From the article:
....and records that it took him nine years to calculate, even with the newly imported technique of 'algorism', calculation with Arabic numerals rather than abacus....
extremely impressive hoax, I thought.
Re:split laser and manipulating end points
on
The Dot in .mars
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· Score: 1
Just starting to get the hang of quantum wierdness too. Does anyone know if it is feasible to use an entangled state for instantaneous communication?
I know that quantum teleportation can only work at the speed at which you can transfer normal information. In this case, you interact a particle with one of the entangled ones and then pass a couple of bits of information through a normal communications channel. These bits, along with the other entangled particle can be used to generate a particle whose state is the same as the original. However, here it is clear that in addition to the 2 bits of ordinary information (communicated conventionally) some kind of information is passing directly between the entangled particles, presumably instantaneously. Can this be used to communicate?
I guess using the simultaneous state-vector collapse of the 2 pairs of particles when one is observered couldn't really be used as a communications channel as the observervation would destroy the entanglement(?)
I am only dimly remembering this from an optics course at uni, but one way of understanding the process conceptually is that each of the point light sources of which the obect is composed generates its own Fresnel zone plate.
I can't remember the maths of the Fresnel zone plate, but basically, if you interfere a point light source with a parallel light source, take the resulting pattern of light and dark rings and etch it onto a surface, light reflected off that surface is diffracted in such a way that it is focused, as if it has passed through a lens with its focal point at the same distance behind the plate as the point source was in front. This creates a virtual image of the original point source. You can view the object as being composed of such light sources each generating their own zone plate.
Like I said, I can't remember the maths, and the extrapolation from one point source to a whole object isn't exactly mathematically trivial, but I remember that the reason the Fresnel zone plate worked was very straightforward to grasp conceptually and helped the holography concept to fall into place. I always preferred to have a way to visualise something like that even when the maths clearly works out fine.
I had to use LabVIEW at university and it is v.good for lab applications. If they did this Eidola thing well (properly specifying the representation) then you could have a LabVIEW style control panel/block diagram as one of a number of simultaneous interfaces to one piece of code. That would be seriously nifty. Of course I'm sure a lot of Real Programmers would be horrified.
I agree with a lot of what you say in your other comment Language==Representation, but what do you mean by this one? Why should using the same notation twice cause problems?
I think this is cool, but having read the "about Eidola" page, I think it is rather poorly explained, and possibly not as useful as it could be. They talk of the actual program taking a purely mathematical form. However, in an actual implementation, this will not be the case. The Eidola kernel, which has the job of maintaining this mathematical structure, will be dealing with some form of internal representation of it - it may not be specified by the language, but it will be there in a real implementation (I'll call it the kernel representation). This is where I have a problem with the explanation and the idea itself. Given that this representation will be there, it will serve logically the same purpose as the source code you manipulate when using a modeling language. The differences are these:
1. You will not see this kernel representation. You can only manipulate it through the various, er, representations of it.
2. The kernel representation will, unlike source code which is meant to be directly manipulable by a human, be designed to fulfill this role of intermediary between design tool and compiler. A Good Thing.
3. Changes to this kernel representation are communicated throughout the development environment by an event mechanism. Another Good Thing.
4. The kernel representation, because of the ambitions of the authors, will not be fully specified, which means that programs written in one Eidola environment will not be compilable in a different Eidola environment. Aaaarrrggghhh....
This is a cool idea, but why not accept that computers handle representations of things, not mathematical abstractions and specify a format for this kernel representation, getting rid of point 4 above and making this really useful.
Re:There is a path to cracking RSA
on
RSA Cracked - Not
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· Score: 2
Coming up with a quantum algorithm is a pretty weird process. The algorithm doesn't actually come up with a single solution, but a random one governed by a probability distribution. The clever thing is that different possible paths through the algorithm can interfere constructively and destructively with each other, so in effect the final probability distribution is a result of the combined effects of all possible computational paths. The tricky part is to come up with a system which takes advantage of this parallelism and interfere in order to make the correct outcome by far the most likely. This makes coming up with a successful quantum algorithm a completely different, and much harder, process than programming in, say, C.
The reason quantum computers are exciting is not that they do anything which classical ones can't or that they have a really high clock speed or something. It is that in certain cases, they can solve in polynomial time problems which classical machines take exponential time to complete. With classical computers, if someone came up with a machine which could factorise a 400 digit number in 1 hour, it would still take perhaps 2 hours to factorise a 401 digit number, 4 hourse to factorise a 402 digit numbers, 8 hours...etc. So if you used an 800 digit number it would still take a crazy amount of time to factorise it. With quantum computers (if you found a linear time algorithm) if a 400 digit number required 1 hour, an 800 digit number would require 2 hours, making any encryption based on factorising a large number crackable in minutes, hours or days rather than a billion billion billion years or something.
