Zawodny says that the most logical first application of LENR is the home reactor, which would produce heat and electricity for the home while charging the family electric car. Another area is in transportation, with the light, portable reactors powering supersonic aircraft and flying cars without the danger or radiation. It could even be used to power a space plane capable of reaching orbit without stages or external fuel tanks.
The list of potential applications reminds me of the Fallout series of video games. For those of you who haven't played or read about the world in those games, technological philosophies stopped at around the 1950's - 1960's, e.g. once they had fission reactors they stopped looking for better methods. The games take place in the post-nuclear winter era after the inevitable global-thermonuclear war. Houses, cars and most other forms of transportation and structures all had their own nuclear fission reactors built in for generating unlimited power. Nuclear fallout shelters were placed just about every square mile and were actually just covers for running unethical scientific experiments on communities and population groups, though I suppose they did actually serve the shelter purpose as well in some cases.
Oh well. I think it would be better as a movie than as a play anyway. Unfortunately the special effects department would probably get carried away when the characters jack in and suck up so much time that they'd forget to tell the story.
Actually, I would say that the biggest problem is that you can't really do much of anything if your user isn't admin level on a windows system. That's why almost every windows user is an administrator on the local machine. Even in enterprise level networks, this is the case with security vulnerabilities mitigated by group policies and patches.
On a *nix box a user can still install programs and use resources as long as it's not making changes outside that user's account. (i.e. restricted to that user's processes and home directory). On a windows machine, without administrative access you can't really do much more than access the internet and run maybe 1/4 of the programs available as long as they're already installed and aren't configured to do something goofy like access the registry or use a location outside the user's home directory or the system temp folders for doing file work.
Unfortunately, most windows programs seems to have been designed to expect administrative access in order to function properly even after installation
I concede that you're correct about worms, however,
trick the user into granting it privilege
gain privileged access via a local exploit
I would argue that these two arguments are always valid since there will always be users who aren't paying attention or are ignorant of what's going on with their own machine, and because it's extremely difficult to find and fix every exploit in any large piece of software.
I would still argue that though a worm could flourish under a specific user's account, it would still allow the damage be contained to that one user's account. Would you agree?
Do you also challenge my point's validity concerning traditional viruses, activex drive-by downloads, and the like? If so, what advantage would there be for desktop users in not having root access for all users, in your opinion?
Let's be fair about where they built the city. It was founded back in 1718. They didn't really know much about weather patterns back then. Not to mention that it was initially french, then went to the spanish after the seven years war (transition was from 1763 to 69), then became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
So where it's built is something we can blame the French for, we didn't get it until almost an entire century later. The levees... well, they've been relying on the natural levees since the place was initially founded to avoid major catastrophes and problems with levees, both natural and otherwise, is nothing new for that city. We are all aware of it now because of how horribly our emergency services responded to Katrina, which opened the door to the worst, which we all got to have spoon fed to us by our news media.
See personally I never thought it would be in discussion whether to allow non-root users to install packages. In my opinion it's one of the great advantages of *nix systems as far as security goes.
Even the distributions with the root user disabled to make it easier on a desktop user, like Ubuntu, still require use of the sudo command. It's one of the biggest reasons certain worms and drive by download techniques which crippled Microsoft OS's never worked on *nix systems.
I imagine he could commission someone to hook up an air tube with a pressure sensor to a trigger pulling actuator. Then he could go for target practice, provided he has a similar device made for aiming the weapon.
I imagine it would be difficult to use a scope, though...
Yes, that's true, however the average user has no idea what a package manager is either. I mean, let's face it, the majority of users are, in reality, Excel users or Word users, or have a knowledge of some proprietary business platform or other very specific program, or simply use the computer as a kind of internet access appliance with email. An alarmingly large number of users who can do wonders with individual programs have trouble figuring out where the volume setting is or why the screen goes dark if they just sit there and stare at it for a half hour. I've heard of Excel 'experts' who can code a vba script to handle a financial security's waterfall cash flows asking why Excel 'wasn't installed on the computer' when there just wasn't an icon on the desktop.
I guess what I'm saying is that this problem won't go away because there's always going to be clueless users who are just too lazy or too clueless to figure out what to do to understand simple things you and I would take for granted. This is why there will always be technical support help desks and there will always be System Administrators and things of that nature until we can program the machines to do everything themselves, at which point they will probably become self aware and stop obeying orders from us anyway.:)
I have yet to meet an off the shelf, home consumer piece of hardware that would not work with a Windows system. They are all designed and constructed for the purposes of usage on Windows.
