This is just one more stupid thing that may or may not be added to the unbelievable Rube Goldbergian catastrophe-waiting-to-happen that is the American legal code. Something's going to give soon. Frankly, there are probably SOOOO many mutually contradictory laws on the books by now that it's virtually impossible to not be a criminal somehow.
The inefficiency, corruption, and general incompetence of the American government is at the moment staggering. And it is happening because we the people have let it happen. Say what you will, this government is still absolutely bound to the will of the people because we can vote it out of office come every two years.
The problem is that the American people are becoming apathetic and uncaring. Nixon irretrievably broke the faith of millions in their government. Even if they hear about these bullshit bills, they have no idea what to do and form their opinion soley around what the magic picture box says.
And do you know what the problem is? We're allowed to escape basic education without even being able to recite our nation's founding documents. Twelve, thirteen years of schooling before high school graduation. We were never required to so much as read the Constutition or the Declaration of Independence.
Personally, I think it's an outrage that the founding documents of our nation aren't required reading in every single high school in the nation. Being able to recite the first two articles of the Declaration, the meaning of the first ten amendments, and being able to enumerate in no unspecific terms the powers of all three branches of Government set forth in the Constitution should be a requirement for high school graduation.
And you can make that possible. Obviously, there are certain politicians don't want you to read material that tells you that it's your duty to rebel against an unjust government and that all rights not specifically granted to the Federal government are reserved by the states or the people, but if the people create enough of an outcry and vote out representatives who oppose it, it will happen if only because the remaining representatives will act out of self-preservation. And note that I didn't say ALL politicians. Heck, I've got a copy of the Constitution in front of me that was sent by my representative in the House.
Now stop staring at the screen. Go out there and make a ruckus.
How about when you're on the vintage mainframe level in Tron 2.0, ask some random program to calculate the seventh even prime number. When he segfaults, you get access to the directory containing Tron Legacy. Just don't ask yourself that question...
If you insist that I restate the evidence that humans are adversely affecting Earth's climate, here are a few quotes from the September 2004 issue of National Geographic:
P14: "When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it was home to an estimated 150 glaciers. Since then the number has decreased to fewer than 30, and most of those remaining have shrunk in area by 2/3."
P14: "The famed shows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80% since 1912."
P14: "Thawing permafrost has caused the ground to subside more than 15 feet in parts of Alaska."
P16: "Since 1978 the area of perennial Arctic sea ice has decreased 9% per decade."
P25: "In three decades the average temparature rose 4.16*F in the northern city of Barrow [Alaska]."
Is the ground in Alaska sinking 15 feet and turning to mush empirical enough? Given roughly a century of detailed measurement, I would call the destruction of 80% of the glaciers in Glacier National Park empirical evidence. If global warming is not happening, why [P18] is an entire tribe of Alaskan natives abandoning their home island because of the erosion caused by higher waves, in turn caused by declining sea ice? Then again, we should disregard this because there was an episode about it in a parody/comedy show called South Park. Or is National Geographic just a bunch of leftist Bush-haters?
Just because you believe it doesn't make it true. - I would suggest that you pose that question to President Bush with regards to why we invaded Iraq. His own people have finished their reports indicating no WMD (The allegedly obvious posession of which was our first raison du jour), no ability to produce them, and a vague future intent to pursue them (just like every other dictatorial facist asshole). The 9/11 commission has completed and published it's report concluding that Saddam was not linked with 9/11 or Osama, yet the White House would have you believe that they were all but making out in the back room.
Frankly, now that I think about it, the pretense under which we invaded Iraq resembles the Gulf of Tonkin incident: President Johnson used an alleged attack on the Maddox and Joy to strongarm Congress into giving him the power to declare war. But it turned out that there was no attack in the first place, and Johnson used the incident because he was intent on expanding the war and needed a reason. Going a little farther back in time, the parallel to the Spanish-American war of 1898-99: America was itching for any reason to attack, and the explosion of the battleship Maine was spun into a reason, even though the ship blew itself up because a spark met coal dust. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
It is as clear as day that I disapprove of Bush. I believe that his fiscal policies place the financial future of America at risk by further increasing our national debt, that his foreign policy is not conducive to increasing peace and stability in the world, and that he lied to America about our reasons for attacking Iraq. My post was trying to explain how, in the face of these 3 issues and those originally described, Kerry lost and how to prevent such a misstep in the future. What is more reasonable and rational, particularly after such a polarizing election?
