> truly random, depending upon quantum interactions
Misguided quantum mechanics who persist in thinking that their theory is in any way logical, are invited to read this paper, which clearly describes the error of their ways.
There is no such thing as "true randomness". When an event is random, it does not mean that it is impossible to predict, but rather that it is impractical to predict. When you toss a coin, it is entirely possible to remove external disturbances and make absolute predictions on the outcome of each toss. The reason we call tossing a coin random is that we don't know the outcome, not because nature doesn't know the outcome. This confusion between a state of nature is so common, it has a name: mind projection fallacy.
> But the key difference is if you swapped scenarios regarding the BSD/GPL > issue you'd be in violation of the terms of the GPL.
Yes, but that is not the key issue. It isn't even an issue at all. The issue is with the action: when you force someone to use the GPL for the code they wrote, you are dictating terms on their code, which is why we hate you.
> So while it isn't exactly possible to steal BSD code it *is* possible to steal GPL code.
Legally true, but not morally true.
> No GPL developer has ever taken BSD code and made it unavailable.
You are missing the point that once code is made GPL, it is unavailable to the BSD people. Not unavailable to you; unavailable to us. And since you will still not understand, I'll define "unavailable" - it means we can't take it and put it into our projects. And to further define "put" - incorporate without changing our license. And then I'll have to define "changing our license" to be "over our dead bodies", is that specific enough for you?
> The GPL camp forcefully opens the code they create. The only way this can be > seen as hypocritical is if you don't really understand the point of the GPL.
You know, after some thought, I agree with this. There is no hypocrisy after all; the GPL camp really is a bunch of honest people. They steal code from everyone without preference. So I guess I shouldn't continue this discussion after all, since my point suddenly reverted from hypocrisy to the general state of being evil. And that's a whole other discussion.
> So getting upset because something wasn't given back seems very contradictory to your own license.
Man, can't you read? I keep repeating it, but it just doesn't get through: 1) We are not upset because something wasn't given back. We don't expect it. 2) We are upset because it wasn't given back by the GPL people. Specificially. Not because they took it and didn't give back, but because they say that this action (taking and not giving back) is precisely the reason why everyone ought to favor GPL over BSD. We are upset because of the resulting deception created and because of the developers that are duped into using the GPL when they would have used BSD instead. 3) Should I repeat the above points again? We are not upset over the action. We are upset over the rhetoric about the action, and the hypocrisy created in the GPL camp by the action.
> We say free, but we mean free in a very different way.
Of course you do. You say you mean "free as in speech" but what you really mean is "free as in beer". It is a well known desire of Richard Stallman to institute the communist policy of forcing everyone to write software for nothing, effectively making all programmers into unpaid slaves, and that's about as evil as you get. But this is, of course, not relevant to the argument. It doesn't matter why I hate the GPL; the present argument is about what the GPL people did and how it makes them howling hypocrites.
> And to top everything off at the end of the day this whole fight was about nothing. > No BSD code was lost. The the extended code didn't exist, it wasn't the work of > the BSD people. It was based on it, but the code that it was based on is still there. > Still BSD.
I agree completely. But go ahead and replace BSD in the above statement with GPL and apply it to commercial rewrapping and you'll see that the argument still holds, offering a graphic illustration that the point of the GPL is not to keep the GPL code free but to steal the work of other people and make it GPL. This is what we call being viral, and this is why we passionately hate it. This is also the very statement that we find hypocritical, for GPL people cry over commerical companies taking their code and making it unavailable to them, and here they take BSD code, make it unavailable to us, and then have the nerve to make arguments like this!
> How is this different from someone taking your BSD code and wrapping it into a commercial project?
Precisely! There is no difference. My point was exactly that the GPL camp says how bad BSD license is because it allows people to take your code and lock it in such a way that you won't be able to use it any more, which they interpret as "losing your code", and "immoral", and "not giving back". Well, here we have the GPL camp doing exactly the same thing to us BSD people and all of a sudden it's ok. This is hypocrisy and is exactly what Theo and I am talking about.
