Consider what this means legally. Basically one person is trying to install software with a questionable purpose on a second person's computer, without asking for permission first.
If the first person is an actual human and the second is a corporation, this is considered a cybercrime and is typically punished by at the very least some sort of probation or community service, coupled with a court order forbidding ownership or use of computers for a fairly lengthy time period.
Now, what happens if these same penalties are applied to the corporations responsible for this?
Once you see that they actually brought Whistler back, at that point I questioned whether the writer had even seen the original movie.
It's my understanding that the original version of the first movie ended with a scene where Blade ran into Whistler, who was now a vampire. This scene was cut in the version that appeared in theaters, but IIRC it's on the DVD, or at least mentioned in the director's commentary.
Not only was the Silmarillion compiled after Tolkien's death, but The Hobbit was first published in 1938. That's quite an accomplishment if, as Katz says, Tolkien's family inspired to write it after WWII.
See the above post "a few bits from an insider" by AC, and note the part about ferroelectric materials.
What got MY attention about this is the high temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7 has a perovskite structure, and I seem to recall being told that a similar material (slightly deficient in oxygen) is a semiconductor. This same technology may lead to the integration of Josephson junctions into microchips.
If one is shot down (such as in war) or it falls for any other reason, the cable would wrap around the entire Earth and kill everyone within quite a few miles of the equator.
Actually if it is "shot down," it will probably be cut by weapons launched from earth's surface or atmosphere, which limits the length of falling cable to a few dozen miles. The rest of the cable would actually move away from Earth.
But are carbon nanotubes that strong? I thought they were having problems manufactureing them that strong...
Not per se, the problem is that nanotubes don't stick to one another very well, and the longest ones are only around 100 microns long. You can get around the length if you can braid them together, but they don't stick together unless they're long enough...kind of a catch-22, at least until we learn how to make longer nanotubes.
I think money is a lot better spent on the international space station or new energy sources to propel new spacecraft.
I think any money spent on even planning it is a waste and may as well be put towards the above causes.
I take pretty much the opposite position, since I've seen some of the numbers and caught a glimpse of how things are run. Unfortunately our governments don't like sharing information (cold war habits die hard, I guess) so frequently scientists from different countries are not allowed to collaborate on experiments. To me, if scientists from different nations can't work together, there is no real purpose in having an "international" space station.
As for propulsion, what type do you mean? A space elevator would lower the cost of getting into geosynchronous orbit tremendously. From there, it's much cheaper to go anywhere else. Just about all of the new propulsion schemes I've heard of either don't produce enough thrust (ion propulsion) or too much radiation (nuclear) for the first part of the trip.
Re:There has to be a practical reason...
on
Going Up?
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· Score: 2
It's (theoretically) much, much less expensive to launch from space than it is to launch from the planet's surface. It's possible that something like this could make the use of local space cost-effective.
I've heard the numbers before, but I can't recall off the top of my head...
I know for certain that current "shipping costs" to get into space are roughly US$10K/lb. The space elevator should reduce that to something like US$200/lb. if I remember correctly (it may be lower).
Never forget the reliability factor. We think space shuttle flights are routine, but they're not very frequent, which means the low number of disasters is primarily due to the low number of flights. From what I've heard directly from NASA, if one shuttle were launched every day, we should expect to lose one every year, give or take a few months.
Re:But, gimp has been ported to Windows!
on
Grokking The Gimp
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· Score: 1
"Gimp has been ported to windows.
Wo why do I need Linux just for that?"
I use GIMP under both Windows and Linux.
GIMP was originally written to run under Linux, and the Windows version doesn't seem to be updated as frequently, at least in the few months I've been paying attention to the Win32 version.
There are other reasons as well. The Win32 GIMP may well be an introduction to open-source software for those who have always relied on closed-source commercial applications like photoshop. This might be what it takes to get rid of confusion between free software and the old shareware ("crippleware") concept.
Further, the GIMP's UI is the same whether you run GIMP on Win32 or Linux/X. Why then should a user continue to put up with the BSOD and other common Windows "features" when he/she can use the same applications running on a more stable platform?
Bold assertions aside, Red Hat is in a very strong position, said WR Hambrecht analyst Prakesh Patel. "It's by far the best-branded open-source company out there," and Patel predicted it would beat Linux computer maker VA Linux Systems in the race to attain profitability.
Is my memory playing tricks on me, or was SuSE already announcing profits way back around the time of Redhat's IPO? This will probably get me moderated down to flamebait, but I seem to recall Redhat's glowing reports of amazingly low losses, while SuSE was already annuncing profits.
