This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

Ask Rym & Scott - Monday Sci/Tech

edited September 2007 in GeekNights
We're going to do an ask Rym + Scott week. Ask your science and technology related questions here. Make sure to listen to the end of episode 070924 for hints on how to write a question that won't be ignored or laughed at.
«13

Comments

  • edited September 2007
    Could you provide a detailed description of your amazing "make rym and scott sound cleverer" filter? Or how to achieve such an effect?
    Post edited by Omnutia on
  • Can you give your own opinions on Bu Ray vs. HD DVD?
    I would think using the codec of HDDVD combined with the disc space of Blu Ray would be ideal but meh...  I'll wait.
    I missed the boat on Linux, is Ubuntu the version that you recommend to dual boot with Vista?  Are Steam games the only thing you have to go back to Windows for?
    How long do you think Japan will stay ahead of the world in technology? 
    It was quite surprising when I visited it, even the toilet seats were electronic!  They were quite ahead of Australia technologically and I can imagine probably the same with the US and definately further ahead than the UK, the UK like 10 years behind the rest of the world, people still use cheques and are scared to buy stuff off the internet.  (A greater majority of the population, it's not a blanket statement obviously.)
    Have you ever been violent with each other?
    Do you torrent any comics?
    What would be your ideal electronic reading device - books, comics, video, photos?
    What companies do you work for currently and do you change often?
    I really need a desktop or laptop as soon as possible should I just pick up a laptop that can play Bioshock and wait till the most recent CPU war has finished (whoever wins out of AMD and Intel for the quad core chips) to build my awesome desktop machine?
    Did you ever do the old school overclocking of CPUs and video cards; Did you think Dell would ever eventually walk down the path of overclocking for their customers?
  • Favourite 5 current ongoing podcasts
  • Do those "penis pills" I get email offers for really work?
  • When getting a fresh Windows box up to Rym/Scott standards, what apps are the first you install? (e.g. - which word processor, image editor, security software, miscellaneous utility, etc?)



    How about that same question for a fresh Linux (I assume Ubuntu) box?
  • edited September 2007
    In general, please exlain this frozen light phenomenon.

    Many products today are made with nanoparticles, such as khakis that are stain and wrinkle resisitant. What is your opinion of nanotech in general and do you think we will ever see nanotech like Michael Crichton describes in his novel Prey?

    Why does a mirror appear to invert the left-right directions, but not up-down?

    Related (kinda) question: Why are the laws of physics not symmetrical between left and right, future and past, and between matter and antimatter? I.e., what is the mechanism of CP violation, and what is the origin of parity violation in Weak interactions? Are there right-handed Weak currents too weak to have been detected so far? If so, what broke the symmetry? Is CP violation explicable entirely within the Standard Model, or is some new force or mechanism required?

    Why are the strengths of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak and strong forces, and gravity) what they are? For example, why is the fine structure constant, that measures the strength of electromagnetism, about 1/137.036? Where do such dimensionless constants come from? Or is this an unanswerable question?

    What is the resistance between various pairs of vertices on a lattice
    of unit resistors in the shape of a
    1. Cube,
    2. Platonic solid,
    3. N dimensional Hypercube,
    4. Infinite square lattice,
    and
    5. between two small terminals on a continuous sheet?

    Why is there an arrow of time; that is, why is the future so much different from the past?

    Do black holes really exist? (It sure seems like it.) Do they really radiate energy and evaporate the way Hawking predicts? If so, what happens when, after a finite amount of time, they radiate completely away? What's left? Do black holes really violate all conservation laws except conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum and electric charge? What happens to the information contained in an object that falls into a black hole? Is it lost when the black hole evaporates? Does this require a modification of quantum mechanics?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • Would you guys recommend a Mac to other people?
    In what program on a computer do you prefer to listen to music or watch video in?
  • This one might be a little out there but do you guys believe that humanity will eventually be able to live in other planets?
  • In no particular order:

    What is your take on multivitamins? Are they fluff? Do we need them, or are we getting everything we need from a proper, well-balanced diet?

