come on, you know better, and it's written write in there where you offer (meekly can I say?) the "real yardstick". The robotic mission to fix the robots is very risky, and reducing the risk would increase the cost and because of time constraints even that probably is not possible.
I attended a speech by the Chief NASA scientist and he did convince that it was worthwhile to try, that even in failure the engineering research into robotic missions would be a net boon...
emotionally I still want them to save the Hubble. I think it would be worth it. I think it would be worth the "risk" to send the Shuttle back one more time (in fact, that is what I wish they would do)... but I'm starting to wonder if that money wouldn't be better used by the rest of the astronomical community.
Of course, the big monkey is in the mix and likely we'll lose the Hubble and the money... so let me just say my comments are about policy not about predicting how bad Bush is going to screw science in the end...
>1. What is the benefit of ending a sentence with "period."?
It means the speaker does not believe that material facts have been left out of the consideration, that other options are not really still on the table, that the position is not tentative on undiscovered facts.
re: throwing out philosophy: no, no need to do that. However, I won't give equal weight to all theories.
>So when the thought police are formed, you'll be first to sign up?
so either it is OK to believe everything, or else one needs thought police? It is not OK to believe anything at all, and yet thought police are not required. You can, for example, choose to be wrong. Did I say otherwise? Is is OK to be wrong? Lack of prohibition does not equal "OK".
>Who is O'Reilly? Does she have a website?
Bill O'Reilly, he has the number one news talk show with millions of people listening to his equating the "theory" of evolution with the "theory" of ID as if the two are equivalent since they are both, just theories. One has facts supporting it rather than just thought experiments.
>To date I've never seen a fact that could not be used to bolster either camp.
I'm sorry but that's nonsense. Which camps are you talking about? ID vs. evolution? The facts point equally in both directions? if that is what you are claiming, I think that is nonsense. You may believe that if you like, but I think it's wrong. I don't want to tell you it's OK just because nothing is absolute. I don't believe in absolute truth. But, I still believe in truth. go figure.
just because you want to or how it makes you feel is not just dandy.
believe should follow evidence, period.
I'm tired of pretending it's OK to believe everything.
O'Reilly was going on about Intelligent Design yesterday... it's a theory, just like evolution. Right, and just like the theory that the moon is made of cheese... to bad the facts are not on it's side.
we should not coddle the believe-whatever-we-like crowd. Reality is relative, that doesn't mean you can't compare things, it means you HAVE TO.
it's much easier to put a robot up there that can grab the satelite and deorbit safely than it is to have a robot that can open it up and fix it, unfortunately.
and you didn't even flame my snark. You are a gentleman.
Yes. It means (1) Python has some great high level stuff built in for networking software, which my pythonophilic freinds have told me for (holy shit!) a decade. And (2) banning P2P will not happen unless python is banned, nor even if python is banned.
banning P2P would be to ban servers... for that's all it is, servers which are peers rather than the old ugly named "master-slave" setup.
Web Hosts that are not traditionally thought of as Peers are, in fact, with modern smart workstations rather than terminals, just Fat Peers. Though I would prefer to call them Phat Peers.
I know I told you because I always post this when we get "in X lines!" stories... please believe me when I tell you that if you write anything at all in under 10 lines of code that is because it was already written and all you had to do was invoke the right tools. It's a testament to Python, which evidently has a peer to peer app more or less built in.
it may even be a sign of great skill to have seen how so few lines were required to invoke the behavior. BUT: it's still not really "writing XYZ in N lines of code".
yes yes... I'm just bitter because my Peer to Peer application is 25 lines long.
by the way, did I tell you about the animation program I wrote? It can only animate one thing but it works flawlessly, I wrote it in GIF.
I also wrote a word processor in Word Basic in zero lines! that's right... without altering the host environment at all... I achieve word processingness. Also... I ported this to Open Office macros with only zero lines.
I feel old and mean now... but in my day we liked being old and mean, hey... GET OFF MY LAWN!
I also hear Microsoft is going to come out with software to help the DOJ track Antitrust litigation...
in other news... wolf applies for job as hen house guard.
This is not Microsoft bashing... oh wait... it is! But it's not senseless! I remember when microsoft released an install program that searched your hard drive and sent an index to microsoft servers (I think it was an MSN install, but it might have been something else)... so you see, there is sense to this bashing. Oh, it's easy. Sure. Tooo easy. But...
there have been many two-slit experiments, the first was with photons but they have been reproduced with particles such as neutrons as well.
The particle is fired such that it might go through either slit (or in fact hit the mask)... on the far side is photographic paper, or something similar that can detect the particle impact.
If you fire a photon gun so slowly that you get one photon at a time, an interference pattern appears on the target side, implying the photon's own probability wave interfered with itself.