It is hoped that quantum computers will complement classical ones and be useful for specific problems, not that they will run word processors - classical computers do that well enough and are many orders of magnitude easier to program.
It does specify "man-machine" interface, ie. that the patent is supposed to be for allowing the user to control the phone itself through a mark-up language based interface. It also specifies that what is being patented is the control of the "telecommunications functionalities" of the phone.
I think this is actually quite carefully written to avoid attempting to patent wireless web browsing, since presumably that would invalidate quite a valuable patent.
Interesting point with WTAI, but that is URL based not mark-up language based.
The two markets are quite separate
on
OS X on x86?
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· Score: 1
One of the things people have always liked with the mac is that it is not 'bitty' like the PC.
You buy a Mac, with MacOS on it. It says mac on the front. It is all "one thing". you don't need to worry about which graphics card you want, etc.
People who feel that way will still buy a Mac for the same reasons.
People who are willing to try out different OSs on their PCs are going to be people who like to tinker around with things and probably like to have various hardware options too. These people are unlikely to have had macs in the first place.
I think the two markets could well be fairly distinct, in which case maybe mac will do it.
Just while you're talking about Solaris - I'm probably being dumb here, not knowing much about Solaris, but I have to deal with Solaris at work a lot - not v. complicated stuff just installing and using 1 app. What irritates me is that when these machines arrive the Backspace key gives ^H in the command and shell tools. I know how to fix this with stty and I guess the blame is with whoever installed the OS. What gets my goat though is that these are UltraSPARCs. One company built the keyboard, the box, the OS, the terminal emulator AND THE SHELL. Why doesn't the FUCKING BACKSPACE KEY WORK FIRST TIME!!!!!!
Yeah but business issues are seprate and important
on
eWeek on Linux
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· Score: 1
Yeah, linux will always live on. It is the geek toy to end all geek toys. It's like giving a car nut a formula one racer complete with all the spares, tools, and even the staff needed to maintain it. People are still tinkering with Amigas purely for fun - Linux will clearly never "die".
However, the reason for the interest in its business prospects is not to see whether our beloved linux will live or die but to see how much it can change the software industry. The current OS situation is deeply unsatisfactory. There is an OS monopoly held by the same company which manufactures a huge chunk of the software which runs on it. This means that the decisions made in designing the piece of software most programmers have to deal with day in day out are not made in order to make their lives easier but to further the interests of a particular company, which is probably competing with them in some area. Linux offers an alternative and thus, regardless of its survival as a piece of software I want to know how it fares as a business model.
I remember reading somewhere that they had got around the problem of cloned cells having shorter lifespans. I think what happened was that when they cloned Dolly the resulting cells only lived for as long as Dolly's cells themselves had left (rather than their full lifespan). Then they made some cows using a different cloning technique and found that the resulting cells didn't just have their full lifespan but 50% more as well. Apparently they had no idea why... I guess if they are using this technology you could have clones living for 150yrs.
Incidentally the idea of people trying this out in their own garages seems a little way out. I might give it a try - can you get DIY cloning at home kits nowadays?
A man at the mercy of a high bandwidth internet connection is not a pretty sight. The eyes become wild and red aroung the rims; the hair becomes greasy and unkempt; bathing becomes an impossibility lest the poor techno-freak have to deal with something as analogue as water.
So far fixed internet connections have kept such people locked away in their bedrooms where they belong, but soon wireless connectivity will bring these zombie hoardes on to our buses, into our churches, into our SHOPPING MALLS.... BRAINS!!!
2Mbps is 3G marketing hype - you can only get that rate if you happen to be the only person using the base station you are on. I doubt any 3G operators will actually offer that service anyway. On a mature 3g network, expect 384 Kbps at best. Also you'll have to wait for the networks to roll out which will take quite a long time - In America they're still not even sure which area of the spectrum they are going to use.
Rather strange - I can see the military value but I can't really see the point in a commercial system. About the only thing going for it is the spectral bandwidth efficiency - but if you are only transmitting small bursts of information every now and then you'd probably get similar bandwidth efficiency by assigning timeslots on a reliable channel. I doubt this is really any cheaper than satellite.
