They voted for bush, therefore they should be placed under a worldwide embargo.
No we didn't. Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court - embargo them... Ok the second time he almost one a majority, but apparently it takes a 2/3 majority to defeat a neocon.
What I find really amuzing is that none of the French people I work with (and there are many) had even heard of the software patent issue. Actually none of the Europeans I work with had heard of it... Yet, and this speaks to the sad state of the US media, they seemed to know all about Michael Jackson and what's-her-name, the brain dead woman from Florida... Maybe that's how 54 million Americans can be so stupid?
I had an interesting discussion with a friend, he was telling me that by using ad-blocking on the web, I was treatening good wepages themselves by denying them their source of revenue to pay for bandwitdh et al. Same story with the DVD and Tivo, the price would go up since the ads would have no effect. He saif ad-blocking is legal, but wrong in terms of ethics.
Ad-filtering is an anchient Darwinian dance. They (marketing folks) find more and more places to stick ads. We (the consumer) certainly have the right to avoid those ads, and they the right to make them harder to avoid. If your friend had his way, the web would be simply impossible to use as there would be hundreds of pop-up ads every time you clicked on a link. The pop-up ad needed to die, and as more and more people figured out how to block pop-up ads (by downloading Mozilla;) ) natural selection started to kill them off.
I am a relentless ad-blocker. I feel like the space in my brain taken up by jingles for products that were discontinued in 1985 is wasted and if had TiVo back then that same space might have been taken up by something usefull... Maybe I'd be a better speller or have been able to remember my times tables (to this day I cannot do long division on paper)...
I like the challenge of steering around ads. Time-shifting internet radio broadcasts, downloading shows with the commercials edited out (rather than using the 30 sec commercial skip on TiVo), ripping DVDs to strip all the protections off and dump all the stupid previews and ads... So as it stands I can either buy a DVD (which I still do regularly), download it off the internet, download a compressed MPEG-4 version, or any combination of the above (well, accordin the MPAA I shouldn't do the last two). Right now the DVD I download (or rip/reencode, but that is more time consuming) has all the protections removed and I can skip whatever I want. So where is the incentive to pay for a DVD that forces me to sit through previews for movies I might already own? Perhaps if movies studios offered me commercial DVDs with more advanced skipping features (like parental controls or the ability to seamlessly add/remove scenes from the 'directors cut' or just skip the *#!!*$ previews and FBI warnings) I would prefer the commercial discs and stop downloading rips... Then the MPAA could say "see, suing people is working; downloads have decreaased". So the same applies to web ads and TV commercials - I'm going to keep skipping them until they give me a reason not to. Hopefully that reason won't involve a Clockwork Orange-like chair with my eyelids pinned to my forehead, but with the current administration in the White House, you never know:)
what tends to happen in hollywood is that scripts are cast not by talent but by marketability and personality. when a script is sold in hollywood it is sold primarily based on the appeal of a particular actor. and typical audiences are not looking for actual talent - they are looking for personalities. i.e. when you go to see Jack Nickelson in a movie you want to see "Jack Nickelson". you don't want to see Jack do something other than himself. Same thing with Sean Connery.
I coulnd't agree more. The best actors IMHO are the ones that you see in a movie and go "that guy... Yeah, he's really good... He's bee in a ton of movies, but I can't really remember.." That said, there are some scripts that really fit an actor's personality. Han Solo comes to mind:)
Re:really a superconductor?
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You seem to have forgotten that the heat loss in computers is due to the SEMICONDUCTORS inside. You know, those pesky little PN junctions made from doped silicon, germanium, or rust? Adding superconductors to the power subsystem in a computer would do nothing to reduce the radiated heat.
I've listened to plenty of people from IBM drone on about interconnects and the need for better conducting (and better insulating) materials. They argue heat dissipation as one of the reasons silicon will become obsolete within a couple of decades. For the time being (they say) we will have to use stop-gap solutions say, for example, superconducting pathways between transistors. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I will take what they say at face value.
The electric motor that spins the platters of your hard drive, the electronics that drive the laser in your CD burner, the copper wire carrying current from the PSU, the copper traces that move electricity between components, the gold connectors in the PCI, IDE, SATA, etc. connectors... All things dissipate heat. I'm not 100% sure how "put your hand on your computer case" translates into "adding superconductors to the power subsystem in a computer". I'm not even sure what a power subsystem is.
Re:really a superconductor?
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However, if when you remember the armchair product design and commerce experts of days gone by, it's only healthy to be skeptical about the credibility and competence of slashdot posters. And editors.
You'll never hear me bad-mouthing skepticism... Afterall it is how I make a living;)
Re:really a superconductor?
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You're right, in BCS superconductors electrons must interact with the lattice in order to form Cooper pairs. However, you're wrong about nanotubes not being crystalline - nanotubes are perfect two dimensional lattices rolled onto themselves (rolled up graphene sheets). For nanotube superconductivity, you don't need a crystalline lattice of nanotubes, you just need one nanotube.
Please read what I wrote. I said CNTs are not crystalline over large enough domains. That is, you cannot make a perfect nanotube of any appreciable length. You certainly cannot make (or isolate) all one type of nanotube (e.g. metallic) at such scales. I never claimed superconductivity didn't exist in CNTs either; I was refering specifically to that article. Of course you can observe super conductivity in sinlge nanotube, as long as electrons don't have to hop across tubes or run into a defect site. You can observe superconductivity in many things near 0 K:)
Perhaps I was a little unclear that I was not making a general statement about CNTs not being superconductors, but you really need read peoples' posts before you reply to them.
Re:really a superconductor?
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I was under the impression that type-II superconductors consisted of small domains of Type-I that become additive macroscopically... The High-Tc inorganic superconductors are all Type-II, correct?
Re:really a superconductor?
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No. Superconductors must be able to form so-called Cooper Pairs in order for electrons to move in the coherent manner in which no energy is lost. I gather the rules are a little different at really small scales where tunneling becomes a much bigger issue and some of the energy relationships are backwards, but the principle is still the same; if electrons bang into something they lose energy.
