Libraries have a mission to disseminate knowledge, and a budget for this purpose (i.e. they are already paying the $40,000 for the journal subscription). They also have a lot of the infrastructure needed for online publishing (high speed network connections, servers, computer programmers). They should cut out the middleman and run competing journals themselves.
I am not working in the field of entanglement, but I am an NMR spectroscopist, so I work with spins. The spin *is* really only up or down (or a combination of the two), but not ever some "angle" in between. Probably the most correct definition of electron spin is Wolfgang Pauli's original statement: "Classically non-describable two-valuedness." Trying to rationalize it as something spinning is incorrect and will generally lead you to false conclusions. In NMR spectroscopy, different nuclei couple to each other and the different spin states produce separate distinct peaks for each value of their neighbor's spin states. Collections of multiple nuclei produce binomial patterns, but each nucleus is always in some particular state or perhaps a superposition of different states, which is not the same as "being in between" different states.
QM may not be all that difficult to "wrap your brain around" if you neglect spin, but I defy you to give me a verbal explanation of spin that is simple and accurate in all situations.
You need to learn some physics as well. There is a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Yes, you are correct, the power level is not what determines the difference, but that doesn't mean that *all* photons can cause ionization. There is something called the photoelectric effect. Below a certain frequency threshold (depends on the material somewhat, but is all in the visible or higher) a photon does not have enough energy to ionize material. Therefore, microwave photons are not going to ionize anything at 1 milli-watt or 100 watts. The primary way that microwave radiation is thought to cause damage is by localized heating, and therefore the intensity of the radiation does matter. Would you rather keep your hand in warm water for 1 minute or boiling water for 5 seconds? You claim that the tests performed are fair and done by people who understand what's happening. Mostly you are right, but some tests have been done by biologists who know little about physics and have applied the wrong models for radiation dosage in their studies. Yes, if you microwave the crap out of a mouse, it will be damaged. No, that doesn't mean that the same damage will happen at a lower intensity over a longer period of time.
That is a great idea, to tax IP. One problem is how to determine the value of the IP... a possible solution is to enforce a marketplace of ideas. You can put whatever value you want on a copyright or patent you own, if you put a high price on it, you have to pay a correspondingly high tax. If you put a low price on it, ANYONE with the money is allowed to automatically buy those rights from you at that price.
Diamond would be much worse. The reason it's so hard to grow is that the surface lattice structure is different than the internal lattice structure at atmospheric pressures. Furthermore, diamond is unstable, so it would (albeit slowly) turn into graphite over time. As for it oxidizing, have you ever heard of carbon dioxide? It would definitely oxidize on its surface.
What the Russian Space Agency ought to do is sell lottery tickets. The winner gets a ride into space (as long as they qualify in terms of health and being able to cope with the training). I'd buy a ticket! I'd bet they would be able to make more than 20 million per trip.
One thing I never see mentioned by all these proponents of nanotubes as a structural material is that extrapolating the strength of nano-scale covalent bonds to macroscopic dimensions is overly optimistic. "Calculations suggest... based on flexibility... 100x as strong as steel" sure. There are all sorts of materials, if you remove all the defects on an atomic scale, that are super strong. But saying that it is inevitable that we can scale up something from 1 micrometer to 100,000 kilometers is a bit of a stretch. If you made the cable out of solid flawless diamond, it would be stronger than out of nanotubes, and we can already make bigger diamonds than we can make nanotubes. I think a space elevator would be great, but don't hold your breath. There are a lot of details to be worked out in the materials science area before it is really a possibility. But nanotubes do hold promise, just not as much as everyone here seems to think.
You're going to go to jail for that virtual child porn you've just created. Unless you can prove that those symbols represent a girl over the age of 18, of course.
So if I draw a lame-ass picture of a kid having sex using microsoft paint, is that "virtual porn?" Or, do I have to use something better, like Photoshop... or does it have to be generated on an SGI like Jurassic Park?
I read an article about the Inuits in Greenland, and they were saying that April 2000 was the coldest anyone had ever seen. The author of the article said that more severe weather in the polar regions is a consequence of global warming. So, yes, not everybody gets warmer due to global warming.
I know you are just trolling, but I'm going to respond anyway.
At least with the helmet cams, we can see what all they are doing with our money better than we could before. I support anything that makes NASA more "for the people" rather than just a lucky few people who get to go on a joy ride now and then.
