Microsoft has piles of money and hires the best Ph.Ds money can buy, why would you wonder how they can come up with a 'superior' search engine?
Perhaps because Google did something truly creative; patented it; got fucking rich; then started hiring people to improve on their work? Basically, "Because Google is 99.7% likely to think of it first, since they expend 99.9% of their effort on sorting and analyzing data for various reasons, and can apply ALL that research to search engines for 1% of additional effort."
It's like if the oil companies started funding car and aerospace (Boeng) companies with fucking bazillions of cash, trying to build advanced rocket engine designs. Sure these are well-funded mechanical engineering firms that deal in all kinds of aerodynamics (what, you think a Porsche is a brick with a giant engine and nice suspension? lol); but NASA has been doing this forever, and still has decent funding, no business case needed (almost), etc. I'm sorry, you're competing with "Somebody god damn well has spent forever trying to do this, you're not going to magically make new shit up because you're both rich and smart."
The Abacus (particularly Soroban and Suan-Pan, more the Japanese Soroban these days) teaches the mind to deal in numbers as isometric spatial registers in base 10 with a low and high register.
In effect this eliminates the conceptualization of large numbers: 1,379,482 for example people will often remember as "1 million, three hundred and seventy something thousand and some odd numbers." Why not "1 million, something and 79 thousand, four hundred something two"? Because the bigger numbers are conceptually more significant. The whole number is not a stream of digits as on paper; it's an atomic unit in your head, with a certain representation of resolution.
Numbers become easier to remember and work with when they're isometrically referenced. The mechanism to add numbers is a quick register overflow process that becomes quite mechanical; subtraction is a bit tougher to grasp, but then simple; multiplication, division, powers, roots, and the like are all methodical. Because of this, study of arithmetic on the Soroban trains the brain to solve math problems mentally, quickly, at a glance.
That's all well and good, but the question isn't "are we stupid for abandoning this tool?" but more "do we still use it?" They do in Japan, at least in some schools. Hell, they still manufacture them, and I've had one imported; one day I'd like a fine wood-and-bone one as well.
I am rather unknown for my baseless theories on the teaching of math; but it is a subject that I enjoy reflecting on. I think one major failing in the US school system is the discrete separation of subjects: we should not have Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. It's been a while since I've reflected on this and my theories have been refined: we should have "Basic Math" and "Advanced Math" as teaching courses. "Basic Math" would begin with Arithmetic on Soroban, and introduce Algebra concepts as early as possible-- not elementary algebra, but the concept of (x + 2 = 5) rather than arithmetic as (5 - 2 = x).
As concepts are solidified, we begin introducing relevant algebra, but we pay mind to finishing arithmetic. As concepts of Geometry come within reach, we should explore them to demonstrate the algebra further. Eventually we'll have finished all arithmetic concepts, be focused on Algebra, and have a fine footing into Geometry. Basic math should focus on finishing Elementary Algebra (what we call "Algebra 1 and 2" today), with strong call-forwards into Geometry. The study of all forms of elementary Geometry should be the lead-out in the same way as modern teaching: we enter Geometry mixed with Algebra, but we lead out as Geometry studied as a discrete course in mathematics.
After Geometry, we step from "Basic Math" to "Advanced Math." With our firm grasp on Elementary Algebra and Geometry, we tackle Trigonometry head-on. Applications of Trigonometry should be used as reinforcement, as well as call-forwards into Precalculus; we should bleed into Calculus--most of "PreCalculus" is covered by Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry--will call-backs to Geometry and Algebra to re-enforce them during application as we enter deeper into Calculus (i.e. integrating PreCalculus more and more as we finish Trigonometry and move more deeply into Calculus).
This is how I believe advanced mathematics education would function. The use of the Japanese Soroban as a teaching tool is a significant part of that not by quantity but by impact: the student becomes capable of understanding and performing foundational arithmetic extremely well. The foundation in Algebra and Geometry as "Basic Math" is, as well, significant; Trigonometry paves the way for engineering and Calculus, and Calculus also paves the way for engineering (note that Trigonometry is considered the root of all engineering: it is the branch of mathematics that enabled the great philosophers to design things like pyramids and complex sculptures and ships and complex weaponry and buildings that don't fall over). Study into e
Okay, my screen just turned black. Every v4 pre since like b2 has been corrupting its own memory, slowly dying, then outright crashing. The crash reporter has submitted 4 or 5 reports after crashes; it usually fails.
