Something in this article sounds wrong, or else I have not understood it properly.
A 60% reduction in an illness by getting more vitamin D equates to a relative risk of 1.66 by not having sufficient vitamin D. The article states this is bigger than the cancer risk of smoking.
However, IIRC, the relative risk for lung cancer for smokers is more like > 20.
So this article seems to have a baaad case of journalistic exageration going on...
C'mon guys, the answer is obvious - line your bin with tinfoil. Instant faraday trash cage, no more local government spying on where you get your take-out pizzas from etc etc
I've just read it again so I can answer my own question...
They are scientists trying to work out the "why" and "how" at a microscopic level.
Us engineers, OTOH, couldn't really care less, as long as we've got good enough tools to ensure our macroscopic things like aeroplanes don't break unexpectedly...
...and these tools don't always come from scientists, they often come first from engineers.
This article was a disappointment - the science of fracture mechanics is at least a half century old, and quite well developed. It *is* a reasonably hard problem to predict crack growth, direction, speed etc in metals (say in an aeroplane structure) but there is software that'll do it, given a big computer, a good FE model, plenty of time, and lots of good material data (usually at least one of these is missing, in my experience...)
However, my quick read of the aricle did not enlighten me at all as to what these guys claim to have done differently. To be honest it wasn't even that clear what specific fracture mechanics problem they had set out to solve.
Or maybe I've drunk too much Sunday night scotch - I dunno...
This is so great - instead of using the built-in PDA contact manager functions of our phones, us geeks will be able to craft perl scripts with regexes to look up people's phone numbers...
Is that just because PC manufacturers don't make PC's that can easily boot from any common removable RW media other than 1.44MB floppies? I could carry round a Knoppix-like bootable Linux partition on a 256MB flash keydrive with its own/home, say, but you can't boot from them, so it's either floppies or CDR's and CDR's are not half so convenient.
That's my thoughts anyway...
C'mon! This is not really big news, is it? I know every project has to start somewhere, but so far all they've done is hover and do vertical stuff with a tip-jet driven rotor (which has been done before in the 60's as others have noted here already). What will be *really* big news is when they transition from rotary winged flight to static wing flight (and back again) - I'm not sure that's ever been demonstrated before?
Actually, reading the Carter website, they have so far got to 173mph, and are not as far ahead as other/. posters have implied. Further ahead than Boeing, maybe, but it's not clear if they are attempting exactly the same kind of approach anyway.
The FCC is a US federal agency, it has no jurisdiction or function in the UK. Whilst a lot of wireless standards are international (eg. Wi-Fi, GSM), there a plenty of others that don't apply in all countries - eg. Eureka 147 DAB is in Europe & Canada but not in the USA. I don't know who sets things in the UK - DTI perhaps?
Absolutely right - that's why some parts of my building ban cameras, but other parts ban cell-phones, pdas, laptops, everything... just depends on what stuff u work on;-)
Also - some of the cell-phone designers (LG?) ban camera phones from their own offices for the same reason.
This is how to make money today:
1. Think of current newish technology that is expensive but cool.
2. Figure that in 5 years it'll be cheap.
3. Take out patents on the *disposable* use of said tech.
4. Wait 5 years for someone elso to make it cheap.
5. Profit
6. Have fun
This is probably a reasonably viable business plan - my tongue is only partly in my cheek...
Everyone (at the time of reading) seems to be stuck on the linux-ness of this phone, with spurious speculation about gcc, bash etc. But the point is that the software development platform for these things will be:
1) Java
2) Not controlled by Microsoft or Symbian or Palm
3) See (1)
etc...
It may well indicate a new platform for open source software development, but it is not going to look much like any current paradigm, I suspect.
Also, the 2 parts (phone and "computer", for want of a better word) will be highly separated to avoid people writing software to "adjust" their phone bills.
