You other Western countries are so behind in Orwellian surveillance. As usual, the UK has already been doing it:
The UK has an extensive automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) CCTV network. Police and security services use it to track UK vehicle movements in real time. The resulting data are stored for 5 years in the National ANPR Data Centre to be analyzed for intelligence and to be used as evidence.[1]
HP won't be putting WebOS as a layer over anything. WebOS is history without an HP phone/pad platform to ship on.
Think about it: Android and iOS will rule the mobile/pad world. Android is free and is already dominating the market. Apple's huge strategic coup was to maintain their vertically integrated chimney of sw and hw. People ten years ago kept bleating that Apple was 'wrong' to do this but oh how wrong we all were! Apple not only kept control of hw and sw, they opened their own stores and took control of their retail sales process as well. Then they revolutionized smart phones. HP are doing the exact opposite. Just what the world needs, yet another corporate consulting services company.
Probably the kindest thing HP could do now is open source WebOS and hope the Chinese put it on cheap smart phones. But then why should the PRC ODMs bother when they can get Android?
With light it's different. We have NO other faster channel.
Are we so sure we don't? Or did we just decide that since we hadn't measured any such channel in 1905, then there isn't?
It seems to me that Einstein arbitrarily decided to assume that there exists no faster channel than light in order to redefine the Lorentz contraction as a spacetime effect. Which was a clever hack and made the maths simple, but isn't much of an explanation because it then leaves us with not only no answer to "so what is the physical mechanism which causes space and time between events to appear to dilate as relative motion approaches C", but also makes it impossible to find an answer because it disallows asking the question - it shoves "why" under the carpet of kinematics, not dynamics. And assuming C is the maximum speed of signal propagation causes no end of trouble when you attempt to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics.
But we have no evidence that there is any faster channel. And the Lorentz contraction and time dilation aren't merely an illusion; these have been proven to be real.
From the photon's "point of view", nothing does happen to it en route. Actually there is no "en route". It's the universe that's abruptly crazy at the boundary conditions at each end.
Also, special relativity per se doesn't know what a photon is: SR is closely related to Maxwell's equations and so thinks in waves rather than quanta, if you will. The process of a photon being emitted or absorbed is a quantum mechanical event. SR and QM have never been fully integrated into one theory and so a unified description would be required to model what you are describing?
Also, I'm not sure that "from the photon's POV" can have any physical meaning outside a thought experiment but it does sound doubtful.
Both Gates and Jobs dropped out of undergraduate study and never completed any degree as far as I know, let alone an engineering degree. They have both been given honorary doctorates by now in various universities.
"Noble?" Why not? Humans have wiped out whole cultures our of a misguided idea of morality. Why do you think aliens should behave any better than humans? How can we know what their values are?
Exactly. I make a similar point below somewhere. It is the height of anthropomorphism to assume that we could predict with certainty what aliens will desire. We have no way of knowing what they might value and for what reasons. And people seem to assume that aliens would somehow be more rational than humans when even the concept of "rationality" is anthropocentric.
Re 1,2,3: we have no way of knowing what we have that an alien species might place a high value on. TFA already mentions the idea that humans imprison seals mainly because they can balance a ball on their nose. A seal would have no way of guessing that we would value that skill beforehand. As I've pointed out before (probably on/.), our own own species collects and ascribes high value to relatively common objects such as diamonds. Actually there are so many diamonds on earth that we have to pretend diamonds are fewer in number than these actually are by restricting distribution in order to maintain their high value. Also, consider food. We have precedent in our own species for disliking synthetic substitutes on philosophical and cultural grounds alone. Aliens may find humans something of a delicacy and eschew synthetic substitutes for no rational reason. We simply have no way of knowing what aliens might value. In short, it is very dangerous to assume that alien desires will be any more rational than our own. If humans are any precedent, there may be little rationality in the desires of an advanced civilization with too much time and resources at its beck and call. Think Nero.
Re 4: They may want to kill us as a preventative measure seeing that we are entering a stage of technological maturity where we could develop FTL. Once we have FTL it is probably too late. Galactic courts/executioners may wish to prevent any chance of first contact initiated by humans.
Re 5,6: This might be akin to a human trying to communicate with an ant. Media won't do it. Our own media might be completely meaningless to an entirely alien kind of intelligence. Humor and many other forms and symbols might be meaningless since these are grounded in human culture and on the human psyche. Also, humans always want to go there. We want to put humans on the Moon and on Mars when a robot would do. How do we know aliens do not have the same impulse to physically explore? Again, it is dangerous to assume that aliens will be more rational than humans.