> You still gain in a socialistic sense. > And if you aren't strung to one particular license (which we are, on both sides often) > then you simply get the benefit of the new code.
No, you do not. If you are looking at the new code while writing your own, most lawyers will string you up for a copyright violation. There is no way to directly copy the new code back into a BSD project. Yes, you can reimplement the changes yourself, but you could have done just as easily without the GPL hypocrites. And don't even suggest that "I am free to use it if I only change to the GPL". Bull. You might as well say "You are free to use it if you let me kill you." It simply is not a choice, it's an ultimatum.
> But the GPL camp is giving back. Their just not doing it in a way that suits *you*.
How is this different from a commercial company who takes GPL code, makes a commercial product with it, and then charges you a million dollars and requires you to sign an NDA for the privilege of getting the code? See, you can get the code! See, they are giving back! It just isn't in a way that suits *you*, isn't it? And if this happened, Stallman would cry bloody murder. And don't bring up that the above scenario violates the GPL; yes, it does, but that's not the point. The point here is political, not a legal one, and is simply that the GPL camp can't say that closing up the code is immoral without applying that label to themselves for that very action.
> Really now, why should you care what someone says? > What's the big deal? Get a grip, son.
The big deal is that people listen to those GPL fanatics saying how their code is more "free" and then go and release their projects under the GPL without understanding all the issues. When people are duped into going to the GPL camp, the BSD camp fails to gain code that we could have used. Since one of the reasons for having free software is to be able to build on other people's work, this really is a big deal.
> There's no hypocrisy in that. Anyone can use the changes that where GPL'd, > but you just have to adhere to the GPL
Exactly! But because I can not adhere to the GPL, I can not use those changes. You are simply engaging in pointless wordplay here. It's like giving me a "choice" of giving you a million dollars or dying. It really isn't a choice at all if I have to do as you tell me.
> They can use their code - they just can't release it under BSD.
That's the point.
> I don't get it - if the GPL is bad for making it so that code can't be released > under BSD, why are BSD people moaning that they don't want their code released under GPL?
Like I already said, we are not moaning that we don't want our code released under GPL. We are simply pointing out that by locking us out (and you are locking us out because we can't incorporate GPL code into ours without changing to GPL, which I will do over my DEAD BODY), you are no different from proprietary software companies. And then you go around saying how BSD is less free than the GPL, which is what we have a problem with. It's not about the code; it's about politics. What you do by GPL-locking BSD code is hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that, by being unnoticed, encourages people to use GPL for their projects thinking that it makes their code "free".
The point is that we have the GPL camp and we have the BSD camp. The GPL camp takes code from the BSD camp and the BSD camp is not able to merge those changes back into BSD code. The issue here is not that this is a license violation; it is not. BSD people, like me, want other people to use our code. The complaint here is about the hypocrisy of the GPL camp, who claim that they don't want anyone to use their code without giving back the changes, but then turn around and do just that to the BSD people's code. Again, I emphasize that this action is not a problem to us; we want it and we expect it. The problem is with the GPL camp saying how they are somehow "more free".
While seawater does indeed have a depressed freezing point, that in no way means that the ocean floor is below freezing. Maximum density is still at a temperature higher than 0C, and consequently the ocean temperatures are normally at 2-4C at the bottom. See http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Water /temp.html&edu=high for a typical profile. Given that the Atlantic ocean is 3-4km deep, the temperature at the bottom ought to be no lower than 3C or so. So no, your freshwater piping will not freeze at the bottom of the ocean!
> Check this out...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Botto m_Water
First of all, the article does not say just how cold that layer is (nor, ironically, how dense. WTF is 27?). In the absence of further data I'll assume it is still above zero. Second, it exists only next to the antarctic shelf, and it is safe to say that Rapture is nowhere near it.
> And when you need to teach abstract concepts like "For every action there is an > equal and opposite reaction" you better be a good teacher since it is non-intuitive.
Oh, come on! Laws of motion are in no way abstract concepts. Each one can be easily demonstrated with something heavy. A few minutes spent tossing around a 20lb medicine ball will easily demonstrate just how hard the darn thing pushes back when you throw it.
