>Instead, QM says that particles gain or lose energy "instantaneously", or rather "so fast that you can't tell what happened" as per the Heisenberg uncertainty of dE*dt. This means GR is, in some sense, more complete as a mathematical theory than QM
Great. I can't believe I understood that.
So QM is Newtonian, huh? Just goes to show the difference that scale can make. Cosmology is out of its reach.
Yep. There's a theory out now that says we live inside of a computer. That is, the universe is an information processing machine with ruthless precision. For example, if you want to find out where a thrown ball will land, you can sit at a desk, run Netwon's equations, and plot the trajectory. Or you can simply throw the ball. The universe provides the answer, perfectly every time.
I consider this theory basically moot. We know the universe conforms to our mathematical approximations. We know it's reliable. We know nothing is going to change this situation barring some fantastical event. We know that, however imprecise, we can communicate with the universe through math.
But there is a theory that goes further, which says that mathematics is the sole requisite for an object to exist. That is, if an object can be described by mathematics, then it does exist, period. I'm not sure what to make of this. I know that math is a human invention. I know that math will always fail, subtley, in comparison to the infinite complexity before us.
And yet, what are we but empty space? Mass is just vibrations held in place by forces, whatever those are. Atoms, mostly empty space, with tiny protons and electrons inside.
I used to say that mathematics was the language of God. I wouldn't go that far anymore. But I think he likes what we're thinking.
Time exists. We experience it everyday. If you could go backwards in time, you would have done so by now.
But as I said in another post, the universe is asynchronous. It doesn't care much for the raw clocking of time. Time is just another annoying impediment for particles moving around randomly, which is what the universe likes to do with itself. You're right in the sense that God has no wristwatch; if you mentioned "time" to him, he would laugh any more than you mentioned distance or volume. It's all just shit moving around (and "moving" implies some useful time dimension, just not an accurate one).
Rather, I agree with your statement that there is an amorphous interface between the two. Quantum mechanics is extremely small-scale, perhaps (I should look this up) smaller than Planck scale. Time is 12-billion light-years wide. The idea that both theories have to match up perfectly is kind of silly:/
And antimatter travels faster than c, correct? I mean, it travels into its own past.
I heard that here, a few months back. It makes quite a deal of sense, symmetry-wise. Antimatter is matter, time-inverted. So much for the mysterious "arrow."
>If you can't encode information into it, are you really transmitting something? *Headache*
Simple. There are many regions of the universe that can't currently communicate with one another because the distances are greater than the speed of light can effectively handle. By the time you get to, say, Cygnus X-1, it may no longer be there.
So how do you think we got so far away from Cygnus X-1?
By travelling faster than the speed of light. Relative to one another, of course.
FTL travel is crucial for understanding the current makeup of the universe. That's because the universe is currently composed of a great many units which do not interact.
What about his full-on hatred for quantum mechanics? His vitriol was so poisonous, you have to assume he knew deep down that it was the correct theory.
The universe is asynchronous. It doesn't understand the concept of global time. When a particle moves at c, it is moving as fast as possible. Therefore time is irrelevant.
For an analogy, imagine you are late for work. You call your boss and say, "I'm on the expressway, I'll get there as fast as possible." You don't tell him how long it will take. As far as you are concerned, you will be there instantly.
You are a photon. Your next scheduled event, or interaction with the outside world, is arrival at work. Everything you do between now and then isn't happening. You can't stop and get breakfast. The music you're listening to in the car is irrelevant, since you're the only one who hears it. Your trip effectively takes no time as observed by anyone else.
But in your boss' local world, you will take time and be late.
Faster-than-light travel doesn't really make sense. It implies that there is some shoulder you can ride on that will bypass the laws of physics. The shoulder lane may exist, but good luck finding it. It may be so far out of the way that there is no benefit.
Actually I got a quite different idea from reading that article. Burning coal, oil, and other hydrocarbons is going to look pretty silly a generation from now when you have the choice of rooftop solar, local or distant wind sources, and then possibly nuclear or fusion on top of that. It's going to be an orgy of electricity.
How can you say that rooftop solar that produces enough energy to sell back to the grid is "pretty disappointing?" You think making money is a losing proposition?
It's late, but reading that Wiki article 2 or 3 times has me saying "Bullshit." Basically what they are saying is that since normally you have infinite-density singularity, here is an alternative where some quantum phenomena pushes back and prevents that from happening.
Problem is, there's no such thing as the type of singularity they are describing. I know that now. So the black star "alternative" that is the opposite of a dumb idea (singularity) is probably meaningless.
