A low cost replacement for current lithographic techniques at 60nm could certainly have a market niche.
But from what I understand of the article, this technique only creates a pattern of parallel stripes, with the spacing controlled by the film thickness. Presumably the direction is cotrolled by which edge you pry apart from. I don't see how that is useful for layout out a chip though.
You might think that making all the concrete, metal, plastics, etc, involved in the manufacture of all the generators will put a large burden on the environment, but actually compared to the energy investment in building, running, and decommissioning a nuclear power plant, the environmental burden is quite light:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_in vestment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy
The question has been asked and the anwser is yes for both wind and solar. (The answer used to be no for solar, but with concentrators and cell technology improvement it changed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain).
I haven't tried Krita, and I mainly use Gimp, but I am very tempted to switch for the single reason that Krita provides a GUI to CImg. If you haven't met CImg, it is an image manipulation library which contains some incredibly powerful image resoration features.
The Cimg homepage is here. But if you want to see what it can do, check out some of the sample image restorations on page 6 of this paper. It does a very credible job of restoring missing parts of images, e.g. features hidden behind text.
This might suprise some people, but to me that comes across as a suprisingly anti-scientific remark from a commonly pro-science Vatican. (Disclaimer: I am a post-evangelical protestant scientist, but I give credit where it is due).
The Catholic church has learned its lesson after Galileo. See for example Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church. The main place it continues to fly in the face of scientific opinion is when science affects what it considers to be its own sacred turf of the traditional family, but outside that you can expect the Vatican to be pretty pro-science.
(In fact, this is not wholly new. Many outstanding scientists around the time of Galileo were priests at the Jesuit university in Rome). Indeed the Natural Law tradition, which is traditionally strong in Catholic theology, is a motivation to study nature.
The big danger to science as I see it comes from fundamentalists, Christian and otherwise. When scripture is granted authority over actual observations, then science is in trouble.
(Sigh). Its usually creationists who trigger this, but here goes anyway.
There are a number of terms relating to different types of scientific 'knowledge'. Many scientists, myself included, do not study philosophy of science, and so sometimes use the terminology inexactly, which can confuse communication. However, the following terms broadly define the common usage:
A hypothesis is an idea about how things might work, which has not been tested against data. One way of doing science is to sit around thinking of hypotheses and then design experiments to see if any of them match the behaviour of the real world.
A law is a mathematical relationship which expresses a relationship observed in certain data. It doesn't explain a reason for that behaviour, it just explains what happens. So for example the gas laws explain how gasses behave without explaining why.
A theory combines a hypothesis with a set of observations (usually obeying some law) which are consistent with that hypothesis. The fact that the observations and the hypothesis are consistent does not prove the theory, because there may be other theories which explain the same data. But a simple theory which is consistent with other theories and explains a great deal of data is considered to be very strong. In some cases the law comes before the hypothesis, in others the other way round.
Hence: Theory of evolution (mechanism + observations). Law of gravity (we can quantify how strong it is, but not why). Gaia hypothesis.
Other interesting stuff relating to this: Aristotelian, Galilean, Kantian, Baconian experiments. Predictive power of a theory. Cross validation. Bayesian statistics.
I have no interest in any of these consoles, I don't own a console and have no intention of owning one in future. However, as an HPC user I am vaguely interested in the Cell processor.
So I read the article and comments with some interest. Above, adubey here refers to a wikipedia article which describes Cell "local memory" as software managed cache. A cache you cannot read from would indeed be a crippling failure.
However an AC here suggests that this local memory is local to the GPU, the topic of that particular presentation. The article text even seems to support this here:
The next slide goes on to say "Don't read from local memory, but write to main memory with RSX(tm) and read it from there instead", and repeats the table numbers.
suggesting that the RSX is the preferred tool for accessing this particular "local memory". A "cache" which is easily accessible from a completely different processor seems unlikely. If this is the case, then the whole issue is irrelevent, since data flow is primarily from CPU to GPU and not the other way round.
So it seems to me more likely that the AC is correct, and that this story is based on an ignorant or willfull misunderstanding of the presentation.
What a lot of accusations both ways! Unfortunately none of this name calling gets us anywhere.
However, there is a genuine point in the parent post, which is that we need to evaluate the credibility of sources. You can find sources stating every possible point of view on global warming. How do we evaluate them? Or do we just say that the cacaphony is proof that there is no consensus?
