Obviously the deaf OS is pretty much covered and Apple has a passable blind OS, so I wouldn't waste any time on the cooky touch based devices that many people are suggesting. Rather, I'd go right to something that interacts with our brains directly. This would be great for everyone actually and would work just as well for blind and deaf people. The fact that we live in a world where monkeys are playing pong with their brains leads me to believe that we should just jump to the endgame. Of course, UPS protection would definitly be a must to avoid those dangerous power surges!
Because computers can only perform arithmatical operations and "playing" chess is enormously more abstract than most other current computer functions. Second, its interesting because the Kasperov vs. Deep Blue match was vehemently disputed and IBM then conspicuously took the computer offline and refused a final rematch. This ended the possibility of a best 2 out of 3 set of matches. Finally, its really damn interesting that brute force computers that can do some really amazing calculations can't reliably beat super grand masters yet... It gives us insight into the ultimate potential of computers that not only calculate, but calculate in an intelligent manner. Think about a machine that could combine Kasperov's intelligence and deductive ability with Deep Blue's raw computing power. It would be fricking brilliant!
There's actually a good semi-sci-fi book that addresses the cohabitation of sentient beings called the Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. She also has a follow up book. I thought it was a very good commentary on the sociology, biology, and ethics of the matter.
I wish that people would get over the term cold fusion and just move on with life! Who that hell cares that someone fused nuclei together at room temperatures? - They expended tramendous amounts of energy to do it! Big deal, particle physicists have been doing it for years and any slightly talented high school student could due this with a 60 Hz linear accelerater built in their basement. This was some stupid attempt to get press for some silly cavendish experiment that will ultimately further hinder those of us trying to get funding for legitimate fusion research... The kind that attempts to recover more power from a reaction than is put in.
"Could this apply to other situations where technical means (radar guns, video surveillance, wire-tapping, etc.) are used to gather evidence?"
Yes, No and No. I think you are missing the point here... breath tests and radar guns use technology as evidence while video survelance and wire tapping use technology to acquire evidence. No one will ever give a damn how a video recorder works as long as the defendant is clearly seen commiting a crime in the video (no comments about image manipulation through gimp/photoshop please).
I'm not a big fan of the PATRIOT Act, but I'm always apalled by the number of people, and who pontificate on its provisions without actually reading them! The referenced article states " Unfortunately, if an over-zealous special agent on a fishing expedition wants to know... the librarian will probably have little choice. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, he or she would have to surrender the personal identity information that was originally collected to protect the library's materials."
This just isn't true! If you are going to express opinions on the PATTRIOT Act then try reading some of it so that your opinion is based on fact. The pertinent section of the PATRIOT Act is Title II section 215
Anyone notice the part about it not applying to activities protected by the first ammendment? Or the part about needing a warrant from a judge? Or the part about the agent needing to have a particular rank to pursue a library inquiry?
Here is the text of section 215, although a download of the PDF serves much better:
"SEC. 215. ACCESS TO RECORDS AND OTHER ITEMS UNDER THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT. Title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861 et seq.) is amended by striking sections 501 through 503 and inserting the following: ''SEC. 501. ACCESS TO CERTAIN BUSINESS RECORDS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM INVESTIGATIONS. ''(a)(1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. ''(2) An investigation conducted under this section shall-- ''(A) be conducted under guidelines approved by the Attorney General under Executive Order 12333 (or a successor order); and ''(B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. ''(b) Each application under this section-- ''(1) shall be made to-- ''(A) a judge of the court established by section 103(a); or ''(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and 50 USC 1861. ''(2) shall specify that the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. ''(c)(1) Upon an application made pursuant to this section, the judge shall enter an ex parte order as requested, or as modified, approving the release of records if the judge finds that the application meets the requirements of this section. ''(2) An order under this subsection shall not disclose that it is issued for purposes of an investigation described in subsection (a). ''(d) No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section. ''(e) A person who, in good faith, produces tangible things under an order pursuant to this section shall not be liable to any other person for such production. Such production shall not be deemed to constitute a waiver of any privilege in any other proceeding or context."
When I took highschool keyboarding in 1990 my teacher told me that on parent's night a lot of parents got mad because the keyboards had keys on them (their generation had learned on keyboards without keys). It turns out that research has shown (sorrry not link! this is complete heresay) that its not the key labels so much as the key locations that people look at... some sort of visual screen actually works better than removing the key labels.