Metallic carbon nanotubes, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be made crystalline (perfectly regular) over large enough domains for this to happen thus there is "minimal energy loss" and they are really just very, very, very low resistance conductors (you can tell the difference by looking at the temperature dependance of the resistance).
The thing is, unless you want to build a mag-lev train, you don't really need a perfect super conductor. Right now the conductivities of the metals used in electronis are around 10^6 - 10^10 (inverse ohms per centimeter) and you can put your hand on your computer case to see just how much energy is dissipated as heat. If you increased those conductivities (with metallic carbon nanotubes for example) then your heat sink shrinks and your clock cycles come up... Assuming we can wire teeny tiny circuits with nanotubes. More importantly, you can drive portable electronics with less power, and thus smaller batteries.
BTW (regarding the very first post), some of the Slashdot Armchair Scientists (there are other sciences besides physics too you know) out here in computer land have Masters and PhDs and have published or worked in the field. Some of us have even met and/or worked with the people mentioned in the articles. I wouldn't be so quick to push aside honest criticism, afterall that is what scientists are trained to do - be skeptical:)
You're right that the bonds make the total mass smaller. But we're talking about stable molecules here, which bonded in one specific way. If their mass were to change, they would have to decay or interact with the environment. If the molecule is stable, it's energy is very well defined. The only limiting factor is the principle of uncertainty, which basically tells here, that the longer you measure the mass, the more precise you are. So the deviation of the measurement may change, but not its expectation value. It would be very interesting, however, if we could apply this -- or other -- technique to measuring masses of unstable molecules and watch how it changes in time.
Huh? You're going to have to explain to me how you bonds change the mass of a molecule... Especially decreasing it. I'm really curious where you heard this. Perhaps there is some nuance to this statement that I'm missing? Are you saying that the mass of the constituent atoms is different than that of a molecule? This can certianly be true if electrons are gained or lost, but chemical bonds don't affect anything beyond the valence electrons of the atoms. As for uncertainty - I'm not buying it. Even if there was a teeny tiny mass "change" over time, you'd be hard pressed to observe it, especially when you're talking about molecules weighing thousands of Daltons... The difference in scale would be like trying to measure the mass you loose from expelling carbon dioxide while standing on your bathroom scale - and having to take into account mass loss to water evaporation, skin exfoliation, etc. Macromolecules, especially biological molecules, have static charge build up, hydration, aggregation, etc. all contributing to a very dynamic system.
At any rate the "mass of a molecule" is an average of all the weights based on the natrual abundance of isotopes because that is the only factor that affects the mass of two molecules with the same empirical formula. "Unstable" molecuels loose mass by becoming different molecules. It is incorrect to say that a molecule's weight changes - that is impossible (save radioactive decay) because when the empirical formula changes, you no longer have the same molecule.
At any rate, it is an interesting challenge to identify biological molecules by weighing them one at a time, as the horrific isotope distribution in the mass spec of any macromolecule demonstrates.
It's an April Fool's joke you idiot. Weighing molecules, what idiocy. Like you can make a molecule-sized set of scales to weight it on. Not to mention that molecules don't weight straight down like objects, they float about, so wouldn't press down on the scales. The rest of the article is filled with pseudo-science drivel to try to look clever and hide the fact that they're making the whole thing up
Indeed. I shared an office with a physicist working on essentially the same thing at IBM and I gan assure you it wasn't pseudo-science. There are plenty of "real" journals in which this research has been published. The reason you don't see them on Slashdot is 'cause they cost money to look at unless your institution pays for a subscription.
The way I see it is, this is protection from government controlled internet. Not only would I fear things like the Patriot Act finding its way on to the backbone of the internet, but state controlled free internet would kill any competition. (Why pay when its free?)
That's all fine and good in bizzaro land where bandwidth is infinite. Look, free dial-up services don't rule the Earth because they suck. Free WiFi access will be so crowded that those that want to pay for a premium service that is fast will do so. You'd have the bare-bones free service, or a faster "premium" service you can pay for. For those sporting the tin foil hat, you can pay for the uber-private government-can't-spy-on-me service.
The problem here is people seem to think that the options are to A) give the government a mononpoly or B) give the private sector a monopoly. When really what we're talking about is forcing the private sector to innovate and offer a servive that is woth paying for unlike my cable modem with I have to choice but to pay for. The latter is what you'll wind up with if commmunity based free WiFi is banned. And really that's what we're talking about. It's not like the Federal Government is going to roll through with free WiFi everywhere. Free WiFi is more like public parks in that "the government" is more like "government funded co-op".
Congress realized the importance of free Internet when they drafted laws to protect it from taxation, privatization, over-regulation (well...) much like citizen's band radio... Except way cooler. So why should the public be prevented from organizing free access to a free, public, tax payer funded service? How many times have you tried to get on the freeway only to find that your subscription to the 405 has expired?
You know this reminds me of the recent energy deregulation in my state (California) where Engron was belly aching because the big-bad inefficient government was making it impossible for the poor little energy companies to offer us better, fastter, cheaper electricity. The argument pretty much boiled down to "boo-hoo our tiny innocent little company just wants to offer you cheap electricity, but the big bad bloated government won't let us!". My thought was "What a load of partisan propaganda, they just want to bilk California out of billions by effectively banning the government from getting involved just like they did in most of South America, England, France, and parts of Asia. No one will buy that."... Just sit down and think about who you're siding with. The government, which is made up of you and me, or a huge multinational corporation run by people so rich you couldn't even afford to have lunch with them.
How's that? AFAIK, you can't form salts with carbon (aka graphite). Only with things like halide ions.