First, hardware is designed to work with other hardware, it's the drivers which are written which allow the software to take advantage of that hardware. Any hardware can be made to work for any operating system if someone takes the time to write a good driver for that operating system.
That being said, there's a distinction right there, "home consumer". I'm not sure of the actual numbers but considering that it's difficult to find an industry which doesn't use computers as well as the type of hardware and software required for most of those industries it is my belief that corporate purchasing trends and requests drive the market. A typical home consumer will probably never set up a RAID array of SCSI drives or purchase a $10,000 (US) file server, or need the software and technology to network 1500 computers in one state with 3000 in another.
The main problem with an average windows user attempting a switch to linux is that they don't realize just how much they have to learn. Especially with younger generations who have grown up with windows computers around them and didn't have to work as hard to learn how to use it as some of the older generations. Linux just doesn't do things the same way. You have to start from scratch, learn the command prompt like older windows users had to learn the DOS system before being able to completely optimize windows systems prior to ME (though that was less necessary in 98). Once you have a grasp on the command prompt then you have to start learning about what's in the kernel and be able to extract, compile, and install drivers for hardware. Once you know how to use the core components, nything else is pretty much just another program which needs independent study to use well.
For someone who's only known windows the entire time they've been on a computer, it is very difficult to switch from that behemoth which integrates as much as possible into itself in order to keep the computer running in spite of the user, to Linux, which, in essense, does exactly what the user tells it to, no more and no less.
In my opinion that's really not that bad of an analogy. My philosophy when dealing with an array of absolutes is to take what rings true from all sides and leave the rest for the fanatics to fight over.
<rant1> As for the fanatics, is it really that hard to forward someone a hyperlink to a howto or manual page? After all, RTFM as a philosophy is all well and good, but a lot of these people don't even know where the manual is, much less what RTFM means. Compassion is a virtue, not everyone has grown up around or fooled with computers for years. And even those that have don't always branch out beyond a particular brand or OS. Oh, tolerence is also a virtue, the perfect human is, by definition(in my opinion), flawed. A fleshy biped who was right all the time and never made a mistake would cease to fall within the definition of a human being. </rant1>
<self righteous nugget> thus, in practice, I'll be proficient at administrating windows and be happy to have it when I have slower and less computer literate people on staff who are baffled by a command prompt, but still work to convince my bosses to take advantage of some of the goodies Linux has in the future. </self righteous nugget>
<rant2> I mean, let's face it, there are elitests a plenty on all sides, most people are stuck in the middle and familiar with windows rather than linux primarily because it's what they use at work and/or it was what was installed on the first computer they ever purchased. As far as macintosh, some people just aren't drawn to that atmosphere or find difficulty comparing macs to other computers, getting confused by the terminology. For someone who's introduction to computing was with an operating system made to be usable for the most common simple tasks by selecting a descriptive picture, configuration files and program compiling are kind of far out there. It's a little easier for old school computing people who used older systems like vax, dos, and original unix architectures and present day administrators familiar enough with computers to be able to find, follow, and understand the linux howto's and learn. For a beginner to computers who only knows the windows GUI, the best you could hope for even if linux was pre-installed on a computer they purchased was that they would know one of the X interfaces, and then probably only with a working help system. Macintosh isn't as difficult to learn, but, once again, you need to tell the user where the help files are. As for which operating system is best, I'm leaving that alone. As far as I'm concerned different operating systems are just different ways of doing the same things. Operating systems have their strengths and weakensses over the others, for instance macintosh is the best for multimedia and sound and video production while linux, when properly configured, can be extremely secure and is capable of being customized to the point of being the most efficient specialist device possible, but Windows is a favorite for offices with people who aren't geniuses when it comes to electronics and some gamers due to the ease of installation and configuration as well as game developers simply making their best games available for windows on a rather consistent basis. OS choice is usually not made, it's just whatever a person is introduced to initially or is used to already. </rant2>
Unfortunately (at least in the mind of most of us techies) the majority of users will never really know an operating system well enough to do everything they should be able to do with it, even with training, and we'll generally end up being asked to help them with relatively simple things. And we should, out of courtesy, compassion and the hope that they will continue to learn and teach someone else along the way so they won't also have to bother us. </very very very very long winded reply>
(yeah, I know I went a little overboard with the tags:P )
Something to keep in mind when you're troubleshooting something is not to make assumptions, if you are going to rule out a possibility, make sure the reason for doing so is based on solid, non-circular reasoning, logical and valid. Also keep in mind that several things in a computer work together to make something happen, so just because the monitor is where you first see the evidence that something is wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean that the monitor itself is the problem.