In those cases you cannot send a $10 SATA PCI card because it is unfit for purpose (and more importantly the customer is not happy with that). Most desktops go to customers who generally won't care, as long as it works.
We're talking about people who like blowing up not just school children (shock value), but just regular old normal people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever, hanging out at a restaurant getting something to eat, having a business meeting, talking about saving the environment, talking about destroying the environment, getting ready to proposition someone for steady dating, etc. People whose intent is to bring the death of non-combatants, not soldiers who have put themselves in a position to be a target. They gain nothing but the glory of killing innocents that they don't like for some reason. These people are honorless cowards and they are serving honorless cowards. Their lives are worth nothing.
Yes, pretty much. It's like slashdot's next generation interface: Completely bat-fuck broken (seriously, it doesn't work; I can't follow the "replies to your comments" links, they takes me to unrelated comments under the same article), but in 3 months they'll release a new, working version. Sony will release a 6 core handheld, and in 3 months phones will release a 3 core handheld but the cores will be ARMv12, twice the clock, and have dedicated coprocessors for graphics and physics that outperform Sony's.
Physicists should study physics, although we're talking about nuclear physics and anything I get wrong is some High Level Shit(TM).
The main point of that particular signature is basically a nod to pre-modern Chinese/Japanese culture and a curse at modern world culture. Eastern and Western culture are still different, but... Eastern culture is decaying, and so is Western culture.
I can universally justify both Go and Philosophy. Geometry not quite; I can directly justify that but you can directly justify chemistry in the same way.
The study of Go actually improves your abstract and logical reasoning; your memory; and your ability to abstractly recall information without explicit linking (useful for everything from solving engineering problems to cracking jokes the moment somebody sets themselves up). This is useful in social life, in home life, in management, in engineering, in everything really. Apparently the brain is not a muscle, but even bone gets stronger with use and atrophies if it's never put under load.
Philosophy is harder to discuss without discussing philosophy. Most people around here are familiar with "Why Is There Air" and "Do We Exist" philosophy; I've had a really hard time convincing people that questions about abortion and taxes are inherently philosophical questions, and that politics is just an application. All base (non-religious, non-doctrine) questions involving right and wrong and honor are philosophical; all questions involving the scientific study of impact are economic (like if we legalize and socially ENCOURAGE abortion, what does that do to, say, STD rate, given lowered inhibitions). Questions like how much liberty should we trade for so-called "security" are philosophical. Lack of a strong philosophical binding produces people who complain about Wal-Mart's serious detrimental impact on society while shopping there religiously.
Philosophy is, most basically, the act of thinking about what is happening in the world around you and what it means to you. It's when you actually sit down and think, you know, it's annoying but they're not hurting anyone groping me and X-raying me going through the airport; but we are all being treated horribly abusively, they think they can shove anything they want down our throats and we'll dance like puppets, and our god damn dignity is more important than the 0.0001% of lives we "might" lose for refusing to be treated like slave-animals. We need to get some backbone as a people and stand up to the transit cartel; and then we need to stand strong as a country and not panic and cry about "terrorism" because we're better than they are and we shouldn't let these cowards break our spirit and our backbone.
Geometry is more direct. You need it to figure out how much cake mix to use to make a different size cake. It's useful math. Of course you could make arguments about physics and engineering and chemistry too; although I've applied Geometry to Physics when we took basic physics to avoid doing 85% of the work for tensile problems (law of consines is a quick solution, but they had a 7 step process using the pythagorean theorem like 4 times). I think as a benchmark, Geometry makes a good base-- it implies (if you're not the US school system) a strong grasp of Algebra, it gives a starting point for Trigonometry, and it's critically important for anything but the most basic calculus--which forms the basis of physics and engineering.
I would have probably said Go, Algebra, Meditation, and Martial Arts, but I pieced this together more from things I've heard others suggest. Meditation and Martial Arts are philosophy facilitators to me anyway (meditation helps improve physical and cognitive senses, but also calms your mind down enough to actually process shit; and the study of martial arts makes a person FAR more willing to stand up for himself and others, because people take offense to bullies and once the fear is dispelled they become hostile to it). Plus Go and Aikido are meditative to me, along with Yoga; but I am strongly familiar with meditation and know how to apply such things in such situations.
