For those who don't know in this case the diesel engine is basically just an electric generator that powers the electric motor. Because as a generator it can run at a constant speed it's even more efficient than a traditional diesel. It works for trains...
It should be noted that while there may be efficiency bonuses to the diesel-electric locomotives, the real reason why they're used is for the torque. To use a straight diesel (or other internal combustion) engine, you would need to have an absurdly large gearbox to be able to move a 100-car freight train from a standing start. The electric motor has gobs of torque right from zero speed--the 'snappier' feel that it lends hybrid automobiles is an absolute necessity in a locomotive.
Someday, we're going to think this was quite a crude process, but we're getting there! We're learning how to [sloppy analogy for complex scientific technique]. With some more breakthroughs, [branch of science] will forever be changed just as penicillin changed the world.
During our lifetimes, it will be extremely exciting to see all of this happen. The scary part is how far we take it. Bad things can come of it too.
FOR SALE. One slightly used "insightful" post for Slashdot science threads. Guaranteed up-moderation; purchaser must fill in blanks. Contains 90% post-consumer starry-eyed optimism, tempered with standard "technology can be used for bad things, too" disclaimer.
I teach physics. Every theory in physics is most likely flawed. In fact, every theory in natural science is flawed. Should I have to point it out again and again?
Indeed. I dare say that everything that is taught in science below...oh, about the advanced undergraduate level, at least...is flawed. To use a less loaded term, I might suggest it's a useful approximation.
In elementary school, you get your first taste of Newtonian mechanics. High school adds on some calculus to make it more useful, and maybe mentions this thing called special relativity. If you study physics at university, then you'll start getting hit with general relativity around what, third year? Quantum gravity shows up if you're lucky just before you graduate.
In elementary school, you find out that acids and bases react, and that everything is made of atoms. You might get to make a little vinegar-and-baking-soda volcano. High school you get hit by perhaps a couple of different models of chemical bonding--all approximations. You probably won't solve the Schrodinger equation until you study university chemistry. The Dirac equation you might not run into at all.
Now that we're starting to have access to genomic information for many different species, the stuff that computational biologists have been doing with evolutionary theory is just stunning. There are some really elegant and subtle results that have been generated. Do we try to explain all of this to a high school class? Nope--there isn't the time or necessity for a graduate-level dissertation on evolutionary theory. A useful approximation is provided, as it is in the rest of the sciences.
Actually, that's not the joke; it's more of a clever saying. Heck, it was even a bit of a proud, jingoistic slogan. The joke is how you finish the phrase:
"The sun never sets on the British Empire...because the sun doesn't trust the British in the dark."
I know the parent poster is kidding, but for those who are wondering...
Under near-ideal conditions, the rovers could crawl a hundred meters (three hundred or so feet) per day.
The two rovers are on roughly opposite sides of the planet, which has a diameter of nearly seven thousand kilometers. To bring the other rover around--assuming you could drive in a straight line and there were no obstacles or technical problems--would take two or three hundred years.
None of these things are halo 1 innovations. They have all been done (with the possible exception of auto-recharging shields - but there CERTAINLY have been shields) in prior FPS games.
Indeed. If we step out of the FPS genre, I was playing with shields that recharge and "health" (armour) that didn't way back in Wing Commander...that was fifteen years ago.
First they came for the white-balance information,
I said nothing; I was not a photographer.
Then they came for the fonts,
I said nothing; I was not a typesetter.
Then they came for the music,
I said nothing; I hate Britney Spears.
Then they came for me...
And you guys were all too busy bitching on Slashdot.
Since when do we have the right to a free internet connection?
Did you mean free (as in beer) or free (as in speech)?
There's certainly no right to the former--but if the government of Texas wants to provide it, then there's certainly an argument that they then must provide the latter.
No kidding this was unnerving. Whenever anybody displays behavior ooutside the norm and tries forcing themselves upon passerbys it's always unnerving, Mann et al are not special in this case. I'm guessing the large group of pale, nerdy looking people would be unnerving enough, the plastic bubbles were merely icing on the cake.
Indeed--why shouldn't they be asked to leave? They're on private property, they're not going to buy anything, and they're annoying paying customers.
I am not sure what you meant by this. Modern photolithography (used in production) has optics which works well at the 193nm wavelength. EUV which is lot more complicated has optics which works all the way to 13nm wavelength.
