I thought about it a bit more, and I think for me it comes down to this: sure, one always has to suspend disbelief to some extent with any movie or even book. But the better movies and books are able to *help* you do this, by providing a complete package including story, plot, characters, context, etc. In the case of movies, this is complicated by the need to create a visual representation of all this.
Bad movies have problems in at least one, but usually more than one of these areas. I think that criticizing the science in a sci-fi movie may often simply be an easy way to point out the movie's lack of integrity. If one had the time to sit down and write a long analysis and critique of, say, the character development and interaction (or lack thereof), one could demonstrate that a movie was equally weak in those areas; however, on/., simply pointing out gaping flaws in the science is a shorthand for "if they got this wrong, what are the chances they got *anything* right?"
Red Planet is a bit too new, but search the web for reviews of Mission to Mars, and you'll find plenty like this one: "director Brian De Palma has reached a new nadir", "Ineptly directed, badly acted, and scripted with an eye towards stupidity and incoherence, the film is worthwhile only to those who are in desperate need of a nap. And, as is often the case when a big budget, high profile motion picture self-destructs, this one does so in spectacular fashion." Now that reviewer is my kinda guy!:)
As for Battlestar Galactica, well, perhaps we do come from totally different universes...
So to you, there's no such thing as good and bad movies - all moving images on a screen with a soundtrack are created equal?
The incompetence of movies of this kind merely reflects the limited ability and intellect of their creators, and the mass market which consumes them. These movies aren't unpretentious - they're actually hugely pretentious failures. With Mission to Mars, for example, it's clear that Brian de Palma was trying, decades after it had already been done, to copy the effects and feel of movies like 2001.
As for Star Wars, I think you're again demonstrating your lack of discrimination if you can't tell that Star Wars was really good cinema, especially compared to, say, Battlestar Galactica which came out shortly thereafter, IIRC. If/. had existed then, I suspect the majority would have liked Star Wars, much as they like The Matrix today, while BG would have received the panning it deserved.
Andrew Wiles spent seven years holed up in his attic solving Fermat's Last Theorem. If the Riemann proof requires similar effort, that $1m prize works out to $143K per year. That might not be so bad if it were a salary, but the risk is that you don't get the answer and spend years earning zero.
Now if anyone wants to offer $1m just for trying to solve Riemann or Goldbach, count me in!!!
"Commercialized" is not the same thing as "popular". The songs available through Napster reflect the tastes of its users. If you couldn't find obscure bands, it's because Napster users either aren't aware of those bands or don't like them. (Aside from which, I've found that the "no obscure bands" objection is usually made by people who don't actually use Napster much, or don't know how to use it well.)
The only connection this has to commercialization is that Napster user's tastes are heavily influenced by the marketing done by commercial music promoters. Still, the Napster song collection has an honesty and purity about it that hasn't been seen before: if an old song, or an obscure unmarketed song, appears on Napster, it's not because of marketing but because people actually like that song enough to keep it around and keep listening to it.
If a corporation steps in and tries to change the way music is made available on a service like Napster, then I agree with Jon: the service will become both sanitized and commercialized, which is unlikely to be an unmitigated improvement.
I'm a little disturbed that I'm agreeing with Jon Katz, though. I'll schedule a psychological checkup immediately, and write 500 lines of Perl as an antidote/penance.
Now, there's the Fourth Reich, which is composed of German mega-media/tech companies
How is this any different from the American or Japanese mega-media/tech companies? Sounds like simplistic nationalistic jingoism to me. I've accused you of being a troll before; add flamebaiting to that list.
This, to me, [reeks] of a crisis at a very severe level. And all this was done within the confines of the Constitution.
I agree, it could be considered a crisis. But it was arrived at via the current two-party system, probably more importantly by the ability of special interest groups with money to disproportionately influence party policy. So changing this system would seem to be of the highest priority.
I admit, the Supreme Court selection issue is a problem for the strategy of voting for a third party, so it's perhaps not as clear-cut as I implied. You have to take some risk: that Bush will not appoint judges based on criteria such as a Roe v. Wade litmus test; or that a majority backlash to executive, legislative or judicial moves in the wrong direction could, at least, force positive changes, or at best, ultimately result in major improvements that might be difficult to achieve otherwise.
