It's Microsoft's fault. They have now, single handedly, broken their own market. No longer do we need to upgrade our PCs, or our PC graphics cards, or even our OS. No, now all we need to do is get on the bandwagon and buy an XBox console, which has a lifespan of about 5 years.
So instead of spending $2,000+ on a PC with a $400+ graphics card (every two years) and a new OS every 5 years, now we just spend $400 and buy a bunch of games at $50 to $60 dollars a pop.
Hmm, I wonder how that worked out business wise? Let's dwell on that...
1. Major PC vendors markets: Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, Gateway, etc? Destroyed. Now they end up selling a bunch of low-end netbooks and cheap $500 PCs, enough for browsing the web, watching videos, listening to music, etc. 2. High end $400+ video graphic cards market from nVidia and AMT/ATI. Destroyed. Nope, who needs a video card that a game doesn't use. After all, all games are now made for consoles, and the consoles are all over 4 years old! 3. 64 bit multi-core computing for home? Destroyed. After all, who needs multi-core computing except for the business and science/eng/tech sectors? A 32 bit (aka 4G RAM) computer works just fine for the internet, office, and financial management of home users. Ok, some may need to edit photo's and movies, I'll grant that.
The problem is that the Microsoft business manager bean counters just didn't think the problem through. The PC gaming market was pushing the technology envelope forward, for better or worse. And all other vendors and software markets (aka the Windows eco system) benefited from those gains. Later they realized, uh oh!, we are shooting ourselves in the foot, and tried to keep it going with "Games for Windows". Little did they realize, by that time, it was all over.
I may never buy another PC, or graphics card again. Someone please explain why I should? Does the amortization of costs actually benefit us over the long run? Stuck with 4 to 5 year old console technology that does not push the envelope? Unlike some slashdotters, from a game, I want a total and absolute simulated environmenal realism. I don't just want to "play a game". I can muck around with Monopoly if I just wanted to "play a game". No I want to be emersed, as if I have been taken to another world. Games must be worth my time, not just something to fidget around with while I'm bored. I want photo-realism, possibly ray traced real time graphics, with true weather and environmental sounds. That's the goal I "was" chasing. That "was" the goal I was helping by buying the latest and greatest tech. But now, Microsoft has just killed that goal for me.
Side note: It seems all vendors of all types now from cell phones, to PC hardware and software, are all hell bent on getting every living being on the planet on some kind of subscription service. To that I say "One Time Cost" is better than the "Recurring Cost" model.
Where is the Original Cosmos series???
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Carl Sagan Sings
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Does anyone have any idea of how to get a hold of the very original Cosmos television series that aired on P.B.S. back in the early 80's ?
The Cosmos series was bought, remastered, and remade in the late 90's by Ted Turner, and that is the series that I own (the DVD set), however it is not what I watched as a child. I liked the original better. The original had much better ambient music, and in the transitions between scenes, worked much better I thought (more powerfully evoking). The remastered version may be more up to date scientifically, but the music has been replaced with mostly classical that doesn't fit the emotion, and is hacked up quite a bit.
I know the story is that Carl had a large disagreement with the way the original series was produced by KCET out of Los Angeles. Later the series was remade with the help of his wife, but some of the original music could not be relicensed (or was not even licensed correctly the first time) when the series was sold to Turner.
I have most of the episodes of the original 80's version on cassette, that I have now digitized. But the sound isn't that great since it was recorded by simply placing a microphone in front of the TV. There are other tape "abnormalities" as well, like the side A to side B change over.
I know there must be some remaining VHS or Beta tapes around of the original series somewhere, since they were sold as sets to schools and universities back in the 80's. I'd love to have a copy of those! Digital of course.
... the website has to include a meta-tag indicating that the site should be displayed in Chrome Frame instead of IE...
The very last thing I want as a system administrator are hundreds of thousands of sites (if not millions, or more) requiring the user to have Google Chrome, or the Chrome Frame plugin, before the site can be used. Web sites should be designed using web standards, and not require specific browsers for use. Talk about pot calling kettle black! Plugins should be handlers for the primary browsers functions, not over reaching take over my browser leaches.
Having a company be able to SEE any user's password should be a crime. Standard practice is that NOBODY, not even sysadmins can see it. They can change it but not see it.
It is now a bit naive to think that things work like this in the industry. Years ago, this was indeed the forward thinking, "engineered" best practice, and though not directly, why systems like Kerberos were originally created.
Sadly however, with the advent of the web, SSL, LDAP, and hundreds of other possible databases to need access, most PHB types quickly bought into "identity management" schemes being pawned by multiple vendors. These schemes end up "managing" your kept password(s) into "secret stores", usually in an LDAP back end. The "secret stores" should be hashed, but you can likely de-hash them using master stores hash. This basically amounts to nothing more than Microsofts old PWL files on Win9x. Its just a temporary patch for a long term problem, but many industry PHBs throw their hands up because even after a decade and a half of Kerberos, very few products have been Kerberized.
Password management is hard. There are few easy solutions.
From what I've seen, they have basically worked the game so down to the nuts and bolts as to make it fit into a three year old console. For starters, how about dynamic weather? None? Shame. Carmack is loosing sight of what made games great to buy and own on a PC, that you could enable advanced new graphics techniques on the PC with the latest graphics cards that were not available to the main stream. Even FarCry2, now a year old, has dynamic weather, and good weather too! I've played Crysis and FarCry2, and I think both games are well ahead of idTech5 in some areas, behind in others. FarCry2 is absolutely amazing when played at 1900x1200 with everything turned on. The mornings and evenings are soo real, with the evironmental audio effects as well. Shadows and foilage are quite fantastic. (The night doesn't seem so accurate however, with the night lighting is just too bright.) We've got quad processors now with 4 Gig PC memory standard, and 1 Gig graphics cards. What was the point of me even spending money on a high end machine? When I buy a game, I expect to see some graphics capabilities in the game that are experimental in nature, like volumetric clouds, wind, rain, dust storms, fog, frigid cold/heat haze effects, etc. I expect HDR lighting. I'm not just buying a game to have fun, I'm buying the game to become immersed in a world, and to explore. I want to feel as though I'm there, and have the freedom to just stand around and gawk at the world for hours, just like a lazy Sunday afternoon.
