If you mean the scratch marks that flash in the top-right corner of the image every half an hour or so: they are to demark the ending of a film role and the beginning of another. It's two flashes separated by 2-3 seconds. Immediately after the 2nd flash, the new film role is turned on. The switch of the role is usually accompaniated with a scene change in the film, to make the non-continuity less visible.
If what you are proposing relies on technology already in use, or which could very likely be made usable during the next few years (i.e. technology which's basic scientific implications we understand, but just need a little time to figure some "engineering details"), then it's workable. If not, then most probably it's not.
I don't see why this is any more or less a problem than the old method.
I do. It's because of why the spoilage occured.
In the case of paper ballots, it's easy to imagine where the spoilage comes from: thousands of helpers handle millions of pieces of paper. Either they mis-count, they accidentally destroy bills... whatever. It's easy to imagine that there is some damage, and the most likely scenario is not a systematic error or a manipulation.
In the voting machine case, it's different. There's a machine counting results. It's not supposed to miscount. There's also the machines adding the numbers and doing the math -- it's not supposed to be wrong. If it is wrong, then it's propably not because of 1000 small errors adding uncorrelated small pieces to the spoilage (like it would be in the case of the manual counting), but it's most probably because of one single error or manipulation in the system. Being one single malfunction, it is not at all likely anymore that it has nothing to do with manipulation on purpose -- on the contrary, this scenario is very possible, and more or less likely.
An analogy with weapons, to clarify (not to justify) my points: if a bow+arrow wouldn't be able to hit a 1 foot target at 1000 yards distance, you wouldn't complain. That's the limits what a bow can do, after all... But if a high-tech sniper rifle missed the same target from the same distance, you'd have all rights to complain! The gun is supposed to work orders of magnitude better, there's no room for such a big error there.
Look up for "EPR Paradoxon" and "Bell states" in the usual physical journals. Start with Einstein et al., Phys. Rev. 47 / 777 (1935) -- that was the first time it was theoretically described -- and work all your way up until Bennet et al. Phys. Ref. Lett. 70 / 1895 (1993), when it was experimentally proven for the first time. Be sure to have a copy of J.S. Bell's "Physics 1" from 1964 lying around.
Second thought: you might want to read tbe Bennet paper first and work click way through the references downwards until you read the Eintein/Podolsky/Rosen one. Then read your way up again through the trail of clicks you left behind.
Oh, and get a decent book on quantum mechanics. Althoug a little non-standard, it's actually undergrad stuff, if you bother to read the papers I told you...
Interesting.... Forgive my gross misunderstanding but is it possible to make a pair where they both have a higher chance of being A than B when observed.
At the sending end, yes. At the receiving end, not. That's the key problem: the receiving end is in one of the four states of maximum uncertainty, called the "Bell states". Each of the state is equally probable, and until you know *exactly* which one of the four it is, you cannot extract any useful information other than pure randomness out of the process -- *regardless* of how the source was prepared (i.e. even if the source was prepared to be purely A, you'd still get a 50-50 chance of measuring either A or B after teleportation, if you don't have any knowledge about which Bell state your target system is immediately after teleportation).
But what I don't understand is why, if you can still transfer that an atom has been teleported... And if there are 4 possible 'twists', then why cant you send between 1 and 4 atoms - the first is the message carrier, no following atom means twist 1, 1 following atom means twist 2, etc.
Please explain for me, someone! >.
That's a common misconception about teleportation: You don't *actually* transfer atoms. You transfer only quantum-mechanical properties.
The target matter has to already exist at the other end. What you do is transfer the quantum-mechanical properties of one atom at site #1 onto an atom at site #2, without actually *knowing* (or having to know:-) what the atom at site #1 looked like in the first place. All you know at the end of the day is that, if you done it right, atom at #2 looks exaclty like the one at #1 used to look like.
Is there any way to know that measurement has taken place at the other end and your local qubit has collapsed?
Crash course in quantum mechanics, perhaps this explains it: a binary quantum mechanical system is in a linear superposition of states A and B. That is, it is either 100% A, or 100% B, or anything in between; for example 70% A and 30% B.
