TFA is *very* short on details but, as far as I can determine, they have nothing more than a (slightly) more efficient gas/metal adsorbtion method.
To illustrate *how* short on detail it is, take the quote "The way to do this is to turn hydrogen into a compound -- a solid -- so you can use it when you want, safely, in the amount you want."... Errr, OK; you mean ICE?
Hydrogen aDsorbtion (which means sticking to the surface of, rather than being pulled into the structure of (aBsorbtion) onto metals) has been known about for a very long time. Using these techniques does do away with the classical problems of storing hydrogen cryogenically (cold, volatility and risk of explosion) but for a *huge* cost of energy-density/weight ratio. So much so that it isn't really worth the effort. Even if they have achieved a ten-fold improvement over traditional (titanium) adsorbtion methods, it wouldn't be nearly enough to be viable consumer level energy requirements.
Oh, I don't know. For me the best ones are those that assume some fictional aspect of science, but don't mess with the rest.
A good example is "Neutron Star" by Larry Niven. It assumes hyperdrive technology and a (supposedly, that's the point of the story) invulnerable spaceship hull. After that the physics is spot on - and quite educational.
I would also suggest "The Mote in God's Eye" as a good example. I would go as far as to say that this is the best of the genre - ever.
BTW. Some have referred to the sequel as being "Gripping Hand"; when I bought it in hardback in England it was titled "The Moat Around Murchenson's Eye". Just so you know...
...is not so much that this is possible, but that the inventors seem to feel sure that there's a market in this AND that there won't be any serious objection to stop it. A bit like the proliferation of "security" (read "unadulterated snooping") cameras in London.
Actually, thinking about it, what *really* worries me is that people *won't* object to it. Not really.
Look - it's very simple. Either there are *usable* amounts of water on Mars, or there aren't.
I understand that the geologists (areologists, whatever) can get excited about the possibilities of trace amounts of water because it will help explain planetary evolution etc. And I share their enthusiasm, if not their expertise. But what I and thousands of other space enthusiasts want to know is; "Is there water on Mars?"
If we are ever going to have some sort of (semi-) permanent presence on Mars, we must have water. Enough speculation, for heaven's sake! Why have we not sent a probe to specifically answer this question?
Thanks for trying to clarify - but I'm none the wiser.
I suspect that I am representative of the majority of/.ers in that I have some understanding of quantum mechanics/chronodynamics etc, but I tend to think in terms of data density s2n ratios etc.
I have many questions, but the one I would *really* like an answer to in terms I can understand is:
The article and TFA say that the info is encoded in one photon. How?
AFAIK a photon can only carry so much information - viz, energy level/frequency/duration etc. And, yes I understand that these aspects are, for the most part, manifestations of each other. I see references to superposition in the article which don't mean much to me in the context - they don't seem to be paying much attention to Maxwell et al. The closest I can come up with is a compression ratio of > 1. Nah!
In short - I'm confused. Please would some Einstein explain it to me. (I refer to his wonderful ability to explain the almost-unexplainable in laymans's terms).
I have to admit I hadn't heard of this before, so I thought I'd give a go (with the XP binary download).
Bloody hell! It not only seems to work, it looks pretty fast as well. I'm installing a Fedora 6 on it (hosted on Win XP) as I type. I use VMware (licenced) on other systems and I use VMWare Player on this one (Dell XP thingy) and, so far, VB has impressed me.
The user interface seems to be better thought out than I've encountered in the past (I especially like the ability to blow a virtual machine completely away with little effort) - VMWare, take note.
I'll post again when I've given this instance a bit of a hammering - you know; IP stack handling, cpu loading etc.
Give it a try - it can't hurt. AND their site hasn't shown signs of being slashdotted (err... yet).
Oh, yeah! One last thing. Will those who are whinging about the differences about the binary version and the source version please do two things:
1. Read what they *actually* say about the two versions. 2. STFU!!
I know a lot of us have experienced the despair of offshore IT "help desks" and many of those are in India. But they're just cowboys jumping on the outsourcing bandwaggon. Their days are numbered, for the most part.
