Ok fine, I decided to take your bait and click on the links (and get offtopic in the process). The only conclusions that those papers brought me to is that deviating from the average speed increases your risk of a crash and that you are more likely to die the larger your change in speed is at the moment of the crash. So that seems to suggest: drive the speed limit and avoid hitting trees. It doesn't say that the speed limit should be lowered.
I believe the parent was talking about this growing trend were politicians suggest that decreasing the speed limit will make roads safer. The last paper you cited even mentions findings from Garber and Gadiraju (1989) that suggest that the crash rate is lowest when the speed limit is 5-10mph less than the design speed for the road. So if the speed limits on our roads were initial set to 5-10 mph less than the design speed then lowering the speed limit increases the crash rate.
I can't say for certain that the speed limits were actually set to 5-10mph below design speed when the roads were built, but it certainly seems like the way I would set the speed limit.
Finally if people already drive 10-15 mph above the speed limit (ever driven on 94 near Chicago, it is the main road I am familiar with and that is certainly the norm) then these results may suggest that it would be safer to just raise the speed limit. But really I know nothing of this subject so feel from to correct me as you see fit.
I agree with what Darinbob said, and as I am not an expert in this field I appreciate his corrections and clarifications. On the one hand these election companies should have higher standards, but on the other hand I just have to stop and ask: why aren't they producing voting machines with decent security? I just can't believe that their engineers are incapable of installing even the most basic security. So I wonder where there might be other sources of error. Perhaps it is unoriginal but I'm suspicious of Secretary's of State and County Clerks (politicians in general I suppose) in this case.
Strict certification standards are great, but if it costs around one million dollars (or I assume that it is at least a few hundred thousand) to obtain certification just so that you can improve the lock on the machine or make some other small change then I could see a significant reason not to update that machine. Similarly I could imagine that they might use these low security machines in low security situations because they are already certified and the company doesn't want to spend all that money trying to certify a new machine.
I've also seen people suggesting in these comments that the companies making e-voting prefer it to paper ballots because they can make so much more money, but I just don't see how these companies could be making much of any money. They are constantly getting sued for large sums of money based on improperly navigating minor differences in details of the election laws between counties.
I understand that people want to maintain state's rights but in this case I think the whole election system would be greatly improved if all the states could just agree on one set of election rules to all abide by. If say Ohio's voting laws make it more secure than Montana (just an imaginary example) does it really make sense for all Montana residents to get hosed?
I know this is slashdot so no one RTFA, but I'm sorry, I got curious so I did, and its all FUD.
This report IS talking about paper voting. The system they hacked is an optical scan reader. The only difference with your HB #2 is that they use a pen instead.
There was never any e-voting here. In fact, this system (the article calls it the "inkavote" system) doesn't even have anything to with counting votes! It just makes sure that the ballot was marked properly so that the problem can be caught before the ballot is brought to the central vote counter. All it is is a simple system to help make sure people don't vote for 2 presidents or something like that.
Then don't even get me stared on the "selling uncertified equipment" FUD. The equipment in question was certified by the federal government for a insignificant change and when a new politician stepped up in California suddenly the federal certification wasn't good enough. And again the machine in question wasn't there to count votes, just to help people make sure they voted correctly (I think it was for disabled people at that).
I just don't get it, there are a bunch of engineers working to make these voting machines, and its all the politicians who are creating all this FUD... this is slashdot, usually aren't people biased on the engineer's side?
There have been a couple posts like this already so I'll take the bait and ask: where has the polywell fusor been "universally deemed to be the proven method of fusion". If you want to learn more about people who currently are doing IEC research and are in fact funded by the DOE to do so (the Navy doesn't fund ITER to my knowledge things like that go through the DOE), then check out the website from at University of Madison: http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/ftisite1.htm
It should give at least a brief introduction to what people who have funding tend to use IEC for (neutron generation and maybe someday energy through the D-He3 reaction if we had He3).
I can't tell you exactly why the Navy isn't funding Bussard but I can ask a question that I bet the Navy asked. Bussard wants $200 million dollars to scale up his fusor based on the few results he found before the fusor broke. Why not apply for a grant to rebuild the device and actually demonstrate results? If thats not good enough why not scale it up slightly before going for the whole $200 million dollar large scale system? There are hundreds (thousands?) of small research companies with great ideas all competing to have their ideas funded and those companies often only ask for $100,000 (approximately an average phase I grant). Is it worth gambling $200 million on something that hasn't demonstrated results when that money could go to so many other ideas that have? I'm not sure how big the grant for this cold fusion research was but I am willing to be its pretty small.