Instead of just saying "nasa sucks" why don't you suggest something positive that they should be doing. Name some of those "other areas" that they should be spending focusing on.
I do agree with you in thinking NASA is doing a pretty crappy job overall. They seem to look to congress for guidence and leadership for what projects they should pursue rather than listening to scientists and figuring out what is really practical and then *telling* congress what they are going to do.
Light has momentum, so you don't need to shoot the matter/antimatter backwards, you just need to let them collide and have the resulting gamma rays "shoot backward." The biggest problems I see with this, other than making & storing enough antimatter, is building some sort of mirror to reflect the forward-going gamma rays backwards. Such extremely high-frequency gamma rays as would be produced by most matter-antimatter annihilations wouldn't reflect off of any kind of material I could think of, it would either ionize it, make it into matter/antimatter, or just go right through it. Think x-rays, except more so. If you don't stop the forward-going gamma rays, not only would you not produce a net momentum, you would irradiate your crew capsule and likely kill everyone. (You'd also probably want to worry about those backward-going gamma rays killing the people you left at home, too)
Maybe instead of trying to reflect the gamma rays with a "mirror" like I said, you could use your idea to absorb the light and make new antimatter which is then fed back into the matter/antimatter collision.
It'd be great, but I think we should try nuclear powered spaceships first.
Ralph Nader scares me. He says he is for the little guy, but his actions show him to be the most hypocritical and totalitarian candidate I've ever seen.
"Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes." -- Dave Barry
"He [Nader] is, I believe, an authoritarian, a man on a white horse, and I for one, hope that he will never ride into the White House." -- David Sanford, Nader's former editor, 1976
Nader wraps himself in the mantle of "public interest" with a personally ascetic style and a focus on structural or "apple pie" issues -- consumer safety, corporate accountability, "citizen power" -- rather than traditional partisan issues.
Unfortunately, Nader has become exactly what he attacks. His organizations allow no public input, intimidate foes and journalists, bust unions, hide almost all details of their finances (to the point of breaking laws), and have amassed millions of dollars - all under Nader's direct and autocratic control. Meanwhile, Ralph has gotten rich off of investments in stock; in other words, by owning and profiting off the very corporations he is attacking.
The Nader myth is built in large part of stories of his personal asceticism -- such as taking a minuscule salary, not owning a car (he bums lots of rides), and living (through the 1970s at least) in a boarding house with a bathroom down the hall. He claims to live on $5,000 a year and give nearly all the rest to his organizations.
This election he had to admit spending more than $5,000, and his financial disclosure -- while sketchy -- revealed that he is a multimillionaire who makes hundreds of thousands on speeches each year and owns over $1 million in Cisco stock alone. (Nader still refused to release his tax returns, though all other major candidates have done so for the last many years.)
Ralph talks big about democracy and even unions. But when his own workers at one of his magazines, Multinational Monitor, got fed up with cruel working conditions and started agitating for a union of their own, Nader busted the union with all of the hardball techniques used by corporate owners across America. Workers at Public Citizen, another Nader group, also tried to form a union because of 60 to 80 hour work weeks, salaries that ranged from $13,000 down, and other difficult working conditions and were blocked by Nader, who remains unapologetic to this day.
Nader says "I don't think there is a role for unions in small nonprofit 'cause' organizations any more than... within a monastery or within a union."
According to Nader, "Public interest groups are like crusades: you can't have work rules, or 9 to 5." Shorrock, with his "union ploy," became an "adversary" according to Nader. "Anything that is commercial, is unionizable," but small public interest organizations "would go broke in a month," Nader says, if they paid union wages, offered union benefits and operated according to standard work rules, such as the eight-hour day. Remember that Nader's well-funded organizations were amassing tons of extra money that Ralph has been playing the stock market with during all these events.
I got these things from http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm
I suggest, as a public service (as well as to annoy the hell out of the MPAA) everyone should send the MPAA the names of sites that link to DeCSS through a "series of links." I can think of a few: Yahoo, AltaVista, Google, Slashdot, etc.
I suppose a separate email for each site would be appropriate.
Please moderate this comment up (and "moderate" the article down, if at all possible).
I can't believe the poor quality of articles over the past couple of days... a "single board computer" is not news (even for nerds) nor is the presence of a quack patent in IBM's database.
Slashdot Mirror
Libraries have a mission to disseminate knowledge, and a budget for this purpose (i.e. they are already paying the $40,000 for the journal subscription). They also have a lot of the infrastructure needed for online publishing (high speed network connections, servers, computer programmers). They should cut out the middleman and run competing journals themselves.
