"...we can't currently control what state the two disentangle into"
This has been the central issue to me since I first started studying quantum mechanics. The other is, why exactly do we need to? Given an entangled pair of photons, measuring ones polarization will tell you what the others polarization is. So, at this point we now know what the polarization of each is. Are the photons still entangled after the first was measured? If so, then the following experiment can be setup...
1. Place an entangled photon generator exactly half way between earth and mars. 2. Do not aim the photon outputs (beams) at earth and mars, but aim the beam at a 90 degree angle to earth and mars. 3. Immediately measure the polarization of one of the photons so that then, both photon polarizations are known. 4. Now, transmit the "known" polarization (as binary data) on another channel, an out of band beam, at the speed of light to both earth and mars. 5. Having sent the "known" polarization of the entangled photons, now reflect (with mirrors) the entangled photons (which have now traveled for some distance from the source) to both earth and mars. One photon reflects to mars, the other the earth. 6. On earth, we first receive the polarization data from the out of band light beam, which mars also receives at the same time. 7. Now since we know what the polarization will be when the entangled photon arrives, we then make an "adjustment" to its polarization. 8. The mars receiver then sees that the polarization of the entangled photon it was supposed to get, isn't actually what is measured.
Why doesn't a scheme like this work?
The other minor thing I don't understand about quantum mechanics is why such a big deal is made about the dual slit experiment. The dual slit experiment is in my opinion not the biggest mystery. The bigger mystery is why does a light beam diffract around "an edge" to begin with. It seems rather "obvious" to me that if a light beam passes a single edge of a razor blade and "diffracts", generating a wavelike pattern on the detector, then having two slits will obviously generate the famous wave pattern in the dual slit experiment. No, the central issue to me in quantum mechanics is why we know so little about photon control in the first place. Ok, so any change in an electrons momentum causes photons to be given off. But this momentum change is constrained so that the photon energy must leave the electron in finite units of Planks constant. This would lead us to the inevitable conclusion that space and time can be quantized, and that we live in a digitizable universe, right? So if I ask for a cup of steaming hot earl grey tea from the replicator, given enough power and control I will get it right?
Yea, and if that's the idea, it's also dead wrong.
You see if "space" was "compressed" the all distances of scale would also be "compressed". In compressed space, matter is just as far as it ever was from other matter. No, that is not what happened during the big bang, if the "big bang" happened at all. No, what's going on here is that more "space" is being "created" between matter as time progresses. The idea here is that space is likely being "created" by the "unwrapping", or "disolving" of matter into "space-time". You see the thing is that it's very likely to be all the same stuff. Matter is just some form of "space" that has been "reconfigured", much like ice is made of the same stuff as water. As ice melts, more space is created between the remaining ice. The problem here is that matter doesn't itself "melt" without some help. A hydrogen atom for example will probably never "melt" on its own. No, there seem to be machines that melt matter called "black holes". It is black holes that convert matter into "space-time". Matter falls into black holes, eventually only "space" is left behind.
Cup your hands together like you are trying to hold some water. The "space" in your cupped hands can be "compressed", or "expanded" as Einstein has shown. It is elastic, and in 3D that elasticity is equal to a volume of "density". Space also seems to be quantum, or has a "granular finiteness" (google on the Beckenstein bound) to it so that you can work with it like "bits" on a computer screen. Within a volume of space, if you could manipulate it like the Star Trek replicators, then you could create any form of material or structure, just like a computer screen can produce any "picture" realizable within the frame of X and Y coordinates. We don't yet know how to manipulate space-time to create matter. Maybe someday we will. Loop quantum gravity theory seems to be a step in the right direction.
Just to add icing to the software developers cake, I just remembered that all the software industry actually sells you are little bits arranged correctly on a piece of plastic. And you know, sometimes you don't even get the plastic! It's the same with the movie and music business.
Ok, I'll give you that, but can you explain why this is the opposite trend in the PC hardware industry?
Case in point, in 1992 I ordered what was then a top of the line PC:
* 486 - 66 MHz / 8 Meg memory
* 240 Meg hard drive.
* No CDROM
* No sound card.
