Lots of people can write articles. Drawing pictures is harder (particularly technical drawings), and getting copyright-cleared photographs of particular people is harder still.
OK, there is some aspect of "moderation" that already exist. The regular contributors to the site, many of whom are rather clueful people and with a variety of political axes to grind, spend a fair bit of time reading other people's edits, and then taking action from a) doing nothing and leaving the new version as is, b) requesting references for the new facts cited, c) modifying the article further, or sometimes d) reverting the edit entirely.
What the Wikipedia doesn't have is an approval process, where credentialled people can approve a version of the article. There have been some proposals to add such a feature, but nobody's got around to coding one yet. If anybody knows PHP, a little SQL, and is prepared to help add such a thing I'm sure most of the developers and contributors would be delighted. I certainly would.
As for the actual quality of the Wikipedia, try a random article in an area you're reasonably knowledgable in, and see. And while you're there, fix anything that's wrong:)
Radio astronomers use the hydrogen band for observations. Hence, if you're trying to attract attention (the initial assumption of SETI researchers), it was thought that aliens would broadcast on the hydrogen band so that anybody doing radio astronomy could spot the beacon as part of their normal observations.
There were also other technical reasons - that part of the spectrum was believed to be one of the most efficient for transmitting through interstellar space.
Aside from the fact that that was what their radiotelescopes were designed to detect (we have a hammer, therefore the problem is a nail)...
As I understand it, white men vote Republican by a considerable margin (2-1 or so), whilst women and ethnic minorities vote Democrat, in the case of (most) minorities by huge margins. Last I checked, white men were by far the biggest supporters of space exploration. Crude, I know, but I think illustrative. Looking at it another way, do you really think most Democrat supporters want money thrown at the space program rather than prescription drugs, welfare, the environment, et cetera?
IANAP, but from the popular press about these babies they won't work for two reasons:
They would have to use a proton-proton fusion reaction, which is really, really hard to do (much, much harder than the deuterium-tritium fusion that we are trying to make work for fusion power at the moment).
Even if you could do the fusion, the drag of the scoop would be greater than the thrust available from the fuel you collect.
The second property was the spark of the idea for magnetic sails.
I'm glad you did good things during your army service. Now explain to me how, say, a missile defence system (which will end up costing more than the Mars mission) would have helped in *anything* the army, navy, or air force need to do?
Hard drives have been squeezing more data in a smaller space at lower cost with lower seek times and higher transfer speeds for the past 40 (actually about 50) years.
CSIRAC (1st generation computer that went online in 1949) had a storage drum that initially held about 1KB, so approximately 2^10 bytes. You can now buy 200GB hard drives off the shelf - roughly 2^37 bytes. So a contemporary hard drive is now 2^27 times bigger than that original device, and is probably about 1/100th the size and mass (so you could, if you were really trying to prove the point, throw in another factor of 2^5). Hardly "slightly bigger and slightly better". We haven't even discussed transfer rates...
Additionally, the particulate emissions are nasty (do all sorts of lung damage, apparently).
Apparently this is a much bigger problem in sunnier climes (California, Australia) than it is in Europe, hence California is currently working on a new set of emission restrictions specifically to tackle these pollutants from diesels. It's apparently going to be very difficult for diesels (trucks, not only cars) to meet them.
Whilst the technology changes, using propaganda to sap the enemy's will to fight is as old as warfare itself.
A famous (though largely unsuccessful, apparently) attempt at such was Tokyo Rose, one of many female broadcasters on radio Tokyo during World War II who mixed American music with propaganda.
The reason for DVD region codes was so that the studios could change different prices for DVDs in different countries without parallel imports undercutting prices, and delay cinema releases without the risk that people would import the DVD beforehand. That, and sheer bloody-mindedness.
You probably believe Palladium is designed to protect your privacy and security, too...
Why do we need regulations to ban what you propose? As long as you advertise yourself as "unqualified idiot who knows nothing about medicine besides watching the occasional TV documentary" and don't claim to be a qualified doctor, I can't see the harm - because noone in their right mind would take up the offer.
Similarly, as long as you're honest about your lack of formal qualifications as a computer hardware technician, if people want to pay you to "fix their computer" good luck to them. As lives aren't at stake, regulation is even less justified in this case.
Connecting them together isn't really much of a problem, you just position the gates so they connect.
Hmmm. So why don't they apply this brilliant technique of "just positioning the gates" to conventional semiconductors? Perhaps because when you're trying to arrange a few million of them it doesn't quite work that way?
The gates ran at the speed of light, and didn't generate heat
Yes, the signals may have travelled at the speed of light (because, well, they are light) but remember that that's slower than c (because we're not talking about a vacuum here). However, the speed of a gate is determined by how long the output takes to stabilise. That's not automatically going to be faster in an optical gate (though it may well be). As for "not generating heat" some proportion of the light energy going in is going to be converted into heat, just like in a conventional chip. The more gates in the system, the bigger the losses, and the more densely they are packed, the hotter the system will get. It might be less of a problem than with current technology. It's just as likely to be worse.
