The d-Wave machine supposedly operates under the principles of an adiabatic quantum computer. There is a considerable controversy in the field regarding what machines of that type can and cannot do. But even d-Wave itself does not claim that the machine can solve NP-complete problems in polynomial type, see also the Wikipedia article. So this article is actually not news but olds. And it is obvious that the author has not a iota of understanding of the distinction of a fully fledged quantum computer and the d-Wave machine.
As a researcher in the field, I find it highly unsavory that something as important as a theory claiming to explain high-Tc superconductivity would be published in a proceedings journal. And not, say, in Science of Nature...
In physics in general, proceedings are considered the lowest form of scientific paper. Basically, you get published I've you've been to the conference. That's not really an achievement.
Which isn't to say that the paper is complete bullshit, I'm no expert in that particular topic. I just work on more applied techniques involving high-Tc superconductors...
I'm sorry to have to say that, but that is a very ignorant and claptrap post. Maglev trains by design cannot be derailed. Even the non-superconducting Transrapid by Siemens (Germany) that commutes between Shanghai Airport and Downtown cannot leave his tracks instead of catastrophic failure of the whole track.
That's because the tracks are shaped like this c-× so the magnets push the "c"-shaped guides away from the "-"-shaped track in every direction. The worst that can happen is that the "c" hits the track in which case the train simply brakes because of friction.
In the case of the L0, consider this picture: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/51b73df36bb3f78825000002-2238-1678-400-/japan-maglev-train-may-2010.jpg
Yes, the track is almost straight. No, there are no sharp curves as in Spain, else it couldn't go that fast. For a more informed article with some tech specs, check here:
http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Maglev+Train+Begins+Full+Speed+Testing+at+310+mph/article33281.htm
Please don't ask questions just for the sake of asking something. A very academic thing to do, but trust me, everybody hates the frustrated postdocs who do this.
Won't help... FB is tracking people even when they're not signed up. So you'd also have to install stuff like NoScript (and and forbid any and all connections to FB domains...) and Ghostery to keep them from tracking you. Don't know whether or how I can post code here, so the code for ABE is here: http://pastebin.com/uAezZEh4
If what you say is true, the fix seems easy: make a custom rom return unavailable warnings instead of not allowed errors, right? Your approach seems to kind of defeat having a smartphone in the first place, if I'm any judge. It's advantage for me lies in being able to use Facebook, web, email and so on while underway.:) Not to forget google maps (I know I could use offline maps as well, but not when searching for restaurants, shops etc.).
It cannot be that big of a problem. Let's see which cases I can think of on the top of my head that an app needs to handle gracefully anyway:
- network/wifi: can be out of range
- write access: sd can be full
- gps: no lock possible
- contacts: there are no contacts
- send sms/make call: out of range
- get installed apps: no apps installed
- camera/voice: some tablets have no camera/voice
etc. pp.
There is no reason for fine grained app permissions not to be included except political considerations. And I would not have even considered installing that new Facebook version had I not right now learned about OpenPDroid. I'm patching my CyanogenMod as we speak. If you're interested, see these two threads:
for the patches http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156
for the gui managing app http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994860
It's not only a question of what's more convenient, there's also the question of risk allocation. I'm not familiar with fracking, but I'm sure there's concerns there, just like there are with nuclear fission. I still think fusion is a pretty cool concept. If we're really serious about developing fusion though, how about we stop bitching about a billion dollars and just pour enough money on projects that are worthwhile? We keep saving banks with that money every other day!
There's the example of W7-X in Germany, a stellarator design that'll never be energy efficient, but that's not the point I am making: they took ages designing and mismanaging everything until a science minister actually swung by the place, saw that the scientist were not getting anywhere because they were doing science and not managing the W7-X project, as it was. So the ministry scrapped the project and said: you can have all the funding back, plus a little extra, if you come up with a detailed plan how to build this thing in the next 7 or so years. If you miss a deadline, all your funding is gone. So the project went ahead, they got some actual project managers and consultants to work on the project and lo and behold: the system is almost finished. It just took enough pressure and some people that are actually trained for the job they're supposed to be doing to get that project humming!
So if we're serious about ITER, we need to put professional project managers in charge and not some consortium of scientists and politicians and bitch about who gets which share. The positions should go to the party most qualified for the job and not to a company in a country that didn't get contracts in the amount they poured in yet. If some countries want to pull out - fine, we just need to make sure we stop the finger pointing and the nationalistic attitude. If the Chinese can't provide quality steel, they shouldn't get those contracts! Working on that project is such a pain! Actually, fuck multinational projects, they're not going to work. If you want to build a power plant, devise a plan, get the best people working on the field to do it, secure the funding, put professionals in charge, check every two years if they're on track. That way, we might actually have fusion plants in 50 years. At the rate we're going now and with the projects currently under way, we never will.