Maybe now it will be possible to create quantum computers that are much more functional than the ones that currently exist.
Not really. The problem with quantum computers is that essentially the computer is designed for a specific problem, since the physical structure of the computer IS the program. A diamond crystal may contain more atoms (and therefore more Qbits) but this doesn't necessarily make a more powerful computer, just like a heap of 1 billion transistors is not automatically more powerful than a P3, or even a 286 for that matter. It all depends on how they're wired together.
I expect a really powerful quantum computer would look more like a dendrimer, but that's just my guess.
First let me criticize a few suggestions I've seen over the past few days:
(1) Launching a DDOS attack against movie companies' websites: Bad idea. This will only reinforce their accusations that we are all criminals, and turn the general public against us. The decision is frustrating, but we don't need to give them justification for what they've done.
(2) Burning DVD's in mass quantities. Are you going to loot video stores to get them? (see above) Otherwise, the movie industry already has your money, and that's the bottom line. I really don't think anyone would care aside from the protesters themselves, and maybe some neighbors who get annoyed by the smell of burning plastic.
There are other forms of entertainment than movies. Gaming, for example.
I'm discussing mainly (but not exclusively--see the end of my post) roleplaying games.
Gaming is cheaper. A typical rulebook for an RPG is $20-$30, cheaper than movie tickets for for the 4-6 people in a typical gaming group. Extra sourcebooks for a gaming system are usually only $10-15.
Gaming is more interesting. Even if you only have one rulebook, you can have a nearly endless variety of scenarios. Your best-case scenario with movies is renting, where you might be able to get 20 movies or so. This leads right into my third point...
Gaming is easier to schedule. Regardless of how much or how little time you have available, a movie (with few exceptions) takes roughly two hours to watch. The length of an RPG session can be controlled by adjusting the complexity of the storyline. I've seen games as short as 2 hours or as long as several days.
With less time available, you might want to consider a card game or board game (maybe monopoly, but I was thinking along the lines of Settlers of Catan)
Not to ramble on too much, I thought I'd post links to a few of my favorite gaming companies: Steve Jackson Games White Wolf Game Studio Cheapass Games (Typically only $5 a game, I recommend Give me the Brain for a fun, short card game.
When I brought the issue up with the safty officer, I was told that Thionl Chloride is a "mild acid" and if something did happen just to "rince it off in the eyewash."
You might not be a chemist, but I am, and your safety officer seems downright incompetent to me.
The reaction when the stuff contacts water (I'm leaving out the various reactions with organic compounds) converts one molecule of thionyl chloride and two molecules of water to two molecules of HCl and one molecule of sulfuric acid, with near 100% efficiency as I understand it.
Neither hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid are considered "weak" by any standards I've ever heard.
I don't have much to add here, I just want to point out most universities seem to be using SSN's as student identification numbers now. I'm not sure what the law states on this point, but universities in general seem increasingly afraid to risk being sued or losing corporate sponsors. In this light it's hard to see universities opening themselves to lawsuits by every single one of their students.
"They're going to try to develop two varieties of a crop - one that can reproduce, and one that can't. How long do you think such a setup would last before they "accidentally" mixed some sterile seed in with the non-sterile? Then a year later, poor farmers who needed to save seeds from the previous year's crops will plant them, but nothing will grow. And this will spread. "
An appropriate place, if any, to point out natural selection at work. If some seeds are for sterile plants, the next year's crop will be smaller, but 100% of the second year's crop will be fertile if the sterile variety is dominant.
More likely the reproductive gene will be dominant. If you assume a 50/50 mix of seed, this means the 2nd year 100% will be fertile, the 3rd 75% will be fertile. The 4th year would have a smaller crop, but would be 5/9 fertile. The 5th year the algebra beginds to get more complicated. If I get some time and a spreadsheet I 'll have to do the calculations in a spreadsheet and post the results later.
The point is, the sterile variety is not part of the reproductive population, so it can never completely take over.
I would imagine you can move across the wind, but not upwind. When photons are reflected from the sail, their momentum is changed. Since momentum must be conserved, the momentum of the spacecraft is changed by an equal and opposite amount.
This means to give the ship more momentum toward the light source ("sailing upwind", if you prefer) you must give the photons more momentum AWAY from the light source. Since that's the direction they're already headed, any reflection or refraction of these photons will reduce their outward momentum.
does the phrase "complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies to design their software" really mean anything? This sounds to me like legalese for "Just to make you happy we'll show you source for everything you already know, so we can pretend to be open source. If we've hidden it from you before, you'll still never see it, but we're open source now so you should like us anyway."
I think we're all familiar with your view on software patents by now. Do you have a similar position on business method patents?