> The physics says that there is a force sending the water towards you, even though > you are swinging the heck out of it. That is completely non-intuitive and requires > understand the concepts of action and reaction.
It is very intuitive if you realize that that the force sending the water towards you is YOU pulling on the rope. Naturally, if you just sit a kid down and talk about it, he'll be scratching his head trying to figure it out. And that's the basic problem with school in general -- too much lecture, not enough time spent in the real world, interacting with the real world. No kid playing around outside would have any difficulty understanding the laws of motion.
> show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun.
You must mean a nice scientifically-based example like that ice-blocked door in Bioshock, explained by the apparent fact that "the ocean down here is cold as a witch's tit and if you don't heat the pipes, they freeze". I guess that means that the ocean water around Rapture doesn't freeze because there's so much salt in it... I know, I know, it's hard to choose whether to laugh or cry.
> That assumes that the repository is already there. > was talking about the regular case - a remote repository that you have to set up first.
No, it doesn't. The commands I listed create the repository. The misconception here is that git does not require you to have a remote repository; yours is as valid as any other. Under the git development model you don't have a central repository, you just publish the one you have. I would start a project with a local repository, hack at it for a while, and then, if I wanted to share it with someone I'd push it to a public site like repo.or.cz. The push does take some setting up, since you need the site owner's permission, but no more difficult than, say, publishing a web page.
The fact that you don't have a central repository is a very important advantage to a single developer. If you work under svn privately and want to publish your project on a public site like SourceForge, you have to pack up the repository and upload it there. From then on you are tied to SourceForge and are forced to be online whenever you want to commit or examine history. With git, nothing changes when you publish a repository. Your workflow is exactly the same, since the published version is just a copy; you still own the master repository. If SourceForge goes down, it doesn't affect you much.
One last thing is the space savings. In subversion every checkout has two copies of every file and pollutes your source tree with.svn subdirs. With git, your local repository with your checkout take up less space than a single svn checkout, with no.svns to pollute your tree (which cause problems, for example, if you want to search all your source files for some string)
> Putting your project in a Subversion repository takes an hour or two
Indeed. And putting your project in git takes maybe 30 seconds: cd project git init git add . git commit
Takes a few more minutes if you want to put it on a public repository: Go to repo.or.cz and register the project (fill out one short form) (why aren't there more hosting sites? SourceForge flat out refuses to offer git hosting...) Add public target url to.git/config git push --all public
Having only recently switched to git from subversion, I'm still in the state of pure awe at how much easier it is to use...
Now if you were nice, and bought a subscription, you wouldn't see any ads either. If everyone did it, then eventually ad-supported content would go extinct and we could all breathe easier.
Give them a speeding ticket, of course. If you can be fined $100 for going 15mph over the speed limit, it is left as an exercise to the reader to estimate the fine for exceeding the speed limit by 2.3 billion miles an hour! I think it ought to be illegal to deprive our cash-strapped government from such an amount of revenue. It may even be considered immoral, if you think of all the starving children so much money could feed.
Some people describe living in the Dymaxion house like living in an airplane. Space is limited, and curved, so you will not be able to use regular furniture. Then there are the aluminum walls, which conduct heat like a giant heatsink.
> What are parthogenic lines? > Is there a way to derive them other than using eggs?
As a Slashdot reader, I am sure that what you really want to ask is: "can we reproduce without women?". And Dr.Hwang's research has sadly failed to produce an answer to that question so far. Perhaps we should set up a donation site to prod him to research in that direction instead of trying to get women to conceive without men. I am sure that millions of Slashdot readers, and, of course, China, would be immensely grateful should such research be successful.
Bah, Physicists and their QM simulations! They got it all wrong again. It isn't the length of the graphene ribbon that affects its properties, but the shape of its edges. If you look at benzene ring's molecular orbitals, you'll see that there are two ways to pack them in a ribbon. If they all line up, with resonant transfer going along the ribbon in a straight line, then you have metallic conductivity, with the electron just gliding across all the orbitals without hitting any gaps. If the orbitals don't line up, you end up with little dead ends here and there, which cause "turbulence" and reduce conductivity.