I of course can't answer about the exact points they revert their wave nature, etc, but I think of it in terms of our sense aparatus. The problem comes from the fact that our brains have evolved around our sense aparatus and this sense aparatus may only be percieving a slice of the world, a cross section, cut by it's interaction with the probability wave.
Imagine a protozoa... it does have some sensation, but no propery eyes. It's ability to move is not even one dimensional... that is, it can't move back and forward, it can move forward or not at all. Such a creature would exist in a three dimensional space and move in that three dimensional space but would experience everything in terms of a single dimension. It has enough information to decude there is a three dimensional world (if you believe evolution this is what happened to us... we did figure it out as our senses refined themselves), but it would be very difficult for it to concieve of.
I tend to think this is where we are with quantum mechanics... in classical mechanic science filled in the world our senses presumed, but with relativity and quantum mechanics our scientific knowledge has shown us a world we cannot see. It's there, we are in that world as surely as the protozoa is in our three dimensional world, and it is a matter of perspective.
The brain may not even be able to concieve of this space... but it can probably evolve to.
but Sierra had to make money with their games and that was an onerous burden... not mentioning having to have Ken and Robert Williams as your company leaders... the burden! add that in, subtract out SCI, Star Wars fundraising, multiply by Warren Schwarder, divide by the Cole's and add a constant equal but not less than my bias as an ex-TSNer then you'll find that Sierra's overall accomplishment factor was greater... although they didn't actually create any games quite as good as Monkey Island, they did come close with Space Quest. Besides, you could bet negative money in Al Lowe's "Soft Porn" and win win win!!! clever.
I wouldn't say a conscious being has to be there to see it. I believe consciousness is a phenomenal illusion which reduces to nothing other than chemical reactions we are speaking of.
wrt to the two slit experiments... the only version I know about has been done only with photons because there are crystals that photons can travel through and the photon retains it's identity without being absorbed, and yet there is a magnetic fluxuation which can be measured.
as this stuff gets esoteric I need to just read about the experiments again because they are so bizarre my memory fades quickly with time. But once ever year or two I go through them again.
but to summarize my own understand/view, an intelligent or conscious observer is not needed, and indeed, could not be needed in the sense that there is no scientific definition of these phenomenon of "intelligence" and "consciousness".
no, it does not have to be intelligent, just matter.
the confusion on this comes back to the model of humans as spiritual being, and as the senses are direct connections to the world.
Observation requires electro-chemical reactions, these reactions are the "observation"... it's not really about observation so much as interactions of probable states. If a reaction occurs, the wave is committed to a particular physical state.
Also, consider that physicists were trying, and succeeding, in getting lighter and lighter in their touch, as experimentation got more advanced scientists found more and better ways to get out of the way of the reaction and just watch. Finally they got good enough to realize there is a limit, in the end, you must interact with the experiment to observe it. And this was proved mathematically as well.
it's not compatible even with the Copenhagen Interpretation. This is the interpretation that invokes "collapse"... and identifies the time of collapse, and accepts the notion there is really only one universe in the end, somehow. You can provoke a smearing, but the universe is rectified continually.
It's not just "being observed" it's having a physical IMPACT.
To observe is to manage these impacts delicately... to collect the impact in the eye or ear, etc... so... a simple rock also "observes" the ocean wave, it "records" the event by shedding a few molecules in a certain pattern. The event is recorded and the probabilities collapsed.
The weird thing is the way these collapses are isolated... in other words, it's not that the wave collapses at all, but merely that material becomes isolated from other parts of the probability wave.
look up the two-slit experiments... the particle, until it impacts, is in both states. The cat is an observer... so the cat will experience one state or the other... from it's perspective.
But from our perspective, the cat is in both states superimposed. These states, while separated in probability space are nearby in real space... and can actually interact with each other... at least if you draw on the two-slit experiments as your analog. In those experiments the particles travel through BOTH slits and actually create an interference pattern in the probability waves which affects the probabilities of striking different locations on the target, a pattern only explained by a wave going through two paths and interfering with itself. If you observe which slit the particle goes through, the interference pattern goes away.
Slashdot Mirror
come on, you know better, and it's written write in there where you offer (meekly can I say?) the "real yardstick". The robotic mission to fix the robots is very risky, and reducing the risk would increase the cost and because of time constraints even that probably is not possible.
I attended a speech by the Chief NASA scientist and he did convince that it was worthwhile to try, that even in failure the engineering research into robotic missions would be a net boon...
emotionally I still want them to save the Hubble. I think it would be worth it. I think it would be worth the "risk" to send the Shuttle back one more time (in fact, that is what I wish they would do)... but I'm starting to wonder if that money wouldn't be better used by the rest of the astronomical community.
