At the moment, much of the content available in the HTML5 demo on YouTube seems to be only available in H.264. It seems strange that Google would serve content that Chrome can't play. It seems like they will almost certainly transcode all of their video to WebM. I wonder if they will continue to serve H.264 or if they'll cripple YouTube for IE and Safari users who don't have the plugin. If they're willing to develop those plugins, I would guess that they will make YouTube WebM only.
1. Of course it can't be left to the ISPs as to what is on the block list. It needs to be an independent organization with the transparency and recognized authority to do so. The ISPs only have to update their DNS servers, they would have no other responsibility.
2. That's fine. They're breaking the law and it's the responsibility of the police to investigate. The point is to reduce accidental viewings. If it's illegal to even visit a site by accident, it's better for everyone if it's blocked. The pedophiles aren't the ones you're trying to protect.
3. Hosts have a responsibility to remove illegal content. Block internet slum-lords until they clean up their act. A notice to offending sites would be sent to the host and if they chose not to comply, they would be blocked. Seriously, if you're hosting child porn, get the fuck off the internet.
Australia and the U.K are examples of attempts at elaborate blocks that have failed miserably. Canada institutes a DNS block list that most ISPs in the country choose to use. There have been very few complaints.
The problem is jurisdiction. If the content is hosted in another country the only thing a police force can do it report it to the local authorities and hope. Beyond that, they do have control over the ISPs, so that's who they try to regulate.
I don't see the problem with just purging those sites from the DNS servers within local jurisdiction. That should cover ISPs plus Google. The stated goal of the filters is to prevent well-intentioned people from accidentally stumbling across illegal content. DNS poisoning would work fine to accomplish that for the majority of users.
It's unclear to me to what extent there was any actual infringement. As I understand it, the artists agreed to have the CMRRA represent their interests with regard to licencing their work. The CMRRA then set up an agreement that allowed the recording companies to use a work and pay for it later. Which they never did.
It may be that proving infringement in court would be difficult due to the existing agreement. Probably, it would be more like a breach of contract. It's tough to know what case could have been made for infringement, but it certainly would be a tough legal battle. Too bad, that would have been very, very fun to watch.
I suspect that $167 per track is close to what they would expect to pay for a licence up front*. Perhaps individuals could do the same. Set aside what it costs to "licence" an album legally, $15 should do it, then go ahead and pirate the album.
Just be sure to keep your "pending" list and coin jar handy for when the recording studios come knocking.
* Can it really be an average of just $167 per track for a commercial licence? That seems lower than I would expect.
Failure to recognize how much you don't know is forgetting what wisdom is. Epistemology, philosophy, is the study of what wisdom is, and yet you claim that ignorance of those is wisdom. Your argument presupposes that there are millions of lives to save or feed, that there is a Mars. Are you wrong? No, but ignorance of the reasons of why your assumptions might be false doesn't make you right.
If anything, philosophy and the natural sciences should be brought closer together because they have so much to offer each other. Epistemology should be a very interesting topic for anyone who pursues knowledge professionally or privately. I find it funny that anyone can be so certain that they know many facts and yet never consider the validity of the means by which they learned them.
Some of it is, much of it isn't. The majority of it is coming up with a problem to solve. That has more to do with creativity.
Cranking through calculations or debugging experiments is problem solving. To be good at those things you need both ability and experience. To be a good scientist; however, you need to know which calculations and experiments are interesting. I think that's the more important element and it comes though experience, intuition and familiarity with the field.
Furthermore, the idea that problem-solving isn't a learned skill is hog-poop.
Furthermore, being smart isn't everything in the sciences or the professional world. Being knowledgeable and creative will take you just as far, if not farther. I think that anyone with a passion for science could do very well in it, even if they're IQ is ranked fairly low during grade school.
What I see, is that people who seem dim are the ones who lack passion for any form of knowledge. Simply being interested in things makes the difference between being suited for working at Wal-Mart and being a doctor, a lawyer or a scientist. IQ doesn't play that big of a role.