The latter approach is intellectual cowardice. The correct approach is a systematic evaluation of the sources. For each source, a whole range of factors need to be taken into account, including, off the top of my head:
1. What is the expertise of the source?
2. How is the source regarded by other respected sources in the field?
3. What data does the source make use of?
4. How reliable and complete is that data?
5. What models are used by the source?
6. What is the explanatory and predictive power of those models?
7. Are there other factors which may have influenced the source, apart from the data?
I'm not a climatologist, and I suspect neither are most of the posters here, so we're not in a position to do most of this evaluation. So for my opinions, I must seek out meta-sources which I trust to do the evaluation for me.
For me, the most plausible sources are national scientific academies. These organisations have diverse roles, but one of them often includes evaluating scientific opinions to inform government policy.
The most convincing source I have therefore is this report, from the scietific academies of the US, UK, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, Brazil, China and India. Note that this includes at least one country whose government is not exactly sympathetic to the climate change viewpoint.
I am prepared to be convinced that I am wrong. But I need a more credible source than the one above. So far, nothing has come close.
Has anyone come across any work looking at the confusing issue of family size in Catholic cultures? In particular, relating the behaviour of previous generations to current trends in Eire and Italy, where birth rates are the lowest in Europe and are leading to a rapid decline in indigenous population?
Is there any similar trend amongst Catholic communities in the US?
ExxonMobile and its supporters in Washington state, " The earth belongs to man; he can wreck the earth in any way that he sees fit ".
In a famous article in a 1967 issue of Science, scientist and Christian Lynn White argues that western Christianity is largely responsible for this attitude, on the basis of Genesis 1:28 "fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
There is certainly some justification for this idea, I have heard it taught in churches in my lifetime. I've been looking into it a little recently.
The 'dominion hypothesis' does not seem to be common in early Jewish writings, and therefore was probably not dominant in the early church either. Augustine's commentary on Genesis does not promote it, although he mentions the idea in passing elsewhere. Aquinas however does support a dominion view, although he bases his argument on natural law rather than Genesis. Luther's commentary on Genesis notes that dominion was granted to Adam and Eve before the fall, but that fallen humanity might would be a bad choice to exercise such power.
St Francis of course was a proto-animal liberationist, but his views were at odds with the dominant viewpoint over most of church history. However, the foundation of the (R)SPCA in Britain (which in turn lead to similar organisations elsewhere), was certainly informed by Christian viewpoints. However, animal liberation is probably peripheral issue within the environmental movement as a whole, since its core concern in animals alive today rather than the future of the planet.
The World Council of Churches has been publishing reports opposing this viewpoint for 30 years, and most hierarchical denominations including the Roman Catholic cheurch have also come out against the dominion viewpoint more recently. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't still taught at grass roots level. Catholic teaching of course has some difficulties to resolve with population stabilistation.
On the whole, I would say that there is certainly justice to White's accusation. The difficulty comes in separating the damage done by western industiralisation from the progress acheived. If the dominon (mis-)reading of Genesis is responsible for the damage western civilisation has done to the environment, then must it not also be given the credit for the benefits we have reaped in terms of healthcare, standard of living, increased leisure and so on? However, clearly on the basis of current scintific opinion it needs to be vigorously opposed.
How good do you want your brakes? There's no point having brakes better than required to lock a wheel or lift the backend, and mid-price bicycle brakes are already plenty good enough to do that.
The prerequisite for improving the stopping power of a bicycle is lower the centre of mass or to put more weight on it, especially at the back. After that, you can get disk brakes if you need them - these are commonly used on recumbents, particularly recumbentstrikes, and sometimes on tandems.
I've never actually heard of anyone trying to assign a source to less than a quarter-verse, and even that practice was a passing fad.
Most modern scholars I've read, while they will on occasion attribute a few words to 'later redaction' (for example where an anchronous reference is included in a passage of probable early origin), don't try and assign a source to anything shorter than a couple of verses.
The "straight dope" article is pretty good, but I'm afraid your summary doesn't do it justice. The "4 Rabbis" are more likely to be schools or traditions, separated by up to 5 centuries, and the common position is that at least J, E and D are pre-exilic. The redaction probably took place during the exile.
(A few scholars however, e.g. Van Seters, argue that the J source, instead of being the earliest in 9th-10th century BCE, is actually post-exilic).