I've owned every id game made in the last 16 years. If all Rage turns out to be is an overblown desert mad max racing game, with pretty good graphics, optimized for a console, I will be thoroughly dissappointed. Thoroughly dissappointed. I may never buy another high-end PC and graphics combo again. What would be the point? When all I really need to browse the web, check email, and watch online videos is a $500 box. So I end up buying a $500 business PC, and a $500 game console, and come out the lesser on both ends?
Where the following line was stated:
'Replace "Google Voice" with "IE" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows".' this should have read,
'Replace "Google Voice" with "Firefox" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows".'
How could Apple possibly know what "end user experience" best suits me? If I install Google Voice, then that -IS- the end user experience I want! If Microsoft pulled that, they would get dinged for trying to push out the competition. Replace "Google Voice" with "IE" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows". This is exactly why the iPhone software environment is poison. Apple should not be allowed to decide what kind of "end user experience" I want on my hardware. Yes, if I purchased the hardware from Apple for the "hardware experience", then that means that I liked the "hardware experience" over other vendors, but that doesn't mean I like, or should be required to use their software! All "computing devices" should be "reconfigurable" using software, thats why software exists! Not to lock you into some Nazi form of "I know best what is for you" mentality. Open the devices up vendors!
Related: Buy the phone first, then choose your cell service vendor! NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Enough with hardware-cell service vendor tie-up aggreements!
How do you know? If I were a "god" that "invented" the universe and the "scare quotes" within it I would be very different from how I am now, and I think you would be too.
This is a strange response, and one that isn't worthy of a reply, but I will nonetheless reply to it.
It is obvious that if "I" were something else, then "I" would not be "me". And if the "not me" ideas about the world were different, then the "not me" might "require", "want", or have "needs" that are different from "mine". However those ideas are still not god-like qualities (characteristices) in any situation.
I don't pretend to know the minds of gods, or "the" god, yet I can "by definition" rule out those characteristics of un-god-like minds. That is, unless you believe that gods are just like ordinary people, with faults just like our own. This pretty much demotes gods to earthly kinds, or at least aliens from other worlds with technologies beyond our own.
It is very annoying when someone (like you) responds to my posts in such a way as to frame everything in cultural relativism. If every persons unique ideas were the truth, then we would have no need for discussion of any kind. Going on the assumption that you are right, then there are no absolutes, and gods don't exist anyway.
Narcissism is a human fault. What would a god need with worship? If I were a god that "invented" the universe and the humans within it, I certainly would not "require", "want", or "need" any kind of worship whatsoever. Worship is something that was demanded, or desired by earthly kings, and is narcissistic. Worship probably arose out of the "alpha male" aspect of the human animal social groups, or "tribes". The whole idea of worship is utterly silly indeed.
Monty Python's "Holy Grail" made the worship idea poignant in the following exchange...
GOD: Oh, don't grovel! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling. ARTHUR: Sorry-- GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's "sorry this" and "forgive me that" and "I'm not worthy". What are you doing now!? ARTHUR: I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord. GOD: Well, don't. It's like those miserable Psalms-- they're so depressing. Now knock it off!
When most people argue or debate the existence of a "god", most of the time all the "believers" really want is that you "worship" something that they believe in. This is quite shameful actually.
Also since when did the word "god" start standing in for the "name" of the being, and not the "description" of the thing?
"It does not say that our experiences and memories don't independently exist, just that they correlate with neural activity."
What does that line even mean? Independently exist...where? How?
All experiences and memories are stored in the brain, either by maintained states of chemical ion charges, or by the wiring of the brains net, or both. In information science, memory storage requires a medium of some kind. No medium, no memory. Most people who own computers should have realized this by now. You need a storage medium to carry information from one place to another. Even if you transmit information from one place to another through a communication channel you still need a medium to do it. The electromagnetic spectrum can be seen as a storage medium for transmission. Any one of the four known forces of nature should be usable for information storage and retreival if we work out how.
It sounds as if the parent is pushing some kind of pseudo science mumbo jumbo that memory and experience are just out-there, somewhere, in the spirit world? The magical, unmeasurable, intangible, unknowable somewhere that has no effect on our world. Completely nonsensical.
Everything you know is in your head. When you die, you lose it. The only thing that remains after "you" is "the pattern" that other beings like you continue to replicate. It is "the pattern" of a replicating and self-aware machine that knows its existance in and apart from the universe. It is the machine that maintains memory throughout its life cycle, unless otherwise damaged in some way. It is the machine that utters the word "I am" to recognize its existance in the world.
Lastly, to remember everything that is, was, or will be, would require all the known material-energy in the universe. In fact, the universe itself. However since memory retrieval requires a retriever, at least some of the medium of the universe would go towards "the pattern", since self recognition cannot happen without "reflection". This leads us inexorably towards a finite state machine that reflects upon everything in the universe, slowly gathering more and more information, and using the material in the universe for more and more storage and reflection of "the information". This process continues until at such point there is either no new information to gather and reflect on, or there is no material to gather for information storage, or both. Going against this process are black holes, which eat both the material medium of information storage, and the information itself.
When I read the headline, my immediate thought was from the movie 2010 from 1984. The Russians (the soviets then), allowed Americans to share a ride on their space ship to Jupiter to save an ailing American spaceship caught in a gravity well from the 2001 movie ending (the one with HAL 9000). Halfway through the movie, there was a conflict on earth that got out of control and put the Soviets and Americans at odds. So the Americans and Soviets in space were required to separate. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/
I was never happy that nVidia got into the chipset business in the first place. If any company has a talent to specialize and do one thing really really well (in a competitive environment), then that is what they should continue to concetrate on. nVidia seems to have talented people who can ultimately bring us photorealistic graphics at high performance for our games, as well as other engineering, and creative needs. I really frown on companies that water down their core business by diversifying into areas which they shouldn't be messing about in.
This kind of thing seems to happen quite often and in other ways. For example, John Carmack seemed to really have a talent in producing great engines for games on the bleeding edge of what is possible with new PC technology. John drove PC gaming technology. But what does John do? John goes off to create rockets. And then he journeys off to work on pocket devices, which are basically PCs from 1995 running Win31 with 16 bit graphics.;( John has allowed Crytek and other engine creators to walk all over id software. (Or maybe John and his company never really were that great to begin with?)
The whole nVidia chipset fiasco is what brought about the feud between Intel and nVidia so that we, the consumers, could not buy a Intel motherboard chipsets with nVidia SLI graphics. Shame.
Focus! Focus! You will never be great at something unless you do it well and are the best at it. A jack-of-all-trades rambling about between different technologies will not make you great, or competitive.