While those statements are true, I'm not sure if it's really legitimate to say that those wavelengths will work well inside a computational device.
Calling 13nm 'extreme ultraviolet' is marketing--those are really soft x-rays at that point. You're getting into photons that are inconveniently energetic. That's fine if you're doing lithographic etching of chips, but murderous on your hardware in daily operation.
We also don't have light sources capable of anywhere near the appropriate level of miniaturization for those very short wavelengths. Constructing one large EUV source for a chip fab plant is a very different engineering problem from constructing hundreds, thousands, or millions of such sources on each chip. The optics also get much more complex, expensive, and exotic as you move to shorter wavelengths. Once again, things that can be done in a billion-dollar chip fab are quite different from things that can be done on a hundred-dollar microchip.
I know someone who considered citing the paper in a dissertation. Fortunately she noticed the retraction before doing so, but it would have been an embarrassment to say the least. Of course we can say that anyone who cites the paper deserves ridicule, but this sort of thing can cause real harm to people's livelihood.
Well, yes?
What was she doing citing a paper that she didn't understand?
Yes, Sokal was being dishonest, submitting a paper that he could not in good faith claim was legitimate. On the other hand, the intellectual dishonesty also extends to Social Text, for failing in their peer review process to admit that they didn't understand the paper, and to anybody who might cite it, because they either misunderstood or misrepresented its contents--if they read it at all.
If you're not honest enough to admit that you don't understand something in academia, and you're bold enough to cite it anyway, then maybe you deserve real harm to your livelihood.
So... no-one organising the conference has actually read it? Anything would've gotten through in that case. Even slashdot trolls.
As others have noted, "not reviewed" is not the same as "not read". It just means that there isn't a formal peer review process--someone should still be sanity checking the submissions.
It's worth noting that a second submission by the same MIT group was rejected. Someone is reading these, but it appears that their selection criterion involves a coin toss....
At many (but not all) conferences, authors tend to be given the benefit of the doubt, so long as the paper is not obviously ridiculous or plagiarized.
Yes, but did you look at the paper? Figure 6 on "millennium hash tables" (which I admit shows an excellent linear relationship) plots the dependence of "seek time (cylinders)" on "latency (celcius)". Figure 3 measures "time since 1977" in teraflops. Okay--maybe reading the paper is too much to ask, but couldn't they at least have looked at the pictures?
I dare say that the paper is "obviously ridiculous".
This morning I had one of the most peaceful commutes in quite a while. I attribute it fully to the conductor, urging us at every stop to "Step aside, let others off before you get on. If you can't fit on the train there is another train right behind this one."
I thought this sort of thing was Public Transit 101 stuff. It's default behaviour in Toronto on the TTC, and when I was in DC the people on the Metro system seemed to get it, too. A gentle reminder at extremely busy stops probably doesn't hurt--but that could be automated.
Man, wouldn't it totally suck if we had a world where the only time people were fired was because they did a poor job? I mean, companies would be staffed with competent (if perhaps arrogant) employees who got the job done on time, instead of being full of brown nosing sycophants who can't do a lick of work, but are great at licking someting else...
It occurs to me that "getting along with coworkers" and "not releasing trade secrets on the 'net" might actually be reasonable job requirements....
Believe it or not, there are workers who are highly competent and capable of getting along with others. They make the entire workplace more productive because they do their work and they don't backstab and badmouth everybody else. Go figure.
And you are the one to judge people's words? Let me get this 100% right. If you don't like what I say, then you can deprive me of my livelyhood? It must suck to be a capatalist in North Korea. Or pro-Tiwan in China. Or a socalist in the USA.
Er. If I went around the office posting notices that my boss is an asshole, I'd expect to be fired. If I put the same message on a billboard across the street...I'd still expect to be fired. The fact is, most terminations aren't the result of incompetence--they are a consequence of interpersonal issues. If I were a manager, I'm not sure if I would want to work with someone who goes around calling me a jerk behind my back. I wouldn't want to continue to employ someone who felt I deserved insults and abuse, and who saw fit to post that for the world to see.
Similarly, posting trade or other corporate secrets online strikes me as a likely breach of an employment contract, or at least a gross lapse in etiquette. Again, I'd expect to be fired if I did that.
The grandparent poster didn't say anything about people fired for their political views--and I suspect that courts in the U.S. might tend to take a dimmer view of such actions by employers. Regardless, such cases seem to be in the minority of blog-related firings...at least among the stories that make it to Slashdot.