In this case, if you have the extra equipment, you might want to try and switch the LCD with another monitor which you know for sure is working fine and see if the same problem shows up. If the problem is there with the second monitor which you know works when plugged into another system, the monitor is probably not the problem. Keep in mind that if the problem doesn't show up in the second monitor that it doesn't rule out driver problems, different monitors use different drivers unless you leave them on the defaults, and even then if the monitor has different capabilities, the operating system might be using a different driver for it. This part of my comment is obviously targeted mainly towards Windows which will attempt to find the 'best' driver for a device with minimal interaction with the user.
The fact that the monitor worked fine when you took it home and plugged it into a different system (I'm assuming this is the case) suggests to me that it is more likely maybe the cord, a port, video drivers, other display software, video card, some outside influence on the LCD, or, worst case scenario, the port or controller on your motherboard which deals with the video card.
Hence, if you have an extra cord you can swap in, see if it makes a difference.
Download and install the latest video drivers for your hardware to make sure the drivers aren't the problem.
Do you have a video color or gamma correction program running? i.e. for a printer or graphics software (I know adobe has one, several printer manufacturers have their own). If so see what happens when you disable it, perhaps it's not configured correctly.
Did you change your video resolution? Some video cards will have unanticipated distortion when you change resolution, though it's usually with older video cards and also usually the brightness and contrast which are changed, not color hue, it's worth switching resolutions a couple times to make sure.
If it was a CRT I would tell you to make sure you didn't have magnets, speakers, or other unshielded electronics right next to it, but magnets don't seem to affect an LCD like they do a CRT. I don't know what prolonged exposure might do to them, but just putting a magnet up to an lcd usually won't distort the display like it will with a crt. Never the less, see what happens if you move your monitor to a different part of your desk, away from other electronics, the wall, power ports, again, nothing lost in trying and if it's environmental interference, it can be the hardest to pinpoint.
There have always been warnings about lasers being dangerous. Any laser beam emitted from a device, no matter how weak, is potentially damaging to stare into. That includes the bar code scanners at the store. Don't believe me? next time you pass an unoccupied register at sears, pick up one of those scanners and take a good look at the yellow labels around the window the beam comes out of.
You're right, the green lasers, being more powerful and of a higher frequency, will probably cause damage to the retina faster than the red lasers. However, there's a big difference between a 2 AAA battery powerd 5mW laser pointer and a 2 C cell battery powered 100+mW laser with safety construction, emission delay, and a necessary cooling fan. How much power is put into a laser directly affects how hazardous it is when you're talking about two lasers of the same type and frequency. The frequency just decides the color and how fast you can read data with it (as well as a list of other things relating to more advanced physics explanations than I care to go into). The 5mW laser pointer is slightly excessive and on the bright side, but it's not really dangerous unless you're pointing it at a reflective surface and/or looking into the beam, just like a red laser. The 100+mW laser, on the other hand is physically dangerous to anything within say, 100 meters (I approximate roughly on the side of caution, I hope it'll only itch a little at that distance) and within 10 meters is fully capable of burning holes in cups, screens, fingers, etc.
All lasers are dangerous, it's just a matter of understanding the danger and taking safety precautions.
I do, however, share your worries to a point as I can just see some idiot attempting to modify a pointer so that he can get a higher power output and hook it up to a car battery to get a quick and extremely dangerous burn of the smaller laser before something inside the device melts. Maybe we're lucky and It'll just melt before it gets to the beam emitter.
What heralds me shaking my head at this one is the fact that we're talking about India, a country in which software piracy (as well as music and video piracy) is rampant. I think some of the figures I've read state that something like 60% of newly purchased computers in India are shipped with pirated copies of Windows, something like 90% of Adobe software in India is allegedly pirated, and the list goes on. We could get into a debate about copyright enforcement in India, but the truth is that their economy would probably collapse if they were suddenly required to pay for all the pirated software in their country.
