The thing that both pisses me off and scares me about Bush is the fact that he can run for president with his mischievous past, yet he wouldn't qualify for a security clearance if he was in a government job.
When you get a security clearance, you go through a huge investigation, I know, I had a security clearance at my last job. They get detailed about your police record, your drug use, your involvement with rebellious organizations, and even your character as they ask your friends and friends friends and friends friends friends about you. Many of Bush's past misdemeanors (DUI, cocaine use/sale, etc) would most likely disqualify him for such a security clearance. That is, the government would deem him not trustworthy enough to handle sensitive US information. In fact, it's on a need-to-know basis, so if he did hold a government job with secret clearance, he'd only know what he needed to do his job.
Yet the ironic thing is that he can now run for president, where he'll be in CHARGE of making decisions involving nearly ALL of the sensitive information available that he wouldn't normally be privy to, in a normal job.
actually, i wasn't dissing slide rules, they're one of the coolest mathematical gadgets around. You're right, you really get to learn logarithms when you use them. < tongue-in-cheek old-fart speak > nowadays, these pesky kids type an equation (in INFIX, not even RPN) into their super-fancy graphing calculators, and get an answer (and can plot it, do least squares, etc). </old fart >
I was just using the slide rule as an example back to antiquity, but of course you probably realized that:-)
I like one of the scenes in Apollo 13, where they're checking the gimbal coordinates, and you see the NASA engineers with their slide rules hacking away. it's great.
Sorry, only have time for a brief comment, but we were going over the EPR in more depth today, and Bell's Inequality, which is roughly an example derived from making spin measurements in the case that hidden variables are present. You go through some calculations assuming there are all sorts of hidden variables that contain the spin information in all the directions, in the case we did today. This yields an equation, which ultimately says one quantity must be less than or equal to another quantity. One can then use this inequaltiy to show that hidden variables aren't present because actual quantum measurements (as experimentally verified) adhere to a different set of conditions which violates Bell's inequality equation. So, thus, there are no hidden variables.
But it's not as simple as that, it's still a very confusing philosophical confusing notion. Feynman supposedly said anyone that's not bothered by this has rocks in their head. To top it all off, the professor suggested we all to go home tonight, take a bong hit, and think about it some more.
Can you provide some cool looking Quantum Mathimatical symbols too please? I am a sucker for punishment
I just found this page with some descriptions, and a taste of funky math:-) I haven't really checked it out fully, but it looks like it's probably a good place to get a basic idea of some of these principles (and hopefully they have some decent movies too).
Manipulating individual electrons is a fool's errand.
Are you the same AC from the beginning of this thread? If it's a fool's errand, then it's a bigger fool who stays with yesterday's 'comfortable' technology instead of pushing forward. You'd probably still be using vacuum tubes instead of solid-state with your forward-thinking ideals. Do you still keep your slide-rule around, because these pesky calculators of today just don't cut it?
You can't even imagine how small a single electron is.
Well, if you think of a single isolated electron as a spin 1/2 realization of Poincare algebra, you may be right, but such cases are pure thought experiments. It's the actions of the electron in the presence of other particles that matters. So, look at the solutions for spherical harmonics of solutions for Schrodinger's equation for an electron-proton pair (ie, the hydrogen atom) to get a feel for the size of an electron cloud in the smallest of one of it's common configurations. Probably on the order of Angstroms.
The electron probability cloud probably get much bigger, fuzzier, and far more complex when you think of electrons in metals and other matter (organics maybe?). In terms of low-dimensional systems (quantum dots / 2-D electron gases) there may be some interesting numbers for the 'size' of the electron, but I don't these cases offhand.
In terms of not imagining the scale, here you are perhaps right. It's difficult to visually comprehend 10 or so orders of magnitude in distance scale. But I can get some idea of it.
Ok, now think about giving a single electron some sort of spin to
represent a data state on a computer. Sounds great? Yah, it will be great until someone rubs their sock on
your box sending your computer into chaos.