Obviously, the authorship of the Pentateuch (and consequently the date) is a subject of debate.
Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians generally support the Mosaic authorship, with datings in the 13th-15th century BCE.
Most other scholars (90% according to wikipedia), including secular, Jewish and Christian scholars, would date the final redaction to 6-7th century BCE (see for example the documentary hypothesis, which although it is not the latest theory forms a background and frequently a basis for newer theories). The final form was based on earlier documents and oral traditions, with the earliest written parts going back to about the 9th or 10th century BCE.
More info here: Dating the bible.
I'll add a few minor thoughts if I may: the energy amplifier solves, may solve or alleviate 1...5. The science has been proven, and a prototype is under construction. i.e. its not here yet, but it's much closer than fusion. (Note the wikipedia article is out of date).
Wind is by far the biggest renewable resource in active production, but the storage problem is big. Pumped storage hydro is efficient enough to solve this, but geographically demanding, probably to the point of unfeasibility. I don't see much else which is here now.
To be fair, churches have been using the word 'mission' (hence missionary) for centuries, and business picked it up and turned it into a weasel word later.
But 'core values' are a fair cop.
I absolutely agree. I'm fine with building stuff from source, but most of my friends aren't.
'yum' helps a lot, for those things which are available on yum. I understand that Fedora Core 4 has a graphical yum client, which would work well for the people I have in mind, if the UI is reasonable, and adding archives intuitive.
That's the problem with the BSD license. It allows you to do exactly this, Microsoft are totally within their rights. As a result Microsoft are pretty happy for software to be BSD licensed. See the license text here
It's just the GPL they hate, because they can't use GPL'ed software. See here for example.
For example, if you were free to run all over anywhere you want on your dirt bike, including my back garden, then you would have removed my freedom to enjoy my back garden in peace.
In any society where resources are contested, granting one freedom to one person may remove a freedom from another.
The GPL trys to addresse this in a way which preserves the most freedom. You are granted the right to modify and redistribute anything I do, as long as you also redistribute the changes you made, so that I and others can benefit in turn. Your additional freedom comes at the price of not restricting the freedom of others.
Alternatively, here is another way of looking at it. Information wants to be free, but copyright laws are provided which allow it to be locked up. The GPL uses these laws against themselves, to create information which can never be locked up.
Which is very interesting, given that that project is sponsered by the EPSRC (Engineering and physical sciences research council) and Microsoft UK. See page 11 of the White paper for details.
About 60% IIRC. Which is pretty awesome, and certainly better than anything else we can do at the same scale.
Also, conventional hydro can be used to fill in the gaps, since you can turn it on and off at will.
Slashdot Mirror
A low cost replacement for current lithographic techniques at 60nm could certainly have a market niche.
But from what I understand of the article, this technique only creates a pattern of parallel stripes, with the spacing controlled by the film thickness. Presumably the direction is cotrolled by which edge you pry apart from. I don't see how that is useful for layout out a chip though.
You might think that making all the concrete, metal, plastics, etc, involved in the manufacture of all the generators will put a large burden on the environment, but actually compared to the energy investment in building, running, and decommissioning a nuclear power plant, the environmental burden is quite light: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_in vestment_(EROI)_for_wind_energy
The question has been asked and the anwser is yes for both wind and solar. (The answer used to be no for solar, but with concentrators and cell technology improvement it changed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_energy_gain).
The Cimg homepage is here. But if you want to see what it can do, check out some of the sample image restorations on page 6 of this paper. It does a very credible job of restoring missing parts of images, e.g. features hidden behind text.
The Catholic church has learned its lesson after Galileo. See for example Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church. The main place it continues to fly in the face of scientific opinion is when science affects what it considers to be its own sacred turf of the traditional family, but outside that you can expect the Vatican to be pretty pro-science. (In fact, this is not wholly new. Many outstanding scientists around the time of Galileo were priests at the Jesuit university in Rome). Indeed the Natural Law tradition, which is traditionally strong in Catholic theology, is a motivation to study nature.
The big danger to science as I see it comes from fundamentalists, Christian and otherwise. When scripture is granted authority over actual observations, then science is in trouble.
