Not really. This is the combination of AFM or STEM with NMR. If that makes any sense. They scan a tiny magnetic probe across the object being observed.
Speaking of college costs, can someone explain this to me: Suppose your typical student is paying $10,000 per semester and taking 15 credits. Now suppose your typical professor costs the school $250,000 per semester. If each professor teaches 9 credits a semester, wouldn't that make your average class size 40 students? Why do universities seem to feel justified charging that amount for a class size of several hundred? Where does all that other money go?
Maybe I should start my own university. It seems like there is a lot of room to undercut the competition and still make a huge profit.
Does anyone really learn anything in a lecture-hall like that? I know that when I was in college I found it was a somewhat decent way to take a nap or practice my doodling skills. It seems to me that if you want to learn, some interaction with your teacher may be necessary. . .
The economy didn't improve for a long time under Roosevelt either.
It is stupid to try to draw a conclusion from one data point in history. It's impossible to know what would have happened is something was done differently. However, personal experience has taught me time and time again that action is not always the best choice.
People sitting around doing nothing is better than people going around wasting resources and being destructive.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind Shashdotters that money is an abstraction, which generally represents value. Many people seem to think it is the other way around.
For example, you talk about the "money multiplier" without realizing that is does not represent an associated "value multiplier". Multiplying is inflation. It is brought about by lending, not exchange (you put it in a bank, they lend it to someone else who exchanges it with someone else who puts it in a bank, etc. ..). It is approximately the reciprocal of the reserve ratio (the % of deposit a bank is required to keep in cash).
Spending money now will only cause an increase in future value/resources if it is invested wisely. People seem to think a return is automatic, but it isn't. The government is not known for it's ability to spend money wisely.
People are sitting on their money right now because they got burned on their previous bad investments and the want a clearer picture of our economic situation before they invest. This is a good thing, because people have been in the habit of expending resources at a rate they can not sustain. Now they are slowing down and thinking more about what they are doing.
The last thing we need right now is economic stimulus. Why would you want to trick people out of living in the real world and back into the fantasy our nation has been living for the last 60 years or so? Do you want us all to die?
I don't see any benefit to a "protocol" droid being human-shaped. Almost all of it's parts would be completely un-necessary.
The research robot I can see, but it is still totally creepy. As long as there's a reason it HAS to look human, it makes sense. But otherwise, it does not.
My complaint is more against those people who seem obsessed with building a slave army of human-looking robots to magically perform all our work for us. It just seems to me that only a severely disturbed person would want to make a human-looking machine to carry out mundane work for them, especially given the extra expense and difficulty involved.
That's going too far. 3 mile island suffered a very serious melt-down which could have resulted in a significant release of radioactive material.
There is a reason corporate H&S officers want you to report near misses along with actual incidents. Any attempt to limit actual incidents must also target events which ended up being only near-misses.
That's not how significant figures work with multiplication..007 has only one significant figure (the 7).007 *.007 =.00005 which also has one sig fig (5). 1-.00005 =.99995, since the 1 is a known integer value (and therefore has an infinite number of significant figures).
That being said, the parent has an incomplete grasp of statistics in this case, and using this formula is inaccurate. However, I am at work, so I will not do an in-depth statistical analysis here.
You can't. Just give them whatever it is and move on with your life. If you feel comfortable doing so, file a complaint with the proper authorities. Unless whatever they are asking for is REALLY important (such as your first born child or something like that), you aren't going to do anybody any good.
Property is an abstract concept, guns are real. If you are going to imperil your life, you should have a good reason to do so.
You are definitely wrong. All the lawyers I've talked to say that the less you say the police the better. Basically, they've already decided you are doing something wrong, and talking to them about it rarely changes that . On the other hand, if you try to talk them out of it, since so many things are illegal, you may unknowingly incriminate yourself.
The best thing to do is say "yes, officer" "sorry officer" and "it won't happen again". Take you ticket and go. No matter how wrong you think they are, they have the guns and the authority and you have nothing.
Okay, what I meant is that the devices themselves do not contain toxic* chemicals. CFLs contain mercury vapor, and that is dangerous stuff.
*by not toxic, I mean that they are not especially dangerous, anything can have toxic effects.