I'm not well-versed in Shor's algorithm, but since the number of operations required scales polynomially, I suspect that the time that a given machine takes to factor a number scales polynomially with the number of bits. A 1064 bit encryption would just take 4 times longer. That doesn't make moving to longer keys a viable solution.
The trouble right now doesn't lie in whether or not Intel's resources are being thrown at it; Intel can't fab ion traps. Fundamentally new ideas regarding producing and interacting qubits will be needed before it could possibly move to a commercial R&D effort. Some people are working with silicon-based systems because of the possibility of, at least partially, using existing technology to build them but those systems have many limitations.
A multi-million qubit system wouldn't really be needed; a few thousand would probably be plenty if the states lasted for a while. I think the record sits at about a seven qubit register using trapped ions and they only last long enough for a proof-of-principle gate operation.
Thanks. The article makes it clear that the major change here is that the way in which atomic weights will be presented is changing. It's not just that they're being updated to reflect a more complete measurement, it's that atomic weights will now be represented as a range of possible values rather than a single value. It's not every day that the way in which information is presented in the periodic table changes.
I wouldn't want a weapon whether it's in or out of orbit. I think the technology is more interesting as a means to launch very simple satellites into orbit. They'd have to be very hardened against both structural and electromagnetic shock, of course.
It's a pretty dense article but, as far as I can tell, they're considering the motion of the photons in the plane transverse to the cavity axis as the particle movement. The problem is then two-dimensional in nature with the curvature of the mirrors directing photons back towards the cavity center. The situation is then analogous to a two-dimensional gas of particles confined by a central trapping potential.
In essence, the temperature is related to the transverse velocity of the intra-cavity photons. I believe that the cavity is spatially multi-mode and the quantum state of a photons is which spatial mode it's in and how it's evolving. Interaction with the dye particles randomizes (thermalizes) the quantum state of each photon, resulting in each photon engaging in a thermal random walk about the cavity's transverse modes. They then found the critical parameters for the "photon gas" to condense into occupying the lowest energy state (probably the fundamental Gaussian cavity mode).
Again, it's a pretty strange paper so I may have some details wrong. Fundamentally though, it's about modelling the transverse motion of photons in a cavity as particle motion, introducing thermal noise through scattering, then analyzing the dynamics by comparing to atomic motion and showing similar condensation at appropriate parameters. Quite an amazing paper.
The research is a fascinating work about fundamental physics. This is one case where a sales pitch about about possible, only tangentially related applications in computing is quite unnecessary.
I don't think that elegant syntax and reasonably straightforward function names are incompatible with a high-level computational language. Mathematica's syntax really is very nice and your first guess at a function name tends to be correct which can save some time. I don't think that the syntax of Mathematica generally gets in the way of writing scripts.
It's too bad that it falls behind MATLAB for numeric data and behind Maple for symbolic mathematics but in some cases cases (many cases) it's still handy to have a single piece of software that does a decent job at both symbolic and numeric computations.
The only thing that's inexcusable is one undo level. Seriously, one undo level?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that the Slashdot community refuses to allow dissenting opinions on its boards. I'm just pointing out the obvious fact that the community opinion is a poor gauge of truth.
I agree with you that Slashdot is remarkably good at not down-rating good comments because they go against the grain, but it does have a habit of up-rating poor comments that go with the grain. That's fine, it's just worth recognizing that it occurs.
It's a point clear to most people on Slashdot, but too often public opinion is confused with truth. Increasingly, even news agencies seem to be touting internet polls as a source of fact rather than investigative journalism.
It's true that a well written post will often get good moderations but it's still very slanted towards opinions favored by the crowd. A comment that isn't particularly well said stands a much better chance of getting a good rating if it doesn't agree with the RIAA or extol the virtues of IE6.
The usual approach is to dismiss the claimant as a crackpot. I was prepared to do exactly that, citing lack of energy or momentum conservation or a violation of Newton's Third Law but it doesn't obviously do any of those things.
