The Reuters article states that the president of Turkmenistan wishes to stop the fires and seal off the pit. I propose that the task could be accomplished by detonating a nuclear warhead in the crater. What could possibly could go wrong?
I think what he's getting at is that, as users become content producers and create their own network, being wrong can become viral. A web of blogs linking to other blogs as sources can become so far dissociated from truth that factual information can be hard to come by. Opinion is often recirculated until it becomes accepted fact; a problem that/. is certainly not immune to. That's the risk; Obama is clear that the possible benefits include dissent from centralized false-truths.
Bah! People need to stop complaining when it turns out that an important incremental advance in the field of quantum computing isn't already a commercially viable quantum computer that's being integrated into a chip for release next week. There won't be commercially viable products for many years to come. What is needed many, many incremental improvements in a broad variety of disciplines. None of the proof-of-principle experiments around today are attempting to be demonstrations of viable technology. This experiment demonstrates that am arbitrary quantum state can be deterministically written to the vibrational modes of a molecule, allowed to evolve and be read out by projective measurement. It is an important result because it helps open a new avenue of attack: vibrational energy levels in molecules.
The experiment is a beast that requires expensive, ultra-fast lasers, pulse shaping optics, and a molecular jet. It won't be integrated into PCI expansion card anytime soon but the fact that it is possible to coherently prepare superpositions of vibrational modes in molecules is interesting in its own right and is potentially important for quantum computation. Another decade or three of fundamental research and well funded grad students (ha) are going to be required before we can expect a commercial application.
That's like saying that the only thing a transistor can only compute is how it will behave for given applied voltages across its base and collector. Strictly true, but it's a critical building block. Any time you can deterministically create a particular quantum state, allow it to evolve, and read the output you can perform some quantum computations. Similarly, any classical system can perform some classical computations; the question is whether those computations are useful. Frauenhofer diffraction performs a Fourier transform and, as another poster pointed out, that can be useful.
The key here is that, while it's easy to prepare a classical system and let it evolve, it's much harder to do it with a quantum system. The experiment is a proof-of-principle experiment that vibrational modes in molecules can be deterministically written to and remain undisturbed enough to evolve in a quantum fashion. So far, the only thing that this quantum system can compute is how it will evolve, but, given appropriate input, other operations could be computed. The authors claim that a controlled-NOT (C-NOT) gate could be implemented which is the only two-bit operation needed to build an arbitrary quantum algorithm.
The reason that this paper isn't a huge breakthrough (Physical Review Letters is good, but it's no Nature or Science) is that the read and write stages are classical so it can't be chained with other operations. Good fidelity C-NOT gates can be built out of many quantum systems but I think vibrational energy level in molecules is a new one, which has many useful features but not, at the moment, quantum read-write. Reliable read-write operations with quantum light are common, but not to systems that have high-fidelity C-NOT protocols.
People, especially people who read/., need to stop expecting quantum computers tomorrow. It turns out that they're really hard to do, but steps like this are solid progress. Give it time; quantum computers will come through a lot incremental progress towards increased fidelity operations in many areas of the field.
It's great marketing but I'd be interested to see a side-by-side comparison of Chrome and a few other browsers rendering in slow motion for comparison. Chrome is the fastest, but only by about 30%. Still stands out as a great ad campaign though.
That Bell has received public money is a very common statement here but I researched a bit a while ago and I found very little to back it up. You're right that Bell was handed a monopoly by the government in exchange for providing service to rural areas but it never directly received public funds as far as I can tell so if anyone can provide any source for that notion, I would like to hear it. It's easy to paint that monopoly as pure evil throughout its history, but the mandate that it must provide service to rural areas is probably the only reason that many areas of the country got telephone service when they did.
No, if you used the proprietary codec as an intermediate step in something that's a commercial endeavor then you're probably liable to pay royalties. They'd have to prove that you filmed it with a particular camera, however.
