I use google reader (though take your pick of rss readers) and set it up to receive feeds from New Scientist, Scientific American, Not Exactly Rocket Science (Ed Yong's excellent science writing blog),... (I also have some some things you won't have access to unless you are at a university: science, nature, and some more specialized bio stuff on my feed), these give access to a bunch of good articles even without paying anything. If you are on Google+, I also suggest following Ed Yong, he posts a lot of cool and interesting stuff. (Disclaimer: I am in the middle of a Ph.D. in physics, so while I have tried to pick out the more approachable stuff, I make no guarantees that some of it may go over your head)
I wonder if a future step will be to mix the GPUish vector op logic in with the logic for the regular CPU. It could further shorten interconnects (though at the cost of lengthening some others) and I would think it might have head dissipation advantages, if you are doing a graphics heavy task, the heat is spread over the whole chip instead of all being generated at the one GPU sector. I am sure there is an "oh god the complexity" here as far as actually doing that mixing, and it might make selectivly shutting down the GPU when not in use harder. Anyone who has actual chip design experience want to comment?
People haven't been talking about what the X-Ray dosage from this device is. Quick googling didn't turn up a number, but it has to be nontrivial. You don't even wear a lead shield over your genitals like you do in a medical x ray.
Methinks unless the number is pretty low I might just tell them to do the actual strip search if it is so important to security. That or stay away from those airports. I hope they don't put it in place in all of the English airports before I get a chance to visit.
I personally prefer to know that I have a copy of my own emails stored on a computer that I control. Sure google is good at what they do and all and they are not evil, but server foul ups happen. It is also nice for when my laptop is not connected to the internet.
Web apps also have some usability issues: no right click, usually less good keyboard shortcuts and/or clashes with browser. They loose screen real estate that the browser takes up. A tab within can't be easily alt tabbed to. There are not as many good options for say notification about new mail.
Gmail and the like are nice for when I am not on one of my computers, but there are still many advantages to having an actual local client, some can probably be mitigated by browser interface improvements, but some are going to be a lot harder.
So I for one am glad to see thunderbird is still being developed
Actually, a well written CSI episode on this could be rather valuable for public education. If they made the important ramifications clear: DNA evidence can still exonerate, DNA evidence is still useful but you should consider that it has been planted, especially if it conflicts with other evidence, and therefore take it with a grain of a salt, and there are probably other ones, IANAFS (I Am Not A Forensic Scientist).
I like your point here, and substantially agree. However in the interest of sparking a lively discussion on this topic (which I think is an interesting topic and worth discussing), I am going to play devil's advocate for a minute her.
In a way he is standing up for his freedoms/exercising them, at least in a weak easy way. He is voting with his feet (kind of like Amazon just did in North Carolina). Nominally if England (or any country) suffers severe brain drain among its highly educated (and hopefully highly productive, though he is posting on slashdot, so no guarantee's on that:) ) taxpayers, I mean citizens, I mean subjects, ah, call it whatever you want, that should sent a message to someone that their policies are disapproved of. It will probably go unheard, but it does at least hit send.
On the flip side, if all the people who cared enough about freedom to move to another country to secure it moved to a small list of countries that would, or at least should, give those countries a substantial population of people who care about freedom, and hopefully would be willing to protect it.
So while I agree with you that it is kind of the cop out answer to this problem, it is an answer of sorts, and is not completely invalid. I can see where he is coming from, the interests that fight against our freedoms are very entrenched and powerful, so it can feel futile. Don't let that stop you from trying though.
I realize you are joking, but in all seriousness, I don't think there would be any trouble finding volunteers if things were done properly.
I know if such an option existed when I was still young enough I would seriously consider it. I would want to make sure there were solid plans in place for supporting the colony until it was self sufficient and that it actually had a good chance of succeeding, but for the adventure of a lifetime and the chance to start humanity's expansion into space, I would be more than willing to commit myself to living on another planet for as long as I could manage. I don't think there are any shortage of other people who would have this opinion, certainly not in the numbers that would be able to be sent in the near future.
