Hmmm..... cosmic radiation counteracts 'that anti-aging effect' which is in turn due to relativity? So we have a way of counteracting relativistic effects? What inaccurate and imprecise physics reporting...again. Slashdot should stick to news on software if these stories can't be written with a bit more rigor. Or properly scrutinized.
I dont know - the USA is not exactly a paragon of libery and prosperity for all, and may not be the best model, which you are obviously suggesting here.
Hmmm...let me see....I have a 3Mbit DSL connection giving me downloads at over 300 kb/sec. Err....yep, that's slow. Jeez, there's hardly any difference between this and the 3kb/sec speed I got with dial-up. You're right - let me cancel straight away - I'm being duped.
Dude - get this into your techno-head: the difference between dial-up and DSL can be huge to people interested in using the Internet. The physical reality, or layer, is irrelevent to the majority of these people. They got care a rat's ass about the FCC and spectrum usage.
"I dont think that DSL should even be considered as broadband". In your universe it probably isn't.
Hey, I just believe that solid, factual, and accurate science posts on Slashdot deserve thoughtful and accurate responses. Otherwise we'd end up reading jibberish and science mumbo-jumbo that sounds plausible but is in fact rubbish.
Oh I think your comments are unfair. Consider: if this new invention is truely tapping into zero-point energy, scientists can use the machine to make a definative measurement of the zero-point field coupling constant. With that information we can estimate the additional amount of zero-point energy gained by the Sun (less decay losses of course), and with this fuller picture of solar energy balance we can at last make a good approximation for the value of solar drag.
And why is this important? Solar drag (and I'm talking about SDg, not Sdg) is responsible for so many critical environmental factors, and its our uncertainty around its value that creates such variability and uncertainty in environmental modelling and prediction. Put simply, until we have a better measure of how the upper atmosphere is disturbed by the sun as it passes through it we will never be able to make solid weather predictions. It is worse than that: some atmometricists are concerned that if SDg > 1 we will have increased churn leading to increasing bad weather, such as hurricanes. Other worry that if SDg 1 we will enter a period of stagnated and unchanging weather, such as the so called 'Badlands' of Arkansas, or the massive glacial icesheets of Maryland.
It is really important to know how this situation might change. If the glaciers of Maryland, for instance, were to melt it would release so much fresh water that the salinity of the oceans would plummet and a great many islands might actually sink as a result of their reduced boyancy (the governments of Great Britain, New Zealand and Luxembourg are right to be concerned)
Of course, SDg might just equal one, SDg = 1, in which case everything will be fine.
Anyway, as you can see I am very enthused by this new discovery.
Slashdotters should stick to commenting on computer stuff and not venture into the realm of hardware, especially the stuff that involves physics, electric current and the like. In their ignorance, Slashdotters are forgetting (if they ever knew) that an exponentially increasing magnetix flux in a perpendicular field arrangement - as the article describes - will be able to couple with the zero-point energy of the normal space.
This is the energy associated with a prediction of quantum thoery which proposes that (and here I'm a bit fuzzy myself) at the very smallest length scales even empty space is filled with short-lived particles, constantly popping into and out of existance. The longevity of a particle (and its anti-particle) is inversly proportional to its energy - so a high energy 'creation' stays around for a very very short time, and vica versa.
Normally the total energy of a particle and its anti-particle is a zero since they cancel out but, as the theory goes, under the right magnetic flux density and orientation conditions the particle pair could be separated and their intrinsic energies harnessed - zero-point energy. It has always been recognised that this could be a tremendous source of energy - but it was thought that only in the heart of a sun do magnetic field conditions arise that could lead to this energy release (which is now how cosmologists explain the energy gap between that generated from a sun's internal nuclear reactions and that required to: i) keep a body as large as a sun that far above the ground, and ii) overcome friction as it moves through the sky).
What is amazing - and I must say somewhat implausible really - is that this team claim to have gathered enough magnetic flux to harness zero-point energy. But if this is true, then apparent perpetual motion is entirely possible. I say 'apparent' because zero-point energy is of course being added to the system, so it's not really perpetual since the universe will one day implode, as Galileo predicted, and the source of energy will cease.