I won't even go into all the side benefits of ITER (large scale international collaboration, developing new technology on U.S. soil, wide spread support from the majority of fusion scientists), but I will say that all these conspiracy theories that no money goes to anything but ITER should google "innovative confinement concepts"
Sorry I guess this was pretty off-topic, but really, look at my karma, how much worse could things get?...
Its just deuterium, you can get it from gas supply companies (usually welding companies). Buying tritium is where you start having challenges. Otherwise deuterium is about as dangerous as hydrogen. What is more impressive is that he was able to get his hands on a vacuum chamber, vacuum pump, high voltage supply, and high voltage feedthroughs. You can buy all of those parts without any trouble (or make many of them yourself) but that means he would either need a lot of excess money or a decent amount of vacuum experience.
"For a point of comparison, fusion is already hitting breakeven."
I agree with everything you posted besides this. To my knowledge the closest experiment to break even fusion is NIF (see http://www.llnl.gov/str/Powell.html or just http://www.llnl.gov/nif/). NIF still has a few years before it will be finished, inertial confinement is probably not going to be a viable energy source, and "break even" just means that you get as much out as you put into the plasma. So all that power on a magnetic confinement device going into magnet coils doesn't count. Power lost to inefficiencies doesn't count. Just what actually makes it into the plasma.
And even once break even is reached (whether it be NIF or ITER) the real goal is not just break even but a self-sustaining (burning) plasma. I think fusion is going to be great for the world, but it has a long way to come yet.
On topic with the article is that China's great accomplishment is in building a working experimental tokamak for less than 1/10th of the normal cost of a tokamak of its scale (around $ 37 million says wikipedia). If they are actually running shots and taking data then i think thats amazing.
I would be surprised if it even works on educated people. A month ago in Chicago I saw a billboard that said something like"make your bluetooth cell phone discoverable for more information".
I made my phone (also a V551) discoverable. Nothing happened.
My friends told me to stop being a nerd and keep walking. Using tech to advertise may sound good in theory, but I tend to get the impression it is just an idea that impresses executives at the top who don't really understand how well it works.
Doesn't this all work out perfectly for Apple? Almost everyone who actually knows what DRM is and is actually concerned about it has a large chance of knowing about programs like this that will strip off iTunes DRM. Some people who don't like DRM will not buy from iTunes because they feel strongly against DRM, but many others who don't like DRM will just buy their songs and strip the DRM off.
So the major labels let Apple sell the music because its "DRM protected" (which is crucial because the services that don't work with major labels are at a disadvantage), most people buy without knowing anything about DRM, others just buy because they know they can strip the DRM off if necessary, and a small part of the market share doesn't buy because they are against DRM. Apple gets pretty much the max possible number of customers. Apple wins, so I tend to feel like it IS about what Apple wants.
Is that just a crazy idea?
(as a side note: I do tend to agree that just happily going along with DRM like this is probably leading us all to our doom... but I'm not going to get into that here.)
This really does sound like a good idea, just upgrading the old software to a colorful and simple linux system. But, being in college, the question I always get is "ok so how do i get mp3's". At least if they are running a Microsoft OS then whatever new evil mp3 aquisition software will likely be compatible.
Or the other question I'll get is "how do i connect my camera" and then I just assume headaches will ensue. People may look like all they use their computer for is solitare and word but somehow they always have dreams of using it to take over the world with some new piece of software or gadget. I don't want to be the one to say "oh that OS i set up for you won't work with what you want and there is no chance in hell you will be able to figure out how to make it work".
I'm calling B.S. on their "temporarily down for maintenance" page. Anyone else think this is just a proper slashdotting and someone was smart enough to redirect all traffic to that page before their servers melted a hole to the center of the earth. It looks nicer than a 404 at least.
And besides if that is not the case, what does it mater, this is slashdot and unsubstantiated claims always get modded up right? right?
Sorry, too busy to respond to this properly right now but you would actually blanket a fusion reactor in something that would breed Tritium (something like Lithium). You can actually do a little research before blindly claiming that thorium is our only hope and come across the abstract to this article: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0029-5515/43/8/306/ by googling "fusion blanket material"
My only problem with your comment is that you mix some true with some half truth (which could lead someone to believe your blanket comments).
What you do say that is very important is: fusion is hard. Fission works great and new ideas for reactors are making it even better (pebble bed reactors make for a nifty solution too). The problem right now is that ignorant people are good at keeping the public afraid of fission because so many lies about its dangers have been spread.