* No networking or modem.
* Diamond Stealth 64 video card (Vesa local bus)
* Cheap case with floppy.
* 14 inch VGA muti-sync monitor.
* Mouse/keyboard.
* $2,500.00
This past Sunday 7/26 I just purchased my new baby:
* Intel D975XBX2 (Bad AXE) mobo with a load of stuff on board. http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX2 /index.htm
* Intel QX6700 (Core 2 quad core 2.66GHz)
* 850 Watt SLI power supply.
* EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Meg video card.
* 4 Gig DDR2 800 MHz RAM (PC2 6400).
* 320 Gig SATA 7200 RPM drive.
* Lian-Li PC1200B II case.
* 20X CD/DVD burner SATA.
* Windows Vista Ultimate.
* $2,800.00
Please tell me why inflation and rising development costs didn't have an effect on these prices?
As an engineer I can tell you that moving from the hardware technology of 1992 to 2007 was also "a lot of work" and required "a lot of resources" and "a lot of money". Yet based on inflation, I got a system that just crushed the older one into the ground.
Microsoft does this all the time. What really tests my patience with Microsoft is when they deliberately break their own products to limit their useful application in an IT environment that has the sole purpose of actually helping to install and further the case for Microsoft's own products!
We see this with Windows PE, the mini kernel'ed XP with networking, that allows us to install XP remotely (please don't comment back about BART here, we know all about BART). There are many useful applications for an open and extensible Windows PE that would allow internal IT operations to enhance operations. What Microsoft does is break this usefulness to the point where you almost must use it with something else you must buy from Microsoft. In this case yet another server for RIS, etc.
The Windows XP web update is another case in point. Have you ever wondered why the Express update deliberately leaves off a "Download Patches Now" button, and instead just provides the "Install Now" button? It's to deliberately push you into buying another Windows 2003 server just to run WUS (Windows Update Services http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/wsu s/default.mspx) server. Most IT departments can easily roll their own patch update scripts using the patches once they are downloaded, yet Microsoft makes downloading each patch a manually tedious process instead of simply adding a "Download Now" button.
Believe me, Linux is getting easier to mold a cohesive IT architecture around than Windows because of all the wrenches Microsoft has thrown into the works. Because of Microsoft's own business practices, local IT total-cost-of-ownership is very high, as well as the personal frustration that goes along with it.
Microsoft in essence wants you to buy into their environment, and then buy into it again and again by deliberately preventing you from developing your own automation practices. Why automate anything when Microsoft can sell you another automation "solution"!
My general point is that Microsoft can never provide a "one solution fits all" product line. Every IT department is different, and needs to develop its own internal automation practices. Microsoft, by being mischevious about its business practices, serves to interfere with in-house automation to the point of asking the question "why are we using Microsofts' products?"
Even if Microsoft could provide a "one solution fits all" architecture, then that wouldn't serve the need of most businesses in general because most businesses actually need to differentiate themselves from other businesses in most ways that matter. If your internal operations are the same as everyone elses, then you don't gain a competitive advantage by streamlining operations for your company's product line.
Microsoft simply needs to stop this foolishness of "vendor lock-in" and allow people to interoperate with their products and services more openly. Otherwise, I don't see a future for Microsoft in the light of an Open Source world.
...to me that they can build these things for less than the price of most MP3/AAC music players. More materials, more software/hardware development, etc. And they still stand to make a (some small) profit? That leads me to believe -we- are being taken "quite" advantage of by vendors of music/movie players. In fact, and in general, we are all being taken advantage of these days by big corps that vend anything from cell phones to TVs, and especially those that include any kind of "service" plan.
It's no wonder they can sell Xunes. All it takes is 1 customer and they've made a profit! I give up.;-(
I'll give them $2.00 a song if they will give up on this compressed stuff and sell me lossless. I'd like to have the same music that comes on the real CD. That way I can compare a checksum with a "global public" value, and make sure they haven't watermarked the song. They could even go to $3.00 a song for people who are aficionados and release the 24 bit stuff.
So we have...
