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Submission + - Currently Quantum computers might be where Rockets were at the time of Goddard (nextbigfuture.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: If quantum computing is at the Goddard level that would be a good thing for quantum computing. This means that the major fundamental breakthrough that would put them over the top was in hand and merely a lot of investment, engineering and scaling was needed.

The goal of being able to solve NP-hard or NP-Complete problems with quantum computers is similar to being able to travel to the moon, mars or deeper into space with rockets. Conventional flight could not achieve those goals because of the lack of atmosphere in space. Current computing seems like they are very limited in being able to tackle NP-hard and NP Complete problems. Although clever work in advanced mathematics and approximations can give answers that are close on a case by case basis.

Comment Free trade with non-free countries? (Score 5, Interesting) 97

by mi (#50191185) Attached to: Trillion-Dollar World Trade Deal Aims To Make IT Products Cheaper

I doubt, free trade with non-free countries is beneficial to humanity. Though one can argue, that it makes such non-free countries more free, it is not at all evident, that that's what happened to China, for example.

Meanwhile, the US is gradually losing freedoms as there appear more and more things we aren't allowed to do or even say, and the list of places requiring identification is growing.

Submission + - State Of Georgia Sues for Copyright Infringement For Publishing The State's Laws (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The state of Georgia has sued sued Carl Malamud and his site Public.Resource.org. It is about as ridiculous as you would expect focusing on the highly questionable claim that the Official Code of Georgia Annotated is covered by federal copyright law — and that not only was Malamud (*gasp*) distributing it, but also... creating derivative works! Oh no! And, he's such an evil person that he was encouraging others to do so as well!

Submission + - You Have a Constitutional Right to Buy and Sell Sex (reason.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Our hope in the lawsuit is to have the anti-prostitution law overturned as unconstitutional and invalidated in the state of California," says Maxine Doogan, a working prostitute and president of the Erotic Service Provider Legal, Education, and Research Project (ESPLER), a group that has filed a lawsuit against California's attorney general and several mayors. "We don't have equal protection under the law."

Reason TV's video breaks down the legal arguments underlying ESPLER's lawsuit with the help of legal expert and former California Supervising Deputy Attorney General Jerald L. Mosley. The case leans heavily on the precedent set by Lawrence v. Texas to argue that sexual privacy warrants protection under the 14th Amendment and also makes First Amendment arguments regarding freedom of association and, more specifically, "freedom to date."

Submission + - The National Security Agency require Adobe Flash (nsa.gov)

Submitted by forgotmylogin
forgotmylogin writes: I felt a ripple of cognitive dissonance when I saw that the NSA, who is categorically tasked with information security in the United State, requires Adobe Flash on its gateway. Really--NSA endorses Abode Flash Player? Is this a NSA troll?

Submission + - Stretchable Conducting Fiber Provides Super Hero Capabilities (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The list of potential applications for a new electrically conducting fiber-artificial muscles, exoskeletons and morphing aircraft-sounds like something out of science fiction or a comic book. With a list like that, it's got to be a pretty special fiber... and it is. The fiber, made from sheets of carbon nanotubes wrapped around a rubber core, can be stretched to 14 times its original length and actually increase its electrical conductivity while being stretched, without losing any of its resistance.

Submission + - Metal Foam: radiation shielding that's lighter and twice as effective as Alumin (kurzweilai.net)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: North Carolina State University researchers have found that lightweight composite metal foams they had developed are effective at blocking X-rays, gamma rays, and neutron radiation, and are capable of absorbing the energy of high-impact collisions. The finding holds promise for use in nuclear power plants, space exploration, and CT-scanner shielding.

This work means there's an opportunity to use composite metal foam to develop safer systems for transporting nuclear waste, more efficient designs for spacecraft and nuclear structures, and new shielding for use in CT scanners

Submission + - Nanostructured Glass Can Switch Between Blocking Heat and Blocking Light (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Electrochromic glass essentially uses electric charge to switch a window from allowing sunlight in to blocking it out. Some have estimated that such "smart windows" could cut lighting needs by about 20 percent and the cooling load by 25 percent at peak times.

Now researchers at the University of Texas Austin have found a way to make them even better. They developed a novel nanostructure architecture for electrochromic materials that enables a highly selective cool mode and warm mode-something thought to be impossible a few years back.

Submission + - SOLVING THE BLOOD SHORTAGE BY draining the dead? (realclearscience.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Roughly 15 million pints of blood are donated each year by approximately 9.2 million individuals. Over the course of the same year, about 2.6 million Americans will — sadly — pass away. If hospitals were to harvest the blood from a third of those people, roughly 4.5 million liters would be added to the reservoir. . . . Draining the blood from a body is hardly out of the ordinary; it's actually a regular part of the embalming process. To prepare a dead body for funeral services and eventual burial or cremation, morticians pump out all of the blood and interstitial fluids and replace them with an embalming solution, typically containing formaldehyde and methanol. Would it not make more sense to remove the blood at the hospital soon after death, rather than let it all go to waste?

Submission + - The Rise of Computer-Aided Explanation (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Imagine it’s the 1950s and you’re in charge of one of the world’s first electronic computers. A company approaches you and says: “We have 10 million words of French text that we’d like to translate into English. We could hire translators, but is there some way your computer could do the translation automatically?”

At this time, computers are still a novelty, and no one has ever done automated translation. But you decide to attempt it. You write a program that examines each sentence and tries to understand the grammatical structure. It looks for verbs, the nouns that go with the verbs, the adjectives modifying nouns, and so on. With the grammatical structure understood, your program converts the sentence structure into English and uses a French-English dictionary to translate individual words.

For several decades, most computer translation systems used ideas along these lines — long lists of rules expressing linguistic structure. But in the late 1980s, a team from IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., tried a radically different approach. They threw out almost everything we know about language — all the rules about verb tenses and noun placement — and instead created a statistical model.

Submission + - Remote control of a car, with no phone or network connection required

Submitted by Albanach
Albanach writes: Following on from this week's Wired report showing the remote control of a Jeep using a cell phone, security researchers claim to have achieved a similar result using just the car radio. Using off the shelf components to create a fake radio station, the researchers sent signals using the DAB digital radio standard used in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. After taking control of the car's entertainment system it was possible to gain control of vital car systems such as the brakes. In the wild, such an exploit could allow widespread simultaneous deployment of a hack affecting huge numbers of vehicles.

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