The nuclear engineering communitiy is (still) standardized on F77. The reasons: 1) many great neutronics codes were written in the 60's (often for weapons research) using F77 and are still valuable today and 2) the NRC has some strange requirements concerning foward and backward compatability - almost anything from a DEC PDP-3 to a new G5 iMac can compile F77 code. Maybe someday they'll let us use F95...
Speech recognition is a two-part process. The silicon is to speed up part one: word recognition. The first thing to do is to figure out that the person is saying:
Computer, set timer for (to|too|two) (ours|hours).
Step two changes that into:... two hours.
based on context. That's where the AI programmers get their turn at the problem.
A bit of explanation is in order. Yes, there is a monsterous barrier to overcome, requiring that the fusing nuclei have upwards of 3.5 keV of energy before they can overcome this barrier. No one is seriously considering that some sort of quantum mechanical tunnelling is occuring. Though that is possible, it is so unlikely, that the fusion rates would be undetectably low.
However, it is possible that added energy is not evenly distributed among nuclei. If you add a ton of energy (thermal, electrical, or whatever) it is possible that, in certain configurations, a small population will get the lion's share of it. Note that there is macroscopic evidence that this can occur. Sonoluminecence, certain (ocean) wave processes, and some electrical phenomenon are proof of that.
I am not an advocate of cold fusion - I've only been studying the hot type. I'm just saying that we should hear them out and look at the data - emitted neutrons don't lie!
the TARDIS! There are a number of people studying this sort of space warping. go to arxiv.org and so a search for Alcubierre, Krasinov, etc. You will see that this is not such a new (or such a far-out) idea.
Automatic driving sound good, but let's apply the current state of routing technology to the driving experience: I am in my PM b0x and have told it to go from home to work, both of which reside in Phoenix.
Me: Car, why have we gotten on the freeway? Car: Network traffic is too congested. We will be routed through Cleveland this morning. Me: Whaaa????
Nice idea, but I'm not sure that it's quite ready for prime time. Let's sucessfully get some unmanned cars across the desert first.
T. Kammash, ed.; Fusion Energy for Space Propulsion; AIAA Press
Somewhat technical, but tons of good studies and information for intelligent non-physicists (and sci-fi fans) as well. The information is about 10 years old, but still considered cutting-edge.
Off thread but needing help figuring out distros..
on
Fedora Core 2 Review
·
· Score: 1
Sorry in advance for the n00b rant. I am an experienced Wintel and MacOS hacker and familiar with other Unix flavors --- but not Linux. I have a PIII laptop that would otherwise be gathering dust and am wanting to put some Linux distro on it. I played with FC1. Slow, hard to upgrade, hard to customize, etc... What is a good distro for basic office tasks, playing MP3's, reading PDFs, etc? And should I just go with FC2 and install a bunch of other stuff? No, I'm not wanting to hack it (maybe later) so dev tool support isn't an issue.
Possibly a poll is in order for this one:
Best office distro:
- Fedora Core 2
- Red Hat 9
- Mandrake
- Debian
- Something else
- I have no computer you insensitive clod! Ooops...
- In Search Of... - Art Bell - Weekly World News - etc..
There is no point to arguing with them. Any outright contraditions to their beliefs, even when backed by hard science, are simply ignored as being part of the "plan". Whose plan, I'm not really sure. At any rate, according to the aforementioned accounts, we're currently being experimented on, mind controlled and invaded by soviets/aliens/time travellers/elvis/whatever.
Here's what has been working with them. Every time they mention [insert appropriate psudeo-science here], I counter with something completely factual and only marginally related to what they are talking about. If they mention alien cities on mars, I talk about the latest findings in martian geochemistry and don't mention aliens at all.
This has two effects:
1) They sometimes learn something. 2) I have factual ammunition that I can use later. For instance when Art Bell says that mars is made of pocket lint, I can bring up the conversation we had last week on mineral salts. And then they listen to reason (sometimes).
Hope this helps (despite some very hopeless people in the world).
use the password, "password", for everything. Just kidding. Non-encrypted CD backups locked in the filing cabinet. Nothing kept on-line for more than one month without being burned to CD. Boss knows where they are, and (worst case) physical locks can be broken. Not a perfect system, but a good balance and solves much of the "hit-by-a-bus" problem.