Well if you want to be strictly correct, and it seems that you do, some of it will be converted to acoustic noise and escape through the walls, or be transmitted out through the wires or end up changing the magnetic potential energy in hard disk platters.
...am I the only one who went into a programming degree realizing that C++ and Java programming are nothing like playing Halo 3? I mean come on, not even on Legendary.
Clearly you're not using vi to do your C++ and Java coding.
Well sure scientists can hype but they should be careful to know their audience. The intro to every academic paper is hype that everyone in the field ignores but helps push the paper into good journals. The title of the project is hype directed at funding agencies. Press-releases are hype to try to pump public support by making things sound cool. It's just important to recognize what the factual basis is.
I suspect that actually working on the project would be somewhere between awesome and a tedium of clean rooms. A speck of dust anywhere in that system could probably result in a burned optic.
They're not a scam? I concede that I didn't read past a few pages of generic publicity on their site; I'll have a closer look but the website and Wikipedia article (which only referenced the website) didn't look promising. I might check it out if I have some time but I remain skeptical. I find that anyone who claims a solution to the world's energy problem can be dismissed as a nut, but I'd be happy to be wrong.
Well, I'm sure the researchers are pumping it up a bit to grab funding. They did a good job of it too because it sounds awesome.
Part of the reason for saying that they are "bringing star power to earth" is likely that ever since the cold fusion hype and subsequent failure researchers avoid doing research on fusion and try to use other terms to describe what they're doing. There have been attempts like this for a while so it's nothing too new, but it is probably the most well-informed, well-funded and well-advertised experiment of its kind that has been built. It also has, by far, the biggest laser.
I think that the lab itself is probably as much to blame as the journalist, have a look at the poster that they stuck on the building photographed in the article.
I agree, but I think that there are other significant differences that sink the comparison as well. Notably, open-source software is a collaborative effort but music fans do not, in general, have a reciprocal arrangement with the artists to create the music (except, perhaps, for some rhythmic clapping in live shows). Open-source requests that the community contribute whereas music is more of a one-way street. One could argue that musicians share ideas constantly and the arrangement parallels the divide between open-source developers and users, but I think that it's more pronounced with music.
Another, more practical and more relevant consideration, is that open-source developers usually develop as a hobby and have other jobs to pay the rent. Musicians shouldn't be relegated to being hobbyists. Arguably, most of the money for starting bands and even established bands comes through live performance, but I dislike the idea that recorded music sales are simply not an option for new bands.
The article suggests that, because copyright is unenforceable for recorded art in the digital age, the supply of that art is effectively infinite and hence the value is near zero. Perhaps enforcing scarcity of a resource through legislation is fundamentally flawed, but the result of a product that has zero value is undoubtedly that no one will produce that product. The act of copying may be free, but recording studios aren't. If artists are expected to make all their money off live shows, then they certainly won't be investing in high-quality recorded productions. Piracy certainly won't end music, but recording engineers might be looking for new work.
we are entering a very precarious phase of the internet
The internet is pushing the world into a very precarious phase. By eliminating all barriers for anyone to communicate globally, the internet is changing a great deal about the world views communication. People haven't figured out what exactly to do with it or how to regulate it, as is demonstrated by constantly changing buzz-words and legal battles.
Central to the issue of regulation is whether or not we treat the internet as a series of dumb pipes. On one hand, it is a collection of dumb pipes, on the other, it doesn't feel like it is when we're on it. Interestingly, the/. crowd has conflicting opinions on this depending on the situation. The free-and-open internet philosophy demands certain protections that differ from the dumb-pipes model; however, net-neutrality is probably best served by assuming dumb pipes.
In this article, for example, if the internet is a collection of private, two-way communications, then Google has listened to the poster and chosen to re-transmit the information to other individuals. There is no way isn't responsible for what it posts on it's site. There is no space on Google that could be "vandalized" because there only exists individual communications between Google and other individuals, some of which involved Google transmitting "injurious content." The notion of protection for site that merely re-transmit user content isn't relevant, Google has to watch what it says even if what it says is a blind repetition of what a poster says.