I think the real question is how they managed to keep the magnetic flux cool during operation. Magnetic flux will decay into 'flax', a type of polymer, if heated beyond a critical temperature. This is where the sun gets its mass, but the same process could lead to problems with their design and really gum up the works.
Anyway, hats off to them. And to the poster for bringing this to everyone's attention - I wish I could detail and describe these technical matters with as much scientific accuracy and insight. And to the Slashdot editors for realising the important and singular value of this post, and not being too distracted by extraneous details that might - at first sight - seem nonsensical and rediculous.
Using this for 8 hours a day? Imagine how tired your arms, your wrists would be! I hope it gets you off because you won't be up to doing anything yourself!!:-)
So by following the actual links it seems to work by capturing an image of the plexiglass screen from behind. The screen is lit from the side, and each contact creates some scattering (via frustrated total internal reflectance) that can be picked up by the camera. Software then sorts out each contact (from background) and tracks them. So it is multi-touch up to the capability of the software, and the ability of the system to resolve one touch from another. I notice in the video they show in their website that these multiple touches dont get too close to each other. I wonder what the limitation is?
The display is then created by rear-projection, ie probably a regular video projector. I wonder how they separate the scattered touch image from the projected display? Perhaps one can be subtracted from the other?
Anyway, this means they have done a lot with a little. I imagine that the practical limitation is the physical dimension used to implement all these projectors and cameras.
Very nice demo though, particularly the software that their contributors wrote to show it off.
I think a hovercraft would be the best design for the all terrain vehicle competition. The moon is very bumpy, you know, and a hovercraft could, like, hover of it all. And if you made the hover very, very, big you might be able to hover right back into moon orbit - the gravitation pull of the moon being so much less than that on Earth.
Nasa must be very stupid not to have thought of this concept before - duh.
Well I agree with you, except the problem isn't about whether 'conservation laws' are being understood or not, but that kids just don't develop an implicit sense of the physical world through play. It's more about a feeling for how things are, rather than a knowledge of a law. More to do with learned behaviour and brain development I suspect.
What is shocking to the rest of us is when internal American propaganda - the stuff fed to the masses - leaks out to world.
Did you know that in the 1990's CNN WorldNews once went for 13 weeks without actually providing any news of events beyond the American border?
Did I say shocking? I meant - hilarious. Do Americans have any idea how parochial and limited their news is? No wonder 8 out of 10 adults in the States cant locate Australia on a map of the world.
People are the same wherever you go. Biologically we are all nearly clones. Must be Institutions and cultures that we surround ourslves with, then:-)
You have a point, but doesn't that illustrate how the scientific approach works:
"Let's assume the world is flat. From here it looks flat. Makes sense. OK, lets try sailing around a bit with navigtion using flat Euclidean geometry. Oh, it doesnt seem to work, something is wrong. Anyone have any other ideas on what shape the Earth might be?"
A notion is only good so long as it is useful. Once humans do things with such scope or precision that errors start to appear between the notion and reality people adapt the 'theory' and try to find something that fits all the known effects. The new theory then may replace, modify or enhance the old. Flat changes to spherical, spherical changes to 'flattened sphere' and so on.
So these scientific theories depend on reality, and are used to describe and predict what happens in the real world - that we all experience. Evolution, together with genetics, has been tremendously successful. It explains much of what we see around us, and where there are questions people are busy trying to find answers. It has opened up the technology of genetic engienering. If this 'science' was wrong, then we would not have many of the vaccines we have today, and there would be no hope in the battles against HIV, SARS and all the other nasty bugs. Other than to prey - which is all that ID has to offer.
I'm not sure why you see evolution leading to something wrong. So much around you points to the fact that evolution and genetics are truely how things on Earth work. Of course we dont know all the answers to every question, not all the details are known, and may not be knowable, but many of today's inaccurancies and unknowns will be filled-in through the work of millions of people around the world.
