I think it's a good thing. You can buy a solution from IBM and they can implement it for you too. You get the whole deal.
When you buy a car you expect them to at least kick the tyres, tax it, and give you a tank of petrol. Without a services division, hardware vendors can't do the equivalent.
Don't forget IBM are already in this space - their Global Services arm delivers about a quarter of their revenue. I'm slightly mystified as to how they feel the monkeys at PwC will add any value to IGS - except that there's now one less competitor.
My laptop, along with 802.11 setup, makes a decent entertainment system in EVERY room in the house (and the garden, although I do have problems with sunlight [when I don't have problems with rain:-) ] ).
It's handy (obviously), attractive (small black thing with sexy flat panel display), and does most things pretty well (Radeon is OK for 3D games, and there's an inbuilt DVD and CD-RW.)
Plus, it has SVGA out for those occasions where you do want to use the big TV - and when you are doing that, the Clie solves the problem of multiple remote controls. I am lacking a wireless keyboard and mouse, because the range on most of them is only a couple of metres which isn't quite enough in a big Victorian house.
Integration of all the software is of course a nightmare, under both of the installed operating systems.
One of the problems is, of course, that if the entire "people with a clue" industry is jailed, you are left with a bunch of "people without a clue" trying to run all the high-tech infrastructure.
Are you familiar with the telco multinational "British Telecom?":-)
You forgot to mention the vast right-wing conspiracy to disprove the theory of evolution. Fundamentalist Christians purchase bible-thumping politicians and force them to pass laws to prevent natural selection. Once this results in an America which has regressed to the point where it is inhabited only by slack-jawed droolmeisters, they will declare victory.
Clearly the plan is proceeding satisfactorily. They have already acheived this in some localities, notably the Whitehouse.
It is at this point, ladies and gentlemen, that communication technology stops empowering the masses, and gives the wealthy yet another tool to consolodate and defend their power.
You have made an implicit assumption that quantum crypto will still be prohibitively expensive in 20-30 years' time.
So IMHO you're correct - only those who can afford QC will be able to use it - in the same way that today only those who can afford it have a TV.
BT to create UK's first Public Access Wireless LAN network, it says here. Apparently they are expecting the UK Radio Agency to allow reselling of 802.11b Real Soon Now, and are going to build something with Cisco and Motorola.
First, there are plenty of random events in this Universe. Radioactive decay of individual particles is a good example. Second, subatomic particles do appear and disappear (quantum foam anybody?). Normally this is only for a short time, but there are exceptions such as Hawking radiation at event horizons.
Third, and most importantly, the "rules of physics" do not apply to collections of universes, because the laws to which you refer describe behaviour within closed systems in _this_ universe only. Not other universes, and certainly not the behaviour of universes in general.
I refer you to Schrodinger and Tiddles on the subject of an absolute future and past.
Your last paragraph is interesting though - I guess that's one way to remove the possibility of paradox.
If you could only travel back in time to spatial locations where your starting point is outside the light cone of your end point, there's no way information could be exchanged between your past selves. ("Starting point" and "end point" refer to your time-travel journey, so the "end" is actually earlier in time than the "start.")
My head aches.
Zack
Re:From the article...
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
Is it possible to send a long-lived low speed probe like Voyager to Alpha Centairi? I wonder if after 40,000 years when the probe arrives at alpha centauri, it could send it's radio signals back to earth. Then the signals would be recieved by a time machine, which would in turn transport them back to our time. So you in effect have a fast intersteller flight while only sending out a cheap probe going 30,000 MPH.
Well, I see no paradox there, -provided- that the time machine sends signals back to a point in time four years after probe launch. (Because the alpha centuri system is approx 4ly away.) As you say, the win is that you only need interplanetary-speed probe technology to get the probe there.
I can see one difficulty: as someone else in this thread has pointed out, neutrons are all pretty much identical, and not really suitable for transmitting information. I guess we'd need to make this work for leptons before we could achieve anything useful.