And it seems as if I have again gone off rambling... I can't believe I spent the better part of an hour writing and revising this post. Fini.
First off, I think that the re-election of Bush will turn out to be a catastrophe. In 4 years, we've managed to piss off almost the entire world. Furthermore, we've gone from reducing the national debt to running it up faster than I care to say. That does not mean I like Kerry. I think that one is a moron and the other has no position other than "I am not bush." They are both complete and utter fucking wankers of the highest order, and I am ashamed that a nation of more than 350 million people could not find anyone better to compete for the office. I do, however, dislike Bush more than I dislike Kerry. Now you know without a doubt where I stand.
That aside, I think that there were a number of fubar events by the Kerry campaign. If we can figure out what went wrong this time, maybe we can fix it next time. Note that I live in Southern California, and thus wasn't subjected to 15 political bullshit sessions an hour on TV (thank God). However, I think that Kerry screwed up on:
Slowness responding to the Swift Boat Veterans ads. I mean, I see this ad from the Swift Boat Vets slamming Kerry, and then jack shit from Kerry for weeks.
I heard almost nothing from the Kerry campaign regarding Bush's complete disregard for the environment. This is one issue where I feel that Kerry could have had Bush by the balls: FFS, Bush didn't even acknowledge global warming for a time!
I heard almost nothing from the Kerry campaign about Bush's favoritism towards huge corporations. 5/6 Americans think that corporations have too much power in DC: Why didn't Kerry say *anything* about this?
Response to flip-flop accusations. I mean, Bush was going to beat that horse until it died; Kerry should have shot it. Possibly something about Bush flip-flopping on Iraq: We went because of WMD... to free the Iraqi people... Because Saddam is an asshole... To his credit, he stopped only just short of calling Bush an outright liar on Iraq ("Not entirely straight with the American people").
There are a handful of other things he could have done too, but I doubt they would have helped much. He could have tried to explain that trying to smash terrorist countries won't help, that you have to erode their base of support (*cough*Israel-Palestine*cough*) by addressing their 'issue', but I doubt that the average idiot would have understood, and Bush would have spun it was "Weak on terror!" in a microsecond. Another possible thing to go after would have been fiscal conservatives, on the basis that Bush took the largest surplus in history and turned it into a deficit that's growing at Warp 9. Didn't hear much on that either.
On the rather more negative side, he could have (long before 11/2) made a huge stink about e-voting paper trails. Beat the Diebold CEO horse ("Deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the President" sound familiar?) like Bush beat the flip-flop horse. In short, cast the legitimacy of e-voting precincts that went to Bush in doubt [One previous poster (unconfirmed) says that the exit polls and tallies were different by 5%+ for Bush in counties with paperless e-voting machines but not in those without or with paper trail. Can anyone confirm?].
I also feel that this election underscores a desperate need for election law reform in America. Why the HELL does a car commercial need to be more truthful that the campaign to decide who will be the most powerful man on earth? Of all the (thank God relatively few) political ads I saw, almost none of them offered anything positive about thier guy. All they did was slander the other guy's character.
Another thing that has to go is the goddamn electoral college. It does not execute the will of the people, as was demonstrated very clearly in 2000. Indeed, without the E.C. I wouldn't be writing an essay about how Kerry lost to Bush. Because of it's inclusion of Senators in the count, it gives a substantially inflated amount of influence to rural states (The vote of someone in Montana or Alaska is worth almost twice
Full voting rights have been extended to all citizens of the US age 18+ for the good of the people and out of respect for human rights.