However, despite the physical construction of the internet, it doesn't feel like a collection of dumb pipes./., for example, feels like a public forum where I am directly communicating with peers rather than having a conversation exclusively with the/. server. It feels like there is something emergent from the dumb pipes that deserves special consideration. If Google provides a service that allows others to communicate directly with each other, then it is absolved of liability for what they say to each other. Recognizing that the internet is more grand than individual conversations; however, raises the problem that we can no longer fall back on previous legislation to determine how that communication is handled.
Regulations regarding privacy, wire taps, and neutrality with respect to content generally look towards the well-established legislation that surrounds telephone communications. If each connection is viewed, not as a direct conversation with a second party, but as a potential link to world via a third party, how does that change the law regarding those communications? It enables cases against the Pirate Bay, for one thing, whose defense relies on the idea that it does not directly communicate any infringing content through any of its conversations. For another thing, it may be a doorway to traffic shaping and stronger legislation against P2P networks.
Am I creating a false dichotomy here? Probably, but my feeling is that the internet is more of an emergent phenomena than its physical construction. It's unlike anything that we have laws to deal with and judges like this Brazilian judge would do well to recognize that. New laws should be built from scratch to deal specifically with the internet rather than telecommunications in general. It will take a while though.
Do you really think that they don't take a peek at how well seeded the torrents of their games are? They have a pretty good idea when a game is being pirated and when it just sucks. The pro-piracy attitude is nothing more than being too cheap to buy the game and not having any respect for the developers. If you like the game, then you associate some value to it and you should buy it. Otherwise, don't play it.
Address space shouldn't be a scarce resource. The only reason that it is presently behaving like one is because of the cost associated with transitioning to IPv6. However, it really isn't ARIN's responsibility to regulate allocation based on need. Everyone is going to have to transition to IPv6, might as well happen sooner rather than later.
The recording is an interesting listen. It's clear that Rachner knew his rights, but also that the arresting cop didn't. The cop isn't grinding an ax or going out of his way to be unreasonable, he was just misinformed about the law (rather inexcusable for an officer). The two were chatting peacefully about the legality of the arrest; Rachner instructing the cop (correctly) about civil liberties and the cop politely disagreeing. Rachner obviously made a conscious choice to be arrested to get a chance to stand on the principle of the thing.
They would probably have to request specific information. That would mean knowledge of the results, presumably due to their publication so worries of being scooped wouldn't really come up.
I'm throwing the Ubuntu or Fedora derived requirement out the window; along with a lot of GUI sugar. The first week would have to be dedicated to simply installing the OS; however, because it will be run inside a virtual machine, the installation will be identical for each student. You can guide them through it. I have a few reasons why I think that this is the way to go.
1) The course is about Linux. That means being comfortable with ls, grep, man, less, vi (or emacs), etc. Teach the way a Linux system is built by building it. The Arch install process guides the user though all of the configuration files. It's very educational. You install the kernel, X11, then the desktop. You configure each relevant file in/etc by hand, guided by the excellent documentation. The first week or two could be done without the students even installing X11. By the time the desktop was up and running, the students would have to be comfortable with some basic Linux tools as well as the layout of the system.
2) Arch can be built to be lightweight. It comes with very little installed, everything else is choice. The install can be tailored to the limited hardware that may be running the VM. Use the XFce perhaps. Despite the frugal initial install, Arch is a bleeding-edge distribution; the students could easily build their systems to be as user-friendly as Ubuntu (but only after learning the command line).
3) The Arch community is friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. They will also tell you to RTFM rather than give "just type this in the command line and don't ask why it works" advice like the Ubuntu community. It is more conducive to learning, even if your have to RTFM.
Slashdot Mirror
The Reuters article states that the president of Turkmenistan wishes to stop the fires and seal off the pit. I propose that the task could be accomplished by detonating a nuclear warhead in the crater. What could possibly could go wrong?
