"That says that because there is an equal probability that the cat is alive or dead (because of that decay-based death switch, remember?) that the cat is in a conceptual superposition of all possible states"
Nope thats a mixed state, a with classic uncertainity, in which the cat is definitely alive or dead, but you don't know which.
A superposition is very different, in a superposition the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, with each posibility multiplied but a probablity amplitude. The do are very definite and there are measurable different (with atoms anyway).
But the good news for those perplexed by the cat, is that physicists now have a solution to the paradox. Whenever a superposition releases information (in from of light, heat, particles etc) into the enivorment (i.e. anything else you are keeping track of), the superposition "decoheres", it transforms into a mixed state. This happens very quickly for big hot things like cats.
The bad news is that decoherence with measurement, doesn't select a definite state for the cat, it only splits the cat and observer system, into an observer who sees a live cats and an observer who sees a dead cat. I.E. you've still got parallel universes, but now we know why you never end up in a universe where you see a cat thats both alive and dead at the same time.
Show Sci-am would have done a biog of a male physictist but only if he was well known, and had a lot of papers to his name.
I did a quick search of papers by Kalamara on the Los Almos archives:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/find
All years, and all subjects, guess what, nada, nothing, she hasn't even got a preprint to her name yet. So i have to say, no this article would not have been written if she was a man. Positive descrimation, may be, but i'm not interested in chating about that. I really wanted to read the papers, because once a theories been through the hacks at Sci-am or New Scientist it becomes inconpressible both to the layman and to other scientists working on the same subject.
Depends on the net charge of strange quark nuggets. Physicists can't yet do the calculations to work out the average charge per baryon on strange quark matter. If has a negative charge it would suck in a nucleii and grow, while if it is positively charge it will reply ordinary nucleii and only be able to grow from neutron and in neutron stars.
My guess would be Strange quark nuggets would be positive, why: a equal miss of u,d and s quarks is neutral, but the s (charge -1/3), is more massive than the other two, so you would have a prepondance of u and d quarks (Charges +2/3 and -1/3), so it the charge would be something positive.
Just one thing, an exponential curve doesn't have a vertical part, it keeps getting more vertical for ever, but never form a vertical asymtote. To get a true signularity the curve will have to be of the form 1/(x-a)^q. Another words if progress remains exponential we never get a singularity.
Yes but then Poe didn't have generally relavity, or Raimanian Geometry to let him consider space as fixable surface that could expand or contract, stuck in Euclids world we had no choice but to consider a center.
How is it possible that an omnicient, omnipotent being happens to exist?
Because if he doesn't (and it sure looks like that right now), we (or some other cilivision) will slowly learn everything and slowly because ultimately powerful, and either become or build one. I just really hope they don't build/become the sort of god that thinks its cool to fly planes into buildings. Maybe it/they could bring us all back from the dead, or maybe it/they'll just have to run a copy everything in simulation. Maybe we're already in a simulation it/they is running, or perphaps we're both in a simulation and not in a simulation at the same time (a'la schroedingers cat).
In the meantime i'm signed up for cryonic storage because there's a lot of work, learning (and play) to be done along the way.
Thats what i believe anyway, wierd huh, but i've got all my bases covered philosophically.
Scientists are human too, just as a religion mind, can't deep down bear to consider the possible that god doesn't exist because its to frightning and horible, so some scientists can't bear to have here ontologies pull down, it can take years of evidence to change such peoples minds, and something science just has to wait for the next generation thats grown up with the new idea and can except it. For example as the article said general relavity predicted the big bang and black holes but it was years before people really took these ideas seriously.
Microwave Beams: Phased Array Antenna
on
Beaming into Space
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
One of the nice advantages of Microwaves over lasers, is that is really easy to make a stearable beam of Microwaves using the phased array technique. I you make a dipole antenna and feed a microwave single into it, the signal goes pretty much everywhere, if you put another dipole antenna, next to the first, the two signal interfere results in a more direction beam. If you have a square grid of antennas, you get a narrow beam which becomes more focused as the density of the grid increases.
If all the signals are in phase then the beam goes straight ahead (also straight behind, so you put a microwave mirror, a metal plate behind the antennas at a (half) integer number of wavelength in distances.
To stear the beam, you just put a slight phase difference between each dipole antenna and the ones next to it, so that the phase difference increases with the distance between the each dipole antenna and the first one, thus the beam is stearable electronically. Because there a lots a seperate dipole antenna, the power in each does need to be to large, so you can use fairly ordinary electronic components to produce the beam.