So getting back to the subject of patents, perhaps it's unfair of me, but my first reaction is to wonder if India's peoples will honor patents any more than they honor copyright.
http://www.express-computer.com/20020909/indtrend1.shtml/
This site hosts an article which contains some of the figures I've mentioned. It's a couple years old, however, and I'm not sure what current figures are.
What about the fundamental physics of matter rushing in to fill a void? Pure speculation, but outside the sphere of our universe as described, if there is nothing then maybe the universe is still accelerating to fill that void like a balloon stuck in a box under decompression. The baloon will expand to fill the space left when the air leaves and if it can't fill that space it will pop... On second thought, let's not think about that...
Not really. Like I said, I don't have a lot of knowledge about the more popular theories at the moment. I was just thinking about everything I've heard about black holes and have always had them referred to me as a kind of literal void in space, the gravity of which makes it seem like its eating itself as well as anything that gets close enough. (that's a more visually metaphoric way of putting it of course) I'm curious how it is possible that they register radiation from it when any photo I've seen (some in different spectrums of light if I remember correctly) always show a suspected black hole as a black void. I actually welcome the possibility of it radiating something because if such behavior exists, then it might be possible to use the circumstances surrounding that radiation to find a way to better study them once we have the capability of manipulating it. Of course, this is complete fantasy right now and probably going down a dark ally with a dead end as far as any true scientific study goes.
I'd get a kick out of it if they discovered how to plot velocity and acceleration rates of particles that would demonstrate this and then find a way to calculate the origin of the trip.
Of course, the trouble with that is that there would most likely be far too many unknowns to truly calculate and plot a reliable location and if the universe is actually expanding in the manner of a rubber sheet as someone stated earlier, then the calculations would only lead back to the origin of that particle, not to the origin.
Ok, before I say anything I'll state that I'm gleaning observations and ideas off of what I've read here more than anything I know about quantum physica, string theory, and/or the current notions surrounding singularities and black holes. I don't really know much about this stuff so don't take me too seriously.
As far as a black hole radiating small amounts of energy and/or particles, is it possible that some of this is simply particals getting caught in an outermost ring of matter at or near the event horizon, getting caught up in the angular rotation, and then getting shot back out again in the manner of something using another object's gravity as a sling shot or a ship heading into the edge of a whirlpool and launching back out of it a few turns later?
Slashdot Mirror
The list of potential applications reminds me of the Fallout series of video games. For those of you who haven't played or read about the world in those games, technological philosophies stopped at around the 1950's - 1960's, e.g. once they had fission reactors they stopped looking for better methods. The games take place in the post-nuclear winter era after the inevitable global-thermonuclear war. Houses, cars and most other forms of transportation and structures all had their own nuclear fission reactors built in for generating unlimited power. Nuclear fallout shelters were placed just about every square mile and were actually just covers for running unethical scientific experiments on communities and population groups, though I suppose they did actually serve the shelter purpose as well in some cases.
Isn't that what books on tape are for?
Oh well. I think it would be better as a movie than as a play anyway. Unfortunately the special effects department would probably get carried away when the characters jack in and suck up so much time that they'd forget to tell the story.
Actually, I would say that the biggest problem is that you can't really do much of anything if your user isn't admin level on a windows system. That's why almost every windows user is an administrator on the local machine. Even in enterprise level networks, this is the case with security vulnerabilities mitigated by group policies and patches.
On a *nix box a user can still install programs and use resources as long as it's not making changes outside that user's account. (i.e. restricted to that user's processes and home directory). On a windows machine, without administrative access you can't really do much more than access the internet and run maybe 1/4 of the programs available as long as they're already installed and aren't configured to do something goofy like access the registry or use a location outside the user's home directory or the system temp folders for doing file work.
Unfortunately, most windows programs seems to have been designed to expect administrative access in order to function properly even after installation
I would argue that these two arguments are always valid since there will always be users who aren't paying attention or are ignorant of what's going on with their own machine, and because it's extremely difficult to find and fix every exploit in any large piece of software.
I would still argue that though a worm could flourish under a specific user's account, it would still allow the damage be contained to that one user's account. Would you agree?
Do you also challenge my point's validity concerning traditional viruses, activex drive-by downloads, and the like? If so, what advantage would there be for desktop users in not having root access for all users, in your opinion?