Hmm, this is right. sounds just as silly as storing a bunch of electrons on an array of millions of small capacitors, and then refreshing them dozens of times per second, to store data bits. And if extra charge comes along, or it's not refreshed long enough, the fragile data gets wiped out. Oh wait a second, that's how DRAM memory works.
Okay, but it's certainly as ridiculous (sp) as making little tiny EXTREMELY static-sensitive transistors wired in a feedback path with current maintaining them in 2 possible states so they can flip and flop between the two, and thus store data bits. Yeah, and if someone rubs their sock on said transistor substrate, they'll send the data into total chaos. Hey wait a minute, that's how SRAM works.
So you can see these seemingly delicate scenarios are both in use today, almost certainly both being made to use in the computer you've used to post your sarcastic little statement. BTW, Dr. Kool, since you're at Harvard University, you're probably very aware of some of your fellow Harvard faculty research with quantum structures, and, I believe, quantum bits.
This is great. Just today in my quantum mechanics class we were talking about the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, and two entangled spin 1/2 particles sent in opposite directions. The particles were entangled, such that their combined angular momentum was in an S=0 state. That is, total angular momentum=0.
This means that if the spin of one particle is measured in any direction (say out of X or Y or Z for cartesian coordinates), then the spin for the other particle is going to be opposite that measured for the first particle, BUT ONLY IF IT'S MEASURED IN THE SAME DIRECTION. So if you measure the z component of particle 1, you get either h-bar/2 or -h-bar/2, and you know that particle 2, if measured in the z direction, gives the opposite one. This will work if both measurements are in the x, or y, or any other combination of directions. But they must be the same direction.
One fundamental aspect of spin is that spin operators in different directions don't commute. that is, if one measures the spin in one direction, say Z, then another direction, say X, and then measures the Z direction spin again, it won't necessarily be the same. That is, measuring the X direction between the two Z measurements changed the state of the system.
So the part of this thought experiment that bothered Einstein and company is that if one can see that if both particles are entangled such that any spin measurement made will be opposite the other particle's measurement, providing the spin direction being measured is the same, then this implies that there are some sort of hidden variables in nature to account for this. Namely, the particles are entangled in seemingly all directions, until that first measurement is made. Surely, then, nature must possess some knowledge about all three orthogonal directions simultaneously.
But what Bohr and Heisenberg maintained is that one cannot simultaneously measure the X,Y,Z spins. That is, we CANNOT ask about measurements that could be made but were not made, we can only talk about those measurements that were made.
So it's a bit different than the analogy the article gives about two pennies, one being heads up and one being heads down, because if your penny is heads up, it'll always be heads up, as that is not a fundamental spin-1/2 particle.
sorry if this post makes ZERO sense, i'm just blabbering about what was pretty cool in quantum class. hopefully tomorrow we'll learn s'more to make it make more sense.
That's a really good point, I thought of the same thing too. If all GPL'd software is publicly available to view, do MSFT and other proprietary software coders have to justify that they have not seen said code?
I was just reading about this article on LinuxToday , so this scenario of paranoia isn't one I've crafted myself, but it presents some interesting ideas. A few people posted some comments there suggesting that perhaps MSFT itself either stole their own code, or maybe hired someone to steal it for them.
Sounds strange? Think about the following reasons. We've seen many times previously that MSFT avoids admitting their own mistakes for as long as they possibly can. It takes them awhile to warn the public about known bugs or exploits in their various software products. Yet, in this case of the stolen source, they were seemingly very willing to let the press know about the break-in and apparent theft of the source code.
Now that it is public knowledge that some MSFT source code has been stolen, imagine what it does for free/open-source development. Because of this, the FSF and other maintainers of free/OSS software now have to take extra measures to ensure that the code is free of any potential influence of the supposed 'stolen code'. This takes time, effort, and will generally serve to slow-down the development open-source software projects. A big 'plus' for MSFT.
