Well, maybe someday that would help to create something like USB but without physical medium between two connected points? Yeah, I know, "no information can be transferred through QE", but still, who knows how else can we sidestep "obvious physical limitations"? Not now, but in 20, 50, 100 years from now? I'd like to imagine our world with such technology widely adapted, and I just can't - possibilities are truly mind-boggling. Ah, I just like news like this - helps to get out of winter depression a little.
First of all, speed of light in one medium differs from speed of light in another. So yeah, probably there is some immeasurably small difference in speed of signal in copper and glass. But of course main difference comes from interference and heating - you can pack more channels of information running much higher frequencies in the same space. Plus there may be some speed gain from changing electronic elements with optronic ones (standard transistor can change its state only this fast - maybe optronic equivalent can do it faster?), but I don't have real numbers on my hands right now and too lazy to search and compare them.
Not only that - said jokes are really plain and primitive. You can make a wide variety of jokes starting from "yo mama" (yo mama is so fat, that even the rover on Mars smelt her methane), all through "Uranus" jokes (to precisely detect methane you'll have to send the rover to Uranus), to some more abstract (let's hope that Mars is not a really shy planet, otherwise it'll become even more Red Planet if we manage to find methane there) and so on.
Even if not funny by themselves, these jokes at least be somewhat creative, and some even may be called elegant (not my examples, of course). And yet we get something on a level of a dumb teenager. Hmm... maybe it's a deep social or political satire in there? Like "look, candidates, with that level of funding all that NASA can attract is a bunch of stupid fart jokes lovers"?
Oh, a nice and civilized point of view. Pity I've ran out of mod points, your post clearly deserves +5 Insightful. But to assume this point of view one must be a fully-formed individual, grown-up and psychically defined. And most of the religious fundamentalists or hardcore atheists are still cannot get over their teenage complexes and maximalism - thus the need to prove that they are undoubtedly right outweighs the need to find some sensible and effective solution for their disagreements. What we really need is not a rule of some religion or denial of any of them, we need a rule of maturity and common sense. But that, sadly, seems far more utopical than even the most fantastical religious descriptions of Heavens.
Well, at least he did much for the Horde, and even led some battles personally, unlike some fancy-hairstyle "king", who, in face of mortal threat from Deathwing, ordered to build a new statue in Stormwind.
Great - you mean one more dead terrorist, who will be used as a proof of necessity of the said check points. And a reason to build much more. How do you think the media would spin that story?
Sorry, are you replying to my comment? I didn't even said anything about Putin - he is not as much a person as a... natural phenomenon. Like a fungus in a warm and moist place. Take him down, there will be someone like him - from Sechin and Ivanov to Medvedev-like faux-president. No, to make something right in this country there has to be a much more drastic change in people's minds, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Quoting South Park: "do you prefer turd sandwich or giant douche"? My personal views are somewhat close to ones of Prokhorov, but realistically he has a better chance of becoming an Iron-Man-style superhero than the President of RF. What I would really prefer is to live in the same Russia, but with much more sane and adequate population. Utopia, I know...
It's just that many tech-savvy Russian Slashdot readers are busy looking for chance to move into more civilized country - from New Zealand to Czech Republic, for example. So they don't have time (and, more importantly, desire) to discuss these topics. Speaking from personal experience here - several of my friends have already left or are planning to leave soon.
Oh, that paid-off half-assed lap-dog clowns called "communists" today? Ones who don't even risk to voice their protests too loud, and would even (oh, the irony) distance from protesting people on the street, calling them "orange disease"? Please, they aren't even funny anymore.
Ahem... from 1917 to 1937 everything that has been done in Russia by bolsheviks has been done with the same premises - your 4 points were among their main principles (at least, many of them really believed in that). I doubt that anyone would want THAT to happen again.
What's good in modern Russia is that for one loudmouth idiot (pro-Putin or anti-Putin, any color or taste) there are 10 or 100 silent, but normal people, who just want to live their lives in comfort, mind their own business and raise their kids accordingly. What's bad... well, the same. So, with the help of small band of well-paid or just mentally handicapped people ("Nashists" from Seleger, extreme-right "patriots" or even Orthodoxal religious fanatics), our current powers-to-be can do absolutely everything they want, because most people will just silently live with that, not feeling strong and united enough (or even motivated enough) to really change something.
So, repeating one sad joke from late-Perestroyka years, "realistic way to make thing right in Russia is just wait for Martians to come and fix everything". And yes, many people in Russia do think that Putin has to go, and some may even name his possible successors, but no one will even lift his finger to do something about it. Problem is not with the people like OP, problem is with everyone else who says nothing at all.
