Software testing is not boring. Most people ignore or don't understand what is software testing. They just think it's just about using a software following a given written scenario (the test case). That's only a small part of the job, and when it's repetitive you have to automate it.
Yes, and the quantum theory being wrong so you can't possibly make a quantum computer is unlikely. I don't say current physic theories are complete and faultless (they aren't) but any better theory would have to explain experiments already done, including most of quantum non-intuitive stuff used in quantum computing.
People often understand (because they are told so) that quantum physics applies only at small scale, and not at bigger one. Actually quantum physics works at all scales, and theory of decoherence explains why it seems to get back to classic behavior at bigger scale and higher temperature. There is an article in Scientific American a few month ago about how quantum effect are also seen at larger scale is many cases.
Any hope that quantum theory is replaced by something more intuitively understandable seems extremely very unlikely to me. As observed outcome of experiment is weird, theory to explain them must be weird also. Actually, the more we understand physic, the more weird it gets, not the other way around.
Coding and developing is a really creative and cool process ?
Yes, but less than 5% of your time (and I'm generous).
You usually spend much of your effort on dull things that are considered super-important by someone above you. At least if you can understand how it could be important for end user, it can relieve you a bit, but that's not always the case.
Sometime you get to design and implement a non-trivial algorithm, and that's fun, but that's very rare.
How Bitcoin was designed, it gave a huge reward to most early adopters. If Bitcoin is successful, early adopters will be very rich. That's a great idea to get the project launch and find early adopters.
But to have success, it now needs late adopters, and they have no incentive to come. First, they need to pay the early adopter their huge reward. Then the system itself is still expensive to run, even if you don't mine and just do no transactions it takes lots of processing power and network bandwidth. And anyway, there is no network effect, even with all these early adopter you can't buy anything real with Bitcoin.
Well, if they add games to Google+, but avoid the annoying thing that Facebook does, it's a great move.
With Facebook, game request permission to post on your wall, and all your contact knows which games you play, when and how often. It's annoying for them and for you.
"Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree)"
You can't reply to this question with inflation adjusted income. On many points our standard of living have progressed a lot.
Consider quality/price ratio of a recent car compared to one 30 years ago. Consider price of traveling. Consider price of telecommunications. Health has gotten more expensive, but quality has much improved. About music, well, 30 years ago it was the 80s...
Of course on other important points, we have a regression.
Yes, the "hard way" doesn't mean it's advanced, it just means you have to type again and again boring things because it's supposed to be a good learning method.
Just go through the python tutorial, it will be more effective on every aspect.
When accepting bitcoin, EFF gave credibility to this money and as any fiat money credibility is what it needs. Now EFF doesn't accept anymore, they take back this credibility.
I think in both case, this was on purpose by EFF. They did the first move because they though bitcoin was an interesting experiment. They do the second move because bitcoin is now an ugly mess.
So far, in the bitcoin community, you see miners, speculators and marketplaces. The system is well designed to attract greedy people, but not to perform useful transaction.
In money history, metal coins are successful for trade when there metal value is weak. If they contains too much gold or silver, people tend to keep them. It's the same for bitcoin: the built-in deflation encourage actors to accumulate bitcoins, not trade them.
Wikileak published these leaked document because they think what is done in Guantanamo is wrong.
Ok, intelligence gathered there has allowed to kill Bin Laden. "The ends justify the means" as we often say. Except that when the means include torture, this still a disgrace for a democracy.
When you receive a mail from Nigeria, explaining you will receive several million dollars if you reply and follow instructions, you are totally certain this is a scam.
With religion this is the same. They are plenty of them, why this one should be true and every other false ? Their claims are extraordinary. They promise immense benefits. At some point, they want a share of your money. It's enough for me to be totally certain religions are scams.
Doesn't the Everett interpretation suggest you could be the Schroedinger cat, and 'you' wouldn't die, your body might in this reality, but each time you live on in another 'world'?
I can't explain better than Tegmark does in the article I linked.
And you're correct, I was making too strong a case that QM could be explained away by common sense, but I still think the weirdness is overestimated in almost every article on the subject.
Sure. Actually, things are simpler and paradoxes disappear with Everett interpretation.
Your position is perfectly valid. We don't have a direct access to physical reality itself. Current physics theories are successful but known to be incomplete.
At first view, quantum physic theory (because of the observer role) seems incompatible to physical realism. That is the philosophical stance that there is a reality independent from human mind.
