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Comment Re:Why Ubuntu?! (Score 1) 208

I'm sure you haven't seen a red boot on a cable in many years!

Check you backend equipment. It is an error catching mechanism. You need to connect the upsteam ports to downstream ports, etc. If they autonegotiate you could connect them wrong and expose your intranet to the internet. If you for some reason want to connect it in a non-standard way you need a crossed cable.

Comment All hail the multi-verse. (Score 1) 199

by goombah99 (#46662465) Attached to: P vs. NP Problem Linked To the Quantum Nature of the Universe

I wonder, if they framed this research another way, if it could solve the question of whether or not the universe is a simulation.

Enough with your silly dichotomies! it's both. In multi-verse theory, there must be some realities in which our universe is a simulation, and ones in which it is not a simulation.

Submission + - Most expensive aviation search: $53 million to find flight MH370 (smh.com.au)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: The search and investigation into missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is already the most expensive in aviation history, figures released to Fairfax Media suggest.

The snippets of costings provide only a small snapshot but the $US50 million ($54 million) spent on the two-year probe into Air France Flight 447 — the previous record — appears to have been easily surpassed after just four weeks....

The biggest expense in the search has involved ships, satellites, planes and submarines deployed first in the South China Sea and the Malacca Straits, and then in the remote reaches of the southern Indian Ocean.

Submission + - P=NP Problem Linked To The Quantum Nature Of The Universe

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: One of the greatest mysteries in science is why we don't see quantum effects on the macroscopic scale; why Schrodinger's famous cat cannot be both alive and dead at the same time. Now one theorist has worked out why and says the answer is because P is NOT equal to NP. Here's the thinking. The equation that describes the state of any quantum object is called Schrodinger's equation. Physicists have always thought it can be used to describe everything in the universe, even large objects and perhaps the universe itself. But the new idea is that this requires an additional assumption--that an efficient algorithm exists to solve the equation for complex macroscopic systems. But is this true? The new approach involves showing that the problem of solving Schrodinger's equation is NP-hard. So if macroscopic superpositions exist, there must be an algorithm that can solve this NP-hard problem quickly and efficiently. And because all NP-hard problems are mathematically equivalent, this algorithm must also be capable of solving all other NP-hard problems too, such as the travelling salesman problem. In other words, NP-hard problems are equivalent to the class of much easier problems called P. Or P=NP. But here's the thing: computational complexity theorists have good reason to think that P is not equal to NP (although they haven't yet proven it). If they're right, then macroscopic superpositions cannot exist, which explains why we do not (and cannot) observe them in the real world. Voila!

Comment Re:So why use trees? (Score 3, Insightful) 112

by goombah99 (#46658575) Attached to: Cheaper Fuel From Self-Destructing Trees

algae has many great aspect. It's achilles heels are 1) separation is very expensive 2) it's hard to get enough C02 into the water to do this at scale 3) it can get infected easily 3) inhomgenous growth requires active stiring or other tricks to bring a pond to harvest all at the same time 4) it's not that fast to grow-- poplars and switch grass are more efficient bio mass producers. Ethanol can be made from waste products too.

The upside of algae is that were starting to learn how to use some of it's byproducts and this offsets the costs. and incremental progress is being made on all these aspects. We haven't been growing algae as long as plants so there's potential headroom to grow. It can grow in seawater. lipids are better fuel than alchohol. And finally it's potentially less energetically expensive to sperarate lipids from water than alchohol from water. That step accounts for something like 1/3 of the cost of ethanol.
Hardware

Video An SSD for Your Current Computer May Save the Cost of a New One (Video) 353

Posted by Roblimo from the breaking-the-i/o-speed-barrier dept.
Obviously, the first performance enhancement you do on any computer you own is max out the RAM. RAM has gotten cheap, and adding more of it to almost any computer will make it faster without requiring any other modification (or any great skill). The next thing you need to do, says Larry O'Connor, the founder and CEO of Other World Computing (OWC), is move from a "platter" hard drive to a Solid State Drive (SSD). Larry's horse in this race is that his company sells SSDs, mostly for Macs. But he's a real evangelist about SSDs and computer mods in general, even if you buy them from NewEgg, Amazon or another vendor.

A big (vendor-neutral) thing Larry points out is that just because you have a Terabyte drive in your computer now doesn't mean you need a Terabyte SSD, which can easily cost $500. Rather, he says, all you need is a large enough SSD to contain your OS and software and whatever data you're working with at the moment, so you might be able to get by with a 120 GB SSD that costs well under $100. Clone your current main drive, stick in the new SSD, and if your need more storage, get another hard drive (or use your old one). Simple. Efficient. And a lot cheaper than buying a new computer, whether we're talking about home, business or even enterprise use. (Alternate video link.)

Comment Re:Bogus (Score 1) 179

by mdsolar (#46649263) Attached to: Vermont Nuclear Plant Seeks Decommission But Lacks Funds
RCP2.6 can't be accomplished with nuclear power: http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C... The question, which you have misunderstood, was about subsidies. Coal is heavily subsidized in terms health costs of sulfur, mercury and particulate pollution. Natural gas is not. Is there a carbon subsidy? In the sense that we are suffering dangerous climate change now, there is. We are making extra payouts for crop insurance and flood insurance for example. But, when it comes to disposal, there is no need since cutting emissions also cuts the concentration below the dangerous threshold. So, there is no disposal subsidy.

Comment Re:The problem (Score 1) 364

by samwichse (#46642581) Attached to: Your Car Will Tell You How To Hit the Next Green Light

I'll leave it at as an exercise of your imagination whether 20 cars going 30mph instead 35 can get through a light faster than 20 cars accelerating from a dead stop.

Because that's what would happen, the first car would run right up to the light and have to stop, and all the other cars would have to brake to a stop behind (or begin to) when the light turned red, they would still have to deal with the standing wave of stopped cars at the light.

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