I think what he's getting at is that, as users become content producers and create their own network, being wrong can become viral. A web of blogs linking to other blogs as sources can become so far dissociated from truth that factual information can be hard to come by. Opinion is often recirculated until it becomes accepted fact; a problem that /. is certainly not immune to. That's the risk; Obama is clear that the possible benefits include dissent from centralized false-truths.
Bah! People need to stop complaining when it turns out that an important incremental advance in the field of quantum computing isn't already a commercially viable quantum computer that's being integrated into a chip for release next week. There won't be commercially viable products for many years to come. What is needed many, many incremental improvements in a broad variety of disciplines. None of the proof-of-principle experiments around today are attempting to be demonstrations of viable technology. This experiment demonstrates that am arbitrary quantum state can be deterministically written to the vibrational modes of a molecule, allowed to evolve and be read out by projective measurement. It is an important result because it helps open a new avenue of attack: vibrational energy levels in molecules.
The experiment is a beast that requires expensive, ultra-fast lasers, pulse shaping optics, and a molecular jet. It won't be integrated into PCI expansion card anytime soon but the fact that it is possible to coherently prepare superpositions of vibrational modes in molecules is interesting in its own right and is potentially important for quantum computation. Another decade or three of fundamental research and well funded grad students (ha) are going to be required before we can expect a commercial application.
That's like saying that the only thing a transistor can only compute is how it will behave for given applied voltages across its base and collector. Strictly true, but it's a critical building block. Any time you can deterministically create a particular quantum state, allow it to evolve, and read the output you can perform some quantum computations. Similarly, any classical system can perform some classical computations; the question is whether those computations are useful. Frauenhofer diffraction performs a Fourier transform and, as another poster pointed out, that can be useful.
The key here is that, while it's easy to prepare a classical system and let it evolve, it's much harder to do it with a quantum system. The experiment is a proof-of-principle experiment that vibrational modes in molecules can be deterministically written to and remain undisturbed enough to evolve in a quantum fashion. So far, the only thing that this quantum system can compute is how it will evolve, but, given appropriate input, other operations could be computed. The authors claim that a controlled-NOT (C-NOT) gate could be implemented which is the only two-bit operation needed to build an arbitrary quantum algorithm.
The reason that this paper isn't a huge breakthrough (Physical Review Letters is good, but it's no Nature or Science) is that the read and write stages are classical so it can't be chained with other operations. Good fidelity C-NOT gates can be built out of many quantum systems but I think vibrational energy level in molecules is a new one, which has many useful features but not, at the moment, quantum read-write. Reliable read-write operations with quantum light are common, but not to systems that have high-fidelity C-NOT protocols.
People, especially people who read /., need to stop expecting quantum computers tomorrow. It turns out that they're really hard to do, but steps like this are solid progress. Give it time; quantum computers will come through a lot incremental progress towards increased fidelity operations in many areas of the field.
It's great marketing but I'd be interested to see a side-by-side comparison of Chrome and a few other browsers rendering in slow motion for comparison. Chrome is the fastest, but only by about 30%. Still stands out as a great ad campaign though.
That Bell has received public money is a very common statement here but I researched a bit a while ago and I found very little to back it up. You're right that Bell was handed a monopoly by the government in exchange for providing service to rural areas but it never directly received public funds as far as I can tell so if anyone can provide any source for that notion, I would like to hear it. It's easy to paint that monopoly as pure evil throughout its history, but the mandate that it must provide service to rural areas is probably the only reason that many areas of the country got telephone service when they did.
Developers don't exactly put themselves in danger when they throw themselves between the public and segfaults.
No, if you used the proprietary codec as an intermediate step in something that's a commercial endeavor then you're probably liable to pay royalties. They'd have to prove that you filmed it with a particular camera, however.
Well of course, I was accounting for what wouldn't need to be dealt with by the data center's climate control.
Well if you want to be strictly correct, and it seems that you do, some of it will be converted to acoustic noise and escape through the walls, or be transmitted out through the wires or end up changing the magnetic potential energy in hard disk platters.