The biggest problem with all this is that it only makes sense if many other people (>5%) think the same way. A game theory analysis would probably tell us that this is unlikely, and that we should just pick our favorite of the two parties and vote for it. We're stuck in a local minimum and it's going to take a major upheaval to escape it. Perhaps a Bush backlash is the quickest way to achieve that? C'mon, live dangerously!;)
I just hope the 67,503 Nader voters feel smug about voting their concience while they're riding in this hand basket come January 20th.
It's this kind of short-term thinking that has created the current big-money duopoly party system.
Unless you're totally happy with the current two-party system and are comfortable with the entire package of policies provided by the party of your choice, it would be in your (and America's) long term interest to have a third party with some influence. It doesn't look like Nader will win enough to qualify for matching funds in the next election, but he almost had a shot at it, and might have been able to do it, if it weren't for the fact that both major parties managed to hoodwink people like you into thinking that this election was more important than all future elections.
The truth is, if we end up with a President Bush, one of two things will happen: either his administration won't do much worse than the previous administration, in which case you have little to worry about; or he'll create a backlash for the next time around which will be to your benefit (as a Democratic voter).
In closing: I hope all those non-strategically-minded Nader supporters who voted for Gore can sleep easily in their beds in four years time, when America still won't have an alternative to the two corrupt parties we have now. Of course, they will sleep easily, since they're clueless about strategy at this level. Oh well. The vote will continue to go to those best at manipulating the "common people": and you, GeorgeH, have just been manipulated.
It's an intelligence thing (assuming the perpetrator is not dyslexic). Intelligence of a poster can be determined and classified as follows:
If the poster is of average or slightly above average intelligence, the difference between "their" and "there", and of course "its" and "it's", apparently seems elusive.
If the poster is rather more intelligent than (1), things like the difference between "effect" and "affect" can be tricky. Poster might also have problems spelling "separate" and/or "desperate" with all the a's and e's in the right places.
The truly intelligent have no problem with any of this stuff, and can even usually correctly spell words they've never previously heard of.
The superintelligent have better things to do than sit around on Slashdot picking at less intellectually gifted people's mistakes.
The hyperintelligent, when bored, enjoy posting messages making offtopic meta-comments on intelligence, and could care less about the effect on their karma, which is capped anyway.
The simpler theory you describe is known in quantum mechanics as a "hidden variable" theory: the idea that a quantum system has a predetermined state even before it has interacted with any other particles. This seems very attractive, and would certainly resolve many of the apparent philosophical mysteries raised by quantum mechanics. But precisely because of this, it would be amazing if physicists hadn't already tried very hard to make this work. They have, dating back to Einstein's famous resistance to this idea of non-locality (communication/action at a distance).
But in 1964, John Bell proved a theorem which showed that hidden variable theories were inconsistent with the foundations of quantum mechanics. Experimental results have since backed this up. Quantum theory doesn't work without Heisenberg's basic principle. If we throw out Heisenberg, we throw out QM, and along with it the most accurate way that anyone has ever come up with to calculate, predict, and even in a sense, explain the behavior of particles at that level.
Given that the theory and the math works so well in practice, the implication is that quantum theory at least correlates quite closely to "real" phenomena in some way.
The confusion and denial which these concepts tend to generate are quite understandable - physicists and philosophers have been arguing about it for decades. Personally, I have little doubt that we have not yet reached "the end of physics", and that there's a good chance that we will make discoveries in future which may help to place our current understanding of QM in a more comprehensible framework. String theory, for example, is an attempt to do that, although it has not yet been fully successful.
However, it seems fairly clear from the experimental evidence and the available theories, that the universe does not behave in a way that is intuitive to us, with our experience being limited to macro-level phenomena. Even simple first-year physics experiments, such as the dual slit experiment, demonstrate this. Richard Feynman described this experiment as "a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery... the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics. "
For a nicely done explanation of the dual slit experiment, try this page at U. Colorado. Once you've seen some of these experiments and thought about what they imply, you might just start to see why Einstein used the word spooky in this context.
I'm guessing you're referring to when it's completely upright or tilted forward, in which case the Aeron's "tilt limiter" has the effect of locking the back in the upright position. That's not what I'm talking about.
I want to be able to tilt the back backwards to the angle I want, and then lock the back in that position so that if I lean forward briefly or shift position, the back doesn't tilt forward with me. Since the tilt limiter only limits backward tilt, not forward tilt, it doesn't allow this.
I've read the other replies to your message, and none of them seem to explicitly mention this:
According to quantum theory, particles such as those in the "spooky" experiment do not have a defined state, until some event causes their wave function - in which all possible states are simultaneously superimposed - to collapse. An observation of the state of one of the particles would be such a collapsing event.