If fusion can be made possible lets not ruin it in the same way before it even starts by spreading misinformation about what exactly its problems are.
(disclaimer: I'm a grad student in applied physics with a plasma physics focus... so i'm pretty biased)
wow are those results ever slanted. I think its certainly important not to ignore that tianamen has been a site of protests or a place where china has shown off its tanks... but when I went there it certainly looked more like the pictures currently available on google.cn
I'm against the censoring China is forcing, but in this case is google.com better than google.cn because it shows the controversial results of Tiananmen with tanks instead of (what I would consider) the more pertinent results of Tiananmen how it actually would look if you were there right now?
I'm just amazed that its so bi-polar... either nearly all tanks or nearly all smiles. weird.
I just think its funny how all the girls in my classes (engineering physics major) are so busy trying to convince the guys "seriously, we are engineers!"
while I'm trying to convince all the girls I see "no seriously, not an engineer, i won't use the words 'secondary electron emission' even once in your presence, we can talk about... you know... sports... right?"
p.s. all of the girls in my classes are extremely intelligent and really don't need to convince me they are engineers, i already believe that.
Maybe people think that because they see a new video on MTV with their favorite artist leaning back against an array of sweet cars that all musicians are doing plenty fine and that it is ok to steal their music. Maybe I feel like I am different because I only agree with half of that statement.
My band played a few shows with and was good friends with a band that has since been signed to Victory records. Sure Victory isn't Sony or BMG but no small label none the less. Since signing the band has had shirts printed and other merchandise to sell at shows along side their cds. Instead of driving around in hummers they barely make it to their shows in the oldest van you could imagine. They have a great job, playing music to appreciative fans all across the world, but they are heavily in debt to the label and barely making it. When one of their songs was sold to MTV to be played on battle of the sexes for many thousands of dollars the band saw none. The band sees no worthwhile money from record sales.
No matter how many times people say "stop pirating it hurts the artists" it still won't be true in most cases.
Of course piracy doesn't hurt profits for musicians, it is free advertising so people are more inclined to go to concerts or buy merch, the places most musicians get their money anyway.
(and if i am horribly wrong on this it would be good to be corrected because I really do believe this)
Really? This doesn't surprise you at all? I read it twice and I still can't believe it. How can we be producing only 6% of the worlds engineers when I'm surrounded by imported students in my job at u of Illinois nuclear radiation lab? Do they just mean "6% receive bachelors degrees in the USA"? Otherwise I can't see why so many brilliant foreign students fly half way around the world to go to school in the middle of illinois surrounded by corn and only corn for miles.
Slashdot Mirror
perhaps the funniest comment I have ever seen on slashdot. A rating of +5 funny is not nearly enough to do this justice.
I believe the parent was talking about this growing trend were politicians suggest that decreasing the speed limit will make roads safer. The last paper you cited even mentions findings from Garber and Gadiraju (1989) that suggest that the crash rate is lowest when the speed limit is 5-10mph less than the design speed for the road. So if the speed limits on our roads were initial set to 5-10 mph less than the design speed then lowering the speed limit increases the crash rate.
I can't say for certain that the speed limits were actually set to 5-10mph below design speed when the roads were built, but it certainly seems like the way I would set the speed limit.
Finally if people already drive 10-15 mph above the speed limit (ever driven on 94 near Chicago, it is the main road I am familiar with and that is certainly the norm) then these results may suggest that it would be safer to just raise the speed limit. But really I know nothing of this subject so feel from to correct me as you see fit.
Strict certification standards are great, but if it costs around one million dollars (or I assume that it is at least a few hundred thousand) to obtain certification just so that you can improve the lock on the machine or make some other small change then I could see a significant reason not to update that machine. Similarly I could imagine that they might use these low security machines in low security situations because they are already certified and the company doesn't want to spend all that money trying to certify a new machine.
I've also seen people suggesting in these comments that the companies making e-voting prefer it to paper ballots because they can make so much more money, but I just don't see how these companies could be making much of any money. They are constantly getting sued for large sums of money based on improperly navigating minor differences in details of the election laws between counties.
I understand that people want to maintain state's rights but in this case I think the whole election system would be greatly improved if all the states could just agree on one set of election rules to all abide by. If say Ohio's voting laws make it more secure than Montana (just an imaginary example) does it really make sense for all Montana residents to get hosed?