Now if you measure, you would only get "pure" results, i.e. purely A or purely B. If the system was pure (i.e. 100% B) before the measurement, you get what it was. If the system was mixed (say, 70-30), and you had the chance to measure the system more than once, then you get A in 70% of the cases, or B in 30%. For example: make 1000 copies of the system, and measure each of them. Roughly 700 (give/take a few) would be A, roughly 300 would be B.
The biggest problem is that you don't have 1000 exact copies -- unlike with classical information, basic QM forbids cloning of a system. So you basically have one shot, and if you happen to measure B, you'll never know whether it was because of a 100% pure B state, or simply because you "got lucky".
I mean, I know the answer is you can't communicate instantly, I'm just figuring out why (mostly to help explain to people with roughly my same layman's understanding of physics why instant communication is impossible).
While the "quantum information" is being transfered instantaneously, the problem is that the quantum state is not transfered 1:1 onto the target. It is... "twisted". Imagine that like x*A+y*B (-> teleport ->) y*A+x*B. Now you know that the numbers x and y mean the same in both systems -- you just don't know exactly how they would be twisted after the teleportation. There are 4 possibilities how they can be twisted, and all 4 are equally probable, there's nothing you can do to favor the one over the other.
However, after the teleportation, the guy at the source can tell how they have been twisted (because the teleportation act itself is a measurement, which's result tells him exactly what happened), but the guy at the target does not.
So at first, even if the guy at the target knows that the atom has been "teleported", he stil doesn't know which one of the 4 twisted flavors of the original atom he got. If he just takes a "wild guess" and tries to measure, he'll get a statistical result which reveals absolutely no information about the actual coefficients.
The target-guy needs the source-guy to tell him which of the 4 twists occured, or in short: needs an information transfer in order to be able to "untwist" his atom and have an exact copy.
Again, the important part is that if the target-guy does not "untwist" his atom, but instead decides to go away and measure it anyway, he'll have an overall chance of 50-50 (regardless of the original x and y) to measure either A or B, so there's no information whatsoever that he could gain, not even from repeating the experiment.
It's the "twist" that makes the twist with teleportation...:-)
If the management above is unable to see which of the two in the example is worth keeping, perhaps it's not the best place to work anyway
Only partly true. The key issue here is unable to see. Management has their own problems. They're not there just to track your day... they see whatever is brought to their attention, plus some random stuff that they choose to look at themselves.
If you need manangement to see you, than you need to point yourself out. No need to make the other guy look bad, though. Just draw attention to what a hot shot you are.
If management still chooses to keep the other guy (even if it's obvious that he's not as good as you are), that is when your post kicks in: that is when you realize that it's not where you want to work anyway;-)
2) After having consulted with the lawyer, "return" the software. Delete it or similar...
The point is that german law requires everybody who sells anything on-line to take back the merchandise on the request of the customer within 2 weeks. It's a kind of a safety net against exactly this kind of scams.
Now I don't exactly know how "returning" would translate for software, but that's exactly she needs to talk to a lawyer about, and she needs to do that *fast*, in order to be able to answer before the two-weeks-deadline passes.
However, I wouldn't respond to the e-mail of the scamers directly. Someone here on/. already suggested that without having an address/card ID from her, they don't have any means to prove that it was actually her who downloaded and installed the copy. And without proof, they can pretty much kiss your/her ass...
If they try to scare her off, in Germany she even has the possibility to file a negative clearifying charge (it's called "negative Feststellungsklage", I don't know the exact english legal construct for this). The charge is aimed at clearifying in front of the law whether she is or is not guilty of whatever they will try to accuse her. The nice thing about this charge is that it's her call, not theirs. So they *need* to prove that they have a valid case, or else they loose. If they loose, they pay (up to several thounsands of euros). It's another protection gimmick of the german law system against scamers:-)
But the easier it is to obtain datasets like these, the easier it is for anyone to do data mining and correlate the public (presumably non-identified) datasets with any private data they do happen to have.
Yes, but at least now we are all able to do data mining in large databases.