    You mentioned before about how bad the aluminum in deodorant is and recommended the natural kind. I couldn't find this at the local grocery store the last time I went, do you have a link or the name of the brand you use that you could share?

    I have a hardware raid and I never could install Ubuntu outside of VMware because there wasn't any drivers for the controller that I could find. I did however come across some source code, but I have no idea how to compile it/what to do with it, and that would require previous Linux knowledge, which was why I wanted to install it in the first place, so I could learn how to use it. Is there any other option around this, or should I just stick with emulation?

    How far off do you think we are from a world like that in the Ghost in the Shell universe? What, if any, cyber enhancements would you guys get installed?

    If you guys had a choice of any one "hard" science to study and get into, no matter how broad or specialized, which one would you pick and why?
  • What do you think is the biggest technological problem humans will face in the coming years?
  • What are some important non-tech skills in a tech world/job/school ?
  • edited September 2007
    What do you think about a (the?) technological singularity? Is it possible? Will we reach it? If so, in our lifetime?

    EDIT:
    Ooh! Ooh! Pick me for physics!
    In general, please exlain this frozen light phenomenon.
    ***So at normal temperatures, atoms jump around a lot, really fast. Also, according to Heisenberg, we can't know exactly their location and momentum. Theoretically, if you cooled something to absolute zero, you could look at the atoms' position, and you know their velocity; it's at absolute zero. So when you get REALLY close to absolute zero, matter tends to collapse into this weird "Bose-Einstein condensate" stuff that has some very weird properties.

    Enough about BECs. Light goes 3.00 * 10^8 m/s in a vacuum. It is slower in everything else. Passing through the interface is what refracts light. Generally, the denser it is, the more it refracts. Unfortunately, the really dense stuff (lead, uranium, iridium, etc.) just blocks light. So whatever this condensate is, it's super-cold, so I think it has to be therefore pretty dense. It must allow some light through, so my guess is that it slows down the photons enough to catch them with their laser-whatever-contraption.
    Why does a mirror appear to invert the left-right directions, but not up-down?
    Because light reflects straight off of a flat mirror. Left stays on the left, right stays on the right, top stays on top, and bottom stays on bottom. The same reason left and right get inverted when you stand behind a person as opposed to looking at their front.
    Why are the strengths of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak and strong forces, and gravity) what they are? For example, why is the fine structure constant, that measures the strength of electromagnetism, about 1/137.036? Where do such dimensionless constants come from? Or is this an unanswerable question?
    Hmm, not really sure. The best I can give you is that all these strengths have to be something, but that's not really a reason why. We can measure them, but that doesn't tell us anything about why they are what they are.


    ***WARNING: This section is missing citations, and may come from unverifiable sources. Please help Foxipedia by adding sources. I am going off of what I learned (a while ago) in physics classes, and making educated guesses as to what I think. I am not a physicist. I could be 1000% wrong.
    Post edited by Starfox on
  • Why does a mirror appear to invert the left-right directions, but not up-down?
    Because light reflects straight off of a flat mirror. Left stays on the left, right stays on the right, top stays on top, and bottom stays on bottom. The same reason left and right get inverted when you stand behind a person as opposed to looking at their front.
    That one is incomplete. At least, it's the only one I can say for sure it's incomplete. The problem lies in the brain. If you look at someone, and they look back at you, and you both raise your left arm, you see that the other's left arm is on your right. Now replace said person with a mirror. So you are now looking yourself in the face. If you now lift your left arm again, your brain goes "WTF!?!?" for your reflection just reflects what you do, but because your brain thinks the reflections other arm should lift, it is confused. And thus it looks 'inverted'. Even though it's not inverted. The brain is just weird like that.

    My idea of that mirror question. I too could be wrong of course, but I feel I'm pretty close.