I don't like you argument that anything that uses toxic chemicals in the supply chain requires toxic chemicals to produce. Certainly food products could be produced without toxic chemicals, as can products made from glass, or metal. I know that they do actually use toxic chemicals to produce these things, but I don't think it's fair to say it's required.
These leds do require gallium nitride, so I was wrong about that, however GaN itself is not known to be dangerous.
If you want to make a robot to perform a mundane task, there is no good reason to make it look human. Human's have a lot of capabilities that robots don't need. These features are difficult to implement, and complicated. They are also rarely the best solution, humans are more of a swiss-army knife of functionality.
I guess what I'm saying is that we already have the one-size fits all solution (people) and it doesn't make sense to replace that.
Also, trying to replace human interaction with automation is creepy. I would say someone who wants to do that almost certainly has some issues they need to work out.
I'd like to point out that the engineers designing the rovers probably expected them to last longer than that (though certainly not 5 years). They probably budgeted for 90 days to keep the projected costs down so that NASA would chose the project. They knew that the budget would be extended once the rovers were there.
Just because you don't enjoy interacting with certain people doesn't mean that there aren't lots of people who do. It's a solution without a problem as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not sure why some people seem to be obsessed with interacting with anthropomorphic machines. There are over 6 billion people in the world, surely you can find one of them to talk to.
A computer is a computer. People use them more like a book that is updated in real-time than anything else. We should simply let it be what it is and try to improve on the way people interact with it. It makes no sense to try to trick users into believing they are interacting with something else. That can only lead to confusion and problems.
The same thing goes you anthropomorphic robot-builders out there. Why build something that acts like a human? We already have lots of those. The whole point of automation is that it can do things that are difficult for us to do by hand. It doesn't make sense that an efficient robot would look like a human, because the mere fact that we need or want a robot to do it implies that the human form does not lend itself to the task.
Look at other female mammals. Do they have breasts? Only when they're nursing. Humans, on the other hand, have them all the time. If they were just for feeding, that would not be so.
You are toeing the social construct line where it does not make sense to do so. Not every aspect of human behavior is a product of the media and religion.
Here is what wikipedia has to say about the matter.
Basically, modern LEDs are more efficient than florescent bulbs, while older ones were not. Also, there is room for further increases in efficiency (with further advances in the materials and manufacturing techniques), while the matter of efficiency in florescent bulbs is pretty much settled.
Moving forward, it is likely we will use LEDs for all of our lighting. LEDs themselves are better in every way, and it won't be long before they are also cheaper.
"It is essentially impossible to manufacture anything without using toxic chemicals somewhere in the supply chain."
That is simply not true, I am a chemical engineer, so I would know. That being said, it is often cheaper to use toxic chemicals. LEDs do not need to be made of toxic chemicals.
The ones mentioned in the article are made of silicon, zirconium nitride and aluminum nitride. None of these are particularly toxic.
The little snippet at the end of the post if off-base, but it is good to keep in mind that LEDs are significantly more environmentally friendly nonetheless. They last a long time, years and years, and they are very durable. They don't require toxic chemicals, and they are more energy efficient than CFLs.
No, I ran the numbers on this a couple years back. The amount of energy you can store in a fly-wheel is limited by the (tensile) strength to weight ratio of the materials you are using. They could never be as inexpensive as chemical batteries (unless you use carbon nanotubes or something like that that doesn't exist). Also, they have moving parts, while batteries have no moving parts. To me that means batteries are a more elegant solution.
"The only real limit is the amount of solar output."
No, the "real" limit is the amount of food available farmland can produce today. You are talking about a meaningless theoretical limit which will never be achieved in practice.
There have not been remarkable increases in crop yields, even over thousands of years. Increases in yields have come from increasing the nutrients in the soil, and breeding crops that produce more grain and less chaff. What has been increased remarkably is the amount of food a unit of labor can produce. Modern technology also makes it possible to farm more land, through irrigation. That does not affect the basic arable land limitation.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. This is the combination of AFM or STEM with NMR. If that makes any sense. They scan a tiny magnetic probe across the object being observed.