Okay, I have to disagree with 3 and agree with 5..
"3) Yoda bounces around like a $10 toy from the bratstore? Yoda was supposed to be literally *awesome* if you did piss him off. Not comical. Yoda should have opened his robes, and anywhere from 6-20 lightsabers just levitate outward from him and activate. The bad guy (Darth Brooks? I forget his name) would have to do everything he can to not be mowed down by the cloud of spinning lightsabers biting at him from every side, even the distractions he might throw at Yoda would be smacked away. Let him escape, sure. But make it look like the guy beat the 100,000 to 1 odds in doing so."
Everyone seems to miss this point but it is cruscial to understanding Star Wars: GOOD JEDIS DO NOT USE THE FORCE TO ATTACK, ONLY TO DEFEND. So ther is no way that Yoda could levitate light sabors and attack with them. We've only really ever seen a Jedi kill a real person when they get angry and turn to the dark side momentarily.
5) The big Jedi battle against whatever those things were. They have to be rescued by storm troopers? Mace Windex runs around like a fat man, out of breath, sloppily hacking at things like one of the three stooges would swat at a bee. Some of these Jedi get nailed without ever even seeing it coming. It was so lame. If they can't squash an army that has less than 50 attackers per Jedi, then it's just plain dumb. You get the impression in the first 3 that if the Death Star coughs, Vader will go down to the surface and destroy the damn planet himself. With one arm tied around his back. He might be one of the most powerful ever, but the other Jedis should be with in a few orders of magnitude of that.
I agree with this whole heartedly! My wife and I always envisioned some sort of symbiotic choreographed attack that they would direct via telekinesis.
I love that someone actually took the time to write a post about a conversion error, and included some silly google reference that is intended to prove his correctness. And it got 3 replies to boot! (yes, I know, I'm now the fourth) Ever wonder why some people grow up to be engineers and some people grow up to be scientists? I'll give you three guesses.
FYI: the wired article
on space elevators (referenced in the first wired article)
has a link to the NASA IAC, which
contains a pretty
cool technical report (PDF) on the specifics of the space elevator
proposal. They cover a lot of
their basis in terms of the technical details and possible problems from cable
construction and deployment vehicles to oscillations in the cable and environmental
concerns.
I've got a great idea! How about using a warning message instead of DRM. Users of a particular product would be verbally or visually warned that violations of the copyright law is a federal offense and carries severe penalties. The consumer could then make an informed decision about how they choose to utilize the product. Sound familiar? What kills me is that all of the digital distribution companies are constantly worrying about DRM yet, to this day, I can go out and buy a C.D., copy it 50 times, and hand copies out copies to my friends and this is perfectly legal under the fair use provisions of copyright law.
Just curious... What did it cost to have the linux shop install linux for you? Did it cover everything like power management, sleep type features, wireless card? Was the shop local or mail order? Sounds intriguing.
When I first saw this story I was thinking ye-haa, but on closer inspection it looks like a pretty weak machine for the money in terms of RAM, weight, and hard drive size. My natural inclination is to switch from OSX back to Linux at the first opportunity for an "easy" transition, but this is somewhat tempered now. In a professional setting where price is less of a concern, you just can't beat OSX's combination of a "no worries" simplicity, unix capability, and the availability of open source products. I'm thinking I may never be able to switch back at this point.
"Yes, there have been problems in duplicating them. But that was 17 years ago. Researchon cold fusion did not stop during the last 17 years."
And your point is?... That researchers in cold fusion continue to have major problems with reproducibility after 17 years, only strengthens the case against them.
"When Nagels is saying: "The experimental case is bulletproof" he is reffering to the established working experiments of the previous 5 yeas. And not to the old Pons/Fleischmann claims."
So the experiments that started the hoax are garbage but the currrent research that is based on this hoax is high quality stuff? I don't think so.
"Further more: exepriments with "hydrogen" on "low pressure" interacting with probes leading to transmutations (where a trasmutation of H + D is considered a "fusion") are meanwhile nearly 100 years old."
No even worthy of comment as there is way to much cargo cult junky pseudo science lingo in this one.
"There are PLENTY of historical experiments of meanwhile less well known physics researchers. The point is, the winners write history: Meissner, Röntgen, Fermi, Bohr, Pauli etc. won the race into the established science."