In what privacy is concerned, we're losing it, one way or the other. The only important question here is whether we are all going to lose the privacy (thus being somehow equal), or if there are going to be those which will keep most of their privacy (large corporations, politicians etc), while we (the mere consumer) is going to lose most of ours.
Large public databases like Amazon's at least tend to level the field a little, by provinding everyone with the same (humongous) amounts of data. They tend to drive towards the "we're all losing a bit of privacy", as opposed to the more scary scenario, where only you get to lose yours and I get to keep mine.
Also, what I quite don't understand is why they would want to call it beta, I mean, it's not like it's got a good cling to it. It just makes it sound like something unstable and unreliable.
That's exactly the point: try calling complaining to tech support over a matter in beta software: "I'm sorry Sir, but the program you are talking about is tagget 'BETA'. Little problems here and there are expected, you've been warned..."
People expect beta software not to function properly, and are therefore even more prepared to accept bugs all over the place without complaining.
Google are tryint o get people to buy the premium version of Gmail. Why would someone want to pay for beta-testing something for someone?
That's a whole another matter... I suppose it's for the same reason people keep paying money for software that provably doesn't work, is crippled, brain-damaged and expensive?
People don't really think "Is this stuff actually worth my money?" No, they don't. Yes, I know, but they don't. Really.
People think like "the box says it does XY. I'd like to do XY. Aw, what the heck, 29.95 ist a no-brainer..."
I don't think the word theory means what you think it means...
What about the words "verifiable", or "falsifiable"? Do you think that means what I think it means?
Well, if it's verifyable/falsifiable, it's sicence. If not, it's not.
The moment you stop trying to verify/falsify a theory, it stops being science and becomes belief, because -- the name gives it away -- if you refuse to "verify", then all that you're left with is having to "believe" it...
Long answer: when reading mail, for example, I use... uhm... a mail reader (mutt), for writing texts I use a text editor (emacs), for photo editting I use a... aehm... photo editor? For spread sheets... well, take a wild guess:-)
But joking aside, of *course* I use a browser. And I do use it extensively -- man, it's the 3rd millenium, of *course* I'm on line and all hip n'stuff and I use a browser quite a lot (like all cool kids). But I don't use a browser exclusively, and I don't see a reason for a browser to use up most of my ressources if I can get stuff done with less ressources, too, without converting an browser into an operating system. Running applications is what kernels are for, and mine works just fine, thank you very much! I mean... what's the point in having an OS kernel scheduling multiple processes, of which some are a browser scheduling multiple tabs, of which one is another (java?) kernel-like construction scheduling multiple applications, of which one part is a full-blown office package, of which's sub-parts one is able to do text editting?
What's *that* wrong about a conventional text editor, that it needs to be fixed by embedding it into a browser?
USB keys have a far superior form factor, and the installed players need only have a USB port and whatever processing is needed to actually view the movie.
Hm... Why not take this a step further, and use, say, a USB-ish device with a DVI plug instead of an USB plug, and a built-in MPEG decoder?:-) You could probably then plug the device itself (a.k.a. the "media") directly to your TV, your projector, your monitor... whatever.
as for getting them off that device later...thats his problem:)
Make it a laptop with a good old serial line (RS-232) or parport and a C compiler. That way, whatever hardware he'll have in 25 years, he sould *definitely* find someone able to wire something together and write a small program to download them.
It doesn't necessary need to be a fully RS-232 compliant port in 25 years from now... he just needs a way to wiggle one or two lines -- enough information to be able to transmit single bits and a little handshaking around it. Should be ready to transmit with two feet of wire and an afternoon's worth of work:-)
Slashdot Mirror
If you mean the scratch marks that flash in the top-right corner of the image every half an hour or so: they are to demark the ending of a film role and the beginning of another. It's two flashes separated by 2-3 seconds. Immediately after the 2nd flash, the new film role is turned on. The switch of the role is usually accompaniated with a scene change in the film, to make the non-continuity less visible.
7.9999414610 - 300 Nearly Correct Opcodes
Fixed.
It was about biometric databases, computer-recognizable photographs and humongous amounts of fingerprints.
If what you are proposing relies on technology already in use, or which could very likely be made usable during the next few years (i.e. technology which's basic scientific implications we understand, but just need a little time to figure some "engineering details"), then it's workable. If not, then most probably it's not.
