Oh. Thats Cliff Stoll's site. He is the astronomer who tracked a German spy 
hacking into US military networks from his computer center at Lawrence 
Berkeley Labs in 1985. He's a real freak. The book about the hacking 
incident is really interesting reading.
http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226428067&sr=8-1

but after that he adopted a very skewed attitude regarding the Internet and 
what it would or should become.

-- 

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
> > The second law has something to do with entropy. Why is everyone so 
> > concerned with entropy?

> Because it's a statistical rule, not an absolute. So people are 
> constantly trying to prove a way they've invented to get around it, 
> leading to free energy.

  I thought free energy was related to the first law, not the second.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Mike Raiford wrote:
>>> The second law has something to do with entropy. Why is everyone so 
>>> concerned with entropy?
> 
>> Because it's a statistical rule, not an absolute. So people are 
>> constantly trying to prove a way they've invented to get around it, 
>> leading to free energy.
> 
>   I thought free energy was related to the first law, not the second.

Only in closed systems. If you can suck useful work out of ambient air 
temperature, that counts as "free" energy in the "gratis" "no-cost" sense.

That is, it's in the same sense that running your car on solar energy is 
"free energy", even tho obviously the sun is supplying the energy and is 
running down much faster than your car is speeding up.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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>>   I thought free energy was related to the first law, not the second.
> 
> Only in closed systems. If you can suck useful work out of ambient air 
> temperature, that counts as "free" energy in the "gratis" "no-cost" sense.
> 
> That is, it's in the same sense that running your car on solar energy is 
> "free energy", even tho obviously the sun is supplying the energy and is 
> running down much faster than your car is speeding up.

Dude, don't forget zero-point energy. One day somebody's going to figure 
out how to harness that and we'll all have limitless amounts of energy 
for nothing!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Dude, don't forget zero-point energy. One day somebody's going to figure 
> out how to harness that and we'll all have limitless amounts of energy 
> for nothing!

I am told by people with PhDs in theoretical particle physics that this 
is not theoretically impossible. Zero-point energy is apparently not 
subject to the same conservation laws, so *if* you could actually get it 
out, you'd be golden. Way over my head, tho.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Dude, don't forget zero-point energy. One day somebody's going to 
>> figure out how to harness that and we'll all have limitless amounts of 
>> energy for nothing!
> 
> I am told by people with PhDs in theoretical particle physics that this 
> is not theoretically impossible. Zero-point energy is apparently not 
> subject to the same conservation laws, so *if* you could actually get it 
> out, you'd be golden. Way over my head, tho.

Interesting. The definition of "zero-point energy" is the minimum energy 
state of the system, such that it is impossible to reduce it to a lower 
energy state.

Therefore, by definition, if you *can* actually access the energy then 
it isn't actually zero-point energy. :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Dude, don't forget zero-point energy. One day somebody's going to figure 
> out how to harness that and we'll all have limitless amounts of energy 
> for nothing!

  Will then a gravity gun be possible?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Dude, don't forget zero-point energy. One day somebody's going to figure 
>> out how to harness that and we'll all have limitless amounts of energy 
>> for nothing!
> 
>   Will then a gravity gun be possible?

Unlikely.

Maybe you could use zero-point energy as an energy source. But that 
still doesn't give you the ability to artificially generate forces like 
that. (Not to mention overcome Newton's Third Law of Motion...)

Alternatively, maybe you could find a way to generate forces like that, 
but it's powered by batteries or something, and so you have no need for 
zero-point energy.

IOW, zero-point energy and the gravity gun don't actually have much 
relationship.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Interesting. The definition of "zero-point energy" is the minimum energy 
> state of the system, such that it is impossible to reduce it to a lower 
> energy state.

Right. But the reason it's the minimum level is due to the Heisenberg 
uncertainty, not because you can't take any out. It's not a 
one-dimensional quantum effect, but a quantum of two combined quantities 
(like all such things when you get to the appropriate level of detail).

> Therefore, by definition, if you *can* actually access the energy then 
> it isn't actually zero-point energy. :-D

But since it doesn't obey conservation laws, you take the energy out and 
yet it's still there.  That's kind of the point.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> IOW, zero-point energy and the gravity gun don't actually have much 
> relationship.

I wasn't aware anyone had actually figured that out. :-)  As in, I was 
pretty sure that quantum gravity was one of the big unsolved mysteries.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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