Roger Penrose or whoever came up with the idea of a singularity inside of an event horizon was wrong. I'm not sure what you mean that black holes are "debatable," but if this is it, then we agree on that much.
Event horizons are not very debatable, they make intrinsic mathematical sense, even if they are extremely odd. Asymptotes tend to be odd. I'm not sure that anyone has ever had the balls to view event horizons as asymptotes or *cough* as singularities in an of themselves. It seems a great deal of mathematical gymnastics have been performed to avoid coming to such a simple conclusion.
There's more of course. I just want to be on record saying that Penrose is wrong and that Hawking is off his rocker. The best description I've ever gotten out of Hawking about the nature of the universe is that spacetime is like a closed system or loop, and that description is so vague as to be a dead giveaway that he's never come up with an actual, workable theory.
No, it's not "just another sedan." An internal combustion engine is going to suffer from being raced. Which means that your 7-8 seconds causes additional wear on the vehicle. Under normal commuting conditions, that acceleration is not available to you, unless you are willing to destroy the car.
Now you have an electric car that is basically frictionless, you can do 6 seconds whenever you want. How about at every stoplight on the way home from work? There's no law against acceleration, dude.
Also, get this: Electric cars don't smell like garbage. If you told me you were going to sell a bag of cherries that didn't smell like farts for 2x what fart cherries cost, I'd say you have a viable product.
The problem with Linux on the desktop is that it's not very compelling.
Linux shines when the people around you are using it. That is, on your LAN or within telnet's reach. X is amazing, when used remotely. Why download and install a program when you can just telnet over to where its installed? Assuming the bandwidth is there (and it's a hell of a lot more there each year), the program will run. And it will be a lot faster than doing it the newfangled way, which is to make it a web service.
Linux makes a great desktop, if by "desktop" you mean network terminal. But we don't have a network. We have the web, which is a single graphical application (the "browser") that runs best on Windows. Just like a video game.
Linux won't, and probably can't, catch on until the network is there to support it. That includes small and large businesses, which have networks that would benefit from it, and are still using Windows. Businesses can use Linux the way it is intended, right now. But the "home desktop" is designed to deliver applications, not services.
Let's put it this way: The day some 14-year-old kid installs IIS for XP and hosts a webpage from his bedroom will be the first day of Linux's life. To my knowledge, nobody is hosting squat. Except on bittorrent, which doesn't quite count, because although BT is a protocol, people use it like just another Windows app.
My understanding of Hawking radiation is that the split virtual pair explanation isn't physically accurate, but that tunneling of particles through the event horizon is the more physically valid explanation.
Wikipedia's understanding is that nobody has any idea what it is.
Originally, I read in his book that a virtual pair would split, and the anti-particle would fall into the black hole, reducing its mass. He never said why with equal probability, regular particles wouldn't also fall in, though.
So then you get to quantum tunneling, which is the theory that any object can pass through any barrier with some probability. Over enough time, enough mass should tunnel through the event horizon to cause evaporation. However, I have noticed that the universe is pretty good at creating probabilities that are effectively zero.
Finally you have the Unruh effect, which is that an accelerating observer (like matter falling into the hole) should witness a sea of warm particles. If you think this is vague, well, everyone agrees it is.
What it comes down to, is that Hawking Radiation is based on the conclusion that a black hole is a perfect black body radiator. Forgive me for being skeptical that an object ruthlessly accumulating matter, that is unnaturally cold (black holes are near 0 Kelvin, below the vacuum average of 2.7k)...an object which very well may violate our common perceptions of entropy and thermodynamics radiates energy perfectly like a car on a hot afternoon?
Point being, Hawking's "perfect black body" is one hell of a leap of intuition. Or quantum field theory, according to him.
This afternoon also marked the appearance of Jammie Thomas [defendant] on the stand. She was called by the plaintiffs immediately after lunch, who started by questioning her about her experience with computers.
NEVER let the defendant testify, especially in first trial! Or is this a civil case where you have no 5th amendment rights? Anyway...
The questioning then turned to her CD-ripping habits. In her deposition, Thomas said that she ripped no more than six or seven CDs per day, but on the stand today, she said she could have ripped over 2,000 songs in a little over two days.
Wow. Then,
She originally had said that she bought the PC from Best Buy in 2003 and that the hard drive was replaced in January or February of 2004. After her forensic expert inspected the hard drive and found that it wasn't manufactured until January 2005, she then said that she bought the PC in 2004 and that the hard drive was replaced in March 2005. "I was a year off on everything in my deposition," she said.
Lying on the stand isn't good either.