(Sigh). Its usually creationists who trigger this, but here goes anyway. There are a number of terms relating to different types of scientific 'knowledge'. Many scientists, myself included, do not study philosophy of science, and so sometimes use the terminology inexactly, which can confuse communication. However, the following terms broadly define the common usage: A hypothesis is an idea about how things might work, which has not been tested against data. One way of doing science is to sit around thinking of hypotheses and then design experiments to see if any of them match the behaviour of the real world. A law is a mathematical relationship which expresses a relationship observed in certain data. It doesn't explain a reason for that behaviour, it just explains what happens. So for example the gas laws explain how gasses behave without explaining why. A theory combines a hypothesis with a set of observations (usually obeying some law) which are consistent with that hypothesis. The fact that the observations and the hypothesis are consistent does not prove the theory, because there may be other theories which explain the same data. But a simple theory which is consistent with other theories and explains a great deal of data is considered to be very strong. In some cases the law comes before the hypothesis, in others the other way round. Hence: Theory of evolution (mechanism + observations). Law of gravity (we can quantify how strong it is, but not why). Gaia hypothesis. Other interesting stuff relating to this: Aristotelian, Galilean, Kantian, Baconian experiments. Predictive power of a theory. Cross validation. Bayesian statistics.
So I read the article and comments with some interest. Above, adubey here refers to a wikipedia article which describes Cell "local memory" as software managed cache. A cache you cannot read from would indeed be a crippling failure.
However an AC here suggests that this local memory is local to the GPU, the topic of that particular presentation. The article text even seems to support this here:
suggesting that the RSX is the preferred tool for accessing this particular "local memory". A "cache" which is easily accessible from a completely different processor seems unlikely. If this is the case, then the whole issue is irrelevent, since data flow is primarily from CPU to GPU and not the other way round.So it seems to me more likely that the AC is correct, and that this story is based on an ignorant or willfull misunderstanding of the presentation.
However, there is a genuine point in the parent post, which is that we need to evaluate the credibility of sources. You can find sources stating every possible point of view on global warming. How do we evaluate them? Or do we just say that the cacaphony is proof that there is no consensus?
The latter approach is intellectual cowardice. The correct approach is a systematic evaluation of the sources. For each source, a whole range of factors need to be taken into account, including, off the top of my head:
1. What is the expertise of the source?
2. How is the source regarded by other respected sources in the field?
3. What data does the source make use of?
4. How reliable and complete is that data?
5. What models are used by the source?
6. What is the explanatory and predictive power of those models?
7. Are there other factors which may have influenced the source, apart from the data?
I'm not a climatologist, and I suspect neither are most of the posters here, so we're not in a position to do most of this evaluation. So for my opinions, I must seek out meta-sources which I trust to do the evaluation for me.
For me, the most plausible sources are national scientific academies. These organisations have diverse roles, but one of them often includes evaluating scientific opinions to inform government policy.
The most convincing source I have therefore is this report, from the scietific academies of the US, UK, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, Brazil, China and India. Note that this includes at least one country whose government is not exactly sympathetic to the climate change viewpoint.
I am prepared to be convinced that I am wrong. But I need a more credible source than the one above. So far, nothing has come close.
Is there any similar trend amongst Catholic communities in the US?
In a famous article in a 1967 issue of Science, scientist and Christian Lynn White argues that western Christianity is largely responsible for this attitude, on the basis of Genesis 1:28 "fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
There is certainly some justification for this idea, I have heard it taught in churches in my lifetime. I've been looking into it a little recently.
The 'dominion hypothesis' does not seem to be common in early Jewish writings, and therefore was probably not dominant in the early church either. Augustine's commentary on Genesis does not promote it, although he mentions the idea in passing elsewhere. Aquinas however does support a dominion view, although he bases his argument on natural law rather than Genesis. Luther's commentary on Genesis notes that dominion was granted to Adam and Eve before the fall, but that fallen humanity might would be a bad choice to exercise such power.
St Francis of course was a proto-animal liberationist, but his views were at odds with the dominant viewpoint over most of church history. However, the foundation of the (R)SPCA in Britain (which in turn lead to similar organisations elsewhere), was certainly informed by Christian viewpoints. However, animal liberation is probably peripheral issue within the environmental movement as a whole, since its core concern in animals alive today rather than the future of the planet.