One widely-accepted current understanding of what can cause quantum wave function collapse, is interaction with the "environment", meaning all the other objects with which it interacts. This phenomenon is known as decoherence, which is where the term "decoherence-free subspaces" comes from. For quantum computing, you want to remain decoherence-free, to be able to take advantage of state superposition.
Regarding the spooky particles, it's not a question of us just not knowing what their state is; the particles don't have a defined state, and exist in a superposition of all possible states, until something forces their state to be "chosen".
Assuming for the moment that this postulate somehow represents a form of reality that is meaningful to talk about, if you wait for the entangled particles to separate a bit - or a lot - and then measure the state of one of them, the model requires that the other particle instantaneously assumes the appropriate state dictated by the state "chosen" by the first particle, more or less. This appears to require "spooky" faster than light communication (or, according to string theory, requires 11 dimensions or so.)
This all goes back to Heisenberg's famous/notorious Uncertainty Principle, which not only puts limits on our ability to measure the states of particles, but puts limits on a particle's ability to be in defined states under certain conditions - for example, if we measure one aspect of a particle's state very accurately, we force other aspects of its state to become undefined, or put another way, force those aspects of its state to exist in a superposition of all possible states for that aspect.
Macrovision ONLY screws with the automatic gain control in the RECORDING circuity of the VCR! It has NO effect while you're NOT recording... unless of course you've got one wacky VHS VCR.:)
Maybe there are more wacky VCRs out there than you think. I, and from what I hear many others, have experienced the problem of being unable to play Macrovision-encoded DVDs through our VCRs, even when not recording.
Which is why they'll have to send men with guns around and drag me away kicking and yelling before I'll agree to go along with the access control circumvention restrictions in the DMCA.
The reports of the Microsoft incident mentioned the Qaz Trojan, which according to this article opens port 7597 to support remote control. Which, needless to say, would easily be stopped by a firewall/packet filter/proxy/etc.
While you're correct that the most determined attackers might be able to create a trojan which might even be able to operate through a protocol-sensitive filter or proxy, the fact is that no-one seems to have actually developed such a trojan, have they? Which means that for most businesses with a decently configured firewall, you're far more likely to have a disgruntled techie or salesperson abscond with or sabotage sensitive information than you are to experience an external attack from the Internet.
I completely agree with you that government should be as small as possible. But if there's anything governments and tax dollars can do well, it is fund important and long-term research projects which corporations would never be able to convince their shareholders was in their interests.
Corporations worry primarily about the next quarter's results, or at most a five-year plan, so researching gravity waves just makes no sense, even if in 25 years time it could result in, say, levitating cars. In fact, corporations would often prefer not to make such breakthroughs because of the degree to which it upsets the status quo.
If you want to eliminate useless government programs that compete unnecessarily with the private sector, go pick on the Postal Service or something. Leave research alone, unless you want to see real progress in scientific knowledge stopped in its tracks.
I seem to be in the minority, but I have to say I basically hate the Aeron chair. I'm sitting in one right now. I liked it for a couple of days after I bought it, but I'm actively shopping for another one now. I'm considering the Humanscale Freedom.
My main complaint with the Aeron is the mesh material - I find it uncomfortable and abrasive. I've taken to sitting on a pad to mitigate that. (It's not that I'm heavy, either: 6'3" and 165 pounds.)
I like having a lumbar support, but the Aeron's digs into my back no matter how I set it up.
I also find the adjustments aren't that good: it doesn't allow you to lock the back in a fixed position, only to limit how far back it tilts. The armrest height adjustments are way too inconvenient to adjust the arms as often as I like to, depending on what I'm doing. Finally, it's low-backed and has no headrest, which of course I knew when I bought it, but I'm regretting it now.
I had an Obus Forme chair for about six years, and I would unquestionably rate it as a better chair than the Aeron in every respect. However, I still didn't consider it the perfect chair. If the Humanscale Freedom doesn't do it for me, I think I'm going to have to look to other planets for a solution - perhaps Cassini will discover a chair-making race on Titan...
This would be a good topic to discuss with Marc Andreesen, don't you think?
Yes, I've had that discussion, as I suspect have a lot of/. readers. That's exactly what I was thinking of in writing my message. Andreesen may not have singlehandly revolutionized technology, but he sure started something, despite how much we all might be tempted to say he got lucky, right place at right time, etc. There's probably a bit of truth to both sides of that argument.