What I wanted to point out earlier is that you can't expect a new, better theory, that supplant current quantum physic and where everything can be explained in a way compatible with common sense.
My feeling is that quantum physic is "true" in a sense that it help us to understand the world. So I tend to think that wave function may have a counterpart in reality itself. This means my preference goes to Everett interpretation.
Am I right if I understand what you think by: "Quantum field theory way to describe a particle by a superposition of two states is too weird to correspond to a physical reality." ?
I agree it is weird. I agree also that goals of a theory in physic is not to describe reality itself.
But, actual experiments demonstrate that it's not only current quantum physic theory that is weird. Any theory that would explain outcome of these experiments will have to include some sort of weirdness. Those experiment proves that naive materialism (Physical reality is based on matter) is wrong. I know that from Bernard d'Espagnat's book "On physics and philosophy.".
Personally I think spooky action at a distance isn't spooky at all. Consider the time-honored classic of two electrons in a correlated state being shot out of some device. Assume they are entangled in such a way that when you measure one to be up, you instantly know the other is down. Physicists will say, how could the other electron possibly know this, instantly. But a very simple explanation is that the device always shoots 1 up, 1 down. Sure you don't know if it's up or down until you measure it, but that doesn't make it spooky at all.
Except that other experiments show it doesn't work that way. It's not "you don't know if it's up or down until you measure it", it's you know it's in a superposition state of up and down that "decide" to be only up or only down only when you (or a detector) look at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Software testing is not boring. Most people ignore or don't understand what is software testing. They just think it's just about using a software following a given written scenario (the test case). That's only a small part of the job, and when it's repetitive you have to automate it.
Yes, and the quantum theory being wrong so you can't possibly make a quantum computer is unlikely. I don't say current physic theories are complete and faultless (they aren't) but any better theory would have to explain experiments already done, including most of quantum non-intuitive stuff used in quantum computing.
People often understand (because they are told so) that quantum physics applies only at small scale, and not at bigger one. Actually quantum physics works at all scales, and theory of decoherence explains why it seems to get back to classic behavior at bigger scale and higher temperature. There is an article in Scientific American a few month ago about how quantum effect are also seen at larger scale is many cases.
Any hope that quantum theory is replaced by something more intuitively understandable seems extremely very unlikely to me. As observed outcome of experiment is weird, theory to explain them must be weird also. Actually, the more we understand physic, the more weird it gets, not the other way around.
Coding and developing is a really creative and cool process ?
Yes, but less than 5% of your time (and I'm generous).
You usually spend much of your effort on dull things that are considered super-important by someone above you. At least if you can understand how it could be important for end user, it can relieve you a bit, but that's not always the case.
Sometime you get to design and implement a non-trivial algorithm, and that's fun, but that's very rare.
The issue you point is a critical one.
How Bitcoin was designed, it gave a huge reward to most early adopters. If Bitcoin is successful, early adopters will be very rich. That's a great idea to get the project launch and find early adopters.
But to have success, it now needs late adopters, and they have no incentive to come. First, they need to pay the early adopter their huge reward. Then the system itself is still expensive to run, even if you don't mine and just do no transactions it takes lots of processing power and network bandwidth. And anyway, there is no network effect, even with all these early adopter you can't buy anything real with Bitcoin.
Well, if they add games to Google+, but avoid the annoying thing that Facebook does, it's a great move.
With Facebook, game request permission to post on your wall, and all your contact knows which games you play, when and how often. It's annoying for them and for you.
"Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree)"
You can't reply to this question with inflation adjusted income. On many points our standard of living have progressed a lot.
Consider quality/price ratio of a recent car compared to one 30 years ago. Consider price of traveling. Consider price of telecommunications. Health has gotten more expensive, but quality has much improved.
About music, well, 30 years ago it was the 80s...
Of course on other important points, we have a regression.
I'm quite sure Jesus has a great sense of humor. What's pity is so many people don't understand his jokes and still believe his hoax.
Two others major segments this article ignore are advertisement serving (doubleclick) and video distribution (youtube).
This is not a "six-front war", all these services are related to each other.
Yes, the "hard way" doesn't mean it's advanced, it just means you have to type again and again boring things because it's supposed to be a good learning method.
Just go through the python tutorial, it will be more effective on every aspect.