After rambling on about junk pseudo science you sight a couple of Nobel Leareattes to try to ligitimise you claims.
"So the our days thinking is: they are right and the others are wrong. I'm very convinced that both are right. That at both ends of the energy spectrum: high energy and very low energy, transmutations and fusions can happen."
Scientists usually think in terms of "the evidence shows" or better yet, "the evidence proves" and not "I'm very convinced". There is no one or the other (hot vs. cold) at play here! Everyone knows that high energy density fusion works and is legitimate, we just aren't able to do it in a way that produces more energy than we put in yet. Or have you not heard of the fusion globual known as the Sun?
"Like electrons building Cooper pairs in super conductors, H atoms difussed into a latice build "Cooper" pairs. As Cooper pairs no longer fall under the Pauli exclusion principle they can come close enough to fuse.
Don't really care about Pauli exclusion here. Have you ever heard of electtrostatic repulsion? It results from electrodynamics and is the basis for the existance of pretty much everything on earth. I'd worry about overcoming this VERY LARGE force before you get caught up in Pauli exclusion.
"If the "gass" of deuterium and hydrogen inside of the latice of the electrode is "dense" enough, collisons amoung them or with the fabrice (or with electrons?) lead to a wide distributed energy spectrum amoung the H/D atoms. If two of them with high enough energy collide, then its not even "cold" fusion but ordinary hot fusion."
Check you numbers again on this one! Heavey water at STP in thermal equilibrium (e.g. with a Boltzmann profile) won't produce "fusion" events at anything like the orders of magnitude that the cold fusion crackpots claim.
"The second explanaition is likely nonsense"
Yeah, thats what I just said. Glad you agree. Why did you write it then?.
"The most anyoing thing about "cold fusion" rejecters, especially if they are scientists is, instead of trying to find an explanaition HOW it could happen they simply reject it on the terms: does not fit into working theory."
Not true! Why don't you guys face up to the fact that "it" is not happening and then you won't have to push the burden of explaining somthing that isn't happening on to theorists. We're not trying to explain it because there is no conclusive evidence that it happens.
Somewhat related to homeopathy (in the sense that it involves alternative medicine) is the case of acupuncture: there was a great PBS show with Alan Alda, which featured an accupuncturist who was trained in China and set up a practice in the U.S. He was seeing tramendously good results in the U.S. (better than in China) and concluded that it was due to the placebo effect. He then engaged in a research study to test accupuncture against a placebo and got some results indicating that placebo was mostly at play.
Wow, the inclusion of cold fusion as number 13 in this list is a big disappointment! Cold fusion took the bang out of legitimate fusion efforts many years ago and it just won't die. Nagel's claim that "The experimental case is bulletproof, [y]ou can't make it go away." is a load of garbage. Even adamant proponents of cold fusion will agree that the experimental evidence is pretty shoddy at best is rife with irreproducibility. It is precisely this lack of reproducibility that makes the "effect" so hard to swallow. I would have preferred to see coronal mass ejections or the enhanced temperature of the Sun's corona listed as number 13.
Most of the succesfull facial recognition algorithms actually mark key locations on the face and employ measurments between these locations. I haven't looked at IR facial images that much, but they seem to change a lot in different temperatures and due to the physical state of the person. Heat comes from blood and blood is a fluid that is governed by the physiology of the body. This changes drastically as your body respondes to external and internal temperatures and its desire to dissipate heat or retain heat.
Not sure what you are replying to here or why your tone is so darn angry and arrogant, but I disagree. Take a 1-D vector and operate on it with the 1x1 matrix -1 and you get a 180 degree rotation. This is physically meaningfull and follows the tennets of a rotation. Afterall a vector rotates like a vector and you wouldn't counter the existenc of 1-D vectors would you?
This doesn't sound entirely copacetic to me. Why would one see an interfrence patttern with time uncertainty? It seems that the energy-time uncertainty principle would be at play here and one would see some sort of energy variation rather than spatial interference. Maybe I'm misunderstanding things.
I think IR light is too transient to use for recognition. Everytime you're face heats up you wouldn't get into the phone. UV might work better, but wouldn't work with sunglasses very well. I'm wondering why passwords have gone out of style? They only take about a second to enter in.