$0.99 = DRM'ed AAC at 128kbps
$1.30 = Non-DRM'ed AAC at 256kbps
$2.00 = Non-DRM'ed, lossless.
$3.00 = Non-DRM'ed, 96KHz-24bit per Channel.
Now if Apple's Steve Jobs would release a line of somewhat pricey, but sleek looking ink jets with reusable ink cartridges at 99 cent per refill (at an Apple store), then we would be in business!
One of them "The Emperor's New Mind", by Roger Penrose, looks into this closely and comes to the same conclusion. However I would be quite surprised if conciousness "actually" boils down to a single physical quantum interaction. The body is simply a machine. A quite complex machine for sure, but still a machine, much like a computer. It is made up of systems that interact to produce the full organism. Now, we can throw away much of the machine without getting rid of what does the sensing, thinking, and output because almost everything else is used for upkeep. So that leaves us with the nervous system(s) (I/O), and the brain. The brain is the thing that has three general functions. The brain takes in formation and stores it. The brain uses the new information to "reflect" on the differences between the new and the old. And the brain determines whether an output should occur after the "reflection" takes place. It is now thought that much of the "reflection" is done during sleep. We can say that sleep "reduces" the total load of information by compression and association.
The really big issue in brain research is "awareness", or what gives us our ability to know we exist in the world independent of our memories of who we are, or what we are here for. Humans seem to have the highest level of self-awareness while animals and lower life forms seem to have a more reactionary, or machine like response to stimulus. Awareness may be as simple as an active feedback loop with memory such that the sensory input is "nulled" (like in a negative feedback operational amplifier configuration) with memory. That nulling certainly would give us a single "quantum" of information vs. time that can be reacted to, but this is a macro quantum, not the real physical quantum that occurs at the level of photons. In this sense the conciousness that defines "me" is simply a single "nulling" waveform that changes over time. And that wave function must definitely be different for each of us because no two people can ever occupy the same space at the same time to have the same input stream. This is the "answer" for the question of what whould happen if you could replicate someone at an instant in time? (the Star Trek transporter hypothosis). Would the two people actually be different. The answer being, yes they would, since their respective wave functions must neccessarily diverge at the instant of replication, they would now both be experiencing the universe from two distinctly different locations.
Before you commit to your shiny new USB/Firewire storage device, be sure you test it thoroughly. I've had several devices for whatever reason fail file checksum tests over multi-gigabytes of data. The most likely culprit is the USB interface and the drivers for them. Copy a very large multi-gigabyte tree of files back and fourth several times, checking against the master file checksums (MD5, etc). Also remember, proper checksum'ing requires that you eliminate any cache'ing that the OS may be doing, so unplug the device, then plug it back in, before running the checksum. Checksum'ing is especially important if you've formatted NTFS and the device is USB powered.
Also, even if you've verified the data is good on your storage device, moving it to another machine and connecting it up may leave you unhappy if the storage interface on the new machine isn't working properly.
We've found after extensive testing that the Xeon line, the 5000 series, and specifically the 5150@2.66, are several percentage points slower than the Core 2 line of processors. The Core 2 Duo 2.66 is faster than the 5150 2.66 processor. So buying the Xeon processors apparently only gets you SMP capability for the higher price(?)
From physics: It is easier to destroy a thing than to create or maintain a thing (in the face of entropy, the one-way stream).
Therefore a moral would be that "constructive" ideas, thoughts, works are better than "destructive" ones. Work against the stream. Being lazy is the devils work. Etc, etc.
Constructive'ism:
* To conserve what can be conserved.
* To help those that need help.
* To maintain, that which can or needs to be maintained.
* To build, that which can be built.
* To seek out, that which can be found, and to determine the limits of all knowledge.
All these are "good" in terms of a positive impact on society and individualism.
The flip side is being destructive, the lazy path. Consider all the amount of "positive" work lost when the planes stuck the twin towers on 9/11. Making a bomb is easy compared to the work to build that which a bomb can destroy.
* is not "a him". * is not even "an it". * doesn't even have a definition that makes sense.
So...
* how can you "believe" in something you cannot accurately describe? * how can you "believe" in an idea that doesn't make sense? * Does believing that blue is red make it true?