The gearing mechanism results in a drag on the wheels but creates an opposing force by spinning the propeller. Does the drag have to be greater than the thrust in that situation? I don't see a clear reason why it would have to be; it would depend on the propeller geometry of course, but I can't see an obvious bound on the maximum thrust for a given drag while considering forces.
The clear place to turn to show that the idea is a crackpot idea, is lack of energy conservation. Again, the situation isn't clear. The cart is gaining kinetic energy but the wind is loosing it. I can't think of a clear argument as why energy conservation would restrict the speed of cart to going the wind speed. The restriction is that the cart can't gain more energy than the wind is losing but that can be satisfied even if the cart is travelling faster than the wind.
I don't think there's any clear reason as to why the cart can't push the wind backwards such that the velocity of the air is reduced. In such a case, the wind loses kinetic energy and the cart gains some. Rather, the wind speed would place a maximum on the possible thrust, which would have to overcome the drag. Again, it comes down to the issue of thrust to drag, but that's no a problem that can be resolved by simple intuitive arguments.
A matter-antimatter reaction in air might work if your eyes see gamma rays. Mine only see this lame portion of the spectrum called visible radiation.
I also think it's a bit funny that you feel that an anti-matter teleporter is a more tractable problem than a free-space hologram. Here's an idea: use high-intensity infra-red beams to heat tiny pockets of air and then use the index-of-refraction gradient to deflect (or better yet, scatter) visible light. Maybe that won't work, but my point is that there just might be hologram technologies that are easier to implement than a teleporter.
I suspect that, while most parts aren't covered by patents, some of them would be and would not be legal to reproduce. Furthermore, the schematics that the manufacturer used to make them would probably be covered by copyright. Still, it wouldn't take long for people to re-create the geometries of the parts (just scan them in!) and have legal replacements available.
Slashdot Mirror
At the moment, much of the content available in the HTML5 demo on YouTube seems to be only available in H.264. It seems strange that Google would serve content that Chrome can't play. It seems like they will almost certainly transcode all of their video to WebM. I wonder if they will continue to serve H.264 or if they'll cripple YouTube for IE and Safari users who don't have the plugin. If they're willing to develop those plugins, I would guess that they will make YouTube WebM only.
1. Of course it can't be left to the ISPs as to what is on the block list. It needs to be an independent organization with the transparency and recognized authority to do so. The ISPs only have to update their DNS servers, they would have no other responsibility.
2. That's fine. They're breaking the law and it's the responsibility of the police to investigate. The point is to reduce accidental viewings. If it's illegal to even visit a site by accident, it's better for everyone if it's blocked. The pedophiles aren't the ones you're trying to protect.
3. Hosts have a responsibility to remove illegal content. Block internet slum-lords until they clean up their act. A notice to offending sites would be sent to the host and if they chose not to comply, they would be blocked. Seriously, if you're hosting child porn, get the fuck off the internet.
Australia and the U.K are examples of attempts at elaborate blocks that have failed miserably. Canada institutes a DNS block list that most ISPs in the country choose to use. There have been very few complaints.
The problem is jurisdiction. If the content is hosted in another country the only thing a police force can do it report it to the local authorities and hope. Beyond that, they do have control over the ISPs, so that's who they try to regulate.
I don't see the problem with just purging those sites from the DNS servers within local jurisdiction. That should cover ISPs plus Google. The stated goal of the filters is to prevent well-intentioned people from accidentally stumbling across illegal content. DNS poisoning would work fine to accomplish that for the majority of users.
It's unclear to me to what extent there was any actual infringement. As I understand it, the artists agreed to have the CMRRA represent their interests with regard to licencing their work. The CMRRA then set up an agreement that allowed the recording companies to use a work and pay for it later. Which they never did.
It may be that proving infringement in court would be difficult due to the existing agreement. Probably, it would be more like a breach of contract. It's tough to know what case could have been made for infringement, but it certainly would be a tough legal battle. Too bad, that would have been very, very fun to watch.
