the megacable strength will be reduced by a factor at least of ~70% with respect to the theoretical nanotube strength, today (erroneously) assumed in the cable design.
For this reason I've become quite skeptical. But please, prove me wrong, boy would that be cool.
Speaking as a Euroweenie, I just don't understand the apparent apathy in the USA with regards to the very serious issues surrounding vote counting machines.
You know, Belgium uses no-paper-trail electronic voting machines. I talked to a Belgian guy who had just voted here in Denmark (pen, manual count) and he boasted of the Belgian voting machines. I asked him how he knew the machine had counted his vote. "But it does". "Well, how do you know?".
He simply trusted the machine, and even when I pointed out the danger of not having any possibility of audition it didn't seem to worry him too much. He majored in political science. In the interest of fairness, I don't think anyone's cheating in Belgium, but I can't know.
I know of at least one Belgian (typical slashdotter) who detests the system, but in total my impression is that apathy is at least as widespread as in the US. The Danish system isn't perfect either, irregularities do happen, many through incompetence, and then some that are rather borderline. Some electronic system with paper trail seems like a good idea to me.
They can hardly be worse than Diebold, so the usual complaints about software quality don't apply.
But why not go all the way? Let the Indians do the actual voting! Many Americans don't care anyway and with a population about 5 times bigger the participation is bound to skyrocket. And, (tongue-slightly-in-cheek) Americans pick the wrong guys...
This smells vaguely like vaporware. At least none of the speakers at this years or last years Spin and Qubit conference seemed nearly as optimistic as these guys, even though there were several top notch people (and last year the focus was VERY much quantum computing).
In any case, the technology that comes to mind when I hear "very cold superconducting niobium quantum computer" is Josephson junctions. There's an article on it here.
What people does DWave have? What have they published previously?
After posting I get a new refresh of the article. Crap, a couple other people make comments along the same lines, and slashdot doesn't let you cancel a comment.
So I get a redundent mod.
Wish the durn moderators would take the Nyquist Sampling Theorem into account befor modding.
I disagree. The moderation is for the benefit of readers and to them your comment is indeed redundant. Ok, it sucks to be you right now, but if you honestly try to contribute to civilized discussion you'll end up with excellent karma anyway, even with the occasional slip.
Yes, there were quite a few pro-war demonstrators, but I think it was very few.
You know, protesting usually takes place to protest against government policy. There was very little need for pro-war protesting since it carried widespread support by the president, congress and the public.
When flying, did you ever notice all the businessmen carrying ALL their stuff as carry-on? Saves a huuge deal of time. Of course, you could allow carry-on on business-class only, the airlines would love that chance to charge extra.
Yes, and if you have an always-on computer, please consider running a TOR server. TOR includes mechanisms for limiting bandwidth usage and blocking certain connections at your choice.
Also, keep the cookies down. I personally block google cookies and those of a bunch of other ad vendors - these are the data that would give the most away about me. I really ought to run something like Privoxy
Oh yeah, and it will work just as well as all these sites giving me 5 years old error messages that my Konqueror should be upgraded to Netscape or IE 4.0 or higher. If you don't care about IE, just leave it to wallow in its own coding errors.
Linux rather be Not Yet Ready for the desktop, rather than joining the Desktop bandwagon, and becoming yet another Patch --> Update --> Service Pack --> Antivirus --> Unstable kind of a desktop OS.
Hey this is Free Software! There's no "one" Linux. In this case Debian Stable and Linspire respectively tend towards either side of the choice you present. Granted, there are probably distros out there that are just as desktop-ready as Linspire but more secure, so you may not have to choose at all.
Note to fanboys: I'm not saying this to diss either Debian or Linspire, it's just that they really have quite different philosophies. Please don't flame, I char really badly.
You may notice that one of the guys was in CS grad school. He's presenting results at a conference. His academic credibility is on the line.
Not actually demonstrating your methods while presenting them at a conference is pretty common in other disciplines where it's really hard to lug around an X-ray diffractometer or the New Guinea Urungwi tribe. In CS it's different, but I think the risk of interception is a pretty good excuse.