This report IS talking about paper voting. The system they hacked is an optical scan reader. The only difference with your HB #2 is that they use a pen instead.
There was never any e-voting here. In fact, this system (the article calls it the "inkavote" system) doesn't even have anything to with counting votes! It just makes sure that the ballot was marked properly so that the problem can be caught before the ballot is brought to the central vote counter. All it is is a simple system to help make sure people don't vote for 2 presidents or something like that.
Then don't even get me stared on the "selling uncertified equipment" FUD. The equipment in question was certified by the federal government for a insignificant change and when a new politician stepped up in California suddenly the federal certification wasn't good enough. And again the machine in question wasn't there to count votes, just to help people make sure they voted correctly (I think it was for disabled people at that).
I just don't get it, there are a bunch of engineers working to make these voting machines, and its all the politicians who are creating all this FUD... this is slashdot, usually aren't people biased on the engineer's side?
where has the polywell fusor been "universally deemed to be the proven method of fusion". If you want to learn more about people who currently are doing IEC research and are in fact funded by the DOE to do so (the Navy doesn't fund ITER to my knowledge things like that go through the DOE), then check out the website from at University of Madison:
http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/ftisite1.htm
It should give at least a brief introduction to what people who have funding tend to use IEC for (neutron generation and maybe someday energy through the D-He3 reaction if we had He3).
I can't tell you exactly why the Navy isn't funding Bussard but I can ask a question that I bet the Navy asked. Bussard wants $200 million dollars to scale up his fusor based on the few results he found before the fusor broke. Why not apply for a grant to rebuild the device and actually demonstrate results? If thats not good enough why not scale it up slightly before going for the whole $200 million dollar large scale system? There are hundreds (thousands?) of small research companies with great ideas all competing to have their ideas funded and those companies often only ask for $100,000 (approximately an average phase I grant). Is it worth gambling $200 million on something that hasn't demonstrated results when that money could go to so many other ideas that have? I'm not sure how big the grant for this cold fusion research was but I am willing to be its pretty small.
I won't even go into all the side benefits of ITER (large scale international collaboration, developing new technology on U.S. soil, wide spread support from the majority of fusion scientists), but I will say that all these conspiracy theories that no money goes to anything but ITER should google "innovative confinement concepts"
Sorry I guess this was pretty off-topic, but really, look at my karma, how much worse could things get? ...
Its just deuterium, you can get it from gas supply companies (usually welding companies). Buying tritium is where you start having challenges. Otherwise deuterium is about as dangerous as hydrogen. What is more impressive is that he was able to get his hands on a vacuum chamber, vacuum pump, high voltage supply, and high voltage feedthroughs. You can buy all of those parts without any trouble (or make many of them yourself) but that means he would either need a lot of excess money or a decent amount of vacuum experience.
I agree with everything you posted besides this. To my knowledge the closest experiment to break even fusion is NIF (see http://www.llnl.gov/str/Powell.html or just http://www.llnl.gov/nif/). NIF still has a few years before it will be finished, inertial confinement is probably not going to be a viable energy source, and "break even" just means that you get as much out as you put into the plasma. So all that power on a magnetic confinement device going into magnet coils doesn't count. Power lost to inefficiencies doesn't count. Just what actually makes it into the plasma.
And even once break even is reached (whether it be NIF or ITER) the real goal is not just break even but a self-sustaining (burning) plasma. I think fusion is going to be great for the world, but it has a long way to come yet.
On topic with the article is that China's great accomplishment is in building a working experimental tokamak for less than 1/10th of the normal cost of a tokamak of its scale (around $ 37 million says wikipedia). If they are actually running shots and taking data then i think thats amazing.
I made my phone (also a V551) discoverable. Nothing happened.
My friends told me to stop being a nerd and keep walking. Using tech to advertise may sound good in theory, but I tend to get the impression it is just an idea that impresses executives at the top who don't really understand how well it works.
Doesn't this all work out perfectly for Apple? Almost everyone who actually knows what DRM is and is actually concerned about it has a large chance of knowing about programs like this that will strip off iTunes DRM. Some people who don't like DRM will not buy from iTunes because they feel strongly against DRM, but many others who don't like DRM will just buy their songs and strip the DRM off. So the major labels let Apple sell the music because its "DRM protected" (which is crucial because the services that don't work with major labels are at a disadvantage), most people buy without knowing anything about DRM, others just buy because they know they can strip the DRM off if necessary, and a small part of the market share doesn't buy because they are against DRM. Apple gets pretty much the max possible number of customers. Apple wins, so I tend to feel like it IS about what Apple wants. Is that just a crazy idea? (as a side note: I do tend to agree that just happily going along with DRM like this is probably leading us all to our doom... but I'm not going to get into that here.)