Does anybody know what they are talking about when they say the word "God"? Because I certainly don't understand what people are talking about when they utter that cobbled word.
"I do think Firefox is far superior to other browsers on the market."
Far superior? I think you need to backup that painfully abstract and non-obvious statement.
I just cranked up my copy of Firefox 2.0.0.1 today after some time has passed since I last used it. I have it set to a blank page. You know what the first thing it asked me was after firing it up? It wanted to know if I wanted to set a "cookie" for the site "newsrss.bbc.co.uk" This would have been normal except for the fact that I hadn't yet even typed in a URL yet. You might say, "well, that's just the RSS news feeds doing its thing". And I'd say, "except for the fact that I'm not subscribed to any feeds!"
Web browsers need to work like newspapers with hyperlinks. That's about it.
I have never understood why we need "listening tests" to determine the "quality" of what basically amounts to a comparison of/in digital mathematics.
The codec that "wins" should be the one that comes closest to the "real" uncompressed data stream (at a given bit rate) in a standard computation. The output numbers of such a comparison algorithm should be measured in a similar way to the way "total harmonic distortion" is measured. Something along the lines of 0 = totally different, and 1 = totally the same.
There's really no need for any listening tests. It's just a computation.
Doesn't flash memory have a maximum lifetime (R/W cycles)? If so, are these new drives designed to "degrade" gracefully so that as the flash "rots", more and more data is stored to the drive instead of the memory? If so, this would mean that the drives would "slow down" over time right?
...narrow minded. Sorry for being blunt, but your "black" and "white" analysis is so flawed it staggers the mind. Yours is the viewpoint of a child, or at least early adolecent.
The universe is. We haven't lived long enough to piece together all the of the puzzle. So far, all the "data" seem to indicate that earlier in history the universe was "hotter" than it is now. It also appears that all the objects in the universe (sans the local group and virgo) seem to be running away from each other (the doppler effect). But we've only been in analysis of this data for less than 100 years. That span of time is but "half the blink of an eye" (metaphor).
You can't make something from nothing. It is impossible, it violates logic. No being, no matter how powerful can do that. The universe has "always existed", it has just changed forms? True, because the word "universe" includes everything that exists...it is "defined" that way. If an intelligence created the universe then the intelligence is part of the universe.
Whether it is oscillatory or not is up for debate. Whether it is steady state or not is up for debate. Whether we live in a black hole is up for debate. Whether the universe was created is up for debate. Whether the universe was created by an alien intelligence is up for debate. Whether we ourselves end up creating universes (and are the aliens) is up for debate.
As for "god", where does that "fit" into anything. What "god" are you talking about. What is a "god". We don't know what the word "GOD" stands for. The three letters "G", "O", and "D" strung together have no intrinsic meaning that everyone can agree on. Your god is not my god. Your god is bigger, faster, stronger, leaner, meaner, infinite this, omnipotent that... What the xell are you talking about? The mere concept of gods are for people with tiny little heads.
In the new "non" net-neutral(ity) world, routing around trouble spots was not a service you paid for. If you need that service it will be an extra $10.00 a month. We love all our customers and hope your experience with our product is to your satisfaction. Now, if you would please take just a few moments and fill out our survey...
This is exactly the defining line between science and religion. Science can never include any religious concepts, like magic, miracles, etc. And what of this word "god"? People keep bandying the word around like they know exactly what it means. As if you can believe, disbelieve, or be agnostic about it. Not one person on this planet is sure what they mean when they say the word "god". I mean the word is "defined" in the dictionary as if it actually makes sense, but the longer you dwell on this "god" concept, it loses more and more of an idea that has a solid foundation. If the word turns out to be meaningless, or better yet "illogical" as Spock would say, then there's no justification in using it in any spoken or written context, except where you need to define an irrational "thing". The only concept for the word "god" to be accurately defined would be the universe itself, or "god" is the universe.
Basic misunderstandings with "god"...