I took chemistry in public school in the USA. We discussed nuclear physics in high school. I built a (non-nuclear) thermal reactor as a term project in 10th grade using a thermite reaction (not thermite) between magnesium and iron oxide by mixing iron, salt water, and magnesium. This is trivial; but I worked it out based on the electron configurations of magnesium and iron, figuring out which would have better bonding energy (whatever it is, it's been 10 years) etc etc.
See here's the thing: they taught us about nuclear forces, about elecron orbitals, about organic and inorganic chemistry. This wasn't 5th grade chemistry where they teach you how acids and bases work, dissociating in water just like any other ionic compound. I took chemistry in college and it was lame; high school chemistry was much more in-depth and information dense. It would have taken me 4 years of chemistry study to catch up to what I learned in high school in 9 months.
They also went into deep discussion about isotopes, radioactive decay, the release of neutrons, they even mentioned that neptunium will follow beta decay and emit an electron, gaining a proton by magic (they didn't explain neutron decay). They talked about how fusion releases tons of energy, and so does fission.
They covered fusion and fission in as little depth as possible in high school.
Basically they explained the concept. Hydrogen, hydrogen, fuse into helium, and tons of energy released. Heavy element (uranium) breaks down, tons of energy released.
So we'll say "public school system," and you can decide if they're sane.
Here's a hint: Nickel-Hydride, chemical. Something elemental and heavier than nickel, fusion. Something elemental and lighter than nickel, fission. A nickel-hydrogen reaction that results in less of both nickel and hydrogen is definitely some sort of fusion; if it results in something lighter than copper, it's probably fission (of nickel) and fusion (of hydrogen with whatever else).
Sometimes I'm surprised scientists are so stupid, really. They have that whole mass-energy conservation bullshit, but both fission and fusion apparently produce tons of energy. So if you can get the energy to cause the reaction in one direction, it's exothermic; if you can do it in the other direction, it's also exothermic. If you can make it oscillate, it produces a run-away exothermic process that self-feeds and turns the universe into a ball of molten liquefied thermal radiation expanding at the speed of light.
That's pretty key science there. The scientific community has too little framework for "I don't know, it just works, stfu." I mean you can take one home with you and go, wow, holy shit, this works. YOU figure out why, I'LL just build the god damn things.
"Open source" is a buzzword that has nothing to do with allowing anyone to contribute; you can vehemently protect your code base, and someone else can copy it and take it somewhere else and do their own thing while not fucking with you. "Open source" also applies to programs with source code, or perhaps architecture and engineering and CGI (source blueprints, source CAD, source animation files, etc); this is just an "open system with transparency."
And the vague reference to "encryption" in TFS is silly; there aren't any crypto algorithms in use whose security rests on P != NP.
Every symmetrical encryption algorithm in the field currently relies on the idea that the computation of the plaintext from the ciphertext and key is easily verifiable, but the computation of the key from the ciphertext is hard. Many can be analyzed if you can perform same difficult mathematics in a short time.
Every asymmetrical encryption algorithm in the field relies on the factoring problem, which is NP hard. If P==NP, then suddenly we know the factoring problem is NP easy. Further, solving one NP hard problem would effectively supply new strategies to solve other NP hard problems. QED.
Encryption relies on the theory that some shit is just hard to do. Not that we don't know how, but that from what we know it's trivially doable but takes too god damn much work that can't be done in any shorter than a huge fucking length of time even with all the resources in the world pointed at it.
I know many people who steal from their employers because they "don't pay me enough." Some of them got jobs paying more than $10/hr and stopped, or steal less.
Well, if we could get it to operate net-positive with a solar photovoltaic system to extract CO2 from the air, they'll probably cheer.
... until we reach peak CO2, and the trees start dying, and wildfires start happening much more.
Granted, I like this idea. I've considered a wood-and-charcoal and solid-to-liquid fuel economy on sustainable forresting; but fossil-to-CO2 with buffers isn't so bad either. The problem is, of course, we don't create a huge dense CO2 cloud with this; drawing enough CO2 from the atmosphere to produce fuel will cause massive environmental damage, while drawing CO2 from burned fossil fuel exhaust collected at emissions source will work.
You have to realize that trees are extremely efficient and all that CO2 in the atmosphere for one disperses and also becomes sugar through plants and trees absorbing it; and at the same time you have the ocean absorbing the stuff, which eventually becomes condensed and compressed at the bottom, and slowly pressurized through slow reactions into frozen methane. There's a lot of reasons why we can't just suck CO2 out of the air; but capturing at the source will work great.