This really does sound like a good idea, just upgrading the old software to a colorful and simple linux system. But, being in college, the question I always get is "ok so how do i get mp3's". At least if they are running a Microsoft OS then whatever new evil mp3 aquisition software will likely be compatible.
Or the other question I'll get is "how do i connect my camera" and then I just assume headaches will ensue. People may look like all they use their computer for is solitare and word but somehow they always have dreams of using it to take over the world with some new piece of software or gadget. I don't want to be the one to say "oh that OS i set up for you won't work with what you want and there is no chance in hell you will be able to figure out how to make it work".
advice?
I'm calling B.S. on their "temporarily down for maintenance" page. Anyone else think this is just a proper slashdotting and someone was smart enough to redirect all traffic to that page before their servers melted a hole to the center of the earth. It looks nicer than a 404 at least.
And besides if that is not the case, what does it mater, this is slashdot and unsubstantiated claims always get modded up right? right?
Sorry, too busy to respond to this properly right now but you would actually blanket a fusion reactor in something that would breed Tritium (something like Lithium). You can actually do a little research before blindly claiming that thorium is our only hope and come across the abstract to this article:/
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0029-5515/43/8/306
by googling "fusion blanket material"
My only problem with your comment is that you mix some true with some half truth (which could lead someone to believe your blanket comments).
What you do say that is very important is: fusion is hard. Fission works great and new ideas for reactors are making it even better (pebble bed reactors make for a nifty solution too). The problem right now is that ignorant people are good at keeping the public afraid of fission because so many lies about its dangers have been spread.
If fusion can be made possible lets not ruin it in the same way before it even starts by spreading misinformation about what exactly its problems are.
(disclaimer: I'm a grad student in applied physics with a plasma physics focus... so i'm pretty biased)
wow are those results ever slanted. I think its certainly important not to ignore that tianamen has been a site of protests or a place where china has shown off its tanks... but when I went there it certainly looked more like the pictures currently available on google.cn
I'm against the censoring China is forcing, but in this case is google.com better than google.cn because it shows the controversial results of Tiananmen with tanks instead of (what I would consider) the more pertinent results of Tiananmen how it actually would look if you were there right now?
I'm just amazed that its so bi-polar... either nearly all tanks or nearly all smiles. weird.
looks kinda like the imac i'm typing this on. I wonder if there are any fruit logos on the side that we just can't see because of the picture. cute
I just think its funny how all the girls in my classes (engineering physics major) are so busy trying to convince the guys "seriously, we are engineers!" while I'm trying to convince all the girls I see "no seriously, not an engineer, i won't use the words 'secondary electron emission' even once in your presence, we can talk about... you know... sports... right?" p.s. all of the girls in my classes are extremely intelligent and really don't need to convince me they are engineers, i already believe that.
Maybe people think that because they see a new video on MTV with their favorite artist leaning back against an array of sweet cars that all musicians are doing plenty fine and that it is ok to steal their music. Maybe I feel like I am different because I only agree with half of that statement. My band played a few shows with and was good friends with a band that has since been signed to Victory records. Sure Victory isn't Sony or BMG but no small label none the less. Since signing the band has had shirts printed and other merchandise to sell at shows along side their cds. Instead of driving around in hummers they barely make it to their shows in the oldest van you could imagine. They have a great job, playing music to appreciative fans all across the world, but they are heavily in debt to the label and barely making it. When one of their songs was sold to MTV to be played on battle of the sexes for many thousands of dollars the band saw none. The band sees no worthwhile money from record sales. No matter how many times people say "stop pirating it hurts the artists" it still won't be true in most cases. Of course piracy doesn't hurt profits for musicians, it is free advertising so people are more inclined to go to concerts or buy merch, the places most musicians get their money anyway. (and if i am horribly wrong on this it would be good to be corrected because I really do believe this)
Really? This doesn't surprise you at all? I read it twice and I still can't believe it. How can we be producing only 6% of the worlds engineers when I'm surrounded by imported students in my job at u of Illinois nuclear radiation lab? Do they just mean "6% receive bachelors degrees in the USA"? Otherwise I can't see why so many brilliant foreign students fly half way around the world to go to school in the middle of illinois surrounded by corn and only corn for miles.