Disagree with most of it. Humans are fragile organisms and are very easy to kill off compared to, say, the hardy cockroach. We die mostly of degenerative diseases which are greatly accelerated by our lifestyles. We have learned to adapt to different earth environments but these all exist within rather narrow parameter ranges by cosmic standards - a little more cold or a little more hot and we die. No water for a few days and we die. No food for so many weeks and we die. Our DNA repair mechanisms are easily overwhelmed and we die. Human infants are the most vulnerable of the young of any earth species. We are far weaker in terms of physical strength than the other great apes and many large animals. Our saving grace as a species has been our omnivorous diet which allowed our brains to grow (meat protein) and move all around the planet (different food in different environments).
Why do we continue to count weight in terms of mass?
Didn't do physics at school? Because F = mMG/Rexp2 and we're all mostly at comparable radial distances from the Earth's center of mass. So weight scales as mass to a good-enough approximation.
All this mass != weight is a bit disingenuous and frivolously pedantic in the OP's journalistic context anyway. Anyone sensible knows the OP was using metaphors that most readers could follow. It's not as if trajectory calculations will be erroneously based on weight = mass.
Hearing robot-like voices emanating from machinery like televisions is a commonly-reported auditory hallucination in those suffering from a psychotic illness.
Once all entertainment content comes into your home via the internet - how far is that away, 5 years? - they won't need to "fingerprint" what is on the screen since what you are viewing will be tracked anyway like web habits are tracked. And as another commenter pointed out, cable tv providers already track what you watch.
So what is the agenda for this short lived intermediary technology - surveillance of private content?
I have bought the occasional paper periodical of this ilk in the past and read these while defecating. I find such reading matter helps me enjoy a goodly shit. Some may say that is an appropriate response to the content. Nevertheless, I dislike the idea of balancing my expensive new tablet on my knees while clenching my teeth, grunting loudly and holding on to solid fixtures in the bathroom for physical support.
Technically, I believe you need a passport to be able to enter another country. Not sure that strictly speaking you should need one to leave your own country. But where would you go? The Moon?
But the Copyright Act is not the Constitution. Isn't the whole point of going to the High Court is that they have the power to overwrite lesser statutory law?
Slashdot Mirror
The UK has an extensive automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) CCTV network. Police and security services use it to track UK vehicle movements in real time. The resulting data are stored for 5 years in the National ANPR Data Centre to be analyzed for intelligence and to be used as evidence.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police-enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK
The United Kingdom: Orwell got the year wrong.
HP won't be putting WebOS as a layer over anything. WebOS is history without an HP phone/pad platform to ship on.
Think about it: Android and iOS will rule the mobile/pad world. Android is free and is already dominating the market. Apple's huge strategic coup was to maintain their vertically integrated chimney of sw and hw. People ten years ago kept bleating that Apple was 'wrong' to do this but oh how wrong we all were! Apple not only kept control of hw and sw, they opened their own stores and took control of their retail sales process as well. Then they revolutionized smart phones. HP are doing the exact opposite. Just what the world needs, yet another corporate consulting services company.
Probably the kindest thing HP could do now is open source WebOS and hope the Chinese put it on cheap smart phones. But then why should the PRC ODMs bother when they can get Android?
With light it's different. We have NO other faster channel.
Are we so sure we don't? Or did we just decide that since we hadn't measured any such channel in 1905, then there isn't?
It seems to me that Einstein arbitrarily decided to assume that there exists no faster channel than light in order to redefine the Lorentz contraction as a spacetime effect. Which was a clever hack and made the maths simple, but isn't much of an explanation because it then leaves us with not only no answer to "so what is the physical mechanism which causes space and time between events to appear to dilate as relative motion approaches C", but also makes it impossible to find an answer because it disallows asking the question - it shoves "why" under the carpet of kinematics, not dynamics. And assuming C is the maximum speed of signal propagation causes no end of trouble when you attempt to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics.
But we have no evidence that there is any faster channel. And the Lorentz contraction and time dilation aren't merely an illusion; these have been proven to be real.
I'd hazard a guess and say:
From the photon's "point of view", nothing does happen to it en route. Actually there is no "en route". It's the universe that's abruptly crazy at the boundary conditions at each end.
Also, special relativity per se doesn't know what a photon is: SR is closely related to Maxwell's equations and so thinks in waves rather than quanta, if you will. The process of a photon being emitted or absorbed is a quantum mechanical event. SR and QM have never been fully integrated into one theory and so a unified description would be required to model what you are describing?
Also, I'm not sure that "from the photon's POV" can have any physical meaning outside a thought experiment but it does sound doubtful.
Re-arrange, re-arrange ....
http://studentsforliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/titanic-movie-wallpapers-images-picture-photo-14.jpg
When a company that size changes CEOs, there is no logic across the transition.
Both Gates and Jobs dropped out of undergraduate study and never completed any degree as far as I know, let alone an engineering degree. They have both been given honorary doctorates by now in various universities.