I'm not completely sure what you mean, but if you want to extract the radiation energy from the cooled atoms it's impossible. Alpha particles will give off all their kinetic energy within micrometers and there's no way to stop it from heating the alloy. (Which you want to keep cold or the effect will stop).
If it had been neutrons it might have worked - they can often penetrate several meters through the right substances, and it should be possible to set up neutron-stopping elements inside some system where the heat could run a turbine.
However, if your program links against libreadline (say), then your employer is required by law to GPL the entire program
But wouldn't you want to ask your employer before including "virally" licensed code like that? If you didn't he'd probably be rather pissed. (I would be.)
In any case that's not really the situation he describes. As I understand the situation one could claim that since he's acting alone, and knowingly against his contract, the company has not actually distributed the hypothetical FreeFoo project.[*] As such the company can not be liable for infringing copyright, in this case the GPL. (And what's the chance FreeFoo contributors would spend money suing them in such a murky situation?) OTOH they have a contractual claim to his contributions to the project, and unless they're willing to free them the FreeFoo developers will have little choice but to clean them out if they still want to be an open source project. Exposing them to that risk is IMO rather irresponsible.
[*] Whether this really is the case depends on lots of civil law that I have no idea about.
Your employer wouldn't want to get in a big GPL lawsuit just because you send in a patch to your favorite project.
IANAL, but I want to warn against this way of thinking.
Let's suppose his company actually holds the copyright of a patch he sent to the FreeFoo project. Now the FreeFoo project (and everyone distributing it) is infringing the copyright, unless they can argue that he was actually acting on behalf of the company when he donated the code. That is surely not made any easier by the fact that he contributed anonymously and knew that it was against his contract.
What would happen when this comes to light? Best case the company says "ok, we'll just donate it then" and everybody's in the clear.
Worse case the company says "this is copyright infringement, remove it from the project". Now the FreeFoo maintainers and all the distributors downstream have to halt their distribution until they have found and re-implemented his patches. Not a nice way to spend a weekend. It will probably take just a single letter from the company's lawyer to trigger that.
Worst case the company is SCO and he's a kernel contributor. Now how much trouble would that cause otherwise innocent people?
I suggest that he contacts his lawyer and/or the FSF to hear what he can do to keep everyone out of trouble. I also suggest he talks to some labor union to get their ideas on how to fight this kind of disgusting contract.
In any case, staying really really anonymous for now is probably a good idea.
Seems like they would do better with a France-like system - if no candidate has 50% in the first round the two leaders duke it out in the one-on-one second round, where presumaby Lopez Obrador would be pummeled. (Personally I'm more inclined towards parlamentarian coalition-based government than a winner-takes-all system, but that has its own problems so might not be right for all systems.)
I had no idea that matronymics were (sometimes) used in Mexico, thanks for the heads-up.
There's STILL no declared presidential winner there, and the losing idiot is still calling for marches, making unsubstantiated accusations, and not giving the legitimate government there a chance to function and do its job. He claims "the will of the people will be heard," forgetting the fact that almost 2/3 of the population were intelligent enough to vote *against* him.
That's funny, according to the BBC the two candidates had 35.88 and 35.31% respectively. Apparently Mexico has more than two candidates taking a serious share of the vote.
Regarding the "mess" Obrador should probably have conceded by now, but in any case the Mexican electoral commission hasn't ruled finally yet. I won't even mention hanging chads;-)
Slashdot Mirror
At least that's the conclusion of Nicola M. Pugno:
the megacable strength will be reduced by a factor at least of ~70% with respect to the theoretical nanotube strength, today (erroneously) assumed in the cable design.
For this reason I've become quite skeptical. But please, prove me wrong, boy would that be cool.
Snake Oil Warning Signs: Encryption Software to Avoid
Last updated 1998, still insightful.
Yes, and Flint has even more to say on DRM, free books and the future of publishing.