The World Council of Churches has been publishing reports opposing this viewpoint for 30 years, and most hierarchical denominations including the Roman Catholic cheurch have also come out against the dominion viewpoint more recently. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't still taught at grass roots level. Catholic teaching of course has some difficulties to resolve with population stabilistation.
On the whole, I would say that there is certainly justice to White's accusation. The difficulty comes in separating the damage done by western industiralisation from the progress acheived. If the dominon (mis-)reading of Genesis is responsible for the damage western civilisation has done to the environment, then must it not also be given the credit for the benefits we have reaped in terms of healthcare, standard of living, increased leisure and so on? However, clearly on the basis of current scintific opinion it needs to be vigorously opposed.
Wikipedia on Lynn White
How good do you want your brakes? There's no point having brakes better than required to lock a wheel or lift the backend, and mid-price bicycle brakes are already plenty good enough to do that. The prerequisite for improving the stopping power of a bicycle is lower the centre of mass or to put more weight on it, especially at the back. After that, you can get disk brakes if you need them - these are commonly used on recumbents, particularly recumbentstrikes, and sometimes on tandems.
Most modern scholars I've read, while they will on occasion attribute a few words to 'later redaction' (for example where an anchronous reference is included in a passage of probable early origin), don't try and assign a source to anything shorter than a couple of verses.
Although the satire is so subtle, I had to read it twice to realise it was satire. But then, I'm not the sharpest knife in the block.
(A few scholars however, e.g. Van Seters, argue that the J source, instead of being the earliest in 9th-10th century BCE, is actually post-exilic).
Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians generally support the Mosaic authorship, with datings in the 13th-15th century BCE.
Most other scholars (90% according to wikipedia), including secular, Jewish and Christian scholars, would date the final redaction to 6-7th century BCE (see for example the documentary hypothesis, which although it is not the latest theory forms a background and frequently a basis for newer theories). The final form was based on earlier documents and oral traditions, with the earliest written parts going back to about the 9th or 10th century BCE. More info here: Dating the bible.
(sorry)
Come on guys, the answer to this one is really easy:
If you want to protect marine life, then don't fire a torpedo at a US warship armed with accoustic defenses.
I'll add a few minor thoughts if I may: the energy amplifier solves, may solve or alleviate 1...5. The science has been proven, and a prototype is under construction. i.e. its not here yet, but it's much closer than fusion. (Note the wikipedia article is out of date).
Wind is by far the biggest renewable resource in active production, but the storage problem is big. Pumped storage hydro is efficient enough to solve this, but geographically demanding, probably to the point of unfeasibility. I don't see much else which is here now.
To be fair, churches have been using the word 'mission' (hence missionary) for centuries, and business picked it up and turned it into a weasel word later. But 'core values' are a fair cop.
I absolutely agree. I'm fine with building stuff from source, but most of my friends aren't.
'yum' helps a lot, for those things which are available on yum. I understand that Fedora Core 4 has a graphical yum client, which would work well for the people I have in mind, if the UI is reasonable, and adding archives intuitive.
There are a few other projects trying to solve the other problems - distribution independent packageing: http://autopackage.org/ and http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/
but they're not there yet.
It's just the GPL they hate, because they can't use GPL'ed software. See here for example.
Please don't play to the stereotype that Texans are illiterate. You know the difference between a 'queue' and a 'cue' as well as I do:
queue: a line of waiting people or vehicles.
cue: a sign or signal to cause some action.
Yes, but freedom is a two-way thing.
For example, if you were free to run all over anywhere you want on your dirt bike, including my back garden, then you would have removed my freedom to enjoy my back garden in peace.
In any society where resources are contested, granting one freedom to one person may remove a freedom from another.
The GPL trys to addresse this in a way which preserves the most freedom. You are granted the right to modify and redistribute anything I do, as long as you also redistribute the changes you made, so that I and others can benefit in turn. Your additional freedom comes at the price of not restricting the freedom of others.
Alternatively, here is another way of looking at it. Information wants to be free, but copyright laws are provided which allow it to be locked up. The GPL uses these laws against themselves, to create information which can never be locked up.
Which is very interesting, given that that project is sponsered by the EPSRC (Engineering and physical sciences research council) and Microsoft UK. See page 11 of the White paper for details.
About 60% IIRC. Which is pretty awesome, and certainly better than anything else we can do at the same scale. Also, conventional hydro can be used to fill in the gaps, since you can turn it on and off at will.