I suspect that $167 per track is close to what they would expect to pay for a licence up front*. Perhaps individuals could do the same. Set aside what it costs to "licence" an album legally, $15 should do it, then go ahead and pirate the album.
Just be sure to keep your "pending" list and coin jar handy for when the recording studios come knocking.
* Can it really be an average of just $167 per track for a commercial licence? That seems lower than I would expect.
Failure to recognize how much you don't know is forgetting what wisdom is. Epistemology, philosophy, is the study of what wisdom is, and yet you claim that ignorance of those is wisdom. Your argument presupposes that there are millions of lives to save or feed, that there is a Mars. Are you wrong? No, but ignorance of the reasons of why your assumptions might be false doesn't make you right.
If anything, philosophy and the natural sciences should be brought closer together because they have so much to offer each other. Epistemology should be a very interesting topic for anyone who pursues knowledge professionally or privately. I find it funny that anyone can be so certain that they know many facts and yet never consider the validity of the means by which they learned them.
Students will be a lot less likely to be using Facebook in a class if it's their second time through.
Science is about problem-solving...
Some of it is, much of it isn't. The majority of it is coming up with a problem to solve. That has more to do with creativity.
Cranking through calculations or debugging experiments is problem solving. To be good at those things you need both ability and experience. To be a good scientist; however, you need to know which calculations and experiments are interesting. I think that's the more important element and it comes though experience, intuition and familiarity with the field.
Furthermore, the idea that problem-solving isn't a learned skill is hog-poop.
Furthermore, being smart isn't everything in the sciences or the professional world. Being knowledgeable and creative will take you just as far, if not farther. I think that anyone with a passion for science could do very well in it, even if they're IQ is ranked fairly low during grade school.
What I see, is that people who seem dim are the ones who lack passion for any form of knowledge. Simply being interested in things makes the difference between being suited for working at Wal-Mart and being a doctor, a lawyer or a scientist. IQ doesn't play that big of a role.
I'm not well-versed in Shor's algorithm, but since the number of operations required scales polynomially, I suspect that the time that a given machine takes to factor a number scales polynomially with the number of bits. A 1064 bit encryption would just take 4 times longer. That doesn't make moving to longer keys a viable solution.
The trouble right now doesn't lie in whether or not Intel's resources are being thrown at it; Intel can't fab ion traps. Fundamentally new ideas regarding producing and interacting qubits will be needed before it could possibly move to a commercial R&D effort. Some people are working with silicon-based systems because of the possibility of, at least partially, using existing technology to build them but those systems have many limitations.
A multi-million qubit system wouldn't really be needed; a few thousand would probably be plenty if the states lasted for a while. I think the record sits at about a seven qubit register using trapped ions and they only last long enough for a proof-of-principle gate operation.
Thanks. The article makes it clear that the major change here is that the way in which atomic weights will be presented is changing. It's not just that they're being updated to reflect a more complete measurement, it's that atomic weights will now be represented as a range of possible values rather than a single value. It's not every day that the way in which information is presented in the periodic table changes.
I wouldn't want a weapon whether it's in or out of orbit. I think the technology is more interesting as a means to launch very simple satellites into orbit. They'd have to be very hardened against both structural and electromagnetic shock, of course.
Escape velocity is the velocity required to leave orbit, not to maintain a stable orbit. Of course, low Earth orbit is about 8 km/s, so still no.
It's a pretty dense article but, as far as I can tell, they're considering the motion of the photons in the plane transverse to the cavity axis as the particle movement. The problem is then two-dimensional in nature with the curvature of the mirrors directing photons back towards the cavity center. The situation is then analogous to a two-dimensional gas of particles confined by a central trapping potential.
In essence, the temperature is related to the transverse velocity of the intra-cavity photons. I believe that the cavity is spatially multi-mode and the quantum state of a photons is which spatial mode it's in and how it's evolving. Interaction with the dye particles randomizes (thermalizes) the quantum state of each photon, resulting in each photon engaging in a thermal random walk about the cavity's transverse modes. They then found the critical parameters for the "photon gas" to condense into occupying the lowest energy state (probably the fundamental Gaussian cavity mode).