Also, suppose someone posts snippets of the 'Forbidden Source' to various newsgroups, like the public postings of DeCSS and MSFT's kerberos additions to slashdot. Or, say, someone emails some of this code to the kernel mailing list directly. Now, nearly the entire team of linux developers, among other projects, has seen the 'forbidden source'. IANAL, but MSFT could possibly use the fact that they saw the 'forbidden source' as justifications that now they're now privy to MSFT's proprietary software models. They may use this fact to either sue future developers, or inhibit future development of such projects. Both of these things are bad for OSS/free software, and are good for MSFT.
This may sound like some grand paranoid conspiracy theory and doomsday scenario, but as someone posted to LinuxToday, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you."
Oh christ, not again. Am I EVER going to read a slashdot gaming article without somebody perpetuating this tired and
completely false cliche?
Interesting how such a cliche can be false, considering it's totally one's opinion.
I at least said IMHO in my post, thus allowing people to disagree. You are entitled to your opinions, and me to mine.
Basically to sum up what I was trying to say, because I think you completely missed my point, was that the jump from Atari-like games to NES-like games was a far bigger jump relatively than from subsequent gaming systems down the line. I did NOT say that today's games are not as good as the ones 'back in my day'. And once again, a big fat IMHO applies.
Once he turned into little pieces, they always flew past in the same pattern. Once you master the pattern, you could survive fighting him. It was tough, because two of the pieces were really close together, you kind of had to jump, run with the pieces flow, then jump again. The hard thing was that each shot of electricity you did on him was the same damage as he did to you, so you had to just make sure you were one-up on the damage if you couldn't master jumping over his pieces.
There was also a cheat, where you could pause the game as the lightning is hitting him. every time you pause and unpause it, it gives him another hit of damage, so you could kill him in only a few lightning bolt hits.
IMHO, I'd actually have to add BattleToads to that list. It came out rather late in the NES lifespan, but damn, was it so fscking cool. I don't know if there's been other sequels to it, though, so it may not have the 'legacy' the other games have. But I do agree with you on those three.
I totally remember how awesome Nintendo was (is). The realization hit me when my friend invited me over to play Super Mario Brothers. I thought it was JustAnotherAtari-LikeConsole with maybe a slight variation on the original Mario Brothers game (remember that one? POW.)
But it wasn't just one screen of action. I was totally floored when I saw the screen actually scrolling by, with all the colors and backgrounds and many sprites on the screen. Damn, I was hooked from then onwards.
That seemed like the big, hate to say it, but Paradigm Shift. Since then, IMHO, games have gotten far more gee-whiz with graphics/sound effects, but this one step of going from simple atari-like games to super-mario-like stuff was totally HUGE for me.
Just my reminisces back towards junior high/high days. Most others will probably disagree...
Of course by then whatever desk space you save with a tiny computer will be taken up by your 80 inch monitor. And you can perish the
thought of sitting your monitor on top of one of those:)
Not when we use those organic glasses with ultra-high-resolution video for each eye, for true stereoscopic terminals.:-)
What a sleazy grab for headlines. Unless one works in an advanced IBM lab or the like, such a degree isn't worth the paper it's
printed on. No one is currently in a position to "teach" nano-tech. It's like teaching warp-drive at this point.
ummm, what's the difference between this and all other scientific graduate programs? Scientific research involves reaching into the unknown. nanotech is one such unknown. how is this different?
Are you at all familiar with how graduate science programs function? They don't just teach you stuff that's already known. Maybe for a master's degree you can do a few classes and maybe a short thesis project. But for a PhD, you've got to pick some specific research area, and work it out for a few years, under guidance of your thesis adviser. You're pretty much expected to become the world's expert in that fairly specific sub-area.
And of course this research is into a new realm. Trying something new out, or possibly finding a better way to do something that's already known. But one doesn't merely repeat what's already done, just for the sake of repeating it. There is an amount of verification, though, just to keep people honest (remember cold fusion)?