Well, don't be sad - there is a lot of opportunities for simple hard-working people yet! Like developing and building all sorts of military drones and robots, for the protection of the same rich people from the "rest of the society". And if you work hard enough, you won't even be in the first set of the test subjects, upon which these robots will be practicing.
No, seriously, I do not know if we yet passed the point of no return, but I am pretty sure that it is not as far away as we would like it to be. After that point absolutely nothing could be done to break the walls between the world of new aristocracy and common serfs. And we are building this world gladly, with our own hands. "Player piano" seems rather prophetic, hmm?
It applies only if you are not some ultra-avangardist, who considers balled up incomplete sketches to be an ultimate form of art ) But of course you are right - if we take an idea of God as an "absolutely perfect in all possible ways being", then yes, our only escape would be in some "God works in mysterious ways" explanation. Why bother with all this "life" and "existence", if there is only some form of inescapable death and non-existence in the end, and you know it? But if we say that said God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent only in our observable Universe, then this idea starts to have some merit. For example, if we take some undergraduate student working in a lab with some Petri dishes, he can be considered God in the Universe of bacteria living in said dishes. Or, for even more straight analogy - creator of computer simulation can see every aspect of every event in all of the simulation time-line at once, being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent - but he himself wouldn't be considered "perfect being" by other humans. Well, he may think so, but that's not the point here )
Of course, this analogy takes us dangerously close to gnosticism and solipsism, and I am, personally, not very fond of either. If I was to chose my own belief, it would be something close to the Taoism - I find it more esthetically appealing. So, it is not really relevant how perfect this God or Creator is by itself. What relevant is that it can be perfect enough for us to view it as "absolutely perfect" (or, to be more precise, simply "absolute"), and its existence wouldn't conflict a bit with the reality of scientific knowledge with all its rules and laws. And, of course, it is not what is happening in the majority of cases of "faith vs. science" discussions. Alas, we hadn't yet evolved enough to stop wasting our time on such... inefficient activities.
I know one person who almost managed that, but then one tiny drop of acid (ok, maybe two or three) ruined it all for him - he became so uninterested with measuring himself on "smart/dumb" and "happy/unhappy" scales, that his experiment was completely foiled. Still, I think it's a pretty inspiring story.
Well, there are many people who had some spiritual experiences in their life. Most of them know for sure that it was just a "mind-trick", or a really good drop of acid, or something else, but nonetheless they chose to believe in something more alive and humane than "cold, blind deterministic machine with a dash of maddening quantum chaos". They work at high-paid jobs, they are socially adapted and generally intelligent people, and, from my own experience, they do not force their beliefs on anyone. Oh, and they are much more understanding, forgiving and generally pleasant people than any religious or "scientific" zealot.
So if they contribute much to the society, and if they don't shove their point of view into their children's heads, then why are you so strongly oppose their beliefs? Why are you so eager to destroy their "illusions", knowing that their overall happiness (and productivity) would be damaged if you succeed? Why being some bitter "I-know-what-real-life-is"-man is better than being some quiet and happy agnostic, Buddhist or even Zoroastrian? How did you came to that conclusion?
Your point is absolutely valid, with one "if" - if you presume that this omniscient being called God has the same standards of "optimal" and "suboptimal". What can be considered its goals? Creation of one, most adaptable, most optimal, most survivable species? Hardly - being omniscient, this God would probably see the futility of all this "life" experiment - sometime later our Sun will become red giant, eliminating all carbon-based life on Earth. And some more time later there wouldn't be anything but "entropy soup" or vast emptiness where matter was before dark energy ripped it all apart. I really doubt that any form of life can evolve enough to live through that. So why bother trying to do something certainly futile?
For some people that would be an argument against the very idea of God. But for some people that would be only a signal to check more basic, even axiomatic assumptions. For example, that the evolution's only goal is the continuation of life itself. Of course it's evolution prime goal, but the only one? We cannot say for sure. And even more confusing question is "how would all this evolution business look and feel to some omniscient, timeless and omnipresent being?"
I am not a religious person myself, but I think that questions like this is what make us more curious, more open-minded, less constrained by dogmas - religious and scientific alike. So yes, no rational man can deny theory of evolution, but at the same time he can ask some "what if" questions, that can lead him to more scientific discoveries or simply inner peace and sense of... well, sense. Teaching something that is obviously false is wrong - I would even call it a "sin" of some sort. But teaching to ask questions that do not contradict our understanding of reality (at least in the obviously stupid sense) - what's wrong with that?
Slashdot Mirror
So now I have a mental image of hundreds of dead Neanderthals mooning us with silent reproach. THANK YOU. Now, where's my brain-bleech...
Yes, they already use some confusingly advanced technology there.
