> burning up or fluttering to the ground like heavy cloth.
Actually more like a loooong sheet of carbon paper - designs call for a ribbon "3 feet wide and barely thicker than Saran wrap" weighing only 7.5 grams per meter (!) at the earth end. For those who don't remember carbon paper: it's a lot lighter than laser printer paper.
Grandfather: this FUD comes up every time the space elevator is discussed here; please try to educate yourself about the proposal first. And take those "but it will discharge the atmosphere" cretins with you, thanks.
(Sorry 'bout the anonymous link. It's quite legit though - you can click your way through to it from here if you prefer.)
Re:What temperature requirements?
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 1
quantum wires could perform at least as well as existing superconductors
So they're saying quantum wires will have *at least* infinite conductivity, perhaps even better? Unlimited power here we come, woo-hoo! Watch out universe! Up yours, conservation of energy!!
Ah, slashdot is *so* much better after 17 coffees... (bounces out)
You have it backwards... fantasy is in fact the encompassing super-category, the grand-daddy of storytelling, since it has the least restrictions placed upon it. As Ursula K. LeGuin's excellent foreword to the Norton Book of Science Fiction points out:
documentary: things that actually happened fiction: things that could well have happened but (incidentally) didn't sf - science (or speculative) fiction: things that could happen if X were true (X not impossible) fantasy: things that couldn't happen, given the laws of the universe as we understand them
In short, these four categories ("modes") are the literatures of the actual, plausible, possible, and impossible, respectively. Anything I write is fantasy, but to be considered sf, fiction, or documentary, my writing must pass increasingly stringent tests of plausibility resp. veracity.
It contains fictional science. That is the definition of Science Fiction.
A common misconception. Bookstore shelving practices notwithstanding, sf is not a genre (defined by content, such as romance, mystery, horror, etc.) but a mode of literature. The "science" in "science fiction" refers to the literary analog to the scientific method which is employed in the process of writing it: the systematic (quasi-scientific) exploration of the question "what if X were true?" To oversimplify: an sf writer gets to make one crazy (but not impossible) speculative assumption X, then the rest of the story should follow from that by the same rules of plausibility applied to ordinary fiction.
Just because it has tech/space/future in it doesn't make something sf. In fact, most "popular sf" - Star Trek, Star Wars, Matrix, what have you - is technically fantasy, typically action/adventure/male teen-oriented. I'd call them "science fantasy". Conversely, there are plenty of fantastic (in every sense of the word) sf stories that do not have any tech/space content whatsoever yet are core sf (to give but one example: Tiptree's "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever").
Magic and trolls and what not do not exist in real life therefore a fictional science needs to be created in order to explain it.
While some works straddling the fantasy/sf boundary go to great lengths to provide some fictional scientific underpinning to their fantasy trappings (MacCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern come to mind), this is by no means a requirement for fantasy. What is the fictional science underlying Little Red Riding Hood?
NASA axes Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter / Wed February 09, 1:53 / Rejected
It all happened on the sly, tucked away as a side note to the decision to deorbit Hubble. NASA has sunk to new lows. (So has Slashdot for rejecting the story. And for making me reformat the above to defeat their lame lameness filter. Why the fsck is whitespace considered a 'junk' character? Bah.)
Thanks for the judges' opinion, I have read it and agree that this particular case was on very flimsy grounds. Overall I think the jury is still out on this issue; note in particular that cell phone frequencies have doubled since the cited studies, and that tumors can be decades in the making. For these reasons I myself prefer to err on the side of caution until the picture is much clearer.
I do appreciate your gracious reaction, and apologize for my knee-jerk "idiot" label - I should have applied it to the post rather than the poster.
I just won't buy every chicken little story I hear.
Neither will I, but there's a difference between stating healthy skepticism and pretending to own the truth while spouting nonsense and, when questioned, citing irrelevant authority.
Notice how the wee little scientist changed his tune before swearing an oath.
Leaving aside your questionable use of Fox as a source of (unbiased my ass) "news", and your ad hominem attack, if you're referring to Dr. Richter in TFA, my respect to him. Judicial and scientific definitions of truth differ significantly. IAAS, and if I were called as an expert witness, my statements in court may therefore differ from those I would make in a journal paper.
Way to go - the study you're citing below to support your half-baked opinion is about 50/60Hz EMF from power lines! Wave too long, indeed - by more than 7 orders of magnitude. You, sir, are talking out of your ass. Period.