NASA is one of the few things that a socialist approach works extremely well for, and indeed is down right essential. NASA is a huge fucking waste of money; however it occasionally spits out something reusable right now, and often spits out engineering knowledge that provides a foundation for something down the line. Rocket science is completely useless as-is; it quickly filters into smaller, simpler designs for ICBMs (also useless-- war is an immutable evil that always depletes the economy in the same way as making jobs to dig holes and then fill them in again or make lots of boots and then burn them) and more slowly into designs for launching satellites, before finally providing the engineering foundation for planes and then land and sea vehicles.
The eventual benefit is absolutely impossible in the private sector, as the cost is impossible to recover in general. While it needs regulation, we do in fact need an enforced money sink for this kind of shit. Technological advancement is a trickle-down economics model: ideas for shit that's physically impossible in current technology are laughed out unless you have an instant moment of clarity with tons of new technology to quickly scribble down on paper. New technology that's basically useless gives you a fresh set of tools to implement new technology that's suddenly possible.
Without an organization like NASA, we can advance neither as far or as fast as we can with their technological progress. Things we would naturally come up to would come more slowly; and some things would cost too much for any business to ever develop (i.e. research components that are only useful when put together, but are prohibitively expensive and pointless to research individually over time, thus would never be developed to be assembled). I mean could you imagine a private company developing satellites? Nothing has ever hit orbit, no rockets, nothing of the sort... the entire science is mainly from-scratch and you get to start with chemistry and material science, engineering is a blank slate. That won't EVER happen; the amount of research just to bootstrap society with something useful in a business sense is enough to bankrupt Microsoft. Our current private space firms are starting well ahead with current NASA technology.
That's actually awesome. 300 workers have been displaced to go send their resumés around and find a better job, making more money or taking a senior position in manufacturing or management with their decade of experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has piles of money and hires the best Ph.Ds money can buy, why would you wonder how they can come up with a 'superior' search engine?
Perhaps because Google did something truly creative; patented it; got fucking rich; then started hiring people to improve on their work? Basically, "Because Google is 99.7% likely to think of it first, since they expend 99.9% of their effort on sorting and analyzing data for various reasons, and can apply ALL that research to search engines for 1% of additional effort."
It's like if the oil companies started funding car and aerospace (Boeng) companies with fucking bazillions of cash, trying to build advanced rocket engine designs. Sure these are well-funded mechanical engineering firms that deal in all kinds of aerodynamics (what, you think a Porsche is a brick with a giant engine and nice suspension? lol); but NASA has been doing this forever, and still has decent funding, no business case needed (almost), etc. I'm sorry, you're competing with "Somebody god damn well has spent forever trying to do this, you're not going to magically make new shit up because you're both rich and smart."
The Abacus (particularly Soroban and Suan-Pan, more the Japanese Soroban these days) teaches the mind to deal in numbers as isometric spatial registers in base 10 with a low and high register.
In effect this eliminates the conceptualization of large numbers: 1,379,482 for example people will often remember as "1 million, three hundred and seventy something thousand and some odd numbers." Why not "1 million, something and 79 thousand, four hundred something two"? Because the bigger numbers are conceptually more significant. The whole number is not a stream of digits as on paper; it's an atomic unit in your head, with a certain representation of resolution.
Numbers become easier to remember and work with when they're isometrically referenced. The mechanism to add numbers is a quick register overflow process that becomes quite mechanical; subtraction is a bit tougher to grasp, but then simple; multiplication, division, powers, roots, and the like are all methodical. Because of this, study of arithmetic on the Soroban trains the brain to solve math problems mentally, quickly, at a glance.
That's all well and good, but the question isn't "are we stupid for abandoning this tool?" but more "do we still use it?" They do in Japan, at least in some schools. Hell, they still manufacture them, and I've had one imported; one day I'd like a fine wood-and-bone one as well.
I am rather unknown for my baseless theories on the teaching of math; but it is a subject that I enjoy reflecting on. I think one major failing in the US school system is the discrete separation of subjects: we should not have Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. It's been a while since I've reflected on this and my theories have been refined: we should have "Basic Math" and "Advanced Math" as teaching courses. "Basic Math" would begin with Arithmetic on Soroban, and introduce Algebra concepts as early as possible-- not elementary algebra, but the concept of (x + 2 = 5) rather than arithmetic as (5 - 2 = x).