I can guarentee you it is possible to form salts with basically every element on the periodic table. Halide salts are sometimes called "simple salts" or "mineral salts". You don't usually hear carbanions (or carbocations for that matter) referred to as "salts", but if you mix lithium metal and graphite (which is a carbon allotrope, but "carbon" and "graphite" are really not the same thing; graphite is a form of elemental carbon) you will in fact produce carbon anion / lithium cation ion pairs. Almost every commercial drug is packaged as a salt (usually an amine salt) to make it water soluble and boner pills are certianly not simple halogens : )
This all sounds like BS to me. Our lab is part of a nation-wide program to develop new battery technologies and I have no idea why they claim lattice strain as the main cause for eletrode fatigue... The problem with ANY battery is that ions have to move as the battery is charged/discharged. These ions are all lithium in lithium-ion batteries (AKA lithium rocking chair or rocker batteries). The material between the electrode compartments has to be a insulator able to transport Li+ reliably. Since liquids in batteries are not such a good thing they use various gel mixtures for this medium (and the rate of ion diffusion is inversly related to viscosity). Every charge/discharge cycle more an more ions get stuck and hence lower the capacity of the battery over time.
The "problem" electrode as far as I know is actually the graphite (like the stuff in pencils) end which get's reduced and forms a lithium salt. When you hook up battery the graphite re-oxidizes, sending the electrons through the circuit and Li+ through the insulating medium. Most "nanomaterials" focus on increasing the surface area of this electrode to allow for more efficient (and rapid) charge storage/discharge. At the other electrode is some (probably cystalline) inorganic oxidant which does break down over time. My guess is that they just found some new inorganic electrode material that is slightly better and they, like EVERY other lab, are claiming they've "solved" the Li-ion battery problem. I've seen way too many talks from people claiming essentially the same thing to put my grains of salt away just yet.
But hey, I'm not on the nanobattery (did you barf?) project and am by no means an expert, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong... FYI "nano" makes me want to puke too. Every week there is some jack-ass giving a talk about "nanomaterials" that are MICROns in size and characterized with MICROscopy. In chemistry land (where I live) a nanometer might as well be a mile (except electrons tunnel more frequently) 'cause atoms are really freaking tiny and that's what we've been using to build our materials for over 200 years : )
The above link is information regarding the EFF's court challenge to the broadcast flag law. They claim the FCC is overstepping their authority. They also point out that where the FCC has no jurisditicion (cable, sat, etc.) companies are happlily enabling the broadcast flag of their own free will... So what now? We boycott our HDTV sat/cable broadcasts? No beer and no TV make Homer go something something....
The Sat receivers have no such common format -- you're stuck with their receivers, and transfer to other devices is analog (except for HD)
That's not true either. While the DirecTiVo boxes won't support MomeMedia, my box (which channel changes by serial cable, hence no IR screw-ups) has the HomeMedia option which allows me to export recorded content to a PC or to another TiVo. As of it's release it's dripping with DRM and is Winblows only (maybe Mac too, but certianly not Linux ), but you can in fact burn it to DVD or copy it to another computer; you'd just need the password to play it on the 2nd computer. If you have other HomeMedia-enabled TiVos in the house they will all be able to play content off of each other real-time. The HomeMedia option sucks rocks compared to downloading other peoples' rips (it can't be illegal to download copies of shows you've already recorded... Oh wait this is America) because the copying is real-time, but I bet it kicks ass for a dialup user or neophyte that doesn't know how to download TV rips.
Wow... Reading these posts (especially under this parent) is like a window into big-brained people's insecurities. Let's face it, you're only as smart as people perceive you to be. Look at me, I'm an idiot, but people ask me for my opinion constantly. Why? Because I'm the only moron dumb enough to offer one (though often when it ISN'T wanted). Does that make me smart? Hell no. Does that make me successful? Aparently yes.
Reading about everyone insecurities and rationalizations for why apparently dumber-than-you people are doing better on homework/tests (I'm a perfectionist comes to mind) takes me back... I could never figure out why all those suck-up, idiot, rule-following, conformist jack-asses were doing better in school, getting big fat scholarships, and going to fancy colleges while I was being groomed over for pumping gas because I smoked pot, cut classes and liked run-on sentences. What was my excuse... Oh yeah, "I wasn't being challenged enough" (I'm also a little dyslexic so exuse any type-o's). Turns out I'm just lazy and stubborn. Or am I? Shit, I don't know anymore because society keeps rewarding me for being an idiot. I'm just waiting for the rug to get pulled out from underneith me.
Anyway, if you're self-aware enough to make excuses for failure and motivated enough to keep trying, then you're probably smart... And if you're posting those feelings here, a geek too. I think this topic touched a nerve because yes, this kind of stuff is just the kind of rationalization for failure big-brained insecure nerds need to motivate us (oops I said us!) to keep trying. Just read the study, empathize with your fellow geeks, light some candles and pray to the poster of Bill Gates.
I smell a rat... I mean, the big telecom utilities were on the short end of a lot of court decisions lately (like VOIP being immune to telecom utility taxes and regulations) and I have to assume they didn't just go quietly into the night. Call me paranoid, but our current White House is notoriously big-business friendly and so is Michael Powell. I think that this is a result of lobbying efforts from telecom utilities. Utility companies have a long history of trying to screw consumers and their competition (see FDR's New Deal and modern deregulation) through the manipulation of legislation. As has been pointed out by others, this is the sort of thing we pay taxes for the government to figure out how to enforce. I'd be curious to know who has historically paid for the development of wire-tap technology, specifically that of cell phone and email monitoring.
Downloading software from a BBS in 1982 was difficult and time consuming. Downloading a song on the Internet is quick and painless. Downloading a movie is still not quick and painless for most of the Internet users, but it could get to be there.
I see a commercial for a new movie that's in the theater. I say Hmmm, Id like to see that. I update my USENET headers or search for a torrent... By the time I'm done cooking dinner my movie is waiting for me to watch. I submit to you that downloading movies IS quick and painless!
I would argue that if I could pay for that service, I certainly would... In fact, I pay for my USENET access and every indie-flick that distributes through the internet (they are rare, but indie music is more common). The problem here is that the MPAA doesn't want to have to invest in a new market because they see the end of their industry as it exists now. The RIAA is reluctantly going along, but it is like pulling teeth to get them to realize the DRM will never work and they will have to accept the existance of piracy much like dubbing CDs onto tapes. Granted downloading MP3s is easier, but there is a larger consumer base on the internet to offset that.