BTW, I code, not administer. It would be a different set of problems for those who do.
> neutron bombs w/out the boom, just the killing power
Not possible. Generating that high of a neutron flux *requires* that amount of energy to be created at the same time. The neutrons are a by-product of the same boom-generating reaction.
The DD reaction requries ~35 keV to initiate, while the DT requires only ~4 keV -- an order of magnitude less energy. So why did they use DD?
I worked with Purdue's bubble fusion system for a bit. We used DD because of the near impossiblility of getting tritiated-acetone. The deuterium in the reaction comes from the acetone in which all hydrogen atoms have been replaced by deuterium atom. The generated heat is hot enough to break down the acetone an start the reaction.
Deuterated acetone is hard to come by but possible. But try to find tritiated acetone on the market and you will come up empty.
If someone were to make tritiated acetone, mix it with the deuterated acetone and put it into the reactor, the neutron yeild would certainly increase.
> what happens if i were to build a big rocket and launch myself into space without telling anyone? would i get shot down by the military when they pick me up on radar?
Yes. Having worked with a (unmanned) launch services firm, getting permission can be the most difficult part of the process. Building the rocket and payload is just rocket science. Getting permission is *legal-stuff*.
Six years ago, we had estimated that launching a satellite required permits, lawyers and insurance in excess of twice the cost of the launch vehicle. The gov't is truly being kind to Mr. Rutan.
Quick sanity check (really not to troll): ENOUGH of the (insert OS name here) is best stuff! Most of us are professional nerds in one capacity or another. We all know that the only "great OS" is the one that we ourselves write/design. Then it is only great for us. And no one else. Hence the problem.
The point is that the closed-source folks have the money/time/inclination to fund artists, studies and usability experts. Open source, by its nature, can't match those resources.
The solution: none, really. Open source makes bulletproof, elegant and sometimes even beautiful systems. But until major open source projects make it a point to do careful UI design, we will be spinning our wheels.
Required reading for everyone: Macintosh User Interface Guidelines. Even if you don't like the Mac. Even if you design embedded code in assembly. And especially if you are looking to put some thought into a UI.
Is this the same thing/similar to what they did in the mid 90's with the "Common Hardware Reference Platform"? The idea was a common set of (PowerPC-based) chips, support chips, firmware, drivers, etc. covering everything (in theory) from desktops to embedded systems. What? You don't remember that? Worked well, didn't it....
Nothing electronic I'm afraid. My primary source is a now (unfortunately) out-of-print series of books called "Fusion Research" vols. 1-3, by Dolan. They are considered quite the find among fusion researchers for their scope and clarity.
Also excellent is "Fusion Energy in Space Propulsion," by Terry Kammash and "Current Trends in International Fusion Research," by Emilio Panarella.
All three make mention of the technique of supression the unwanted D-D side reaction. The technique is called "fuel spin-polarization" and involves using high magnitude B-fields to spin polarize the D fuel as it travels from the tank to the reaction chamber.
Supposedly, the D-D reaction can be supressed to a less than 1% occurance (from about 50%). Sorry I can't say more about that technique, but I'm not as up on the quantum physics as I should be.
Fusion reactions come in many different flavors, with the D-T reaction being the easiest to ignite (ignition temp = 4keV). Another, perfectly good reaction it the D-Helium-3 (all that stuff on the moon that Bush talks about) and D-D. Both have a higher ignition temp at about 35keV. The D-He3 reaction is aneutronic producing only He-4 and a proton. The D-D reaction produces a neutron but that reaction can be supressed by clever placement of magnetic fields. I.E.: He-3 fusion is (almost completely) radiation-free, making it the holy grail of fusion research.
> So, when people start whining about the "excessive" cost of military and space electronics, they need to remember that sending a man to Mars or the Moon is not a garage hobby project.
Slashdot Mirror
The nuclear engineering communitiy is (still) standardized on F77. The reasons: 1) many great neutronics codes were written in the 60's (often for weapons research) using F77 and are still valuable today and 2) the NRC has some strange requirements concerning foward and backward compatability - almost anything from a DEC PDP-3 to a new G5 iMac can compile F77 code. Maybe someday they'll let us use F95...