I don't know this system in great detail, but I suspect the challenge would be in saturating all of the receptors. If even a few receptors were left unblocked, HIV could still enter the cell at a reduced rate. Thus, likely it would help with the infection but not cure it. I would not suggest trying this though, because having a person where HIV replication was still possible but substantially slowed by the blockage of this receptor would provide an excellent environment for evolving a HIV strain that could bypass this natural immunity and possible cure. I guess if you can make sure the person doesn't pass on their HIV then that isn't too bad for society, but it is a danger worth considering.
I will second that. Especially if you are in a state where your vote doesn't matter (for example, me in Massachussets where Obama is going to win regardless of what I vote), you may as well vote for whichever third party whose policies you like best. Maybe the majors will eventually realize which third party ideas people seem to be voting for and adopt them, or who knows, maybe some other part could eventually get enough votes to challenge the current Duopoly. Now that would be change.
I have just joined a similar group, the Harvard Computing Society (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/). We try to provide more up to date web services to student organizations. We provide web hosting for student groups that is capable of running all the latest web goodies like Drupal, Mediawiki, sql, and the like. We also maintain mailing lists for student organizations, and advocate for better tech practices at Harvard. There are also lots of other cool projects in the pipeline that may or may not go anywhere but are fun to work on: IPtv, content aggregation from student org websites, internet phone, and other off the wall ideas. I am still new to the organization, but everything seems to work very well.
Taking this successful example, I would suggest taking advantage of the fact that you can be less bureaucratic than the school's general IT staff to provide more modern web tools to student organizations.
I haven't seen many posts by youngish people, so I thought I would throw my $0.02 in. I am 22, and learned how to program in 10th grade, after a few earlier false starts.
In my case, I tried basic in elementary school and visual basic in middle school. In both cases I never really connected, I don't know whether it was the simplistic languages or just my lack of maturity.
When I actually succeeded in getting started I got "Learn to Program using Python" by Alan Gould and worked through a bit of that, and then moved up to "C++ programming for scientists Engineers and Mathematicians" by D. M. Capper (I am science inclined, currently starting a Ph.D. in physics). I learned mostly from these books. If he has the desire to work through a book, it is a good way to learn, they are good teachers even if you are not.
The other thing that helped me was that I did this as an independent study for school which forced me to spend 10 hours a week on it for a semester. It was a little painful, but being forced to just keep slogging got me to the point where I knew enough to be able to write programs that were complex enough to be interesting to me. I don't know if there is a way to replicate that effect (I wouldn't suggest forcing him to do it unless he wants to, but maybe come to an agreement that if he does x hours a week for n months you get him his own computer or something else he wants).
I would also second the suggestions of games. If he is programming something he thinks is cool it will be a lot more fun for him.
As a college student a very obvious example comes to mind. When I am in a course that uses a common textbook, I pay around $80 for it (which is probably way to much, but that is a whole other issue). For the less common textbooks, I pay upwards of $150 for the book, even if it is less pages and not in color. The reason for this is the fixed cost of authorship, and the negative second deriviative of cost curve of printing as volume increases. For something like music where the unit cost is essentially zero, the price for popular items should be able to go down even further. Now obviously I am only speaking from an economic standpoint, but textbook publishers eventually got the hang of gouging us at least in line with this curve, so maybe music publishers should think about following it as well.
A few years back my grandfather was teaching a class on at least several occasions a student with a laptop would look up information he was lecturing about and then add current examples, other information and the like. It took my grandfather by surprise a bit, but he said it was actually quite beneficial overall.
Just like all technologies, it can be misused, but it can also be put to good use.
Re:really a superconductor?
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Carbon nanotubes are not superconductors. In an ideal (the kind they are trying to build), they have a resistance that is independent of length, however it is not zero like in actual superconductors. The resistance of an individual nanotube is about 20 kOhms, but because they are so small an array of a large number of them in parallel can have a small resistance, and still not be very large. Because the restance does not increase for longer tubes, they are similar to a superconductor, and would be useful for transmitting power over long distances. However, the physics behind the conduction is different.