Yeah, the arbitrary kiligram is very antiquated... I've heard these guys get together and spend months discussing whether "the kilogram" should be washed and how. Washed to often and the weight will decrease, too much and it will pick up dust and increase in weight. Atoms are much more standard.
I've read the responses to this article and a large number of them express concerns over identity theft, cash sucking wands, no ID transactions, etc. Chill out people! The deal with credit cards is that the large credit companies try to promote their ease of use by reminding us that we can leave the house with only our credit card and paying for things won't be a problem. As a result they incure some liability for fraudulent transactions. I'll repeat that: THEY not you incure the liability. That means that if a fradulent charge is made then you download a form that says "I didn't make those charges", fax it to them and they erase the charges. Its as simple as that. People are so darn brain washed by other companies and people who promote the fear economy... fear identity theft: by our identity theft insurance, fear ffor your personal safety: buy a gun and bomb Iraq, fear that you are ugly: buy a bunch of crappy beauty prodcts... I know that Visa and Mastercard are big bad companies that are gaining power and wealth every day, but they sell a pretty damn usefull product. I love leaving the house with only my key chain with mini visa card atached and not worrying about anything else.
At $2500 per year for a pack a day habit a P.O. box at a private place (like the UPS store) and a preloaded Visa grift card would present a viable altenative. Wow thats something like $6.80 a pack and P.O. boxes only run about $10 a month. Its the same old story whether their talking about movies, songs or cigarettes... People have always pirated the stuff, but "the internet has maid it so easy to do" so the powers that be are freaking out with reactive litigation instead of responding with new law that incorporates new technology.
The popularity of PDA's has always surprised me as virtually no one actually uses them... Why spend $200 dollars on a toy that most people use to replace their $5 address book and a couple of note cards? The only people that I have ever seen really "use" their PDA's are doctors. They can put all of their patient records, reference and diagnosing books and language translators on there making them an indispensible tool. If the PDA industry was smart, they would design one just for doctors. I'm a physicist and I won't buy a PDA untill I can get one that will connect to the internet, support ssh networking and run Mathematica all ffor about $150.
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Obviously the deaf OS is pretty much covered and Apple has a passable blind OS, so I wouldn't waste any time on the cooky touch based devices that many people are suggesting. Rather, I'd go right to something that interacts with our brains directly. This would be great for everyone actually and would work just as well for blind and deaf people. The fact that we live in a world where monkeys are playing pong with their brains leads me to believe that we should just jump to the endgame. Of course, UPS protection would definitly be a must to avoid those dangerous power surges!
Because computers can only perform arithmatical operations and "playing" chess is enormously more abstract than most other current computer functions. Second, its interesting because the Kasperov vs. Deep Blue match was vehemently disputed and IBM then conspicuously took the computer offline and refused a final rematch. This ended the possibility of a best 2 out of 3 set of matches. Finally, its really damn interesting that brute force computers that can do some really amazing calculations can't reliably beat super grand masters yet... It gives us insight into the ultimate potential of computers that not only calculate, but calculate in an intelligent manner. Think about a machine that could combine Kasperov's intelligence and deductive ability with Deep Blue's raw computing power. It would be fricking brilliant!
There's actually a good semi-sci-fi book that addresses the cohabitation of sentient beings called the Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. She also has a follow up book. I thought it was a very good commentary on the sociology, biology, and ethics of the matter.
I wish that people would get over the term cold fusion and just move on with life! Who that hell cares that someone fused nuclei together at room temperatures? - They expended tramendous amounts of energy to do it! Big deal, particle physicists have been doing it for years and any slightly talented high school student could due this with a 60 Hz linear accelerater built in their basement. This was some stupid attempt to get press for some silly cavendish experiment that will ultimately further hinder those of us trying to get funding for legitimate fusion research... The kind that attempts to recover more power from a reaction than is put in.
"Could this apply to other situations where technical means (radar guns, video surveillance, wire-tapping, etc.) are used to gather evidence?"
Yes, No and No. I think you are missing the point here... breath tests and radar guns use technology as evidence while video survelance and wire tapping use technology to acquire evidence. No one will ever give a damn how a video recorder works as long as the defendant is clearly seen commiting a crime in the video (no comments about image manipulation through gimp/photoshop please).