Well, maybe someday that would help to create something like USB but without physical medium between two connected points? Yeah, I know, "no information can be transferred through QE", but still, who knows how else can we sidestep "obvious physical limitations"? Not now, but in 20, 50, 100 years from now? I'd like to imagine our world with such technology widely adapted, and I just can't - possibilities are truly mind-boggling. Ah, I just like news like this - helps to get out of winter depression a little.
First of all, speed of light in one medium differs from speed of light in another. So yeah, probably there is some immeasurably small difference in speed of signal in copper and glass. But of course main difference comes from interference and heating - you can pack more channels of information running much higher frequencies in the same space. Plus there may be some speed gain from changing electronic elements with optronic ones (standard transistor can change its state only this fast - maybe optronic equivalent can do it faster?), but I don't have real numbers on my hands right now and too lazy to search and compare them.
Please, go and die in an undisclosed grave, would you kindly? Thank you in advance.
Not only that - said jokes are really plain and primitive. You can make a wide variety of jokes starting from "yo mama" (yo mama is so fat, that even the rover on Mars smelt her methane), all through "Uranus" jokes (to precisely detect methane you'll have to send the rover to Uranus), to some more abstract (let's hope that Mars is not a really shy planet, otherwise it'll become even more Red Planet if we manage to find methane there) and so on.
Even if not funny by themselves, these jokes at least be somewhat creative, and some even may be called elegant (not my examples, of course). And yet we get something on a level of a dumb teenager. Hmm... maybe it's a deep social or political satire in there? Like "look, candidates, with that level of funding all that NASA can attract is a bunch of stupid fart jokes lovers"?
Oh, a nice and civilized point of view. Pity I've ran out of mod points, your post clearly deserves +5 Insightful. But to assume this point of view one must be a fully-formed individual, grown-up and psychically defined. And most of the religious fundamentalists or hardcore atheists are still cannot get over their teenage complexes and maximalism - thus the need to prove that they are undoubtedly right outweighs the need to find some sensible and effective solution for their disagreements. What we really need is not a rule of some religion or denial of any of them, we need a rule of maturity and common sense. But that, sadly, seems far more utopical than even the most fantastical religious descriptions of Heavens.
I'd prefer lazy over greedy any day...
Maybe it only means that South Koreans are reading Slashdot too?
Well, at least he did much for the Horde, and even led some battles personally, unlike some fancy-hairstyle "king", who, in face of mortal threat from Deathwing, ordered to build a new statue in Stormwind.
Oblig xkcd
Great - you mean one more dead terrorist, who will be used as a proof of necessity of the said check points. And a reason to build much more. How do you think the media would spin that story?
Ah, thanks for lightening up my mood. Still, by the looks of it, things are not that bad... yet.
Sorry, are you replying to my comment? I didn't even said anything about Putin - he is not as much a person as a... natural phenomenon. Like a fungus in a warm and moist place. Take him down, there will be someone like him - from Sechin and Ivanov to Medvedev-like faux-president. No, to make something right in this country there has to be a much more drastic change in people's minds, and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Quoting South Park: "do you prefer turd sandwich or giant douche"? My personal views are somewhat close to ones of Prokhorov, but realistically he has a better chance of becoming an Iron-Man-style superhero than the President of RF. What I would really prefer is to live in the same Russia, but with much more sane and adequate population. Utopia, I know...
It's just that many tech-savvy Russian Slashdot readers are busy looking for chance to move into more civilized country - from New Zealand to Czech Republic, for example. So they don't have time (and, more importantly, desire) to discuss these topics. Speaking from personal experience here - several of my friends have already left or are planning to leave soon.
Oh, that paid-off half-assed lap-dog clowns called "communists" today? Ones who don't even risk to voice their protests too loud, and would even (oh, the irony) distance from protesting people on the street, calling them "orange disease"? Please, they aren't even funny anymore.
Ahem... from 1917 to 1937 everything that has been done in Russia by bolsheviks has been done with the same premises - your 4 points were among their main principles (at least, many of them really believed in that). I doubt that anyone would want THAT to happen again.
What's good in modern Russia is that for one loudmouth idiot (pro-Putin or anti-Putin, any color or taste) there are 10 or 100 silent, but normal people, who just want to live their lives in comfort, mind their own business and raise their kids accordingly. What's bad... well, the same. So, with the help of small band of well-paid or just mentally handicapped people ("Nashists" from Seleger, extreme-right "patriots" or even Orthodoxal religious fanatics), our current powers-to-be can do absolutely everything they want, because most people will just silently live with that, not feeling strong and united enough (or even motivated enough) to really change something.
So, repeating one sad joke from late-Perestroyka years, "realistic way to make thing right in Russia is just wait for Martians to come and fix everything". And yes, many people in Russia do think that Putin has to go, and some may even name his possible successors, but no one will even lift his finger to do something about it. Problem is not with the people like OP, problem is with everyone else who says nothing at all.