Actually in some respects, I think what Fanning did was more revolutionary: he didn't just put a new user interface on an existing service (Mosaic on WWW), thus making it more usable, he conceived and created (or if you prefer, packaged) a new service. Andreesen+BernersLee==Fanning?;-)
I'm just making the point that P2P isn't any different, technologically, than tried and true networking fundamentals, and so the argument that it will fail on technical merit is completely flawed.
But there is a difference which has a technological symptom: a new and significantly higher demand for a high-bandwidth type of P2P, namely media file exchange. Nothing on the scale of Napster has existed before - an online distributed database in the multi-terabyte range which exists on individual user's home computers, rather than on managed servers, with high-volume data traffic. Napster has caused more trouble for bandwidth management at places like universities than any other service I'm aware of. So although the basic components of the service may be familiar, the emergent behavior of the system is not. So it's not necessarily invalid to argue that it might fail because of technical constraints, not to mention issues like the "tragedy of the commons", although I don't happen to think that'll be the case with P2P "file sharing" in general.
Just because some kid slapped a web interface onto a hack of anonymous FTP doesn't suddenly make it a different technology. Just because he made it distributed doesn't make it anything more than simply 'convenient'. Searchable FTP has existed for a long time, also since before the www. Anyone remember the Archie tool? Indexing, and making it transparent is the next obvious step, not some revolutionary break-through.
If it was so obvious, why didn't someone do it three years ago? Seemingly minor or incremental improvements in the usability or packaging of existing technology can be a breakthrough if the result is that hundreds of thousands of people suddenly become able to do something which they want to be able to do, but couldn't previously.
I suspect you have a narrow technical definition of what you think constitutes a revolutionary breakthrough. The fact that the recording industry is shaking in its boots right now is proof enough of the revolutionary nature of P2P file exchange. And it's this specific application and incarnation of P2P "technology" that the CNET article is about. Not that I agree with the article itself - I'm simply reacting to your unjustifiably dismissive comment.
Bits is bits is bits.
Uh-oh, Nicholas Negroponte is posting on Slashdot now!!!
First of all, the only thing that patents clearly make illegal is building a device covered by patent and profiting from it either by using or selling that device, without first coming to a licensing agreement with the patent holder.
Theoretically, if you build this clock for your own use, the patent holder might have some claim (although I'm not sure if there's an exception for non-profit use), but in practice, he would have to sue you in federal court to get anything from you, and would be likely to be awarded zip, so realistically he's not going to sue you, he's going to sue the guys with deep pockets who're making money off his patent instead.
It's perfectly legal to be discussing it, because patents are public - that's kind of their whole point, they're the opposite of trade secrets. The details of patents are published so that others can decide whether they want to license them, and be aware if they're violating them.
As for the existence of these other plans, it's up to the patent holder to uncover and enforce their patent, via civil lawsuit if necessary, so the holder should be sending a notice to the owner of that page. I believe if the page owner were to include a notice saying "these plans may be covered in part by U.S. Patent #XXX", he'd be fine, since once again, it's perfectly legal to discuss the details of patents.
It is most certainly not illegal for Slashdot to link to the plans. The only kind of argument I can think of which might lead to such a conclusion is the as-yet unresolved "Napster argument": because Slashdot profits by linking to information about a patented device, the patent holder might be entitled to a cut of that revenue. However, that issue hasn't been decided in the Napster case, and further, clearly doesn't seem to be extensible from copyrights to patents. In the case of Napster, the actual content is available for download, not mere discussion of it. In this patent case, all that is available is information about building a patented device, which overlaps information in the publicly accessible patent database. In addition, Slashdot has strong rights based on freedom of speech as well as freedom of the press.
This product already exists, although Sharper Image doesn't carry it, yet... (I guess "Richard" is being slow on the uptake on this one.) These clocks can already be seen on executive desktops - a CIO I know has one on his. Places like Exploratorium sell them for around $99.
The one I'm thinking of is the
Fantazein clock. The animated image on that page gives a pretty good rendition of the way the clock behaves in real life. It has a strip of LEDs mounted on a metronome-like arm that moves back and forth fast enough that you don't see the arm, so the numbers appear to float in space.
Sorry for the confusion. I don't think I made clear what the nature of my problem with this bug is. I said this is in another message:
My problem is with the nature of this RH issue: it's a bug in a piece of software RH developed internally, and install by default without any indication or choice. I find that kind of "thinking for the customer" undesirable and unacceptable, and as I said, Microsoft-like. No doubt it's a reflection of Red Hat's post-IPO mass consumer focus; unfortunately that doesn't suit me very well.