* A "god" has "feelings" of any kind. No infinitely _____ful "being"? would need feelings, these are human frailties. * A "god" thinks. No infinitely _____ful "being"? needs to think, everything is already known and there is no outcome to "think" about. * A "god" needs, or requires worship. No infinitely ____ful "being"? needs acceptance of any kind, the act of doing so is simply superfluous. This also goes for a "god" having any "needs" whatsoever. * A "god" performs any actions at all. Why? All outcomes are already known, there is simply nothing to alter. * A "god" cares about us. Again, caring is an emotion, a human trait which no all ______ful "being" would do. * A "god" planned all this. What good is planning when everything there is to do is already been done, is known, and would be pointless anyway?
There are a few things we as humans in the 21st century should know...
* The universe exists. * The universe exists forever (it just exists in different forms). * We exist as a part of the universe. * Our past, present, and future are already "set". * We will never be able to "predict" the future (to any great extent) so for all practical purposes we have "free will". * We exist now, we existed before, and we will exist again. * "You" are not the body (or memories) in which you inhabit. "You" are the second level meta-recognition of "being", simply recognizing existance. Most human minds recognize their existance in and a part from the universe. This "recognizer" is you, simply to say "I" exist. Your "I", is no different than my "I". We are conscious, we are the same. Only our memories, bodies, and environmental living conditions make us different. * There is no possible way to exist forever, since this would require an infinite medium. The only medium we know to exist is the universe itself. (memories require a medium for storage) * The universe itself may in fact be finite (we don't currently know for certain). * There may be "other" universes besides our own. * The depth of either heirarchy must be infinite. (A single universe in an infinite volume would represent an illogical anomaly.)
So again, what is this "god" thing for which I'm supposed to believe, disbelieve, or be agnostic about, and why should I care?
If the universe does not work on principles of logic (and hence mathematics), then fairies and pink unicorns do roam the plains of Nebraska, while miracles occur via Mother Theresa, and Jesus walks on water. I mean what business are scientists in if they don't think that the universe follows some order? To say it follows this or that order some of the time is just crazy right? If things can happen in the universe without any cause or reason, then what is the point of science? What exactly are we investigating? Alice would have more hope in wonderland based on a world irrational.
The above statement being made, I do know that at the quantum level it appears that particles are popping into and going out of existence all the time, and that it may be possible that "all of this", everything we know of is just TEMPORARY. It could be possible that if the entire universe is simply a completely random event then nothing matters anyway. The only flip side to these types of arguments is the argument of infinite complexity, which could only manifest itself in a world of infinite energy and infinite time. But if the universe is closed and bounded then like a finite state machine, it must run its course. These principles are known, well defined, and are as the saying goes "not subject to negotiation".
I've often wondered whether we already know, down deep, instinctively that the universe must ultimately relinquish all information to be "reset" in the end. This is because there probably isn't infinite energy to store all the bits of information that could possibly be encoded. Eventually, either you run out of storage for information, or you run out of information to store which is the result being the same...a dead end. These thoughts occur to me because of the religious idea of the "afterlife". Taking a completely scientific view of things, if we are machines and all machines are made of the stuff (that is the universe itself), then when machines are disassembled they get reassembled at some point in the future into some other thing. So when we are born, we begin to encode all the information that occurs throughout our lifetime. When we die, that information is dumped. It must be, because simply if we lived forever we would need an infinite amount of storage. So taking a maximal extrapolation from that I find that we in fact may have lived before, and we may in fact live again (in some other person, or form), its just that the universe forces us to forget...because that is just we way it is, that is how the universe works. Ultimately the universe itself must "reset" because there is no "infinitely extended sequence of digits" that will "be spat out" buy the Turing machine that will be different from anything that came before.
Of course all this is mere speculation at this point because we don't have sufficient data to make final statements here. But one thing is guaranteed, within the resolution of your own computers monitor, there are only a finite number of images that can be seen. If God exists, and can be seen, then his/her/its image must be representable on your computers monitor within the resolution. And if you could see a God, then you could ultimately write out the code necessary to produce "Gods image".
