That's an interesting way to reformulate the Schrodinger's Cat "Paradox" (and one that connects it to the EPR "paradox"), but the classical version usually involves killing the cat. Basically, you put a cat in a box with something that could kill it (eg. a device which releases poison gas). Connect the device to a purely random quantum system, like a particle which has a 50% chance of decaying in a given time period. Then, after the given time period, you could say that the cat is in a superposition of live and dead states. Then you open the box and "the waveform collapses" and the cat is either fully alive or fully dead.
Note that the paradox doesn't really say anything new. It just takes a strange microscopic process and bumps it up to the level of an equally strange macroscopic process. I guess this might serve the purpose of convincing some people of it's strangeness, but beyond that it's pretty pointless.
"The skirmish between AOL/Time-Warner and Disney over cable domination..."
I noticed something strange the other day when I accessed ESPN's website, namely the fact I got redirected to espn.go.com. Now, go.com is controlled by Disney, and Turner (who founded Turner Broadcasting which runs ESPN) has a large stake in AOL/Time-Warner. Am I missing something, or are these two monopolistic companies working together?
This is off-topic, I know, but people really have to learn the difference between a good and bad background for a web page. In general, bunches of little dots that obscure the text are a Bad Idea. If a person puts in the time and effort to do an analysis like this, they should at least make sure everyone can read it comfortably.
I'm not comparing apples to oranges here. When I say that Mediaplayer plays the same files with half the overhead, I mean the same files, not ones encoded with different codecs. Plus, the clunky interface just annoys me.
Update: It was two and a half years ago when I did this. TC now has page where you can custom build without so much hassle. Click "Build your own system" on the main page. I don't know how good their prices are these days, though.
Just some advice... When I built my last PC, I did it by buying all the components I wanted from TC Computers. I basically bought an unassembled system, minus a few things I already had (floppy drive, NIC card). Then I got TC to apply a "full system discount" as though they had sold me a complete system. This is important, because unless you get very good deals on your components, you're going to end up paying more for a system you put together yourself (but you're also going to get exactly what you want). By getting a complete system, you'll also get a copy of Windows and maybe Office (which, let's face it, most of us still need).
I'm sure there are other companies that do the same thing as TC. You basically find a place with good prices that also sells complete systems. Then you might have to be a little sneaky. Pick a system that's most like the one you want. Then say, "Oh, by the way, I want to substitute this motherboard for that one, this video card for that one, etc... Oh, and I don't need a keyboard or a floppy drive. Oh, and you might as well not assemble it either. Thanks."
I know you were joking, but it's actually a good point. If there is a way to artificially generate gravity waves (very big if) besides crashing suns together, it would probably be the communication method of choice for an advanced civilization. The signals would see no interference and travel way farther than their electromagnetic equivelant could. But like I said, big if.
Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.
Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).
Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.
I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
I don't really want to further the off-topic thread, and I do agree with you that the U.S. military is bloated, but...
"Our armed strength just about rivals that of all other countries in the world combined..."
I'm sorry, but that's just not true. China alone would be more than a match for the U.S. It's a matter of sheer numbers, as technology would only take us so far in a serious (ground) war. We're not going to use nukes, after all, and those million dollar "smart" bombs would run out pretty quick.
In any case, I don't have the numbers, but I suspect that a fairly small percentage of the ridiculous military budget goes to actually paying soldiers.
Just a personal opinion, but I have my reasons. I'm still running a K6-200 (with 64 megs), and Quicktime under Win95 is practically unusable. The player takes inordinately long to load, and all but the lowest resolutions are extremely choppy.
Quicktime was ahead of it's time, and normally I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and just say it's time I bought a new system. What's unacceptable, however, is the fact that MediaPlayer plays Quicktime files (the ones it can play at all) with better quality and half the overhead of the Quicktime player. There's just no excuse for that sort of bloat (and we're comparing it to a Microsoft product here).