I'd tend to think of all this stuff as moving things around in space-time rather than actual time-travel. You're just subtracting from the t co-ordinate rather than adding to x, y, or z, which we're more used to thinking about.
The question is whether sending the data back through time will use any less energy than accelerating the probe to near light-speed would...
Note: IANAP, but I do have half a physics degree from 10 years back.
Regarding your other conjectures, there's a Greg Egan short story of the usual high quality where citizens are allocated a few hundred bytes a day of inter-temporal bandwidth, which they use to send a "diary" back to their junior selves. Unfortunately I cannot recall the name of the story and I am in the office right now so I can't look it up. I'll reply to this from home with the title if nobody else has filled the gap by then...
Additionally, wormholes play a key part in Egan's novel "Diaspora".
though, based on engine speed and knowing what gear you're in, the computer could calculate and drive the speedo/odo to display accurate speed and mileage.
...except when you're riding the clutch accelerating hard. Then the car will think you're doing 6000 revs in third when in actual fact you've just come out of second. Then, your mileage would most definitely vary.
It's not just the manufacturer that's interested in whether the car has been modified. When I signed my insurance agreement, I formally agreed with the statement that the vehicle had -not- been modified.
I have a Seat TDI, and as a VAG car I could pretty much buy a new EMC in the supermarket down the road, but I ain't gonna, for two reasons.
1/ I wouldn't be insured. When I'm paying £700 pounds a year for the privilege, I want to be damn sure there's a payout if I do have to claim. [I'm in the UK, where the car insurance market is notoriously shoddy. YMMV, if you will pardon the strangely appropriate TLA.]
2/ VW have spent a lot of time and effort balancing emissions and performance and achieving miracles in both arenas. I would have bought a Caterham 7 if I wanted to play silly buggers.
I hack with just about everything else, but I want to be sure that 3000lbs of steel and aluminium goes where I want it, when I want it, and I'm not going to have any nasty surprises at 110^H^H^H70 mph.
Or, Google could simply transfer operations to a non-US country and tell anybody using DMCA against them to stuff it up their engrams.
I've read half of Dianetics three times, but never quite managed to make it all the way through, usually due to injuries sustained falling off my reading armchair laughing.
This is good, in that it will cut down unnecessary journeys considerably, and hopefully do for the school run once and for all.
But what about those of us with necessary journeys? I do take the train to the office occasionally, and it would be a damn site more often if it was a more pleasant experience. (And more timely, I may add.) Unfortunately, as a UK denizen I don't see that happening any time soon. And that's the real problem.
(Okay, old physics puzzle: disregarding air resistance, how will two pennies behave with respect to each other if you throw down one, and then the second a tenth of a second later? Answer: they will grow farther and farther apart, and the speed of the first will at one point be more than a million miles per second faster than the speed of the second!)
A million miles per second? That's some gravity well. What are we dropping these into, a neutron star?
Or are these pennies of the Elbonian currency, the tachyon?
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I think it's a good thing. You can buy a solution from IBM and they can implement it for you too. You get the whole deal.
When you buy a car you expect them to at least kick the tyres, tax it, and give you a tank of petrol. Without a services division, hardware vendors can't do the equivalent.
Don't forget IBM are already in this space - their Global Services arm delivers about a quarter of their revenue. I'm slightly mystified as to how they feel the monkeys at PwC will add any value to IGS - except that there's now one less competitor.
My laptop, along with 802.11 setup, makes a decent entertainment system in EVERY room in the house (and the garden, although I do have problems with sunlight [when I don't have problems with rain :-) ] ).
It's handy (obviously), attractive (small black thing with sexy flat panel display), and does most things pretty well (Radeon is OK for 3D games, and there's an inbuilt DVD and CD-RW.)
Plus, it has SVGA out for those occasions where you do want to use the big TV - and when you are doing that, the Clie solves the problem of multiple remote controls. I am lacking a wireless keyboard and mouse, because the range on most of them is only a couple of metres which isn't quite enough in a big Victorian house.