You are being very "smarty" with your reply, but it is very likely the parent poster did mean main memory. The bottleneck for most software is main memory. These days your level 1 and level 2 cache is barely enough to hold even the simplest code without overflowing. With the addition of each new core, you divide those internal caches by approximately 2. Consider the Java runtime engine. Try to put that inside the CPU caches. But the problem is even larger. Most all pure data passes through the cache as well and modern data requirments are going into the Gigabyte range. The main memory bandwidth is a problem, and needs to be addressed for multiple cores, otherwise you've just replaced one poor performance marketing scheme, processor frequency, with another, multiple cores.
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"...we can't currently control what state the two disentangle into"
This has been the central issue to me since I first started studying quantum mechanics. The other is, why exactly do we need to? Given an entangled pair of photons, measuring ones polarization will tell you what the others polarization is. So, at this point we now know what the polarization of each is. Are the photons still entangled after the first was measured? If so, then the following experiment can be setup...
1. Place an entangled photon generator exactly half way between earth and mars.
2. Do not aim the photon outputs (beams) at earth and mars, but aim the beam at a 90 degree angle to earth and mars.
3. Immediately measure the polarization of one of the photons so that then, both photon polarizations are known.
4. Now, transmit the "known" polarization (as binary data) on another channel, an out of band beam, at the speed of light to both earth and mars.
5. Having sent the "known" polarization of the entangled photons, now reflect (with mirrors) the entangled photons (which have now traveled for some distance from the source) to both earth and mars. One photon reflects to mars, the other the earth.
6. On earth, we first receive the polarization data from the out of band light beam, which mars also receives at the same time.
7. Now since we know what the polarization will be when the entangled photon arrives, we then make an "adjustment" to its polarization.
8. The mars receiver then sees that the polarization of the entangled photon it was supposed to get, isn't actually what is measured.
Why doesn't a scheme like this work?
The other minor thing I don't understand about quantum mechanics is why such a big deal is made about the dual slit experiment. The dual slit experiment is in my opinion not the biggest mystery. The bigger mystery is why does a light beam diffract around "an edge" to begin with. It seems rather "obvious" to me that if a light beam passes a single edge of a razor blade and "diffracts", generating a wavelike pattern on the detector, then having two slits will obviously generate the famous wave pattern in the dual slit experiment. No, the central issue to me in quantum mechanics is why we know so little about photon control in the first place. Ok, so any change in an electrons momentum causes photons to be given off. But this momentum change is constrained so that the photon energy must leave the electron in finite units of Planks constant. This would lead us to the inevitable conclusion that space and time can be quantized, and that we live in a digitizable universe, right? So if I ask for a cup of steaming hot earl grey tea from the replicator, given enough power and control I will get it right?
"You get the idea..."
Yea, and if that's the idea, it's also dead wrong.
You see if "space" was "compressed" the all distances of scale would also be "compressed". In compressed space, matter is just as far as it ever was from other matter. No, that is not what happened during the big bang, if the "big bang" happened at all. No, what's going on here is that more "space" is being "created" between matter as time progresses. The idea here is that space is likely being "created" by the "unwrapping", or "disolving" of matter into "space-time". You see the thing is that it's very likely to be all the same stuff. Matter is just some form of "space" that has been "reconfigured", much like ice is made of the same stuff as water. As ice melts, more space is created between the remaining ice. The problem here is that matter doesn't itself "melt" without some help. A hydrogen atom for example will probably never "melt" on its own. No, there seem to be machines that melt matter called "black holes". It is black holes that convert matter into "space-time". Matter falls into black holes, eventually only "space" is left behind.
Cup your hands together like you are trying to hold some water. The "space" in your cupped hands can be "compressed", or "expanded" as Einstein has shown. It is elastic, and in 3D that elasticity is equal to a volume of "density". Space also seems to be quantum, or has a "granular finiteness" (google on the Beckenstein bound) to it so that you can work with it like "bits" on a computer screen. Within a volume of space, if you could manipulate it like the Star Trek replicators, then you could create any form of material or structure, just like a computer screen can produce any "picture" realizable within the frame of X and Y coordinates. We don't yet know how to manipulate space-time to create matter. Maybe someday we will. Loop quantum gravity theory seems to be a step in the right direction.