Slashdot Mirror
I use google reader (though take your pick of rss readers) and set it up to receive feeds from New Scientist, Scientific American, Not Exactly Rocket Science (Ed Yong's excellent science writing blog), ... (I also have some some things you won't have access to unless you are at a university: science, nature, and some more specialized bio stuff on my feed), these give access to a bunch of good articles even without paying anything. If you are on Google+, I also suggest following Ed Yong, he posts a lot of cool and interesting stuff.
(Disclaimer: I am in the middle of a Ph.D. in physics, so while I have tried to pick out the more approachable stuff, I make no guarantees that some of it may go over your head)
I wonder if a future step will be to mix the GPUish vector op logic in with the logic for the regular CPU. It could further shorten interconnects (though at the cost of lengthening some others) and I would think it might have head dissipation advantages, if you are doing a graphics heavy task, the heat is spread over the whole chip instead of all being generated at the one GPU sector. I am sure there is an "oh god the complexity" here as far as actually doing that mixing, and it might make selectivly shutting down the GPU when not in use harder. Anyone who has actual chip design experience want to comment?
People haven't been talking about what the X-Ray dosage from this device is. Quick googling didn't turn up a number, but it has to be nontrivial. You don't even wear a lead shield over your genitals like you do in a medical x ray.
Methinks unless the number is pretty low I might just tell them to do the actual strip search if it is so important to security. That or stay away from those airports. I hope they don't put it in place in all of the English airports before I get a chance to visit.
I personally prefer to know that I have a copy of my own emails stored on a computer that I control. Sure google is good at what they do and all and they are not evil, but server foul ups happen. It is also nice for when my laptop is not connected to the internet.
Web apps also have some usability issues: no right click, usually less good keyboard shortcuts and/or clashes with browser. They loose screen real estate that the browser takes up. A tab within can't be easily alt tabbed to. There are not as many good options for say notification about new mail.
Gmail and the like are nice for when I am not on one of my computers, but there are still many advantages to having an actual local client, some can probably be mitigated by browser interface improvements, but some are going to be a lot harder.
So I for one am glad to see thunderbird is still being developed
Actually, a well written CSI episode on this could be rather valuable for public education. If they made the important ramifications clear: DNA evidence can still exonerate, DNA evidence is still useful but you should consider that it has been planted, especially if it conflicts with other evidence, and therefore take it with a grain of a salt, and there are probably other ones, IANAFS (I Am Not A Forensic Scientist).
I like your point here, and substantially agree. However in the interest of sparking a lively discussion on this topic (which I think is an interesting topic and worth discussing), I am going to play devil's advocate for a minute her.
In a way he is standing up for his freedoms/exercising them, at least in a weak easy way. He is voting with his feet (kind of like Amazon just did in North Carolina). Nominally if England (or any country) suffers severe brain drain among its highly educated (and hopefully highly productive, though he is posting on slashdot, so no guarantee's on that :) ) taxpayers, I mean citizens, I mean subjects, ah, call it whatever you want, that should sent a message to someone that their policies are disapproved of. It will probably go unheard, but it does at least hit send.
On the flip side, if all the people who cared enough about freedom to move to another country to secure it moved to a small list of countries that would, or at least should, give those countries a substantial population of people who care about freedom, and hopefully would be willing to protect it.
So while I agree with you that it is kind of the cop out answer to this problem, it is an answer of sorts, and is not completely invalid. I can see where he is coming from, the interests that fight against our freedoms are very entrenched and powerful, so it can feel futile. Don't let that stop you from trying though.
I realize you are joking, but in all seriousness, I don't think there would be any trouble finding volunteers if things were done properly.
I know if such an option existed when I was still young enough I would seriously consider it. I would want to make sure there were solid plans in place for supporting the colony until it was self sufficient and that it actually had a good chance of succeeding, but for the adventure of a lifetime and the chance to start humanity's expansion into space, I would be more than willing to commit myself to living on another planet for as long as I could manage. I don't think there are any shortage of other people who would have this opinion, certainly not in the numbers that would be able to be sent in the near future.