Copyrights have been extended beyond 14/28 year terms for the good of corporations like Disney who won't give up their cash cows like Mickey because they think it's cheaper to litigate than innovate.
Ok, does this worm happen to use port 46204? Because I'm seeing 20 connection attempts a minute like this one go splat against my firewall... WTF is going on?
> Oct 12 00:04:25 server kernel: Shorewall:net2all:DROP:IN=ppp0 OUT= MAC= SRC=151.46.155.113 DST=69.224.41.18 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=111 ID=29343 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=1657 DPT=46204 WINDOW=65535 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0
How on earth could anyone possibly need a hundred gigabytes of remote storage! The only data formats around that have an excuse to reach that size are hours of hifi video or the transaction database of a large corporation. What possible use could an ordinary user have for it?
Seriously... How much space does your non-spam e-mail take up?
We perceive real life much differently than a camera. Our eyes have 7 million color receptors, almost all of which are within about 3 degrees of the center of the eye. As we look, our eye constantly moves to create the appearence of sharp vision everywhere. Indeed, you'll find that it's instinctually almost impossible to focus on an object without looking directly at it. Anyway, it would take about 70 to 100 megapixels to make an image whose pixels were smaller than you could resolve if the image were to cover your entire field of vision.
And no, a higher resolution will not expose anything but smaller details than the eye can perceive.
NASA has been building nuclear batteries for decades on deep space missions.
>> The radiothermal generators you refer to required kilograms of Plutonium, and were the size of washing machines.
We could use waste product from reactors to power smaller versions for home use.
>> The waste from nuclear reactors generates, among many other things, a great deal of gamma radiation, which can only be stopped by ~3 feet of lead. The materials they are working with generate alpha and beta particles, which can be stopped by a sheet of paper and a half-inch piece of wood respectively.
No, it would not be as efficient as using 'fresh' fuel , but its WASTE.. so its still cheap power for the masses..
>> It also generates penetrating high-energy radiation.
And if you build them small enough, they are safe... It would change the very way we live.. 'free' nearly unlmited portable electric power for everyone..
>> There is a reason that NASA's radiothermal generators are the size of a washing machine: They rely on a temperature difference between the ends to generate an electric potential. The smaller it gets, the lower the temperature of the heat source to begin with and the greater the problem of heat conductivity. Moreover, as they get smaller they make less power. You will still need a certain amount of waste to generate X amount of power, and that amount is gauranteed to generate an unacceptable amount of gamma rays.
I've been advocating this for years, but I don't expect to see it, due to the hold 'big oil' has on this country... ( hell the world.. )
Oh yeah... When the hippies start getting all foamy at the mouth, tell them it's a fusion reactor... After all, it makes helium and electric, and fusion is a Good Thing.
Random thought here...
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Would it be possible to use something that undergoes Alpha decay (say, Radium or Polonium), and convert it's moving charged particles directly into electric?
In short, you take a small amount of the radioactive substance and wrap all but one face in a lead shield, only allowing alpha particles out one face. Place a wire coil around that face, voila... moving charge (alpha particle) induces voltage and current in a conductor (coil). Insulate the coil, and draw power off it's ends. Place a little endpoint for the alpha particles to hit that's grounded to the radium/lead sample, so it can recombine into helium.
Sounds good... can someone with more physics knowledge than I poke my idea full of holes? What kind of coupling efficiency/energy output/conversion efficiency/helium generation could one expect?
This just occurred to me... Wouldn't the thermal contraction induced by such an extreme temperature change tear all the connections between the CPU itself and it's pins apart? That's the problem they have with Josephson Junction logic...
If you take a close look at the cpu (possibly breaking one apart) you'll find that the actual processor is a chip of silicon about 1 square centimeter; The entire rest of the chip is making space for all the pins. (On a chip 1 cm across, the limit is ~30 Ghz before the signal can't cross the chip in 1 clock cycle).
Well, that's only for the current build of Longhorn... by the time it's out, not only will generic CPUs run at 6Ghz, but it'll require a 10Ghz system or an SMP box. It was a nice try though. They'll make one eventually.