...than religion, which is a sort of self induced sensory deprivation (a horse with blinders on).
Science generates "wakes" of truth in the waters of knowledge in its path, while religion only leaves "still" water and goes nowhere.
Said another way... "The difference between those who truely believe and those who doubt is that those who doubt leave a wake of truths in their path." - Anonymous
Years ago pretty much everyone was exactly alike. Pretty much everyone was scruffing around gathering food, hunting for shelter, and having babies. Years ago almost no one understood how things worked. Things would pop out of nowhere and eat us; earthquakes, hurricanes, and diseases would kill us. We just didn't get anything at all, especially the forces that cause things to happen, energy.
Well we finally got some bright ideas, and in time, those ideas built on other ideas, until finally we have now amassed a collection, a mountain even, of ideas on what energy is. Science describes how things work, and on the subject of energy, its word is final.
You see, we used to (and many still do) cling to the idea that energy is some sort of hazy, cloudy, ethereal, and formless "stuff". Some even believe that this "stuff" can just appear (or be made to appear), as if by magic. Maybe someone can speak an incantation and suddenly "poof", presto things just happen. Or maybe, like the ancient alchemists, we just combine one thing with another, or we play with magnets in just the right way, and energy is created. Well, in some respects that did happen. If you combine sodium metal and water, you get a reaction. Or, if you move a magnet in a coil of wire, you can get electrons to move. Or, even if you fire enough neutrons at compressed plutonium things just might start happening. Yes, these things were done. If you play around long enough with stuff, you might get something unexpected and random to happen.
However, at the bottom of it all, we've learned that energy is NOT hazy. It is NOT ethereal. And, it is definitely not unquantifiable. With the combination of Einstein's e=mc(squared) formula, and further quantum mechanics, we've learned that not only is energy similar to money, or bits in a computer, no it is EXACTLY LIKE money and bits in a computer. Energy comes in exact and indivisible packets that CAN BE COUNTED, one by one. Matter too, being converted to energy (or vice versa), can be counted in EXACT amounts. As a metaphor, if you get 10 dollars of energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water, then it should take exactly 10 dollars plus the extra money required to cause the splitting process!
Electricty, or for our conversation here, electrical current in a wire, is the movement of massive numbers of electrons. Each electron CAN BE COUNTED, one by one. If you can move a magnet through a coil of wire and cause electons to move, then for each electron there was an associated photon of work generated by the magnet to move that electron.
ALL PHYSICS IS ACCOUNTING. IF YOU ARE NOT AN ACCOUNTANT, THEN YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND PHYSICS!
Energy (that can be put to use) doesn't come out of nowhere. If it did, then we would be in a whole heap of trouble. It would be like living in Alice in Wonderland every day. Matter, or energy just doesn't suddenly happen, because there's only so much of it to go around. It would be like printing money and expecting the government to acknowlege it as being real. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!
CFs efficiency is in terms of total energy consumed, not how much you pay for it. So whether you are using fossil fuels, or something else, the "cost" in physics "energy" used is the same. The amount of heat provided by an ordinary incandescent bulb "offsets" what needs to be produced by "whatever" you are using the heat your environment. If an incandescent can produce all the heat your environment needs, then you need not even turn on your heating unit, whatever fuel it uses. CF is not about saving money, its about saving fuel.
Compact florescent efficiency only begins when you need to turn on your air conditioner, otherwise they don't do much good unless they are being used in an environment that doesn't need to be heated. This is due to the energy offset provided by the light to heat the room that can be removed from the heating units energy cost.
"The 'inefficiencies' of incandescent lightbulbs in cold countries are virtually zero, since the generated heat offsets some of the need for central heating."... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_flourescent
Any system where a person can verify their vote after it has been cast is open to a very real kind of attack:
"Vote for #{my_candidate} or you are fired. Signed, your boss" Or, husband, wife, mother, creepy guy standing outside the polling place, etc.
Yet this "kind of attack" is not an actual attack on the voting system itself, it is a personal attack on you. You call it "very real" yet provide no statistics that this doesn't already take place, or if it did under the system outlined previously, whether the cumulative effect would make any statistically measurable difference. Like I said, using some kind of one time pad, or cryptographic technique, that you generate to protect your vote, no one else can see it, without "stealing" that key from you. Ok, so we add in the following property to the system outlined previously...
h. That you can generate different keys protecting different vote casts. One is real, the others fake. If someone forces you to disclose who you voted for, you give them all the keys. They then see that both (or all if several keys) candidates are voted for. They won't know which one is valid, only you do.
Maybe I'm wrong (please feel free to correct me if I am), but is it not possible to create some kind of secured voting system based on methods of cryptographic techniques that would allow the following properies of a voting system...
a. Your vote can be cast without anybody else knowing who you voted for. b. At any point in time after you cast your vote, you can verfiy that your
vote is counted with the candidate you voted for. c. The government can "verify" that you voted. d. You can vote over the internet. e. Only one vote per citizen. f. Any cheating is immediately detected. g. others where needed and appropriate.
I'm wondering if some kind of one time pads could be generated by all parties involved, combined togther with public key cryptography, that would allow such a system.
It boggles the mind that more effort and resources are put into making sure the government gets their tax returns than whether the voting system works or not.
Sure, if what you want to do is play a "game" on the PC, then yea, forgo the "pretty" look and just concentrate on the "how many points can I score" aspect.
However since Doom, I've never totally played a game just to pass the time scoring on my friends, or getting good at Tetris. I actually love the experience of exploring, and going somewhere else that I can't go in real life. In these terms, the bigger the world a game company can create, the more visually stunning and accurate the photorealism is, and the more complex the scene can be rendered at a reasonable rate the better. I've enjoyed the Myst series of games for that reason as well, and I don't even care about the puzzles, I just like the wonderous "places" I get to visit after I get home after a hard days work. In some ways it is just like a vacation. It's like a way of being a kid again, and the adventure of going on a long journey to some end that I know not. Environmentals are a "big" part of the game experience.
The most recent game in my arsenal of photorealism is Crysis. When I purchased a computer powerful enough to run that game with all the bells and whisles turned on, I was left slack-jawed and amazed at the possibilities. Crysis only flaw is that it isn't big enough, and ends up just being a "leading you" game just like Half Life. There are implied "barriers" for the sake of disk space, and for the sake of the story.
