"There is a downside to this "utopia", of course. Because replicators will be ubiquitous, people will work only when they want to. It will be interesting to see what happens to the human animal when we no longer need to do anything.
"
The logical extension of this is that some will choose not to work at all, whilst others will only do work which they enjoy.
I believe the theory of quantum computers is that they attempt all possible answers simultaneously. The difficult part is writing a program such that all of the wrong answers cancel each other out exactly, just leaving the correct answer.
I think the article is saying that if the correct answer happens to be zero, then all the states with 1's in will cancel each other out, so it will appear that the computer is doing nothing between starting the program and outputting its result. However, you don't know that the answer is going to be zero in advance, so you have to run the program anyway and wait.
I have been subscribed now to blueyonder in the UK for about 3 months, and I must say I am very impressed with their service. Connection speed is extremely fast (I've had up to 88kBps), and they were very helpful with the install. When they came round to set it up, I was having problems with a new modem I'd just bought. So they said don't worry, we'll set it up on your laptop, call us when you fix your desktop modem. A week later I'd taken the modem back to the shop and changed it, and I let the cable company know. Anyway one of their engineers phoned me back the following day, and talked me through the entire install process, which was very helpful.
Since then I've had no problems with the service.
I'd definately recommend them if you live within their coverage area.
Yes you are right. MS _are_ working on a 'United States of Microsoft'.
However you got a few facts slightly incorrect.
Children born in these states will not only get an NDA, but they will also receive a product ID, which their parents will have to activate with Redmond. If Bill doesn't like your kid, too bad !
And of course these states _will_ be more democratic, Micro$oft is constantly innovating in the area of Democracy. In fact Democracy XP(tm) will take democracy to a new level, never before seen.
There will be no law breaking, because as soon as you cross the street at the wrong time, a giant floating judge will appear and say 'It looks like you are trying to shoot your wife.' thus alerting everyone else to your intransigence !
You are using poor logic.
A implies B
does not mean
B implies A.
(In other words 'All drug free states are police states' does not mean 'All police states are drug free').
I don't think many would complain if Microsoft competed fairly in the marketplace, but remember, they were found guilty of using illegal means to destroy their competitors.
It's not really strange at all if you understand how science works.
Scientific hypotheses are based upon the evidence available at the time. Sometimes there will be different interpretations of the same evidence (competing theories) and it is then up to scientists to devise experiments to try to figure out which interpretation is correct.
As new evidence comes along the theories evolve to reflect this. But that doesn't mean all the old theories were wrong, maybe they just described a particular subset of something, and they needed to be expanded for a more general case.
A good example of this is Newton's Laws of motion, which were superceeded by Einstein's theories of relativity. It doesn't mean that Newton was wrong, just that his theories were a very very good approximation for objects travelling at 'everyday' speeds. In Newton's time they didn't have any way of observing objects travelling at relativistic speeds, as the fastest things around were cannon balls !
Of course you could argue that since Newton and Einstein are in 'disagreement', they are obviously both wrong, and of course God moves everything around by hand.
So apparently people who buy DVD's and want to play them under Linux are not 'innocent consumers' ?
Very nice...
Re:Where are IBM's priorities?
on
CPRM Voted Down
·
· Score: 3
I think the problem is that Big Blue's legal department is too disconnected from its technical people.
On the one hand we have cool stuff coming from them such as the Linux watch, and then on the other hand they lobby for lame ducks like European software patents and CPRM.
The legal guys see something like CPRM and start drooling about how many $$$ they can make for the company out of it, whilst at the same time it's obviously going to impact their good standing amongst open source advocates.
IBM needs to decide their overall strategy much better - are they going to be long term supporters of open source, or are they out to make quick bucks from the first company that comes along and says "vote for this !" whilst pissing in the open source well. They can't have it both ways for long.
Slashdot Mirror
The logical extension of this is that some will choose not to work at all, whilst others will only do work which they enjoy.
I think the article is saying that if the correct answer happens to be zero, then all the states with 1's in will cancel each other out, so it will appear that the computer is doing nothing between starting the program and outputting its result. However, you don't know that the answer is going to be zero in advance, so you have to run the program anyway and wait.
I hope that makes it clearer !
If you talk about 'cracking' a DVD, a lot of people will think 'piracy', 'illegal copying', etc.
So it's better to emphasise that DeCSS is a tool to allow *playing* of DVDs on equipment that hasn't been 'blessed' by the DVD CCA.
I hope I've made my point clearer.
Your first link is almost a year old, the second link is about NS 4.x, not Mozilla.
Are you on the M$ payroll or something?
Since then I've had no problems with the service.
I'd definately recommend them if you live within their coverage area.
However you got a few facts slightly incorrect.
Children born in these states will not only get an NDA, but they will also receive a product ID, which their parents will have to activate with Redmond. If Bill doesn't like your kid, too bad !
And of course these states _will_ be more democratic, Micro$oft is constantly innovating in the area of Democracy. In fact Democracy XP(tm) will take democracy to a new level, never before seen.
There will be no law breaking, because as soon as you cross the street at the wrong time, a giant floating judge will appear and say 'It looks like you are trying to shoot your wife.' thus alerting everyone else to your intransigence !
You are using poor logic. A implies B does not mean B implies A. (In other words 'All drug free states are police states' does not mean 'All police states are drug free').
I agree ! This is probably the most intelligent post I have read on /. for a while. I hope it gets modded up.
No I didn't.
I don't think many would complain if Microsoft competed fairly in the marketplace, but remember, they were found guilty of using illegal means to destroy their competitors.
Scientific hypotheses are based upon the evidence available at the time. Sometimes there will be different interpretations of the same evidence (competing theories) and it is then up to scientists to devise experiments to try to figure out which interpretation is correct.
As new evidence comes along the theories evolve to reflect this. But that doesn't mean all the old theories were wrong, maybe they just described a particular subset of something, and they needed to be expanded for a more general case.
A good example of this is Newton's Laws of motion, which were superceeded by Einstein's theories of relativity. It doesn't mean that Newton was wrong, just that his theories were a very very good approximation for objects travelling at 'everyday' speeds. In Newton's time they didn't have any way of observing objects travelling at relativistic speeds, as the fastest things around were cannon balls !
Of course you could argue that since Newton and Einstein are in 'disagreement', they are obviously both wrong, and of course God moves everything around by hand.
Great ! Does that mean I can change its source and recompile it ?
And of course if somebody wrote their own driver it would be unusable under Windows since M$ didn't 'sign' the driver...
Very nice...
On the one hand we have cool stuff coming from them such as the Linux watch, and then on the other hand they lobby for lame ducks like European software patents and CPRM.
The legal guys see something like CPRM and start drooling about how many $$$ they can make for the company out of it, whilst at the same time it's obviously going to impact their good standing amongst open source advocates.
IBM needs to decide their overall strategy much better - are they going to be long term supporters of open source, or are they out to make quick bucks from the first company that comes along and says "vote for this !" whilst pissing in the open source well. They can't have it both ways for long.
"All your gene are belong to us !"