TL;DR: multinational projects suck, too many economically motivated political bullshit; professional project managers should lead the project and not some senior scientist who has no clue about how to efficiently manage something on that scale; chance to get fusion plants in 50 years: >0.5. Chance to get fusion plants in 20 years with the currently employed system of running fusion projects: 1E-9.
Actually, it's the other way around: Europe is less nanny. In Europe, you can buy things that your toddler can swallow (Kinder Surprise, anybody?). They also don't tell you your coffee is hot...
I don't know why it should be different here. In Germany, where I lived before moving to MA, they even sell *drum roll* Kinder Surprise! Google it if you don't know what that is... it's banned here in the US. So what you are saying is that US parents are so inept at bringing up their brood that more stringent regulation is needed here as opposed to Europe? hahaha... well... At this point, let me only say that I love the Darwin award.
IMHO, that depends very much where you live. The US just banned even SIM-unlocking phones. And since jailbreaking iOS may be considered a circumvention of DRM, you also would be in violation of the DMCA and quite possibly similar laws in other countries. Or am I missing something?
You mean it is still customizable. It's not like you can install any software you want legally on your iOS appliance. But that is besides the point: even using Safari browsers, one is still susceptible to MITM, fishing, scamming... attacks. So it isn't really a question of which browser/OS etc. you use. It is a question of infrastructure and the weakest link will always be the target.
Actually, a crystal's basic physical and optical properties do not change even when it is eroded: one unit cell of the crystal has all the determining characteristics that a macroscopic sample would have. Given, it takes some training to tell a rough diamond apart from quartz, but that's what mineralogists and material scientists are for. Oh and one more thing: if it was at least a little transparent, the most readily distinguishable characteristic of calcite is that it's birefringent (check: Wikipedia if you do not know what that means).
There's other countries where you can actually study for free - Germany for example... We have lots of Chinese students coming here for their education because it's
1) Very good
2) Very cheap
and 3) You can even take courses in English at most universities
Think about it - one semester costs you as a foreign student about 600 or 800$, depending on where you want to study - and I know quite a lot of students who don't have any money, get no scholarship and work all through the year so they can afford to pay rent etc. and they still have free time and can easily do their studies... Oh and another thing: I don't know how it is in America but here we have libraries so you don't need to buy one single book.
But then again I don't think you should get into university because clearly, if you havn't got the wits to figure out where you could study you don't belong in one anyway...
basically the same thing happens to me when i see that a link is down again just because people are too lazy to use a perfectly good proxy like coral which is just so easy to use... you don't even need to alter any options. *sigh*
please guys - since almost everybody here is tech-savvy anyway: why don't you just fucking coralize links so everybody can read em and the servers aren't down after half a minute?
i recall there being a post about coral here on slashdot quite some time ago - why don't make people a habit of posting all urls with that stupid.nyud.net:8090 appended and slashdotting won't be that much of an issue anymore
It hasn't been long since I finished school - namely a year - I think that still qualifies me to think like a pupil. Maybe it'd be best if I just wrote down what intrigued ME about science in school (actually enough to get me started studying material science:) ).
I have always loved comprehensible explanations of very complex topics - what quantum mechanics is all about, how quantum computers would realise XOR, OR (you know - like when I push this electron in HERE that other one gets pushed HERE...:) ) etc. what heisenberg's cat is all about, how tunneling works, how an electron microscope works. but also what fourier transforming is, how DivX and the like work and how graphic engines for FPS are written. how anisotropic filtering works, how antialiasing works and so on...
I loved it when the topics were so hard you had to really crack the nut but just understandable enough to really tackle them with limited knowledge (because I wouldn't sit at home and still think about that problem or really put some work into it AFTER school...).
I think the major trick is to slice up science in tiny bits that are 1) interesting and 2) not TOO hard but also not TOO easy. and i think lectures are the best way to get people interested since a fair is just another way of bunking school and only the geeks will get into competitions. when the lectures are good everybody will know instantly through rumor and more people will attend.
I don't think the geeks at school need support (I know this is a risky thing to state here;) ) - they're the ones you don't have to think about since they'll get into informatics or mathematics or physics anyway - it's the "normal" people you should encourage to look at science.
Slashdot Mirror
What data do you base your theory on? The people I know in Europe do not have prepaid SIMs... That stuff is for kids.
Could be a new art form if transferred to RL: oil paintings on post-it notes. About the same concept as PS on a mac mini... Royalties, please!