As for RTFM, where exactly is this documented? The paper manual has shrunk significantly since RH 5.2, and I have yet to find the documentation, paper or otherwise, about the fact that this update daemon gets installed by default.
Bottom line: I'm a developer, and I don't need someone else deciding on my behalf to install daemons on my system that I don't care about. That in itself is 50% of my issue with this. The fact that this daemon had a fatal bug is the other 50%. Red Hat screwed this up both ways.
Re-read my message. I said it's my personal server. I'm not an admin, I'm a software developer.
I'm not complaining that there are bugs in RH7 - I know it's new, and I'm the first person to tell clients not to put new software on production servers. I made a considered choice to do this on my own server, because the hardware needed upgrading anyway, and the RH 5.2 which has been running flawlessly on it for the past couple of years was missing some stuff that I needed.
My problem is with the nature of this RH issue: it's a bug in a piece of software RH developed internally, and install by default without any indication or choice. I find that kind of "thinking for the customer" undesirable and unacceptable, and as I said, Microsoft-like. No doubt it's a reflection of Red Hat's post-IPO mass consumer focus; unfortunately that doesn't suit me very well.
As for checking the services, I did the install over the weekend, looked at the long list of services (since I installed a bunch of database and other server stuff) and decided to check it out later. I would have found rhnsd soon enough. Security isn't much of an issue because the box sits behind a firewall at the colo site with only web, imap and ssh ports open; the web server is my own build of Apache 2.0 alpha, for development purposes only.
Slashdot Mirror
Bad movies have problems in at least one, but usually more than one of these areas. I think that criticizing the science in a sci-fi movie may often simply be an easy way to point out the movie's lack of integrity. If one had the time to sit down and write a long analysis and critique of, say, the character development and interaction (or lack thereof), one could demonstrate that a movie was equally weak in those areas; however, on /., simply pointing out gaping flaws in the science is a shorthand for "if they got this wrong, what are the chances they got *anything* right?"
Red Planet is a bit too new, but search the web for reviews of Mission to Mars, and you'll find plenty like this one: "director Brian De Palma has reached a new nadir", "Ineptly directed, badly acted, and scripted with an eye towards stupidity and incoherence, the film is worthwhile only to those who are in desperate need of a nap. And, as is often the case when a big budget, high profile motion picture self-destructs, this one does so in spectacular fashion." Now that reviewer is my kinda guy! :)
As for Battlestar Galactica, well, perhaps we do come from totally different universes...
The incompetence of movies of this kind merely reflects the limited ability and intellect of their creators, and the mass market which consumes them. These movies aren't unpretentious - they're actually hugely pretentious failures. With Mission to Mars, for example, it's clear that Brian de Palma was trying, decades after it had already been done, to copy the effects and feel of movies like 2001.
As for Star Wars, I think you're again demonstrating your lack of discrimination if you can't tell that Star Wars was really good cinema, especially compared to, say, Battlestar Galactica which came out shortly thereafter, IIRC. If /. had existed then, I suspect the majority would have liked Star Wars, much as they like The Matrix today, while BG would have received the panning it deserved.
Now if anyone wants to offer $1m just for trying to solve Riemann or Goldbach, count me in!!!
"Commercialized" is not the same thing as "popular". The songs available through Napster reflect the tastes of its users. If you couldn't find obscure bands, it's because Napster users either aren't aware of those bands or don't like them. (Aside from which, I've found that the "no obscure bands" objection is usually made by people who don't actually use Napster much, or don't know how to use it well.)
The only connection this has to commercialization is that Napster user's tastes are heavily influenced by the marketing done by commercial music promoters. Still, the Napster song collection has an honesty and purity about it that hasn't been seen before: if an old song, or an obscure unmarketed song, appears on Napster, it's not because of marketing but because people actually like that song enough to keep it around and keep listening to it.
If a corporation steps in and tries to change the way music is made available on a service like Napster, then I agree with Jon: the service will become both sanitized and commercialized, which is unlikely to be an unmitigated improvement.
I'm a little disturbed that I'm agreeing with Jon Katz, though. I'll schedule a psychological checkup immediately, and write 500 lines of Perl as an antidote/penance.
How is this any different from the American or Japanese mega-media/tech companies? Sounds like simplistic nationalistic jingoism to me. I've accused you of being a troll before; add flamebaiting to that list.