Imagine, building a simple block of antenna, consisting of a 100 by 100 dipole antenna, each feed by its own 100W oscillator, and with its own control and stearing computer inside. That should be fairly cheap to build. Now mass produce these.
Now lets put a hundred of these side by side in a square, you get a stearable 100 MegaWatt beam and its only 10meter by 10meters big. You can use this idea to build with conventional technology a microwave beam as powerful as you like.
Now you don't get much thrust from just reflecting the energy, 6.7 Newtons per gigawatt. But a constant accelation over time can quickly build up speed in space. You can get a lot more thrust out of the system by using the microwaves to heat a reaction mass, say water in the target craft. I haven't done the calculations, put a powerful enough beam could be used to launch a steam rocket from the earths surface at very little cost.
Don't start me on SOAP. Dumhead idea. You got one computer converting the data it sends to a (not quite) human readible XML format, and then the other computer has to convert it back at the far end.
You should not judge art or a story, by its politics but by artistic criteria. The claim "Babylon 5 was made for people who don't strive for the perfection that could be achieved if we set aside our differences and work together (a la STTNG)", is in case completely wrong. In Babylon 5 the races started at odds with each other, Earth vs Membar, Narns vs Centari, and through the story ark, evolved into a cooperation, sending there old gods away in the process.
"My head is starting to hurt at this point. They're discussing not being able to have complete requirements and have them also be consistent."
Actually there talking about Godels Theorem here, no system of logic powerful enough to express number theory (and the includes computer programs), can be both complete and consistant.
I loved the paying speeding tickets stunt. I've been while pissed of this the goverment putting speed cameras and low speed limits on good solid dual carriageways.
All the women I've seen portrayed in games are either scantily clad, big breasted (with a choker waist), or looking like a man.
About from the witches, the shamp hags, the archers/rouges, the fat valykies, the elfen girls, etc. But in low res with poor model polycount, you will find that if you don't have exaggerant female features, the character will look that a man. Its a general feature of cartoons and computer graphics that you have to exaggerant features to make them recognizable against the rendition of reality.
Actually, there is a big problem with cloths in games, and its nothing to do with sexism. Real cloths except for tight figure hugging cloths tend to move around independently of the body, skirts and long coats twirl, loose shirts billow etc. Now the state of art physics engines in most games are not powerful enough to model the motion of real cloths, so any of these forms of dress stay static and just look wrong. Hence all characters in games 'wear' (actually all the cloths are just painted onto the skin), tight figure hugging cloths, or big solid armour, in the rare case you get a skirt its actually a solid part of model, which your immediately find out if you find the ZVA (zone of visual access).
Would you care to tell us, how computer game character should be choosen so as not to be sexist.
A. Not a woman. (That would just show the how computer games don't represent woman, are unwoman friendly and give woman no rolemodel: men being sexist.
B. An woman without sexual charactistics. (That would just show that male game players were intimidated by the female sexuality, and cannot provide female archetypes in games: men being sexist.
C. A woman with strong sexual charactistics. (That is insulting and degrading to woman, and shows that they only exist to please men: men being sexist.
But A+B+C = the universal set: therefore games are sexist whatever they do. So next time you want to have a go at games, why don't you cut out giving any reason, huh.
What? This was not a play on words... the "object" in "objectify" I meant as: "an unthinking item," to use your definition. I never included any other sense of the word "object"--I certainly didn't mean it in the "object of my desire" sense (i.e. synonymous with "objective").
I'm sure you didn't notice the category error, but then the phrase "objectify" wasn't invented by you, but by some feminist author, and the error been passed on for years. And it is error: There is no other link, between, i find this person sexually attractive and this person is "unthinking item". Lara croft portrayed as sexually attractive, therefore she is an "unthinking item". No that does not follow in any way shape or form.
"Now, if a woman had the body-type of Lara Croft, what would she gain physically? I contend that anyone with that body type in real life would be physically impeded."
Absolute rubbish, woman with a lot bigger breasts than our fictional Lara, are fully functional.
Further what gives you or anyone else the moral right to cast judgement on how fictional characters are protrayed. Why should woman and men not be protrayed as sexual, or sexually attractive. I seriously can't believe your working yourself into a moral frensy over the size are a computers characters polygons. Lara Croft looks different from a normal female because she is a computer sprite. The original version had trianglar breasts, and even current state of the art video cards cannot render the curves of a human body in a lifelike way.
Angelina Jolee played are on the cinema, i suppose you would also contend that she is not a normal female, normal females being ones that are fat or have small breasts or bad skin: normal females being the sickly ones that overeat and don't exercise, or have anorexia, and either way risk heart disease and cancer.