Only downside is I can no longer pile things on top of a monitor.
Sure...but now you can pile stuff behind the monitor. There's a good cubic foot or more of volume that you can fill with anything you want--and it has less gravitational potential energy, so it's less likely to fall and crush you.
For low voltages I don't see any problem with DC but AFAICR at higher voltages DC is more dangerous - a shock from an AC supply causes you to let go quickly, a shock from a DC supply (ISTR) causes the muscles in your hand to contract so that you can't let go.
That's partly true. An electric current passing through a muscle will cause it to contract. Since AC passes through zero voltage many times per second (120 in North America) there's a brief interval where the muscle may relax and the person may be able to let go--or at least his grip will get limp enough that he'll fall off the wire. DC's constant flow of current will tend to prevent a relaxation of the muscles--there will be no opportunity to release.
On the other hand, AC is much more likely to cause fibrillation of the heart. All those little pulses of contraction seem to be much better suited to causing the heart to flutter--not in a good way--compared to the steady paralysis of DC shock. If you kill the power quickly, then a heart that's received a DC shock stands a substantially better chance of spontaneously resuming a normal beat.
Now for an anecdote--I don't recommend trying this at home. I had a physics teacher who once told me that if I had to check to see if a wire was live using my own hands, I should use the back of my hand to do it. Just brush lightly. If there's a current flow, then the induced contraction of muscles in the hand and arm should pull the arm away from the wire...instead of tightly clenching the cable, which is what happens when reaching in the usual way.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I got it right from Jayson Blair.
It should be noted that while there may be efficiency bonuses to the diesel-electric locomotives, the real reason why they're used is for the torque. To use a straight diesel (or other internal combustion) engine, you would need to have an absurdly large gearbox to be able to move a 100-car freight train from a standing start. The electric motor has gobs of torque right from zero speed--the 'snappier' feel that it lends hybrid automobiles is an absolute necessity in a locomotive.
How about a Fields medal?
Different skills are recognized in different ways by different people.
It wasn't just bus drivers....
Yes, but surely 640 MB should be enough for anybody.
Indeed. I dare say that everything that is taught in science below...oh, about the advanced undergraduate level, at least...is flawed. To use a less loaded term, I might suggest it's a useful approximation.
In elementary school, you get your first taste of Newtonian mechanics. High school adds on some calculus to make it more useful, and maybe mentions this thing called special relativity. If you study physics at university, then you'll start getting hit with general relativity around what, third year? Quantum gravity shows up if you're lucky just before you graduate.
In elementary school, you find out that acids and bases react, and that everything is made of atoms. You might get to make a little vinegar-and-baking-soda volcano. High school you get hit by perhaps a couple of different models of chemical bonding--all approximations. You probably won't solve the Schrodinger equation until you study university chemistry. The Dirac equation you might not run into at all.
Now that we're starting to have access to genomic information for many different species, the stuff that computational biologists have been doing with evolutionary theory is just stunning. There are some really elegant and subtle results that have been generated. Do we try to explain all of this to a high school class? Nope--there isn't the time or necessity for a graduate-level dissertation on evolutionary theory. A useful approximation is provided, as it is in the rest of the sciences.
Under near-ideal conditions, the rovers could crawl a hundred meters (three hundred or so feet) per day.
The two rovers are on roughly opposite sides of the planet, which has a diameter of nearly seven thousand kilometers. To bring the other rover around--assuming you could drive in a straight line and there were no obstacles or technical problems--would take two or three hundred years.
Indeed. If we step out of the FPS genre, I was playing with shields that recharge and "health" (armour) that didn't way back in Wing Commander...that was fifteen years ago.
Distributed Denial of Survival.
Did you mean free (as in beer) or free (as in speech)?
There's certainly no right to the former--but if the government of Texas wants to provide it, then there's certainly an argument that they then must provide the latter.
Then we realize that we're doing something even more embarrassing: posting on Slashdot.
Indeed--why shouldn't they be asked to leave? They're on private property, they're not going to buy anything, and they're annoying paying customers.
While those statements are true, I'm not sure if it's really legitimate to say that those wavelengths will work well inside a computational device.
Calling 13nm 'extreme ultraviolet' is marketing--those are really soft x-rays at that point. You're getting into photons that are inconveniently energetic. That's fine if you're doing lithographic etching of chips, but murderous on your hardware in daily operation.