Science may be a fallible human tool, but it so useful. It makes such wonderful sense of what we see and experience. Again, the fact that we are communicating on a computer and over the Internet demonstrates that millions of scientific ideas, steching back through years and years of human work, are right. Or at least, right enough that the computer and the Internet work well enough for our communication to happen.
So if such a sensible, useful, and practical thing as science might be viewed as a fallible human tool or construction what can we say about ID? Obviously ID is faith-based, and as we discussed earlier, it has no practicality to the physical world of today. How much more fallible is this? How much more a human construction, an imagination?
One might believe ID, and one might feel better for believing it - that we are here for a reason, that we might have an unknown purpose. It might be true, but it is no substitution for evolution and genetics. That God created our Universe - 13 billion years ago, in a flash - with a very long-term and a very cunning plan is, to me, quite plausible. Unimaginably clever. That fits in with how I might view God. More of a cosmologist than a naturalist.
Anyway, I very much appreciate your postings here Sardiskan. Cheers
I understand what your saying but I don't think you can compare science and ID and suggest that they are similar in both being beliefs. The world really DOES seem to behave as science, with all its theories, describes it. Look, you're using a computer which relies and depends on a mountain of technology and scientific ideas and advances just to exist. Science really is practical. It's real, to all intents and purposes.
ID, on the other hand, doesn't really help us at all. There's no practicality. It's a belief that has no use. Nothing can be tested, and there is no evidence. Believe it if you want, but it will only have life in your head - there's no application of it. Computers wont get faster, GPS systems wont become more accurate, vaccines won't be produced, whether someone believes in ID or not. It has no bearing on the world as we all experience it.
So given the two alternatives, I go for a scientific view of things. It has real pragmatic value. It makes sense, at least as much as I understand a fraction of it. It adapts to new discoveries and information, and it fills me with awe. The 'received wisdom' on ID has none of that; it's static, parochial, lethargic and leads nowhere.
There is a huge community of physicists that debate gravity. Last month's Scientific American ran a front page that asked whether gravity is a holographic effect of a higher-dimensional space. Sounds spooky, I know, but the point is that humans are trying to understand how things are, and why. Bit by bit a picture is emerging. The picture will never be complete, but that doesnt mean that the incomplete remainder is wrong or does not exist.
ID is no answer to the question of Life, but ID might the answer to the question of why our cosmos is here in the first place. Why be so parochial as to expect God to be involved with our spec of dirt, and our small existance? The real question is why our universe is here in the first place, and why it is like it is.
Did anyone actually read their challenge on this patent? Their agument is that the nasty company had earlier patents that made the JPEG patent 'obvious'. Not sure that the patent office will buy this 'self defeating' argument. I think that if they want to challenge the patent, they have to come up with something real - and not lame.
He he - dont wheels kind of rely on a friction reaction for propulsion - normally generated by way of gravity? Wheeled vehicles dont really do too well in zero g.
I seem to remember that the maximum acceleration achievable by a wheeled vehicle is, in fact, Fg, where F is the coefficient of friction, and g is g.
Medical PDAs actually do this? Automatically begin erase operations if their link with a server is interrupted? This sounds like a safety issue, a hazard. Can you imagine stepping into an elevator with a patient on a stretcher to find your PDA suddenly rendered useless? I've never heard of this in a healthcare environment; normally the goal is to keep things running as long as possible.
On the other hand, the rule of thumb about medical equipment anti-theft is to bolt it down or chain it to the wall - so you could be absolutely correct.
As an alternative, you could always use unencrypted data on your system but make sure that its kept in a locked room, or has strict access control. That's what most people do.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm..... cosmic radiation counteracts 'that anti-aging effect' which is in turn due to relativity? So we have a way of counteracting relativistic effects? What inaccurate and imprecise physics reporting...again. Slashdot should stick to news on software if these stories can't be written with a bit more rigor. Or properly scrutinized.
You're right. Sarbanes-Oxley doesn't matter today. What was I thinking?