It's evil I tell you. EEeeeevil! I happened upon the free library, and now Baen has my soul and my wallet. Be forewarned.
Speaking as a Euroweenie, I just don't understand the apparent apathy in the USA with regards to the very serious issues surrounding vote counting machines.
You know, Belgium uses no-paper-trail electronic voting machines. I talked to a Belgian guy who had just voted here in Denmark (pen, manual count) and he boasted of the Belgian voting machines. I asked him how he knew the machine had counted his vote. "But it does". "Well, how do you know?".
He simply trusted the machine, and even when I pointed out the danger of not having any possibility of audition it didn't seem to worry him too much. He majored in political science. In the interest of fairness, I don't think anyone's cheating in Belgium, but I can't know.
I know of at least one Belgian (typical slashdotter) who detests the system, but in total my impression is that apathy is at least as widespread as in the US. The Danish system isn't perfect either, irregularities do happen, many through incompetence, and then some that are rather borderline. Some electronic system with paper trail seems like a good idea to me.
They can hardly be worse than Diebold, so the usual complaints about software quality don't apply.
But why not go all the way? Let the Indians do the actual voting! Many Americans don't care anyway and with a population about 5 times bigger the participation is bound to skyrocket. And, (tongue-slightly-in-cheek) Americans pick the wrong guys...
No, they want the cleaning company. (2005 revenue $8e9)
They've put up a paper on their techniques. And judging from the pictures, they do something that looks like serious research. Interesting. Apparently they're after quantum chemical computations.
This smells vaguely like vaporware. At least none of the speakers at this years or last years Spin and Qubit conference seemed nearly as optimistic as these guys, even though there were several top notch people (and last year the focus was VERY much quantum computing).
In any case, the technology that comes to mind when I hear "very cold superconducting niobium quantum computer" is Josephson junctions. There's an article on it here.
What people does DWave have? What have they published previously?
Maybe you should look into this really nice bunch of intros to quantum computing. (Click on "Tutorials").
I disagree. The moderation is for the benefit of readers and to them your comment is indeed redundant. Ok, it sucks to be you right now, but if you honestly try to contribute to civilized discussion you'll end up with excellent karma anyway, even with the occasional slip.
Yes, there were quite a few pro-war demonstrators, but I think it was very few.
You know, protesting usually takes place to protest against government policy. There was very little need for pro-war protesting since it carried widespread support by the president, congress and the public.
When flying, did you ever notice all the businessmen carrying ALL their stuff as carry-on? Saves a huuge deal of time. Of course, you could allow carry-on on business-class only, the airlines would love that chance to charge extra.
Yes, and if you have an always-on computer, please consider running a TOR server. TOR includes mechanisms for limiting bandwidth usage and blocking certain connections at your choice.
Also, keep the cookies down. I personally block google cookies and those of a bunch of other ad vendors - these are the data that would give the most away about me. I really ought to run something like Privoxy
The latency issues have been more or less resolved by FreeNX, maybe read this nice NX intro.
Check out cosmopod.com - I think they still offer free testing NX desktops.
Oh yeah, and it will work just as well as all these sites giving me 5 years old error messages that my Konqueror should be upgraded to Netscape or IE 4.0 or higher. If you don't care about IE, just leave it to wallow in its own coding errors.
Linux rather be Not Yet Ready for the desktop, rather than joining the Desktop bandwagon, and becoming yet another Patch --> Update --> Service Pack --> Antivirus --> Unstable kind of a desktop OS.
Hey this is Free Software! There's no "one" Linux. In this case Debian Stable and Linspire respectively tend towards either side of the choice you present. Granted, there are probably distros out there that are just as desktop-ready as Linspire but more secure, so you may not have to choose at all.
Note to fanboys: I'm not saying this to diss either Debian or Linspire, it's just that they really have quite different philosophies. Please don't flame, I char really badly.
You may notice that one of the guys was in CS grad school. He's presenting results at a conference. His academic credibility is on the line.