Well, don't be sad - there is a lot of opportunities for simple hard-working people yet! Like developing and building all sorts of military drones and robots, for the protection of the same rich people from the "rest of the society". And if you work hard enough, you won't even be in the first set of the test subjects, upon which these robots will be practicing.
No, seriously, I do not know if we yet passed the point of no return, but I am pretty sure that it is not as far away as we would like it to be. After that point absolutely nothing could be done to break the walls between the world of new aristocracy and common serfs. And we are building this world gladly, with our own hands. "Player piano" seems rather prophetic, hmm?
I thought Mexicans were unquestionable leaders in this field?
(Hey, I have nothing against Mexicans or even light drugs like the weed, really.)
It applies only if you are not some ultra-avangardist, who considers balled up incomplete sketches to be an ultimate form of art ) But of course you are right - if we take an idea of God as an "absolutely perfect in all possible ways being", then yes, our only escape would be in some "God works in mysterious ways" explanation. Why bother with all this "life" and "existence", if there is only some form of inescapable death and non-existence in the end, and you know it? But if we say that said God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent only in our observable Universe, then this idea starts to have some merit. For example, if we take some undergraduate student working in a lab with some Petri dishes, he can be considered God in the Universe of bacteria living in said dishes. Or, for even more straight analogy - creator of computer simulation can see every aspect of every event in all of the simulation time-line at once, being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent - but he himself wouldn't be considered "perfect being" by other humans. Well, he may think so, but that's not the point here )
Of course, this analogy takes us dangerously close to gnosticism and solipsism, and I am, personally, not very fond of either. If I was to chose my own belief, it would be something close to the Taoism - I find it more esthetically appealing. So, it is not really relevant how perfect this God or Creator is by itself. What relevant is that it can be perfect enough for us to view it as "absolutely perfect" (or, to be more precise, simply "absolute"), and its existence wouldn't conflict a bit with the reality of scientific knowledge with all its rules and laws. And, of course, it is not what is happening in the majority of cases of "faith vs. science" discussions. Alas, we hadn't yet evolved enough to stop wasting our time on such... inefficient activities.
I know one person who almost managed that, but then one tiny drop of acid (ok, maybe two or three) ruined it all for him - he became so uninterested with measuring himself on "smart/dumb" and "happy/unhappy" scales, that his experiment was completely foiled. Still, I think it's a pretty inspiring story.
Well, there are many people who had some spiritual experiences in their life. Most of them know for sure that it was just a "mind-trick", or a really good drop of acid, or something else, but nonetheless they chose to believe in something more alive and humane than "cold, blind deterministic machine with a dash of maddening quantum chaos". They work at high-paid jobs, they are socially adapted and generally intelligent people, and, from my own experience, they do not force their beliefs on anyone. Oh, and they are much more understanding, forgiving and generally pleasant people than any religious or "scientific" zealot.
So if they contribute much to the society, and if they don't shove their point of view into their children's heads, then why are you so strongly oppose their beliefs? Why are you so eager to destroy their "illusions", knowing that their overall happiness (and productivity) would be damaged if you succeed? Why being some bitter "I-know-what-real-life-is"-man is better than being some quiet and happy agnostic, Buddhist or even Zoroastrian? How did you came to that conclusion?
Your point is absolutely valid, with one "if" - if you presume that this omniscient being called God has the same standards of "optimal" and "suboptimal". What can be considered its goals? Creation of one, most adaptable, most optimal, most survivable species? Hardly - being omniscient, this God would probably see the futility of all this "life" experiment - sometime later our Sun will become red giant, eliminating all carbon-based life on Earth. And some more time later there wouldn't be anything but "entropy soup" or vast emptiness where matter was before dark energy ripped it all apart. I really doubt that any form of life can evolve enough to live through that. So why bother trying to do something certainly futile?
For some people that would be an argument against the very idea of God. But for some people that would be only a signal to check more basic, even axiomatic assumptions. For example, that the evolution's only goal is the continuation of life itself. Of course it's evolution prime goal, but the only one? We cannot say for sure. And even more confusing question is "how would all this evolution business look and feel to some omniscient, timeless and omnipresent being?"
I am not a religious person myself, but I think that questions like this is what make us more curious, more open-minded, less constrained by dogmas - religious and scientific alike. So yes, no rational man can deny theory of evolution, but at the same time he can ask some "what if" questions, that can lead him to more scientific discoveries or simply inner peace and sense of... well, sense. Teaching something that is obviously false is wrong - I would even call it a "sin" of some sort. But teaching to ask questions that do not contradict our understanding of reality (at least in the obviously stupid sense) - what's wrong with that?