When accepting bitcoin, EFF gave credibility to this money and as any fiat money credibility is what it needs. Now EFF doesn't accept anymore, they take back this credibility.
I think in both case, this was on purpose by EFF. They did the first move because they though bitcoin was an interesting experiment. They do the second move because bitcoin is now an ugly mess.
There will still remain a high quality books niche market for collectors and you will get those signed.
Article estimates that botnet bitcoin mining is not lucrative, comparing with renting rate for DDOS attack.
1 - If botnet contains a good proportion of computer with GPU, it could mine in GPU and be much more efficient.
2 - I doubt botnet are rented 24/24
So far, in the bitcoin community, you see miners, speculators and marketplaces. The system is well designed to attract greedy people, but not to perform useful transaction.
In money history, metal coins are successful for trade when there metal value is weak. If they contains too much gold or silver, people tend to keep them. It's the same for bitcoin: the built-in deflation encourage actors to accumulate bitcoins, not trade them.
Eating natural veggies, that what has killed three people in Germany. We can't rely on anything nowadays.
Wikileak published these leaked document because they think what is done in Guantanamo is wrong.
Ok, intelligence gathered there has allowed to kill Bin Laden. "The ends justify the means" as we often say. Except that when the means include torture, this still a disgrace for a democracy.
When you receive a mail from Nigeria, explaining you will receive several million dollars if you reply and follow instructions, you are totally certain this is a scam.
With religion this is the same. They are plenty of them, why this one should be true and every other false ? Their claims are extraordinary. They promise immense benefits. At some point, they want a share of your money. It's enough for me to be totally certain religions are scams.
You trash your old code on sourceforge and you hope someone will be interested, will work on it and build a community. This is extremely unlikely.
This is a very good way to kill a project, sure.
Number 7: Without an active community dedicated to keep an open source project alive and evolving, it is useless.
That would just mean stopping science. Performing actual research is the best way to learn a scientific subject. It's the only way, in a sense.
Please read my post again, it is clear enough.
In Europe, you can't patent a "computer program" but you can patent a "Computer-implemented inventions".
Anyway, US market is not something you can't ignore. So even if something is only patented in US, it applies worldwide.
Doesn't the Everett interpretation suggest you could be the Schroedinger cat, and 'you' wouldn't die, your body might in this reality, but each time you live on in another 'world'?
I can't explain better than Tegmark does in the article I linked.
And you're correct, I was making too strong a case that QM could be explained away by common sense, but I still think the weirdness is overestimated in almost every article on the subject.
Sure. Actually, things are simpler and paradoxes disappear with Everett interpretation.
Your position is perfectly valid. We don't have a direct access to physical reality itself. Current physics theories are successful but known to be incomplete.
At first view, quantum physic theory (because of the observer role) seems incompatible to physical realism. That is the philosophical stance that there is a reality independent from human mind.
What I wanted to point out earlier is that you can't expect a new, better theory, that supplant current quantum physic and where everything can be explained in a way compatible with common sense.
My feeling is that quantum physic is "true" in a sense that it help us to understand the world. So I tend to think that wave function may have a counterpart in reality itself. This means my preference goes to Everett interpretation.
This article of Tegmark and Wheeler is very good on the subject:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0101/0101077v1.pdf
Am I right if I understand what you think by: "Quantum field theory way to describe a particle by a superposition of two states is too weird to correspond to a physical reality." ?
I agree it is weird. I agree also that goals of a theory in physic is not to describe reality itself.
But, actual experiments demonstrate that it's not only current quantum physic theory that is weird. Any theory that would explain outcome of these experiments will have to include some sort of weirdness. Those experiment proves that naive materialism (Physical reality is based on matter) is wrong. I know that from Bernard d'Espagnat's book "On physics and philosophy.".
Personally I think spooky action at a distance isn't spooky at all. Consider the time-honored classic of two electrons in a correlated state being shot out of some device. Assume they are entangled in such a way that when you measure one to be up, you instantly know the other is down. Physicists will say, how could the other electron possibly know this, instantly. But a very simple explanation is that the device always shoots 1 up, 1 down. Sure you don't know if it's up or down until you measure it, but that doesn't make it spooky at all.
Except that other experiments show it doesn't work that way. It's not "you don't know if it's up or down until you measure it", it's you know it's in a superposition state of up and down that "decide" to be only up or only down only when you (or a detector) look at it.