I'm not a big fan of the PATRIOT Act, but I'm always apalled by the number of people, and who pontificate on its provisions without actually reading them! The referenced article states " Unfortunately, if an over-zealous special agent on a fishing expedition wants to know ... the librarian will probably have little choice. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, he or she would have to surrender the personal identity information that was originally collected to protect the library's materials."
This just isn't true! If you are going to express opinions on the PATTRIOT Act then try reading some of it so that your opinion is based on fact. The pertinent section of the PATRIOT Act is Title II section 215
Anyone notice the part about it not applying to activities protected by the first ammendment? Or the part about needing a warrant from a judge? Or the part about the agent needing to have a particular rank to pursue a library inquiry?
Here is the text of section 215, although a download of the PDF serves much better:
"SEC. 215. ACCESS TO RECORDS AND OTHER ITEMS UNDER THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT. Title V of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861 et seq.) is amended by striking sections 501 through 503 and inserting the following: ''SEC. 501. ACCESS TO CERTAIN BUSINESS RECORDS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM INVESTIGATIONS. ''(a)(1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. ''(2) An investigation conducted under this section shall-- ''(A) be conducted under guidelines approved by the Attorney General under Executive Order 12333 (or a successor order); and ''(B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. ''(b) Each application under this section-- ''(1) shall be made to-- ''(A) a judge of the court established by section 103(a); or ''(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and 50 USC 1861. ''(2) shall specify that the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. ''(c)(1) Upon an application made pursuant to this section, the judge shall enter an ex parte order as requested, or as modified, approving the release of records if the judge finds that the application meets the requirements of this section. ''(2) An order under this subsection shall not disclose that it is issued for purposes of an investigation described in subsection (a). ''(d) No person shall disclose to any other person (other than those persons necessary to produce the tangible things under this section) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section. ''(e) A person who, in good faith, produces tangible things under an order pursuant to this section shall not be liable to any other person for such production. Such production shall not be deemed to constitute a waiver of any privilege in any other proceeding or context."
When I took highschool keyboarding in 1990 my teacher told me that on parent's night a lot of parents got mad because the keyboards had keys on them (their generation had learned on keyboards without keys). It turns out that research has shown (sorrry not link! this is complete heresay) that its not the key labels so much as the key locations that people look at... some sort of visual screen actually works better than removing the key labels.
Okay, I have to disagree with 3 and agree with 5..
"3) Yoda bounces around like a $10 toy from the bratstore? Yoda was supposed to be literally *awesome* if you did piss him off. Not comical. Yoda should have opened his robes, and anywhere from 6-20 lightsabers just levitate outward from him and activate. The bad guy (Darth Brooks? I forget his name) would have to do everything he can to not be mowed down by the cloud of spinning lightsabers biting at him from every side, even the distractions he might throw at Yoda would be smacked away. Let him escape, sure. But make it look like the guy beat the 100,000 to 1 odds in doing so."
Everyone seems to miss this point but it is cruscial to understanding Star Wars: GOOD JEDIS DO NOT USE THE FORCE TO ATTACK, ONLY TO DEFEND. So ther is no way that Yoda could levitate light sabors and attack with them. We've only really ever seen a Jedi kill a real person when they get angry and turn to the dark side momentarily.
5) The big Jedi battle against whatever those things were. They have to be rescued by storm troopers? Mace Windex runs around like a fat man, out of breath, sloppily hacking at things like one of the three stooges would swat at a bee. Some of these Jedi get nailed without ever even seeing it coming. It was so lame. If they can't squash an army that has less than 50 attackers per Jedi, then it's just plain dumb. You get the impression in the first 3 that if the Death Star coughs, Vader will go down to the surface and destroy the damn planet himself. With one arm tied around his back. He might be one of the most powerful ever, but the other Jedis should be with in a few orders of magnitude of that.
I agree with this whole heartedly! My wife and I always envisioned some sort of symbiotic choreographed attack that they would direct via telekinesis.
I love that someone actually took the time to write a post about a conversion error, and included some silly google reference that is intended to prove his correctness. And it got 3 replies to boot! (yes, I know, I'm now the fourth) Ever wonder why some people grow up to be engineers and some people grow up to be scientists? I'll give you three guesses.
FYI: the wired article on space elevators (referenced in the first wired article) has a link to the NASA IAC, which contains a pretty cool technical report (PDF) on the specifics of the space elevator proposal. They cover a lot of their basis in terms of the technical details and possible problems from cable construction and deployment vehicles to oscillations in the cable and environmental concerns.