Let's be realistic... What does "98% piracy rate" mean? A more relavent percentage is the percentage of US made movies/music/software that is the target of that 98% piracy rate. Why? Because US companies largely ignore China as a viable market specifically because they don't have all the anti-piracy laws the US has. Therefore, the easiest method to aquire software/movies/music is to pirate it. (now charging people for said pirated material is certainly a problem, I won't argue against that)
I agree completely with the Apple ][ argment, but reach a different conclusion... That is people will aquire goods and services in the most convenvient way possible. If that turns out to be free, then they'll steal it. If you charge them for it, then most people will pay... The problem with piracy in the 80's was the that PCs were still really a niche market whereas today you can reasonably assume that every household has a computer. I don't think anyone is talking about walking away the multi-billion dollar game industry because of rampant piracy (which is far worse than any other in my opinion).
The fundamentally free and unregulated nature of the internet will never foster laws that will make it less convenient to download movies that to go to the theater thus, when the dust settles, movies will be legally distributed over the internet because that is the most convenient way for consumers to consume the MPAA's product.
Every other week we see an announcement like this. It makes me wonder if in ages past, people took innovation and technological advancement like this for granted. Did it feel the same to live in the Renaissance?
The reason you seen announcements like this every other week is funding. Grant money is drying up for research (thanks Bush), thus it becomes more important to sell your research. The C&E News is the American Chemical Society's "industry" newsletter. The last ACS meeting focused on "nanoscience" because the nano buzz word get's you funding these days. Don't get me wrong, this is interesting research, but the ability to get grants funded and papers published boils down to name recognition and the ability to sell your research as the next greatest nano computing, data storage, bullet proof fiber, etc etc etc.
During a DARPA funding review a PI (this is second hand) remarked that they could build a cloaking device by the decade's end... These DARPA people represent the latest puddle of poorly utilized defense funds that get handed out to the researcher's that can trot out the best dog and pony show. They buy into these exaggerated claims you see in the introduction section of pubs, which are typically left out when presenting the research to peers.
In every case when I've pressed a PI on the real-world applications of their new miracle material, they admit that the practical application is precluded by some enormous flaw that isn't apparent in the publication. I think the recent rotaxane-basd molecular computing debate is an excellent example of the public hype / professional scrutiny dichotomy that exists as a result of the battle for funding. The New York times, Scientific American, etc picked up Science magazine's claim of "research of the year" while the scientific community was raking them over the coals for poor controls and a lack of supporting data.
To answer your question, no the Renaissance probably didn't feel like this. Back then scientists were hobbiests who's discoveries went largely unrecognized for decades or centuries. In modern day the opposite applies and career scientists try to sell their discoveries as the next light bulb when in reality it's just a drop in the bucket.
Well that explains it : ) There have been major advances in LCD technology since 2000, let alone 1997.
There are several patents by J. Lilienfeld and others on thin film field effect transistors dating back the 20ies. Unfortunately no way to manufacture them back then..
That's really interesting that the idea of FETs is older than the solid state transistor. I'm a chemist, so I know more about the history of the materials used in FETs rather than the theory itself.
And which if the zillion record claiming papers would that be? (try a search on "high efficient" on the AIP website:) )
Disclaimer; I don't work in their lab, I simply use their facilities to make OLEDs once in a while... They claim the highest external efficiency as of December of 2003 right around 40 Cd/A. As fast as that field is growing, I wouldn't be surprised to find that record broken twice again by now though. I will say that of the zillions of claims, these guys actually do know what their doing.
Uhm.. where exactly are you criticising my statement? It seems to be well in line with what I was claiming. You forgot to mentionthat also quite some light is lost due to the TFT circuitry, the filler material and the light spreader. But anyways.. the killer is the polarization, 50% intrinsic light loss is not too convincing..
I was pointing out that 90% light loss is simply not true. You are quite correct that light is loss from the electronics, ITO, etc, but 90% is an exaggeration at best. The polarization problem has been solved. As I said, backlights can now emit polarized light that is in phase with the first polarizer, thus the problem of out of plane light being reflected has been solved.
Yes, but people have claimed the same about silicon FETS from 1924 until well into the 60ies...
We're talking about "Field Effect Transistors" here right? Now this is an honest question because I don't know the answer: How were people speculating on FETs in the 20's when the transistor hadn't been invented yet? Were these theoretical predictions? Again though, organic FETs also have the lifetime problem. Standard CMOS FETs run circles around pentacene-based FETs in terms of life time.
Anyway, I don't want to start a big argument, I just meant to point out that LCDs are going to be around for quite a while because they're just not as bad as people (especially people who make OLEDs) would like you to think. The lab I make OLEDs in has produced the most efficient OLEDs ever published (and PLEDs for that matter), but they just can't complete in terms of lifetime for LCDs.
Yes, but in a TFT display you lose close to 90% of your light to the TFT and Liquid Crystal panel. So if your backlights efficiency is 60 lumen/W the total display efficiency is more like 6 lumen/W, even neglecting the the power consumption for the panel..
That just isn't true. Liquid crystal display backlighs emit polarized light which all but eliminates wasted light. The issue with LCDs is that the backlight is constantly on, even when a pixel is "dark". Organic light emitting devices (diodes if you prefer) emit a very narrow band of visible light (no IR, UV, etc.) that is tunable, and only consumes energy when a pixel is actually generating light. An LCD also uses colored filters (more wasted light) to generate color displays whereas OLEDs use different emissive species for different colors. If you ever get a chance to see an Alq3 based green OLED in person, you will realize why this technology is promising.
The sticking point for current OLED technology is lifetime. An LCD display can function for years while the best OLED would be lucky to useable after a year or two.
Reading these posts I get the feeling that not many of you have actually filed a patent. When we make a new molecule, the structure is patented. Is it because it is a useful invention? No, it is because we worked hard to make it. If someone does use it to create something profitable, we get to take a cut and that is all the patent guarentees.