Make no mistake, I will pay just about any kind of money to satisfy my experience for other worlds and adventure. Yea, playing some occasional puzzles are fun, and certainly when you are in the mood to just wail on your internet buddies there's nothing more satifying than a good Quake style FPS. But in my view, all the games I've played have taken me "somewhere" that I can't go in real life, and offer me an escape to my rather mundane world.
The games I've played since Doom...
Doom (all variants) Doom 1.666 Doom 2
System Shock
ROTT (Rise of the Triad)
Mech Warrior 2
Heretic Hexen Hexen II
Unreal Unreal Tournament
The Wheel of Time
Myst Riven Exile UrU Ages beyond Myst UrU Path of the Shell Real Myst Myst IV Revelation Myst V End of Ages
The Elder Scrolls III, Morrowind The Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion --- (Truely visually stunning, awesome, and adventure inspiring, with the exception of just plain bad execution. Why does every freaking thing on the road to other towns try to kill you? There are almost too many people and not enough variation in the conversations. Too many minor dumb quests to solve. I don't use the speedup.)
Tribes Tribes 2 (These were good no matter what people say!) Tribes Vengence (Great game, poor marketing)
Quake (all mods, world, etc) Quake II (all mods) Quake III Arena (all mods) Quake III Team Arena Doom 3 Quake 4
Halo
Half Life 2
Battlefield 2 (Environmental sounds not loud enough, comm voice over TOO LOUD!) Battlefield 2142 (If I could talk about how bad this game was... geeze. I mean I played quite a bit to pass the time, but the implementation of the game was just poor compared to BF2.)
BioShock (off the beaten path and very nice) Crysis --- (Absolutely stunning and amazing graphics, but poor AI, and very narrow storyline. However I understand there are limits to what computers can do, so I will give Crytek some credit here. Oh, and the whole alien ship experience was not so exciting. The multi-player needs to improve.)
I'm down to only 2 (maybe) three games per year. I'm waiting on Id's Rage now. If you can tell, I'm a PC gamer. I won't play console games because I feel that they were just created for companies to make quick short-term money. I feel that consoles surpress innovation and prevent PC hardware technologies from improving. I could talk all day about why I despise consoles, but in the end I just put my money where my mouth is and not buy them. However I also don't th
You are right. I have of course forgot something. In the environment in which I work, we don't exclusively use only Windows. We are a heterogeneous network composed of Linux, Windows, and Solaris, as well as several web based applications and database interfaces. Over the years I have become conditioned to the fact that because of this large number of systems, our passwords (and some user names) are "limited" to 15 characters "in our environment". Of course Windows itself (2000 and beyond) can use long user names and very long passwords, we just can't. So in the case where you actually have used a 15+ character password Ophcrack is just a cpu exorciser.
However your remark about using "unicode" character sets for the password intrigues me. I'm not sure how I would enter a "unicode" character into the password entry logon box without some extra interface. The interface provided obviously depends on your language or location code, but you still only have your basic keyboard for input. I suppose you could use the "alt + keynum" sequence, and I know some security freaks do. I'd hate to enter a 15+ character password using the "alt + keynum" sequence!;-)
Good passwords are half of the equation. If the hacker knows your user name then the hacking program only needs to solve for the entropy (cipher quality) of the password (of the hash). This is given by an equation based on the number of characters you can use in a password and the character set base. So let's say you are using a base64 character set. That gives us:
6 bits per character = (ln 64) / (ln 2)
This is because there are 64 possible ascii values per string character in a base64 character set. So for example, creating a random key string to be used in encryption with a base64 character set, you would require the following number of characters:
A 128 bit encryption key: 128 / 6 >= ~22 characters
The problem here is that Windows only allows passwords that are 15 characters (I don't immediately know the base character set windows uses without looking it up). But the entropy to solve for with Windows passwords is probably much less. It is best if your user name is something that isn't easily known. I suppose a 15 character base64 random username and a 15 character base64 random password would be about the best you could get under windows. However again, you need to release the username "publicly" sometimes, so again we are stuck.
To prevent attacks against passwords, the authentication or encryption libraries need to be able to use failure-delay schemes. However that won't work for physical access to the machine in which case all bets are off anyway. So if Ophcrack needs physical access to the machine, why exactly are we discussing this anyway?
"Ok. Since now you measured the photon polarization, the photons cease to be entangled. Therefore you just have generated a photon of random spin (well, actually one randomly selected of two spins, where the two spins you select from are determined by your measurement device)."
True. It's been a while since I've thought deeply about quantum entanglement so I sort-of crafted the post "off-the-cuff" before I realized the mistake I had made. However, this leads to a bigger question. Even when the measurement was made, just after that time, neither earth nor mars yet know what the measurement was. So what if we hide the results of that measurement for a bit, or delay the measurement results to earth and mars? If the pre-measured entangled photons actually arrive first, then a post-measurement is made, then we later "open" the delayed pre-measurement results and view them, what happens?
And more to the point here. Why can we not just simply generate a "preset polarized - entangled pair" of photons? Most experiments "collapse" the wave function because they first measure one or the other to find the state of the other. But if we could just generate a set of polarized entangled photons with alrealy known polarizations we could just use a setup similar to the one I described right? It seems that photon polarization can't be controlled. But this was exactly the state of affairs that I was trying to setup with my thought experiment. It simply can't be that measuring the value of one destroys the entanglement, because we could throw that measurement away without ever using it, and the photons from the outside of the apparatus would still be entangled. Otherwise the photon entanglement would immediately be destroyed upon interaction with just about any kind of matter, such as air molecules in the way, or mirrors used to to perform the experiment.
"That is, if you view light as classical particles, you cannot explain the interference pattern (the photon should go either through the left or through the right slit, and therefore should not be affected by the other slit; however they obviously are). On the other hand, if you interpret them as waves, you get the interference pattern, but not the single, localized hits."
This was exactly my point with the "edge diffraction" mystery. You've certainly explained away the case yet again for the dual slit experiment, however for edge diffraction we are left wanting if we switch from waves to particles. Particles won't diffract around an edge. I re-iterate my case that we don't need the dual slit experiment to show the mystery of quantum mechanics. A single edge will do just fine. The dual slit experiment is just an over complication of the experiment.
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It's Microsoft's fault. They have now, single handedly, broken their own market. No longer do we need to upgrade our PCs, or our PC graphics cards, or even our OS. No, now all we need to do is get on the bandwagon and buy an XBox console, which has a lifespan of about 5 years.