As concepts are solidified, we begin introducing relevant algebra, but we pay mind to finishing arithmetic. As concepts of Geometry come within reach, we should explore them to demonstrate the algebra further. Eventually we'll have finished all arithmetic concepts, be focused on Algebra, and have a fine footing into Geometry. Basic math should focus on finishing Elementary Algebra (what we call "Algebra 1 and 2" today), with strong call-forwards into Geometry. The study of all forms of elementary Geometry should be the lead-out in the same way as modern teaching: we enter Geometry mixed with Algebra, but we lead out as Geometry studied as a discrete course in mathematics.
After Geometry, we step from "Basic Math" to "Advanced Math." With our firm grasp on Elementary Algebra and Geometry, we tackle Trigonometry head-on. Applications of Trigonometry should be used as reinforcement, as well as call-forwards into Precalculus; we should bleed into Calculus--most of "PreCalculus" is covered by Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry--will call-backs to Geometry and Algebra to re-enforce them during application as we enter deeper into Calculus (i.e. integrating PreCalculus more and more as we finish Trigonometry and move more deeply into Calculus).
This is how I believe advanced mathematics education would function. The use of the Japanese Soroban as a teaching tool is a significant part of that not by quantity but by impact: the student becomes capable of understanding and performing foundational arithmetic extremely well. The foundation in Algebra and Geometry as "Basic Math" is, as well, significant; Trigonometry paves the way for engineering and Calculus, and Calculus also paves the way for engineering (note that Trigonometry is considered the root of all engineering: it is the branch of mathematics that enabled the great philosophers to design things like pyramids and complex sculptures and ships and complex weaponry and buildings that don't fall over). Study into e
Okay, my screen just turned black. Every v4 pre since like b2 has been corrupting its own memory, slowly dying, then outright crashing. The crash reporter has submitted 4 or 5 reports after crashes; it usually fails.
In those cases you cannot send a $10 SATA PCI card because it is unfit for purpose (and more importantly the customer is not happy with that). Most desktops go to customers who generally won't care, as long as it works.
Why replace when you can send a $10 SATA PCI card?
The Romans had DRAM? I thought they used the abacus.
"They are regular people who believe they have been pushed too far and are fighting back."
So emotionally unstable
We're talking about people who like blowing up not just school children (shock value), but just regular old normal people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever, hanging out at a restaurant getting something to eat, having a business meeting, talking about saving the environment, talking about destroying the environment, getting ready to proposition someone for steady dating, etc. People whose intent is to bring the death of non-combatants, not soldiers who have put themselves in a position to be a target. They gain nothing but the glory of killing innocents that they don't like for some reason. These people are honorless cowards and they are serving honorless cowards. Their lives are worth nothing.
Yes, pretty much. It's like slashdot's next generation interface: Completely bat-fuck broken (seriously, it doesn't work; I can't follow the "replies to your comments" links, they takes me to unrelated comments under the same article), but in 3 months they'll release a new, working version. Sony will release a 6 core handheld, and in 3 months phones will release a 3 core handheld but the cores will be ARMv12, twice the clock, and have dedicated coprocessors for graphics and physics that outperform Sony's.
That was mostly the point.
Physicists should study physics, although we're talking about nuclear physics and anything I get wrong is some High Level Shit(TM).
The main point of that particular signature is basically a nod to pre-modern Chinese/Japanese culture and a curse at modern world culture. Eastern and Western culture are still different, but ... Eastern culture is decaying, and so is Western culture.
I can universally justify both Go and Philosophy. Geometry not quite; I can directly justify that but you can directly justify chemistry in the same way.
The study of Go actually improves your abstract and logical reasoning; your memory; and your ability to abstractly recall information without explicit linking (useful for everything from solving engineering problems to cracking jokes the moment somebody sets themselves up). This is useful in social life, in home life, in management, in engineering, in everything really. Apparently the brain is not a muscle, but even bone gets stronger with use and atrophies if it's never put under load.