The problem with liquid helium (This made MRI scanners horribly impractical for a LOT of years) is that it has 1/20 the heat capacity of nitrogen, and you have to suck a thousand times the power to get down to helium temperatures compared to nitrogen. There would also be no quantum anomalies with silicon. It can only be compelled to a superconductive state under Extreme pressure.
BTW, which is it... are we mounting it in a vaccuum or under liquid helium:)
Thinking of Dilbert here...
on
Security Alert
·
· Score: 1
Catbert: "Your users are defective. I recommend cat scans."
[later] [holding employee head] Catbert: "This one is defective too."
I have, in the past, made a handful of comments w.r.t. the spam problem. After thinking about it for a bit, I've come to realize that the solution is not so much in applying new technology but applying new people.
Think about it: Right now, almost everything that lands in the spammer's inbox is signal because right now, no one in their right mind responds to offers for the hottest young teens on the net and herbal viagra. Thus, it's trivial for them to send out a hundred million e-mails and it's also easy to sort through the maybe one thousand people dumb enough to respond: It's almost ALL signal.
But, suppose that of those hundred million people, ten million clicked the link and a million responded. The S/N ratio goes from 10:1 to 1:1000 or 1:10000. It's no longer going to be economical for the spammer to sort through so much static. It should be possible to respond to, perhaps, 1/10 or 1/20 of the spam you get. It won't take much... Just something like "I'm very intrigued by your offer. Please tell me more." You can't use a computer script to generate responses, because they can easily be filtered out just like you filter 99% of spam. You'll maybe spend 30 minutes a day to respond to 60 spams.
Before long, the bastards will spend so goddamn much time sorting through the static that they won't be able to send more! The only problem is, what do we do to reedcuate the millions of idiots (ie the ones who create the problem in the FIRST PLACE!!!) who are (mostly) trained to pound the delete key?
Scientists have already experimented with them; They mount a high-strength centrifuge onto a superconductor for levitation, and place it into a vaccuum. Right now, I think there are a few test units in place. Link. I think that Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage is more interesting; They store energy by building an enormously powerful magnetic field around a superconducting toroid. The neat thing is that, minus losses from cooling, the energy is stored for basically ever.
[Spade and Farley are stoned on n2o, randomly laughing at nothing]
[Moment of lucidity for Farley] Farley: I'm stoned. So are you!
Both: [Random spastic giggling]
Slashdot Mirror
This is just one more stupid thing that may or may not be added to the unbelievable Rube Goldbergian catastrophe-waiting-to-happen that is the American legal code. Something's going to give soon. Frankly, there are probably SOOOO many mutually contradictory laws on the books by now that it's virtually impossible to not be a criminal somehow.
The inefficiency, corruption, and general incompetence of the American government is at the moment staggering. And it is happening because we the people have let it happen. Say what you will, this government is still absolutely bound to the will of the people because we can vote it out of office come every two years.
The problem is that the American people are becoming apathetic and uncaring. Nixon irretrievably broke the faith of millions in their government. Even if they hear about these bullshit bills, they have no idea what to do and form their opinion soley around what the magic picture box says.
And do you know what the problem is? We're allowed to escape basic education without even being able to recite our nation's founding documents. Twelve, thirteen years of schooling before high school graduation. We were never required to so much as read the Constutition or the Declaration of Independence.
Personally, I think it's an outrage that the founding documents of our nation aren't required reading in every single high school in the nation. Being able to recite the first two articles of the Declaration, the meaning of the first ten amendments, and being able to enumerate in no unspecific terms the powers of all three branches of Government set forth in the Constitution should be a requirement for high school graduation.
And you can make that possible. Obviously, there are certain politicians don't want you to read material that tells you that it's your duty to rebel against an unjust government and that all rights not specifically granted to the Federal government are reserved by the states or the people, but if the people create enough of an outcry and vote out representatives who oppose it, it will happen if only because the remaining representatives will act out of self-preservation. And note that I didn't say ALL politicians. Heck, I've got a copy of the Constitution in front of me that was sent by my representative in the House.