So instead of spending $2,000+ on a PC with a $400+ graphics card (every two years) and a new OS every 5 years, now we just spend $400 and buy a bunch of games at $50 to $60 dollars a pop.
Hmm, I wonder how that worked out business wise? Let's dwell on that...
1. Major PC vendors markets: Dell, HP, Sony, Lenovo, Gateway, etc? Destroyed. Now they end up selling a bunch of low-end netbooks and cheap $500 PCs, enough for browsing the web, watching videos, listening to music, etc.
2. High end $400+ video graphic cards market from nVidia and AMT/ATI. Destroyed. Nope, who needs a video card that a game doesn't use. After all, all games are now made for consoles, and the consoles are all over 4 years old!
3. 64 bit multi-core computing for home? Destroyed. After all, who needs multi-core computing except for the business and science/eng/tech sectors? A 32 bit (aka 4G RAM) computer works just fine for the internet, office, and financial management of home users. Ok, some may need to edit photo's and movies, I'll grant that.
The problem is that the Microsoft business manager bean counters just didn't think the problem through. The PC gaming market was pushing the technology envelope forward, for better or worse. And all other vendors and software markets (aka the Windows eco system) benefited from those gains. Later they realized, uh oh!, we are shooting ourselves in the foot, and tried to keep it going with "Games for Windows". Little did they realize, by that time, it was all over.
I may never buy another PC, or graphics card again. Someone please explain why I should? Does the amortization of costs actually benefit us over the long run? Stuck with 4 to 5 year old console technology that does not push the envelope? Unlike some slashdotters, from a game, I want a total and absolute simulated environmenal realism. I don't just want to "play a game". I can muck around with Monopoly if I just wanted to "play a game". No I want to be emersed, as if I have been taken to another world. Games must be worth my time, not just something to fidget around with while I'm bored. I want photo-realism, possibly ray traced real time graphics, with true weather and environmental sounds. That's the goal I "was" chasing. That "was" the goal I was helping by buying the latest and greatest tech. But now, Microsoft has just killed that goal for me.
Side note: It seems all vendors of all types now from cell phones, to PC hardware and software, are all hell bent on getting every living being on the planet on some kind of subscription service. To that I say "One Time Cost" is better than the "Recurring Cost" model.
Does anyone have any idea of how to get a hold of the very original Cosmos television series that aired on P.B.S. back in the early 80's ?
The Cosmos series was bought, remastered, and remade in the late 90's by Ted Turner, and that is the series that I own (the DVD set), however it is not what I watched as a child. I liked the original better. The original had much better ambient music, and in the transitions between scenes, worked much better I thought (more powerfully evoking). The remastered version may be more up to date scientifically, but the music has been replaced with mostly classical that doesn't fit the emotion, and is hacked up quite a bit.
I know the story is that Carl had a large disagreement with the way the original series was produced by KCET out of Los Angeles. Later the series was remade with the help of his wife, but some of the original music could not be relicensed (or was not even licensed correctly the first time) when the series was sold to Turner.
I have most of the episodes of the original 80's version on cassette, that I have now digitized. But the sound isn't that great since it was recorded by simply placing a microphone in front of the TV. There are other tape "abnormalities" as well, like the side A to side B change over.
I know there must be some remaining VHS or Beta tapes around of the original series somewhere, since they were sold as sets to schools and universities back in the 80's. I'd love to have a copy of those! Digital of course.
... the website has to include a meta-tag indicating that the site should be displayed in Chrome Frame instead of IE ...
The very last thing I want as a system administrator are hundreds of thousands of sites (if not millions, or more) requiring the user to have Google Chrome, or the Chrome Frame plugin, before the site can be used. Web sites should be designed using web standards, and not require specific browsers for use. Talk about pot calling kettle black! Plugins should be handlers for the primary browsers functions, not over reaching take over my browser leaches.
Having a company be able to SEE any user's password should be a crime. Standard practice is that NOBODY, not even sysadmins can see it. They can change it but not see it.
It is now a bit naive to think that things work like this in the industry. Years ago, this was indeed the forward thinking, "engineered" best practice, and though not directly, why systems like Kerberos were originally created.
Sadly however, with the advent of the web, SSL, LDAP, and hundreds of other possible databases to need access, most PHB types quickly bought into "identity management" schemes being pawned by multiple vendors. These schemes end up "managing" your kept password(s) into "secret stores", usually in an LDAP back end. The "secret stores" should be hashed, but you can likely de-hash them using master stores hash. This basically amounts to nothing more than Microsofts old PWL files on Win9x. Its just a temporary patch for a long term problem, but many industry PHBs throw their hands up because even after a decade and a half of Kerberos, very few products have been Kerberized.
Password management is hard. There are few easy solutions.
From what I've seen, they have basically worked the game so down to the nuts and bolts as to make it fit into a three year old console. For starters, how about dynamic weather? None? Shame. Carmack is loosing sight of what made games great to buy and own on a PC, that you could enable advanced new graphics techniques on the PC with the latest graphics cards that were not available to the main stream. Even FarCry2, now a year old, has dynamic weather, and good weather too! I've played Crysis and FarCry2, and I think both games are well ahead of idTech5 in some areas, behind in others. FarCry2 is absolutely amazing when played at 1900x1200 with everything turned on. The mornings and evenings are soo real, with the evironmental audio effects as well. Shadows and foilage are quite fantastic. (The night doesn't seem so accurate however, with the night lighting is just too bright.) We've got quad processors now with 4 Gig PC memory standard, and 1 Gig graphics cards. What was the point of me even spending money on a high end machine? When I buy a game, I expect to see some graphics capabilities in the game that are experimental in nature, like volumetric clouds, wind, rain, dust storms, fog, frigid cold/heat haze effects, etc. I expect HDR lighting. I'm not just buying a game to have fun, I'm buying the game to become immersed in a world, and to explore. I want to feel as though I'm there, and have the freedom to just stand around and gawk at the world for hours, just like a lazy Sunday afternoon.
I've owned every id game made in the last 16 years. If all Rage turns out to be is an overblown desert mad max racing game, with pretty good graphics, optimized for a console, I will be thoroughly dissappointed. Thoroughly dissappointed. I may never buy another high-end PC and graphics combo again. What would be the point? When all I really need to browse the web, check email, and watch online videos is a $500 box. So I end up buying a $500 business PC, and a $500 game console, and come out the lesser on both ends?