In fact, the purpose of patents is to enable ideas to be made public to further the progress of technology while protecting the inventors (and the people who funded them) from the theft of their work.The details of all patents are published in paper and on the web 1 (or 2 I can't remember) years after being filed. This is typically before the patent is even granted (this takes 2-3 years).
Without patents inventors would use the "trade secrets" classification for every useful invention (this is what has kept the recipe to Coke a secret for the better part of the 20th century) becuase they never expire and they do not require publication. Otherwise people would steal their ideas and profit from them (read: Microsoft). This is the purpose of the USPTO: to facilitate the sharing of knowledge while protecting the invenstments made to aquire that knowledge.
As long as I can stick a server in Zimbabwe and serve files off of it there's jack shit the RIAA can do about it.
You can stick your server in Zimbabwe and hope, but if too many people start doing that you can bet that draconian restrictions on getting data over the 'net from that country will follow. In the meantime, do be careful never to set foot on US soil, won't you?
This RIAA thing is scary similar to satellite piracy... They're using basically the same tactics to go after distributors (granted they make money like the whole war on drugs analogy). In fact, the same things that people are proposing here (e.g. moving servers out of the US) have worked for satellite thieves... And in the case of satellite, people actually purchase equipment and have it shipped to their house which is a lot easier to track and prosecute for. DirecTV actually resorted to the exact same scare tactic of the RIAA years ago with no measurable success. If you think the RIAA is more powerful, I'd say that the satellite TV lobbyists had enough power to change the laws in Canada because they were too close to US and made it too easy for US citizens to order parts/download software. The RIAA had enough trouble disposing of Napster and itâ(TM)s really the Patriot act theyâ(TM)re using to go after music pirates more than the DMCA (which they had a hand in creating)⦠Although maybe the RIAA had a hand in the terrorist attacks, I wouldnâ(TM)t put it past them.
Now I KNOW I can't be alone in this, but my (home) WiFi network serves two purposes. 1) I can use it outside, or in the head, or anywhere else I work/play 2) That whatch-a-callit... woman that I live with has pretty much made it clear that I can have all my little toys only if they don't create "clutter". So that computer I have attached to the entertainment center, my Linux gateway, my desktop, and the laptop cannot ALL have cables running to them at the same time. Therefore, I NEED that extra bandwidth to move those massive papers/presentations/data (average PhD thesis 'round here is several hundred pages packed full of figures) around my LAN unless I want to be stuck doing all my work in "the cave" (or god forbit at work-school) with the wired desktop... Those of us living under the iron fist of the non-nerd significant other simply lack the wired option!
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No we didn't. Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court - embargo them... Ok the second time he almost one a majority, but apparently it takes a 2/3 majority to defeat a neocon.
What I find really amuzing is that none of the French people I work with (and there are many) had even heard of the software patent issue. Actually none of the Europeans I work with had heard of it... Yet, and this speaks to the sad state of the US media, they seemed to know all about Michael Jackson and what's-her-name, the brain dead woman from Florida... Maybe that's how 54 million Americans can be so stupid?
Ad-filtering is an anchient Darwinian dance. They (marketing folks) find more and more places to stick ads. We (the consumer) certainly have the right to avoid those ads, and they the right to make them harder to avoid. If your friend had his way, the web would be simply impossible to use as there would be hundreds of pop-up ads every time you clicked on a link. The pop-up ad needed to die, and as more and more people figured out how to block pop-up ads (by downloading Mozilla ;) ) natural selection started to kill them off.
I am a relentless ad-blocker. I feel like the space in my brain taken up by jingles for products that were discontinued in 1985 is wasted and if had TiVo back then that same space might have been taken up by something usefull... Maybe I'd be a better speller or have been able to remember my times tables (to this day I cannot do long division on paper)...
I like the challenge of steering around ads. Time-shifting internet radio broadcasts, downloading shows with the commercials edited out (rather than using the 30 sec commercial skip on TiVo), ripping DVDs to strip all the protections off and dump all the stupid previews and ads... So as it stands I can either buy a DVD (which I still do regularly), download it off the internet, download a compressed MPEG-4 version, or any combination of the above (well, accordin the MPAA I shouldn't do the last two). Right now the DVD I download (or rip/reencode, but that is more time consuming) has all the protections removed and I can skip whatever I want. So where is the incentive to pay for a DVD that forces me to sit through previews for movies I might already own? Perhaps if movies studios offered me commercial DVDs with more advanced skipping features (like parental controls or the ability to seamlessly add/remove scenes from the 'directors cut' or just skip the *#!!*$ previews and FBI warnings) I would prefer the commercial discs and stop downloading rips... Then the MPAA could say "see, suing people is working; downloads have decreaased". So the same applies to web ads and TV commercials - I'm going to keep skipping them until they give me a reason not to. Hopefully that reason won't involve a Clockwork Orange-like chair with my eyelids pinned to my forehead, but with the current administration in the White House, you never know :)
I coulnd't agree more. The best actors IMHO are the ones that you see in a movie and go "that guy... Yeah, he's really good... He's bee in a ton of movies, but I can't really remember.." That said, there are some scripts that really fit an actor's personality. Han Solo comes to mind :)
I've listened to plenty of people from IBM drone on about interconnects and the need for better conducting (and better insulating) materials. They argue heat dissipation as one of the reasons silicon will become obsolete within a couple of decades. For the time being (they say) we will have to use stop-gap solutions say, for example, superconducting pathways between transistors. Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I will take what they say at face value.
The electric motor that spins the platters of your hard drive, the electronics that drive the laser in your CD burner, the copper wire carrying current from the PSU, the copper traces that move electricity between components, the gold connectors in the PCI, IDE, SATA, etc. connectors... All things dissipate heat. I'm not 100% sure how "put your hand on your computer case" translates into "adding superconductors to the power subsystem in a computer". I'm not even sure what a power subsystem is.