Now stop staring at the screen. Go out there and make a ruckus.
How about when you're on the vintage mainframe level in Tron 2.0, ask some random program to calculate the seventh even prime number. When he segfaults, you get access to the directory containing Tron Legacy. Just don't ask yourself that question...
Hook it up and I think that 'anonymous' may just be displaced as the top contributor...
If you insist that I restate the evidence that humans are adversely affecting Earth's climate, here are a few quotes from the September 2004 issue of National Geographic:
P14: "When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it was home to an estimated 150 glaciers. Since then the number has decreased to fewer than 30, and most of those remaining have shrunk in area by 2/3."
P14: "The famed shows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80% since 1912."
P14: "Thawing permafrost has caused the ground to subside more than 15 feet in parts of Alaska."
P16: "Since 1978 the area of perennial Arctic sea ice has decreased 9% per decade."
P25: "In three decades the average temparature rose 4.16*F in the northern city of Barrow [Alaska]."
Is the ground in Alaska sinking 15 feet and turning to mush empirical enough? Given roughly a century of detailed measurement, I would call the destruction of 80% of the glaciers in Glacier National Park empirical evidence. If global warming is not happening, why [P18] is an entire tribe of Alaskan natives abandoning their home island because of the erosion caused by higher waves, in turn caused by declining sea ice? Then again, we should disregard this because there was an episode about it in a parody/comedy show called South Park. Or is National Geographic just a bunch of leftist Bush-haters?
Just because you believe it doesn't make it true. - I would suggest that you pose that question to President Bush with regards to why we invaded Iraq. His own people have finished their reports indicating no WMD (The allegedly obvious posession of which was our first raison du jour), no ability to produce them, and a vague future intent to pursue them (just like every other dictatorial facist asshole). The 9/11 commission has completed and published it's report concluding that Saddam was not linked with 9/11 or Osama, yet the White House would have you believe that they were all but making out in the back room.
Frankly, now that I think about it, the pretense under which we invaded Iraq resembles the Gulf of Tonkin incident: President Johnson used an alleged attack on the Maddox and Joy to strongarm Congress into giving him the power to declare war. But it turned out that there was no attack in the first place, and Johnson used the incident because he was intent on expanding the war and needed a reason. Going a little farther back in time, the parallel to the Spanish-American war of 1898-99: America was itching for any reason to attack, and the explosion of the battleship Maine was spun into a reason, even though the ship blew itself up because a spark met coal dust. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
It is as clear as day that I disapprove of Bush. I believe that his fiscal policies place the financial future of America at risk by further increasing our national debt, that his foreign policy is not conducive to increasing peace and stability in the world, and that he lied to America about our reasons for attacking Iraq. My post was trying to explain how, in the face of these 3 issues and those originally described, Kerry lost and how to prevent such a misstep in the future. What is more reasonable and rational, particularly after such a polarizing election?
And it seems as if I have again gone off rambling... I can't believe I spent the better part of an hour writing and revising this post. Fini.
That aside, I think that there were a number of fubar events by the Kerry campaign. If we can figure out what went wrong this time, maybe we can fix it next time. Note that I live in Southern California, and thus wasn't subjected to 15 political bullshit sessions an hour on TV (thank God). However, I think that Kerry screwed up on:
There are a handful of other things he could have done too, but I doubt they would have helped much. He could have tried to explain that trying to smash terrorist countries won't help, that you have to erode their base of support (*cough*Israel-Palestine*cough*) by addressing their 'issue', but I doubt that the average idiot would have understood, and Bush would have spun it was "Weak on terror!" in a microsecond. Another possible thing to go after would have been fiscal conservatives, on the basis that Bush took the largest surplus in history and turned it into a deficit that's growing at Warp 9. Didn't hear much on that either.