Plus, there's usually lots of colloboration between big labs and grad programs, such as IBM as you mention. Big companies like this are usually more than willing to shell out small cash in comparison, to have some slaves (read grad students) really focus on research specifics. Much cheaper than hiring full-time employees to do the same.
Finally, there are many grad programs already doing nanotech stuff. For example, down the hall from me right now some people in the experimental condensed matter physics wing are doing research on carbon nanotubes. Just this is in the physics dept, this announcement deals with the first dept focused exclusively on nanotech.
This method is already in use, it's called WDM, or wavelength-division multiplexing. Although typically a diffraction grating is used instead of a prism.
No, it's definitely possible. Current switching techniques use Electro-optical modulators. For example, a Lithium Naiobate (LiNbO3) mach-zender interferometer, which basically alters it's index of refraction due to an electic potential across the path. It modulates in such a way that one can route the data through different paths by the intensity of the voltage. This is a common technique used to convert digital data into optical data. Similar methods can be used to route optical signals input to output, using the Electro-optical signal for routing.
The cool part about all-optical switching is that you're now using an optical signal to tell the modulator which path to send the optical data. no more electric signal. There are a few methods in which to do this, but I'm not too familiar with them.
Although, technically speaking, we've had all-optical switching for a long time now. When you send any AC electric signal down a transmission line, you're sending photons, believe it or not!
Wouldn't NTFS compatability in Linux allow anyone with a Linux micro-distribution(on a floppy) access the information on a
computer running NT on NTFS? AFAIK the current situation is that even with local access, unless you have a l/p for NT you
can't get to the info stored on the NTFS partition, even with a boot floppy.If so I could definately see this as a valid reason for
Microsoft's anger, although not for grounds on which to sue.
don't forget, if you have access to the computer, all you need is an axe or chainsaw, which will render the underlying OS on the computer inoperable.
The most secure OS in the world isn't secure if you can get access to the computer physically (unless, of course, the partitions are encrypted and there's intrusion detection, etc)
I think they're planning an inaudible watermark that the recording device can still detect. SDMI-aware sound
cards would refuse to record watermarked audio.
I've been bouncing around ideas for awhile now to design my own soundcard, with fully-documented schematics and the like. Just haven't gotten off my lazy arse to do it. But if we ever get to a point where one can only buy SMDI-aware ones, I'll just have to follow through.
I would like to make plans available under some open-source-like license. That is, schematics, etching-masks for the boards, parts lists, building constructions, and fully-documented interfacing manual would be fully and freely available on the web.
I think that schematics cannot be covered under a GPL-like license, but a more BSD-like license would be fine. Depending on how high demand was, boards and parts could be purchased as kits (like PAIA does with their audio stuff) and pre-assembled too. Plus, the public availability of the plans would allow any number of fabrication facilities to make boards themselves and ship locally. I think it would be interesting to see how such a project could/would work.
One other thing to consider is alternatives to both ISS and SSC. Currently, the only in-orbit space station is Mir (are there others? Skylab fell decades ago, I think that's it), which is limiting in it's capabilities, relatively unsafe, and technologically old-fashioned (based on 70's tech, but that's not necessarily all bad). However, it is a global alternative to provide microgravity research should ISS get cancelled.
On the other hand, there are many global alternatives to SSC, most notably LHC at CERN. Granted, their energies MAY not be equivalent (I'm still not certain), and they probably are searching for different effects, but there's still plenty of research venues for particle physicists to pursue after the SSC was cancelled. Also included amongst alternatives are SLAC, FermiLab, and many smaller accellerators.
So on the bright side, particle physicists can do their research at these other places, and microgravity scientists can do theirs (eventually) in ISS. And in case you're actually wondering, I didn't support Congress's move to cancel SSC, and I was pretty bummed about it when it happened.
But strictly in terms of SSC vs ISS, I can't say if they're nearly equal in bang/buck, because it's really apples to oranges. However, I don't think either of them will contribute "nil" to actual science.