Error addendum.
Where the following line was stated:
'Replace "Google Voice" with "IE" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows".'
this should have read,
'Replace "Google Voice" with "Firefox" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows".'
Dyslexia because of thinking too fast.
How could Apple possibly know what "end user experience" best suits me? If I install Google Voice, then that -IS- the end user experience I want! If Microsoft pulled that, they would get dinged for trying to push out the competition. Replace "Google Voice" with "IE" for example in Apple's reply, and "iPhone" with "Windows". This is exactly why the iPhone software environment is poison. Apple should not be allowed to decide what kind of "end user experience" I want on my hardware. Yes, if I purchased the hardware from Apple for the "hardware experience", then that means that I liked the "hardware experience" over other vendors, but that doesn't mean I like, or should be required to use their software! All "computing devices" should be "reconfigurable" using software, thats why software exists! Not to lock you into some Nazi form of "I know best what is for you" mentality. Open the devices up vendors!
Related: Buy the phone first, then choose your cell service vendor! NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Enough with hardware-cell service vendor tie-up aggreements!
How do you know? If I were a "god" that "invented" the universe and the "scare quotes" within it I would be very different from how I am now, and I think you would be too.
This is a strange response, and one that isn't worthy of a reply, but I will nonetheless reply to it.
It is obvious that if "I" were something else, then "I" would not be "me". And if the "not me" ideas about the world were different, then the "not me" might "require", "want", or have "needs" that are different from "mine". However those ideas are still not god-like qualities (characteristices) in any situation.
I don't pretend to know the minds of gods, or "the" god, yet I can "by definition" rule out those characteristics of un-god-like minds. That is, unless you believe that gods are just like ordinary people, with faults just like our own. This pretty much demotes gods to earthly kinds, or at least aliens from other worlds with technologies beyond our own.
In which case this brings us right back to (again) "theological non-cognitivism"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism
It is very annoying when someone (like you) responds to my posts in such a way as to frame everything in cultural relativism. If every persons unique ideas were the truth, then we would have no need for discussion of any kind. Going on the assumption that you are right, then there are no absolutes, and gods don't exist anyway.
So ok, I gladly agree.
Narcissism is a human fault. What would a god need with worship? If I were a god that "invented" the universe and the humans within it, I certainly would not "require", "want", or "need" any kind of worship whatsoever. Worship is something that was demanded, or desired by earthly kings, and is narcissistic. Worship probably arose out of the "alpha male" aspect of the human animal social groups, or "tribes". The whole idea of worship is utterly silly indeed.
Monty Python's "Holy Grail" made the worship idea poignant in the following exchange...
GOD: Oh, don't grovel! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling.
ARTHUR: Sorry--
GOD: And don't apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it's "sorry this" and "forgive me that" and "I'm not worthy". What are you doing now!?
ARTHUR: I'm averting my eyes, oh Lord.
GOD: Well, don't. It's like those miserable Psalms-- they're so depressing. Now knock it off!
When most people argue or debate the existence of a "god", most of the time all the "believers" really want is that you "worship" something that they believe in. This is quite shameful actually.
Also since when did the word "god" start standing in for the "name" of the being, and not the "description" of the thing?
The word "god" is mostly "without meaning" anyway. So you can politely ignore people who discuss it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism/
(control)
duh
... the ebook purchase "The Catcher in the Rye" is right out then, eh?
"It does not say that our experiences and memories don't independently exist, just that they correlate with neural activity."
What does that line even mean? Independently exist...where? How?
All experiences and memories are stored in the brain, either by maintained states of chemical ion charges, or by the wiring of the brains net, or both. In information science, memory storage requires a medium of some kind. No medium, no memory. Most people who own computers should have realized this by now. You need a storage medium to carry information from one place to another. Even if you transmit information from one place to another through a communication channel you still need a medium to do it. The electromagnetic spectrum can be seen as a storage medium for transmission. Any one of the four known forces of nature should be usable for information storage and retreival if we work out how.
It sounds as if the parent is pushing some kind of pseudo science mumbo jumbo that memory and experience are just out-there, somewhere, in the spirit world? The magical, unmeasurable, intangible, unknowable somewhere that has no effect on our world. Completely nonsensical.
Everything you know is in your head. When you die, you lose it. The only thing that remains after "you" is "the pattern" that other beings like you continue to replicate. It is "the pattern" of a replicating and self-aware machine that knows its existance in and apart from the universe. It is the machine that maintains memory throughout its life cycle, unless otherwise damaged in some way. It is the machine that utters the word "I am" to recognize its existance in the world.
Lastly, to remember everything that is, was, or will be, would require all the known material-energy in the universe. In fact, the universe itself. However since memory retrieval requires a retriever, at least some of the medium of the universe would go towards "the pattern", since self recognition cannot happen without "reflection". This leads us inexorably towards a finite state machine that reflects upon everything in the universe, slowly gathering more and more information, and using the material in the universe for more and more storage and reflection of "the information". This process continues until at such point there is either no new information to gather and reflect on, or there is no material to gather for information storage, or both. Going against this process are black holes, which eat both the material medium of information storage, and the information itself.
When I read the headline, my immediate thought was from the movie 2010 from 1984. The Russians (the soviets then), allowed Americans to share a ride on their space ship to Jupiter to save an ailing American spaceship caught in a gravity well from the 2001 movie ending (the one with HAL 9000). Halfway through the movie, there was a conflict on earth that got out of control and put the Soviets and Americans at odds. So the Americans and Soviets in space were required to separate.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/
I was never happy that nVidia got into the chipset business in the first place. If any company has a talent to specialize and do one thing really really well (in a competitive environment), then that is what they should continue to concetrate on. nVidia seems to have talented people who can ultimately bring us photorealistic graphics at high performance for our games, as well as other engineering, and creative needs. I really frown on companies that water down their core business by diversifying into areas which they shouldn't be messing about in.
This kind of thing seems to happen quite often and in other ways. For example, John Carmack seemed to really have a talent in producing great engines for games on the bleeding edge of what is possible with new PC technology. John drove PC gaming technology. But what does John do? John goes off to create rockets. And then he journeys off to work on pocket devices, which are basically PCs from 1995 running Win31 with 16 bit graphics. ;( John has allowed Crytek and other engine creators to walk all over id software. (Or maybe John and his company never really were that great to begin with?)