On the rather more negative side, he could have (long before 11/2) made a huge stink about e-voting paper trails. Beat the Diebold CEO horse ("Deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the President" sound familiar?) like Bush beat the flip-flop horse. In short, cast the legitimacy of e-voting precincts that went to Bush in doubt [One previous poster (unconfirmed) says that the exit polls and tallies were different by 5%+ for Bush in counties with paperless e-voting machines but not in those without or with paper trail. Can anyone confirm?].
I also feel that this election underscores a desperate need for election law reform in America. Why the HELL does a car commercial need to be more truthful that the campaign to decide who will be the most powerful man on earth? Of all the (thank God relatively few) political ads I saw, almost none of them offered anything positive about thier guy. All they did was slander the other guy's character.
Another thing that has to go is the goddamn electoral college. It does not execute the will of the people, as was demonstrated very clearly in 2000. Indeed, without the E.C. I wouldn't be writing an essay about how Kerry lost to Bush. Because of it's inclusion of Senators in the count, it gives a substantially inflated amount of influence to rural states (The vote of someone in Montana or Alaska is worth almost twice
Are you sure? Because Users can be REAL stupid sometimes. How can you design an interface for someone like this?
Customer: "I'm having a problem here. Do I put the serial number in the box that says 'serial number,' or do I put it in the box that says 'company'?"
Full voting rights have been extended to all citizens of the US age 18+ for the good of the people and out of respect for human rights.
Copyrights have been extended beyond 14/28 year terms for the good of corporations like Disney who won't give up their cash cows like Mickey because they think it's cheaper to litigate than innovate.
Ok, does this worm happen to use port 46204? Because I'm seeing 20 connection attempts a minute like this one go splat against my firewall... WTF is going on?
> Oct 12 00:04:25 server kernel: Shorewall:net2all:DROP:IN=ppp0 OUT= MAC= SRC=151.46.155.113 DST=69.224.41.18 LEN=64 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=111 ID=29343 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=1657 DPT=46204 WINDOW=65535 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0
That's what the Internet is for - A form of media that is NOT controlled by corporations or their whores in congress. For the time being...
First, isn't Kodak those people who make expensive film?
Second, Kodak has just all business from me. Forever.
How on earth could anyone possibly need a hundred gigabytes of remote storage! The only data formats around that have an excuse to reach that size are hours of hifi video or the transaction database of a large corporation. What possible use could an ordinary user have for it?
Seriously... How much space does your non-spam e-mail take up?
We perceive real life much differently than a camera. Our eyes have 7 million color receptors, almost all of which are within about 3 degrees of the center of the eye. As we look, our eye constantly moves to create the appearence of sharp vision everywhere. Indeed, you'll find that it's instinctually almost impossible to focus on an object without looking directly at it. Anyway, it would take about 70 to 100 megapixels to make an image whose pixels were smaller than you could resolve if the image were to cover your entire field of vision.
And no, a higher resolution will not expose anything but smaller details than the eye can perceive.
NASA has been building nuclear batteries for decades on deep space missions.
:)
>> The radiothermal generators you refer to required kilograms of Plutonium, and were the size of washing machines.
We could use waste product from reactors to power smaller versions for home use.
>> The waste from nuclear reactors generates, among many other things, a great deal of gamma radiation, which can only be stopped by ~3 feet of lead. The materials they are working with generate alpha and beta particles, which can be stopped by a sheet of paper and a half-inch piece of wood respectively.
No, it would not be as efficient as using 'fresh' fuel , but its WASTE.. so its still cheap power for the masses..
>> It also generates penetrating high-energy radiation.
And if you build them small enough, they are safe... It would change the very way we live.. 'free' nearly unlmited portable electric power for everyone..
>> There is a reason that NASA's radiothermal generators are the size of a washing machine: They rely on a temperature difference between the ends to generate an electric potential. The smaller it gets, the lower the temperature of the heat source to begin with and the greater the problem of heat conductivity. Moreover, as they get smaller they make less power. You will still need a certain amount of waste to generate X amount of power, and that amount is gauranteed to generate an unacceptable amount of gamma rays.
I've been advocating this for years, but I don't expect to see it, due to the hold 'big oil' has on this country... ( hell the world.. )
>> Whatever
What other kind is there :)
Unless you can modify the Strong Nuclear Force, in which case I want blueprints...