This isn't exactly rocket science, nor is it some kind of fabricated, liberal nonsense
There is certainly nothing liberal about feminist chip on there shoulders about how woman are portrayed, it is most illiberal and is bordering on fascist. Jews have more money than us, lets get rid of the Jews: Those woman are more pretty than us, lets prevent them from being in the media. Lets try to make men guilty for fantasing about them, lets try to make men guilty about there every action and thought.
These visual attributes only serve to objectify female characters (like Lara Croft), because they emphasize sexual attractiveness and nothing else.
So being sexually attractive makes you an object:
bullcrap. Your making a delibrate category error, between object as in subject/object or goal/object as in object of desire, and object as in unthinking item, in other languages you wouldn't be able to get away we such an obvios error. Men should not have to be ashamed of having a sex drive.
Only women that have been bought up on certain styles of feminism, think that men enjoying the female form, is objectifing or insulting.
A good deal of woman are attention seeking and loving feeling desired (thank goodness). Where do you think all those girls that make porn or music videos or run these own amature webcam pages come from.
Indeed its takes quite a perverse form of philophobia, to turn "you look pretty, i like to have sex with you", Into "your an object, i want to degrade and rape you".
But for me the best part of (pretending to) own a house, is being free to change it, to put up satellite dishes, the simple joy of picking some colors and painting the walls, putting up flooring in the loft, or running CAT5 cable under the floor boards. And that is rather irrelavent to how good an investment is.
Still on the investment front, i'm really glad i went for a repayment mortage, and not an endowment mortage, gambling a house on the stock market always seemed like a bad idea, and the stock market bust we've had is the proof.
Slashdot Mirror
Tinnitus seems to be quite common in IT jobs, the
combination of stress and the backgroup hum of
computers tends to lead to it.
One thing that would be good all round is if
Shareholder had the right to set managements pay.
It sometimes happens: GSK promised they new CEO
millions of stock options just recently but the
sharehold revolted and blocked it.
I take it back, she does have preprints, she just
did'nt use the Kalamara part of her name in the
Author field.
"That says that because there is an equal probability that the cat is alive or dead (because of that decay-based death switch, remember?) that the cat is in a conceptual superposition of all possible states"
Nope thats a mixed state, a with classic uncertainity, in which the cat is definitely
alive or dead, but you don't know which.
A superposition is very different, in a superposition the cat is both alive and dead at
the same time, with each posibility multiplied but
a probablity amplitude. The do are very definite
and there are measurable different (with atoms anyway).
But the good news for those perplexed by the cat, is that physicists now have a solution to the
paradox. Whenever a superposition releases information (in from of light, heat, particles etc) into the enivorment (i.e. anything else you are keeping track of), the superposition "decoheres", it
transforms into a mixed state. This happens very
quickly for big hot things like cats.
The bad news is that decoherence with measurement, doesn't select
a definite state for the cat, it only splits
the cat and observer system, into an observer who
sees a live cats and an observer who sees a dead cat. I.E. you've still got parallel universes, but now we know why you never end up in a universe
where you see a cat thats both alive and dead at
the same time.
Dude, Rene Descartes was french.
Show Sci-am would have done a biog of a male
physictist but only if he was well known, and
had a lot of papers to his name.
I did a quick search of papers by Kalamara
on the Los Almos archives:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/find
All years, and all subjects, guess what, nada,
nothing, she hasn't even got a preprint to
her name yet. So i have to say, no this article
would not have been written if she was a man.
Positive descrimation, may be, but i'm not interested in chating about that. I really wanted
to read the papers, because once a theories been
through the hacks at Sci-am or New Scientist it
becomes inconpressible both to the layman and to
other scientists working on the same subject.
Depends on the net charge of strange quark
nuggets. Physicists can't yet do the calculations
to work out the average charge per baryon on
strange quark matter. If has a negative charge it
would suck in a nucleii and grow, while if it is
positively charge it will reply ordinary nucleii
and only be able to grow from neutron and in
neutron stars.
My guess would be Strange quark nuggets would
be positive, why: a equal miss of u,d and s
quarks is neutral, but the s (charge -1/3), is
more massive than the other two, so you would
have a prepondance of u and d quarks (Charges +2/3 and -1/3), so it the charge would be something positive.
Just one thing, an exponential curve doesn't have
a vertical part, it keeps getting more vertical for ever, but never form a vertical asymtote. To
get a true signularity the curve will have to be
of the form 1/(x-a)^q. Another words if progress
remains exponential we never get a singularity.
Yes but then Poe didn't have generally relavity,
or Raimanian Geometry to let him consider space as fixable surface that could expand or contract, stuck in Euclids world we had no choice but to consider a center.