The d-Wave machine supposedly operates under the principles of an adiabatic quantum computer. There is a considerable controversy in the field regarding what machines of that type can and cannot do. But even d-Wave itself does not claim that the machine can solve NP-complete problems in polynomial type, see also the Wikipedia article. So this article is actually not news but olds. And it is obvious that the author has not a iota of understanding of the distinction of a fully fledged quantum computer and the d-Wave machine.
my god. Mistakes en masse! :s/Science of Nature/Science or Nature/ :s/published I've/published if/
As a researcher in the field, I find it highly unsavory that something as important as a theory claiming to explain high-Tc superconductivity would be published in a proceedings journal. And not, say, in Science of Nature... In physics in general, proceedings are considered the lowest form of scientific paper. Basically, you get published I've you've been to the conference. That's not really an achievement. Which isn't to say that the paper is complete bullshit, I'm no expert in that particular topic. I just work on more applied techniques involving high-Tc superconductors...
I'm sorry to have to say that, but that is a very ignorant and claptrap post. Maglev trains by design cannot be derailed. Even the non-superconducting Transrapid by Siemens (Germany) that commutes between Shanghai Airport and Downtown cannot leave his tracks instead of catastrophic failure of the whole track. That's because the tracks are shaped like this c-× so the magnets push the "c"-shaped guides away from the "-"-shaped track in every direction. The worst that can happen is that the "c" hits the track in which case the train simply brakes because of friction. In the case of the L0, consider this picture: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/51b73df36bb3f78825000002-2238-1678-400-/japan-maglev-train-may-2010.jpg Yes, the track is almost straight. No, there are no sharp curves as in Spain, else it couldn't go that fast. For a more informed article with some tech specs, check here: http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Maglev+Train+Begins+Full+Speed+Testing+at+310+mph/article33281.htm Please don't ask questions just for the sake of asking something. A very academic thing to do, but trust me, everybody hates the frustrated postdocs who do this.
Where is it available and where are those optimized implementations you mentioned? I'd really like to have a go at the standard...
Won't help... FB is tracking people even when they're not signed up. So you'd also have to install stuff like NoScript (and and forbid any and all connections to FB domains...) and Ghostery to keep them from tracking you. Don't know whether or how I can post code here, so the code for ABE is here: http://pastebin.com/uAezZEh4
If what you say is true, the fix seems easy: make a custom rom return unavailable warnings instead of not allowed errors, right? Your approach seems to kind of defeat having a smartphone in the first place, if I'm any judge. It's advantage for me lies in being able to use Facebook, web, email and so on while underway. :) Not to forget google maps (I know I could use offline maps as well, but not when searching for restaurants, shops etc.).
It cannot be that big of a problem. Let's see which cases I can think of on the top of my head that an app needs to handle gracefully anyway: - network/wifi: can be out of range - write access: sd can be full - gps: no lock possible - contacts: there are no contacts - send sms/make call: out of range - get installed apps: no apps installed - camera/voice: some tablets have no camera/voice etc. pp. There is no reason for fine grained app permissions not to be included except political considerations. And I would not have even considered installing that new Facebook version had I not right now learned about OpenPDroid. I'm patching my CyanogenMod as we speak. If you're interested, see these two threads: for the patches http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2098156 for the gui managing app http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1994860
It's not only a question of what's more convenient, there's also the question of risk allocation. I'm not familiar with fracking, but I'm sure there's concerns there, just like there are with nuclear fission. I still think fusion is a pretty cool concept. If we're really serious about developing fusion though, how about we stop bitching about a billion dollars and just pour enough money on projects that are worthwhile? We keep saving banks with that money every other day!
There's the example of W7-X in Germany, a stellarator design that'll never be energy efficient, but that's not the point I am making: they took ages designing and mismanaging everything until a science minister actually swung by the place, saw that the scientist were not getting anywhere because they were doing science and not managing the W7-X project, as it was. So the ministry scrapped the project and said: you can have all the funding back, plus a little extra, if you come up with a detailed plan how to build this thing in the next 7 or so years. If you miss a deadline, all your funding is gone. So the project went ahead, they got some actual project managers and consultants to work on the project and lo and behold: the system is almost finished. It just took enough pressure and some people that are actually trained for the job they're supposed to be doing to get that project humming!
So if we're serious about ITER, we need to put professional project managers in charge and not some consortium of scientists and politicians and bitch about who gets which share. The positions should go to the party most qualified for the job and not to a company in a country that didn't get contracts in the amount they poured in yet. If some countries want to pull out - fine, we just need to make sure we stop the finger pointing and the nationalistic attitude. If the Chinese can't provide quality steel, they shouldn't get those contracts! Working on that project is such a pain! Actually, fuck multinational projects, they're not going to work. If you want to build a power plant, devise a plan, get the best people working on the field to do it, secure the funding, put professionals in charge, check every two years if they're on track. That way, we might actually have fusion plants in 50 years. At the rate we're going now and with the projects currently under way, we never will.