I dont know - the USA is not exactly a paragon of libery and prosperity for all, and may not be the best model, which you are obviously suggesting here.
Hmmm...let me see....I have a 3Mbit DSL connection giving me downloads at over 300 kb/sec. Err....yep, that's slow. Jeez, there's hardly any difference between this and the 3kb/sec speed I got with dial-up. You're right - let me cancel straight away - I'm being duped.
Dude - get this into your techno-head: the difference between dial-up and DSL can be huge to people interested in using the Internet. The physical reality, or layer, is irrelevent to the majority of these people. They got care a rat's ass about the FCC and spectrum usage.
"I dont think that DSL should even be considered as broadband". In your universe it probably isn't.
Yes - but it would take a mastermind and hero of outstanding quality to devise and engineer such an event :-)
Hey, I just believe that solid, factual, and accurate science posts on Slashdot deserve thoughtful and accurate responses. Otherwise we'd end up reading jibberish and science mumbo-jumbo that sounds plausible but is in fact rubbish.
Oh I think your comments are unfair. Consider: if this new invention is truely tapping into zero-point energy, scientists can use the machine to make a definative measurement of the zero-point field coupling constant. With that information we can estimate the additional amount of zero-point energy gained by the Sun (less decay losses of course), and with this fuller picture of solar energy balance we can at last make a good approximation for the value of solar drag.
And why is this important? Solar drag (and I'm talking about SDg, not Sdg) is responsible for so many critical environmental factors, and its our uncertainty around its value that creates such variability and uncertainty in environmental modelling and prediction. Put simply, until we have a better measure of how the upper atmosphere is disturbed by the sun as it passes through it we will never be able to make solid weather predictions. It is worse than that: some atmometricists are concerned that if SDg > 1 we will have increased churn leading to increasing bad weather, such as hurricanes. Other worry that if SDg 1 we will enter a period of stagnated and unchanging weather, such as the so called 'Badlands' of Arkansas, or the massive glacial icesheets of Maryland.
It is really important to know how this situation might change. If the glaciers of Maryland, for instance, were to melt it would release so much fresh water that the salinity of the oceans would plummet and a great many islands might actually sink as a result of their reduced boyancy (the governments of Great Britain, New Zealand and Luxembourg are right to be concerned)
Of course, SDg might just equal one, SDg = 1, in which case everything will be fine.
Anyway, as you can see I am very enthused by this new discovery.
Slashdotters should stick to commenting on computer stuff and not venture into the realm of hardware, especially the stuff that involves physics, electric current and the like. In their ignorance, Slashdotters are forgetting (if they ever knew) that an exponentially increasing magnetix flux in a perpendicular field arrangement - as the article describes - will be able to couple with the zero-point energy of the normal space.
This is the energy associated with a prediction of quantum thoery which proposes that (and here I'm a bit fuzzy myself) at the very smallest length scales even empty space is filled with short-lived particles, constantly popping into and out of existance. The longevity of a particle (and its anti-particle) is inversly proportional to its energy - so a high energy 'creation' stays around for a very very short time, and vica versa.
Normally the total energy of a particle and its anti-particle is a zero since they cancel out but, as the theory goes, under the right magnetic flux density and orientation conditions the particle pair could be separated and their intrinsic energies harnessed - zero-point energy. It has always been recognised that this could be a tremendous source of energy - but it was thought that only in the heart of a sun do magnetic field conditions arise that could lead to this energy release (which is now how cosmologists explain the energy gap between that generated from a sun's internal nuclear reactions and that required to: i) keep a body as large as a sun that far above the ground, and ii) overcome friction as it moves through the sky).
What is amazing - and I must say somewhat implausible really - is that this team claim to have gathered enough magnetic flux to harness zero-point energy. But if this is true, then apparent perpetual motion is entirely possible. I say 'apparent' because zero-point energy is of course being added to the system, so it's not really perpetual since the universe will one day implode, as Galileo predicted, and the source of energy will cease.