How is it possible that an omnicient, omnipotent being happens to exist?
Because if he doesn't (and it sure looks like
that right now), we (or some other cilivision)
will slowly learn everything and slowly because
ultimately powerful, and either become or build
one. I just really hope they don't build/become the sort of god that thinks its cool to fly planes into buildings. Maybe it/they could bring us all back from the dead, or maybe it/they'll just have to run a copy everything in simulation.
Maybe we're already in a simulation it/they is running, or perphaps we're both in a simulation and not in a simulation at the same time (a'la schroedingers cat).
In the meantime i'm signed up for cryonic storage
because there's a lot of work, learning (and play) to be done along the way.
Thats what i believe anyway, wierd huh, but i've
got all my bases covered philosophically.
Scientists are human too, just as a religion mind,
can't deep down bear to consider the possible that
god doesn't exist because its to frightning and
horible, so some scientists can't bear to have
here ontologies pull down, it can take years of
evidence to change such peoples minds, and something science just has to wait for the next
generation thats grown up with the new idea and
can except it. For example as the article said general relavity predicted the big bang and black holes but it was years before people really took these ideas seriously.
One of the nice advantages of Microwaves over
lasers, is that is really easy to make a stearable
beam of Microwaves using the phased array technique. I you make a dipole antenna and feed a
microwave single into it, the signal goes pretty much everywhere, if you put another dipole antenna, next to the first, the two signal interfere results in a more direction beam. If you
have a square grid of antennas, you get a narrow
beam which becomes more focused as the density of
the grid increases.
If all the signals are in phase then the beam goes straight ahead (also straight behind, so you put a microwave mirror, a metal plate behind the antennas at a (half) integer number of wavelength in distances.
To stear the beam, you just put a slight phase difference between each dipole antenna and the ones next to it, so that the phase difference increases with the distance between the each dipole antenna and the first one, thus the beam is stearable electronically. Because there a lots a seperate dipole antenna, the power in each does need to be to large, so you can use fairly ordinary electronic components to produce the beam.
Imagine, building a simple block of antenna, consisting of a 100 by 100 dipole antenna, each
feed by its own 100W oscillator, and with its own
control and stearing computer inside. That should
be fairly cheap to build. Now mass produce these.
Now lets put a hundred of these side by side in a square, you
get a stearable 100 MegaWatt beam and its only 10meter by 10meters big.
You can use this idea to build with conventional
technology a microwave beam as powerful as you like.
Now you don't get much thrust from just reflecting
the energy, 6.7 Newtons per gigawatt. But a constant accelation over time can quickly build up speed in space. You can get a lot more thrust out of the system by using the microwaves to heat a reaction mass, say water in the target craft. I haven't done the calculations, put a powerful enough beam could be used to launch a steam rocket from the earths surface at very little cost.
Don't start me on SOAP. Dumhead idea. You got
one computer converting the data it sends to
a (not quite) human readible XML format, and then the other computer has to convert it back at the far end.
SOAP because CORBA just isn't slow enough.
"in the episode theres this crazy vulcan sniper with a gun that could transport its bullets."
You've got a machine that can cause arbitary matter
and energy to appear at any point in space without
needing a receiver, and you need bullets?
You should not judge art or a story, by its politics
but by artistic criteria. The claim "Babylon 5 was made for people who don't strive for the perfection that could be achieved if we set aside our differences and work together (a la STTNG)", is in
case completely wrong. In Babylon 5 the races started at odds with each other, Earth vs Membar, Narns vs Centari, and through the story ark, evolved
into a cooperation, sending there old gods away in the process.
"My head is starting to hurt at this point. They're discussing not being able to have complete requirements and have them also be consistent."
Actually there talking about Godels Theorem
here, no system of logic powerful enough to
express number theory (and the includes computer
programs), can be both complete and consistant.
...worst autocrat ever
I loved the paying speeding tickets stunt. I've
been while pissed of this the goverment putting
speed cameras and low speed limits on good solid
dual carriageways.
Oh and a like Troma movies (occasionly) too.
About from the witches, the shamp hags, the archers/rouges, the fat valykies, the elfen girls, etc. But in low res with poor model polycount, you will find that if you don't have
exaggerant female features, the character will look that a man. Its a general feature of cartoons
and computer graphics that you have to exaggerant
features to make them recognizable against the rendition of reality.