This part of the business gives a false impression of what the state of IT expertise in India is *really* like. It's pretty darn good. There are plenty of highly competent IT people there and, yes they generally have a huge advantage in terms of cost-of-living vs. expected-income. However, despite the rhetoric about the Internet making geographical location irrelevant, I don't see it happening just yet. For most of my work I still have to fly to the client's site.
But, in their own back yard, Indian IT workers are in a position to do what the hell they like. They have the expertise, culture and work ethic to make it work and there is no way that anyone can force a second-choice solution on them. And if they see MS as second choice...
"They don't discuss the possibility of being safe without living in a cage"
Not that that is a realistic objective, anyway.
I agree with you but, from your argument, the choice boils down to "Caged, but safe" or "Free, but vulnerable". There is very little middle ground of the "Sort of caged/sort of free but more secure" because, as you point out the authorities will take any willingness to secede a bit of freedom as an invitation to intrude more. Just like your boiled frog analogy. So, which choice should we make? In my view, the rights of privacy for an individual - especially from interference from the authorities, outweighs any benefits of "protection". I think this because *any* shifting from that position involves the sort of "mission creep" we've been talking about.
In short, I'd rather be free but vulnerable than under the control of the state and "safe" - which is a pipe dream, anyway.
I've asked this question before, but noone has had a good answer: Why do they want to control every aspects of our lives and who are "they"? No, I'm not a conspiracy nut. I suspect it's a flaw in the way we do things - but what is it?
"they seem just about perfectly suited to the environment on Mars... They don't need an atmosphere, they depend on radiation,"
Which wouldn't help them on Mars. Unlike Earth which has an abundance of radioactive materials, Mars has virtually none that we know of. AFAIK, it's part of the reason that the planet is dead (tectonically, that is).
Um. I think you're just confirming what I was saying in the first place. Or, to put it another way, I think you missed my point - no disrespect intended - it's probably my lack of talent for explaining things.
I was pointing out that each of the conditions I listed (and there are many more) had it's own special challenge to known (or even hypothesised) organisms. Note that I used a scale of "Not Good" to "Very Bad"; I didn't use "Impossible".
What I was trying to say was that taken individually these conditions are *severe* obstacles to LAWKI - but not insurmountable. However, the combination of them all blocks all known tricks that organisms use to circumvent otherwise hostile conditions. So, it is difficult to imagine an organism that can survive with:
1. Hard radiation: Martian UV flux would give you fatal sunburn in seconds. Not to mention *ionising* radiation which would slap complex molucules in any organism into their component parts. 2. Virtually zero atmosphere: This represents a scarcity of resources. It's no good being a CO2 ingester if there's hardly any there. 3. Little water: OK, there may well be water on Mars. Does anyone know of an organism that needs *no* water to survive? Important - see below. 4. Highly oxidising compounds: This, from my point of view, is the real killer (pun intended). It involves compounds that have a powerful ability to rip electrons off molecules. If one assumes an organism which needs water to survive it's had it! The combination of dessication (in a water poor environment) combined with what is effectively a serious electron transport disruptor means that there is no *known* mechanism an organism could deploy to maintain its own integrity - let alone reproduction.
Still, it would be wonderful if we *did* find something - I'd be the first to acknowledge that more more we learn the more we realise we know dick-all. After all, wouldn't the Universe be a boring place if we didn't have a *lot* of "OMG! Lookatthat! That's IMPOSSIBLE! WOW!" moments left to trip over.
But in this case, with not even theoretical models to use, how do we know what to test for?
1. Hard radiation on surface - not good. 2. Virtually zero atmosphere - not that good. 3. No (or little water) - not good. 4. Highly oxidising compounds on surface - very bad.
Each in themselves, not a show-stopper. Two - err... All of them == no life. Well, not as we know it (Jim - sorry).
As a biochemist, I wouldn't expect any form of life (AWKI) to survive those conditions; not even if I were allowed to tweak every other possible variable to the organism's advantage. It would be nice to be proved wrong - but I don't think so.
That's what it says in the summary; I think they're referring to the phrase "exceed the statutory exceptions for fair dealing access." in TFA. Not quite the same thing, still...