I'm intreagued by the technology though. It seems to me that to take advantage of the space diversity (the small footprint) you would need a highly directional antenna. In that case, you would need to know where to point it in order to communicate. I can imagine just sending out a broadcast signal from the base station which a vehicle would hear whenever a useable meteor appeared, but how would it know in which direction to transmit the return signal? I guess you would need some way of measuring the direction the received signal is coming from. Can you do that?
When I say an infinite bandwidth environment I really mean an analogue one. True, nerve cells either fire or don't, but the time at which they fire and the factors at a synapse deciding whether a neuron will fire or not, are continuous variables. I think a human is capable of responding to a signal without converting it to information. I believe this is the level on which instinctive and intuitive responses occur. On that level, in order to make a group of humans respond identically twice you would have to give them the exact same (analogue) input signal both times. To perfectly specify an an analogue signal requires an (ok it's a dodgy use of the word, but...) infinite amount of information (unless the signal is a combination of elementary functions or something).
They keep referring to unlimited bandwidth in this article. People seem to fail to realise that minds operate in an infinite-bandwidth environment and that any resource which can be measured in bits or bits/s can easily be consumed by a person. Even if you cover the entire globe in optics with optical switches and routers with mind-boggling information rates will that cope with every high-res videoconference call, every TV broadcast and movie on demand, every book sold, every office which ceases to exist physically and becomes virtual, etc, etc? Unlimited, my arse.
Hope this isn't considered OT
Silly idea, but with the movie and music industry scrabbling to control technologies which could prevent them from making their zillions and meanwhile pumping the most apalling crap into our brains because they know it will make bucks, wouldn't it be nice if we could nationalise the entertainment industry.
Music and films would be free at the point of delivery, and those who make them would be obliged to justify themselves to someone with higher motives that cash.
There is an oft-seen TV ad here in Britain which basically implies "buy a minidisc player and record all your CDs - and then dance around like a prat in the streets". If there is a mechanism by which the makers of the CDs can prevent you from doing so it should have been made known to me by the time I spent a couple of hundred quid on the machine. The existence of the mechanism is clearly not a secret, but I'm not exactly technology illiterate and if I thought I could copy anything with it many people will think the same.
I have a minidisc recorder which has never complained about recording anything, be it analogue, digital, copyrighted, tasteless, heretical or obscene. I wasn't even aware that minidiscs would or could detect the copyright of what they were being asked to record. Is this just an American thing or am I being dumb?
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
....and records that it took him nine years to calculate, even with the newly imported technique of 'algorism', calculation with Arabic numerals rather than abacus....
extremely impressive hoax, I thought.
Just starting to get the hang of quantum wierdness too. Does anyone know if it is feasible to use an entangled state for instantaneous communication?
I know that quantum teleportation can only work at the speed at which you can transfer normal information. In this case, you interact a particle with one of the entangled ones and then pass a couple of bits of information through a normal communications channel. These bits, along with the other entangled particle can be used to generate a particle whose state is the same as the original. However, here it is clear that in addition to the 2 bits of ordinary information (communicated conventionally) some kind of information is passing directly between the entangled particles, presumably instantaneously. Can this be used to communicate?
I guess using the simultaneous state-vector collapse of the 2 pairs of particles when one is observered couldn't really be used as a communications channel as the observervation would destroy the entanglement(?)
Quite right. If you get your knickers in an uproar, next thing you know they'll be revolting.
Or perhaps a flashlight, a pair of sunglasses and some 'shrooms. Much more fun than holograms.
I am only dimly remembering this from an optics course at uni, but one way of understanding the process conceptually is that each of the point light sources of which the obect is composed generates its own Fresnel zone plate.
I can't remember the maths of the Fresnel zone plate, but basically, if you interfere a point light source with a parallel light source, take the resulting pattern of light and dark rings and etch it onto a surface, light reflected off that surface is diffracted in such a way that it is focused, as if it has passed through a lens with its focal point at the same distance behind the plate as the point source was in front. This creates a virtual image of the original point source. You can view the object as being composed of such light sources each generating their own zone plate.
Like I said, I can't remember the maths, and the extrapolation from one point source to a whole object isn't exactly mathematically trivial, but I remember that the reason the Fresnel zone plate worked was very straightforward to grasp conceptually and helped the holography concept to fall into place. I always preferred to have a way to visualise something like that even when the maths clearly works out fine.
Looks like some moderator has just gone along and modded about 5 consecutive posts up. This one's not even attached to the right artice.
I had to use LabVIEW at university and it is v.good for lab applications. If they did this Eidola thing well (properly specifying the representation) then you could have a LabVIEW style control panel/block diagram as one of a number of simultaneous interfaces to one piece of code. That would be seriously nifty. Of course I'm sure a lot of Real Programmers would be horrified.