Speech recognition is a two-part process. The silicon is to speed up part one: word recognition. The first thing to do is to figure out that the person is saying:
... two hours.
Computer, set timer for (to|too|two) (ours|hours).
Step two changes that into:
based on context. That's where the AI programmers get their turn at the problem.
A bit of explanation is in order. Yes, there is a monsterous barrier to overcome, requiring that the fusing nuclei have upwards of 3.5 keV of energy before they can overcome this barrier. No one is seriously considering that some sort of quantum mechanical tunnelling is occuring. Though that is possible, it is so unlikely, that the fusion rates would be undetectably low.
However, it is possible that added energy is not evenly distributed among nuclei. If you add a ton of energy (thermal, electrical, or whatever) it is possible that, in certain configurations, a small population will get the lion's share of it. Note that there is macroscopic evidence that this can occur. Sonoluminecence, certain (ocean) wave processes, and some electrical phenomenon are proof of that.
I am not an advocate of cold fusion - I've only been studying the hot type. I'm just saying that we should hear them out and look at the data - emitted neutrons don't lie!
Let the clippy jokes commence....
the TARDIS! There are a number of people studying this sort of space warping. go to arxiv.org and so a search for Alcubierre, Krasinov, etc. You will see that this is not such a new (or such a far-out) idea.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of... oh, never mind.
Automatic driving sound good, but let's apply the current state of routing technology to the driving experience: I am in my PM b0x and have told it to go from home to work, both of which reside in Phoenix.
Me: Car, why have we gotten on the freeway?
Car: Network traffic is too congested. We will be routed through Cleveland this morning.
Me: Whaaa????
Nice idea, but I'm not sure that it's quite ready for prime time. Let's sucessfully get some unmanned cars across the desert first.
Read This:
T. Kammash, ed.; Fusion Energy for Space Propulsion; AIAA Press
Somewhat technical, but tons of good studies and information for intelligent non-physicists (and sci-fi fans) as well. The information is about 10 years old, but still considered cutting-edge.
Sorry in advance for the n00b rant. I am an experienced Wintel and MacOS hacker and familiar with other Unix flavors --- but not Linux. I have a PIII laptop that would otherwise be gathering dust and am wanting to put some Linux distro on it. I played with FC1. Slow, hard to upgrade, hard to customize, etc... What is a good distro for basic office tasks, playing MP3's, reading PDFs, etc? And should I just go with FC2 and install a bunch of other stuff? No, I'm not wanting to hack it (maybe later) so dev tool support isn't an issue.
Possibly a poll is in order for this one:
Best office distro:
- Fedora Core 2
- Red Hat 9
- Mandrake
- Debian
- Something else
- I have no computer you insensitive clod! Ooops...
I have relatives who believe everything in/on:
- In Search Of...
- Art Bell
- Weekly World News
- etc..
There is no point to arguing with them. Any outright contraditions to their beliefs, even when backed by hard science, are simply ignored as being part of the "plan". Whose plan, I'm not really sure. At any rate, according to the aforementioned accounts, we're currently being experimented on, mind controlled and invaded by soviets/aliens/time travellers/elvis/whatever.
Here's what has been working with them. Every time they mention [insert appropriate psudeo-science here], I counter with something completely factual and only marginally related to what they are talking about. If they mention alien cities on mars, I talk about the latest findings in martian geochemistry and don't mention aliens at all.
This has two effects:
1) They sometimes learn something.
2) I have factual ammunition that I can use later. For instance when Art Bell says that mars is made of pocket lint, I can bring up the conversation we had last week on mineral salts. And then they listen to reason (sometimes).
Hope this helps (despite some very hopeless people in the world).
use the password, "password", for everything. Just kidding. Non-encrypted CD backups locked in the filing cabinet. Nothing kept on-line for more than one month without being burned to CD. Boss knows where they are, and (worst case) physical locks can be broken. Not a perfect system, but a good balance and solves much of the "hit-by-a-bus" problem.
BTW, I code, not administer. It would be a different set of problems for those who do.
- Jim
> neutron bombs w/out the boom, just the killing power
Not possible. Generating that high of a neutron flux *requires* that amount of energy to be created at the same time. The neutrons are a by-product of the same boom-generating reaction.