IANAL, but I thought statutory rights override *anything* that a company can put in a contract. Or, to put it another way, you can't legally contract someone to break the law.
A ridiculous example to illustrate the point:
EULA: "...and before using this software, the user agrees to sacrifice their first-born to the company." User: "No way, AND I'm going to use the software, anyway" Company: "We're going to sue you for breach of contract." Courts: "Errr.. we don't think so" (except where the RIAA is involved, apparently)
I see these attempts at extortion (and that's *just* what they are) in all sorts s/w related EULAs. I just ignore them.
How on earth do they get away with this. Or (sudden horrible thought) am I missing something?
Does anyone else see SCO in the same light as those cheesey ending of thrillers where the baddie is dead and everything is lovely.. then the baddie isn't dead, after all. So they kill him again... etc etc. (repeat until required cheese level is achieved).
I agree. I have posted on/. before deploring sensationalist "scientific" publications. Well, at least in my area of expertise - and this is one of them.
The point about the irrelevance of the %age coincidence of genome match between mice and men (sorry) is well made. The way the article presents the results suggest that we have a 50% chance of learning something useful from analysing the genome of an orange:-)
Actually, it's worse than that.
TFA essentially suggests that this project will be able to be of real assistance in determining the cause of a whole bundle of brain-centred diseases in humans. Err........ no.
Beyond some basic similarities (formed several tens of millions of years ago), the mouse brain and human brain have very little in common (some/. submitters notwithstanding). To say, for example, that these results will directly lead to a better understanding of schizophrenia is disingenuous - they can't. They are implying that behavioural disfunction in mice, to which they assign the term "schizophrenia" is analogous to the human disease of the same name. Just how can they draw parallels between a twitchy mouse and a human with severe *cognitive* problems?
Research with mice does have its place, but in lower-order metabolic research. Even this has severe restrictions when trying to apply results to human physiology/metabolism.
Yet again, a sensationalist paper has been published with a view to catching the public's eye and, I suspect in this case, to boost the self-esteem of the sponsor. There's far too much of this crap around today.
Rest assured that *real* scientists take this sort of thing in its proper context.
(SIGH!) BTW I *am* a biochemist, but not in thrall to any pharmaceutical concern. I have worked for them in the past.
"Ahhahahahaha. You made me laugh.. *wipes tears* You are joking right? You are saying that in this day and age of patents/trademarks and corporate secrets they would share the biggest cash cow of the millenium! I think not.. they will milk it for every drop it's worth, you will have to pay the discoverers royalties whenever you produce it, if they even let you produce it, assuming they don't set up their own production plant."
The typical rant about evil drug companies. Let me explain in simple words:
First off; no, drug companies are not angels any more than any other company. But they're not more evil, either. A common perception is that they just make huge profits from a line of drugs and that's it. No it isn't!
For every drug that makes it to market there are at least 50 that don't. Each one involves a *huge* amount of effort and cost for every stage of development. We're talking millions, here. To get a drug to the commercial stage can take *billions* - no I'm not kidding. Every successful commercial drug has to pay not only for it's own development, but also the others that didn't make it to market. Otherwise the company would fold pretty rapidly.
"if someone figures out the chemical breakdown and produces it you could sue their ass off for even more money."
And so they should. My lab is quite capable of analysing *any* drug to the point where I could manufacture it. But it would be a pointless exercise because the structure (and a whole load of other stuff) are always published by the company to protect their interests. How long do you think that research into drug discovery would last if anyone could just pick up the results of their hard (and expensive) labour and just manufacture it with impugnity?
Slashdot Mirror
Note that they have disconnected it and buried it and it's STILL not secure.
(You know, the old joke: disconnect it, bury it in concrete... Ah, never mind).
Ye Gods!
... Errr, OK; you mean ICE?
TFA is *very* short on details but, as far as I can determine, they have nothing more than a (slightly) more efficient gas/metal adsorbtion method.
To illustrate *how* short on detail it is, take the quote "The way to do this is to turn hydrogen into a compound -- a solid -- so you can use it when you want, safely, in the amount you want."