Just to add icing to the software developers cake, I just remembered that all the software industry actually sells you are little bits arranged correctly on a piece of plastic. And you know, sometimes you don't even get the plastic! It's the same with the movie and music business.
Sheesh, must be nice.
...of money for the software industry.
2 /index.htm
Ok, I'll give you that, but can you explain why this is the opposite trend in the PC hardware industry?
Case in point, in 1992 I ordered what was then a top of the line PC:
* 486 - 66 MHz / 8 Meg memory
* 240 Meg hard drive.
* No CDROM
* No sound card.
* No networking or modem.
* Diamond Stealth 64 video card (Vesa local bus)
* Cheap case with floppy.
* 14 inch VGA muti-sync monitor.
* Mouse/keyboard.
* $2,500.00
This past Sunday 7/26 I just purchased my new baby:
* Intel D975XBX2 (Bad AXE) mobo with a load of stuff on board.
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX
* Intel QX6700 (Core 2 quad core 2.66GHz)
* 850 Watt SLI power supply.
* EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Meg video card.
* 4 Gig DDR2 800 MHz RAM (PC2 6400).
* 320 Gig SATA 7200 RPM drive.
* Lian-Li PC1200B II case.
* 20X CD/DVD burner SATA.
* Windows Vista Ultimate.
* $2,800.00
Please tell me why inflation and rising development costs didn't have an effect on these prices?
As an engineer I can tell you that moving from the hardware technology of 1992 to 2007 was also "a lot of work" and required "a lot of resources" and "a lot of money". Yet based on inflation, I got a system that just crushed the older one into the ground.
Hmmm...
'Read "ethos" as "business case".'
u s/default.mspx) server. Most IT departments can easily roll their own patch update scripts using the patches once they are downloaded, yet Microsoft makes downloading each patch a manually tedious process instead of simply adding a "Download Now" button.
Microsoft does this all the time. What really tests my patience with Microsoft is when they deliberately break their own products to limit their useful application in an IT environment that has the sole purpose of actually helping to install and further the case for Microsoft's own products!
We see this with Windows PE, the mini kernel'ed XP with networking, that allows us to install XP remotely (please don't comment back about BART here, we know all about BART). There are many useful applications for an open and extensible Windows PE that would allow internal IT operations to enhance operations. What Microsoft does is break this usefulness to the point where you almost must use it with something else you must buy from Microsoft. In this case yet another server for RIS, etc.
The Windows XP web update is another case in point. Have you ever wondered why the Express update deliberately leaves off a "Download Patches Now" button, and instead just provides the "Install Now" button? It's to deliberately push you into buying another Windows 2003 server just to run WUS (Windows Update Services http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/ws
Believe me, Linux is getting easier to mold a cohesive IT architecture around than Windows because of all the wrenches Microsoft has thrown into the works. Because of Microsoft's own business practices, local IT total-cost-of-ownership is very high, as well as the personal frustration that goes along with it.
Microsoft in essence wants you to buy into their environment, and then buy into it again and again by deliberately preventing you from developing your own automation practices. Why automate anything when Microsoft can sell you another automation "solution"!
My general point is that Microsoft can never provide a "one solution fits all" product line. Every IT department is different, and needs to develop its own internal automation practices. Microsoft, by being mischevious about its business practices, serves to interfere with in-house automation to the point of asking the question "why are we using Microsofts' products?"
Even if Microsoft could provide a "one solution fits all" architecture, then that wouldn't serve the need of most businesses in general because most businesses actually need to differentiate themselves from other businesses in most ways that matter. If your internal operations are the same as everyone elses, then you don't gain a competitive advantage by streamlining operations for your company's product line.
Microsoft simply needs to stop this foolishness of "vendor lock-in" and allow people to interoperate with their products and services more openly. Otherwise, I don't see a future for Microsoft in the light of an Open Source world.
...to me that they can build these things for less than the price of most MP3/AAC music players. More materials, more software/hardware development, etc. And they still stand to make a (some small) profit? That leads me to believe -we- are being taken "quite" advantage of by vendors of music/movie players. In fact, and in general, we are all being taken advantage of these days by big corps that vend anything from cell phones to TVs, and especially those that include any kind of "service" plan.