I've got a great idea! How about using a warning message instead of DRM. Users of a particular product would be verbally or visually warned that violations of the copyright law is a federal offense and carries severe penalties. The consumer could then make an informed decision about how they choose to utilize the product. Sound familiar? What kills me is that all of the digital distribution companies are constantly worrying about DRM yet, to this day, I can go out and buy a C.D., copy it 50 times, and hand copies out copies to my friends and this is perfectly legal under the fair use provisions of copyright law.
Just curious... What did it cost to have the linux shop install linux for you? Did it cover everything like power management, sleep type features, wireless card? Was the shop local or mail order? Sounds intriguing.
When I first saw this story I was thinking ye-haa, but on closer inspection it looks like a pretty weak machine for the money in terms of RAM, weight, and hard drive size. My natural inclination is to switch from OSX back to Linux at the first opportunity for an "easy" transition, but this is somewhat tempered now. In a professional setting where price is less of a concern, you just can't beat OSX's combination of a "no worries" simplicity, unix capability, and the availability of open source products. I'm thinking I may never be able to switch back at this point.
This entire thread is way off topic... but since I've been pulled in, where is there a link to this simulation in mpeg or avi format?
"Yes, there have been problems in duplicating them. But that was 17 years ago. Researchon cold fusion did not stop during the last 17 years."
... That researchers in cold fusion continue to have major problems with reproducibility after 17 years, only strengthens the case against them.
And your point is?
"When Nagels is saying: "The experimental case is bulletproof" he is reffering to the established working experiments of the previous 5 yeas. And not to the old Pons/Fleischmann claims."
So the experiments that started the hoax are garbage but the currrent research that is based on this hoax is high quality stuff? I don't think so.
"Further more: exepriments with "hydrogen" on "low pressure" interacting with probes leading to transmutations (where a trasmutation of H + D is considered a "fusion") are meanwhile nearly 100 years old."
No even worthy of comment as there is way to much cargo cult junky pseudo science lingo in this one.
"There are PLENTY of historical experiments of meanwhile less well known physics researchers. The point is, the winners write history: Meissner, Röntgen, Fermi, Bohr, Pauli etc. won the race into the established science."
After rambling on about junk pseudo science you sight a couple of Nobel Leareattes to try to ligitimise you claims.
"So the our days thinking is: they are right and the others are wrong. I'm very convinced that both are right. That at both ends of the energy spectrum: high energy and very low energy, transmutations and fusions can happen."
Scientists usually think in terms of "the evidence shows" or better yet, "the evidence proves" and not "I'm very convinced". There is no one or the other (hot vs. cold) at play here! Everyone knows that high energy density fusion works and is legitimate, we just aren't able to do it in a way that produces more energy than we put in yet. Or have you not heard of the fusion globual known as the Sun?
"Like electrons building Cooper pairs in super conductors, H atoms difussed into a latice build "Cooper" pairs. As Cooper pairs no longer fall under the Pauli exclusion principle they can come close enough to fuse.
Don't really care about Pauli exclusion here. Have you ever heard of electtrostatic repulsion? It results from electrodynamics and is the basis for the existance of pretty much everything on earth. I'd worry about overcoming this VERY LARGE force before you get caught up in Pauli exclusion.
"If the "gass" of deuterium and hydrogen inside of the latice of the electrode is "dense" enough, collisons amoung them or with the fabrice (or with electrons?) lead to a wide distributed energy spectrum amoung the H/D atoms. If two of them with high enough energy collide, then its not even "cold" fusion but ordinary hot fusion."
Check you numbers again on this one! Heavey water at STP in thermal equilibrium (e.g. with a Boltzmann profile) won't produce "fusion" events at anything like the orders of magnitude that the cold fusion crackpots claim.
"The second explanaition is likely nonsense"
Yeah, thats what I just said. Glad you agree. Why did you write it then?.
"The most anyoing thing about "cold fusion" rejecters, especially if they are scientists is, instead of trying to find an explanaition HOW it could happen they simply reject it on the terms: does not fit into working theory."
Not true! Why don't you guys face up to the fact that "it" is not happening and then you won't have to push the burden of explaining somthing that isn't happening on to theorists. We're not trying to explain it because there is no conclusive evidence that it happens.