Oh yeah... When the hippies start getting all foamy at the mouth, tell them it's a fusion reactor... After all, it makes helium and electric, and fusion is a Good Thing.
Would it be possible to use something that undergoes Alpha decay (say, Radium or Polonium), and convert it's moving charged particles directly into electric?
In short, you take a small amount of the radioactive substance and wrap all but one face in a lead shield, only allowing alpha particles out one face. Place a wire coil around that face, voila... moving charge (alpha particle) induces voltage and current in a conductor (coil). Insulate the coil, and draw power off it's ends. Place a little endpoint for the alpha particles to hit that's grounded to the radium/lead sample, so it can recombine into helium.
Sounds good... can someone with more physics knowledge than I poke my idea full of holes? What kind of coupling efficiency/energy output/conversion efficiency/helium generation could one expect?
This just occurred to me... Wouldn't the thermal contraction induced by such an extreme temperature change tear all the connections between the CPU itself and it's pins apart? That's the problem they have with Josephson Junction logic...
If you take a close look at the cpu (possibly breaking one apart) you'll find that the actual processor is a chip of silicon about 1 square centimeter; The entire rest of the chip is making space for all the pins. (On a chip 1 cm across, the limit is ~30 Ghz before the signal can't cross the chip in 1 clock cycle).
Well, that's only for the current build of Longhorn... by the time it's out, not only will generic CPUs run at 6Ghz, but it'll require a 10Ghz system or an SMP box. It was a nice try though. They'll make one eventually.
The problem with liquid helium (This made MRI scanners horribly impractical for a LOT of years) is that it has 1/20 the heat capacity of nitrogen, and you have to suck a thousand times the power to get down to helium temperatures compared to nitrogen. There would also be no quantum anomalies with silicon. It can only be compelled to a superconductive state under Extreme pressure.
:)
BTW, which is it... are we mounting it in a vaccuum or under liquid helium
Catbert: "Your users are defective. I recommend cat scans."
[later] [holding employee head] Catbert: "This one is defective too."
Let's play Pass the H Bomb! Yeah! That's a great idea! Catch!
I have, in the past, made a handful of comments w.r.t. the spam problem. After thinking about it for a bit, I've come to realize that the solution is not so much in applying new technology but applying new people.
Think about it: Right now, almost everything that lands in the spammer's inbox is signal because right now, no one in their right mind responds to offers for the hottest young teens on the net and herbal viagra. Thus, it's trivial for them to send out a hundred million e-mails and it's also easy to sort through the maybe one thousand people dumb enough to respond: It's almost ALL signal.
But, suppose that of those hundred million people, ten million clicked the link and a million responded. The S/N ratio goes from 10:1 to 1:1000 or 1:10000. It's no longer going to be economical for the spammer to sort through so much static. It should be possible to respond to, perhaps, 1/10 or 1/20 of the spam you get. It won't take much... Just something like "I'm very intrigued by your offer. Please tell me more." You can't use a computer script to generate responses, because they can easily be filtered out just like you filter 99% of spam. You'll maybe spend 30 minutes a day to respond to 60 spams.
Before long, the bastards will spend so goddamn much time sorting through the static that they won't be able to send more! The only problem is, what do we do to reedcuate the millions of idiots (ie the ones who create the problem in the FIRST PLACE!!!) who are (mostly) trained to pound the delete key?
Scientists have already experimented with them; They mount a high-strength centrifuge onto a superconductor for levitation, and place it into a vaccuum. Right now, I think there are a few test units in place. Link. I think that Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage is more interesting; They store energy by building an enormously powerful magnetic field around a superconducting toroid. The neat thing is that, minus losses from cooling, the energy is stored for basically ever.
I can't help but think of the movie Black Sheep:
[Spade and Farley are stoned on n2o, randomly laughing at nothing]
[Moment of lucidity for Farley] Farley: I'm stoned. So are you!
Both: [Random spastic giggling]