You're right. SETI@Home wouldn't run particularly well on this beast, and it certainly wouldn't be worth the trouble to code. Distributed.net, on the other hand, would fly, as both ogr and rc5-cracking rely almost exclusively on integer arithmetic (from what I understand).
Of course, this is probably irrelevant, since we're unlikely to ever see these processors in a desktop system.
They've had these around for a long time. I remember seeing ones years ago that could do four languages (not sure how well they worked, though) and were about the size of a large calculator. I think Franklin was the most popular brand.
A simple solution to your man in the middle attack: Transmit a standard radio signal with timing pulses at the same time as the signal going over the fiber. Both go at the speed of light, so middleman X has no time to decrypt and reencrypt the signals (which is the only way the attack can work) without also somehow hijacking the radio signal.
Any given cryptography system will have potential flaws, but quantum cryptography could be a great tool for anyone with the money and paranoia to implement it.
I don't know why this was moderated up so high, but the issue involved here was addressed before. In short, it is not possible to transmit information by using entangled states. If it was, the transmission would happen instantaneously and therefore violate relativity.
Consider the situation. You have a matched set of particles that can be in one of two states (or a dozen states, it doesn't matter). Call them A and B. Two parties who wish to share information are a million miles apart. At a predetermined time, the first party takes a measurement of their particle. The particle happens to "choose" state A. The second party then checks their particle, which is guaranteed to match the first (i.e. be in state A). Cool. Faster that light communication, right? Wrong. There is no way for one party to tell the other what state A means. It's random. Without a radio, telegraph, or carrier pidgeon, the system is useless.
Now, since the speed of light is the upper limit, what we need is a device to encode information in light, or some other electromagnetic wave. Oh, wait... that's what a $5 walkie talkie does.
Slashdot Mirror
That's an interesting way to reformulate the Schrodinger's Cat "Paradox" (and one that connects it to the EPR "paradox"), but the classical version usually involves killing the cat. Basically, you put a cat in a box with something that could kill it (eg. a device which releases poison gas). Connect the device to a purely random quantum system, like a particle which has a 50% chance of decaying in a given time period. Then, after the given time period, you could say that the cat is in a superposition of live and dead states. Then you open the box and "the waveform collapses" and the cat is either fully alive or fully dead.
Note that the paradox doesn't really say anything new. It just takes a strange microscopic process and bumps it up to the level of an equally strange macroscopic process. I guess this might serve the purpose of convincing some people of it's strangeness, but beyond that it's pretty pointless.
Just in case anyone's confused... They didn't really take his coffee maker. It was part of the analogy.
"The skirmish between AOL/Time-Warner and Disney over cable domination..."
I noticed something strange the other day when I accessed ESPN's website, namely the fact I got redirected to espn.go.com. Now, go.com is controlled by Disney, and Turner (who founded Turner Broadcasting which runs ESPN) has a large stake in AOL/Time-Warner. Am I missing something, or are these two monopolistic companies working together?
This is off-topic, I know, but people really have to learn the difference between a good and bad background for a web page. In general, bunches of little dots that obscure the text are a Bad Idea. If a person puts in the time and effort to do an analysis like this, they should at least make sure everyone can read it comfortably.
sigh
To Anonymous Cowards 1, 2, and 3:
I'm not comparing apples to oranges here. When I say that Mediaplayer plays the same files with half the overhead, I mean the same files, not ones encoded with different codecs. Plus, the clunky interface just annoys me.
Update: It was two and a half years ago when I did this. TC now has page where you can custom build without so much hassle. Click "Build your own system" on the main page. I don't know how good their prices are these days, though.
Just some advice... When I built my last PC, I did it by buying all the components I wanted from TC Computers. I basically bought an unassembled system, minus a few things I already had (floppy drive, NIC card). Then I got TC to apply a "full system discount" as though they had sold me a complete system. This is important, because unless you get very good deals on your components, you're going to end up paying more for a system you put together yourself (but you're also going to get exactly what you want). By getting a complete system, you'll also get a copy of Windows and maybe Office (which, let's face it, most of us still need).