...am I the only one who went into a programming degree realizing that C++ and Java programming are nothing like playing Halo 3? I mean come on, not even on Legendary.
Clearly you're not using vi to do your C++ and Java coding.
This "new" energy cycle, while more efficient, also puts us in direct competition with plants...
You could put it in a desert. Perhaps in orbit? On rooftops maybe?
Well sure scientists can hype but they should be careful to know their audience. The intro to every academic paper is hype that everyone in the field ignores but helps push the paper into good journals. The title of the project is hype directed at funding agencies. Press-releases are hype to try to pump public support by making things sound cool. It's just important to recognize what the factual basis is.
I suspect that actually working on the project would be somewhere between awesome and a tedium of clean rooms. A speck of dust anywhere in that system could probably result in a burned optic.
They're not a scam? I concede that I didn't read past a few pages of generic publicity on their site; I'll have a closer look but the website and Wikipedia article (which only referenced the website) didn't look promising. I might check it out if I have some time but I remain skeptical. I find that anyone who claims a solution to the world's energy problem can be dismissed as a nut, but I'd be happy to be wrong.
Ha ha, a company that peddles cold fusion. Good luck to them and their investors!
Well, I'm sure the researchers are pumping it up a bit to grab funding. They did a good job of it too because it sounds awesome .
Part of the reason for saying that they are "bringing star power to earth" is likely that ever since the cold fusion hype and subsequent failure researchers avoid doing research on fusion and try to use other terms to describe what they're doing. There have been attempts like this for a while so it's nothing too new, but it is probably the most well-informed, well-funded and well-advertised experiment of its kind that has been built. It also has, by far, the biggest laser.
I think that the lab itself is probably as much to blame as the journalist, have a look at the poster that they stuck on the building photographed in the article.
The article is a single post on a forum from one user with no follow-up. Can anyone else confirm the allegation?
I agree, but I think that there are other significant differences that sink the comparison as well. Notably, open-source software is a collaborative effort but music fans do not, in general, have a reciprocal arrangement with the artists to create the music (except, perhaps, for some rhythmic clapping in live shows). Open-source requests that the community contribute whereas music is more of a one-way street. One could argue that musicians share ideas constantly and the arrangement parallels the divide between open-source developers and users, but I think that it's more pronounced with music.
Another, more practical and more relevant consideration, is that open-source developers usually develop as a hobby and have other jobs to pay the rent. Musicians shouldn't be relegated to being hobbyists. Arguably, most of the money for starting bands and even established bands comes through live performance, but I dislike the idea that recorded music sales are simply not an option for new bands.
The article suggests that, because copyright is unenforceable for recorded art in the digital age, the supply of that art is effectively infinite and hence the value is near zero. Perhaps enforcing scarcity of a resource through legislation is fundamentally flawed, but the result of a product that has zero value is undoubtedly that no one will produce that product. The act of copying may be free, but recording studios aren't. If artists are expected to make all their money off live shows, then they certainly won't be investing in high-quality recorded productions. Piracy certainly won't end music, but recording engineers might be looking for new work.
we are entering a very precarious phase of the internet
The internet is pushing the world into a very precarious phase. By eliminating all barriers for anyone to communicate globally, the internet is changing a great deal about the world views communication. People haven't figured out what exactly to do with it or how to regulate it, as is demonstrated by constantly changing buzz-words and legal battles.
Central to the issue of regulation is whether or not we treat the internet as a series of dumb pipes. On one hand, it is a collection of dumb pipes, on the other, it doesn't feel like it is when we're on it. Interestingly, the /. crowd has conflicting opinions on this depending on the situation. The free-and-open internet philosophy demands certain protections that differ from the dumb-pipes model; however, net-neutrality is probably best served by assuming dumb pipes.