I agree, it could be considered a crisis. But it was arrived at via the current two-party system, probably more importantly by the ability of special interest groups with money to disproportionately influence party policy. So changing this system would seem to be of the highest priority.
I admit, the Supreme Court selection issue is a problem for the strategy of voting for a third party, so it's perhaps not as clear-cut as I implied. You have to take some risk: that Bush will not appoint judges based on criteria such as a Roe v. Wade litmus test; or that a majority backlash to executive, legislative or judicial moves in the wrong direction could, at least, force positive changes, or at best, ultimately result in major improvements that might be difficult to achieve otherwise.
The biggest problem with all this is that it only makes sense if many other people (>5%) think the same way. A game theory analysis would probably tell us that this is unlikely, and that we should just pick our favorite of the two parties and vote for it. We're stuck in a local minimum and it's going to take a major upheaval to escape it. Perhaps a Bush backlash is the quickest way to achieve that? C'mon, live dangerously! ;)
It's this kind of short-term thinking that has created the current big-money duopoly party system.
Unless you're totally happy with the current two-party system and are comfortable with the entire package of policies provided by the party of your choice, it would be in your (and America's) long term interest to have a third party with some influence. It doesn't look like Nader will win enough to qualify for matching funds in the next election, but he almost had a shot at it, and might have been able to do it, if it weren't for the fact that both major parties managed to hoodwink people like you into thinking that this election was more important than all future elections.
The truth is, if we end up with a President Bush, one of two things will happen: either his administration won't do much worse than the previous administration, in which case you have little to worry about; or he'll create a backlash for the next time around which will be to your benefit (as a Democratic voter).
In closing: I hope all those non-strategically-minded Nader supporters who voted for Gore can sleep easily in their beds in four years time, when America still won't have an alternative to the two corrupt parties we have now. Of course, they will sleep easily, since they're clueless about strategy at this level. Oh well. The vote will continue to go to those best at manipulating the "common people": and you, GeorgeH, have just been manipulated.
"That is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put!"
According to a Merriam-Webster article on the subject, this usage dates back to the '50s. Here's another more concise description.
But thanks for the challenge, I'm bored too. Or more accurately, I'm avoiding doing some economically useful work because it is as boring as hell.
But in 1964, John Bell proved a theorem which showed that hidden variable theories were inconsistent with the foundations of quantum mechanics. Experimental results have since backed this up. Quantum theory doesn't work without Heisenberg's basic principle. If we throw out Heisenberg, we throw out QM, and along with it the most accurate way that anyone has ever come up with to calculate, predict, and even in a sense, explain the behavior of particles at that level.
Given that the theory and the math works so well in practice, the implication is that quantum theory at least correlates quite closely to "real" phenomena in some way.
The confusion and denial which these concepts tend to generate are quite understandable - physicists and philosophers have been arguing about it for decades. Personally, I have little doubt that we have not yet reached "the end of physics", and that there's a good chance that we will make discoveries in future which may help to place our current understanding of QM in a more comprehensible framework. String theory, for example, is an attempt to do that, although it has not yet been fully successful.
However, it seems fairly clear from the experimental evidence and the available theories, that the universe does not behave in a way that is intuitive to us, with our experience being limited to macro-level phenomena. Even simple first-year physics experiments, such as the dual slit experiment, demonstrate this. Richard Feynman described this experiment as "a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery ... the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics. "
For a nicely done explanation of the dual slit experiment, try this page at U. Colorado. Once you've seen some of these experiments and thought about what they imply, you might just start to see why Einstein used the word spooky in this context.
I'm guessing you're referring to when it's completely upright or tilted forward, in which case the Aeron's "tilt limiter" has the effect of locking the back in the upright position. That's not what I'm talking about.
I want to be able to tilt the back backwards to the angle I want, and then lock the back in that position so that if I lean forward briefly or shift position, the back doesn't tilt forward with me. Since the tilt limiter only limits backward tilt, not forward tilt, it doesn't allow this.
According to quantum theory, particles such as those in the "spooky" experiment do not have a defined state, until some event causes their wave function - in which all possible states are simultaneously superimposed - to collapse. An observation of the state of one of the particles would be such a collapsing event.
One widely-accepted current understanding of what can cause quantum wave function collapse, is interaction with the "environment", meaning all the other objects with which it interacts. This phenomenon is known as decoherence, which is where the term "decoherence-free subspaces" comes from. For quantum computing, you want to remain decoherence-free, to be able to take advantage of state superposition.