Actually, there is a big problem with cloths in
games, and its nothing to do with sexism. Real
cloths except for tight figure hugging cloths
tend to move around independently of the body, skirts and long coats twirl, loose shirts billow etc. Now the state of art physics engines in most
games are not powerful enough to model the motion
of real cloths, so any of these forms of dress
stay static and just look wrong. Hence all characters in games 'wear' (actually all the
cloths are just painted onto the skin), tight figure hugging cloths, or big solid armour, in the
rare case you get a skirt its actually a solid part of model, which your immediately find out if you find the ZVA (zone of visual access).
character should be choosen so as not to be
sexist.
A. Not a woman.
(That would just show the how computer games
don't represent woman, are unwoman friendly
and give woman no rolemodel: men being sexist.
B. An woman without sexual charactistics.
(That would just show that male game players
were intimidated by the female sexuality, and
cannot provide female archetypes in games: men being sexist.
C. A woman with strong sexual charactistics.
(That is insulting and degrading to woman, and
shows that they only exist to please men: men
being sexist.
But A+B+C = the universal set: therefore games are
sexist whatever they do. So next time you want
to have a go at games, why don't you cut out giving any reason, huh.
What? This was not a play on words... the "object" in "objectify" I meant as: "an unthinking item," to use your definition. I never included any other sense of the word "object"--I certainly didn't mean it in the "object of my desire" sense (i.e. synonymous with "objective").
I'm sure you didn't notice the category error, but
then the phrase "objectify" wasn't invented by you, but by some feminist author, and the error been passed on for years. And it is error:
There is no other link, between, i find this person sexually attractive and this person is "unthinking item". Lara croft portrayed as
sexually attractive, therefore she is an "unthinking item". No that does not follow in
any way shape or form.
"Now, if a woman had the body-type of Lara Croft, what would she gain physically? I contend that anyone with that body type in real life would be physically impeded."
Absolute rubbish, woman with a lot bigger breasts than our fictional Lara, are fully functional.
Further what gives you or anyone else the moral
right to cast judgement on how fictional characters are protrayed. Why should woman and
men not be protrayed as sexual, or sexually
attractive. I seriously can't believe your working
yourself into a moral frensy over the size are
a computers characters polygons. Lara Croft looks
different from a normal female because she is a
computer sprite. The original version had trianglar breasts, and even current state of the
art video cards cannot render the curves of a
human body in a lifelike way.
Angelina Jolee played are on
the cinema, i suppose you would also contend that
she is not a normal female, normal females being
ones that are fat or have small breasts or bad
skin: normal females being the sickly ones that overeat and don't exercise, or have anorexia, and either way risk heart disease and cancer.
This isn't exactly rocket science, nor is it some kind of fabricated, liberal nonsense
There is certainly nothing liberal about feminist
chip on there shoulders about how woman are
portrayed, it is most illiberal and is bordering
on fascist. Jews have more money than us, lets get
rid of the Jews: Those woman are more pretty than
us, lets prevent them from being in the media. Lets try to make men guilty for fantasing about them, lets try to make men guilty about there every action and thought.
and some do have "explicit" scenes! (Hmm...) Probably, women dont like to play such games.
Yeah, because woman never like sex sences in movies, and never buy books full of sex, and never
watch "sex and the city" whoops.
Many video games give a "princess" as the final prize, name one?, and don't include
japanese porn games.
Let a female develop a game.
No one is stopping them. You want to make a
game then stop whining and make one.
These visual attributes only serve to objectify female characters (like Lara Croft), because they emphasize sexual attractiveness and nothing else.
So being sexually attractive makes you an object:
bullcrap. Your making a delibrate category error,
between object as in subject/object or goal/object
as in object of desire, and object as in unthinking item, in other languages you wouldn't
be able to get away we such an obvios error. Men should not have to be ashamed of having a sex drive.
Only women that have been bought up on certain styles of feminism, think that men enjoying
the female form, is objectifing or insulting.
A good deal of woman are attention seeking and
loving feeling desired (thank goodness). Where
do you think all those girls that make porn or
music videos or run these own amature webcam
pages come from.
Indeed its takes quite a perverse form of philophobia, to turn "you look pretty, i like to
have sex with you", Into "your an object, i want
to degrade and rape you".
Why should we be ashamed of having a sex drive?
Wow, great article, lol.
But for me the best part of (pretending to) own a house, is being free to change it, to put up satellite dishes, the simple joy of picking some colors and painting the walls, putting up flooring in the loft, or running CAT5 cable under the floor boards. And that is rather irrelavent
to how good an investment is.
Still on the investment front, i'm really glad
i went for a repayment mortage, and not an
endowment mortage, gambling a house on the stock
market always seemed like a bad idea, and the
stock market bust we've had is the proof.