Hooray someone gets it. Thank you.
"Noble?" Why not? Humans have wiped out whole cultures our of a misguided idea of morality. Why do you think aliens should behave any better than humans? How can we know what their values are?
Exactly. I make a similar point below somewhere. It is the height of anthropomorphism to assume that we could predict with certainty what aliens will desire. We have no way of knowing what they might value and for what reasons. And people seem to assume that aliens would somehow be more rational than humans when even the concept of "rationality" is anthropocentric.
There are problems with your 1-6.
Re 1,2,3: we have no way of knowing what we have that an alien species might place a high value on. TFA already mentions the idea that humans imprison seals mainly because they can balance a ball on their nose. A seal would have no way of guessing that we would value that skill beforehand. As I've pointed out before (probably on /.), our own own species collects and ascribes high value to relatively common objects such as diamonds. Actually there are so many diamonds on earth that we have to pretend diamonds are fewer in number than these actually are by restricting distribution in order to maintain their high value. Also, consider food. We have precedent in our own species for disliking synthetic substitutes on philosophical and cultural grounds alone. Aliens may find humans something of a delicacy and eschew synthetic substitutes for no rational reason. We simply have no way of knowing what aliens might value. In short, it is very dangerous to assume that alien desires will be any more rational than our own. If humans are any precedent, there may be little rationality in the desires of an advanced civilization with too much time and resources at its beck and call. Think Nero.
Re 4: They may want to kill us as a preventative measure seeing that we are entering a stage of technological maturity where we could develop FTL. Once we have FTL it is probably too late. Galactic courts/executioners may wish to prevent any chance of first contact initiated by humans. Re 5,6: This might be akin to a human trying to communicate with an ant. Media won't do it. Our own media might be completely meaningless to an entirely alien kind of intelligence. Humor and many other forms and symbols might be meaningless since these are grounded in human culture and on the human psyche. Also, humans always want to go there. We want to put humans on the Moon and on Mars when a robot would do. How do we know aliens do not have the same impulse to physically explore? Again, it is dangerous to assume that aliens will be more rational than humans.
Disagree with most of it. Humans are fragile organisms and are very easy to kill off compared to, say, the hardy cockroach. We die mostly of degenerative diseases which are greatly accelerated by our lifestyles. We have learned to adapt to different earth environments but these all exist within rather narrow parameter ranges by cosmic standards - a little more cold or a little more hot and we die. No water for a few days and we die. No food for so many weeks and we die. Our DNA repair mechanisms are easily overwhelmed and we die. Human infants are the most vulnerable of the young of any earth species. We are far weaker in terms of physical strength than the other great apes and many large animals. Our saving grace as a species has been our omnivorous diet which allowed our brains to grow (meat protein) and move all around the planet (different food in different environments).
You're forgetting that aliens might be watching our TV broadcasts .... just how much more damage could we do?
Why do we continue to count weight in terms of mass?
Didn't do physics at school? Because F = mMG/Rexp2 and we're all mostly at comparable radial distances from the Earth's center of mass. So weight scales as mass to a good-enough approximation.
All this mass != weight is a bit disingenuous and frivolously pedantic in the OP's journalistic context anyway. Anyone sensible knows the OP was using metaphors that most readers could follow. It's not as if trajectory calculations will be erroneously based on weight = mass.
Hearing robot-like voices emanating from machinery like televisions is a commonly-reported auditory hallucination in those suffering from a psychotic illness.
Once all entertainment content comes into your home via the internet - how far is that away, 5 years? - they won't need to "fingerprint" what is on the screen since what you are viewing will be tracked anyway like web habits are tracked. And as another commenter pointed out, cable tv providers already track what you watch.
So what is the agenda for this short lived intermediary technology - surveillance of private content?
Yes I miss the more techy articles. If it's not in your field you occasionally pick up something or are encouraged to find out more.
I have bought the occasional paper periodical of this ilk in the past and read these while defecating. I find such reading matter helps me enjoy a goodly shit. Some may say that is an appropriate response to the content. Nevertheless, I dislike the idea of balancing my expensive new tablet on my knees while clenching my teeth, grunting loudly and holding on to solid fixtures in the bathroom for physical support.
For those who don't know and could be bothered, this is a Star Wars IV reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_Eisley.
... and I can party all night long!
Technically, I believe you need a passport to be able to enter another country. Not sure that strictly speaking you should need one to leave your own country. But where would you go? The Moon?
I don't care about the amount of tax. I'd just like to live in a country not full of retards.
And where would that be exactly? But for my money the Scandinavians look a lot better and are more rational and liberal than any other gang.
Belgium and neighboring countries have terrible weather.
But the Copyright Act is not the Constitution. Isn't the whole point of going to the High Court is that they have the power to overwrite lesser statutory law?