Somewhat related to homeopathy (in the sense that it involves alternative medicine) is the case of acupuncture: there was a great PBS show with Alan Alda, which featured an accupuncturist who was trained in China and set up a practice in the U.S. He was seeing tramendously good results in the U.S. (better than in China) and concluded that it was due to the placebo effect. He then engaged in a research study to test accupuncture against a placebo and got some results indicating that placebo was mostly at play.
Wow, the inclusion of cold fusion as number 13 in this list is a big disappointment! Cold fusion took the bang out of legitimate fusion efforts many years ago and it just won't die. Nagel's claim that "The experimental case is bulletproof, [y]ou can't make it go away." is a load of garbage. Even adamant proponents of cold fusion will agree that the experimental evidence is pretty shoddy at best is rife with irreproducibility. It is precisely this lack of reproducibility that makes the "effect" so hard to swallow. I would have preferred to see coronal mass ejections or the enhanced temperature of the Sun's corona listed as number 13.
Most of the succesfull facial recognition algorithms actually mark key locations on the face and employ measurments between these locations. I haven't looked at IR facial images that much, but they seem to change a lot in different temperatures and due to the physical state of the person. Heat comes from blood and blood is a fluid that is governed by the physiology of the body. This changes drastically as your body respondes to external and internal temperatures and its desire to dissipate heat or retain heat.
Not sure what you are replying to here or why your tone is so darn angry and arrogant, but I disagree. Take a 1-D vector and operate on it with the 1x1 matrix -1 and you get a 180 degree rotation. This is physically meaningfull and follows the tennets of a rotation. Afterall a vector rotates like a vector and you wouldn't counter the existenc of 1-D vectors would you?
This doesn't sound entirely copacetic to me. Why would one see an interfrence patttern with time uncertainty? It seems that the energy-time uncertainty principle would be at play here and one would see some sort of energy variation rather than spatial interference. Maybe I'm misunderstanding things.
I think IR light is too transient to use for recognition. Everytime you're face heats up you wouldn't get into the phone. UV might work better, but wouldn't work with sunglasses very well. I'm wondering why passwords have gone out of style? They only take about a second to enter in.
Yeah, the arbitrary kiligram is very antiquated... I've heard these guys get together and spend months discussing whether "the kilogram" should be washed and how. Washed to often and the weight will decrease, too much and it will pick up dust and increase in weight. Atoms are much more standard.
I've read the responses to this article and a large number of them express concerns over identity theft, cash sucking wands, no ID transactions, etc. Chill out people! The deal with credit cards is that the large credit companies try to promote their ease of use by reminding us that we can leave the house with only our credit card and paying for things won't be a problem. As a result they incure some liability for fraudulent transactions. I'll repeat that: THEY not you incure the liability. That means that if a fradulent charge is made then you download a form that says "I didn't make those charges", fax it to them and they erase the charges. Its as simple as that. People are so darn brain washed by other companies and people who promote the fear economy... fear identity theft: by our identity theft insurance, fear ffor your personal safety: buy a gun and bomb Iraq, fear that you are ugly: buy a bunch of crappy beauty prodcts... I know that Visa and Mastercard are big bad companies that are gaining power and wealth every day, but they sell a pretty damn usefull product. I love leaving the house with only my key chain with mini visa card atached and not worrying about anything else.
At $2500 per year for a pack a day habit a P.O. box at a private place (like the UPS store) and a preloaded Visa grift card would present a viable altenative. Wow thats something like $6.80 a pack and P.O. boxes only run about $10 a month. Its the same old story whether their talking about movies, songs or cigarettes... People have always pirated the stuff, but "the internet has maid it so easy to do" so the powers that be are freaking out with reactive litigation instead of responding with new law that incorporates new technology.
The popularity of PDA's has always surprised me as virtually no one actually uses them... Why spend $200 dollars on a toy that most people use to replace their $5 address book and a couple of note cards? The only people that I have ever seen really "use" their PDA's are doctors. They can put all of their patient records, reference and diagnosing books and language translators on there making them an indispensible tool. If the PDA industry was smart, they would design one just for doctors. I'm a physicist and I won't buy a PDA untill I can get one that will connect to the internet, support ssh networking and run Mathematica all ffor about $150.