Let's be fair about where they built the city. It was founded back in 1718. They didn't really know much about weather patterns back then. Not to mention that it was initially french, then went to the spanish after the seven years war (transition was from 1763 to 69), then became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
So where it's built is something we can blame the French for, we didn't get it until almost an entire century later. The levees... well, they've been relying on the natural levees since the place was initially founded to avoid major catastrophes and problems with levees, both natural and otherwise, is nothing new for that city. We are all aware of it now because of how horribly our emergency services responded to Katrina, which opened the door to the worst, which we all got to have spoon fed to us by our news media.
Here's some history, btw: http://www.madere.com/history.html
See personally I never thought it would be in discussion whether to allow non-root users to install packages. In my opinion it's one of the great advantages of *nix systems as far as security goes. Even the distributions with the root user disabled to make it easier on a desktop user, like Ubuntu, still require use of the sudo command. It's one of the biggest reasons certain worms and drive by download techniques which crippled Microsoft OS's never worked on *nix systems.
I imagine he could commission someone to hook up an air tube with a pressure sensor to a trigger pulling actuator. Then he could go for target practice, provided he has a similar device made for aiming the weapon. I imagine it would be difficult to use a scope, though...
Yes, that's true, however the average user has no idea what a package manager is either. I mean, let's face it, the majority of users are, in reality, Excel users or Word users, or have a knowledge of some proprietary business platform or other very specific program, or simply use the computer as a kind of internet access appliance with email. An alarmingly large number of users who can do wonders with individual programs have trouble figuring out where the volume setting is or why the screen goes dark if they just sit there and stare at it for a half hour. I've heard of Excel 'experts' who can code a vba script to handle a financial security's waterfall cash flows asking why Excel 'wasn't installed on the computer' when there just wasn't an icon on the desktop.
I guess what I'm saying is that this problem won't go away because there's always going to be clueless users who are just too lazy or too clueless to figure out what to do to understand simple things you and I would take for granted. This is why there will always be technical support help desks and there will always be System Administrators and things of that nature until we can program the machines to do everything themselves, at which point they will probably become self aware and stop obeying orders from us anyway. :)
First, hardware is designed to work with other hardware, it's the drivers which are written which allow the software to take advantage of that hardware. Any hardware can be made to work for any operating system if someone takes the time to write a good driver for that operating system.
That being said, there's a distinction right there, "home consumer". I'm not sure of the actual numbers but considering that it's difficult to find an industry which doesn't use computers as well as the type of hardware and software required for most of those industries it is my belief that corporate purchasing trends and requests drive the market. A typical home consumer will probably never set up a RAID array of SCSI drives or purchase a $10,000 (US) file server, or need the software and technology to network 1500 computers in one state with 3000 in another.
The main problem with an average windows user attempting a switch to linux is that they don't realize just how much they have to learn. Especially with younger generations who have grown up with windows computers around them and didn't have to work as hard to learn how to use it as some of the older generations. Linux just doesn't do things the same way. You have to start from scratch, learn the command prompt like older windows users had to learn the DOS system before being able to completely optimize windows systems prior to ME (though that was less necessary in 98). Once you have a grasp on the command prompt then you have to start learning about what's in the kernel and be able to extract, compile, and install drivers for hardware. Once you know how to use the core components, nything else is pretty much just another program which needs independent study to use well.
For someone who's only known windows the entire time they've been on a computer, it is very difficult to switch from that behemoth which integrates as much as possible into itself in order to keep the computer running in spite of the user, to Linux, which, in essense, does exactly what the user tells it to, no more and no less.
In my opinion that's really not that bad of an analogy. My philosophy when dealing with an array of absolutes is to take what rings true from all sides and leave the rest for the fanatics to fight over.
<rant1>
As for the fanatics, is it really that hard to forward someone a hyperlink to a howto or manual page? After all, RTFM as a philosophy is all well and good, but a lot of these people don't even know where the manual is, much less what RTFM means. Compassion is a virtue, not everyone has grown up around or fooled with computers for years. And even those that have don't always branch out beyond a particular brand or OS. Oh, tolerence is also a virtue, the perfect human is, by definition(in my opinion), flawed. A fleshy biped who was right all the time and never made a mistake would cease to fall within the definition of a human being.