Yeah, I wasn't so polite in the original reply, but the way I read your post, it sounded as if you were taking out your anger/frustration due to SSC's cancellation onto ISS. So since you've level-headed-ly explained your position since, I apologize for mentioning the "childish rivalry" and "pissing contest".
and also FYI, I am now back in grad physics school, after a hiatus of 3 years. Not planning to do HEP, though I did work for them at U.Penn for 2 years back in the day.
Look at one of my replies above. Of course NASA's PR machine advocates the microgravity environment, but so did SSC's PR machine advocate it's own high-energy studies.
The part of your post I had problems with was "and congress chose the boondoggle that will contribute approximately nil to actual science". That's a completely subjective statement. The 'science' that both projects would undertake are completely different. As we both seem to agree, one will advance basic physics knowledge, and another will advance various engineering/technology knowledge.
One aspect of study in microgravity will be astrobiology. Including effects of weightlessness on the human body, which will ultimately be necessary for any future space travel (ie, manned mars mission). Also, strange behaviors of materials without strong grav fields can be studied. Micrograv projects I know are underway are liquid interfaces and lectric arcing. Here's a list of micrograv experiments, but hopefully you don't distrust all of NASA-related reports as PR exaggerations. I'd wager that there are plenty more proposals, too.
YOu may think such studies will contribute nil to science, but many others disagree. I've also heard talks that new semiconductor fab methods may be done in micrograv. So maybe research on the space station can ultimately get you a better front-end detector.
and I do apologize for unsubstantiated claims made in one of the posts above. I posted some hearsay that some HEP physicists told me about LHC being able to do nearly all SSC could have. These physicists were working on the SSC, too. Two other posts responded to mine said SSC would have been higher energy than LHC could deliver. None are substantiated either way, maybe you could also confirm this?
gotta go to math methods class now, we'll talk later.
Slashdot Mirror
When you get a security clearance, you go through a huge investigation, I know, I had a security clearance at my last job. They get detailed about your police record, your drug use, your involvement with rebellious organizations, and even your character as they ask your friends and friends friends and friends friends friends about you. Many of Bush's past misdemeanors (DUI, cocaine use/sale, etc) would most likely disqualify him for such a security clearance. That is, the government would deem him not trustworthy enough to handle sensitive US information. In fact, it's on a need-to-know basis, so if he did hold a government job with secret clearance, he'd only know what he needed to do his job.
Yet the ironic thing is that he can now run for president, where he'll be in CHARGE of making decisions involving nearly ALL of the sensitive information available that he wouldn't normally be privy to, in a normal job.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this?
I was just using the slide rule as an example back to antiquity, but of course you probably realized that :-)
I like one of the scenes in Apollo 13, where they're checking the gimbal coordinates, and you see the NASA engineers with their slide rules hacking away. it's great.
But it's not as simple as that, it's still a very confusing philosophical confusing notion. Feynman supposedly said anyone that's not bothered by this has rocks in their head. To top it all off, the professor suggested we all to go home tonight, take a bong hit, and think about it some more.
I just found this page with some descriptions, and a taste of funky math :-) I haven't really checked it out fully, but it looks like it's probably a good place to get a basic idea of some of these principles (and hopefully they have some decent movies too).
enjoy.
Manipulating individual electrons is a fool's errand.
Are you the same AC from the beginning of this thread? If it's a fool's errand, then it's a bigger fool who stays with yesterday's 'comfortable' technology instead of pushing forward. You'd probably still be using vacuum tubes instead of solid-state with your forward-thinking ideals. Do you still keep your slide-rule around, because these pesky calculators of today just don't cut it?
You can't even imagine how small a single electron is.