Now, the packing of the orbitals is determined by the edges because of their constraints on orbital orientation. In the middle of the ribbon, you have a pure hex grid, and the orbitals, which can be visualized as taking half of each hex and painting a large C on it (these are not the same as the three bonding pi orbitals). Try it yourself: draw a hex grid and try to pack Cs. To visualize resonance, push on one end of a C and see how to repack the resulting structure. In the middle, you have three orientations at every node, but at the edges you don't. The more edges you have, the more constraints there are on the packing, and the more likely it is that the oribitals in the middle won't be in resonance with each other in a given direction. When you push on a C in such a grid, it will push other Cs sideways instead of along the ribbon, causing "resistance".
There are two types of edges, familiar to tile game developers as the vertical and horizontal orientation. In the horizontal packing, the flat side of each hex is bordering the edge, in the vertical the flat side is perpendicular to the edge. It turns out that if you have horizontal edges on your graphene ribbon, it is metallic; if you have vertical ones, it is semiconductive (which is another way of saying it has more resistance). If the edges are not quite straight, which will quite likely happen if you are making your ribbons via CVD or duct tape or something, you'll see a mix of both behaviors, resulting in a conductivity somewhere in between full-out and almost-nothing.
This is the trouble with modern physics - they just don't care about reality any more. If they only drew a few pictures, like real chemists do, they'd have seen this very easily. Instead they waste their time on simulations that only give them numbers they don't know how to interpret. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
>> I personally never found it much of a burden to enter a license key.
> Spoken as a person who has apparently never lost a license key.
Spoken as a person who has apparently never learned to find license keys on the internet.
> truly random, depending upon quantum interactions
Misguided quantum mechanics who persist in thinking that their theory is in any way logical, are invited to read this paper, which clearly describes the error of their ways.
There is no such thing as "true randomness". When an event is random, it does not mean that it is impossible to predict, but rather that it is impractical to predict. When you toss a coin, it is entirely possible to remove external disturbances and make absolute predictions on the outcome of each toss. The reason we call tossing a coin random is that we don't know the outcome, not because nature doesn't know the outcome. This confusion between a state of nature is so common, it has a name: mind projection fallacy.
> But the key difference is if you swapped scenarios regarding the BSD/GPL
> issue you'd be in violation of the terms of the GPL.
Yes, but that is not the key issue. It isn't even an issue at all. The issue is with the action: when you force someone to use the GPL for the code they wrote, you are dictating terms on their code, which is why we hate you.
> So while it isn't exactly possible to steal BSD code it *is* possible to steal GPL code.
Legally true, but not morally true.
> No GPL developer has ever taken BSD code and made it unavailable.
You are missing the point that once code is made GPL, it is unavailable to the BSD people. Not unavailable to you; unavailable to us. And since you will still not understand, I'll define "unavailable" - it means we can't take it and put it into our projects. And to further define "put" - incorporate without changing our license. And then I'll have to define "changing our license" to be "over our dead bodies", is that specific enough for you?
> The GPL camp forcefully opens the code they create. The only way this can be
> seen as hypocritical is if you don't really understand the point of the GPL.
You know, after some thought, I agree with this. There is no hypocrisy after all; the GPL camp really is a bunch of honest people. They steal code from everyone without preference. So I guess I shouldn't continue this discussion after all, since my point suddenly reverted from hypocrisy to the general state of being evil. And that's a whole other discussion.
> So getting upset because something wasn't given back seems very contradictory to your own license.
Man, can't you read? I keep repeating it, but it just doesn't get through:
1) We are not upset because something wasn't given back. We don't expect it.
2) We are upset because it wasn't given back by the GPL people. Specificially. Not because they took it and didn't give back, but because they say that this action (taking and not giving back) is precisely the reason why everyone ought to favor GPL over BSD. We are upset because of the resulting deception created and because of the developers that are duped into using the GPL when they would have used BSD instead.