I don't see why this is any more or less a problem than the old method.
I do. It's because of why the spoilage occured.
In the case of paper ballots, it's easy to imagine where the spoilage comes from: thousands of helpers handle millions of pieces of paper. Either they mis-count, they accidentally destroy bills... whatever. It's easy to imagine that there is some damage, and the most likely scenario is not a systematic error or a manipulation.
In the voting machine case, it's different. There's a machine counting results. It's not supposed to miscount. There's also the machines adding the numbers and doing the math -- it's not supposed to be wrong. If it is wrong, then it's propably not because of 1000 small errors adding uncorrelated small pieces to the spoilage (like it would be in the case of the manual counting), but it's most probably because of one single error or manipulation in the system. Being one single malfunction, it is not at all likely anymore that it has nothing to do with manipulation on purpose -- on the contrary, this scenario is very possible, and more or less likely.
An analogy with weapons, to clarify (not to justify) my points: if a bow+arrow wouldn't be able to hit a 1 foot target at 1000 yards distance, you wouldn't complain. That's the limits what a bow can do, after all... But if a high-tech sniper rifle missed the same target from the same distance, you'd have all rights to complain! The gun is supposed to work orders of magnitude better, there's no room for such a big error there.
How? If your ethical system agrees with patents and enforcing them in court, then it's perfectly ethical. It's certainly legal.
Ethical and legal are two different pairs of shoes. They don't always match.
Look up for "EPR Paradoxon" and "Bell states" in the usual physical journals. Start with Einstein et al., Phys. Rev. 47 / 777 (1935) -- that was the first time it was theoretically described -- and work all your way up until Bennet et al. Phys. Ref. Lett. 70 / 1895 (1993), when it was experimentally proven for the first time. Be sure to have a copy of J.S. Bell's "Physics 1" from 1964 lying around.
Second thought: you might want to read tbe Bennet paper first and work click way through the references downwards until you read the Eintein/Podolsky/Rosen one. Then read your way up again through the trail of clicks you left behind.
Oh, and get a decent book on quantum mechanics. Althoug a little non-standard, it's actually undergrad stuff, if you bother to read the papers I told you...
Interesting.... Forgive my gross misunderstanding but is it possible to make a pair where they both have a higher chance of being A than B when observed.
At the sending end, yes. At the receiving end, not. That's the key problem: the receiving end is in one of the four states of maximum uncertainty, called the "Bell states". Each of the state is equally probable, and until you know *exactly* which one of the four it is, you cannot extract any useful information other than pure randomness out of the process -- *regardless* of how the source was prepared (i.e. even if the source was prepared to be purely A, you'd still get a 50-50 chance of measuring either A or B after teleportation, if you don't have any knowledge about which Bell state your target system is immediately after teleportation).
But what I don't understand is why, if you can still transfer that an atom has been teleported... And if there are 4 possible 'twists', then why cant you send between 1 and 4 atoms - the first is the message carrier, no following atom means twist 1, 1 following atom means twist 2, etc.
Please explain for me, someone! >.
That's a common misconception about teleportation: You don't *actually* transfer atoms. You transfer only quantum-mechanical properties.
The target matter has to already exist at the other end. What you do is transfer the quantum-mechanical properties of one atom at site #1 onto an atom at site #2, without actually *knowing* (or having to know :-) what the atom at site #1 looked like in the first place. All you know at the end of the day is that, if you done it right, atom at #2 looks exaclty like the one at #1 used to look like.
Is there any way to know that measurement has taken place at the other end and your local qubit has collapsed?
Crash course in quantum mechanics, perhaps this explains it: a binary quantum mechanical system is in a linear superposition of states A and B. That is, it is either 100% A, or 100% B, or anything in between; for example 70% A and 30% B.
Now if you measure, you would only get "pure" results, i.e. purely A or purely B. If the system was pure (i.e. 100% B) before the measurement, you get what it was. If the system was mixed (say, 70-30), and you had the chance to measure the system more than once, then you get A in 70% of the cases, or B in 30%. For example: make 1000 copies of the system, and measure each of them. Roughly 700 (give/take a few) would be A, roughly 300 would be B.