Speaking of college costs, can someone explain this to me: Suppose your typical student is paying $10,000 per semester and taking 15 credits. Now suppose your typical professor costs the school $250,000 per semester. If each professor teaches 9 credits a semester, wouldn't that make your average class size 40 students? Why do universities seem to feel justified charging that amount for a class size of several hundred? Where does all that other money go?
Maybe I should start my own university. It seems like there is a lot of room to undercut the competition and still make a huge profit.
Does anyone really learn anything in a lecture-hall like that? I know that when I was in college I found it was a somewhat decent way to take a nap or practice my doodling skills. It seems to me that if you want to learn, some interaction with your teacher may be necessary. . .
Wow, you say that with such conviction. What makes you believe any of that?
The economy didn't improve for a long time under Roosevelt either.
It is stupid to try to draw a conclusion from one data point in history. It's impossible to know what would have happened is something was done differently. However, personal experience has taught me time and time again that action is not always the best choice.
People sitting around doing nothing is better than people going around wasting resources and being destructive.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind Shashdotters that money is an abstraction, which generally represents value. Many people seem to think it is the other way around.
.). It is approximately the reciprocal of the reserve ratio (the % of deposit a bank is required to keep in cash).
For example, you talk about the "money multiplier" without realizing that is does not represent an associated "value multiplier". Multiplying is inflation. It is brought about by lending, not exchange (you put it in a bank, they lend it to someone else who exchanges it with someone else who puts it in a bank, etc. .
Spending money now will only cause an increase in future value/resources if it is invested wisely. People seem to think a return is automatic, but it isn't. The government is not known for it's ability to spend money wisely.
People are sitting on their money right now because they got burned on their previous bad investments and the want a clearer picture of our economic situation before they invest. This is a good thing, because people have been in the habit of expending resources at a rate they can not sustain. Now they are slowing down and thinking more about what they are doing.
The last thing we need right now is economic stimulus. Why would you want to trick people out of living in the real world and back into the fantasy our nation has been living for the last 60 years or so? Do you want us all to die?
"People sitting around doing nothing is wasted capital."
Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something. I am talking to you, Uncle Sam.
I don't see any benefit to a "protocol" droid being human-shaped. Almost all of it's parts would be completely un-necessary.
The research robot I can see, but it is still totally creepy. As long as there's a reason it HAS to look human, it makes sense. But otherwise, it does not.
My complaint is more against those people who seem obsessed with building a slave army of human-looking robots to magically perform all our work for us. It just seems to me that only a severely disturbed person would want to make a human-looking machine to carry out mundane work for them, especially given the extra expense and difficulty involved.
"3 mile island? Literally not an issue..."
That's going too far. 3 mile island suffered a very serious melt-down which could have resulted in a significant release of radioactive material.
There is a reason corporate H&S officers want you to report near misses along with actual incidents. Any attempt to limit actual incidents must also target events which ended up being only near-misses.
That's not how significant figures work with multiplication. .007 has only one significant figure (the 7) .007 * .007 = .00005 which also has one sig fig (5). 1-.00005 = .99995, since the 1 is a known integer value (and therefore has an infinite number of significant figures).
That being said, the parent has an incomplete grasp of statistics in this case, and using this formula is inaccurate. However, I am at work, so I will not do an in-depth statistical analysis here.
You can't. Just give them whatever it is and move on with your life. If you feel comfortable doing so, file a complaint with the proper authorities. Unless whatever they are asking for is REALLY important (such as your first born child or something like that), you aren't going to do anybody any good.
Property is an abstract concept, guns are real. If you are going to imperil your life, you should have a good reason to do so.
You are definitely wrong. All the lawyers I've talked to say that the less you say the police the better. Basically, they've already decided you are doing something wrong, and talking to them about it rarely changes that . On the other hand, if you try to talk them out of it, since so many things are illegal, you may unknowingly incriminate yourself.
The best thing to do is say "yes, officer" "sorry officer" and "it won't happen again". Take you ticket and go. No matter how wrong you think they are, they have the guns and the authority and you have nothing.
Okay, what I meant is that the devices themselves do not contain toxic* chemicals. CFLs contain mercury vapor, and that is dangerous stuff.
*by not toxic, I mean that they are not especially dangerous, anything can have toxic effects.