Regarding the spooky particles, it's not a question of us just not knowing what their state is; the particles don't have a defined state, and exist in a superposition of all possible states, until something forces their state to be "chosen".
Assuming for the moment that this postulate somehow represents a form of reality that is meaningful to talk about, if you wait for the entangled particles to separate a bit - or a lot - and then measure the state of one of them, the model requires that the other particle instantaneously assumes the appropriate state dictated by the state "chosen" by the first particle, more or less. This appears to require "spooky" faster than light communication (or, according to string theory, requires 11 dimensions or so.)
This all goes back to Heisenberg's famous/notorious Uncertainty Principle, which not only puts limits on our ability to measure the states of particles, but puts limits on a particle's ability to be in defined states under certain conditions - for example, if we measure one aspect of a particle's state very accurately, we force other aspects of its state to become undefined, or put another way, force those aspects of its state to exist in a superposition of all possible states for that aspect.
Spooky enough for you yet?
Maybe there are more wacky VCRs out there than you think. I, and from what I hear many others, have experienced the problem of being unable to play Macrovision-encoded DVDs through our VCRs, even when not recording.
Which is why they'll have to send men with guns around and drag me away kicking and yelling before I'll agree to go along with the access control circumvention restrictions in the DMCA.
The reports of the Microsoft incident mentioned the Qaz Trojan, which according to this article opens port 7597 to support remote control. Which, needless to say, would easily be stopped by a firewall/packet filter/proxy/etc.
While you're correct that the most determined attackers might be able to create a trojan which might even be able to operate through a protocol-sensitive filter or proxy, the fact is that no-one seems to have actually developed such a trojan, have they? Which means that for most businesses with a decently configured firewall, you're far more likely to have a disgruntled techie or salesperson abscond with or sabotage sensitive information than you are to experience an external attack from the Internet.
Corporations worry primarily about the next quarter's results, or at most a five-year plan, so researching gravity waves just makes no sense, even if in 25 years time it could result in, say, levitating cars. In fact, corporations would often prefer not to make such breakthroughs because of the degree to which it upsets the status quo.
If you want to eliminate useless government programs that compete unnecessarily with the private sector, go pick on the Postal Service or something. Leave research alone, unless you want to see real progress in scientific knowledge stopped in its tracks.
My main complaint with the Aeron is the mesh material - I find it uncomfortable and abrasive. I've taken to sitting on a pad to mitigate that. (It's not that I'm heavy, either: 6'3" and 165 pounds.)
I like having a lumbar support, but the Aeron's digs into my back no matter how I set it up. I also find the adjustments aren't that good: it doesn't allow you to lock the back in a fixed position, only to limit how far back it tilts. The armrest height adjustments are way too inconvenient to adjust the arms as often as I like to, depending on what I'm doing. Finally, it's low-backed and has no headrest, which of course I knew when I bought it, but I'm regretting it now.
I had an Obus Forme chair for about six years, and I would unquestionably rate it as a better chair than the Aeron in every respect. However, I still didn't consider it the perfect chair. If the Humanscale Freedom doesn't do it for me, I think I'm going to have to look to other planets for a solution - perhaps Cassini will discover a chair-making race on Titan...
Yes, I've had that discussion, as I suspect have a lot of /. readers. That's exactly what I was thinking of in writing my message. Andreesen may not have singlehandly revolutionized technology, but he sure started something, despite how much we all might be tempted to say he got lucky, right place at right time, etc. There's probably a bit of truth to both sides of that argument.
Actually in some respects, I think what Fanning did was more revolutionary: he didn't just put a new user interface on an existing service (Mosaic on WWW), thus making it more usable, he conceived and created (or if you prefer, packaged) a new service. Andreesen+BernersLee==Fanning? ;-)
I'm just making the point that P2P isn't any different, technologically, than tried and true networking fundamentals, and so the argument that it will fail on technical merit is completely flawed.
But there is a difference which has a technological symptom: a new and significantly higher demand for a high-bandwidth type of P2P, namely media file exchange. Nothing on the scale of Napster has existed before - an online distributed database in the multi-terabyte range which exists on individual user's home computers, rather than on managed servers, with high-volume data traffic. Napster has caused more trouble for bandwidth management at places like universities than any other service I'm aware of. So although the basic components of the service may be familiar, the emergent behavior of the system is not. So it's not necessarily invalid to argue that it might fail because of technical constraints, not to mention issues like the "tragedy of the commons", although I don't happen to think that'll be the case with P2P "file sharing" in general.