What distances? My office lies right between the Linux.conf.au stomping grounds and the local Apple Center, both all of 50 meters away. *And* I'm a European, you insensitive clod!:-)
But Qantas run damn near an air-bridge Sydney Canberra. The flights leave every 30 mins and only take half an hour (including all the fiddling around)
If you do get a choice, go through Melbourne when flying in from overseas. Yes you'll spend half an hour longer on the plane, but immigration and changeover from international to domestic in Melbourne are *so* much more relaxed and easy. In Sydney you can have long lines at immigration, then to get to domestic they make you take a fricking bus that leaves the airport first thing (uh-oh), randomly loops around some freeway ramps (driver drunk?), then veers straight back onto the airfield through a gap in the fencing (isn't that illegal?), where it executes an entire ice skating program (watch out for the triple toe-loop!) before it finally drops you off at the domestic terminal - which, unsurprisingly, turns out to be right next to where you left 20 minutes earlier. You could have walked over in a minute or two, at the risk of being sucked into the odd jet engine, and/or chased by outraged Quantas employees (top speed: 2 mph).
Seriosuly, you need to give yourself two hours minimum for the changeover in Sydney, while one hour should suffice in Melbourne. Net gain: half an hour, and a lot of nerves.
Fer chrissakes, don't mix IP apples and oranges. 'xor' is a perfectly respectable trademark, as is a purple 'T', as is the Nike swoosh. They are not patents. They are not copyrights. They are frigging trademarks. They're completely, utterly irrelevant in a patent discussion. At least grade-school knowledge of such distinctions would be conducive to the discussion. Sheesh.
Just days after NASA denounces any findings of life on Mars, they come up something that, while technically does not prove there is life on mars, does say that it's within the realm of possibliities !
You do realize that Mars Express has nothing whatsoever to do with NASA?
Moore's Law. At the time MEX was designed, the simulations that uncovered the problem would have been prohibitively expensive. I'd say the opposite: kudos to the engineers at the booms' manufacturer who kept improving and re-running their simulations long after their product was delivered, launched, and (presumably) paid for.
Gravity sucks for telescopes: mirror sag, need for heavy structural support, inability to point a spinning liquid mirror 'scope anywhere other than straight up, and that idiotic ball of rock beneath you blocks half the sky, not to mention the line of sight for long baseline interferometry. If any instrument was meant to free-float in space, optical 'scopes are it.
It would be an excellent complement to a moonbase that will be very handy when building a ship for mars.
My USB stick would be an excellent complement to a Toyota Corolla that will be very handy when boarding my plane for Europe. These three things have nothing to do with each other, except that two happen to involve transportation (manned space flight).
The moonbase would also be excellent to learn to create a selfsupporting environment for a marsbase.
How so? Anything serious goes wrong on the Mars base, astronauts die. Anything serious goes wrong on the Moon base: ditto. You can't afford much slack with humans in space. A mock base in Arizona or Antarctica may afford learning opportunities, but by the time you head for the Moon you better have *everything* well sorted out.
The sticking points for the technology which have to be worked out are the lifetime of the devices, and their switching speed. Currently, the devices only work for 100s of computing cycles, and switching speed is many thousands of times slower than silicon technology, comments Professor Moriarty.
Quotyed from a somewhat better news source. CNN sucks, dump it if you want to keep your neurons.
Do not wear clothing made from two kinds of fiber.
Dear AC,
perhaps you could advise me then regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them?
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev. 15:19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath, but Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?
IANAS, but I imagine that such review might take some $ to accomplish.
IAAS, and peer review takes zero $ to accomplish. The action editor (who works for love) emails the article (in PDF) to the reviewers (who work for love), who email their reviews back, whereupon the action editor makes the call - publish, revise, or reject. The publishers do not put any money into that system, and have indeed been scamming the public for years.
Establishing a solid reputation, quality control, and peer review process are challenges for any new journal, whether online or not. It can be done though - for instance, the free online Journal of Machine Learning Research has within the few years of its existence rocketed to the top of the journal citation reports in its field.
"We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems..."
Note: 1. Cheshire (smiles a lot, I bet) 2. member of. not the president, not the press secretary, not the janitor. just "a member". 3. Medical and Dental Associations - reknowned science experts one and all. 4. disturbing fragile ecosystems? huh?
Looks like they had to turn over rocks to dig up a sufficiently alarming-sounding (if ludicrous) statement. The existence of a dentist somewhere who spews such nonsense is saddening but hardly surprising.
Slashdot Mirror
> burning up or fluttering to the ground like heavy cloth.
Actually more like a loooong sheet of carbon paper - designs call for a ribbon "3 feet wide and barely thicker than Saran wrap" weighing only 7.5 grams per meter (!) at the earth end. For those who don't remember carbon paper: it's a lot lighter than laser printer paper.
Grandfather: this FUD comes up every time the space elevator is discussed here; please try to educate yourself about the proposal first. And take those "but it will discharge the atmosphere" cretins with you, thanks.