Again, it's a pretty strange paper so I may have some details wrong. Fundamentally though, it's about modelling the transverse motion of photons in a cavity as particle motion, introducing thermal noise through scattering, then analyzing the dynamics by comparing to atomic motion and showing similar condensation at appropriate parameters. Quite an amazing paper.
The research is a fascinating work about fundamental physics. This is one case where a sales pitch about about possible, only tangentially related applications in computing is quite unnecessary.
I don't think that elegant syntax and reasonably straightforward function names are incompatible with a high-level computational language. Mathematica's syntax really is very nice and your first guess at a function name tends to be correct which can save some time. I don't think that the syntax of Mathematica generally gets in the way of writing scripts.
It's too bad that it falls behind MATLAB for numeric data and behind Maple for symbolic mathematics but in some cases cases (many cases) it's still handy to have a single piece of software that does a decent job at both symbolic and numeric computations.
The only thing that's inexcusable is one undo level. Seriously, one undo level?
Or middle click with most browsers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that the Slashdot community refuses to allow dissenting opinions on its boards. I'm just pointing out the obvious fact that the community opinion is a poor gauge of truth.
I agree with you that Slashdot is remarkably good at not down-rating good comments because they go against the grain, but it does have a habit of up-rating poor comments that go with the grain. That's fine, it's just worth recognizing that it occurs.
It's a point clear to most people on Slashdot, but too often public opinion is confused with truth. Increasingly, even news agencies seem to be touting internet polls as a source of fact rather than investigative journalism.
It's true that a well written post will often get good moderations but it's still very slanted towards opinions favored by the crowd. A comment that isn't particularly well said stands a much better chance of getting a good rating if it doesn't agree with the RIAA or extol the virtues of IE6.
The usual approach is to dismiss the claimant as a crackpot. I was prepared to do exactly that, citing lack of energy or momentum conservation or a violation of Newton's Third Law but it doesn't obviously do any of those things.
The gearing mechanism results in a drag on the wheels but creates an opposing force by spinning the propeller. Does the drag have to be greater than the thrust in that situation? I don't see a clear reason why it would have to be; it would depend on the propeller geometry of course, but I can't see an obvious bound on the maximum thrust for a given drag while considering forces.
The clear place to turn to show that the idea is a crackpot idea, is lack of energy conservation. Again, the situation isn't clear. The cart is gaining kinetic energy but the wind is loosing it. I can't think of a clear argument as why energy conservation would restrict the speed of cart to going the wind speed. The restriction is that the cart can't gain more energy than the wind is losing but that can be satisfied even if the cart is travelling faster than the wind.
I don't think there's any clear reason as to why the cart can't push the wind backwards such that the velocity of the air is reduced. In such a case, the wind loses kinetic energy and the cart gains some. Rather, the wind speed would place a maximum on the possible thrust, which would have to overcome the drag. Again, it comes down to the issue of thrust to drag, but that's no a problem that can be resolved by simple intuitive arguments.
Ah damn. Thanks.
A matter-antimatter reaction in air might work if your eyes see gamma rays. Mine only see this lame portion of the spectrum called visible radiation.
I also think it's a bit funny that you feel that an anti-matter teleporter is a more tractable problem than a free-space hologram. Here's an idea: use high-intensity infra-red beams to heat tiny pockets of air and then use the index-of-refraction gradient to deflect (or better yet, scatter) visible light. Maybe that won't work, but my point is that there just might be hologram technologies that are easier to implement than a teleporter.
in the Nature abstract, but there certainly is on their group's website!
Also, it's rad that they mentioned Star Wars in a Nature article; although it would have been better if they'd actually referenced A New Hope.
I suspect that, while most parts aren't covered by patents, some of them would be and would not be legal to reproduce. Furthermore, the schematics that the manufacturer used to make them would probably be covered by copyright. Still, it wouldn't take long for people to re-create the geometries of the parts (just scan them in!) and have legal replacements available.