Consult the candidates websites. Consult wikipedia. Consult google. Consult friends and family who might be more informed. It's not difficult to find out where candidates stand on the issues of the day, which companies they've (mis-)managed, and their general message and tone. You can probably get a general idea of the candidates in 5 or 10 minutes per candidate, less for those that you reject quickly.
My understanding of the basic math suggests that a photon-creating drive will tend to be inefficient. The amount of light energy necessary to get a significant amount of momentum is simply enormous, which is why you don't feel flashlights, even very bright ones, pushing backwards perceptably when you turn them on.
The article makes this guys thing sound like some kind of perpetual motion machine limited only by his ability to build a perfecct cavity. I haven't read his paper yet, but I'm skeptical of his ability to get more momentum out of a photon that the photon itself contains, unless he has some other reaction mass. If his photons are transfering momentum to the cavity on each continually, then the photons should be losing momentum as they do so (in the form of dopler shift?), and therefore the total momentum gained should be no greater than merely shining a flashlight backwards.
Or at least, that's my understanding. I Am Not A Physicist.
The Oblivion female character is done as a nude model with a seperate bra added when not wearing any other top. This was done because different outfits cover different areas of skin - for instance, the chainmail top has a narrow slit between the breasts which revails a small amount of skin which is covered by the middle of the bra when topless. Plus, doing it that way makes it easier for mods to add things like backless dresses etc that don't go well with the bra.
The only nude mod I've seen so far simply removes the bra. The underlieing stuff was never really intended as a nude model and looks like a boob-job with tan lines and very strange lighting. Probably a nude mod with original artwork will come soon to fix those issues. I know at least one modder who did nude mods for Morrowind is active in the Oblivion mod community (Maboroshi Daikon) so the talent is definitely available.
After the hot coffee fiasco, Bethesda really should have had the sense to remove nipples and black out a little of the area around it, just so that they could say that none of the naughty bits in the nude mods were done by Bethesda.
Am I the only one who thinks that phrases like "gained the power of regeneration" are more appropriate for comic books or RPGs than professors of immunology announcing research results? : )
That is a fair request. Unfortunately I don't have a source handy, as I read this in a paper bound book (I'll take a wild guess and say Profit Before People by Noam Chomsky.) , which apart from being harder to search through, I don't have with me at this time. But I invite you to look at the GDP of some third world countries of comparible size to the United States, and explain to me wether compared to the United states, the disparity in child outcomes more corelated to the relative IQ's of americans vs third worlders or corelates to the average wealth of parents in those same countries 1 generation ago.
Searching slighty further online found some sources that agree with your statement, even the "during childhood" portions of your statement. ( http://www.economica.ca/ew21p1.htm ). However, I also find sources (like the wikipedia article on IQ) that say things like: "In a sample of US siblings, Rowe et al (1997) report that the inequality in education and income was predominantly due to genes, with shared environmental factors playing a subordinate role." which suggest that inherritable IQ accounts for much of that. I haven't read the Chomsky book, but believe he usually has good sources (though I hate his attitude and style).
Comparing the US to 3rd world countries in this way is just silly. For starters, they tend to get paid in currencies that have depressed values due to political instability. Comparing to China specifically, their currency has a depressed value because their government spends enormous ammounts of money and effort manipulating their currency to keep the citizenry poor in terms of international purchasing ability. There are a host of other reasons why such comparisons should be kept to a limited region, but I have to leave now.
the best predictor of those things is how rich your parents were during your childhood.
To quote from the Ashkenazi study I referenced, "... IQ (as measured by IQ tests) is the best predictor we have of success in academic subjects and most jobs". The study cites a bunch of sources on IQ-related issues, but I don't see one associated with that particular assertion. If you have a citable source for your assertion, please cite it.