I'm sure there are other companies that do the same thing as TC. You basically find a place with good prices that also sells complete systems. Then you might have to be a little sneaky. Pick a system that's most like the one you want. Then say, "Oh, by the way, I want to substitute this motherboard for that one, this video card for that one, etc... Oh, and I don't need a keyboard or a floppy drive. Oh, and you might as well not assemble it either. Thanks."
I know you were joking, but it's actually a good point. If there is a way to artificially generate gravity waves (very big if) besides crashing suns together, it would probably be the communication method of choice for an advanced civilization. The signals would see no interference and travel way farther than their electromagnetic equivelant could. But like I said, big if.
The superstring thing was a joke... Laugh.
Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.
Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).
Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.
I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
I don't really want to further the off-topic thread, and I do agree with you that the U.S. military is bloated, but...
"Our armed strength just about rivals that of all other countries in the world combined..."
I'm sorry, but that's just not true. China alone would be more than a match for the U.S. It's a matter of sheer numbers, as technology would only take us so far in a serious (ground) war. We're not going to use nukes, after all, and those million dollar "smart" bombs would run out pretty quick.
In any case, I don't have the numbers, but I suspect that a fairly small percentage of the ridiculous military budget goes to actually paying soldiers.
Just a personal opinion, but I have my reasons. I'm still running a K6-200 (with 64 megs), and Quicktime under Win95 is practically unusable. The player takes inordinately long to load, and all but the lowest resolutions are extremely choppy.
Quicktime was ahead of it's time, and normally I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and just say it's time I bought a new system. What's unacceptable, however, is the fact that MediaPlayer plays Quicktime files (the ones it can play at all) with better quality and half the overhead of the Quicktime player. There's just no excuse for that sort of bloat (and we're comparing it to a Microsoft product here).
You're right. SETI@Home wouldn't run particularly well on this beast, and it certainly wouldn't be worth the trouble to code. Distributed.net, on the other hand, would fly, as both ogr and rc5-cracking rely almost exclusively on integer arithmetic (from what I understand).
Of course, this is probably irrelevant, since we're unlikely to ever see these processors in a desktop system.
...a name that you might recognize from The Soul of a New Machine but might not expect to be selling computers...
It was before my time, but if I remember correctly, Honeywell was once very much in the computer market as a direct competiter of IBM and DEC.
Of course, those systems were a few orders of magnitude larger (and a few orders less powerful) than a web appliance.
Found it... Here's one for 25 bucks that can do phrases in Spanish, French, German, and Italian: http://www.franklin.com/estore/de tails.asp?ID=23
They've had these around for a long time. I remember seeing ones years ago that could do four languages (not sure how well they worked, though) and were about the size of a large calculator. I think Franklin was the most popular brand.
A simple solution to your man in the middle attack: Transmit a standard radio signal with timing pulses at the same time as the signal going over the fiber. Both go at the speed of light, so middleman X has no time to decrypt and reencrypt the signals (which is the only way the attack can work) without also somehow hijacking the radio signal.
Any given cryptography system will have potential flaws, but quantum cryptography could be a great tool for anyone with the money and paranoia to implement it.
I don't know why this was moderated up so high, but the issue involved here was addressed before. In short, it is not possible to transmit information by using entangled states. If it was, the transmission would happen instantaneously and therefore violate relativity.
Consider the situation. You have a matched set of particles that can be in one of two states (or a dozen states, it doesn't matter). Call them A and B. Two parties who wish to share information are a million miles apart. At a predetermined time, the first party takes a measurement of their particle. The particle happens to "choose" state A. The second party then checks their particle, which is guaranteed to match the first (i.e. be in state A). Cool. Faster that light communication, right? Wrong. There is no way for one party to tell the other what state A means. It's random. Without a radio, telegraph, or carrier pidgeon, the system is useless.
Now, since the speed of light is the upper limit, what we need is a device to encode information in light, or some other electromagnetic wave. Oh, wait... that's what a $5 walkie talkie does.