That ain't no flying car. This is a flying car.
(Sorry 'bout the anonymous link. It's quite legit though - you can click your way through to it from here if you prefer.)
quantum wires could perform at least as well as existing superconductors
So they're saying quantum wires will have *at least* infinite conductivity, perhaps even better? Unlimited power here we come, woo-hoo! Watch out universe! Up yours, conservation of energy!!
Ah, slashdot is *so* much better after 17 coffees... (bounces out)
Fantasy is a sub-genre of Science Fiction.
You have it backwards... fantasy is in fact the encompassing super-category, the grand-daddy of storytelling, since it has the least restrictions placed upon it. As Ursula K. LeGuin's excellent foreword to the Norton Book of Science Fiction points out:
documentary: things that actually happened
fiction: things that could well have happened but (incidentally) didn't
sf - science (or speculative) fiction: things that could happen if X were true (X not impossible)
fantasy: things that couldn't happen, given the laws of the universe as we understand them
In short, these four categories ("modes") are the literatures of the actual, plausible, possible, and impossible, respectively. Anything I write is fantasy, but to be considered sf, fiction, or documentary, my writing must pass increasingly stringent tests of plausibility resp. veracity.
It contains fictional science. That is the definition of Science Fiction.
A common misconception. Bookstore shelving practices notwithstanding, sf is not a genre (defined by content, such as romance, mystery, horror, etc.) but a mode of literature. The "science" in "science fiction" refers to the literary analog to the scientific method which is employed in the process of writing it: the systematic (quasi-scientific) exploration of the question "what if X were true?" To oversimplify: an sf writer gets to make one crazy (but not impossible) speculative assumption X, then the rest of the story should follow from that by the same rules of plausibility applied to ordinary fiction.
Just because it has tech/space/future in it doesn't make something sf. In fact, most "popular sf" - Star Trek, Star Wars, Matrix, what have you - is technically fantasy, typically action/adventure/male teen-oriented. I'd call them "science fantasy". Conversely, there are plenty of fantastic (in every sense of the word) sf stories that do not have any tech/space content whatsoever yet are core sf (to give but one example: Tiptree's "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever").
Magic and trolls and what not do not exist in real life therefore a fictional science needs to be created in order to explain it.
While some works straddling the fantasy/sf boundary go to great lengths to provide some fictional scientific underpinning to their fantasy trappings (MacCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern come to mind), this is by no means a requirement for fantasy. What is the fictional science underlying Little Red Riding Hood?
\end{soapbox}
What the hell happened to the JIMO mission?
Allow me to quote: linoleo's Recent Submissions
Title / Datestamp
NASA axes Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter / Wed February 09, 1:53 / Rejected
It all happened on the sly, tucked away as a side note to the decision to deorbit Hubble. NASA has sunk to new lows. (So has Slashdot for rejecting the story. And for making me reformat the above to defeat their lame lameness filter. Why the fsck is whitespace considered a 'junk' character? Bah.)
Thanks for the judges' opinion, I have read it and agree that this particular case was on very flimsy grounds. Overall I think the jury is still out on this issue; note in particular that cell phone frequencies have doubled since the cited studies, and that tumors can be decades in the making. For these reasons I myself prefer to err on the side of caution until the picture is much clearer.
I do appreciate your gracious reaction, and apologize for my knee-jerk "idiot" label - I should have applied it to the post rather than the poster.
I just won't buy every chicken little story I hear.
Neither will I, but there's a difference between stating healthy skepticism and pretending to own the truth while spouting nonsense and, when questioned, citing irrelevant authority.
Notice how the wee little scientist changed his tune before swearing an oath.
Leaving aside your questionable use of Fox as a source of (unbiased my ass) "news", and your ad hominem attack, if you're referring to Dr. Richter in TFA, my respect to him. Judicial and scientific definitions of truth differ significantly. IAAS, and if I were called as an expert witness, my statements in court may therefore differ from those I would make in a journal paper.
Istrongly supsect that while the microwire might *carry* 10 million divisions, it can not in fact *carry them out*. Microwire FPU, anyone?
Way to go - the study you're citing below to support your half-baked opinion is about 50/60Hz EMF from power lines! Wave too long, indeed - by more than 7 orders of magnitude. You, sir, are talking out of your ass. Period.
Are you an 18 - 28 yo female?
:-)
On slashdot? +5 funny.
Tell you what, I'll come over for some of that excellent dope you must have been smoking.
we Europeans are not used to such distances
:-)
What distances? My office lies right between the Linux.conf.au stomping grounds and the local Apple Center, both all of 50 meters away. *And* I'm a European, you insensitive clod!