As to your suggested hardware-software hybrid, I just have to ask what the hell kind of economic sense does it make to pay for a custom processor for every two-bit program on your machine?
although the paranoid in me wonders if the technology didn't get developed but is being kept from us.
Keep your tinfoil hat on, the aliens are coming...
You not only need logic gates, you need to connect them together. You need to be able to make them really small, and they need to be really fast, and you need to do it all really cheap, to beat conventional semiconductor logic. As we're still (according to the people who build this stuff) able to squeeze more performance out of conventional semiconductors for another decade or so, there's no real incentive to throw megabucks at the engineering required to do the above.
If a new system has bugs, people can (and sometimes do) die. This tends to be a pretty powerful incentive to keep an old, working system going.
We had this in Victoria (Australia) when ambulance dispatch was contracted out to Intergraph (who you may remember as a graphics card manufacturer). The inevitable teething problems occurred, a few people died, the government ended up in very hot water.
Well, that's a bit harsh, but I think you may be more cynical about the motives for exempting politicians from this than is actually justified.
As I understand it, different types of speech are protected to greater or lesser extents by the first amendment. Political speech is the most protected, and the courts are (rightly) loath to allow restrictions on it. Hence, the parts of such a bill that restrict politicians from making unsolicited calls could well, as I understand US law, be found unconstitional.
Whereas spam, from all reports, isn't all that profitable. In fact, it's only profitable because of the insanely low cost of doing business.
If the cost could be driven up just a bit by legal and technical means, that would make it unprofitable and therefore it would disappear.
Finally, whilst pr0n can be served up from anywhere it's legal, there are a lot of products that require a US presence, and thus present a target for civil and criminal law.
I wonder whether they took into account that with smaller stars, the habitable zone is so close to the star that any planet in it would be tidally locked, leading to the atmosphere etc. freezing out on the side that never sees its sun.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a story about the idea many years ago. Basically it took the form of a company executive testifying before a future congressional committee about practices in the food manufacturing industry.
In the story, it is explained that all food is now grown in tanks, but the people of this future have now almost forgotten that people used to eat the flesh of once-living animals - indeed, the thought of such apparently disturbs the chairman of the committee such that it leaves him distinctly queasy. The executive testifies at some length about what a "carnivore" is.
However, the food that *is* served is still actually synthesised meat. A new such product, Ambrosia Plus, has recently been released by a competitor, and has caused the testifying executive's company to lose significant amounts of market share. Normally, they are quickly able to duplicate such a new product, but they were unable for some time to determine what type of meat it is...
The story ends with the executive saying "I have a second archaic term which I need to introduce to you all. I'll spell it out: C-A-N-N..."
I wouldn't be surprised if there are even earlier examples of the idea.
With a pair of 8db omnidirection antennas and a 30 milliwat card you can quite easily get a couple of kilometres range with 802.11b. With two high-gain dish antennas very long ranges can be achieved. If the right permits can be issued (and if you're trying to do really long range it tends to indicate that you're not likely to be interfering with too much else) you could whack a nice amplifier on the omni setup and improve your range further.
It looks like 802.11g's ranges at full speed will be maybe 1/3 that of 802.11b. That tends to suggest that maybe the omni route will not be nearly as productive, but it should still be quite feasible to have reasonably long-distance high speed links using yagis or dishes.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people can write articles. Drawing pictures is harder (particularly technical drawings), and getting copyright-cleared photographs of particular people is harder still.
What the Wikipedia doesn't have is an approval process, where credentialled people can approve a version of the article. There have been some proposals to add such a feature, but nobody's got around to coding one yet. If anybody knows PHP, a little SQL, and is prepared to help add such a thing I'm sure most of the developers and contributors would be delighted. I certainly would.
As for the actual quality of the Wikipedia, try a random article in an area you're reasonably knowledgable in, and see. And while you're there, fix anything that's wrong :)
There were also other technical reasons - that part of the spectrum was believed to be one of the most efficient for transmitting through interstellar space.
Aside from the fact that that was what their radiotelescopes were designed to detect (we have a hammer, therefore the problem is a nail)...
As I understand it, white men vote Republican by a considerable margin (2-1 or so), whilst women and ethnic minorities vote Democrat, in the case of (most) minorities by huge margins. Last I checked, white men were by far the biggest supporters of space exploration. Crude, I know, but I think illustrative. Looking at it another way, do you really think most Democrat supporters want money thrown at the space program rather than prescription drugs, welfare, the environment, et cetera?
The second property was the spark of the idea for magnetic sails.