You'll never hear me bad-mouthing skepticism... Afterall it is how I make a living ;)
Please read what I wrote. I said CNTs are not crystalline over large enough domains. That is, you cannot make a perfect nanotube of any appreciable length. You certainly cannot make (or isolate) all one type of nanotube (e.g. metallic) at such scales. I never claimed superconductivity didn't exist in CNTs either; I was refering specifically to that article. Of course you can observe super conductivity in sinlge nanotube, as long as electrons don't have to hop across tubes or run into a defect site. You can observe superconductivity in many things near 0 K :)
Perhaps I was a little unclear that I was not making a general statement about CNTs not being superconductors, but you really need read peoples' posts before you reply to them.
I was under the impression that type-II superconductors consisted of small domains of Type-I that become additive macroscopically... The High-Tc inorganic superconductors are all Type-II, correct?
No. Superconductors must be able to form so-called Cooper Pairs in order for electrons to move in the coherent manner in which no energy is lost. I gather the rules are a little different at really small scales where tunneling becomes a much bigger issue and some of the energy relationships are backwards, but the principle is still the same; if electrons bang into something they lose energy.
Metallic carbon nanotubes, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be made crystalline (perfectly regular) over large enough domains for this to happen thus there is "minimal energy loss" and they are really just very, very, very low resistance conductors (you can tell the difference by looking at the temperature dependance of the resistance).
The thing is, unless you want to build a mag-lev train, you don't really need a perfect super conductor. Right now the conductivities of the metals used in electronis are around 10^6 - 10^10 (inverse ohms per centimeter) and you can put your hand on your computer case to see just how much energy is dissipated as heat. If you increased those conductivities (with metallic carbon nanotubes for example) then your heat sink shrinks and your clock cycles come up... Assuming we can wire teeny tiny circuits with nanotubes. More importantly, you can drive portable electronics with less power, and thus smaller batteries.
BTW (regarding the very first post), some of the Slashdot Armchair Scientists (there are other sciences besides physics too you know) out here in computer land have Masters and PhDs and have published or worked in the field. Some of us have even met and/or worked with the people mentioned in the articles. I wouldn't be so quick to push aside honest criticism, afterall that is what scientists are trained to do - be skeptical :)
Huh? You're going to have to explain to me how you bonds change the mass of a molecule... Especially decreasing it. I'm really curious where you heard this. Perhaps there is some nuance to this statement that I'm missing? Are you saying that the mass of the constituent atoms is different than that of a molecule? This can certianly be true if electrons are gained or lost, but chemical bonds don't affect anything beyond the valence electrons of the atoms. As for uncertainty - I'm not buying it. Even if there was a teeny tiny mass "change" over time, you'd be hard pressed to observe it, especially when you're talking about molecules weighing thousands of Daltons... The difference in scale would be like trying to measure the mass you loose from expelling carbon dioxide while standing on your bathroom scale - and having to take into account mass loss to water evaporation, skin exfoliation, etc. Macromolecules, especially biological molecules, have static charge build up, hydration, aggregation, etc. all contributing to a very dynamic system.
At any rate the "mass of a molecule" is an average of all the weights based on the natrual abundance of isotopes because that is the only factor that affects the mass of two molecules with the same empirical formula. "Unstable" molecuels loose mass by becoming different molecules. It is incorrect to say that a molecule's weight changes - that is impossible (save radioactive decay) because when the empirical formula changes, you no longer have the same molecule.
At any rate, it is an interesting challenge to identify biological molecules by weighing them one at a time, as the horrific isotope distribution in the mass spec of any macromolecule demonstrates.
That's all fine and good in bizzaro land where bandwidth is infinite. Look, free dial-up services don't rule the Earth because they suck. Free WiFi access will be so crowded that those that want to pay for a premium service that is fast will do so. You'd have the bare-bones free service, or a faster "premium" service you can pay for. For those sporting the tin foil hat, you can pay for the uber-private government-can't-spy-on-me service.
The problem here is people seem to think that the options are to A) give the government a mononpoly or B) give the private sector a monopoly. When really what we're talking about is forcing the private sector to innovate and offer a servive that is woth paying for unlike my cable modem with I have to choice but to pay for. The latter is what you'll wind up with if commmunity based free WiFi is banned. And really that's what we're talking about. It's not like the Federal Government is going to roll through with free WiFi everywhere. Free WiFi is more like public parks in that "the government" is more like "government funded co-op".
Congress realized the importance of free Internet when they drafted laws to protect it from taxation, privatization, over-regulation (well...) much like citizen's band radio... Except way cooler. So why should the public be prevented from organizing free access to a free, public, tax payer funded service? How many times have you tried to get on the freeway only to find that your subscription to the 405 has expired?
You know this reminds me of the recent energy deregulation in my state (California) where Engron was belly aching because the big-bad inefficient government was making it impossible for the poor little energy companies to offer us better, fastter, cheaper electricity. The argument pretty much boiled down to "boo-hoo our tiny innocent little company just wants to offer you cheap electricity, but the big bad bloated government won't let us!". My thought was "What a load of partisan propaganda, they just want to bilk California out of billions by effectively banning the government from getting involved just like they did in most of South America, England, France, and parts of Asia. No one will buy that." ... Just sit down and think about who you're siding with. The government, which is made up of you and me, or a huge multinational corporation run by people so rich you couldn't even afford to have lunch with them.
How's that? AFAIK, you can't form salts with carbon (aka graphite). Only with things like halide ions.
I can guarentee you it is possible to form salts with basically every element on the periodic table. Halide salts are sometimes called "simple salts" or "mineral salts". You don't usually hear carbanions (or carbocations for that matter) referred to as "salts", but if you mix lithium metal and graphite (which is a carbon allotrope, but "carbon" and "graphite" are really not the same thing; graphite is a form of elemental carbon) you will in fact produce carbon anion / lithium cation ion pairs. Almost every commercial drug is packaged as a salt (usually an amine salt) to make it water soluble and boner pills are certianly not simple halogens : )
This all sounds like BS to me. Our lab is part of a nation-wide program to develop new battery technologies and I have no idea why they claim lattice strain as the main cause for eletrode fatigue... The problem with ANY battery is that ions have to move as the battery is charged/discharged. These ions are all lithium in lithium-ion batteries (AKA lithium rocking chair or rocker batteries). The material between the electrode compartments has to be a insulator able to transport Li+ reliably. Since liquids in batteries are not such a good thing they use various gel mixtures for this medium (and the rate of ion diffusion is inversly related to viscosity). Every charge/discharge cycle more an more ions get stuck and hence lower the capacity of the battery over time.