I agree with a lot of what you say in your other comment Language==Representation, but what do you mean by this one? Why should using the same notation twice cause problems?
I think this is cool, but having read the "about Eidola" page, I think it is rather poorly explained, and possibly not as useful as it could be. They talk of the actual program taking a purely mathematical form. However, in an actual implementation, this will not be the case. The Eidola kernel, which has the job of maintaining this mathematical structure, will be dealing with some form of internal representation of it - it may not be specified by the language, but it will be there in a real implementation (I'll call it the kernel representation). This is where I have a problem with the explanation and the idea itself. Given that this representation will be there, it will serve logically the same purpose as the source code you manipulate when using a modeling language. The differences are these:
1. You will not see this kernel representation. You can only manipulate it through the various, er, representations of it.
2. The kernel representation will, unlike source code which is meant to be directly manipulable by a human, be designed to fulfill this role of intermediary between design tool and compiler. A Good Thing.
3. Changes to this kernel representation are communicated throughout the development environment by an event mechanism. Another Good Thing.
4. The kernel representation, because of the ambitions of the authors, will not be fully specified, which means that programs written in one Eidola environment will not be compilable in a different Eidola environment. Aaaarrrggghhh....
This is a cool idea, but why not accept that computers handle representations of things, not mathematical abstractions and specify a format for this kernel representation, getting rid of point 4 above and making this really useful.
Coming up with a quantum algorithm is a pretty weird process. The algorithm doesn't actually come up with a single solution, but a random one governed by a probability distribution. The clever thing is that different possible paths through the algorithm can interfere constructively and destructively with each other, so in effect the final probability distribution is a result of the combined effects of all possible computational paths. The tricky part is to come up with a system which takes advantage of this parallelism and interfere in order to make the correct outcome by far the most likely. This makes coming up with a successful quantum algorithm a completely different, and much harder, process than programming in, say, C.
The reason quantum computers are exciting is not that they do anything which classical ones can't or that they have a really high clock speed or something. It is that in certain cases, they can solve in polynomial time problems which classical machines take exponential time to complete. With classical computers, if someone came up with a machine which could factorise a 400 digit number in 1 hour, it would still take perhaps 2 hours to factorise a 401 digit number, 4 hourse to factorise a 402 digit numbers, 8 hours...etc. So if you used an 800 digit number it would still take a crazy amount of time to factorise it. With quantum computers (if you found a linear time algorithm) if a 400 digit number required 1 hour, an 800 digit number would require 2 hours, making any encryption based on factorising a large number crackable in minutes, hours or days rather than a billion billion billion years or something.
It is hoped that quantum computers will complement classical ones and be useful for specific problems, not that they will run word processors - classical computers do that well enough and are many orders of magnitude easier to program.
...you'll realise it's already here :P
It does specify "man-machine" interface, ie. that the patent is supposed to be for allowing the user to control the phone itself through a mark-up language based interface. It also specifies that what is being patented is the control of the "telecommunications functionalities" of the phone.
I think this is actually quite carefully written to avoid attempting to patent wireless web browsing, since presumably that would invalidate quite a valuable patent.
Interesting point with WTAI, but that is URL based not mark-up language based.
One of the things people have always liked with the mac is that it is not 'bitty' like the PC.
You buy a Mac, with MacOS on it. It says mac on the front. It is all "one thing". you don't need to worry about which graphics card you want, etc.
People who feel that way will still buy a Mac for the same reasons.
People who are willing to try out different OSs on their PCs are going to be people who like to tinker around with things and probably like to have various hardware options too. These people are unlikely to have had macs in the first place.
I think the two markets could well be fairly distinct, in which case maybe mac will do it.
Just while you're talking about Solaris - I'm probably being dumb here, not knowing much about Solaris, but I have to deal with Solaris at work a lot - not v. complicated stuff just installing and using 1 app. What irritates me is that when these machines arrive the Backspace key gives ^H in the command and shell tools. I know how to fix this with stty and I guess the blame is with whoever installed the OS. What gets my goat though is that these are UltraSPARCs. One company built the keyboard, the box, the OS, the terminal emulator AND THE SHELL. Why doesn't the FUCKING BACKSPACE KEY WORK FIRST TIME!!!!!!
Yeah, linux will always live on. It is the geek toy to end all geek toys. It's like giving a car nut a formula one racer complete with all the spares, tools, and even the staff needed to maintain it. People are still tinkering with Amigas purely for fun - Linux will clearly never "die".