In a quick googling on "correlation income parents", the top item is a review of a book (What Money Can't Buy) which finds that "higher earned income is more correlated with good child outcomes than is unearned income, such as child support, alimony, or an inheritance" and that "[Parental] income received after specified child outcomes, such as [...], is as associated with the outcome as is parental income received prior to the outcome". That seems to suggest that the success of children is more dependant upon factors that correlate with parent wealth rather than parental wealth itself, and to contradict the "during your childhood" portion of your statement.
This simply begs the question of what use IQ tests are if they don't predict anything in the real world. I have not read the article yet, but the last study I read that dealt with IQ (the controversial study on Ashkenazi genetic diseases and intelligence) cited some sources saying that IQ testing is the best known predictor for salary, family stability, and a whole bunch of other things.
The article seems to pretend that the Israeli design teams low power Pentium M doesn't exist. It says the last major design change was the Pentium 4 (which was prior to the Pentium M), and doesn't mention that current and (already announced) future Pentium M based designs match the description given.
I doubt that slashdotters (or policicians) making decisions based upon idealogy and buzz will produce better reactor designs than people who have incentive and resources to make smart decisions.
That said, I'd be happy to see more research into pebble bed reactors, and into energy amplifiers / ADS (subcritical fission reactor plus a particle accelerator), and other promising nuclear reactor designs that come along. I just wouldn't assume that just because pebble bed reactors have some clever safety and efficiency benefits means that they are automatically better for commerical power generation than conventional reactor designs today.
The article (unlike the submitter) primarily talks about a 940 pin socket M2. No extra pins, just not compatible with AMDs existing socket 939 or socket 940.
They integrated the memory controller on to the CPU. Now, every time they switch memory technology (DDR -> DDR2 in this case), they have to switch CPU sockets also.
Many (most? all?) DRM advocates also advocate criminal penalties for violating DRM (DMCA, etc).
If he's a believer in the DMCA and similar laws, he should explain whether or not he believes that he should be jailed for his actions, and why. If he's not a DMCA advocate, he should explain how DRM could work without the force of law backing it.
But I can't be bothered to read through a years worth of blog to find out if he discusses that issue.
The article submitter should be flayed alive. The/. editor should be drubbed soundly.
Use the GPL if you're going to get upset if someone uses your code commercially without paying you. GPL won't quite prohibit that kind of thing, but it will make most business models involving it impractical.
Use the GPL if you have strong philosophical objections to the basic idea of intellectual property. If, eventually, a sufficiently large portion of code is GPLed, then it might become prohibitively difficult for anyone to make non-GPLed code without re-inventing the wheel. Dream on.
Use the BSD license if you just want your code to be useful to as many people as possible.
Oh yeah, that does put a crimp into the idea of this sort of thing as a drop in replacement in a projector. I guess they'd have to be custom designed specifically to use such a bulb. I guess that pushes it farther into the future.
So, what does this mean for the DIY projectors that/. linked (here)to a few days ago? Those projectors were supposed to be fairly loud, due to the cooling required for the 400 watt light bulb. If this thing is 10 times the efficiency of a normal light bulb, it could probably get by without the primary cooling system, making the projector much quieter. On the other hand, it sounds like it's a bit dimmer than the 350 to 400 watt bulbs, so maybe it's not practical yet, though it likely will be soon. The color spectrum produced by these things might not be as good as that of the incandescent bulb it would be replacing, and the secondary fan used to cool the LCD screen would probably still be needed. These are a little more expensive, but imagine many would consider the extra $50 or so to be a good bargain for a quiet projector.
So... am I on crack or will projectors soon be much quieter?
Yes, it transmutes to U-233 (an easily fissionable isotope of uranium) when it does a radiative capture of a neutron (though the transmutation has an intermediate stage with a halflife of about a month before it's useful). That's why it's a "fertile material" usable in breeder reactors. That still doesn't explain why it's significantly more useful than U-238 (which we already have around and are mining lots of), which can be converted to plutonium (Pu-239, which is easily fissionable) via a very similiar radiative capture of a neutron (with an intermediate stage with a halflife of 2.3 days). I suppose thorium might have a better radiative capture cross-section, or accept neutrons of better energy levels or be so common that we wouldn't have to bother with reprocessing costs or something, but if so I haven't heard about it.