TL;DR: multinational projects suck, too many economically motivated political bullshit; professional project managers should lead the project and not some senior scientist who has no clue about how to efficiently manage something on that scale; chance to get fusion plants in 50 years: >0.5. Chance to get fusion plants in 20 years with the currently employed system of running fusion projects: 1E-9.
Actually, it's the other way around: Europe is less nanny. In Europe, you can buy things that your toddler can swallow (Kinder Surprise, anybody?). They also don't tell you your coffee is hot...
I don't know why it should be different here. In Germany, where I lived before moving to MA, they even sell *drum roll* Kinder Surprise! Google it if you don't know what that is... it's banned here in the US. So what you are saying is that US parents are so inept at bringing up their brood that more stringent regulation is needed here as opposed to Europe? hahaha... well... At this point, let me only say that I love the Darwin award.
IMHO, that depends very much where you live. The US just banned even SIM-unlocking phones. And since jailbreaking iOS may be considered a circumvention of DRM, you also would be in violation of the DMCA and quite possibly similar laws in other countries. Or am I missing something?
You mean it is still customizable. It's not like you can install any software you want legally on your iOS appliance. But that is besides the point: even using Safari browsers, one is still susceptible to MITM, fishing, scamming ... attacks. So it isn't really a question of which browser/OS etc. you use. It is a question of infrastructure and the weakest link will always be the target.
Actually, a crystal's basic physical and optical properties do not change even when it is eroded: one unit cell of the crystal has all the determining characteristics that a macroscopic sample would have. Given, it takes some training to tell a rough diamond apart from quartz, but that's what mineralogists and material scientists are for. Oh and one more thing: if it was at least a little transparent, the most readily distinguishable characteristic of calcite is that it's birefringent (check: Wikipedia if you do not know what that means).
Actually, that were the politicians, not the lawyers as such.
There's other countries where you can actually study for free - Germany for example... We have lots of Chinese students coming here for their education because it's 1) Very good 2) Very cheap and 3) You can even take courses in English at most universities Think about it - one semester costs you as a foreign student about 600 or 800$, depending on where you want to study - and I know quite a lot of students who don't have any money, get no scholarship and work all through the year so they can afford to pay rent etc. and they still have free time and can easily do their studies... Oh and another thing: I don't know how it is in America but here we have libraries so you don't need to buy one single book. But then again I don't think you should get into university because clearly, if you havn't got the wits to figure out where you could study you don't belong in one anyway...
basically the same thing happens to me when i see that a link is down again just because people are too lazy to use a perfectly good proxy like coral which is just so easy to use... you don't even need to alter any options. *sigh*
why thank you! :) but it was a good attempt you have to admit...
please guys - since almost everybody here is tech-savvy anyway: why don't you just fucking coralize links so everybody can read em and the servers aren't down after half a minute?
i recall there being a post about coral here on slashdot quite some time ago - why don't make people a habit of posting all urls with that stupid .nyud.net:8090 appended and slashdotting won't be that much of an issue anymore
you're perfectly right :)
It hasn't been long since I finished school - namely a year - I think that still qualifies me to think like a pupil. Maybe it'd be best if I just wrote down what intrigued ME about science in school (actually enough to get me started studying material science :) ).
I have always loved comprehensible explanations of very complex topics - what quantum mechanics is all about, how quantum computers would realise XOR, OR (you know - like when I push this electron in HERE that other one gets pushed HERE... :) ) etc. what heisenberg's cat is all about, how tunneling works, how an electron microscope works. but also what fourier transforming is, how DivX and the like work and how graphic engines for FPS are written. how anisotropic filtering works, how antialiasing works and so on...
I loved it when the topics were so hard you had to really crack the nut but just understandable enough to really tackle them with limited knowledge (because I wouldn't sit at home and still think about that problem or really put some work into it AFTER school...).
I think the major trick is to slice up science in tiny bits that are 1) interesting and 2) not TOO hard but also not TOO easy. and i think lectures are the best way to get people interested since a fair is just another way of bunking school and only the geeks will get into competitions. when the lectures are good everybody will know instantly through rumor and more people will attend.
I don't think the geeks at school need support (I know this is a risky thing to state here ;) ) - they're the ones you don't have to think about since they'll get into informatics or mathematics or physics anyway - it's the "normal" people you should encourage to look at science.