Finally,
"He also said that the 'jury could do the math' on whether it was possible for her to rip 2,000 or so tracks over a two-day period given the demonstration earlier in the day."
Well, I'm a bit surprised too...but...this is the best defense?
Silly me, I thought the RIAA spoofed her computer and faked the whole thing.
Besides, the bigger question is "WHY DOESN'T ANYONE ELSE MAKE A 3RD PARTY BOX?!" Personally, I think there is not currently a market for cable boxes. How much money did TiVO lose last quarter [google.com]? Ah...only $17 million.
TiVo's weakness is that they have a Macintosh-esque approach to the market. Like Mac, they invented a good interface early on, and spent years ramming it down the market's throat, all the while collecting subscription fees and discouraging hacking and reverse-engineering (ever been to a TiVo hacking forum? it's like ooh, don't piss them off.)
Nowadays, there's plenty of DVR's, especially from cable companies. TiVo (probably) is still the best. But TiVo hasn't fundamentally changed in 5 years. Their new HD unit doesn't even have HD inputs. Sad.
So, point is, TiVo is ripe to get displaced by upstart DVR's that have more HD and user-friendly controls. Much like Wintel blew away Mac in the 1990's. But Mac never died, either, and the way that TiVo is copying Mac's playbook (the 30-year payoff) is shameless.
Slashdot Mirror
The anthropic principle justifies everything, actually. It is far under-utilized.
The universe does not care that we are here. What we witness is a product of our presence.
>Instead, QM says that particles gain or lose energy "instantaneously", or rather "so fast that you can't tell what happened" as per the Heisenberg uncertainty of dE*dt. This means GR is, in some sense, more complete as a mathematical theory than QM
Great. I can't believe I understood that.
So QM is Newtonian, huh? Just goes to show the difference that scale can make. Cosmology is out of its reach.
Nah. Newton is correct for a wide swath of experiments. "Usefulness" is the measure here.
If you want to talk "wrong", let's talk about Einstein in the 30's when confronted with quantum theory. He went apeshit.
The article sucks, get over it. Show me one good sentence (or two).
Yep. There's a theory out now that says we live inside of a computer. That is, the universe is an information processing machine with ruthless precision. For example, if you want to find out where a thrown ball will land, you can sit at a desk, run Netwon's equations, and plot the trajectory. Or you can simply throw the ball. The universe provides the answer, perfectly every time.
I consider this theory basically moot. We know the universe conforms to our mathematical approximations. We know it's reliable. We know nothing is going to change this situation barring some fantastical event. We know that, however imprecise, we can communicate with the universe through math.
But there is a theory that goes further, which says that mathematics is the sole requisite for an object to exist. That is, if an object can be described by mathematics, then it does exist, period. I'm not sure what to make of this. I know that math is a human invention. I know that math will always fail, subtley, in comparison to the infinite complexity before us.
And yet, what are we but empty space? Mass is just vibrations held in place by forces, whatever those are. Atoms, mostly empty space, with tiny protons and electrons inside.
I used to say that mathematics was the language of God. I wouldn't go that far anymore. But I think he likes what we're thinking.
Time exists. We experience it everyday. If you could go backwards in time, you would have done so by now.
:/
But as I said in another post, the universe is asynchronous. It doesn't care much for the raw clocking of time. Time is just another annoying impediment for particles moving around randomly, which is what the universe likes to do with itself. You're right in the sense that God has no wristwatch; if you mentioned "time" to him, he would laugh any more than you mentioned distance or volume. It's all just shit moving around (and "moving" implies some useful time dimension, just not an accurate one).
Rather, I agree with your statement that there is an amorphous interface between the two. Quantum mechanics is extremely small-scale, perhaps (I should look this up) smaller than Planck scale. Time is 12-billion light-years wide. The idea that both theories have to match up perfectly is kind of silly
And antimatter travels faster than c, correct? I mean, it travels into its own past.
I heard that here, a few months back. It makes quite a deal of sense, symmetry-wise. Antimatter is matter, time-inverted. So much for the mysterious "arrow."
>If you can't encode information into it, are you really transmitting something? *Headache*
Simple. There are many regions of the universe that can't currently communicate with one another because the distances are greater than the speed of light can effectively handle. By the time you get to, say, Cygnus X-1, it may no longer be there.
So how do you think we got so far away from Cygnus X-1?
By travelling faster than the speed of light. Relative to one another, of course.
FTL travel is crucial for understanding the current makeup of the universe. That's because the universe is currently composed of a great many units which do not interact.
Many Worlds is a joke and you know it. Let's discuss Stargate SG-1, while you're on this ridiculous topic.