Well, if you think of a single isolated electron as a spin 1/2 realization of Poincare algebra, you may be right, but such cases are pure thought experiments. It's the actions of the electron in the presence of other particles that matters. So, look at the solutions for spherical harmonics of solutions for Schrodinger's equation for an electron-proton pair (ie, the hydrogen atom) to get a feel for the size of an electron cloud in the smallest of one of it's common configurations. Probably on the order of Angstroms.
The electron probability cloud probably get much bigger, fuzzier, and far more complex when you think of electrons in metals and other matter (organics maybe?). In terms of low-dimensional systems (quantum dots / 2-D electron gases) there may be some interesting numbers for the 'size' of the electron, but I don't these cases offhand.
In terms of not imagining the scale, here you are perhaps right. It's difficult to visually comprehend 10 or so orders of magnitude in distance scale. But I can get some idea of it.
Hmm, this is right. sounds just as silly as storing a bunch of electrons on an array of millions of small capacitors, and then refreshing them dozens of times per second, to store data bits. And if extra charge comes along, or it's not refreshed long enough, the fragile data gets wiped out. Oh wait a second, that's how DRAM memory works.
Okay, but it's certainly as ridiculous (sp) as making little tiny EXTREMELY static-sensitive transistors wired in a feedback path with current maintaining them in 2 possible states so they can flip and flop between the two, and thus store data bits. Yeah, and if someone rubs their sock on said transistor substrate, they'll send the data into total chaos. Hey wait a minute, that's how SRAM works.
So you can see these seemingly delicate scenarios are both in use today, almost certainly both being made to use in the computer you've used to post your sarcastic little statement. BTW, Dr. Kool, since you're at Harvard University, you're probably very aware of some of your fellow Harvard faculty research with quantum structures, and, I believe, quantum bits.
Good day.
This means that if the spin of one particle is measured in any direction (say out of X or Y or Z for cartesian coordinates), then the spin for the other particle is going to be opposite that measured for the first particle, BUT ONLY IF IT'S MEASURED IN THE SAME DIRECTION. So if you measure the z component of particle 1, you get either h-bar/2 or -h-bar/2, and you know that particle 2, if measured in the z direction, gives the opposite one. This will work if both measurements are in the x, or y, or any other combination of directions. But they must be the same direction.
One fundamental aspect of spin is that spin operators in different directions don't commute. that is, if one measures the spin in one direction, say Z, then another direction, say X, and then measures the Z direction spin again, it won't necessarily be the same. That is, measuring the X direction between the two Z measurements changed the state of the system.
So the part of this thought experiment that bothered Einstein and company is that if one can see that if both particles are entangled such that any spin measurement made will be opposite the other particle's measurement, providing the spin direction being measured is the same, then this implies that there are some sort of hidden variables in nature to account for this. Namely, the particles are entangled in seemingly all directions, until that first measurement is made. Surely, then, nature must possess some knowledge about all three orthogonal directions simultaneously.
But what Bohr and Heisenberg maintained is that one cannot simultaneously measure the X,Y,Z spins. That is, we CANNOT ask about measurements that could be made but were not made, we can only talk about those measurements that were made.
So it's a bit different than the analogy the article gives about two pennies, one being heads up and one being heads down, because if your penny is heads up, it'll always be heads up, as that is not a fundamental spin-1/2 particle.
sorry if this post makes ZERO sense, i'm just blabbering about what was pretty cool in quantum class. hopefully tomorrow we'll learn s'more to make it make more sense.
That's a really good point, I thought of the same thing too. If all GPL'd software is publicly available to view, do MSFT and other proprietary software coders have to justify that they have not seen said code?
I get a blank page on that link. Netscape on Solaris must not like it, I guess.
You're not the only one being paranoid. Read my comment about this issue. It's posted below, on this same /. thread.
Sounds strange? Think about the following reasons. We've seen many times previously that MSFT avoids admitting their own mistakes for as long as they possibly can. It takes them awhile to warn the public about known bugs or exploits in their various software products. Yet, in this case of the stolen source, they were seemingly very willing to let the press know about the break-in and apparent theft of the source code.