Hydrogen aDsorbtion (which means sticking to the surface of, rather than being pulled into the structure of (aBsorbtion) onto metals) has been known about for a very long time. Using these techniques does do away with the classical problems of storing hydrogen cryogenically (cold, volatility and risk of explosion) but for a *huge* cost of energy-density/weight ratio. So much so that it isn't really worth the effort. Even if they have achieved a ten-fold improvement over traditional (titanium) adsorbtion methods, it wouldn't be nearly enough to be viable consumer level energy requirements.
Oh, I don't know. For me the best ones are those that assume some fictional aspect of science, but don't mess with the rest.
A good example is "Neutron Star" by Larry Niven. It assumes hyperdrive technology and a (supposedly, that's the point of the story) invulnerable spaceship hull. After that the physics is spot on - and quite educational.
I would also suggest "The Mote in God's Eye" as a good example. I would go as far as to say that this is the best of the genre - ever.
BTW. Some have referred to the sequel as being "Gripping Hand"; when I bought it in hardback in England it was titled "The Moat Around Murchenson's Eye". Just so you know...
...is not so much that this is possible, but that the inventors seem to feel sure that there's a market in this AND that there won't be any serious objection to stop it. A bit like the proliferation of "security" (read "unadulterated snooping") cameras in London.
Actually, thinking about it, what *really* worries me is that people *won't* object to it. Not really.
Ah! Brave new world... etc.
Look - it's very simple. Either there are *usable* amounts of water on Mars, or there aren't.
I understand that the geologists (areologists, whatever) can get excited about the possibilities of trace amounts of water because it will help explain planetary evolution etc. And I share their enthusiasm, if not their expertise. But what I and thousands of other space enthusiasts want to know is; "Is there water on Mars?"
If we are ever going to have some sort of (semi-) permanent presence on Mars, we must have water. Enough speculation, for heaven's sake! Why have we not sent a probe to specifically answer this question?
Thanks for trying to clarify - but I'm none the wiser.
/.ers in that I have some understanding of quantum mechanics/chronodynamics etc, but I tend to think in terms of data density s2n ratios etc.
I suspect that I am representative of the majority of
I have many questions, but the one I would *really* like an answer to in terms I can understand is:
The article and TFA say that the info is encoded in one photon. How?
AFAIK a photon can only carry so much information - viz, energy level/frequency/duration etc. And, yes I understand that these aspects are, for the most part, manifestations of each other. I see references to superposition in the article which don't mean much to me in the context - they don't seem to be paying much attention to Maxwell et al. The closest I can come up with is a compression ratio of > 1. Nah!
In short - I'm confused. Please would some Einstein explain it to me. (I refer to his wonderful ability to explain the almost-unexplainable in laymans's terms).
I ain't stupid - just confused.
OK - maybe stupid as well.
Excellent idea!
Well... what are you waiting for?
I have to admit I hadn't heard of this before, so I thought I'd give a go (with the XP binary download).
Bloody hell! It not only seems to work, it looks pretty fast as well. I'm installing a Fedora 6 on it (hosted on Win XP) as I type. I use VMware (licenced) on other systems and I use VMWare Player on this one (Dell XP thingy) and, so far, VB has impressed me.
The user interface seems to be better thought out than I've encountered in the past (I especially like the ability to blow a virtual machine completely away with little effort) - VMWare, take note.
I'll post again when I've given this instance a bit of a hammering - you know; IP stack handling, cpu loading etc.
Give it a try - it can't hurt. AND their site hasn't shown signs of being slashdotted (err... yet).
Oh, yeah! One last thing. Will those who are whinging about the differences about the binary version and the source version please do two things:
1. Read what they *actually* say about the two versions.
2. STFU!!
I thank you.
...it'll be India.
I know a lot of us have experienced the despair of offshore IT "help desks" and many of those are in India. But they're just cowboys jumping on the outsourcing bandwaggon. Their days are numbered, for the most part.
This part of the business gives a false impression of what the state of IT expertise in India is *really* like. It's pretty darn good. There are plenty of highly competent IT people there and, yes they generally have a huge advantage in terms of cost-of-living vs. expected-income. However, despite the rhetoric about the Internet making geographical location irrelevant, I don't see it happening just yet. For most of my work I still have to fly to the client's site.