Of course, the big monkey is in the mix and likely we'll lose the Hubble and the money... so let me just say my comments are about policy not about predicting how bad Bush is going to screw science in the end...
>1. What is the benefit of ending a sentence with "period."?
It means the speaker does not believe that material facts have been left out of the consideration, that other options are not really still on the table, that the position is not tentative on undiscovered facts.
re: throwing out philosophy: no, no need to do that. However, I won't give equal weight to all theories.
>So when the thought police are formed, you'll be first to sign up?
so either it is OK to believe everything, or else one needs thought police? It is not OK to believe anything at all, and yet thought police are not required. You can, for example, choose to be wrong. Did I say otherwise? Is is OK to be wrong? Lack of prohibition does not equal "OK".
>Who is O'Reilly? Does she have a website?
Bill O'Reilly, he has the number one news talk show with millions of people listening to his equating the "theory" of evolution with the "theory" of ID as if the two are equivalent since they are both, just theories. One has facts supporting it rather than just thought experiments.
>To date I've never seen a fact that could not be used to bolster either camp.
I'm sorry but that's nonsense. Which camps are you talking about? ID vs. evolution? The facts point equally in both directions? if that is what you are claiming, I think that is nonsense. You may believe that if you like, but I think it's wrong. I don't want to tell you it's OK just because nothing is absolute. I don't believe in absolute truth. But, I still believe in truth. go figure.
just because you want to or how it makes you feel is not just dandy.
believe should follow evidence, period.
I'm tired of pretending it's OK to believe everything.
O'Reilly was going on about Intelligent Design yesterday... it's a theory, just like evolution. Right, and just like the theory that the moon is made of cheese... to bad the facts are not on it's side.
we should not coddle the believe-whatever-we-like crowd. Reality is relative, that doesn't mean you can't compare things, it means you HAVE TO.
it's much easier to put a robot up there that can grab the satelite and deorbit safely than it is to have a robot that can open it up and fix it, unfortunately.
I hate saying it but it might be time to move on.
there will be three ships. The first will carry the marketers and middle managers and as many CEOs as we can catch.
hurry! before it's too late!
which is sadly why people don't learn about the term.
playing to peoples ignorance while educating them... ah, I know it's a balancing trick...
and you didn't even flame my snark. You are a gentleman.
Yes. It means (1) Python has some great high level stuff built in for networking software, which my pythonophilic freinds have told me for (holy shit!) a decade. And (2) banning P2P will not happen unless python is banned, nor even if python is banned.
banning P2P would be to ban servers... for that's all it is, servers which are peers rather than the old ugly named "master-slave" setup.
Web Hosts that are not traditionally thought of as Peers are, in fact, with modern smart workstations rather than terminals, just Fat Peers. Though I would prefer to call them Phat Peers.
would have been better like this
/etc/init.d/httpd start
#!/bin/bash
sorry for my formating evil.
did I tell you?
/etc/init.d/httpd start
#!/bin/bash
I know I told you because I always post this when we get "in X lines!" stories... please believe me when I tell you that if you write anything at all in under 10 lines of code that is because it was already written and all you had to do was invoke the right tools. It's a testament to Python, which evidently has a peer to peer app more or less built in.
it may even be a sign of great skill to have seen how so few lines were required to invoke the behavior. BUT: it's still not really "writing XYZ in N lines of code".
yes yes... I'm just bitter because my Peer to Peer application is 25 lines long.
by the way, did I tell you about the animation program I wrote? It can only animate one thing but it works flawlessly, I wrote it in GIF.
I also wrote a word processor in Word Basic in zero lines! that's right... without altering the host environment at all... I achieve word processingness. Also... I ported this to Open Office macros with only zero lines.
I feel old and mean now... but in my day we liked being old and mean, hey... GET OFF MY LAWN!
I also hear Microsoft is going to come out with software to help the DOJ track Antitrust litigation...
...
in other news... wolf applies for job as hen house guard.
This is not Microsoft bashing... oh wait... it is! But it's not senseless! I remember when microsoft released an install program that searched your hard drive and sent an index to microsoft servers (I think it was an MSN install, but it might have been something else)... so you see, there is sense to this bashing. Oh, it's easy. Sure. Tooo easy. But
there have been many two-slit experiments, the first was with photons but they have been reproduced with particles such as neutrons as well.
The particle is fired such that it might go through either slit (or in fact hit the mask)... on the far side is photographic paper, or something similar that can detect the particle impact.
If you fire a photon gun so slowly that you get one photon at a time, an interference pattern appears on the target side, implying the photon's own probability wave interfered with itself.
I of course can't answer about the exact points they revert their wave nature, etc, but I think of it in terms of our sense aparatus. The problem comes from the fact that our brains have evolved around our sense aparatus and this sense aparatus may only be percieving a slice of the world, a cross section, cut by it's interaction with the probability wave.