In this article, for example, if the internet is a collection of private, two-way communications, then Google has listened to the poster and chosen to re-transmit the information to other individuals. There is no way isn't responsible for what it posts on it's site. There is no space on Google that could be "vandalized" because there only exists individual communications between Google and other individuals, some of which involved Google transmitting "injurious content." The notion of protection for site that merely re-transmit user content isn't relevant, Google has to watch what it says even if what it says is a blind repetition of what a poster says.
However, despite the physical construction of the internet, it doesn't feel like a collection of dumb pipes. /., for example, feels like a public forum where I am directly communicating with peers rather than having a conversation exclusively with the /. server. It feels like there is something emergent from the dumb pipes that deserves special consideration. If Google provides a service that allows others to communicate directly with each other, then it is absolved of liability for what they say to each other. Recognizing that the internet is more grand than individual conversations; however, raises the problem that we can no longer fall back on previous legislation to determine how that communication is handled.
Regulations regarding privacy, wire taps, and neutrality with respect to content generally look towards the well-established legislation that surrounds telephone communications. If each connection is viewed, not as a direct conversation with a second party, but as a potential link to world via a third party, how does that change the law regarding those communications? It enables cases against the Pirate Bay, for one thing, whose defense relies on the idea that it does not directly communicate any infringing content through any of its conversations. For another thing, it may be a doorway to traffic shaping and stronger legislation against P2P networks.
Am I creating a false dichotomy here? Probably, but my feeling is that the internet is more of an emergent phenomena than its physical construction. It's unlike anything that we have laws to deal with and judges like this Brazilian judge would do well to recognize that. New laws should be built from scratch to deal specifically with the internet rather than telecommunications in general. It will take a while though.
Do you really think that they don't take a peek at how well seeded the torrents of their games are? They have a pretty good idea when a game is being pirated and when it just sucks. The pro-piracy attitude is nothing more than being too cheap to buy the game and not having any respect for the developers. If you like the game, then you associate some value to it and you should buy it. Otherwise, don't play it.
Address space shouldn't be a scarce resource. The only reason that it is presently behaving like one is because of the cost associated with transitioning to IPv6. However, it really isn't ARIN's responsibility to regulate allocation based on need. Everyone is going to have to transition to IPv6, might as well happen sooner rather than later.
The recording is an interesting listen. It's clear that Rachner knew his rights, but also that the arresting cop didn't. The cop isn't grinding an ax or going out of his way to be unreasonable, he was just misinformed about the law (rather inexcusable for an officer). The two were chatting peacefully about the legality of the arrest; Rachner instructing the cop (correctly) about civil liberties and the cop politely disagreeing. Rachner obviously made a conscious choice to be arrested to get a chance to stand on the principle of the thing.
They would probably have to request specific information. That would mean knowledge of the results, presumably due to their publication so worries of being scooped wouldn't really come up.
Clearly you haven't read the man page for less. Less is more, but allows more flexible navigation.
I'm throwing the Ubuntu or Fedora derived requirement out the window; along with a lot of GUI sugar. The first week would have to be dedicated to simply installing the OS; however, because it will be run inside a virtual machine, the installation will be identical for each student. You can guide them through it. I have a few reasons why I think that this is the way to go.
1) The course is about Linux. That means being comfortable with ls, grep, man, less, vi (or emacs), etc. Teach the way a Linux system is built by building it. The Arch install process guides the user though all of the configuration files. It's very educational. You install the kernel, X11, then the desktop. You configure each relevant file in /etc by hand, guided by the excellent documentation. The first week or two could be done without the students even installing X11. By the time the desktop was up and running, the students would have to be comfortable with some basic Linux tools as well as the layout of the system.
2) Arch can be built to be lightweight. It comes with very little installed, everything else is choice. The install can be tailored to the limited hardware that may be running the VM. Use the XFce perhaps. Despite the frugal initial install, Arch is a bleeding-edge distribution; the students could easily build their systems to be as user-friendly as Ubuntu (but only after learning the command line).
3) The Arch community is friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. They will also tell you to RTFM rather than give "just type this in the command line and don't ask why it works" advice like the Ubuntu community. It is more conducive to learning, even if your have to RTFM.