</rant1>
<self righteous nugget>
thus, in practice, I'll be proficient at administrating windows and be happy to have it when I have slower and less computer literate people on staff who are baffled by a command prompt, but still work to convince my bosses to take advantage of some of the goodies Linux has in the future.
</self righteous nugget>
<rant2>
I mean, let's face it, there are elitests a plenty on all sides, most people are stuck in the middle and familiar with windows rather than linux primarily because it's what they use at work and/or it was what was installed on the first computer they ever purchased. As far as macintosh, some people just aren't drawn to that atmosphere or find difficulty comparing macs to other computers, getting confused by the terminology. For someone who's introduction to computing was with an operating system made to be usable for the most common simple tasks by selecting a descriptive picture, configuration files and program compiling are kind of far out there. It's a little easier for old school computing people who used older systems like vax, dos, and original unix architectures and present day administrators familiar enough with computers to be able to find, follow, and understand the linux howto's and learn. For a beginner to computers who only knows the windows GUI, the best you could hope for even if linux was pre-installed on a computer they purchased was that they would know one of the X interfaces, and then probably only with a working help system. Macintosh isn't as difficult to learn, but, once again, you need to tell the user where the help files are. As for which operating system is best, I'm leaving that alone. As far as I'm concerned different operating systems are just different ways of doing the same things. Operating systems have their strengths and weakensses over the others, for instance macintosh is the best for multimedia and sound and video production while linux, when properly configured, can be extremely secure and is capable of being customized to the point of being the most efficient specialist device possible, but Windows is a favorite for offices with people who aren't geniuses when it comes to electronics and some gamers due to the ease of installation and configuration as well as game developers simply making their best games available for windows on a rather consistent basis. OS choice is usually not made, it's just whatever a person is introduced to initially or is used to already.
</rant2>
Unfortunately (at least in the mind of most of us techies) the majority of users will never really know an operating system well enough to do everything they should be able to do with it, even with training, and we'll generally end up being asked to help them with relatively simple things. And we should, out of courtesy, compassion and the hope that they will continue to learn and teach someone else along the way so they won't also have to bother us.
</very very very very long winded reply>
(yeah, I know I went a little overboard with the tags
Something to keep in mind when you're troubleshooting something is not to make assumptions, if you are going to rule out a possibility, make sure the reason for doing so is based on solid, non-circular reasoning, logical and valid. Also keep in mind that several things in a computer work together to make something happen, so just because the monitor is where you first see the evidence that something is wrong, it doesn't necessarily mean that the monitor itself is the problem.
In this case, if you have the extra equipment, you might want to try and switch the LCD with another monitor which you know for sure is working fine and see if the same problem shows up. If the problem is there with the second monitor which you know works when plugged into another system, the monitor is probably not the problem. Keep in mind that if the problem doesn't show up in the second monitor that it doesn't rule out driver problems, different monitors use different drivers unless you leave them on the defaults, and even then if the monitor has different capabilities, the operating system might be using a different driver for it. This part of my comment is obviously targeted mainly towards Windows which will attempt to find the 'best' driver for a device with minimal interaction with the user.
The fact that the monitor worked fine when you took it home and plugged it into a different system (I'm assuming this is the case) suggests to me that it is more likely maybe the cord, a port, video drivers, other display software, video card, some outside influence on the LCD, or, worst case scenario, the port or controller on your motherboard which deals with the video card.
Hence, if you have an extra cord you can swap in, see if it makes a difference.
Download and install the latest video drivers for your hardware to make sure the drivers aren't the problem.
Do you have a video color or gamma correction program running? i.e. for a printer or graphics software (I know adobe has one, several printer manufacturers have their own). If so see what happens when you disable it, perhaps it's not configured correctly.
Did you change your video resolution? Some video cards will have unanticipated distortion when you change resolution, though it's usually with older video cards and also usually the brightness and contrast which are changed, not color hue, it's worth switching resolutions a couple times to make sure.
If it was a CRT I would tell you to make sure you didn't have magnets, speakers, or other unshielded electronics right next to it, but magnets don't seem to affect an LCD like they do a CRT. I don't know what prolonged exposure might do to them, but just putting a magnet up to an lcd usually won't distort the display like it will with a crt. Never the less, see what happens if you move your monitor to a different part of your desk, away from other electronics, the wall, power ports, again, nothing lost in trying and if it's environmental interference, it can be the hardest to pinpoint.