I'm also curious about your position on ordinary (hardware) patents, including biotech and nanotech patents. Do you feel these should be restricted or abolished?
Just to respond to a LOT of posts out there, this would require a wavelength of.1 mm. Assuming they scale up the number of transistors in a chip to keep the die size the same, this means within the CPU itself some parts would lag by at least a dozen cycles. With the lack of info about the specific molecules used as switches, I'd guess we're looking at a feature size of 1-10nm, which lies roughly at.005-.05 the size of modern IC features. Since the wavelength is 10^5 nm, this means we could fit 10^8-10^10 devices on a chip assuming we left no space at all between devices. Considerably more than a modern CPU, so we could conceivably integrate all the system memory onto the same chip
You're thinking of endohedral complexes....they've been around for years. What they're talking about doing is depassivating a silicon surface one atom at a time. The "hole" referred to in the article is not the "hole" which serves as a carrier particle in semiconductor theory, but what chemists call a "dangling bond" or "free radical." This is extremely reactive, and tends to react with any nearby molecules containing double or triple bonds.
"I think the question of being gods is far from relevant. "Gods" of religion, myth, and legend are usually omnipotent (certainly doesn't apply to us) and omniscient (ditto)."
Really? That doesn't seem to be the case in Norse or Greek mythology. Perhaps you simply meant all monotheistic religions. On the other hand, I can't be certain even that limited statement would be true.
"But what I don't get is why this is good for M$, what do they gain? What they lose is that they are helping people make the break to a more stable platform and relegating windoze to be simply an application launcher and runtime environment"
And what exactly do they lose by that? If M$ is, as most of us seem to believe, only in business for the money then collecting the license fee is all that matters.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised they haven't come out with their own commercial Win9x emulator for Linux.
"Thus the body can acquire large accelerations with small forces , in accordance with Eq.(2.05)."
Wait a second, they claimed to be reducing gravitational mass, not inertial mass. That wouldn't be true. What they should be trying to claim is that the spacecraft experiences little or no acceleration in LARGE gravitational fields.
If the body indeed acquired large accelerations with small forces, it would slam into the ground faster, not fly away.
"s another side note to this, Lucent Tech. has an EBL system just about at proof of concept called SCAPEL. Hope this clears up a few of the wrong ideas and helps people understand what this is all about."
Might I point out that here on slashdot back in October or November was an announcement that Lucent had reached a resolution of.05 microns using SCALPEL. Then let's not forget the UC Berkeley student who made an even smaller transistor two weeks later. Something like 0.018 microns or so. This IBM announcement is not really anything new. Here is the press release.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider what this means legally. Basically one person is trying to install software with a questionable purpose on a second person's computer, without asking for permission first.
If the first person is an actual human and the second is a corporation, this is considered a cybercrime and is typically punished by at the very least some sort of probation or community service, coupled with a court order forbidding ownership or use of computers for a fairly lengthy time period.
Now, what happens if these same penalties are applied to the corporations responsible for this?
Once you see that they actually brought Whistler back, at that point I questioned whether the writer had even seen the original movie.
It's my understanding that the original version of the first movie ended with a scene where Blade ran into Whistler, who was now a vampire. This scene was cut in the version that appeared in theaters, but IIRC it's on the DVD, or at least mentioned in the director's commentary.
Not only was the Silmarillion compiled after Tolkien's death, but The Hobbit was first published in 1938. That's quite an accomplishment if, as Katz says, Tolkien's family inspired to write it after WWII.
See the above post "a few bits from an insider" by AC, and note the part about ferroelectric materials.
What got MY attention about this is the high temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7 has a perovskite structure, and I seem to recall being told that a similar material (slightly deficient in oxygen) is a semiconductor. This same technology may lead to the integration of Josephson junctions into microchips.
Actually if it is "shot down," it will probably be cut by weapons launched from earth's surface or atmosphere, which limits the length of falling cable to a few dozen miles. The rest of the cable would actually move away from Earth.
Not per se, the problem is that nanotubes don't stick to one another very well, and the longest ones are only around 100 microns long. You can get around the length if you can braid them together, but they don't stick together unless they're long enough...kind of a catch-22, at least until we learn how to make longer nanotubes.
I take pretty much the opposite position, since I've seen some of the numbers and caught a glimpse of how things are run. Unfortunately our governments don't like sharing information (cold war habits die hard, I guess) so frequently scientists from different countries are not allowed to collaborate on experiments. To me, if scientists from different nations can't work together, there is no real purpose in having an "international" space station.