Philosophy is harder to discuss without discussing philosophy. Most people around here are familiar with "Why Is There Air" and "Do We Exist" philosophy; I've had a really hard time convincing people that questions about abortion and taxes are inherently philosophical questions, and that politics is just an application. All base (non-religious, non-doctrine) questions involving right and wrong and honor are philosophical; all questions involving the scientific study of impact are economic (like if we legalize and socially ENCOURAGE abortion, what does that do to, say, STD rate, given lowered inhibitions). Questions like how much liberty should we trade for so-called "security" are philosophical. Lack of a strong philosophical binding produces people who complain about Wal-Mart's serious detrimental impact on society while shopping there religiously.
Philosophy is, most basically, the act of thinking about what is happening in the world around you and what it means to you. It's when you actually sit down and think, you know, it's annoying but they're not hurting anyone groping me and X-raying me going through the airport; but we are all being treated horribly abusively, they think they can shove anything they want down our throats and we'll dance like puppets, and our god damn dignity is more important than the 0.0001% of lives we "might" lose for refusing to be treated like slave-animals. We need to get some backbone as a people and stand up to the transit cartel; and then we need to stand strong as a country and not panic and cry about "terrorism" because we're better than they are and we shouldn't let these cowards break our spirit and our backbone.
Geometry is more direct. You need it to figure out how much cake mix to use to make a different size cake. It's useful math. Of course you could make arguments about physics and engineering and chemistry too; although I've applied Geometry to Physics when we took basic physics to avoid doing 85% of the work for tensile problems (law of consines is a quick solution, but they had a 7 step process using the pythagorean theorem like 4 times). I think as a benchmark, Geometry makes a good base-- it implies (if you're not the US school system) a strong grasp of Algebra, it gives a starting point for Trigonometry, and it's critically important for anything but the most basic calculus--which forms the basis of physics and engineering.
I would have probably said Go, Algebra, Meditation, and Martial Arts, but I pieced this together more from things I've heard others suggest. Meditation and Martial Arts are philosophy facilitators to me anyway (meditation helps improve physical and cognitive senses, but also calms your mind down enough to actually process shit; and the study of martial arts makes a person FAR more willing to stand up for himself and others, because people take offense to bullies and once the fear is dispelled they become hostile to it). Plus Go and Aikido are meditative to me, along with Yoga; but I am strongly familiar with meditation and know how to apply such things in such situations.
* Nobody sane, that is.
I took chemistry in public school in the USA. We discussed nuclear physics in high school. I built a (non-nuclear) thermal reactor as a term project in 10th grade using a thermite reaction (not thermite) between magnesium and iron oxide by mixing iron, salt water, and magnesium. This is trivial; but I worked it out based on the electron configurations of magnesium and iron, figuring out which would have better bonding energy (whatever it is, it's been 10 years) etc etc.
See here's the thing: they taught us about nuclear forces, about elecron orbitals, about organic and inorganic chemistry. This wasn't 5th grade chemistry where they teach you how acids and bases work, dissociating in water just like any other ionic compound. I took chemistry in college and it was lame; high school chemistry was much more in-depth and information dense. It would have taken me 4 years of chemistry study to catch up to what I learned in high school in 9 months.
They also went into deep discussion about isotopes, radioactive decay, the release of neutrons, they even mentioned that neptunium will follow beta decay and emit an electron, gaining a proton by magic (they didn't explain neutron decay). They talked about how fusion releases tons of energy, and so does fission.
They covered fusion and fission in as little depth as possible in high school.
Basically they explained the concept. Hydrogen, hydrogen, fuse into helium, and tons of energy released. Heavy element (uranium) breaks down, tons of energy released.
So we'll say "public school system," and you can decide if they're sane.
That would make iron the lowest energy state element in existence, which would suggest it would have to be the most common thing in the universe.
Here's a hint: Nickel-Hydride, chemical. Something elemental and heavier than nickel, fusion. Something elemental and lighter than nickel, fission. A nickel-hydrogen reaction that results in less of both nickel and hydrogen is definitely some sort of fusion; if it results in something lighter than copper, it's probably fission (of nickel) and fusion (of hydrogen with whatever else).
Sometimes I'm surprised scientists are so stupid, really. They have that whole mass-energy conservation bullshit, but both fission and fusion apparently produce tons of energy. So if you can get the energy to cause the reaction in one direction, it's exothermic; if you can do it in the other direction, it's also exothermic. If you can make it oscillate, it produces a run-away exothermic process that self-feeds and turns the universe into a ball of molten liquefied thermal radiation expanding at the speed of light.
Do you see it?