The whole nVidia chipset fiasco is what brought about the feud between Intel and nVidia so that we, the consumers, could not buy a Intel motherboard chipsets with nVidia SLI graphics. Shame.
Focus! Focus! You will never be great at something unless you do it well and are the best at it. A jack-of-all-trades rambling about between different technologies will not make you great, or competitive.
...than religion, which is a sort of self induced sensory deprivation (a horse with blinders on).
Science generates "wakes" of truth in the waters of knowledge in its path, while religion only leaves "still" water and goes nowhere.
Said another way... "The difference between those who truely believe and those who doubt is that those who doubt leave a wake of truths in their path." - Anonymous
... on the subject of energy.
Years ago pretty much everyone was exactly alike. Pretty much everyone was scruffing around gathering food, hunting for shelter, and having babies. Years ago almost no one understood how things worked. Things would pop out of nowhere and eat us; earthquakes, hurricanes, and diseases would kill us. We just didn't get anything at all, especially the forces that cause things to happen, energy.
Well we finally got some bright ideas, and in time, those ideas built on other ideas, until finally we have now amassed a collection, a mountain even, of ideas on what energy is. Science describes how things work, and on the subject of energy, its word is final.
You see, we used to (and many still do) cling to the idea that energy is some sort of hazy, cloudy, ethereal, and formless "stuff". Some even believe that this "stuff" can just appear (or be made to appear), as if by magic. Maybe someone can speak an incantation and suddenly "poof", presto things just happen. Or maybe, like the ancient alchemists, we just combine one thing with another, or we play with magnets in just the right way, and energy is created. Well, in some respects that did happen. If you combine sodium metal and water, you get a reaction. Or, if you move a magnet in a coil of wire, you can get electrons to move. Or, even if you fire enough neutrons at compressed plutonium things just might start happening. Yes, these things were done. If you play around long enough with stuff, you might get something unexpected and random to happen.
However, at the bottom of it all, we've learned that energy is NOT hazy. It is NOT ethereal. And, it is definitely not unquantifiable. With the combination of Einstein's e=mc(squared) formula, and further quantum mechanics, we've learned that not only is energy similar to money, or bits in a computer, no it is EXACTLY LIKE money and bits in a computer. Energy comes in exact and indivisible packets that CAN BE COUNTED, one by one. Matter too, being converted to energy (or vice versa), can be counted in EXACT amounts. As a metaphor, if you get 10 dollars of energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen into water, then it should take exactly 10 dollars plus the extra money required to cause the splitting process!
Electricty, or for our conversation here, electrical current in a wire, is the movement of massive numbers of electrons. Each electron CAN BE COUNTED, one by one. If you can move a magnet through a coil of wire and cause electons to move, then for each electron there was an associated photon of work generated by the magnet to move that electron.
ALL PHYSICS IS ACCOUNTING. IF YOU ARE NOT AN ACCOUNTANT, THEN YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND PHYSICS!
Energy (that can be put to use) doesn't come out of nowhere. If it did, then we would be in a whole heap of trouble. It would be like living in Alice in Wonderland every day. Matter, or energy just doesn't suddenly happen, because there's only so much of it to go around. It would be like printing money and expecting the government to acknowlege it as being real. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!
... "All work and no play makes Hans a dull boy" ?
CFs efficiency is in terms of total energy consumed, not how much you pay for it. So whether you are using fossil fuels, or something else, the "cost" in physics "energy" used is the same. The amount of heat provided by an ordinary incandescent bulb "offsets" what needs to be produced by "whatever" you are using the heat your environment. If an incandescent can produce all the heat your environment needs, then you need not even turn on your heating unit, whatever fuel it uses. CF is not about saving money, its about saving fuel.
Compact florescent efficiency only begins when you need to turn on your air conditioner, otherwise they don't do much good unless they are being used in an environment that doesn't need to be heated. This is due to the energy offset provided by the light to heat the room that can be removed from the heating units energy cost.
... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_flourescent
"The 'inefficiencies' of incandescent lightbulbs in cold countries are virtually zero, since the generated heat offsets some of the need for central heating."
Yet this "kind of attack" is not an actual attack on the voting system itself, it is a personal attack on you. You call it "very real" yet provide no statistics that this doesn't already take place, or if it did under the system outlined previously, whether the cumulative effect would make any statistically measurable difference. Like I said, using some kind of one time pad, or cryptographic technique, that you generate to protect your vote, no one else can see it, without "stealing" that key from you. Ok, so we add in the following property to the system outlined previously...
h. That you can generate different keys protecting different vote casts. One is real, the others fake. If someone forces you to disclose who you voted for, you give them all the keys. They then see that both (or all if several keys) candidates are voted for. They won't know which one is valid, only you do.
That should lock up that senario.
Maybe I'm wrong (please feel free to correct me if I am), but is it not possible to create some kind of secured voting system based on methods of cryptographic techniques that would allow the following properies of a voting system...
a. Your vote can be cast without anybody else knowing who you voted for.
b. At any point in time after you cast your vote, you can verfiy that your
vote is counted with the candidate you voted for.
c. The government can "verify" that you voted.
d. You can vote over the internet.
e. Only one vote per citizen.
f. Any cheating is immediately detected.
g. others where needed and appropriate.
I'm wondering if some kind of one time pads could be generated by all parties involved, combined togther with public key cryptography, that would allow such a system.
It boggles the mind that more effort and resources are put into making sure the government gets their tax returns than whether the voting system works or not.
Why should I vote again?
Sure, if what you want to do is play a "game" on the PC, then yea, forgo the "pretty" look and just concentrate on the "how many points can I score" aspect.
However since Doom, I've never totally played a game just to pass the time scoring on my friends, or getting good at Tetris. I actually love the experience of exploring, and going somewhere else that I can't go in real life. In these terms, the bigger the world a game company can create, the more visually stunning and accurate the photorealism is, and the more complex the scene can be rendered at a reasonable rate the better. I've enjoyed the Myst series of games for that reason as well, and I don't even care about the puzzles, I just like the wonderous "places" I get to visit after I get home after a hard days work. In some ways it is just like a vacation. It's like a way of being a kid again, and the adventure of going on a long journey to some end that I know not. Environmentals are a "big" part of the game experience.
The most recent game in my arsenal of photorealism is Crysis. When I purchased a computer powerful enough to run that game with all the bells and whisles turned on, I was left slack-jawed and amazed at the possibilities. Crysis only flaw is that it isn't big enough, and ends up just being a "leading you" game just like Half Life. There are implied "barriers" for the sake of disk space, and for the sake of the story.