Integration of all the software is of course a nightmare, under both of the installed operating systems.
Zack
Nice summary of the dangers of broken legislation. Hello, DMCA (and RIP in the UK, of course.)
One of the problems is, of course, that if the entire "people with a clue" industry is jailed, you are left with a bunch of "people without a clue" trying to run all the high-tech infrastructure.
:-)
Are you familiar with the telco multinational "British Telecom?"
I volunteer for the Salvation Army several times a month, helping to feed and house the homeless.
You work with organised religion and you think that's a -good- thing?
Indeed it does have to go somewhere, but I'd vote for somewhere seismically stable, personally...
We've (UK) got a boatload of the stuff coming back from Japan on the slow boat right now.
[BTW I live about 50 miles from Windscale / Sellafield and 5 miles from a PWR, so I'm pretty relaxed about the whole thing - I have to be.]
"But there was no reason for the coffee to be at eight hundred degrees either"
It's a hot beverage, you idiot. There's every reason for it to be hot.
You forgot to mention the vast right-wing conspiracy to disprove the theory of evolution. Fundamentalist Christians purchase bible-thumping politicians and force them to pass laws to prevent natural selection. Once this results in an America which has regressed to the point where it is inhabited only by slack-jawed droolmeisters, they will declare victory.
Clearly the plan is proceeding satisfactorily. They have already acheived this in some localities, notably the Whitehouse.
It might be 28kbps, but it's low-latency and an always-on connection. That counts for a lot.
Wow. Where do you get 802.11 cards that work at minus 45?
Your link to MOND doesn't really explain WHY Newtonian physics may not hold for extremely low accelerations, it just talks a lot of maths.
Is this something to do with "quantum friction?" (Virtual particles actually impeding the motion of real particles.)
Zack
It is at this point, ladies and gentlemen, that communication technology stops empowering the masses, and gives the wealthy yet another tool to consolodate and defend their power.
You have made an implicit assumption that quantum crypto will still be prohibitively expensive in 20-30 years' time.
So IMHO you're correct - only those who can afford QC will be able to use it - in the same way that today only those who can afford it have a TV.
IIRC, Verwaayen said just that in his first week, and hence the sudden broadband feeding frenzy.
Has anyone else read the Mobility Strategy Statement which came out on Wednesday?
BT to create UK's first Public Access Wireless LAN network, it says here. Apparently they are expecting the UK Radio Agency to allow reselling of 802.11b Real Soon Now, and are going to build something with Cisco and Motorola.
Zack
OK, I'll bite.
First, there are plenty of random events in this Universe. Radioactive decay of individual particles is a good example. Second, subatomic particles do appear and disappear (quantum foam anybody?). Normally this is only for a short time, but there are exceptions such as Hawking radiation at event horizons.
Third, and most importantly, the "rules of physics" do not apply to collections of universes, because the laws to which you refer describe behaviour within closed systems in _this_ universe only. Not other universes, and certainly not the behaviour of universes in general.
I refer you to Schrodinger and Tiddles on the subject of an absolute future and past.
Your last paragraph is interesting though - I guess that's one way to remove the possibility of paradox.
If you could only travel back in time to spatial locations where your starting point is outside the light cone of your end point, there's no way information could be exchanged between your past selves. ("Starting point" and "end point" refer to your time-travel journey, so the "end" is actually earlier in time than the "start.")
My head aches.
Zack
Is it possible to send a long-lived low speed probe like Voyager to Alpha Centairi? I wonder if after 40,000 years when the probe arrives at alpha centauri, it could send it's radio signals back to earth. Then the signals would be recieved by a time machine, which would in turn transport them back to our time. So you in effect have a fast intersteller flight while only sending out a cheap probe going 30,000 MPH.
Well, I see no paradox there, -provided- that the time machine sends signals back to a point in time four years after probe launch. (Because the alpha centuri system is approx 4ly away.) As you say, the win is that you only need interplanetary-speed probe technology to get the probe there.