The "problem" electrode as far as I know is actually the graphite (like the stuff in pencils) end which get's reduced and forms a lithium salt. When you hook up battery the graphite re-oxidizes, sending the electrons through the circuit and Li+ through the insulating medium. Most "nanomaterials" focus on increasing the surface area of this electrode to allow for more efficient (and rapid) charge storage/discharge. At the other electrode is some (probably cystalline) inorganic oxidant which does break down over time. My guess is that they just found some new inorganic electrode material that is slightly better and they, like EVERY other lab, are claiming they've "solved" the Li-ion battery problem. I've seen way too many talks from people claiming essentially the same thing to put my grains of salt away just yet.
But hey, I'm not on the nanobattery (did you barf?) project and am by no means an expert, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong... FYI "nano" makes me want to puke too. Every week there is some jack-ass giving a talk about "nanomaterials" that are MICROns in size and characterized with MICROscopy. In chemistry land (where I live) a nanometer might as well be a mile (except electrons tunnel more frequently) 'cause atoms are really freaking tiny and that's what we've been using to build our materials for over 200 years : )
I'm sure someone else has posted this link, but just to be sure:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/?f=broadcastfla g.html
The above link is information regarding the EFF's court challenge to the broadcast flag law. They claim the FCC is overstepping their authority. They also point out that where the FCC has no jurisditicion (cable, sat, etc.) companies are happlily enabling the broadcast flag of their own free will... So what now? We boycott our HDTV sat/cable broadcasts? No beer and no TV make Homer go something something....
The Sat receivers have no such common format -- you're stuck with their receivers, and transfer to other devices is analog (except for HD)
That's not true either. While the DirecTiVo boxes won't support MomeMedia, my box (which channel changes by serial cable, hence no IR screw-ups) has the HomeMedia option which allows me to export recorded content to a PC or to another TiVo. As of it's release it's dripping with DRM and is Winblows only (maybe Mac too, but certianly not Linux ), but you can in fact burn it to DVD or copy it to another computer; you'd just need the password to play it on the 2nd computer. If you have other HomeMedia-enabled TiVos in the house they will all be able to play content off of each other real-time. The HomeMedia option sucks rocks compared to downloading other peoples' rips (it can't be illegal to download copies of shows you've already recorded... Oh wait this is America) because the copying is real-time, but I bet it kicks ass for a dialup user or neophyte that doesn't know how to download TV rips.
Wow... Reading these posts (especially under this parent) is like a window into big-brained people's insecurities. Let's face it, you're only as smart as people perceive you to be. Look at me, I'm an idiot, but people ask me for my opinion constantly. Why? Because I'm the only moron dumb enough to offer one (though often when it ISN'T wanted). Does that make me smart? Hell no. Does that make me successful? Aparently yes.
Reading about everyone insecurities and rationalizations for why apparently dumber-than-you people are doing better on homework/tests (I'm a perfectionist comes to mind) takes me back... I could never figure out why all those suck-up, idiot, rule-following, conformist jack-asses were doing better in school, getting big fat scholarships, and going to fancy colleges while I was being groomed over for pumping gas because I smoked pot, cut classes and liked run-on sentences. What was my excuse... Oh yeah, "I wasn't being challenged enough" (I'm also a little dyslexic so exuse any type-o's). Turns out I'm just lazy and stubborn. Or am I? Shit, I don't know anymore because society keeps rewarding me for being an idiot. I'm just waiting for the rug to get pulled out from underneith me.
Anyway, if you're self-aware enough to make excuses for failure and motivated enough to keep trying, then you're probably smart... And if you're posting those feelings here, a geek too. I think this topic touched a nerve because yes, this kind of stuff is just the kind of rationalization for failure big-brained insecure nerds need to motivate us (oops I said us!) to keep trying. Just read the study, empathize with your fellow geeks, light some candles and pray to the poster of Bill Gates.
I smell a rat... I mean, the big telecom utilities were on the short end of a lot of court decisions lately (like VOIP being immune to telecom utility taxes and regulations) and I have to assume they didn't just go quietly into the night. Call me paranoid, but our current White House is notoriously big-business friendly and so is Michael Powell. I think that this is a result of lobbying efforts from telecom utilities. Utility companies have a long history of trying to screw consumers and their competition (see FDR's New Deal and modern deregulation) through the manipulation of legislation. As has been pointed out by others, this is the sort of thing we pay taxes for the government to figure out how to enforce. I'd be curious to know who has historically paid for the development of wire-tap technology, specifically that of cell phone and email monitoring.
I see a commercial for a new movie that's in the theater. I say Hmmm, Id like to see that. I update my USENET headers or search for a torrent... By the time I'm done cooking dinner my movie is waiting for me to watch. I submit to you that downloading movies IS quick and painless!
I would argue that if I could pay for that service, I certainly would... In fact, I pay for my USENET access and every indie-flick that distributes through the internet (they are rare, but indie music is more common). The problem here is that the MPAA doesn't want to have to invest in a new market because they see the end of their industry as it exists now. The RIAA is reluctantly going along, but it is like pulling teeth to get them to realize the DRM will never work and they will have to accept the existance of piracy much like dubbing CDs onto tapes. Granted downloading MP3s is easier, but there is a larger consumer base on the internet to offset that.