The biggest problem is that you don't have 1000 exact copies -- unlike with classical information, basic QM forbids cloning of a system. So you basically have one shot, and if you happen to measure B, you'll never know whether it was because of a 100% pure B state, or simply because you "got lucky".
I mean, I know the answer is you can't communicate instantly, I'm just figuring out why (mostly to help explain to people with roughly my same layman's understanding of physics why instant communication is impossible).
While the "quantum information" is being transfered instantaneously, the problem is that the quantum state is not transfered 1:1 onto the target. It is ... "twisted". Imagine that like x*A+y*B (-> teleport ->) y*A+x*B. Now you know that the numbers x and y mean the same in both systems -- you just don't know exactly how they would be twisted after the teleportation. There are 4 possibilities how they can be twisted, and all 4 are equally probable, there's nothing you can do to favor the one over the other.
However, after the teleportation, the guy at the source can tell how they have been twisted (because the teleportation act itself is a measurement, which's result tells him exactly what happened), but the guy at the target does not.
So at first, even if the guy at the target knows that the atom has been "teleported", he stil doesn't know which one of the 4 twisted flavors of the original atom he got. If he just takes a "wild guess" and tries to measure, he'll get a statistical result which reveals absolutely no information about the actual coefficients.
The target-guy needs the source-guy to tell him which of the 4 twists occured, or in short: needs an information transfer in order to be able to "untwist" his atom and have an exact copy.
Again, the important part is that if the target-guy does not "untwist" his atom, but instead decides to go away and measure it anyway, he'll have an overall chance of 50-50 (regardless of the original x and y) to measure either A or B, so there's no information whatsoever that he could gain, not even from repeating the experiment.
It's the "twist" that makes the twist with teleportation... :-)
If the management above is unable to see which of the two in the example is worth keeping, perhaps it's not the best place to work anyway
Only partly true. The key issue here is unable to see. Management has their own problems. They're not there just to track your day... they see whatever is brought to their attention, plus some random stuff that they choose to look at themselves.
;-)
If you need manangement to see you, than you need to point yourself out. No need to make the other guy look bad, though. Just draw attention to what a hot shot you are.
If management still chooses to keep the other guy (even if it's obvious that he's not as good as you are), that is when your post kicks in: that is when you realize that it's not where you want to work anyway
1) Go see a good lawyer.
/. already suggested that without having an address/card ID from her, they don't have any means to prove that it was actually her who downloaded and installed the copy. And without proof, they can pretty much kiss your/her ass...
:-)
2) After having consulted with the lawyer, "return" the software. Delete it or similar...
The point is that german law requires everybody who sells anything on-line to take back the merchandise on the request of the customer within 2 weeks. It's a kind of a safety net against exactly this kind of scams.
Now I don't exactly know how "returning" would translate for software, but that's exactly she needs to talk to a lawyer about, and she needs to do that *fast*, in order to be able to answer before the two-weeks-deadline passes.
However, I wouldn't respond to the e-mail of the scamers directly. Someone here on
If they try to scare her off, in Germany she even has the possibility to file a negative clearifying charge (it's called "negative Feststellungsklage", I don't know the exact english legal construct for this). The charge is aimed at clearifying in front of the law whether she is or is not guilty of whatever they will try to accuse her. The nice thing about this charge is that it's her call, not theirs. So they *need* to prove that they have a valid case, or else they loose. If they loose, they pay (up to several thounsands of euros). It's another protection gimmick of the german law system against scamers
...a name change to "Insta-Buntu" is currently being evaluated for the upcoming release 9.04 :-)
What the hell is a Jiggawatt?
Wow, that's heavy...
58 percent wanted to know the specific attributes that prompted hi-tech firms to label their products green
#00ff00 maybe?
Thank you, I'll be here all week! Try the veal.
But the easier it is to obtain datasets like these, the easier it is for anyone to do data mining and correlate the public (presumably non-identified) datasets with any private data they do happen to have.
Yes, but at least now we are all able to do data mining in large databases.
