixel sets..
Just a note: looking on AIPTEK.COM, their clearance items include:
http://www.aiptek.com/
Pocket DV4500 + Free Camera Bag $29.99
Pocket DV4100M $19.99
Mini PenCam 1.3 Blue + Free Webcam Accessories $9.99
I don't see where you can get much cheaper than that.
Just an idea here, and a question...
Suppose you went down to the thrift store, and got a bunch of those 0.3 MPx PenCams (as termed from the Linux driver that runs them). Those cams typically run about $2.50-$3.00 at the thrift store, though they run something like $20 new.
Then you pair them together like a pair of eyes.
Now, for every picture you download, you actually download a pair -- one from each camera.
If you want to view them, you view them through two polarized filters, one turned horizontally, and the other turned vertically. And you view them with glasses set the same way.
So now you have a total resolution of 0.3 MPx+0.3 Mpx= 0.6 Mpx, with 3-d imaging.
Of course, you could go with one of the newer VGA pencams instead, for 1.2+1.2 = 2.4 MPx.
With either of these, you need to maintain good lighting, of course.
But there is one other thought I have... couldn't you take successive images and combine them, to raise the resolution?
As the targeted person moves, he's going to switch from one pixel to another, crossing pixel boundaries. So a good piece of software might be able to track that, and come up with a high resolution image from a whole series of low resolution images.
Just in case you, -- or others, and even hopefully members of China's government/ruling party -- do wish to dialogue, I've set up a journal where that can be done.
By all means, I don't understand Chinese law. Please don't do anything that might break that law, undermine it, or even bring you into a bad light under Chinese law or the authorities.
[Even in America, there is a difference between pleasing the authorities and following the law. It's often best to do both.]
But if this is possible, I'd love to open a discussion.
My journal site is
http://slashdot.org/~MickLinux/journal/201236
Thank you.
I've enabled comments, so all are able to post.
I seem to remember previous articles that showed that the Chinese government had sponsored a cyberwar/spamming/hacking network, and several times has tested it against the Pentagon's systems.
I also seem to remember that Russia had done the same about 4-5 years before.
Not real big news, actually. Although we probably don't do it through so-called hackers, we probably do have government researchers who probe adversary systems.
But (assuming my memory is correct) the fact remains that China's method was to use hackers, and to sponsor spamming as well. So the author validly wonders whether this is in fact the "Chinese Government Propaganda Machine".
I don't know that it really matters. In the end, even if it was a "Chinese Private Propaganda Machine", the views of Chinese are largely controlled by what they see. And what they see right now is that Chinese Supremacy is being challenged by the "Western Government Propaganda Machine", which today means CNN.
Arggh.
Over Here, we do have Propaganda Machines, but most people do not find it necessary to follow. I keep hearing that Over There, they do. Who knows.
Slogan. Slogan. Slogan. I think I'm going to move on to a different topic.
I'd love to open a dialogue with you, simply because it is difficult to speak to the topics with the chinese people I would run into today.
That poem isn't a dialogue: it's a series of slogans. There's partial truth in it, but there's also much that is a lie because the issues are given so little consideration. I'd much rather have a dialogue, in which both parties are looking for truth. That way, opinions can change, trust can be built, and falsehoods can be eliminated.
My position: I'm an American; I've been in other countries, including Lithuania for 3 years. While there, due to police corruption and my refusal to pay bribes, I became an illegal alien, and so spent 6 months back in America, reapplying (with that which the police wrongly refused to accept), and then returned.
Here in America, I work with some who are probably illegal aliens. I favor the position of aliens, documented or not -- and partly because undocumented aliens sometimes become slave laborers here in America. To this end, I wish that we allowed anyone in for purposes of employment.
I don't hate the thought of the Chinese or Mexicans stealing jobs. However, I do hate the "free trade for corporations, but not for laborers" that WTO plus restricted immigration produces. When a traded product (labor) is limited to some traders but not others, the net result is to take money from the restricted traders, and give it for free to the unrestricted traders. In other words, allowing free trade for corporations but not for laborers seems to me to drive down wages on both sides of the border.
Now, as to my problems with China: First, I can't see how China Government = China People. I don't hold the views of my government, and they don't hold mine. Yet all media references, and even your comment, seem to say that for the Chinese, this is usually true. Am I misunderstanding something here? Does this apply only to Chinese in China, or does it apply to the Chinese in the restaurant, the Chinese at grad school, and even Chinese people working as slave labor in a Los Angeles sweatshop (and yes, I am aware it does happen)?
Second: I am more a Roman Catholic Christian, in some ways, than I am an American (though I am a US citizen). I see the Chinese efforts to suppress Christianity and other religions as doomed, and enormously destructive to Chinese people. Somehow, it seems to me that there needs to be freedom of thought and speech in some fashion, or human rights attrocities will be commonplace because there will be nobody to say "stop". That doesn't mean that I deify freedom (indeed, my brother noted that the Tianamen Square protest was doomed the moment they brought out the 'goddess liberty'.) But it is hard for any truth to be learned, if communication is prevented.
Third: I hear about the Chinese government corruption as being extreme, including the chinese use of prisoners as a source of spare parts for organ transplants, including the abuse of laborers, including supporting African genocide in Sudan, and including the aggression against foreigners. None of this is unique to China. But I decry it in all its forms -- including our own Iraq war, our torture of prisoners of war, our original sponsorship of every terrorist nation that has come back to bite us (Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were both once CIA babies). Why is it so especially offensive that I decry it in the behavior of China's government as well?
Fourth: I find Chinese products so often substitute toxic ingredients for safe ones, that I avoid Chinese products whenever possible. This is tied in with Chinese corruption. With some -- such as wooden "Thomas the Tank" toys, the publicity was enough that I can tell which ones are safe, and we go with the safe ones. With others, I try to avoid the product (red paints, vinyl or PVC plastics, are all more likely to have lead).
However, I also avoid other non-chinese things that I find are often toxic, including a garden plot that I leased, and s
Even when the OS was significant, there would have been good reason to use all three.
The Mac has long excelled as a desktop publishing machine, for example. So you would expect the advertisers and some of the manual writers to use it.
On the other hand, for information that is internal, you probably would want to use TeX and LaTex a majority of the time. For that, I'd suggest Linux.
Likewise, Linux makes a good server system. It is more easily and cheaply repairable than other systems, and can be expanded as necessary (and as new hardware becomes available). It is also good for quickly testing out new ideas. So lab computers and servers should probably be Linux.
Finally, Windows is good for government compliance (yes, see, we're using a Windows system over there, right next to the desk fan. If we need to use windows, we have that too.) Basically, Microsoft gave their OS to the government and educational systems as a way of forcing others to use it. So by all means, every business should have at least one copy.
Anyhow, that's how I ran our small business back in the 90's thru 2002, and it worked fine.
Aside from that, having a windows system allowed me to complain. I find there's nothing more frustrating than hearing "how's it going", and having to say "Can't complain."
Of course, that presupposes that you have just two tennis players. On the other hand, if some Japanese terrorist group wishes to go through lane two in the LAX-JFK flight, and they send two women wearing burkhas through lane three in the LAX-Las Vegas flight (won, free, from unknown sponsors), then they convince the ARMOR unit to randomly send police over to lane three with a 99% probability. Then give them a prize package that is completely innocent -- but contents unknown, and they guarantee a bit of a delay and a lot of attention in the wrong direction...
Sounds to me like these programmers don't understand random, or unpredictability.