By the time we develop efficient breeder reactors, we should already have accumulated a large supply of depleted uranium or at least an active uranium mining industry, so it ought to be thousands of years (at power usage levels remotely comparable to current ones) before we run out of uranium. If we develop efficient breeder reactors before the fissionable uranium runs out that is. Otherwise, thorium would not be of much use. So, by my understanding, thorium is largely irrelevant to the nuclear power situation for the next millenia unless it is somehow more suitable for breeding than U-238 is.
34 thousand tons of natural uranium per year... times 0.00712 to get the amount of fissionable specie (since we're ignoring breeder reactors) is... 242 fissionable tons per year... times 8.35 * 10^13 J per kg of fissionable specie (assuming 100% efficiency on the heat engines, though I think real-world efficiency is closer to 30%, and assuming 100% reaction, though I think they usually do about 70% reaction) is... 2.0 * 10^19 J / year Isn't our world power consumption supposed to be something like 5*10^19 J/year, about 2.5 times that much? Admittedly I could easily have made a mistake on any of those numbers...
Thorium is used as a "fertile material", not a "fissionable material", so it is not of much use until/unless we have efficient breeder reactors. And once we have efficient breeder reactors, the power output from plain old uranium should go up by a factor of 140 or so anyway (the ratio of naturally occuring U-238 to U-235). Plus, that improvement will be somewhat retroactive since the depleted uranium currently produced as a waste product can be used in the same manner as thorium, if we haven't already shot all of it in Iraq or wherever (the military makes armor piercing bullets out of it).
Slashdot Mirror
Consult the candidates websites. Consult wikipedia. Consult google. Consult friends and family who might be more informed. It's not difficult to find out where candidates stand on the issues of the day, which companies they've (mis-)managed, and their general message and tone. You can probably get a general idea of the candidates in 5 or 10 minutes per candidate, less for those that you reject quickly.
My understanding of the basic math suggests that a photon-creating drive will tend to be inefficient. The amount of light energy necessary to get a significant amount of momentum is simply enormous, which is why you don't feel flashlights, even very bright ones, pushing backwards perceptably when you turn them on.
The article makes this guys thing sound like some kind of perpetual motion machine limited only by his ability to build a perfecct cavity. I haven't read his paper yet, but I'm skeptical of his ability to get more momentum out of a photon that the photon itself contains, unless he has some other reaction mass. If his photons are transfering momentum to the cavity on each continually, then the photons should be losing momentum as they do so (in the form of dopler shift?), and therefore the total momentum gained should be no greater than merely shining a flashlight backwards.
Or at least, that's my understanding. I Am Not A Physicist.
The Oblivion female character is done as a nude model with a seperate bra added when not wearing any other top. This was done because different outfits cover different areas of skin - for instance, the chainmail top has a narrow slit between the breasts which revails a small amount of skin which is covered by the middle of the bra when topless. Plus, doing it that way makes it easier for mods to add things like backless dresses etc that don't go well with the bra.
The only nude mod I've seen so far simply removes the bra. The underlieing stuff was never really intended as a nude model and looks like a boob-job with tan lines and very strange lighting. Probably a nude mod with original artwork will come soon to fix those issues. I know at least one modder who did nude mods for Morrowind is active in the Oblivion mod community (Maboroshi Daikon) so the talent is definitely available.
After the hot coffee fiasco, Bethesda really should have had the sense to remove nipples and black out a little of the area around it, just so that they could say that none of the naughty bits in the nude mods were done by Bethesda.
Apparently the environmental movement agrees with you.
Am I the only one who thinks that phrases like "gained the power of regeneration" are more appropriate for comic books or RPGs than professors of immunology announcing research results? : )
That is a fair request. Unfortunately I don't have a source handy, as I read this in a paper bound book (I'll take a wild guess and say Profit Before People by Noam Chomsky.) , which apart from being harder to search through, I don't have with me at this time. But I invite you to look at the GDP of some third world countries of comparible size to the United States, and explain to me wether compared to the United states, the disparity in child outcomes more corelated to the relative IQ's of americans vs third worlders or corelates to the average wealth of parents in those same countries 1 generation ago.