I think the real question is how they managed to keep the magnetic flux cool during operation. Magnetic flux will decay into 'flax', a type of polymer, if heated beyond a critical temperature. This is where the sun gets its mass, but the same process could lead to problems with their design and really gum up the works.
Anyway, hats off to them. And to the poster for bringing this to everyone's attention - I wish I could detail and describe these technical matters with as much scientific accuracy and insight. And to the Slashdot editors for realising the important and singular value of this post, and not being too distracted by extraneous details that might - at first sight - seem nonsensical and rediculous.
Brilliant - that would do it. Separation by wavelength.
Using this for 8 hours a day? Imagine how tired your arms, your wrists would be! I hope it gets you off because you won't be up to doing anything yourself!! :-)
So by following the actual links it seems to work by capturing an image of the plexiglass screen from behind. The screen is lit from the side, and each contact creates some scattering (via frustrated total internal reflectance) that can be picked up by the camera. Software then sorts out each contact (from background) and tracks them. So it is multi-touch up to the capability of the software, and the ability of the system to resolve one touch from another. I notice in the video they show in their website that these multiple touches dont get too close to each other. I wonder what the limitation is?
The display is then created by rear-projection, ie probably a regular video projector. I wonder how they separate the scattered touch image from the projected display? Perhaps one can be subtracted from the other?
Anyway, this means they have done a lot with a little. I imagine that the practical limitation is the physical dimension used to implement all these projectors and cameras.
Very nice demo though, particularly the software that their contributors wrote to show it off.
I think a hovercraft would be the best design for the all terrain vehicle competition. The moon is very bumpy, you know, and a hovercraft could, like, hover of it all. And if you made the hover very, very, big you might be able to hover right back into moon orbit - the gravitation pull of the moon being so much less than that on Earth.
Nasa must be very stupid not to have thought of this concept before - duh.
- My hovercraft is full of eals.
Yes, but most other companies don't have the monopoly power that Microsoft have.
Well I agree with you, except the problem isn't about whether 'conservation laws' are being understood or not, but that kids just don't develop an implicit sense of the physical world through play. It's more about a feeling for how things are, rather than a knowledge of a law. More to do with learned behaviour and brain development I suspect.
What is shocking to the rest of us is when internal American propaganda - the stuff fed to the masses - leaks out to world.
:-)
Did you know that in the 1990's CNN WorldNews once went for 13 weeks without actually providing any news of events beyond the American border?
Did I say shocking? I meant - hilarious. Do Americans have any idea how parochial and limited their news is? No wonder 8 out of 10 adults in the States cant locate Australia on a map of the world.
People are the same wherever you go. Biologically we are all nearly clones. Must be Institutions and cultures that we surround ourslves with, then
What I remember is:
Q: What's the difference between the Space Shuttle and a Monastery?
A: One teaches friars, and the other fries teachers
You have a point, but doesn't that illustrate how the scientific approach works:
"Let's assume the world is flat. From here it looks flat. Makes sense. OK, lets try sailing around a bit with navigtion using flat Euclidean geometry. Oh, it doesnt seem to work, something is wrong. Anyone have any other ideas on what shape the Earth might be?"
A notion is only good so long as it is useful. Once humans do things with such scope or precision that errors start to appear between the notion and reality people adapt the 'theory' and try to find something that fits all the known effects. The new theory then may replace, modify or enhance the old. Flat changes to spherical, spherical changes to 'flattened sphere' and so on.
So these scientific theories depend on reality, and are used to describe and predict what happens in the real world - that we all experience. Evolution, together with genetics, has been tremendously successful. It explains much of what we see around us, and where there are questions people are busy trying to find answers. It has opened up the technology of genetic engienering. If this 'science' was wrong, then we would not have many of the vaccines we have today, and there would be no hope in the battles against HIV, SARS and all the other nasty bugs. Other than to prey - which is all that ID has to offer.