But, in their own back yard, Indian IT workers are in a position to do what the hell they like. They have the expertise, culture and work ethic to make it work and there is no way that anyone can force a second-choice solution on them. And if they see MS as second choice...
"They don't discuss the possibility of being safe without living in a cage"
Not that that is a realistic objective, anyway.
I agree with you but, from your argument, the choice boils down to "Caged, but safe" or "Free, but vulnerable". There is very little middle ground of the "Sort of caged/sort of free but more secure" because, as you point out the authorities will take any willingness to secede a bit of freedom as an invitation to intrude more. Just like your boiled frog analogy. So, which choice should we make? In my view, the rights of privacy for an individual - especially from interference from the authorities, outweighs any benefits of "protection". I think this because *any* shifting from that position involves the sort of "mission creep" we've been talking about.
In short, I'd rather be free but vulnerable than under the control of the state and "safe" - which is a pipe dream, anyway.
I've asked this question before, but noone has had a good answer: Why do they want to control every aspects of our lives and who are "they"? No, I'm not a conspiracy nut. I suspect it's a flaw in the way we do things - but what is it?
No, it didn't. It hit at full speed.
"they seem just about perfectly suited to the environment on Mars... They don't need an atmosphere, they depend on radiation,"
Which wouldn't help them on Mars. Unlike Earth which has an abundance of radioactive materials, Mars has virtually none that we know of. AFAIK, it's part of the reason that the planet is dead (tectonically, that is).
Um. I think you're just confirming what I was saying in the first place. Or, to put it another way, I think you missed my point - no disrespect intended - it's probably my lack of talent for explaining things.
I was pointing out that each of the conditions I listed (and there are many more) had it's own special challenge to known (or even hypothesised) organisms. Note that I used a scale of "Not Good" to "Very Bad"; I didn't use "Impossible".
What I was trying to say was that taken individually these conditions are *severe* obstacles to LAWKI - but not insurmountable. However, the combination of them all blocks all known tricks that organisms use to circumvent otherwise hostile conditions. So, it is difficult to imagine an organism that can survive with:
1. Hard radiation: Martian UV flux would give you fatal sunburn in seconds. Not to mention *ionising* radiation which would slap complex molucules in any organism into their component parts.
2. Virtually zero atmosphere: This represents a scarcity of resources. It's no good being a CO2 ingester if there's hardly any there.
3. Little water: OK, there may well be water on Mars. Does anyone know of an organism that needs *no* water to survive? Important - see below.
4. Highly oxidising compounds: This, from my point of view, is the real killer (pun intended). It involves compounds that have a powerful ability to rip electrons off molecules. If one assumes an organism which needs water to survive it's had it! The combination of dessication (in a water poor environment) combined with what is effectively a serious electron transport disruptor means that there is no *known* mechanism an organism could deploy to maintain its own integrity - let alone reproduction.
Still, it would be wonderful if we *did* find something - I'd be the first to acknowledge that more more we learn the more we realise we know dick-all. After all, wouldn't the Universe be a boring place if we didn't have a *lot* of "OMG! Lookatthat! That's IMPOSSIBLE! WOW!" moments left to trip over.
But in this case, with not even theoretical models to use, how do we know what to test for?
...barring some bizarre deep-rock extremophiles.
1. Hard radiation on surface - not good.
2. Virtually zero atmosphere - not that good.
3. No (or little water) - not good.
4. Highly oxidising compounds on surface - very bad.
Each in themselves, not a show-stopper. Two - err... All of them == no life. Well, not as we know it (Jim - sorry).
As a biochemist, I wouldn't expect any form of life (AWKI) to survive those conditions; not even if I were allowed to tweak every other possible variable to the organism's advantage. It would be nice to be proved wrong - but I don't think so.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" ...
O'er the land of the free...
Oh, wait.
"We live in VERY interesting times."
How true. And how appropriate that this is a traditional *Chinese* curse. "May you live in interesting times".
But you knew that, didn't you?
...or even 1944.
Sorry the TARDIS had a glitch.
"landing craft are bottlenecks. Aim your machine guns at the exit and voila."