3) Should I repeat the above points again? We are not upset over the action. We are upset over the rhetoric about the action, and the hypocrisy created in the GPL camp by the action.
> We say free, but we mean free in a very different way.
Of course you do. You say you mean "free as in speech" but what you really mean is "free as in beer". It is a well known desire of Richard Stallman to institute the communist policy of forcing everyone to write software for nothing, effectively making all programmers into unpaid slaves, and that's about as evil as you get. But this is, of course, not relevant to the argument. It doesn't matter why I hate the GPL; the present argument is about what the GPL people did and how it makes them howling hypocrites.
> And to top everything off at the end of the day this whole fight was about nothing.
> No BSD code was lost. The the extended code didn't exist, it wasn't the work of
> the BSD people. It was based on it, but the code that it was based on is still there.
> Still BSD.
I agree completely. But go ahead and replace BSD in the above statement with GPL and apply it to commercial rewrapping and you'll see that the argument still holds, offering a graphic illustration that the point of the GPL is not to keep the GPL code free but to steal the work of other people and make it GPL. This is what we call being viral, and this is why we passionately hate it. This is also the very statement that we find hypocritical, for GPL people cry over commerical companies taking their code and making it unavailable to them, and here they take BSD code, make it unavailable to us, and then have the nerve to make arguments like this!
> How is this different from someone taking your BSD code and wrapping it into a commercial project?
Precisely! There is no difference. My point was exactly that the GPL camp says how bad BSD license is because it allows people to take your code and lock it in such a way that you won't be able to use it any more, which they interpret as "losing your code", and "immoral", and "not giving back". Well, here we have the GPL camp doing exactly the same thing to us BSD people and all of a sudden it's ok. This is hypocrisy and is exactly what Theo and I am talking about.
> You still gain in a socialistic sense.
> And if you aren't strung to one particular license (which we are, on both sides often)
> then you simply get the benefit of the new code.
No, you do not. If you are looking at the new code while writing your own, most lawyers will string you up for a copyright violation. There is no way to directly copy the new code back into a BSD project. Yes, you can reimplement the changes yourself, but you could have done just as easily without the GPL hypocrites. And don't even suggest that "I am free to use it if I only change to the GPL". Bull. You might as well say "You are free to use it if you let me kill you." It simply is not a choice, it's an ultimatum.
> But the GPL camp is giving back. Their just not doing it in a way that suits *you*.
How is this different from a commercial company who takes GPL code, makes a commercial product with it, and then charges you a million dollars and requires you to sign an NDA for the privilege of getting the code? See, you can get the code! See, they are giving back! It just isn't in a way that suits *you*, isn't it? And if this happened, Stallman would cry bloody murder. And don't bring up that the above scenario violates the GPL; yes, it does, but that's not the point. The point here is political, not a legal one, and is simply that the GPL camp can't say that closing up the code is immoral without applying that label to themselves for that very action.
> Really now, why should you care what someone says?
> What's the big deal? Get a grip, son.
The big deal is that people listen to those GPL fanatics saying how their code is more "free" and then go and release their projects under the GPL without understanding all the issues. When people are duped into going to the GPL camp, the BSD camp fails to gain code that we could have used. Since one of the reasons for having free software is to be able to build on other people's work, this really is a big deal.
> There's no hypocrisy in that. Anyone can use the changes that where GPL'd,
> but you just have to adhere to the GPL
Exactly! But because I can not adhere to the GPL, I can not use those changes. You are simply engaging in pointless wordplay here. It's like giving me a "choice" of giving you a million dollars or dying. It really isn't a choice at all if I have to do as you tell me.
> They can use their code - they just can't release it under BSD.
That's the point.
> I don't get it - if the GPL is bad for making it so that code can't be released
> under BSD, why are BSD people moaning that they don't want their code released under GPL?
Like I already said, we are not moaning that we don't want our code released under GPL. We are simply pointing out that by locking us out (and you are locking us out because we can't incorporate GPL code into ours without changing to GPL, which I will do over my DEAD BODY), you are no different from proprietary software companies. And then you go around saying how BSD is less free than the GPL, which is what we have a problem with. It's not about the code; it's about politics. What you do by GPL-locking BSD code is hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that, by being unnoticed, encourages people to use GPL for their projects thinking that it makes their code "free".