Searching slighty further online found some sources that agree with your statement, even the "during childhood" portions of your statement. ( http://www.economica.ca/ew21p1.htm ). However, I also find sources (like the wikipedia article on IQ) that say things like: "In a sample of US siblings, Rowe et al (1997) report that the inequality in education and income was predominantly due to genes, with shared environmental factors playing a subordinate role." which suggest that inherritable IQ accounts for much of that. I haven't read the Chomsky book, but believe he usually has good sources (though I hate his attitude and style).
Comparing the US to 3rd world countries in this way is just silly. For starters, they tend to get paid in currencies that have depressed values due to political instability. Comparing to China specifically, their currency has a depressed value because their government spends enormous ammounts of money and effort manipulating their currency to keep the citizenry poor in terms of international purchasing ability. There are a host of other reasons why such comparisons should be kept to a limited region, but I have to leave now.
the best predictor of those things is how rich your parents were during your childhood.
To quote from the Ashkenazi study I referenced, "... IQ (as measured by IQ tests) is the best predictor we have of success in academic subjects and most jobs". The study cites a bunch of sources on IQ-related issues, but I don't see one associated with that particular assertion. If you have a citable source for your assertion, please cite it.
In a quick googling on "correlation income parents", the top item is a review of a book (What Money Can't Buy) which finds that "higher earned income is more correlated with good child outcomes than is unearned income, such as child support, alimony, or an inheritance" and that "[Parental] income received after specified child outcomes, such as [...], is as associated with the outcome as is parental income received prior to the outcome". That seems to suggest that the success of children is more dependant upon factors that correlate with parent wealth rather than parental wealth itself, and to contradict the "during your childhood" portion of your statement.
This simply begs the question of what use IQ tests are if they don't predict anything in the real world.
I have not read the article yet, but the last study I read that dealt with IQ (the controversial study on Ashkenazi genetic diseases and intelligence) cited some sources saying that IQ testing is the best known predictor for salary, family stability, and a whole bunch of other things.
The article seems to pretend that the Israeli design teams low power Pentium M doesn't exist. It says the last major design change was the Pentium 4 (which was prior to the Pentium M), and doesn't mention that current and (already announced) future Pentium M based designs match the description given.
I doubt that slashdotters (or policicians) making decisions based upon idealogy and buzz will produce better reactor designs than people who have incentive and resources to make smart decisions.
That said, I'd be happy to see more research into pebble bed reactors, and into energy amplifiers / ADS (subcritical fission reactor plus a particle accelerator), and other promising nuclear reactor designs that come along.
I just wouldn't assume that just because pebble bed reactors have some clever safety and efficiency benefits means that they are automatically better for commerical power generation than conventional reactor designs today.
even now intel Itanium is a massive change fromtheir standard, and wwas released AFTER the AMD 64 bit.
The Intel Itanium was released before the Athlon 64. You're thinking of EM64T-enabled Pentium 4s and Xeons.
But yeah, AMD got a lot of very good engineers from DEC.
The article (unlike the submitter) primarily talks about a 940 pin socket M2. No extra pins, just not compatible with AMDs existing socket 939 or socket 940.
The article mentions DDR2-667
They integrated the memory controller on to the CPU. Now, every time they switch memory technology (DDR -> DDR2 in this case), they have to switch CPU sockets also.
The article does mention a 1207-pin "Socket F" in a footnote at the end. But yeah, the submitter got that detail wrong.
Many (most? all?) DRM advocates also advocate criminal penalties for violating DRM (DMCA, etc).
If he's a believer in the DMCA and similar laws, he should explain whether or not he believes that he should be jailed for his actions, and why. If he's not a DMCA advocate, he should explain how DRM could work without the force of law backing it.