Let's be realistic... What does "98% piracy rate" mean? A more relavent percentage is the percentage of US made movies/music/software that is the target of that 98% piracy rate. Why? Because US companies largely ignore China as a viable market specifically because they don't have all the anti-piracy laws the US has. Therefore, the easiest method to aquire software/movies/music is to pirate it. (now charging people for said pirated material is certainly a problem, I won't argue against that)
I agree completely with the Apple ][ argment, but reach a different conclusion... That is people will aquire goods and services in the most convenvient way possible. If that turns out to be free, then they'll steal it. If you charge them for it, then most people will pay... The problem with piracy in the 80's was the that PCs were still really a niche market whereas today you can reasonably assume that every household has a computer. I don't think anyone is talking about walking away the multi-billion dollar game industry because of rampant piracy (which is far worse than any other in my opinion).
The fundamentally free and unregulated nature of the internet will never foster laws that will make it less convenient to download movies that to go to the theater thus, when the dust settles, movies will be legally distributed over the internet because that is the most convenient way for consumers to consume the MPAA's product.
The reason you seen announcements like this every other week is funding. Grant money is drying up for research (thanks Bush), thus it becomes more important to sell your research. The C&E News is the American Chemical Society's "industry" newsletter. The last ACS meeting focused on "nanoscience" because the nano buzz word get's you funding these days. Don't get me wrong, this is interesting research, but the ability to get grants funded and papers published boils down to name recognition and the ability to sell your research as the next greatest nano computing, data storage, bullet proof fiber, etc etc etc.
During a DARPA funding review a PI (this is second hand) remarked that they could build a cloaking device by the decade's end... These DARPA people represent the latest puddle of poorly utilized defense funds that get handed out to the researcher's that can trot out the best dog and pony show. They buy into these exaggerated claims you see in the introduction section of pubs, which are typically left out when presenting the research to peers.
In every case when I've pressed a PI on the real-world applications of their new miracle material, they admit that the practical application is precluded by some enormous flaw that isn't apparent in the publication. I think the recent rotaxane-basd molecular computing debate is an excellent example of the public hype / professional scrutiny dichotomy that exists as a result of the battle for funding. The New York times, Scientific American, etc picked up Science magazine's claim of "research of the year" while the scientific community was raking them over the coals for poor controls and a lack of supporting data.
To answer your question, no the Renaissance probably didn't feel like this. Back then scientists were hobbiests who's discoveries went largely unrecognized for decades or centuries. In modern day the opposite applies and career scientists try to sell their discoveries as the next light bulb when in reality it's just a drop in the bucket.
We're talking about "Field Effect Transistors" here right? Now this is an honest question because I don't know the answer: How were people speculating on FETs in the 20's when the transistor hadn't been invented yet? Were these theoretical predictions? Again though, organic FETs also have the lifetime problem. Standard CMOS FETs run circles around pentacene-based FETs in terms of life time.
Anyway, I don't want to start a big argument, I just meant to point out that LCDs are going to be around for quite a while because they're just not as bad as people (especially people who make OLEDs) would like you to think. The lab I make OLEDs in has produced the most efficient OLEDs ever published (and PLEDs for that matter), but they just can't complete in terms of lifetime for LCDs.
That just isn't true. Liquid crystal display backlighs emit polarized light which all but eliminates wasted light. The issue with LCDs is that the backlight is constantly on, even when a pixel is "dark". Organic light emitting devices (diodes if you prefer) emit a very narrow band of visible light (no IR, UV, etc.) that is tunable, and only consumes energy when a pixel is actually generating light. An LCD also uses colored filters (more wasted light) to generate color displays whereas OLEDs use different emissive species for different colors. If you ever get a chance to see an Alq3 based green OLED in person, you will realize why this technology is promising.
The sticking point for current OLED technology is lifetime. An LCD display can function for years while the best OLED would be lucky to useable after a year or two.
Reading these posts I get the feeling that not many of you have actually filed a patent. When we make a new molecule, the structure is patented. Is it because it is a useful invention? No, it is because we worked hard to make it. If someone does use it to create something profitable, we get to take a cut and that is all the patent guarentees.
In fact, the purpose of patents is to enable ideas to be made public to further the progress of technology while protecting the inventors (and the people who funded them) from the theft of their work.The details of all patents are published in paper and on the web 1 (or 2 I can't remember) years after being filed. This is typically before the patent is even granted (this takes 2-3 years).
Without patents inventors would use the "trade secrets" classification for every useful invention (this is what has kept the recipe to Coke a secret for the better part of the 20th century) becuase they never expire and they do not require publication. Otherwise people would steal their ideas and profit from them (read: Microsoft). This is the purpose of the USPTO: to facilitate the sharing of knowledge while protecting the invenstments made to aquire that knowledge.
This RIAA thing is scary similar to satellite piracy... They're using basically the same tactics to go after distributors (granted they make money like the whole war on drugs analogy). In fact, the same things that people are proposing here (e.g. moving servers out of the US) have worked for satellite thieves... And in the case of satellite, people actually purchase equipment and have it shipped to their house which is a lot easier to track and prosecute for. DirecTV actually resorted to the exact same scare tactic of the RIAA years ago with no measurable success. If you think the RIAA is more powerful, I'd say that the satellite TV lobbyists had enough power to change the laws in Canada because they were too close to US and made it too easy for US citizens to order parts/download software. The RIAA had enough trouble disposing of Napster and itâ(TM)s really the Patriot act theyâ(TM)re using to go after music pirates more than the DMCA (which they had a hand in creating)⦠Although maybe the RIAA had a hand in the terrorist attacks, I wouldnâ(TM)t put it past them.
Now I KNOW I can't be alone in this, but my (home) WiFi network serves two purposes. 1) I can use it outside, or in the head, or anywhere else I work/play 2) That whatch-a-callit... woman that I live with has pretty much made it clear that I can have all my little toys only if they don't create "clutter". So that computer I have attached to the entertainment center, my Linux gateway, my desktop, and the laptop cannot ALL have cables running to them at the same time. Therefore, I NEED that extra bandwidth to move those massive papers/presentations/data (average PhD thesis 'round here is several hundred pages packed full of figures) around my LAN unless I want to be stuck doing all my work in "the cave" (or god forbit at work-school) with the wired desktop... Those of us living under the iron fist of the non-nerd significant other simply lack the wired option!