If it was so obvious, why didn't someone do it three years ago? Seemingly minor or incremental improvements in the usability or packaging of existing technology can be a breakthrough if the result is that hundreds of thousands of people suddenly become able to do something which they want to be able to do, but couldn't previously.
I suspect you have a narrow technical definition of what you think constitutes a revolutionary breakthrough. The fact that the recording industry is shaking in its boots right now is proof enough of the revolutionary nature of P2P file exchange. And it's this specific application and incarnation of P2P "technology" that the CNET article is about. Not that I agree with the article itself - I'm simply reacting to your unjustifiably dismissive comment.
Bits is bits is bits.
Uh-oh, Nicholas Negroponte is posting on Slashdot now!!!
Thanks, I wasn't really aware of Debian unstable. I'm going to give Debian a try.
First of all, the only thing that patents clearly make illegal is building a device covered by patent and profiting from it either by using or selling that device, without first coming to a licensing agreement with the patent holder.
Theoretically, if you build this clock for your own use, the patent holder might have some claim (although I'm not sure if there's an exception for non-profit use), but in practice, he would have to sue you in federal court to get anything from you, and would be likely to be awarded zip, so realistically he's not going to sue you, he's going to sue the guys with deep pockets who're making money off his patent instead.
It's perfectly legal to be discussing it, because patents are public - that's kind of their whole point, they're the opposite of trade secrets. The details of patents are published so that others can decide whether they want to license them, and be aware if they're violating them.
As for the existence of these other plans, it's up to the patent holder to uncover and enforce their patent, via civil lawsuit if necessary, so the holder should be sending a notice to the owner of that page. I believe if the page owner were to include a notice saying "these plans may be covered in part by U.S. Patent #XXX", he'd be fine, since once again, it's perfectly legal to discuss the details of patents.
It is most certainly not illegal for Slashdot to link to the plans. The only kind of argument I can think of which might lead to such a conclusion is the as-yet unresolved "Napster argument": because Slashdot profits by linking to information about a patented device, the patent holder might be entitled to a cut of that revenue. However, that issue hasn't been decided in the Napster case, and further, clearly doesn't seem to be extensible from copyrights to patents. In the case of Napster, the actual content is available for download, not mere discussion of it. In this patent case, all that is available is information about building a patented device, which overlaps information in the publicly accessible patent database. In addition, Slashdot has strong rights based on freedom of speech as well as freedom of the press.
The one I'm thinking of is the Fantazein clock. The animated image on that page gives a pretty good rendition of the way the clock behaves in real life. It has a strip of LEDs mounted on a metronome-like arm that moves back and forth fast enough that you don't see the arm, so the numbers appear to float in space.
My problem is with the nature of this RH issue: it's a bug in a piece of software RH developed internally, and install by default without any indication or choice. I find that kind of "thinking for the customer" undesirable and unacceptable, and as I said, Microsoft-like. No doubt it's a reflection of Red Hat's post-IPO mass consumer focus; unfortunately that doesn't suit me very well.
As for RTFM, where exactly is this documented? The paper manual has shrunk significantly since RH 5.2, and I have yet to find the documentation, paper or otherwise, about the fact that this update daemon gets installed by default.
Bottom line: I'm a developer, and I don't need someone else deciding on my behalf to install daemons on my system that I don't care about. That in itself is 50% of my issue with this. The fact that this daemon had a fatal bug is the other 50%. Red Hat screwed this up both ways.
It's how much your brain would weigh if you had one.
I'm not complaining that there are bugs in RH7 - I know it's new, and I'm the first person to tell clients not to put new software on production servers. I made a considered choice to do this on my own server, because the hardware needed upgrading anyway, and the RH 5.2 which has been running flawlessly on it for the past couple of years was missing some stuff that I needed.
My problem is with the nature of this RH issue: it's a bug in a piece of software RH developed internally, and install by default without any indication or choice. I find that kind of "thinking for the customer" undesirable and unacceptable, and as I said, Microsoft-like. No doubt it's a reflection of Red Hat's post-IPO mass consumer focus; unfortunately that doesn't suit me very well.
As for checking the services, I did the install over the weekend, looked at the long list of services (since I installed a bunch of database and other server stuff) and decided to check it out later. I would have found rhnsd soon enough. Security isn't much of an issue because the box sits behind a firewall at the colo site with only web, imap and ssh ports open; the web server is my own build of Apache 2.0 alpha, for development purposes only.