The point is that we have the GPL camp and we have the BSD camp. The GPL camp takes code from the BSD camp and the BSD camp is not able to merge those changes back into BSD code. The issue here is not that this is a license violation; it is not. BSD people, like me, want other people to use our code. The complaint here is about the hypocrisy of the GPL camp, who claim that they don't want anyone to use their code without giving back the changes, but then turn around and do just that to the BSD people's code. Again, I emphasize that this action is not a problem to us; we want it and we expect it. The problem is with the GPL camp saying how they are somehow "more free".
> Saline water freezes at about -1.8 C btw.
r /temp.html&edu=high for a typical profile. Given that the Atlantic ocean is 3-4km deep, the temperature at the bottom ought to be no lower than 3C or so. So no, your freshwater piping will not freeze at the bottom of the ocean!
o m_Water
While seawater does indeed have a depressed freezing point, that in no way means that the ocean floor is below freezing. Maximum density is still at a temperature higher than 0C, and consequently the ocean temperatures are normally at 2-4C at the bottom. See http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Wate
> Check this out...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Bott
First of all, the article does not say just how cold that layer is (nor, ironically, how dense. WTF is 27?). In the absence of further data I'll assume it is still above zero. Second, it exists only next to the antarctic shelf, and it is safe to say that Rapture is nowhere near it.
> And when you need to teach abstract concepts like "For every action there is an
> equal and opposite reaction" you better be a good teacher since it is non-intuitive.
Oh, come on! Laws of motion are in no way abstract concepts. Each one can be easily demonstrated with something heavy. A few minutes spent tossing around a 20lb medicine ball will easily demonstrate just how hard the darn thing pushes back when you throw it.
> The physics says that there is a force sending the water towards you, even though
> you are swinging the heck out of it. That is completely non-intuitive and requires
> understand the concepts of action and reaction.
It is very intuitive if you realize that that the force sending the water towards you is YOU pulling on the rope. Naturally, if you just sit a kid down and talk about it, he'll be scratching his head trying to figure it out. And that's the basic problem with school in general -- too much lecture, not enough time spent in the real world, interacting with the real world. No kid playing around outside would have any difficulty understanding the laws of motion.
> show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun.
You must mean a nice scientifically-based example like that ice-blocked door in Bioshock, explained by the apparent fact that "the ocean down here is cold as a witch's tit and if you don't heat the pipes, they freeze". I guess that means that the ocean water around Rapture doesn't freeze because there's so much salt in it... I know, I know, it's hard to choose whether to laugh or cry.
> That assumes that the repository is already there.
.svn subdirs. With git, your local repository with your checkout take up less space than a single svn checkout, with no .svns to pollute your tree (which cause problems, for example, if you want to search all your source files for some string)
> was talking about the regular case - a remote repository that you have to set up first.
No, it doesn't. The commands I listed create the repository. The misconception here is that git does not require you to have a remote repository; yours is as valid as any other. Under the git development model you don't have a central repository, you just publish the one you have. I would start a project with a local repository, hack at it for a while, and then, if I wanted to share it with someone I'd push it to a public site like repo.or.cz. The push does take some setting up, since you need the site owner's permission, but no more difficult than, say, publishing a web page.
The fact that you don't have a central repository is a very important advantage to a single developer. If you work under svn privately and want to publish your project on a public site like SourceForge, you have to pack up the repository and upload it there. From then on you are tied to SourceForge and are forced to be online whenever you want to commit or examine history. With git, nothing changes when you publish a repository. Your workflow is exactly the same, since the published version is just a copy; you still own the master repository. If SourceForge goes down, it doesn't affect you much.