But I can't be bothered to read through a years worth of blog to find out if he discusses that issue.
The article submitter should be flayed alive. The /. editor should be drubbed soundly.
Use the GPL if you're going to get upset if someone uses your code commercially without paying you. GPL won't quite prohibit that kind of thing, but it will make most business models involving it impractical.
Use the GPL if you have strong philosophical objections to the basic idea of intellectual property. If, eventually, a sufficiently large portion of code is GPLed, then it might become prohibitively difficult for anyone to make non-GPLed code without re-inventing the wheel. Dream on.
Use the BSD license if you just want your code to be useful to as many people as possible.
I suspect that many users don't get a lot of benefit from the second core. Which benefits you more depends upon your workload.
Oh yeah, that does put a crimp into the idea of this sort of thing as a drop in replacement in a projector. I guess they'd have to be custom designed specifically to use such a bulb. I guess that pushes it farther into the future.
The spec says 300 lumens at 15 watts. But the spec also says that it uses 22 watts, not 15. Can anyone clarify how much light these things produce?
So, what does this mean for the DIY projectors that /. linked (here)to a few days ago? Those projectors were supposed to be fairly loud, due to the cooling required for the 400 watt light bulb. If this thing is 10 times the efficiency of a normal light bulb, it could probably get by without the primary cooling system, making the projector much quieter.
On the other hand, it sounds like it's a bit dimmer than the 350 to 400 watt bulbs, so maybe it's not practical yet, though it likely will be soon. The color spectrum produced by these things might not be as good as that of the incandescent bulb it would be replacing, and the secondary fan used to cool the LCD screen would probably still be needed. These are a little more expensive, but imagine many would consider the extra $50 or so to be a good bargain for a quiet projector.
So... am I on crack or will projectors soon be much quieter?
Yes, it transmutes to U-233 (an easily fissionable isotope of uranium) when it does a radiative capture of a neutron (though the transmutation has an intermediate stage with a halflife of about a month before it's useful). That's why it's a "fertile material" usable in breeder reactors. That still doesn't explain why it's significantly more useful than U-238 (which we already have around and are mining lots of), which can be converted to plutonium (Pu-239, which is easily fissionable) via a very similiar radiative capture of a neutron (with an intermediate stage with a halflife of 2.3 days). I suppose thorium might have a better radiative capture cross-section, or accept neutrons of better energy levels or be so common that we wouldn't have to bother with reprocessing costs or something, but if so I haven't heard about it.
By the time we develop efficient breeder reactors, we should already have accumulated a large supply of depleted uranium or at least an active uranium mining industry, so it ought to be thousands of years (at power usage levels remotely comparable to current ones) before we run out of uranium. If we develop efficient breeder reactors before the fissionable uranium runs out that is. Otherwise, thorium would not be of much use.
So, by my understanding, thorium is largely irrelevant to the nuclear power situation for the next millenia unless it is somehow more suitable for breeding than U-238 is.
34 thousand tons of natural uranium per year...
times 0.00712 to get the amount of fissionable specie (since we're ignoring breeder reactors) is...
242 fissionable tons per year... times 8.35 * 10^13 J per kg of fissionable specie (assuming 100% efficiency on the heat engines, though I think real-world efficiency is closer to 30%, and assuming 100% reaction, though I think they usually do about 70% reaction) is...
2.0 * 10^19 J / year
Isn't our world power consumption supposed to be something like 5*10^19 J/year, about 2.5 times that much?
Admittedly I could easily have made a mistake on any of those numbers...
Thorium is used as a "fertile material", not a "fissionable material", so it is not of much use until/unless we have efficient breeder reactors. And once we have efficient breeder reactors, the power output from plain old uranium should go up by a factor of 140 or so anyway (the ratio of naturally occuring U-238 to U-235). Plus, that improvement will be somewhat retroactive since the depleted uranium currently produced as a waste product can be used in the same manner as thorium, if we haven't already shot all of it in Iraq or wherever (the military makes armor piercing bullets out of it).