I'd like this guy to do a repeat set of pics in 12 months when it's all full of dust, cat hairs, dead flies, crud, whatever... (Just before all the mesh holes get blocked up and it melts down).
Although I do agree they're great pics, and I'd sure love a G5...
This just goes to show how deluded is the common idea that "Cyberspace" is a real place, above and separate from the real world, immune to national boundaries, laws and so forth. The internet might provide an efficient and (apparently) "free" means of communication between people in different nations, but if enterprises are going to do business "on" the internet then they have to play within the various frameworks of the existing nation states that us 6 billion people have formed ourselves into.
Oh, and PS - the Apple story is still annoying, cos at 0.99 euro's per track I'd buy it (and I *don't* indulge in P2P file trading anyway...)
The rumour that this CV has already been secretly bought by the RIAA for an unspecified "future project" is probably no more than that: an unsubstantiated rumour...
("...Tomorrow the World!!!")
Commercial aicraft have to operate with a "ploa" (probability of loss of aircraft) which is *very* low. Given that is the sum of a large number of things that could go wrong, the probabilities of any given failure happening have to be very small indeed (we're talking perhaps 10^-8 or 9 per flying hour). When TWA flight 800 exploded due to a centre fuel tank problem (US NTSB conclusion, more or less), the FAA/Airlines successfully argued that the failure mode wasn't high enough probability to justify the expense of modifying all affected airliners out there. So it's extremely unlikely that airlines will pay for mod's to allow passengers to use cell phones etc if they argued against inerting their centre fuel tanks.
I appreciate the helpful post from a German, but here in the UK, "nose" and "hose" only have *one* syllable, so the explanation still isn't clear to me...
Slashdot Mirror
OK my maths was off - 60% reduction = RR 2.5
Something in this article sounds wrong, or else I have not understood it properly.
A 60% reduction in an illness by getting more vitamin D equates to a relative risk of 1.66 by not having sufficient vitamin D. The article states this is bigger than the cancer risk of smoking.
However, IIRC, the relative risk for lung cancer for smokers is more like > 20. So this article seems to have a baaad case of journalistic exageration going on...
Yeah - like I'd really want to live / work in a building that was soaking up crud out of the atmosphere... Great idea, guys, thanks...
C'mon guys, the answer is obvious - line your bin with tinfoil. Instant faraday trash cage, no more local government spying on where you get your take-out pizzas from etc etc
I've just read it again so I can answer my own question...
...and these tools don't always come from scientists, they often come first from engineers.
They are scientists trying to work out the "why" and "how" at a microscopic level.
Us engineers, OTOH, couldn't really care less, as long as we've got good enough tools to ensure our macroscopic things like aeroplanes don't break unexpectedly...
This article was a disappointment - the science of fracture mechanics is at least a half century old, and quite well developed. It *is* a reasonably hard problem to predict crack growth, direction, speed etc in metals (say in an aeroplane structure) but there is software that'll do it, given a big computer, a good FE model, plenty of time, and lots of good material data (usually at least one of these is missing, in my experience...)
However, my quick read of the aricle did not enlighten me at all as to what these guys claim to have done differently. To be honest it wasn't even that clear what specific fracture mechanics problem they had set out to solve.
Or maybe I've drunk too much Sunday night scotch - I dunno...
OK, I admit I didn't RTFA...
See the "Record Fallacy" at:
numberwatch get with the maths, people...
This is so great - instead of using the built-in PDA contact manager functions of our phones, us geeks will be able to craft perl scripts with regexes to look up people's phone numbers...
Is that just because PC manufacturers don't make PC's that can easily boot from any common removable RW media other than 1.44MB floppies? I could carry round a Knoppix-like bootable Linux partition on a 256MB flash keydrive with its own /home, say, but you can't boot from them, so it's either floppies or CDR's and CDR's are not half so convenient.
That's my thoughts anyway...