As for propulsion, what type do you mean? A space elevator would lower the cost of getting into geosynchronous orbit tremendously. From there, it's much cheaper to go anywhere else. Just about all of the new propulsion schemes I've heard of either don't produce enough thrust (ion propulsion) or too much radiation (nuclear) for the first part of the trip.
I've heard the numbers before, but I can't recall off the top of my head...
I know for certain that current "shipping costs" to get into space are roughly US$10K/lb. The space elevator should reduce that to something like US$200/lb. if I remember correctly (it may be lower).
Never forget the reliability factor. We think space shuttle flights are routine, but they're not very frequent, which means the low number of disasters is primarily due to the low number of flights. From what I've heard directly from NASA, if one shuttle were launched every day, we should expect to lose one every year, give or take a few months.
"Gimp has been ported to windows.
Wo why do I need Linux just for that?"
I use GIMP under both Windows and Linux.
GIMP was originally written to run under Linux, and the Windows version doesn't seem to be updated as frequently, at least in the few months I've been paying attention to the Win32 version.
There are other reasons as well. The Win32 GIMP may well be an introduction to open-source software for those who have always relied on closed-source commercial applications like photoshop. This might be what it takes to get rid of confusion between free software and the old shareware ("crippleware") concept.
Further, the GIMP's UI is the same whether you run GIMP on Win32 or Linux/X. Why then should a user continue to put up with the BSOD and other common Windows "features" when he/she can use the same applications running on a more stable platform?
Bold assertions aside, Red Hat is in a very strong position, said WR Hambrecht analyst Prakesh Patel. "It's by far the best-branded open-source company out there," and Patel predicted it would beat Linux computer maker VA Linux Systems in the race to attain profitability.
Is my memory playing tricks on me, or was SuSE already announcing profits way back around the time of Redhat's IPO? This will probably get me moderated down to flamebait, but I seem to recall Redhat's glowing reports of amazingly low losses, while SuSE was already annuncing profits.
Or has SuSE been going downhill lately?
Maybe now it will be possible to create quantum computers that are much more functional than the ones that currently exist.
Not really. The problem with quantum computers is that essentially the computer is designed for a specific problem, since the physical structure of the computer IS the program. A diamond crystal may contain more atoms (and therefore more Qbits) but this doesn't necessarily make a more powerful computer, just like a heap of 1 billion transistors is not automatically more powerful than a P3, or even a 286 for that matter. It all depends on how they're wired together.
I expect a really powerful quantum computer would look more like a dendrimer, but that's just my guess.
First let me criticize a few suggestions I've seen over the past few days:
(1) Launching a DDOS attack against movie companies' websites: Bad idea. This will only reinforce their accusations that we are all criminals, and turn the general public against us. The decision is frustrating, but we don't need to give them justification for what they've done.
(2) Burning DVD's in mass quantities. Are you going to loot video stores to get them? (see above) Otherwise, the movie industry already has your money, and that's the bottom line. I really don't think anyone would care aside from the protesters themselves, and maybe some neighbors who get annoyed by the smell of burning plastic.
There are other forms of entertainment than movies. Gaming, for example.
I'm discussing mainly (but not exclusively--see the end of my post) roleplaying games.
Gaming is cheaper. A typical rulebook for an RPG is $20-$30, cheaper than movie tickets for for the 4-6 people in a typical gaming group. Extra sourcebooks for a gaming system are usually only $10-15.
Gaming is more interesting. Even if you only have one rulebook, you can have a nearly endless variety of scenarios. Your best-case scenario with movies is renting, where you might be able to get 20 movies or so. This leads right into my third point...
Gaming is easier to schedule. Regardless of how much or how little time you have available, a movie (with few exceptions) takes roughly two hours to watch. The length of an RPG session can be controlled by adjusting the complexity of the storyline. I've seen games as short as 2 hours or as long as several days.
With less time available, you might want to consider a card game or board game (maybe monopoly, but I was thinking along the lines of Settlers of Catan)
Not to ramble on too much, I thought I'd post links to a few of my favorite gaming companies:
Steve Jackson Games
White Wolf Game Studio
Cheapass Games (Typically only $5 a game, I recommend Give me the Brain for a fun, short card game.
You might not be a chemist, but I am, and your safety officer seems downright incompetent to me.
The reaction when the stuff contacts water (I'm leaving out the various reactions with organic compounds) converts one molecule of thionyl chloride and two molecules of water to two molecules of HCl and one molecule of sulfuric acid, with near 100% efficiency as I understand it.
Neither hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid are considered "weak" by any standards I've ever heard.
I don't have much to add here, I just want to point out most universities seem to be using SSN's as student identification numbers now.