Now that it is public knowledge that some MSFT source code has been stolen, imagine what it does for free/open-source development. Because of this, the FSF and other maintainers of free/OSS software now have to take extra measures to ensure that the code is free of any potential influence of the supposed 'stolen code'. This takes time, effort, and will generally serve to slow-down the development open-source software projects. A big 'plus' for MSFT.
Also, suppose someone posts snippets of the 'Forbidden Source' to various newsgroups, like the public postings of DeCSS and MSFT's kerberos additions to slashdot. Or, say, someone emails some of this code to the kernel mailing list directly. Now, nearly the entire team of linux developers, among other projects, has seen the 'forbidden source'. IANAL, but MSFT could possibly use the fact that they saw the 'forbidden source' as justifications that now they're now privy to MSFT's proprietary software models. They may use this fact to either sue future developers, or inhibit future development of such projects. Both of these things are bad for OSS/free software, and are good for MSFT.
This may sound like some grand paranoid conspiracy theory and doomsday scenario, but as someone posted to LinuxToday, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you."
Interesting how such a cliche can be false, considering it's totally one's opinion. I at least said IMHO in my post, thus allowing people to disagree. You are entitled to your opinions, and me to mine.
Basically to sum up what I was trying to say, because I think you completely missed my point, was that the jump from Atari-like games to NES-like games was a far bigger jump relatively than from subsequent gaming systems down the line. I did NOT say that today's games are not as good as the ones 'back in my day'. And once again, a big fat IMHO applies.
There was also a cheat, where you could pause the game as the lightning is hitting him. every time you pause and unpause it, it gives him another hit of damage, so you could kill him in only a few lightning bolt hits.
IMHO, I'd actually have to add BattleToads to that list. It came out rather late in the NES lifespan, but damn, was it so fscking cool. I don't know if there's been other sequels to it, though, so it may not have the 'legacy' the other games have. But I do agree with you on those three.
But it wasn't just one screen of action. I was totally floored when I saw the screen actually scrolling by, with all the colors and backgrounds and many sprites on the screen. Damn, I was hooked from then onwards.
That seemed like the big, hate to say it, but Paradigm Shift. Since then, IMHO, games have gotten far more gee-whiz with graphics/sound effects, but this one step of going from simple atari-like games to super-mario-like stuff was totally HUGE for me.
Just my reminisces back towards junior high/high days. Most others will probably disagree...
Not when we use those organic glasses with ultra-high-resolution video for each eye, for true stereoscopic terminals. :-)
ummm, what's the difference between this and all other scientific graduate programs? Scientific research involves reaching into the unknown. nanotech is one such unknown. how is this different?
Are you at all familiar with how graduate science programs function? They don't just teach you stuff that's already known. Maybe for a master's degree you can do a few classes and maybe a short thesis project. But for a PhD, you've got to pick some specific research area, and work it out for a few years, under guidance of your thesis adviser. You're pretty much expected to become the world's expert in that fairly specific sub-area.
And of course this research is into a new realm. Trying something new out, or possibly finding a better way to do something that's already known. But one doesn't merely repeat what's already done, just for the sake of repeating it. There is an amount of verification, though, just to keep people honest (remember cold fusion)?
Plus, there's usually lots of colloboration between big labs and grad programs, such as IBM as you mention. Big companies like this are usually more than willing to shell out small cash in comparison, to have some slaves (read grad students) really focus on research specifics. Much cheaper than hiring full-time employees to do the same.
Finally, there are many grad programs already doing nanotech stuff. For example, down the hall from me right now some people in the experimental condensed matter physics wing are doing research on carbon nanotubes. Just this is in the physics dept, this announcement deals with the first dept focused exclusively on nanotech.
Yes, lots of folks. Nonlinear materials are VERY complex, but have so many cool uses.
This method is already in use, it's called WDM, or wavelength-division multiplexing. Although typically a diffraction grating is used instead of a prism.