I am not working in the field of entanglement, but I am an NMR spectroscopist, so I work with spins. The spin *is* really only up or down (or a combination of the two), but not ever some "angle" in between. Probably the most correct definition of electron spin is Wolfgang Pauli's original statement: "Classically non-describable two-valuedness." Trying to rationalize it as something spinning is incorrect and will generally lead you to false conclusions. In NMR spectroscopy, different nuclei couple to each other and the different spin states produce separate distinct peaks for each value of their neighbor's spin states. Collections of multiple nuclei produce binomial patterns, but each nucleus is always in some particular state or perhaps a superposition of different states, which is not the same as "being in between" different states.
QM may not be all that difficult to "wrap your brain around" if you neglect spin, but I defy you to give me a verbal explanation of spin that is simple and accurate in all situations.
Feet per second is also a useful comparison unit because it is commonly used to express the speed of bullets fired from guns.
You need to learn some physics as well. There is a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Yes, you are correct, the power level is not what determines the difference, but that doesn't mean that *all* photons can cause ionization. There is something called the photoelectric effect. Below a certain frequency threshold (depends on the material somewhat, but is all in the visible or higher) a photon does not have enough energy to ionize material. Therefore, microwave photons are not going to ionize anything at 1 milli-watt or 100 watts. The primary way that microwave radiation is thought to cause damage is by localized heating, and therefore the intensity of the radiation does matter. Would you rather keep your hand in warm water for 1 minute or boiling water for 5 seconds? You claim that the tests performed are fair and done by people who understand what's happening. Mostly you are right, but some tests have been done by biologists who know little about physics and have applied the wrong models for radiation dosage in their studies. Yes, if you microwave the crap out of a mouse, it will be damaged. No, that doesn't mean that the same damage will happen at a lower intensity over a longer period of time.
That is a great idea, to tax IP. One problem is how to determine the value of the IP... a possible solution is to enforce a marketplace of ideas. You can put whatever value you want on a copyright or patent you own, if you put a high price on it, you have to pay a correspondingly high tax. If you put a low price on it, ANYONE with the money is allowed to automatically buy those rights from you at that price.
The majority of the fuel weight in a rocket is the oxidizer, which in a jet you get for free (from the air).
Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't Pro/ENGINEER run on linux? Granted, it's far from free, but it beats the socks off of AutoCAD for many things.
Diamond would be much worse. The reason it's so hard to grow is that the surface lattice structure is different than the internal lattice structure at atmospheric pressures. Furthermore, diamond is unstable, so it would (albeit slowly) turn into graphite over time. As for it oxidizing, have you ever heard of carbon dioxide? It would definitely oxidize on its surface.
What the Russian Space Agency ought to do is sell lottery tickets. The winner gets a ride into space (as long as they qualify in terms of health and being able to cope with the training). I'd buy a ticket! I'd bet they would be able to make more than 20 million per trip.
One thing I never see mentioned by all these proponents of nanotubes as a structural material is that extrapolating the strength of nano-scale covalent bonds to macroscopic dimensions is overly optimistic. "Calculations suggest... based on flexibility... 100x as strong as steel" sure. There are all sorts of materials, if you remove all the defects on an atomic scale, that are super strong. But saying that it is inevitable that we can scale up something from 1 micrometer to 100,000 kilometers is a bit of a stretch. If you made the cable out of solid flawless diamond, it would be stronger than out of nanotubes, and we can already make bigger diamonds than we can make nanotubes. I think a space elevator would be great, but don't hold your breath. There are a lot of details to be worked out in the materials science area before it is really a possibility. But nanotubes do hold promise, just not as much as everyone here seems to think.
Then why are you posting as an Anonymous Coward, Mr. "I have nothing to hide" ?
You're going to go to jail for that virtual child porn you've just created. Unless you can prove that those symbols represent a girl over the age of 18, of course.
So if I draw a lame-ass picture of a kid having sex using microsoft paint, is that "virtual porn?" Or, do I have to use something better, like Photoshop... or does it have to be generated on an SGI like Jurassic Park?
I read an article about the Inuits in Greenland, and they were saying that April 2000 was the coldest anyone had ever seen. The author of the article said that more severe weather in the polar regions is a consequence of global warming. So, yes, not everybody gets warmer due to global warming.
I know you are just trolling, but I'm going to respond anyway.