But Qantas run damn near an air-bridge Sydney Canberra. The flights leave every 30 mins and only take half an hour (including all the fiddling around)
If you do get a choice, go through Melbourne when flying in from overseas. Yes you'll spend half an hour longer on the plane, but immigration and changeover from international to domestic in Melbourne are *so* much more relaxed and easy. In Sydney you can have long lines at immigration, then to get to domestic they make you take a fricking bus that leaves the airport first thing (uh-oh), randomly loops around some freeway ramps (driver drunk?), then veers straight back onto the airfield through a gap in the fencing (isn't that illegal?), where it executes an entire ice skating program (watch out for the triple toe-loop!) before it finally drops you off at the domestic terminal - which, unsurprisingly, turns out to be right next to where you left 20 minutes earlier. You could have walked over in a minute or two, at the risk of being sucked into the odd jet engine, and/or chased by outraged Quantas employees (top speed: 2 mph).
Seriosuly, you need to give yourself two hours minimum for the changeover in Sydney, while one hour should suffice in Melbourne. Net gain: half an hour, and a lot of nerves.
My house is your house and your house is mine
:-)
Excellent, cause mine's a wreck... when can I move in? Add me to the Canberran slashdotter love-in
That's 45 meters deep, not kilometers.
It's actually *30* meters deep now if you RTFA. It started out at 45 meters, 15 meters are the presumed loss due to sublimation.
Just days after NASA denounces any findings of life on Mars, they come up something that, while technically does not prove there is life on mars, does say that it's within the realm of possibliities !
You do realize that Mars Express has nothing whatsoever to do with NASA?
field strength drops of with the inverse square of the distance
Third power, for a dipole magnetic field.
Why wasn't that discovered earlier?
Moore's Law. At the time MEX was designed, the simulations that uncovered the problem would have been prohibitively expensive. I'd say the opposite: kudos to the engineers at the booms' manufacturer who kept improving and re-running their simulations long after their product was delivered, launched, and (presumably) paid for.
with the advantages of (some) gravity
*what* advantages?
Gravity sucks for telescopes: mirror sag, need for heavy structural support, inability to point a spinning liquid mirror 'scope anywhere other than straight up, and that idiotic ball of rock beneath you blocks half the sky, not to mention the line of sight for long baseline interferometry. If any instrument was meant to free-float in space, optical 'scopes are it.
It would be an excellent complement to a moonbase that will be very handy when building a ship for mars.
My USB stick would be an excellent complement to a Toyota Corolla that will be very handy when boarding my plane for Europe. These three things have nothing to do with each other, except that two happen to involve transportation (manned space flight).
The moonbase would also be excellent to learn to create a selfsupporting environment for a marsbase.
How so? Anything serious goes wrong on the Mars base, astronauts die. Anything serious goes wrong on the Moon base: ditto. You can't afford much slack with humans in space. A mock base in Arizona or Antarctica may afford learning opportunities, but by the time you head for the Moon you better have *everything* well sorted out.
I call sloppy thinking.
The sticking points for the technology which have to be worked out are the lifetime of the devices, and their switching speed. Currently, the devices only work for 100s of computing cycles, and switching speed is many thousands of times slower than silicon technology, comments Professor Moriarty.
Quotyed from a somewhat better news source. CNN sucks, dump it if you want to keep your neurons.
Do we get flying cars, a HAL9000 computer, a holodeck, and warp drive as well?
:)
I call bingo on the flying car
Do not wear clothing made from two kinds of fiber.
Dear AC,
perhaps you could advise me then regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them?
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev. 15:19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath, but Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?
IANAS, but I imagine that such review might take some $ to accomplish.
IAAS, and peer review takes zero $ to accomplish. The action editor (who works for love) emails the article (in PDF) to the reviewers (who work for love), who email their reviews back, whereupon the action editor makes the call - publish, revise, or reject. The publishers do not put any money into that system, and have indeed been scamming the public for years.
Establishing a solid reputation, quality control, and peer review process are challenges for any new journal, whether online or not. It can be done though - for instance, the free online Journal of Machine Learning Research has within the few years of its existence rocketed to the top of the journal citation reports in its field.
"We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems..."
Note:
1. Cheshire (smiles a lot, I bet)
2. member of. not the president, not the press secretary, not the janitor. just "a member".
3. Medical and Dental Associations - reknowned science experts one and all.
4. disturbing fragile ecosystems? huh?
Looks like they had to turn over rocks to dig up a sufficiently alarming-sounding (if ludicrous) statement. The existence of a dentist somewhere who spews such nonsense is saddening but hardly surprising.
I'm talking about only the "private parts" of the body.
Well *my* body's F/OSS, so there.