I'm not sure what the law states on this point, but universities in general seem increasingly afraid to risk being sued or losing corporate sponsors. In this light it's hard to see universities opening themselves to lawsuits by every single one of their students.
Patentleft? I have a better name. I misread the title at first glance and instead of "copyleft" I saw "copyleaf." But it fits very well.
"They're going to try to develop two varieties of a crop - one that can reproduce, and one that can't. How long do you think such a setup would last before they "accidentally" mixed some sterile seed in with the non-sterile? Then a year later, poor farmers who needed to save seeds from the previous year's crops will plant them, but nothing will grow. And this will spread. "
An appropriate place, if any, to point out natural selection at work. If some seeds are for sterile plants, the next year's crop will be smaller, but 100% of the second year's crop will be fertile if the sterile variety is dominant.
More likely the reproductive gene will be dominant. If you assume a 50/50 mix of seed, this means the 2nd year 100% will be fertile, the 3rd 75% will be fertile. The 4th year would have a smaller crop, but would be 5/9 fertile. The 5th year the algebra beginds to get more complicated. If I get some time and a spreadsheet I 'll have to do the calculations in a spreadsheet and post the results later.
The point is, the sterile variety is not part of the reproductive population, so it can never completely take over.
I would imagine you can move across the wind, but not upwind.
When photons are reflected from the sail, their momentum is changed. Since momentum must be conserved, the momentum of the spacecraft is changed by an equal and opposite amount.
This means to give the ship more momentum toward the light source ("sailing upwind", if you prefer) you must give the photons more momentum AWAY from the light source. Since that's the direction they're already headed, any reflection or refraction of these photons will reduce their outward momentum.
does the phrase "complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies to design their software" really mean anything?
This sounds to me like legalese for "Just to make you happy we'll show you source for everything you already know, so we can pretend to be open source. If we've hidden it from you before, you'll still never see it, but we're open source now so you should like us anyway."
I think we're all familiar with your view on software patents by now. Do you have a similar position on business method patents?
I'm also curious about your position on ordinary (hardware) patents, including biotech and nanotech patents. Do you feel these should be restricted or abolished?
Just to respond to a LOT of posts out there, this would require a wavelength of .1 mm. Assuming they scale up the number of transistors in a chip to keep the die size the same, this means within the CPU itself some parts would lag by at least a dozen cycles. .005-.05 the size of modern IC features.
With the lack of info about the specific molecules used as switches, I'd guess we're looking at a feature size of 1-10nm, which lies roughly at
Since the wavelength is 10^5 nm, this means we could fit 10^8-10^10 devices on a chip assuming we left no space at all between devices. Considerably more than a modern CPU, so we could conceivably integrate all the system memory onto the same chip
You're thinking of endohedral complexes....they've been around for years.
What they're talking about doing is depassivating a silicon surface one atom at a time. The "hole" referred to in the article is not the "hole" which serves as a carrier particle in semiconductor theory, but what chemists call a "dangling bond" or "free radical." This is extremely reactive, and tends to react with any nearby molecules containing double or triple bonds.
"I think the question of being gods is far from relevant. "Gods" of religion, myth, and legend are usually omnipotent (certainly doesn't apply to us) and omniscient (ditto)."
Really? That doesn't seem to be the case in Norse or Greek mythology. Perhaps you simply meant all monotheistic religions. On the other hand, I can't be certain even that limited statement would be true.
"But what I don't get is why this is good for M$, what do they gain? What they lose is that they are helping people make the break to a more stable platform and relegating windoze to be simply an application launcher and runtime environment"
And what exactly do they lose by that? If M$ is, as most of us seem to believe, only in business for the money then collecting the license fee is all that matters.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised they haven't come out with their own commercial Win9x emulator for Linux.
"Thus the body can acquire large accelerations with small forces , in accordance with Eq.(2.05)."
Wait a second, they claimed to be reducing gravitational mass, not inertial mass. That wouldn't be true. What they should be trying to claim is that the spacecraft experiences little or no acceleration in LARGE gravitational fields.
If the body indeed acquired large accelerations with small forces, it would slam into the ground faster, not fly away.
"s another side note to this, Lucent Tech. has an EBL system just about at proof of concept called SCAPEL. Hope this clears up a few of the wrong ideas and helps people understand what this is all about."
Might I point out that here on slashdot back in October or November was an announcement that Lucent had reached a resolution of .05 microns using SCALPEL. Then let's not forget the UC Berkeley student who made an even smaller transistor two weeks later. Something like 0.018 microns or so. This IBM announcement is not really anything new. Here is the press release.