What about his full-on hatred for quantum mechanics? His vitriol was so poisonous, you have to assume he knew deep down that it was the correct theory.
My bad, "as observed by yourself."
The universe is asynchronous. It doesn't understand the concept of global time. When a particle moves at c, it is moving as fast as possible. Therefore time is irrelevant.
For an analogy, imagine you are late for work. You call your boss and say, "I'm on the expressway, I'll get there as fast as possible." You don't tell him how long it will take. As far as you are concerned, you will be there instantly.
You are a photon. Your next scheduled event, or interaction with the outside world, is arrival at work. Everything you do between now and then isn't happening. You can't stop and get breakfast. The music you're listening to in the car is irrelevant, since you're the only one who hears it. Your trip effectively takes no time as observed by anyone else.
But in your boss' local world, you will take time and be late.
Faster-than-light travel doesn't really make sense. It implies that there is some shoulder you can ride on that will bypass the laws of physics. The shoulder lane may exist, but good luck finding it. It may be so far out of the way that there is no benefit.
I read this article several times looking for at least one sentence that made sense and didn't find one.
General rule of physics, if you can't explain your theory, then it's wrong. Because there isn't one.
Big Bounce? WHAT THE FUCK. I could get a better creation theory by going to church.
Actually I got a quite different idea from reading that article. Burning coal, oil, and other hydrocarbons is going to look pretty silly a generation from now when you have the choice of rooftop solar, local or distant wind sources, and then possibly nuclear or fusion on top of that. It's going to be an orgy of electricity.
How can you say that rooftop solar that produces enough energy to sell back to the grid is "pretty disappointing?" You think making money is a losing proposition?
It's late, but reading that Wiki article 2 or 3 times has me saying "Bullshit." Basically what they are saying is that since normally you have infinite-density singularity, here is an alternative where some quantum phenomena pushes back and prevents that from happening.
Problem is, there's no such thing as the type of singularity they are describing. I know that now. So the black star "alternative" that is the opposite of a dumb idea (singularity) is probably meaningless.
Roger Penrose or whoever came up with the idea of a singularity inside of an event horizon was wrong. I'm not sure what you mean that black holes are "debatable," but if this is it, then we agree on that much.
Event horizons are not very debatable, they make intrinsic mathematical sense, even if they are extremely odd. Asymptotes tend to be odd. I'm not sure that anyone has ever had the balls to view event horizons as asymptotes or *cough* as singularities in an of themselves. It seems a great deal of mathematical gymnastics have been performed to avoid coming to such a simple conclusion.
There's more of course. I just want to be on record saying that Penrose is wrong and that Hawking is off his rocker. The best description I've ever gotten out of Hawking about the nature of the universe is that spacetime is like a closed system or loop, and that description is so vague as to be a dead giveaway that he's never come up with an actual, workable theory.
No, it's not "just another sedan." An internal combustion engine is going to suffer from being raced. Which means that your 7-8 seconds causes additional wear on the vehicle. Under normal commuting conditions, that acceleration is not available to you, unless you are willing to destroy the car.
Now you have an electric car that is basically frictionless, you can do 6 seconds whenever you want. How about at every stoplight on the way home from work? There's no law against acceleration, dude.
Also, get this: Electric cars don't smell like garbage. If you told me you were going to sell a bag of cherries that didn't smell like farts for 2x what fart cherries cost, I'd say you have a viable product.
>Linux has picked up a lot of mindshare
The problem with Linux on the desktop is that it's not very compelling.
Linux shines when the people around you are using it. That is, on your LAN or within telnet's reach. X is amazing, when used remotely. Why download and install a program when you can just telnet over to where its installed? Assuming the bandwidth is there (and it's a hell of a lot more there each year), the program will run. And it will be a lot faster than doing it the newfangled way, which is to make it a web service.
Linux makes a great desktop, if by "desktop" you mean network terminal. But we don't have a network. We have the web, which is a single graphical application (the "browser") that runs best on Windows. Just like a video game.
Linux won't, and probably can't, catch on until the network is there to support it. That includes small and large businesses, which have networks that would benefit from it, and are still using Windows. Businesses can use Linux the way it is intended, right now. But the "home desktop" is designed to deliver applications, not services.
Let's put it this way: The day some 14-year-old kid installs IIS for XP and hosts a webpage from his bedroom will be the first day of Linux's life. To my knowledge, nobody is hosting squat. Except on bittorrent, which doesn't quite count, because although BT is a protocol, people use it like just another Windows app.
My understanding of Hawking radiation is that the split virtual pair explanation isn't physically accurate, but that tunneling of particles through the event horizon is the more physically valid explanation.