The cool part about all-optical switching is that you're now using an optical signal to tell the modulator which path to send the optical data. no more electric signal. There are a few methods in which to do this, but I'm not too familiar with them.
Although, technically speaking, we've had all-optical switching for a long time now. When you send any AC electric signal down a transmission line, you're sending photons, believe it or not!
don't forget, if you have access to the computer, all you need is an axe or chainsaw, which will render the underlying OS on the computer inoperable.
The most secure OS in the world isn't secure if you can get access to the computer physically (unless, of course, the partitions are encrypted and there's intrusion detection, etc)
I've been bouncing around ideas for awhile now to design my own soundcard, with fully-documented schematics and the like. Just haven't gotten off my lazy arse to do it. But if we ever get to a point where one can only buy SMDI-aware ones, I'll just have to follow through.
I would like to make plans available under some open-source-like license. That is, schematics, etching-masks for the boards, parts lists, building constructions, and fully-documented interfacing manual would be fully and freely available on the web.
I think that schematics cannot be covered under a GPL-like license, but a more BSD-like license would be fine. Depending on how high demand was, boards and parts could be purchased as kits (like PAIA does with their audio stuff) and pre-assembled too. Plus, the public availability of the plans would allow any number of fabrication facilities to make boards themselves and ship locally. I think it would be interesting to see how such a project could/would work.
On the other hand, there are many global alternatives to SSC, most notably LHC at CERN. Granted, their energies MAY not be equivalent (I'm still not certain), and they probably are searching for different effects, but there's still plenty of research venues for particle physicists to pursue after the SSC was cancelled. Also included amongst alternatives are SLAC, FermiLab, and many smaller accellerators.
So on the bright side, particle physicists can do their research at these other places, and microgravity scientists can do theirs (eventually) in ISS. And in case you're actually wondering, I didn't support Congress's move to cancel SSC, and I was pretty bummed about it when it happened.
But strictly in terms of SSC vs ISS, I can't say if they're nearly equal in bang/buck, because it's really apples to oranges. However, I don't think either of them will contribute "nil" to actual science.
Yeah, I wasn't so polite in the original reply, but the way I read your post, it sounded as if you were taking out your anger/frustration due to SSC's cancellation onto ISS. So since you've level-headed-ly explained your position since, I apologize for mentioning the "childish rivalry" and "pissing contest".
and also FYI, I am now back in grad physics school, after a hiatus of 3 years. Not planning to do HEP, though I did work for them at U.Penn for 2 years back in the day.
peace out.
Look at one of my replies above. Of course NASA's PR machine advocates the microgravity environment, but so did SSC's PR machine advocate it's own high-energy studies.
The part of your post I had problems with was "and congress chose the boondoggle that will contribute approximately nil to actual science". That's a completely subjective statement. The 'science' that both projects would undertake are completely different. As we both seem to agree, one will advance basic physics knowledge, and another will advance various engineering/technology knowledge.
One aspect of study in microgravity will be astrobiology. Including effects of weightlessness on the human body, which will ultimately be necessary for any future space travel (ie, manned mars mission). Also, strange behaviors of materials without strong grav fields can be studied. Micrograv projects I know are underway are liquid interfaces and lectric arcing. Here's a list of micrograv experiments, but hopefully you don't distrust all of NASA-related reports as PR exaggerations. I'd wager that there are plenty more proposals, too.
YOu may think such studies will contribute nil to science, but many others disagree. I've also heard talks that new semiconductor fab methods may be done in micrograv. So maybe research on the space station can ultimately get you a better front-end detector.
and I do apologize for unsubstantiated claims made in one of the posts above. I posted some hearsay that some HEP physicists told me about LHC being able to do nearly all SSC could have. These physicists were working on the SSC, too. Two other posts responded to mine said SSC would have been higher energy than LHC could deliver. None are substantiated either way, maybe you could also confirm this?
gotta go to math methods class now, we'll talk later.
it's probably a hell of a lot cheaper