I'm glad you did good things during your army service. Now explain to me how, say, a missile defence system (which will end up costing more than the Mars mission) would have helped in *anything* the army, navy, or air force need to do?
You'll want to be damn careful you don't touch the ignition key ;)
CSIRAC (1st generation computer that went online in 1949) had a storage drum that initially held about 1KB, so approximately 2^10 bytes. You can now buy 200GB hard drives off the shelf - roughly 2^37 bytes. So a contemporary hard drive is now 2^27 times bigger than that original device, and is probably about 1/100th the size and mass (so you could, if you were really trying to prove the point, throw in another factor of 2^5). Hardly "slightly bigger and slightly better". We haven't even discussed transfer rates...
I wonder what the gain is on a Deep Space Network antenna...
If you were European, you'd probably be taking public transport to work - so no problem :)
Apparently this is a much bigger problem in sunnier climes (California, Australia) than it is in Europe, hence California is currently working on a new set of emission restrictions specifically to tackle these pollutants from diesels. It's apparently going to be very difficult for diesels (trucks, not only cars) to meet them.
I gather that GIMP 2.0 will fix that particular problem at some stage, when 2.0 will be released is another question...
Whilst the technology changes, using propaganda to sap the enemy's will to fight is as old as warfare itself. A famous (though largely unsuccessful, apparently) attempt at such was Tokyo Rose, one of many female broadcasters on radio Tokyo during World War II who mixed American music with propaganda.
You probably believe Palladium is designed to protect your privacy and security, too...
Similarly, as long as you're honest about your lack of formal qualifications as a computer hardware technician, if people want to pay you to "fix their computer" good luck to them. As lives aren't at stake, regulation is even less justified in this case.
Hmmm. So why don't they apply this brilliant technique of "just positioning the gates" to conventional semiconductors? Perhaps because when you're trying to arrange a few million of them it doesn't quite work that way?
Yes, the signals may have travelled at the speed of light (because, well, they are light) but remember that that's slower than c (because we're not talking about a vacuum here). However, the speed of a gate is determined by how long the output takes to stabilise. That's not automatically going to be faster in an optical gate (though it may well be). As for "not generating heat" some proportion of the light energy going in is going to be converted into heat, just like in a conventional chip. The more gates in the system, the bigger the losses, and the more densely they are packed, the hotter the system will get. It might be less of a problem than with current technology. It's just as likely to be worse.
As to your suggested hardware-software hybrid, I just have to ask what the hell kind of economic sense does it make to pay for a custom processor for every two-bit program on your machine?
Keep your tinfoil hat on, the aliens are coming ...
Must be good crack for the moderators today :/
You not only need logic gates, you need to connect them together. You need to be able to make them really small, and they need to be really fast, and you need to do it all really cheap, to beat conventional semiconductor logic. As we're still (according to the people who build this stuff) able to squeeze more performance out of conventional semiconductors for another decade or so, there's no real incentive to throw megabucks at the engineering required to do the above.
We had this in Victoria (Australia) when ambulance dispatch was contracted out to Intergraph (who you may remember as a graphics card manufacturer). The inevitable teething problems occurred, a few people died, the government ended up in very hot water.
As I understand it, different types of speech are protected to greater or lesser extents by the first amendment. Political speech is the most protected, and the courts are (rightly) loath to allow restrictions on it. Hence, the parts of such a bill that restrict politicians from making unsolicited calls could well, as I understand US law, be found unconstitional.
Nonprofits are a different matter, of course.
IANAL. IANA American, either :)
If the cost could be driven up just a bit by legal and technical means, that would make it unprofitable and therefore it would disappear.
Finally, whilst pr0n can be served up from anywhere it's legal, there are a lot of products that require a US presence, and thus present a target for civil and criminal law.
I wonder whether they took into account that with smaller stars, the habitable zone is so close to the star that any planet in it would be tidally locked, leading to the atmosphere etc. freezing out on the side that never sees its sun.
However, the food that *is* served is still actually synthesised meat. A new such product, Ambrosia Plus, has recently been released by a competitor, and has caused the testifying executive's company to lose significant amounts of market share. Normally, they are quickly able to duplicate such a new product, but they were unable for some time to determine what type of meat it is...
The story ends with the executive saying "I have a second archaic term which I need to introduce to you all. I'll spell it out: C-A-N-N..."
I wouldn't be surprised if there are even earlier examples of the idea.
It looks like 802.11g's ranges at full speed will be maybe 1/3 that of 802.11b. That tends to suggest that maybe the omni route will not be nearly as productive, but it should still be quite feasible to have reasonably long-distance high speed links using yagis or dishes.
At current prices, it'll be quite a while before Joe Sixpack will choose it over a standard TV.
By the way, let's see, how are we doing WRT the predictions for 2015? Let's see:
Not a great strike rate, I have to say