The DD reaction requries ~35 keV to initiate, while the DT requires only ~4 keV -- an order of magnitude less energy. So why did they use DD?
I worked with Purdue's bubble fusion system for a bit. We used DD because of the near impossiblility of getting tritiated-acetone. The deuterium in the reaction comes from the acetone in which all hydrogen atoms have been replaced by deuterium atom. The generated heat is hot enough to break down the acetone an start the reaction.
Deuterated acetone is hard to come by but possible. But try to find tritiated acetone on the market and you will come up empty.
If someone were to make tritiated acetone, mix it with the deuterated acetone and put it into the reactor, the neutron yeild would certainly increase.
Anyone find a reference to the supposed patent? A quick search of the USPTO site with Inventor=Minato gives 300-odd entries of nothing useful.
.... but the comments are all mine! HAHAHAHA!
> what happens if i were to build a big rocket and launch myself into space without telling anyone? would i get shot down by the military when they pick me up on radar?
.
Yes. Having worked with a (unmanned) launch services firm, getting permission can be the most difficult part of the process. Building the rocket and payload is just rocket science. Getting permission is *legal-stuff*
Six years ago, we had estimated that launching a satellite required permits, lawyers and insurance in excess of twice the cost of the launch vehicle. The gov't is truly being kind to Mr. Rutan.
In 1969, it stood for "Petroglyphic Document Format". They were etched on stone tablets with a "Lincoln Stylus" (see document).
Quick sanity check (really not to troll): ENOUGH of the (insert OS name here) is best stuff! Most of us are professional nerds in one capacity or another. We all know that the only "great OS" is the one that we ourselves write/design. Then it is only great for us. And no one else. Hence the problem.
The point is that the closed-source folks have the money/time/inclination to fund artists, studies and usability experts. Open source, by its nature, can't match those resources.
The solution: none, really. Open source makes bulletproof, elegant and sometimes even beautiful systems. But until major open source projects make it a point to do careful UI design, we will be spinning our wheels.
Required reading for everyone: Macintosh User Interface Guidelines. Even if you don't like the Mac. Even if you design embedded code in assembly. And especially if you are looking to put some thought into a UI.
Just my 0.02 - take with grain of NaCl.
Is this the same thing/similar to what they did in the mid 90's with the "Common Hardware Reference Platform"? The idea was a common set of (PowerPC-based) chips, support chips, firmware, drivers, etc. covering everything (in theory) from desktops to embedded systems. What? You don't remember that? Worked well, didn't it....
Nothing electronic I'm afraid. My primary source is a now (unfortunately) out-of-print series of books called "Fusion Research" vols. 1-3, by Dolan. They are considered quite the find among fusion researchers for their scope and clarity.
Also excellent is "Fusion Energy in Space Propulsion," by Terry Kammash and "Current Trends in International Fusion Research," by Emilio Panarella.
All three make mention of the technique of supression the unwanted D-D side reaction. The technique is called "fuel spin-polarization" and involves using high magnitude B-fields to spin polarize the D fuel as it travels from the tank to the reaction chamber.
Supposedly, the D-D reaction can be supressed to a less than 1% occurance (from about 50%). Sorry I can't say more about that technique, but I'm not as up on the quantum physics as I should be.
- Jim
All good and true but missing a point:
Fusion reactions come in many different flavors, with the D-T reaction being the easiest to ignite (ignition temp = 4keV). Another, perfectly good reaction it the D-Helium-3 (all that stuff on the moon that Bush talks about) and D-D. Both have a higher ignition temp at about 35keV. The D-He3 reaction is aneutronic producing only He-4 and a proton. The D-D reaction produces a neutron but that reaction can be supressed by clever placement of magnetic fields. I.E.: He-3 fusion is (almost completely) radiation-free, making it the holy grail of fusion research.
I, for one, welcome our new, fashionable, overlords! (You saw this one coming)
> So, when people start whining about the "excessive" cost of military and space electronics, they need to remember that sending a man to Mars or the Moon is not a garage hobby project.
I'll supply the garage! Who's with me?
Due to peculiarities with the ASCII table only needing 7 bits and 4 byte word lengths...