Try telling that to the Germans in Normandy in 1945.
I am enlightened. Thank you.
(No, not sarcasm).
No, but I never agreed to the EULA.. ..Oh SHIT!
EULA: "...and before using this software, the user agrees to sacrifice their first-born to the company."
I stand corrected. I quoted this as a ridiculous and hypothetical example but apparently it's a direct quote from the Windows EULA.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
That's what it says in the summary; I think they're referring to the phrase "exceed the statutory exceptions for fair dealing access." in TFA. Not quite the same thing, still...
IANAL, but I thought statutory rights override *anything* that a company can put in a contract. Or, to put it another way, you can't legally contract someone to break the law.
A ridiculous example to illustrate the point:
EULA: "...and before using this software, the user agrees to sacrifice their first-born to the company."
User: "No way, AND I'm going to use the software, anyway"
Company: "We're going to sue you for breach of contract."
Courts: "Errr.. we don't think so" (except where the RIAA is involved, apparently)
I see these attempts at extortion (and that's *just* what they are) in all sorts s/w related EULAs. I just ignore them.
How on earth do they get away with this. Or (sudden horrible thought) am I missing something?
Does anyone else see SCO in the same light as those cheesey ending of thrillers where the baddie is dead and everything is lovely.. then the baddie isn't dead, after all. So they kill him again... etc etc. (repeat until required cheese level is achieved).
I agree. I have posted on /. before deploring sensationalist "scientific" publications. Well, at least in my area of expertise - and this is one of them.
:-)
/. submitters notwithstanding). To say, for example, that these results will directly lead to a better understanding of schizophrenia is disingenuous - they can't. They are implying that behavioural disfunction in mice, to which they assign the term "schizophrenia" is analogous to the human disease of the same name. Just how can they draw parallels between a twitchy mouse and a human with severe *cognitive* problems?
The point about the irrelevance of the %age coincidence of genome match between mice and men (sorry) is well made. The way the article presents the results suggest that we have a 50% chance of learning something useful from analysing the genome of an orange
Actually, it's worse than that.
TFA essentially suggests that this project will be able to be of real assistance in determining the cause of a whole bundle of brain-centred diseases in humans. Err........ no.
Beyond some basic similarities (formed several tens of millions of years ago), the mouse brain and human brain have very little in common (some
Research with mice does have its place, but in lower-order metabolic research. Even this has severe restrictions when trying to apply results to human physiology/metabolism.
Yet again, a sensationalist paper has been published with a view to catching the public's eye and, I suspect in this case, to boost the self-esteem of the sponsor. There's far too much of this crap around today.
Rest assured that *real* scientists take this sort of thing in its proper context.
(SIGH!) BTW I *am* a biochemist, but not in thrall to any pharmaceutical concern. I have worked for them in the past.
"Ahhahahahaha. You made me laugh.. *wipes tears* You are joking right? You are saying that in this day and age of patents/trademarks and corporate secrets they would share the biggest cash cow of the millenium! I think not.. they will milk it for every drop it's worth, you will have to pay the discoverers royalties whenever you produce it, if they even let you produce it, assuming they don't set up their own production plant."
The typical rant about evil drug companies. Let me explain in simple words:
First off; no, drug companies are not angels any more than any other company. But they're not more evil, either. A common perception is that they just make huge profits from a line of drugs and that's it. No it isn't!
For every drug that makes it to market there are at least 50 that don't. Each one involves a *huge* amount of effort and cost for every stage of development. We're talking millions, here. To get a drug to the commercial stage can take *billions* - no I'm not kidding. Every successful commercial drug has to pay not only for it's own development, but also the others that didn't make it to market. Otherwise the company would fold pretty rapidly.
"if someone figures out the chemical breakdown and produces it you could sue their ass off for even more money."
And so they should. My lab is quite capable of analysing *any* drug to the point where I could manufacture it. But it would be a pointless exercise because the structure (and a whole load of other stuff) are always published by the company to protect their interests. How long do you think that research into drug discovery would last if anyone could just pick up the results of their hard (and expensive) labour and just manufacture it with impugnity?
Sheesh!