Not actually demonstrating your methods while presenting them at a conference is pretty common in other disciplines where it's really hard to lug around an X-ray diffractometer or the New Guinea Urungwi tribe. In CS it's different, but I think the risk of interception is a pretty good excuse.
They will figure it out. And yes, the plan is to have these things on the internet.
I'm not completely sure what you mean, but if you want to extract the radiation energy from the cooled atoms it's impossible. Alpha particles will give off all their kinetic energy within micrometers and there's no way to stop it from heating the alloy. (Which you want to keep cold or the effect will stop).
If it had been neutrons it might have worked - they can often penetrate several meters through the right substances, and it should be possible to set up neutron-stopping elements inside some system where the heat could run a turbine.
However, if your program links against libreadline (say), then your employer is required by law to GPL the entire program
But wouldn't you want to ask your employer before including "virally" licensed code like that? If you didn't he'd probably be rather pissed. (I would be.)
In any case that's not really the situation he describes. As I understand the situation one could claim that since he's acting alone, and knowingly against his contract, the company has not actually distributed the hypothetical FreeFoo project.[*] As such the company can not be liable for infringing copyright, in this case the GPL. (And what's the chance FreeFoo contributors would spend money suing them in such a murky situation?) OTOH they have a contractual claim to his contributions to the project, and unless they're willing to free them the FreeFoo developers will have little choice but to clean them out if they still want to be an open source project. Exposing them to that risk is IMO rather irresponsible.
[*] Whether this really is the case depends on lots of civil law that I have no idea about.
Your employer wouldn't want to get in a big GPL lawsuit just because you send in a patch to your favorite project.
IANAL, but I want to warn against this way of thinking.
Let's suppose his company actually holds the copyright of a patch he sent to the FreeFoo project. Now the FreeFoo project (and everyone distributing it) is infringing the copyright, unless they can argue that he was actually acting on behalf of the company when he donated the code. That is surely not made any easier by the fact that he contributed anonymously and knew that it was against his contract.
What would happen when this comes to light? Best case the company says "ok, we'll just donate it then" and everybody's in the clear.
Worse case the company says "this is copyright infringement, remove it from the project". Now the FreeFoo maintainers and all the distributors downstream have to halt their distribution until they have found and re-implemented his patches. Not a nice way to spend a weekend. It will probably take just a single letter from the company's lawyer to trigger that.
Worst case the company is SCO and he's a kernel contributor. Now how much trouble would that cause otherwise innocent people?
I suggest that he contacts his lawyer and/or the FSF to hear what he can do to keep everyone out of trouble. I also suggest he talks to some labor union to get their ideas on how to fight this kind of disgusting contract.
In any case, staying really really anonymous for now is probably a good idea.
Seems like they would do better with a France-like system - if no candidate has 50% in the first round the two leaders duke it out in the one-on-one second round, where presumaby Lopez Obrador would be pummeled. (Personally I'm more inclined towards parlamentarian coalition-based government than a winner-takes-all system, but that has its own problems so might not be right for all systems.)
I had no idea that matronymics were (sometimes) used in Mexico, thanks for the heads-up.
Black hole life preserver to the rescue![*]
Ok, maybe not entirely rescue, but it would buy you time. Only 0.09 seconds to tell the truth, but it's something.
[*] Not tested in dual hole configuration, use at your own risk, no liability implied.
There's STILL no declared presidential winner there, and the losing idiot is still calling for marches, making unsubstantiated accusations, and not giving the legitimate government there a chance to function and do its job. He claims "the will of the people will be heard," forgetting the fact that almost 2/3 of the population were intelligent enough to vote *against* him.
That's funny, according to the BBC the two candidates had 35.88 and 35.31% respectively. Apparently Mexico has more than two candidates taking a serious share of the vote.
Regarding the "mess" Obrador should probably have conceded by now, but in any case the Mexican electoral commission hasn't ruled finally yet. I won't even mention hanging chads ;-)
Abstract and full text PDF. (currently freely available).