C'mon! This is not really big news, is it? I know every project has to start somewhere, but so far all they've done is hover and do vertical stuff with a tip-jet driven rotor (which has been done before in the 60's as others have noted here already). What will be *really* big news is when they transition from rotary winged flight to static wing flight (and back again) - I'm not sure that's ever been demonstrated before?
Actually, reading the Carter website, they have so far got to 173mph, and are not as far ahead as other /. posters have implied. Further ahead than Boeing, maybe, but it's not clear if they are attempting exactly the same kind of approach anyway.
Yep - I had to choose between "this is a dumb comment" and "this is really funny", and I jumped the wrong way - I obvioulsy need more coffee...
The FCC is a US federal agency, it has no jurisdiction or function in the UK. Whilst a lot of wireless standards are international (eg. Wi-Fi, GSM), there a plenty of others that don't apply in all countries - eg. Eureka 147 DAB is in Europe & Canada but not in the USA. I don't know who sets things in the UK - DTI perhaps?
At least this Segway-Robot was born in the USA, so unlike the Governor of California, it will be able to serve as President of the country...
Absolutely right - that's why some parts of my building ban cameras, but other parts ban cell-phones, pdas, laptops, everything... just depends on what stuff u work on ;-)
Also - some of the cell-phone designers (LG?) ban camera phones from their own offices for the same reason.
This is how to make money today: 1. Think of current newish technology that is expensive but cool. 2. Figure that in 5 years it'll be cheap. 3. Take out patents on the *disposable* use of said tech. 4. Wait 5 years for someone elso to make it cheap. 5. Profit 6. Have fun This is probably a reasonably viable business plan - my tongue is only partly in my cheek...
Everyone (at the time of reading) seems to be stuck on the linux-ness of this phone, with spurious speculation about gcc, bash etc. But the point is that the software development platform for these things will be: 1) Java 2) Not controlled by Microsoft or Symbian or Palm 3) See (1) etc... It may well indicate a new platform for open source software development, but it is not going to look much like any current paradigm, I suspect. Also, the 2 parts (phone and "computer", for want of a better word) will be highly separated to avoid people writing software to "adjust" their phone bills.
I'd like this guy to do a repeat set of pics in 12 months when it's all full of dust, cat hairs, dead flies, crud, whatever... (Just before all the mesh holes get blocked up and it melts down). Although I do agree they're great pics, and I'd sure love a G5...
This is such an obvious (and pathetic) troll, I *almost* couldn't be bothered to reply to it... Get a life, MCSE boy ;-)
This just goes to show how deluded is the common idea that "Cyberspace" is a real place, above and separate from the real world, immune to national boundaries, laws and so forth. The internet might provide an efficient and (apparently) "free" means of communication between people in different nations, but if enterprises are going to do business "on" the internet then they have to play within the various frameworks of the existing nation states that us 6 billion people have formed ourselves into. Oh, and PS - the Apple story is still annoying, cos at 0.99 euro's per track I'd buy it (and I *don't* indulge in P2P file trading anyway...)
The rumour that this CV has already been secretly bought by the RIAA for an unspecified "future project" is probably no more than that: an unsubstantiated rumour... ("...Tomorrow the World!!!")
Commercial aicraft have to operate with a "ploa" (probability of loss of aircraft) which is *very* low. Given that is the sum of a large number of things that could go wrong, the probabilities of any given failure happening have to be very small indeed (we're talking perhaps 10^-8 or 9 per flying hour). When TWA flight 800 exploded due to a centre fuel tank problem (US NTSB conclusion, more or less), the FAA/Airlines successfully argued that the failure mode wasn't high enough probability to justify the expense of modifying all affected airliners out there. So it's extremely unlikely that airlines will pay for mod's to allow passengers to use cell phones etc if they argued against inerting their centre fuel tanks.
Are there even human beings "driving" it? No: My bet is on 6th generation space worms driving it...
I appreciate the helpful post from a German, but here in the UK, "nose" and "hose" only have *one* syllable, so the explanation still isn't clear to me...