I'm not sure why you see evolution leading to something wrong. So much around you points to the fact that evolution and genetics are truely how things on Earth work. Of course we dont know all the answers to every question, not all the details are known, and may not be knowable, but many of today's inaccurancies and unknowns will be filled-in through the work of millions of people around the world.
Science may be a fallible human tool, but it so useful. It makes such wonderful sense of what we see and experience. Again, the fact that we are communicating on a computer and over the Internet demonstrates that millions of scientific ideas, steching back through years and years of human work, are right. Or at least, right enough that the computer and the Internet work well enough for our communication to happen.
So if such a sensible, useful, and practical thing as science might be viewed as a fallible human tool or construction what can we say about ID? Obviously ID is faith-based, and as we discussed earlier, it has no practicality to the physical world of today. How much more fallible is this? How much more a human construction, an imagination?
One might believe ID, and one might feel better for believing it - that we are here for a reason, that we might have an unknown purpose. It might be true, but it is no substitution for evolution and genetics. That God created our Universe - 13 billion years ago, in a flash - with a very long-term and a very cunning plan is, to me, quite plausible. Unimaginably clever. That fits in with how I might view God. More of a cosmologist than a naturalist.
Anyway, I very much appreciate your postings here Sardiskan. Cheers
I understand what your saying but I don't think you can compare science and ID and suggest that they are similar in both being beliefs. The world really DOES seem to behave as science, with all its theories, describes it. Look, you're using a computer which relies and depends on a mountain of technology and scientific ideas and advances just to exist. Science really is practical. It's real, to all intents and purposes.
ID, on the other hand, doesn't really help us at all. There's no practicality. It's a belief that has no use. Nothing can be tested, and there is no evidence. Believe it if you want, but it will only have life in your head - there's no application of it. Computers wont get faster, GPS systems wont become more accurate, vaccines won't be produced, whether someone believes in ID or not. It has no bearing on the world as we all experience it.
So given the two alternatives, I go for a scientific view of things. It has real pragmatic value. It makes sense, at least as much as I understand a fraction of it. It adapts to new discoveries and information, and it fills me with awe. The 'received wisdom' on ID has none of that; it's static, parochial, lethargic and leads nowhere.
There is a huge community of physicists that debate gravity. Last month's Scientific American ran a front page that asked whether gravity is a holographic effect of a higher-dimensional space. Sounds spooky, I know, but the point is that humans are trying to understand how things are, and why. Bit by bit a picture is emerging. The picture will never be complete, but that doesnt mean that the incomplete remainder is wrong or does not exist.
ID is no answer to the question of Life, but ID might the answer to the question of why our cosmos is here in the first place. Why be so parochial as to expect God to be involved with our spec of dirt, and our small existance? The real question is why our universe is here in the first place, and why it is like it is.
Did anyone actually read their challenge on this patent? Their agument is that the nasty company had earlier patents that made the JPEG patent 'obvious'. Not sure that the patent office will buy this 'self defeating' argument. I think that if they want to challenge the patent, they have to come up with something real - and not lame.
Hear about the lagging space-based circumcision robot? It screwed up and got the sack.
"got the sack" Brit slang
He he - dont wheels kind of rely on a friction reaction for propulsion - normally generated by way of gravity? Wheeled vehicles dont really do too well in zero g.
I seem to remember that the maximum acceleration achievable by a wheeled vehicle is, in fact, Fg, where F is the coefficient of friction, and g is g.
I'm afraid that unless you take a surgeon with you, if you need an operation in space you're a gonner. Robots... yeah right.
Medical PDAs actually do this? Automatically begin erase operations if their link with a server is interrupted? This sounds like a safety issue, a hazard. Can you imagine stepping into an elevator with a patient on a stretcher to find your PDA suddenly rendered useless? I've never heard of this in a healthcare environment; normally the goal is to keep things running as long as possible.
On the other hand, the rule of thumb about medical equipment anti-theft is to bolt it down or chain it to the wall - so you could be absolutely correct.
As an alternative, you could always use unencrypted data on your system but make sure that its kept in a locked room, or has strict access control. That's what most people do.