Imagine a protozoa... it does have some sensation, but no propery eyes. It's ability to move is not even one dimensional... that is, it can't move back and forward, it can move forward or not at all. Such a creature would exist in a three dimensional space and move in that three dimensional space but would experience everything in terms of a single dimension. It has enough information to decude there is a three dimensional world (if you believe evolution this is what happened to us... we did figure it out as our senses refined themselves), but it would be very difficult for it to concieve of.
I tend to think this is where we are with quantum mechanics... in classical mechanic science filled in the world our senses presumed, but with relativity and quantum mechanics our scientific knowledge has shown us a world we cannot see. It's there, we are in that world as surely as the protozoa is in our three dimensional world, and it is a matter of perspective.
The brain may not even be able to concieve of this space... but it can probably evolve to.
how do you feel about watching movies with subtitles!
Shaolin Soccer... don't go dubbed... you ruin a classic when you do that and an old silent movie dies.
but Sierra had to make money with their games and that was an onerous burden... not mentioning having to have Ken and Robert Williams as your company leaders... the burden! add that in, subtract out SCI, Star Wars fundraising, multiply by Warren Schwarder, divide by the Cole's and add a constant equal but not less than my bias as an ex-TSNer then you'll find that Sierra's overall accomplishment factor was greater... although they didn't actually create any games quite as good as Monkey Island, they did come close with Space Quest. Besides, you could bet negative money in Al Lowe's "Soft Porn" and win win win!!! clever.
holy fuk that was funny.
thanks.
I wouldn't say a conscious being has to be there to see it. I believe consciousness is a phenomenal illusion which reduces to nothing other than chemical reactions we are speaking of.
wrt to the two slit experiments... the only version I know about has been done only with photons because there are crystals that photons can travel through and the photon retains it's identity without being absorbed, and yet there is a magnetic fluxuation which can be measured.
as this stuff gets esoteric I need to just read about the experiments again because they are so bizarre my memory fades quickly with time. But once ever year or two I go through them again.
but to summarize my own understand/view, an intelligent or conscious observer is not needed, and indeed, could not be needed in the sense that there is no scientific definition of these phenomenon of "intelligence" and "consciousness".
"Observation" means "physical collision".
"Look around, and everyone will see that quantum mechanics is not something that happens around us! Do you see quantum wells on your computer screen?"
explain the transparency of glass.
no, it does not have to be intelligent, just matter.
the confusion on this comes back to the model of humans as spiritual being, and as the senses are direct connections to the world.
Observation requires electro-chemical reactions, these reactions are the "observation"... it's not really about observation so much as interactions of probable states. If a reaction occurs, the wave is committed to a particular physical state.
Also, consider that physicists were trying, and succeeding, in getting lighter and lighter in their touch, as experimentation got more advanced scientists found more and better ways to get out of the way of the reaction and just watch. Finally they got good enough to realize there is a limit, in the end, you must interact with the experiment to observe it. And this was proved mathematically as well.
it's not compatible even with the Copenhagen Interpretation. This is the interpretation that invokes "collapse"... and identifies the time of collapse, and accepts the notion there is really only one universe in the end, somehow. You can provoke a smearing, but the universe is rectified continually.
is that you8 are made of matter.
It's not just "being observed" it's having a physical IMPACT.
To observe is to manage these impacts delicately... to collect the impact in the eye or ear, etc... so... a simple rock also "observes" the ocean wave, it "records" the event by shedding a few molecules in a certain pattern. The event is recorded and the probabilities collapsed.
The weird thing is the way these collapses are isolated... in other words, it's not that the wave collapses at all, but merely that material becomes isolated from other parts of the probability wave.
it would all be so clear.
look up the two-slit experiments... the particle, until it impacts, is in both states. The cat is an observer... so the cat will experience one state or the other... from it's perspective.
But from our perspective, the cat is in both states superimposed. These states, while separated in probability space are nearby in real space... and can actually interact with each other... at least if you draw on the two-slit experiments as your analog. In those experiments the particles travel through BOTH slits and actually create an interference pattern in the probability waves which affects the probabilities of striking different locations on the target, a pattern only explained by a wave going through two paths and interfering with itself. If you observe which slit the particle goes through, the interference pattern goes away.
iow, it's fucking mind bending... what luck!!!
it's not in question any more.
now they know!
also... there are protons decaying AS WE SPEAK!!!!
what of the protons!?
ASAP! you can't let this sort of thing go unchallenged.
Go in there, liberate this fellows house... make sure he's not on steroid while we're there!
if the language hasn't got the sense to be spelled phonetically fuck it.
You sir, are a spelling villin.
I don't have time to learn a new villian.