There have always been warnings about lasers being dangerous. Any laser beam emitted from a device, no matter how weak, is potentially damaging to stare into. That includes the bar code scanners at the store. Don't believe me? next time you pass an unoccupied register at sears, pick up one of those scanners and take a good look at the yellow labels around the window the beam comes out of.
You're right, the green lasers, being more powerful and of a higher frequency, will probably cause damage to the retina faster than the red lasers. However, there's a big difference between a 2 AAA battery powerd 5mW laser pointer and a 2 C cell battery powered 100+mW laser with safety construction, emission delay, and a necessary cooling fan. How much power is put into a laser directly affects how hazardous it is when you're talking about two lasers of the same type and frequency. The frequency just decides the color and how fast you can read data with it (as well as a list of other things relating to more advanced physics explanations than I care to go into). The 5mW laser pointer is slightly excessive and on the bright side, but it's not really dangerous unless you're pointing it at a reflective surface and/or looking into the beam, just like a red laser. The 100+mW laser, on the other hand is physically dangerous to anything within say, 100 meters (I approximate roughly on the side of caution, I hope it'll only itch a little at that distance) and within 10 meters is fully capable of burning holes in cups, screens, fingers, etc.
All lasers are dangerous, it's just a matter of understanding the danger and taking safety precautions.
I do, however, share your worries to a point as I can just see some idiot attempting to modify a pointer so that he can get a higher power output and hook it up to a car battery to get a quick and extremely dangerous burn of the smaller laser before something inside the device melts. Maybe we're lucky and It'll just melt before it gets to the beam emitter.
What heralds me shaking my head at this one is the fact that we're talking about India, a country in which software piracy (as well as music and video piracy) is rampant. I think some of the figures I've read state that something like 60% of newly purchased computers in India are shipped with pirated copies of Windows, something like 90% of Adobe software in India is allegedly pirated, and the list goes on. We could get into a debate about copyright enforcement in India, but the truth is that their economy would probably collapse if they were suddenly required to pay for all the pirated software in their country. So getting back to the subject of patents, perhaps it's unfair of me, but my first reaction is to wonder if India's peoples will honor patents any more than they honor copyright. http://www.express-computer.com/20020909/indtrend1 .shtml/
This site hosts an article which contains some of the figures I've mentioned. It's a couple years old, however, and I'm not sure what current figures are.
What about the fundamental physics of matter rushing in to fill a void? Pure speculation, but outside the sphere of our universe as described, if there is nothing then maybe the universe is still accelerating to fill that void like a balloon stuck in a box under decompression. The baloon will expand to fill the space left when the air leaves and if it can't fill that space it will pop... On second thought, let's not think about that...
Not really. Like I said, I don't have a lot of knowledge about the more popular theories at the moment. I was just thinking about everything I've heard about black holes and have always had them referred to me as a kind of literal void in space, the gravity of which makes it seem like its eating itself as well as anything that gets close enough. (that's a more visually metaphoric way of putting it of course) I'm curious how it is possible that they register radiation from it when any photo I've seen (some in different spectrums of light if I remember correctly) always show a suspected black hole as a black void. I actually welcome the possibility of it radiating something because if such behavior exists, then it might be possible to use the circumstances surrounding that radiation to find a way to better study them once we have the capability of manipulating it. Of course, this is complete fantasy right now and probably going down a dark ally with a dead end as far as any true scientific study goes.
I'd get a kick out of it if they discovered how to plot velocity and acceleration rates of particles that would demonstrate this and then find a way to calculate the origin of the trip. Of course, the trouble with that is that there would most likely be far too many unknowns to truly calculate and plot a reliable location and if the universe is actually expanding in the manner of a rubber sheet as someone stated earlier, then the calculations would only lead back to the origin of that particle, not to the origin.
Ok, before I say anything I'll state that I'm gleaning observations and ideas off of what I've read here more than anything I know about quantum physica, string theory, and/or the current notions surrounding singularities and black holes. I don't really know much about this stuff so don't take me too seriously. As far as a black hole radiating small amounts of energy and/or particles, is it possible that some of this is simply particals getting caught in an outermost ring of matter at or near the event horizon, getting caught up in the angular rotation, and then getting shot back out again in the manner of something using another object's gravity as a sling shot or a ship heading into the edge of a whirlpool and launching back out of it a few turns later?