I can see one difficulty: as someone else in this thread has pointed out, neutrons are all pretty much identical, and not really suitable for transmitting information. I guess we'd need to make this work for leptons before we could achieve anything useful.
I'd tend to think of all this stuff as moving things around in space-time rather than actual time-travel. You're just subtracting from the t co-ordinate rather than adding to x, y, or z, which we're more used to thinking about.
The question is whether sending the data back through time will use any less energy than accelerating the probe to near light-speed would...
Note: IANAP, but I do have half a physics degree from 10 years back.
Regarding your other conjectures, there's a Greg Egan short story of the usual high quality where citizens are allocated a few hundred bytes a day of inter-temporal bandwidth, which they use to send a "diary" back to their junior selves. Unfortunately I cannot recall the name of the story and I am in the office right now so I can't look it up. I'll reply to this from home with the title if nobody else has filled the gap by then...
Additionally, wormholes play a key part in Egan's novel "Diaspora".
Zack
though, based on engine speed and knowing what gear you're in, the computer could calculate and drive the speedo/odo to display accurate speed and mileage.
...except when you're riding the clutch accelerating hard. Then the car will think you're doing 6000 revs in third when in actual fact you've just come out of second. Then, your mileage would most definitely vary.
Or worse, it's an automatic.
10,000 below is easy if you have one of those white Lotus Elises...
It's not just the manufacturer that's interested in whether the car has been modified. When I signed my insurance agreement, I formally agreed with the statement that the vehicle had -not- been modified.
I have a Seat TDI, and as a VAG car I could pretty much buy a new EMC in the supermarket down the road, but I ain't gonna, for two reasons.
1/ I wouldn't be insured. When I'm paying £700 pounds a year for the privilege, I want to be damn sure there's a payout if I do have to claim. [I'm in the UK, where the car insurance market is notoriously shoddy. YMMV, if you will pardon the strangely appropriate TLA.]
2/ VW have spent a lot of time and effort balancing emissions and performance and achieving miracles in both arenas. I would have bought a Caterham 7 if I wanted to play silly buggers.
I hack with just about everything else, but I want to be sure that 3000lbs of steel and aluminium goes where I want it, when I want it, and I'm not going to have any nasty surprises at 110^H^H^H70 mph.
Zack
These hot rock procedures have much much much lower yields, but people are slowly figuring out how to build amino acids through them.
Amazingly, the amino acids figured out how to build people several million years ago.
On my widescreen TV?
I'd buy that for a dollar. Or even two hundred dollars.
Or, Google could simply transfer operations to a non-US country and tell anybody using DMCA against them to stuff it up their engrams.
I've read half of Dianetics three times, but never quite managed to make it all the way through, usually due to injuries sustained falling off my reading armchair laughing.
This is good, in that it will cut down unnecessary journeys considerably, and hopefully do for the school run once and for all.
But what about those of us with necessary journeys? I do take the train to the office occasionally, and it would be a damn site more often if it was a more pleasant experience. (And more timely, I may add.) Unfortunately, as a UK denizen I don't see that happening any time soon. And that's the real problem.
Zack
(Okay, old physics puzzle: disregarding air resistance, how will two pennies behave with respect to each other if you throw down one, and then the second a tenth of a second later? Answer: they will grow farther and farther apart, and the speed of the first will at one point be more than a million miles per second faster than the speed of the second!)
A million miles per second? That's some gravity well. What are we dropping these into, a neutron star?
Or are these pennies of the Elbonian currency, the tachyon?
It's only a matter of time before IBM fill's the niche for the CPU intensive VM's...
Um, that would be the p690 / Regatta.
Sun are actually playing catchup here, although they do seem to have the marketing advantage (and I'm almost tempted to add "as usual".)
This isn't "funny" - it's informative. It already happened in Japan with i-Mode.
Zack