Make no mistake, I will pay just about any kind of money to satisfy my experience for other worlds and adventure. Yea, playing some occasional puzzles are fun, and certainly when you are in the mood to just wail on your internet buddies there's nothing more satifying than a good Quake style FPS. But in my view, all the games I've played have taken me "somewhere" that I can't go in real life, and offer me an escape to my rather mundane world.
The games I've played since Doom...
Doom (all variants)
Doom 1.666
Doom 2
System Shock
ROTT (Rise of the Triad)
Mech Warrior 2
Heretic
Hexen
Hexen II
Unreal
Unreal Tournament
The Wheel of Time
Myst
Riven
Exile
UrU Ages beyond Myst
UrU Path of the Shell
Real Myst
Myst IV Revelation
Myst V End of Ages
The Elder Scrolls III, Morrowind
The Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion --- (Truely visually stunning, awesome, and adventure inspiring, with the exception of just plain bad execution. Why does every freaking thing on the road to other towns try to kill you? There are almost too many people and not enough variation in the conversations. Too many minor dumb quests to solve. I don't use the speedup.)
Tribes
Tribes 2 (These were good no matter what people say!)
Tribes Vengence (Great game, poor marketing)
Quake (all mods, world, etc)
Quake II (all mods)
Quake III Arena (all mods)
Quake III Team Arena
Doom 3
Quake 4
Halo
Half Life 2
Battlefield 2 (Environmental sounds not loud enough, comm voice over TOO LOUD!)
Battlefield 2142 (If I could talk about how bad this game was... geeze. I mean I played quite a bit to pass the time, but the implementation of the game was just poor compared to BF2.)
BioShock (off the beaten path and very nice)
Crysis --- (Absolutely stunning and amazing graphics, but poor AI, and very narrow storyline. However I understand there are limits to what computers can do, so I will give Crytek some credit here. Oh, and the whole alien ship experience was not so exciting. The multi-player needs to improve.)
I'm down to only 2 (maybe) three games per year. I'm waiting on Id's Rage now. If you can tell, I'm a PC gamer. I won't play console games because I feel that they were just created for companies to make quick short-term money. I feel that consoles surpress innovation and prevent PC hardware technologies from improving. I could talk all day about why I despise consoles, but in the end I just put my money where my mouth is and not buy them. However I also don't th
You are right. I have of course forgot something. In the environment in which I work, we don't exclusively use only Windows. We are a heterogeneous network composed of Linux, Windows, and Solaris, as well as several web based applications and database interfaces. Over the years I have become conditioned to the fact that because of this large number of systems, our passwords (and some user names) are "limited" to 15 characters "in our environment". Of course Windows itself (2000 and beyond) can use long user names and very long passwords, we just can't. So in the case where you actually have used a 15+ character password Ophcrack is just a cpu exorciser.
;-)
However your remark about using "unicode" character sets for the password intrigues me. I'm not sure how I would enter a "unicode" character into the password entry logon box without some extra interface. The interface provided obviously depends on your language or location code, but you still only have your basic keyboard for input. I suppose you could use the "alt + keynum" sequence, and I know some security freaks do. I'd hate to enter a 15+ character password using the "alt + keynum" sequence!
Good passwords are half of the equation. If the hacker knows your user name then the hacking program only needs to solve for the entropy (cipher quality) of the password (of the hash). This is given by an equation based on the number of characters you can use in a password and the character set base. So let's say you are using a base64 character set. That gives us:
6 bits per character = (ln 64) / (ln 2)
This is because there are 64 possible ascii values per string character in a base64 character set. So for example, creating a random key string to be used in encryption with a base64 character set, you would require the following number of characters:
A 128 bit encryption key: 128 / 6 >= ~22 characters
The problem here is that Windows only allows passwords that are 15 characters (I don't immediately know the base character set windows uses without looking it up). But the entropy to solve for with Windows passwords is probably much less. It is best if your user name is something that isn't easily known. I suppose a 15 character base64 random username and a 15 character base64 random password would be about the best you could get under windows. However again, you need to release the username "publicly" sometimes, so again we are stuck.
To prevent attacks against passwords, the authentication or encryption libraries need to be able to use failure-delay schemes. However that won't work for physical access to the machine in which case all bets are off anyway. So if Ophcrack needs physical access to the machine, why exactly are we discussing this anyway?
"Ok. Since now you measured the photon polarization, the photons cease to be entangled. Therefore you just have generated a photon of random spin (well, actually one randomly selected of two spins, where the two spins you select from are determined by your measurement device)."
True. It's been a while since I've thought deeply about quantum entanglement so I sort-of crafted the post "off-the-cuff" before I realized the mistake I had made. However, this leads to a bigger question. Even when the measurement was made, just after that time, neither earth nor mars yet know what the measurement was. So what if we hide the results of that measurement for a bit, or delay the measurement results to earth and mars? If the pre-measured entangled photons actually arrive first, then a post-measurement is made, then we later "open" the delayed pre-measurement results and view them, what happens?
And more to the point here. Why can we not just simply generate a "preset polarized - entangled pair" of photons? Most experiments "collapse" the wave function because they first measure one or the other to find the state of the other. But if we could just generate a set of polarized entangled photons with alrealy known polarizations we could just use a setup similar to the one I described right? It seems that photon polarization can't be controlled. But this was exactly the state of affairs that I was trying to setup with my thought experiment. It simply can't be that measuring the value of one destroys the entanglement, because we could throw that measurement away without ever using it, and the photons from the outside of the apparatus would still be entangled. Otherwise the photon entanglement would immediately be destroyed upon interaction with just about any kind of matter, such as air molecules in the way, or mirrors used to to perform the experiment.
"That is, if you view light as classical particles, you cannot explain the interference pattern (the photon should go either through the left or through the right slit, and therefore should not be affected by the other slit; however they obviously are). On the other hand, if you interpret them as waves, you get the interference pattern, but not the single, localized hits."
This was exactly my point with the "edge diffraction" mystery. You've certainly explained away the case yet again for the dual slit experiment, however for edge diffraction we are left wanting if we switch from waves to particles. Particles won't diffract around an edge. I re-iterate my case that we don't need the dual slit experiment to show the mystery of quantum mechanics. A single edge will do just fine. The dual slit experiment is just an over complication of the experiment.