In what privacy is concerned, we're losing it, one way or the other. The only important question here is whether we are all going to lose the privacy (thus being somehow equal), or if there are going to be those which will keep most of their privacy (large corporations, politicians etc), while we (the mere consumer) is going to lose most of ours.
Large public databases like Amazon's at least tend to level the field a little, by provinding everyone with the same (humongous) amounts of data. They tend to drive towards the "we're all losing a bit of privacy", as opposed to the more scary scenario, where only you get to lose yours and I get to keep mine.
Also, what I quite don't understand is why they would want to call it beta, I mean, it's not like it's got a good cling to it. It just makes it sound like something unstable and unreliable.
That's exactly the point: try calling complaining to tech support over a matter in beta software: "I'm sorry Sir, but the program you are talking about is tagget 'BETA'. Little problems here and there are expected, you've been warned..."
People expect beta software not to function properly, and are therefore even more prepared to accept bugs all over the place without complaining.
Google are tryint o get people to buy the premium version of Gmail. Why would someone want to pay for beta-testing something for someone?
That's a whole another matter... I suppose it's for the same reason people keep paying money for software that provably doesn't work, is crippled, brain-damaged and expensive?
People don't really think "Is this stuff actually worth my money?" No, they don't. Yes, I know, but they don't. Really.
People think like "the box says it does XY. I'd like to do XY. Aw, what the heck, 29.95 ist a no-brainer..."
Buy and return it, explain why you are returning it. Shows that you had interest but are not willing to support the policies.
Right, good luck with that! :-)
Aren't people ever going to learn that they harm themselves most this way?
All you & me need to do is *not* link to the respective website(s). Now guess who's going to hurt this most... I don't think it's going to be me.
cat << EOF > foo.c
long long long foo;
int main () {}
EOF
$ gcc foo.c -o foo
foo.c:1: error: 'long long long' is too long for GCC
I don't think the word theory means what you think it means...
What about the words "verifiable", or "falsifiable"? Do you think that means what I think it means?
Well, if it's verifyable/falsifiable, it's sicence. If not, it's not.
The moment you stop trying to verify/falsify a theory, it stops being science and becomes belief, because -- the name gives it away -- if you refuse to "verify", then all that you're left with is having to "believe" it...
Short answer: xterm :-)
:-)
Long answer: when reading mail, for example, I use... uhm... a mail reader (mutt), for writing texts I use a text editor (emacs), for photo editting I use a... aehm... photo editor? For spread sheets... well, take a wild guess
But joking aside, of *course* I use a browser. And I do use it extensively -- man, it's the 3rd millenium, of *course* I'm on line and all hip n'stuff and I use a browser quite a lot (like all cool kids). But I don't use a browser exclusively, and I don't see a reason for a browser to use up most of my ressources if I can get stuff done with less ressources, too, without converting an browser into an operating system. Running applications is what kernels are for, and mine works just fine, thank you very much! I mean... what's the point in having an OS kernel scheduling multiple processes, of which some are a browser scheduling multiple tabs, of which one is another (java?) kernel-like construction scheduling multiple applications, of which one part is a full-blown office package, of which's sub-parts one is able to do text editting?
What's *that* wrong about a conventional text editor, that it needs to be fixed by embedding it into a browser?
Why? I spend more time in the web browser--by far--than any other application.
I don't.
USB keys have a far superior form factor, and the installed players need only have a USB port and whatever processing is needed to actually view the movie.
Hm... Why not take this a step further, and use, say, a USB-ish device with a DVI plug instead of an USB plug, and a built-in MPEG decoder? :-) You could probably then plug the device itself (a.k.a. the "media") directly to your TV, your projector, your monitor... whatever.
as for getting them off that device later...thats his problem :)
Make it a laptop with a good old serial line (RS-232) or parport and a C compiler. That way, whatever hardware he'll have in 25 years, he sould *definitely* find someone able to wire something together and write a small program to download them.
:-)
It doesn't necessary need to be a fully RS-232 compliant port in 25 years from now... he just needs a way to wiggle one or two lines -- enough information to be able to transmit single bits and a little handshaking around it. Should be ready to transmit with two feet of wire and an afternoon's worth of work