At least with the helmet cams, we can see what all they are doing with our money better than we could before. I support anything that makes NASA more "for the people" rather than just a lucky few people who get to go on a joy ride now and then.
Instead of just saying "nasa sucks" why don't you suggest something positive that they should be doing. Name some of those "other areas" that they should be spending focusing on.
I do agree with you in thinking NASA is doing a pretty crappy job overall. They seem to look to congress for guidence and leadership for what projects they should pursue rather than listening to scientists and figuring out what is really practical and then *telling* congress what they are going to do.
Light has momentum, so you don't need to shoot the matter/antimatter backwards, you just need to let them collide and have the resulting gamma rays "shoot backward." The biggest problems I see with this, other than making & storing enough antimatter, is building some sort of mirror to reflect the forward-going gamma rays backwards. Such extremely high-frequency gamma rays as would be produced by most matter-antimatter annihilations wouldn't reflect off of any kind of material I could think of, it would either ionize it, make it into matter/antimatter, or just go right through it. Think x-rays, except more so. If you don't stop the forward-going gamma rays, not only would you not produce a net momentum, you would irradiate your crew capsule and likely kill everyone. (You'd also probably want to worry about those backward-going gamma rays killing the people you left at home, too)
Maybe instead of trying to reflect the gamma rays with a "mirror" like I said, you could use your idea to absorb the light and make new antimatter which is then fed back into the matter/antimatter collision.
It'd be great, but I think we should try nuclear powered spaceships first.
Ralph Nader scares me. He says he is for the little guy, but his actions show him to be the most hypocritical and totalitarian candidate I've ever seen.
... within a monastery or within a union."
"Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes." -- Dave Barry
"He [Nader] is, I believe, an authoritarian, a man on a white horse, and I for one, hope that he will never ride into the White House." -- David Sanford, Nader's former editor, 1976
Nader wraps himself in the mantle of "public interest" with a personally ascetic style and a focus on structural or "apple pie" issues -- consumer safety, corporate accountability, "citizen power" -- rather than traditional partisan issues.
Unfortunately, Nader has become exactly what he attacks. His organizations allow no public input, intimidate foes and journalists, bust unions, hide almost all details of their finances (to the point of breaking laws), and have amassed millions of dollars - all under Nader's direct and autocratic control. Meanwhile, Ralph has gotten rich off of investments in stock; in other words, by owning and profiting off the very corporations he is attacking.
The Nader myth is built in large part of stories of his personal asceticism -- such as taking a minuscule salary, not owning a car (he bums lots of rides), and living (through the 1970s at least) in a boarding house with a bathroom down the hall. He claims to live on $5,000 a year and give nearly all the rest to his organizations.
This election he had to admit spending more than $5,000, and his financial disclosure -- while sketchy -- revealed that he is a multimillionaire who makes hundreds of thousands on speeches each year and owns over $1 million in Cisco stock alone. (Nader still refused to release his tax returns, though all other major candidates have done so for the last many years.)
Ralph talks big about democracy and even unions. But when his own workers at one of his magazines, Multinational Monitor, got fed up with cruel working conditions and started agitating for a union of their own, Nader busted the union with all of the hardball techniques used by corporate owners across America. Workers at Public Citizen, another Nader group, also tried to form a union because of 60 to 80 hour work weeks, salaries that ranged from $13,000 down, and other difficult working conditions and were blocked by Nader, who remains unapologetic to this day.
Nader says "I don't think there is a role for unions in small nonprofit 'cause' organizations any more than
According to Nader, "Public interest groups are like crusades: you can't have work rules, or 9 to 5." Shorrock, with his "union ploy," became an "adversary" according to Nader. "Anything that is commercial, is unionizable," but small public interest organizations "would go broke in a month," Nader says, if they paid union wages, offered union benefits and operated according to standard work rules, such as the eight-hour day. Remember that Nader's well-funded organizations were amassing tons of extra money that Ralph has been playing the stock market with during all these events.
I got these things from http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm
Look at this .
I suggest, as a public service (as well as to annoy the hell out of the MPAA) everyone should send the MPAA the names of sites that link to DeCSS through a "series of links." I can think of a few: Yahoo, AltaVista, Google, Slashdot, etc. I suppose a separate email for each site would be appropriate.
Please moderate this comment up (and "moderate" the article down, if at all possible).
I can't believe the poor quality of articles over the past couple of days... a "single board computer" is not news (even for nerds) nor is the presence of a quack patent in IBM's database.