Rediculous as it seems, in some cities 911 is the standard number for the police AND emergencies. The first question the operator asks is, "Is this an emergency?", then transfers you to the police department if you don't scream in pain...
This of course adds nothing to the discussion, but Intel actually chooses codenames for Pacific Northwest RIVERS, not cities. The Tualatin River does exist, as do the Willamette, Dechutes, etc.
Agreed, you need to be careful about the external signals affecting your bit stream -- what is usually suggested is:
(a) don't collect your bits too quickly (to avoid correlations between bits);
(b) collect 10-20 times as many bits as you need and hash them with something like MD5, which tweaks them all nicely.
As a nuclear physicist I think the radioactive decay RNG is really cool, but when it comes to something to put in every computer, avalanche noise from a reverse-biased transistor is MUCH easier (and smaller and cheaper:v), and does a fine job. Heck, add a PIC controller that converts the data into a serial bitstream and you can connect a 'RNG box' onto any computer you want...
I'm quite keen to know how they detected these little quarks spraying off
That's the fun part -- lots of house-sized detectors! The quark-gluon plasma expands and cools (actually "hadronizes", collapses back into more ordinary particles) long before they are detected. This means that you need to analyze the particles that come out of the explosion and determine from their properties whether they were created in an ordinary collision or whether a QGP was formed.
As far as the actual detectors go, there are a variety of options -- from scintillation detectors that detect tiny flashes of light when a particle travels through a plastic paddle, to Cerenkov detectors that detect rings of light that form when a particle travels faster than the speed of light in the detector's medium, to time-projection chambers that use the particles' ability to ionize gas to create a 3D "CCD image" of the trajectories. Each detector type has its own advantages and disadvantages, and in the experiments at CERN and RHIC a variety of detectors are wrapped around the collision points. Check out NA49 and PHENIX for two experiments that I've worked on in the past few years (although I'm a software engineer now).
Cripes, where are all of the Slashdot scientists to give us some lay-men (sp?) explanation?
Heck, this guy supposedly IS giving you the layman's explanation -- that's why all those highbrow scientist guys are scoffing at him. It's a conspiracy, I tell you...
Seriously tho -- as a Slashdot physicist I can tell you that this guy is full of it, has been full of it for years now, and the fact that people have actually given him money just means that he's good at selling stuff to people who don't know any better. Despite the usual complaints about the peer-review process (no, it's not perfect), it has an important effect: it helps weed out frauds. Consider this -- when the typical physicist comes up with something new, he works on it in secret, then publishes all the results for the world to see. This guy works on something in private, then is willing to sell you one of his miracle cells for the low cost of $1000 each, or at least that's what they were offered for a few years ago when I got a mass-mailing from him -- the claim at that time was that it would convert dangerous chemicals into useful elements like copper...
BTW, if you're interested in alternatives to the standard peer-reviewed process, take a look at the e-print archive at xxx.lanl.gov. This has proven to be a wonderful way of getting useful information and ideas out into the scientific community even faster than the so-called "Rapid Communications" columns in the scientific journals...
Burning your own property and then filing an insurance claim to recover the value of the property destroyed by the fire would be considered arson.
Yes, but if the court had already declared that it was a legitimate claim, then by definition it was NOT arson in the court's eyes. Maybe the insurance company could make an appeal or something...
that's exactly what he intended to do silly, defraud the insurance company.
Sigh... follow the train of thought:
Yes, that IS what he intended to do, BUT (if you follow the story), the court had supposedly decided that it was a legitimate claim, i.e. by definition he was NOT defrauding the insurance company. The insurance company can't claim he was defrauding them after the court said he wasn't.
Bzzzt... sorry, urban legend alert! Check out any urban legend web site for details. Suffice to say that insurance companies are not that stupid and include clauses denying payouts for any deliberate actions on the part of the policy holder. In addition, destroying your own property is not considered arson unless you intend to defraud someone -- if the court had already decided that the insurance company had to pay for the cigars, then it couldn't be arson.
Slashdot Mirror
Rediculous as it seems, in some cities 911 is the standard number for the police AND emergencies. The first question the operator asks is, "Is this an emergency?", then transfers you to the police department if you don't scream in pain...
This of course adds nothing to the discussion, but Intel actually chooses codenames for Pacific Northwest RIVERS, not cities. The Tualatin River does exist, as do the Willamette, Dechutes, etc.
(a) don't collect your bits too quickly (to avoid correlations between bits);
(b) collect 10-20 times as many bits as you need and hash them with something like MD5, which tweaks them all nicely.
As a nuclear physicist I think the radioactive decay RNG is really cool, but when it comes to something to put in every computer, avalanche noise from a reverse-biased transistor is MUCH easier (and smaller and cheaper :v), and does a fine job. Heck, add a PIC controller that converts the data into a serial bitstream and you can connect a 'RNG box' onto any computer you want...
That's the fun part -- lots of house-sized detectors! The quark-gluon plasma expands and cools (actually "hadronizes", collapses back into more ordinary particles) long before they are detected. This means that you need to analyze the particles that come out of the explosion and determine from their properties whether they were created in an ordinary collision or whether a QGP was formed.
As far as the actual detectors go, there are a variety of options -- from scintillation detectors that detect tiny flashes of light when a particle travels through a plastic paddle, to Cerenkov detectors that detect rings of light that form when a particle travels faster than the speed of light in the detector's medium, to time-projection chambers that use the particles' ability to ionize gas to create a 3D "CCD image" of the trajectories. Each detector type has its own advantages and disadvantages, and in the experiments at CERN and RHIC a variety of detectors are wrapped around the collision points. Check out NA49 and PHENIX for two experiments that I've worked on in the past few years (although I'm a software engineer now).
Heck, this guy supposedly IS giving you the layman's explanation -- that's why all those highbrow scientist guys are scoffing at him. It's a conspiracy, I tell you...
Seriously tho -- as a Slashdot physicist I can tell you that this guy is full of it, has been full of it for years now, and the fact that people have actually given him money just means that he's good at selling stuff to people who don't know any better. Despite the usual complaints about the peer-review process (no, it's not perfect), it has an important effect: it helps weed out frauds. Consider this -- when the typical physicist comes up with something new, he works on it in secret, then publishes all the results for the world to see. This guy works on something in private, then is willing to sell you one of his miracle cells for the low cost of $1000 each, or at least that's what they were offered for a few years ago when I got a mass-mailing from him -- the claim at that time was that it would convert dangerous chemicals into useful elements like copper...
BTW, if you're interested in alternatives to the standard peer-reviewed process, take a look at the e-print archive at xxx.lanl.gov. This has proven to be a wonderful way of getting useful information and ideas out into the scientific community even faster than the so-called "Rapid Communications" columns in the scientific journals...
Yes, but if the court had already declared that it was a legitimate claim, then by definition it was NOT arson in the court's eyes. Maybe the insurance company could make an appeal or something...
Sigh... follow the train of thought:
Yes, that IS what he intended to do, BUT (if you follow the story), the court had supposedly decided that it was a legitimate claim, i.e. by definition he was NOT defrauding the insurance company. The insurance company can't claim he was defrauding them after the court said he wasn't.
Bzzzt... sorry, urban legend alert! Check out any urban legend web site for details. Suffice to say that insurance companies are not that stupid and include clauses denying payouts for any deliberate actions on the part of the policy holder. In addition, destroying your own property is not considered arson unless you intend to defraud someone -- if the court had already decided that the insurance company had to pay for the cigars, then it couldn't be arson.