I don't like you argument that anything that uses toxic chemicals in the supply chain requires toxic chemicals to produce. Certainly food products could be produced without toxic chemicals, as can products made from glass, or metal. I know that they do actually use toxic chemicals to produce these things, but I don't think it's fair to say it's required.
These leds do require gallium nitride, so I was wrong about that, however GaN itself is not known to be dangerous.
If you want to make a robot to perform a mundane task, there is no good reason to make it look human. Human's have a lot of capabilities that robots don't need. These features are difficult to implement, and complicated. They are also rarely the best solution, humans are more of a swiss-army knife of functionality.
I guess what I'm saying is that we already have the one-size fits all solution (people) and it doesn't make sense to replace that.
Also, trying to replace human interaction with automation is creepy. I would say someone who wants to do that almost certainly has some issues they need to work out.
I'd like to point out that the engineers designing the rovers probably expected them to last longer than that (though certainly not 5 years). They probably budgeted for 90 days to keep the projected costs down so that NASA would chose the project. They knew that the budget would be extended once the rovers were there.
Just because you don't enjoy interacting with certain people doesn't mean that there aren't lots of people who do. It's a solution without a problem as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not sure why some people seem to be obsessed with interacting with anthropomorphic machines. There are over 6 billion people in the world, surely you can find one of them to talk to.
A computer is a computer. People use them more like a book that is updated in real-time than anything else. We should simply let it be what it is and try to improve on the way people interact with it. It makes no sense to try to trick users into believing they are interacting with something else. That can only lead to confusion and problems.
The same thing goes you anthropomorphic robot-builders out there. Why build something that acts like a human? We already have lots of those. The whole point of automation is that it can do things that are difficult for us to do by hand. It doesn't make sense that an efficient robot would look like a human, because the mere fact that we need or want a robot to do it implies that the human form does not lend itself to the task.
Look at other female mammals. Do they have breasts? Only when they're nursing. Humans, on the other hand, have them all the time. If they were just for feeding, that would not be so.
You are toeing the social construct line where it does not make sense to do so. Not every aspect of human behavior is a product of the media and religion.
Here is what wikipedia has to say about the matter.
Basically, modern LEDs are more efficient than florescent bulbs, while older ones were not. Also, there is room for further increases in efficiency (with further advances in the materials and manufacturing techniques), while the matter of efficiency in florescent bulbs is pretty much settled.
Moving forward, it is likely we will use LEDs for all of our lighting. LEDs themselves are better in every way, and it won't be long before they are also cheaper.
"It is essentially impossible to manufacture anything without using toxic chemicals somewhere in the supply chain."
That is simply not true, I am a chemical engineer, so I would know. That being said, it is often cheaper to use toxic chemicals. LEDs do not need to be made of toxic chemicals.
The ones mentioned in the article are made of silicon, zirconium nitride and aluminum nitride. None of these are particularly toxic.
The little snippet at the end of the post if off-base, but it is good to keep in mind that LEDs are significantly more environmentally friendly nonetheless. They last a long time, years and years, and they are very durable. They don't require toxic chemicals, and they are more energy efficient than CFLs.
"Whether or not others agree with me does not change the fact that projects such as this are entirely outside the proper role of government."
That's not true. They are outside the role of the US government, as stated by the Constitution. Whether or not it is proper is a mater of opinion.
If you were to ask me, I'd say that the government has no proper role whatsoever.
No, I ran the numbers on this a couple years back. The amount of energy you can store in a fly-wheel is limited by the (tensile) strength to weight ratio of the materials you are using. They could never be as inexpensive as chemical batteries (unless you use carbon nanotubes or something like that that doesn't exist). Also, they have moving parts, while batteries have no moving parts. To me that means batteries are a more elegant solution.
That would be freaking awesome.
"The only real limit is the amount of solar output."
No, the "real" limit is the amount of food available farmland can produce today. You are talking about a meaningless theoretical limit which will never be achieved in practice.
There have not been remarkable increases in crop yields, even over thousands of years. Increases in yields have come from increasing the nutrients in the soil, and breeding crops that produce more grain and less chaff. What has been increased remarkably is the amount of food a unit of labor can produce. Modern technology also makes it possible to farm more land, through irrigation. That does not affect the basic arable land limitation.