    I too am not a physicist, or a biologist. I am also just making educated guesses and deductions from what I've learned in class. Please don't help Ninepedia by adding sources, we do not like to be proven wrong. Though of course you may try...
  • edited October 2007
    Can you go over utilizing Newton's method for iteratively solving a system of non-linear equations? What about finding the optimizers for a set of non-linear equations (i.e finding the maxima and minima of a non-linear function within some set boundaries D which constrains the function)? Can you go over how to find the minimum distance between two spheres in R3?

    What is the best way for me to programmatically implement an Ant Colony Optimization of an NP-Hard problem such as the Traveling Salesman Problem? What data structure would be best in representing a weighted graph?

    How did the native Americans treat trade with the Europeans when they first made contact? In what ways did the two cultures differ in trading technology and how did this trade practice affect the dissemination of technology among the Native Americans? Please include specific references to the Algonquian tribes dependance on the French technology and their ideals of besoins.
    Post edited by Andrew on
  • Theoretically, if you cooled something to absolute zero, you could look at the atoms' position, and you know their velocity; it's at absolute zero.
    Doesn't the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle state that as you increase the precision of your measurement of position, you lose accuracy of the the particle's velocity and vice versa?
  • edited September 2007
    For integers n such that n > 2, does the equation an + bn = cn have any solutions in non-zero integers a, b, and c? Prove it.

    Can every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes? If so, prove it.

    Will there ever be a working quantum computer?
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • If you were going to try to design a Linux-based virus, how would you go about it?

    Why is the world we live in today so different from the "world of the future" that all the old sci-fi authors wrote about? Pocket supercomputers are nice and all, but I was really looking forward to space colonies and personal hovercars. :)
  • How has technology changed the way we have and experience sex? How do you perceive it changing in the future?
  • Can every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes? If so, prove it.
    I was about to try to attempt this using Strong Induction until I realized it's Goldbach's conjecture and it has not proof.
  • P = NP? Why do you think so?
    Theoretically, if you cooled something to absolute zero, you could look at the atoms' position, and you know their velocity; it's at absolute zero.
    Doesn't the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle state that as you increase the precision of your measurement of position, you lose accuracy of the the particle's velocity and vice versa?
    It does. That's why I said theoretically. It collapses into the condensate to prevent this, and then there's all kinds of shady business going on.
  • Bluetooth and A,B,G,N wireless network.
  • Bluetooth and A,B,G,N wireless network.
    Right here.
  • In his book, The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke described the construction of a "space elevator":



    What do you think of this idea?
  • I know it's possible, but is it practical to build a Linux based home file server that goes to standby or hibernate when not in use, and use the Wake on LAN function when it is needed again? I plan to build a server from old computer parts, and want to reduce power consumption and extend the life of the hard drives (preferably in RAID).

    This would be my first real Linux project. Is the hibernation/wake on LAN thing too complex for a noob? The articles I find online could be interpreted that way.
  • Wow...

    As an intermediate computer user, I've never gotten into using Linux. What's the best way to keep my current PC functionality, but try out Linux?
  • As an intermediate computer user, I've never gotten into using Linux. What's the best way to keep my current PC functionality, but try out Linux?
    Live CD/DVD and dual boot. I'm using a dual boot Ubuntu-XP. It's awesome.
  • See, that really doesn't tell me anything. I think a bit more specific info would help me and maybe a few other folks who haven't ventured into the Linux world.
  • edited September 2007
    Explain how this Invisibility Cloak works.

    Note: It actually does work. The link goes to a Scientific American article.
    Post edited by HungryJoe on
  • I think a bit more specific info would help me and maybe a few other folks who haven't ventured into the Linux world.
    All you have to do is download the ISO, put it in your CD drive and reboot. If you boot from the disc it will have several options. Choose the one that says something like live cd or try Ubuntu. It will then boot you into the linux environment and you can use the full Ubuntu without changing anything on your hard drive.
Sign In or Register to comment.