We also don't have light sources capable of anywhere near the appropriate level of miniaturization for those very short wavelengths. Constructing one large EUV source for a chip fab plant is a very different engineering problem from constructing hundreds, thousands, or millions of such sources on each chip. The optics also get much more complex, expensive, and exotic as you move to shorter wavelengths. Once again, things that can be done in a billion-dollar chip fab are quite different from things that can be done on a hundred-dollar microchip.
Well, yes?
What was she doing citing a paper that she didn't understand?
Yes, Sokal was being dishonest, submitting a paper that he could not in good faith claim was legitimate. On the other hand, the intellectual dishonesty also extends to Social Text, for failing in their peer review process to admit that they didn't understand the paper, and to anybody who might cite it, because they either misunderstood or misrepresented its contents--if they read it at all.
If you're not honest enough to admit that you don't understand something in academia, and you're bold enough to cite it anyway, then maybe you deserve real harm to your livelihood.
As others have noted, "not reviewed" is not the same as "not read". It just means that there isn't a formal peer review process--someone should still be sanity checking the submissions.
It's worth noting that a second submission by the same MIT group was rejected. Someone is reading these, but it appears that their selection criterion involves a coin toss....
Yes, but did you look at the paper? Figure 6 on "millennium hash tables" (which I admit shows an excellent linear relationship) plots the dependence of "seek time (cylinders)" on "latency (celcius)". Figure 3 measures "time since 1977" in teraflops. Okay--maybe reading the paper is too much to ask, but couldn't they at least have looked at the pictures?
I dare say that the paper is "obviously ridiculous".
I thought this sort of thing was Public Transit 101 stuff. It's default behaviour in Toronto on the TTC, and when I was in DC the people on the Metro system seemed to get it, too. A gentle reminder at extremely busy stops probably doesn't hurt--but that could be automated.
It occurs to me that "getting along with coworkers" and "not releasing trade secrets on the 'net" might actually be reasonable job requirements....
Believe it or not, there are workers who are highly competent and capable of getting along with others. They make the entire workplace more productive because they do their work and they don't backstab and badmouth everybody else. Go figure.
Er. If I went around the office posting notices that my boss is an asshole, I'd expect to be fired. If I put the same message on a billboard across the street...I'd still expect to be fired. The fact is, most terminations aren't the result of incompetence--they are a consequence of interpersonal issues. If I were a manager, I'm not sure if I would want to work with someone who goes around calling me a jerk behind my back. I wouldn't want to continue to employ someone who felt I deserved insults and abuse, and who saw fit to post that for the world to see.
Similarly, posting trade or other corporate secrets online strikes me as a likely breach of an employment contract, or at least a gross lapse in etiquette. Again, I'd expect to be fired if I did that.
The grandparent poster didn't say anything about people fired for their political views--and I suspect that courts in the U.S. might tend to take a dimmer view of such actions by employers. Regardless, such cases seem to be in the minority of blog-related firings...at least among the stories that make it to Slashdot.
Sure...but now you can pile stuff behind the monitor. There's a good cubic foot or more of volume that you can fill with anything you want--and it has less gravitational potential energy, so it's less likely to fall and crush you.
That's partly true. An electric current passing through a muscle will cause it to contract. Since AC passes through zero voltage many times per second (120 in North America) there's a brief interval where the muscle may relax and the person may be able to let go--or at least his grip will get limp enough that he'll fall off the wire. DC's constant flow of current will tend to prevent a relaxation of the muscles--there will be no opportunity to release.
On the other hand, AC is much more likely to cause fibrillation of the heart. All those little pulses of contraction seem to be much better suited to causing the heart to flutter--not in a good way--compared to the steady paralysis of DC shock. If you kill the power quickly, then a heart that's received a DC shock stands a substantially better chance of spontaneously resuming a normal beat.
Now for an anecdote--I don't recommend trying this at home. I had a physics teacher who once told me that if I had to check to see if a wire was live using my own hands, I should use the back of my hand to do it. Just brush lightly. If there's a current flow, then the induced contraction of muscles in the hand and arm should pull the arm away from the wire...instead of tightly clenching the cable, which is what happens when reaching in the usual way.
While on the subject of typographical errors, don't forget the ever-popular lesson in kerning provided by Megaflicks.