One last thing is the space savings. In subversion every checkout has two copies of every file and pollutes your source tree with
> Putting your project in a Subversion repository takes an hour or two
.git/config
Indeed. And putting your project in git takes maybe 30 seconds:
cd project
git init
git add .
git commit
Takes a few more minutes if you want to put it on a public repository:
Go to repo.or.cz and register the project (fill out one short form)
(why aren't there more hosting sites? SourceForge flat out refuses to offer git hosting...)
Add public target url to
git push --all public
Having only recently switched to git from subversion, I'm still in the state of pure awe at how much easier it is to use...
Now if you were nice, and bought a subscription, you wouldn't see any ads either. If everyone did it, then eventually ad-supported content would go extinct and we could all breathe easier.
Give them a speeding ticket, of course. If you can be fined $100 for going 15mph over the speed limit, it is left as an exercise to the reader to estimate the fine for exceeding the speed limit by 2.3 billion miles an hour! I think it ought to be illegal to deprive our cash-strapped government from such an amount of revenue. It may even be considered immoral, if you think of all the starving children so much money could feed.
Some people describe living in the Dymaxion house like living in an airplane. Space is limited, and curved, so you will not be able to use regular furniture. Then there are the aluminum walls, which conduct heat like a giant heatsink.
> What are parthogenic lines?
> Is there a way to derive them other than using eggs?
As a Slashdot reader, I am sure that what you really want to ask is: "can we reproduce without women?". And Dr.Hwang's research has sadly failed to produce an answer to that question so far. Perhaps we should set up a donation site to prod him to research in that direction instead of trying to get women to conceive without men. I am sure that millions of Slashdot readers, and, of course, China, would be immensely grateful should such research be successful.
> Everyone is always bitching about how many patches and bugs are in games,
> and now we've got someone who actually wants to build a great game
We are just all pessimists who believe that no matter how much that someone wants to build a great game, it will have lots of patches and bugs anyway.
> Unless they are worrying about thousands or millions of command-line arguments
Clearly they are thinking of the next version of ls...
Oooh, does the little Davey want to go outside?
It just means you are your own best friend.
> The whole thing will probably unfold much like a zombie film, only in slow motion and with more labored breathing
What a great idea for a video game! We can call it FAT DOOM! I wonder if Carmack would be willing...
Bah, Physicists and their QM simulations! They got it all wrong again. It isn't the length of the graphene ribbon that affects its properties, but the shape of its edges. If you look at benzene ring's molecular orbitals, you'll see that there are two ways to pack them in a ribbon. If they all line up, with resonant transfer going along the ribbon in a straight line, then you have metallic conductivity, with the electron just gliding across all the orbitals without hitting any gaps. If the orbitals don't line up, you end up with little dead ends here and there, which cause "turbulence" and reduce conductivity.
Now, the packing of the orbitals is determined by the edges because of their constraints on orbital orientation. In the middle of the ribbon, you have a pure hex grid, and the orbitals, which can be visualized as taking half of each hex and painting a large C on it (these are not the same as the three bonding pi orbitals). Try it yourself: draw a hex grid and try to pack Cs. To visualize resonance, push on one end of a C and see how to repack the resulting structure. In the middle, you have three orientations at every node, but at the edges you don't. The more edges you have, the more constraints there are on the packing, and the more likely it is that the oribitals in the middle won't be in resonance with each other in a given direction. When you push on a C in such a grid, it will push other Cs sideways instead of along the ribbon, causing "resistance".
There are two types of edges, familiar to tile game developers as the vertical and horizontal orientation. In the horizontal packing, the flat side of each hex is bordering the edge, in the vertical the flat side is perpendicular to the edge. It turns out that if you have horizontal edges on your graphene ribbon, it is metallic; if you have vertical ones, it is semiconductive (which is another way of saying it has more resistance). If the edges are not quite straight, which will quite likely happen if you are making your ribbons via CVD or duct tape or something, you'll see a mix of both behaviors, resulting in a conductivity somewhere in between full-out and almost-nothing.
This is the trouble with modern physics - they just don't care about reality any more. If they only drew a few pictures, like real chemists do, they'd have seen this very easily. Instead they waste their time on simulations that only give them numbers they don't know how to interpret. Sheesh.