However, the reason for the interest in its business prospects is not to see whether our beloved linux will live or die but to see how much it can change the software industry. The current OS situation is deeply unsatisfactory. There is an OS monopoly held by the same company which manufactures a huge chunk of the software which runs on it. This means that the decisions made in designing the piece of software most programmers have to deal with day in day out are not made in order to make their lives easier but to further the interests of a particular company, which is probably competing with them in some area. Linux offers an alternative and thus, regardless of its survival as a piece of software I want to know how it fares as a business model.
I remember reading somewhere that they had got around the problem of cloned cells having shorter lifespans. I think what happened was that when they cloned Dolly the resulting cells only lived for as long as Dolly's cells themselves had left (rather than their full lifespan). Then they made some cows using a different cloning technique and found that the resulting cells didn't just have their full lifespan but 50% more as well. Apparently they had no idea why... I guess if they are using this technology you could have clones living for 150yrs.
Incidentally the idea of people trying this out in their own garages seems a little way out. I might give it a try - can you get DIY cloning at home kits nowadays?
A man at the mercy of a high bandwidth internet connection is not a pretty sight. The eyes become wild and red aroung the rims; the hair becomes greasy and unkempt; bathing becomes an impossibility lest the poor techno-freak have to deal with something as analogue as water.
So far fixed internet connections have kept such people locked away in their bedrooms where they belong, but soon wireless connectivity will bring these zombie hoardes on to our buses, into our churches, into our SHOPPING MALLS.... BRAINS!!!
2Mbps is 3G marketing hype - you can only get that rate if you happen to be the only person using the base station you are on. I doubt any 3G operators will actually offer that service anyway. On a mature 3g network, expect 384 Kbps at best. Also you'll have to wait for the networks to roll out which will take quite a long time - In America they're still not even sure which area of the spectrum they are going to use.
Rather strange - I can see the military value but I can't really see the point in a commercial system. About the only thing going for it is the spectral bandwidth efficiency - but if you are only transmitting small bursts of information every now and then you'd probably get similar bandwidth efficiency by assigning timeslots on a reliable channel. I doubt this is really any cheaper than satellite.
I'm intreagued by the technology though. It seems to me that to take advantage of the space diversity (the small footprint) you would need a highly directional antenna. In that case, you would need to know where to point it in order to communicate. I can imagine just sending out a broadcast signal from the base station which a vehicle would hear whenever a useable meteor appeared, but how would it know in which direction to transmit the return signal? I guess you would need some way of measuring the direction the received signal is coming from. Can you do that?
When I say an infinite bandwidth environment I really mean an analogue one. True, nerve cells either fire or don't, but the time at which they fire and the factors at a synapse deciding whether a neuron will fire or not, are continuous variables. I think a human is capable of responding to a signal without converting it to information. I believe this is the level on which instinctive and intuitive responses occur. On that level, in order to make a group of humans respond identically twice you would have to give them the exact same (analogue) input signal both times. To perfectly specify an an analogue signal requires an (ok it's a dodgy use of the word, but...) infinite amount of information (unless the signal is a combination of elementary functions or something).
They keep referring to unlimited bandwidth in this article. People seem to fail to realise that minds operate in an infinite-bandwidth environment and that any resource which can be measured in bits or bits/s can easily be consumed by a person. Even if you cover the entire globe in optics with optical switches and routers with mind-boggling information rates will that cope with every high-res videoconference call, every TV broadcast and movie on demand, every book sold, every office which ceases to exist physically and becomes virtual, etc, etc? Unlimited, my arse.
Hope this isn't considered OT
Silly idea, but with the movie and music industry scrabbling to control technologies which could prevent them from making their zillions and meanwhile pumping the most apalling crap into our brains because they know it will make bucks, wouldn't it be nice if we could nationalise the entertainment industry.
Music and films would be free at the point of delivery, and those who make them would be obliged to justify themselves to someone with higher motives that cash.
There is an oft-seen TV ad here in Britain which basically implies "buy a minidisc player and record all your CDs - and then dance around like a prat in the streets". If there is a mechanism by which the makers of the CDs can prevent you from doing so it should have been made known to me by the time I spent a couple of hundred quid on the machine. The existence of the mechanism is clearly not a secret, but I'm not exactly technology illiterate and if I thought I could copy anything with it many people will think the same.
I have a minidisc recorder which has never complained about recording anything, be it analogue, digital, copyrighted, tasteless, heretical or obscene. I wasn't even aware that minidiscs would or could detect the copyright of what they were being asked to record. Is this just an American thing or am I being dumb?
Not wanting to be a smartarse, but this is all true only if each arm builds its replica on its own plate -see reply to parent.