Wikipedia's understanding is that nobody has any idea what it is.
Originally, I read in his book that a virtual pair would split, and the anti-particle would fall into the black hole, reducing its mass. He never said why with equal probability, regular particles wouldn't also fall in, though.
So then you get to quantum tunneling, which is the theory that any object can pass through any barrier with some probability. Over enough time, enough mass should tunnel through the event horizon to cause evaporation. However, I have noticed that the universe is pretty good at creating probabilities that are effectively zero.
Finally you have the Unruh effect, which is that an accelerating observer (like matter falling into the hole) should witness a sea of warm particles. If you think this is vague, well, everyone agrees it is.
What it comes down to, is that Hawking Radiation is based on the conclusion that a black hole is a perfect black body radiator. Forgive me for being skeptical that an object ruthlessly accumulating matter, that is unnaturally cold (black holes are near 0 Kelvin, below the vacuum average of 2.7k)...an object which very well may violate our common perceptions of entropy and thermodynamics radiates energy perfectly like a car on a hot afternoon?
Point being, Hawking's "perfect black body" is one hell of a leap of intuition. Or quantum field theory, according to him.
String theory : universe :: Google Earth : earth.
I hope this answers your questions.
How would you feel if aluminum really did burn more easily than wood?
I think you are facing that crisis right now.
>The percentage of gaming books you own is inversely relative to the amount of dates you go out on.
Interesting story, I met a girl playing Diplomacy (board game) at a gaming conference. She wanted to come over and show me the RPG Vampires.
We didn't even open the book.
Then she moved (lol).
But anyway, RPGer meets RPGer and no RPGs were played.
Shadowrun was college...all dudes. AD&D in middle school, well, we worshipped it and made a complete mess of it at the same time.
As a Slashdot user since 2001 or so, there's plenty of questions I could ask.
But here's one:
When are you going to show the article that you are replying to?
Should take an hour to fix, if you spend an hour on Slashdot, every 5 years or so.
Let's take a look at the case:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071003-judge-bars-riaa-president-from-testifying-in-capitol-records-v-thomas.html
This afternoon also marked the appearance of Jammie Thomas [defendant] on the stand. She was called by the plaintiffs immediately after lunch, who started by questioning her about her experience with computers.
NEVER let the defendant testify, especially in first trial! Or is this a civil case where you have no 5th amendment rights? Anyway...
The questioning then turned to her CD-ripping habits. In her deposition, Thomas said that she ripped no more than six or seven CDs per day, but on the stand today, she said she could have ripped over 2,000 songs in a little over two days.
Wow. Then,
She originally had said that she bought the PC from Best Buy in 2003 and that the hard drive was replaced in January or February of 2004. After her forensic expert inspected the hard drive and found that it wasn't manufactured until January 2005, she then said that she bought the PC in 2004 and that the hard drive was replaced in March 2005. "I was a year off on everything in my deposition," she said.
Lying on the stand isn't good either.
Finally,
"He also said that the 'jury could do the math' on whether it was possible for her to rip 2,000 or so tracks over a two-day period given the demonstration earlier in the day."
Well, I'm a bit surprised too...but...this is the best defense?
Silly me, I thought the RIAA spoofed her computer and faked the whole thing.
What does STDs have to do with HIV?
I grew up in the Reagan-AIDS era, and it was made abundantly clear to me that AIDS is *not* an STD, along with the fact that HIV *can't* kill you.
So, cutting off a part of your body, that can't contract a disease, that can't kill you, would seem particularly absurd.
Or did my child-like mind remember the hard-learned lessons of the 1980's completely wrong?
Besides, the bigger question is "WHY DOESN'T ANYONE ELSE MAKE A 3RD PARTY BOX?!" Personally, I think there is not currently a market for cable boxes. How much money did TiVO lose last quarter [google.com]? Ah...only $17 million.
TiVo's weakness is that they have a Macintosh-esque approach to the market. Like Mac, they invented a good interface early on, and spent years ramming it down the market's throat, all the while collecting subscription fees and discouraging hacking and reverse-engineering (ever been to a TiVo hacking forum? it's like ooh, don't piss them off.)
Nowadays, there's plenty of DVR's, especially from cable companies. TiVo (probably) is still the best. But TiVo hasn't fundamentally changed in 5 years. Their new HD unit doesn't even have HD inputs. Sad.
So, point is, TiVo is ripe to get displaced by upstart DVR's that have more HD and user-friendly controls. Much like Wintel blew away Mac in the 1990's. But Mac never died, either, and the way that TiVo is copying Mac's playbook (the 30-year payoff) is shameless.