I don't know this system in great detail, but I suspect the challenge would be in saturating all of the receptors. If even a few receptors were left unblocked, HIV could still enter the cell at a reduced rate. Thus, likely it would help with the infection but not cure it. I would not suggest trying this though, because having a person where HIV replication was still possible but substantially slowed by the blockage of this receptor would provide an excellent environment for evolving a HIV strain that could bypass this natural immunity and possible cure. I guess if you can make sure the person doesn't pass on their HIV then that isn't too bad for society, but it is a danger worth considering.
I will second that. Especially if you are in a state where your vote doesn't matter (for example, me in Massachussets where Obama is going to win regardless of what I vote), you may as well vote for whichever third party whose policies you like best. Maybe the majors will eventually realize which third party ideas people seem to be voting for and adopt them, or who knows, maybe some other part could eventually get enough votes to challenge the current Duopoly. Now that would be change.
I have just joined a similar group, the Harvard Computing Society (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/). We try to provide more up to date web services to student organizations. We provide web hosting for student groups that is capable of running all the latest web goodies like Drupal, Mediawiki, sql, and the like. We also maintain mailing lists for student organizations, and advocate for better tech practices at Harvard. There are also lots of other cool projects in the pipeline that may or may not go anywhere but are fun to work on: IPtv, content aggregation from student org websites, internet phone, and other off the wall ideas. I am still new to the organization, but everything seems to work very well.
Taking this successful example, I would suggest taking advantage of the fact that you can be less bureaucratic than the school's general IT staff to provide more modern web tools to student organizations.
I haven't seen many posts by youngish people, so I thought I would throw my $0.02 in. I am 22, and learned how to program in 10th grade, after a few earlier false starts.
In my case, I tried basic in elementary school and visual basic in middle school. In both cases I never really connected, I don't know whether it was the simplistic languages or just my lack of maturity.
When I actually succeeded in getting started I got "Learn to Program using Python" by Alan Gould and worked through a bit of that, and then moved up to "C++ programming for scientists Engineers and Mathematicians" by D. M. Capper (I am science inclined, currently starting a Ph.D. in physics). I learned mostly from these books. If he has the desire to work through a book, it is a good way to learn, they are good teachers even if you are not.
The other thing that helped me was that I did this as an independent study for school which forced me to spend 10 hours a week on it for a semester. It was a little painful, but being forced to just keep slogging got me to the point where I knew enough to be able to write programs that were complex enough to be interesting to me. I don't know if there is a way to replicate that effect (I wouldn't suggest forcing him to do it unless he wants to, but maybe come to an agreement that if he does x hours a week for n months you get him his own computer or something else he wants).
I would also second the suggestions of games. If he is programming something he thinks is cool it will be a lot more fun for him.
As a college student a very obvious example comes to mind. When I am in a course that uses a common textbook, I pay around $80 for it (which is probably way to much, but that is a whole other issue). For the less common textbooks, I pay upwards of $150 for the book, even if it is less pages and not in color. The reason for this is the fixed cost of authorship, and the negative second deriviative of cost curve of printing as volume increases. For something like music where the unit cost is essentially zero, the price for popular items should be able to go down even further. Now obviously I am only speaking from an economic standpoint, but textbook publishers eventually got the hang of gouging us at least in line with this curve, so maybe music publishers should think about following it as well.
A few years back my grandfather was teaching a class on at least several occasions a student with a laptop would look up information he was lecturing about and then add current examples, other information and the like. It took my grandfather by surprise a bit, but he said it was actually quite beneficial overall. Just like all technologies, it can be misused, but it can also be put to good use.
Carbon nanotubes are not superconductors. In an ideal (the kind they are trying to build), they have a resistance that is independent of length, however it is not zero like in actual superconductors. The resistance of an individual nanotube is about 20 kOhms, but because they are so small an array of a large number of them in parallel can have a small resistance, and still not be very large. Because the restance does not increase for longer tubes, they are similar to a superconductor, and would be useful for transmitting power over long distances. However, the physics behind the conduction is different.