That's pretty key science there. The scientific community has too little framework for "I don't know, it just works, stfu." I mean you can take one home with you and go, wow, holy shit, this works. YOU figure out why, I'LL just build the god damn things.
"Open source" is a buzzword that has nothing to do with allowing anyone to contribute; you can vehemently protect your code base, and someone else can copy it and take it somewhere else and do their own thing while not fucking with you. "Open source" also applies to programs with source code, or perhaps architecture and engineering and CGI (source blueprints, source CAD, source animation files, etc); this is just an "open system with transparency."
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem
And the vague reference to "encryption" in TFS is silly; there aren't any crypto algorithms in use whose security rests on P != NP.
Every symmetrical encryption algorithm in the field currently relies on the idea that the computation of the plaintext from the ciphertext and key is easily verifiable, but the computation of the key from the ciphertext is hard. Many can be analyzed if you can perform same difficult mathematics in a short time.
Every asymmetrical encryption algorithm in the field relies on the factoring problem, which is NP hard. If P==NP, then suddenly we know the factoring problem is NP easy. Further, solving one NP hard problem would effectively supply new strategies to solve other NP hard problems. QED.
Encryption relies on the theory that some shit is just hard to do. Not that we don't know how, but that from what we know it's trivially doable but takes too god damn much work that can't be done in any shorter than a huge fucking length of time even with all the resources in the world pointed at it.
I know many people who steal from their employers because they "don't pay me enough." Some of them got jobs paying more than $10/hr and stopped, or steal less.
It costs me $30/mo for unlimited data.
Well, if we could get it to operate net-positive with a solar photovoltaic system to extract CO2 from the air, they'll probably cheer.
Granted, I like this idea. I've considered a wood-and-charcoal and solid-to-liquid fuel economy on sustainable forresting; but fossil-to-CO2 with buffers isn't so bad either. The problem is, of course, we don't create a huge dense CO2 cloud with this; drawing enough CO2 from the atmosphere to produce fuel will cause massive environmental damage, while drawing CO2 from burned fossil fuel exhaust collected at emissions source will work.
You have to realize that trees are extremely efficient and all that CO2 in the atmosphere for one disperses and also becomes sugar through plants and trees absorbing it; and at the same time you have the ocean absorbing the stuff, which eventually becomes condensed and compressed at the bottom, and slowly pressurized through slow reactions into frozen methane. There's a lot of reasons why we can't just suck CO2 out of the air; but capturing at the source will work great.
You mean like Wii games? Of course not.
NASA is one of the few things that a socialist approach works extremely well for, and indeed is down right essential. NASA is a huge fucking waste of money; however it occasionally spits out something reusable right now, and often spits out engineering knowledge that provides a foundation for something down the line. Rocket science is completely useless as-is; it quickly filters into smaller, simpler designs for ICBMs (also useless-- war is an immutable evil that always depletes the economy in the same way as making jobs to dig holes and then fill them in again or make lots of boots and then burn them) and more slowly into designs for launching satellites, before finally providing the engineering foundation for planes and then land and sea vehicles.
The eventual benefit is absolutely impossible in the private sector, as the cost is impossible to recover in general. While it needs regulation, we do in fact need an enforced money sink for this kind of shit. Technological advancement is a trickle-down economics model: ideas for shit that's physically impossible in current technology are laughed out unless you have an instant moment of clarity with tons of new technology to quickly scribble down on paper. New technology that's basically useless gives you a fresh set of tools to implement new technology that's suddenly possible.
Without an organization like NASA, we can advance neither as far or as fast as we can with their technological progress. Things we would naturally come up to would come more slowly; and some things would cost too much for any business to ever develop (i.e. research components that are only useful when put together, but are prohibitively expensive and pointless to research individually over time, thus would never be developed to be assembled). I mean could you imagine a private company developing satellites? Nothing has ever hit orbit, no rockets, nothing of the sort... the entire science is mainly from-scratch and you get to start with chemistry and material science, engineering is a blank slate. That won't EVER happen; the amount of research just to bootstrap society with something useful in a business sense is enough to bankrupt Microsoft. Our current private space firms are starting well ahead with current NASA technology.
5 year old laptop or whatever is actually still a capable machine (especially if you get rid of Windows).
He's a member of the Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society. Built to last, the future is the past.
That's actually awesome. 300 workers have been displaced to go send their resumés around and find a better job, making more money or taking a senior position in manufacturing or management with their decade of experience.