;-(
It's no wonder they can sell Xunes. All it takes is 1 customer and they've made a profit! I give up.
I'll give them $2.00 a song if they will give up on this compressed stuff and sell me lossless. I'd like to have the same music that comes on the real CD. That way I can compare a checksum with a "global public" value, and make sure they haven't watermarked the song. They could even go to $3.00 a song for people who are aficionados and release the 24 bit stuff.
So we have...
$0.99 = DRM'ed AAC at 128kbps
$1.30 = Non-DRM'ed AAC at 256kbps
$2.00 = Non-DRM'ed, lossless.
$3.00 = Non-DRM'ed, 96KHz-24bit per Channel.
Still dreaming.
Now if Apple's Steve Jobs would release a line of somewhat pricey, but sleek looking ink jets with reusable ink cartridges at 99 cent per refill (at an Apple store), then we would be in business!
:)
I can dream...
"Consciousness may not be so easily explained without taking into account quantum effects."
t um+mind&btnG=Google+Search
On the one hand you are right, on the other you are wrong.
There have been many books that proposed the idea you are dwelling on. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Penrose+quan
One of them "The Emperor's New Mind", by Roger Penrose, looks into this closely and comes to the same conclusion. However I would be quite surprised if conciousness "actually" boils down to a single physical quantum interaction. The body is simply a machine. A quite complex machine for sure, but still a machine, much like a computer. It is made up of systems that interact to produce the full organism. Now, we can throw away much of the machine without getting rid of what does the sensing, thinking, and output because almost everything else is used for upkeep. So that leaves us with the nervous system(s) (I/O), and the brain. The brain is the thing that has three general functions. The brain takes in formation and stores it. The brain uses the new information to "reflect" on the differences between the new and the old. And the brain determines whether an output should occur after the "reflection" takes place. It is now thought that much of the "reflection" is done during sleep. We can say that sleep "reduces" the total load of information by compression and association.
The really big issue in brain research is "awareness", or what gives us our ability to know we exist in the world independent of our memories of who we are, or what we are here for. Humans seem to have the highest level of self-awareness while animals and lower life forms seem to have a more reactionary, or machine like response to stimulus. Awareness may be as simple as an active feedback loop with memory such that the sensory input is "nulled" (like in a negative feedback operational amplifier configuration) with memory. That nulling certainly would give us a single "quantum" of information vs. time that can be reacted to, but this is a macro quantum, not the real physical quantum that occurs at the level of photons. In this sense the conciousness that defines "me" is simply a single "nulling" waveform that changes over time. And that wave function must definitely be different for each of us because no two people can ever occupy the same space at the same time to have the same input stream. This is the "answer" for the question of what whould happen if you could replicate someone at an instant in time? (the Star Trek transporter hypothosis). Would the two people actually be different. The answer being, yes they would, since their respective wave functions must neccessarily diverge at the instant of replication, they would now both be experiencing the universe from two distinctly different locations.
Before you commit to your shiny new USB/Firewire storage device, be sure you test it thoroughly. I've had several devices for whatever reason fail file checksum tests over multi-gigabytes of data. The most likely culprit is the USB interface and the drivers for them. Copy a very large multi-gigabyte tree of files back and fourth several times, checking against the master file checksums (MD5, etc). Also remember, proper checksum'ing requires that you eliminate any cache'ing that the OS may be doing, so unplug the device, then plug it back in, before running the checksum. Checksum'ing is especially important if you've formatted NTFS and the device is USB powered.
Also, even if you've verified the data is good on your storage device, moving it to another machine and connecting it up may leave you unhappy if the storage interface on the new machine isn't working properly.
You have been warned.
Note(s) to my previous post...
1. Most of the tests were conducted using 32 BIT Windows XP Pro SP2, some were using Red Hat Linux (also 32 BIT).
2. The machines tested were the Dell Precision Workstation line vs. the business Optiplex series.
3. Some of the software...
ProEngineer Wildfire 2 and 3.
Matlab
Quake 4 Benchmarks.
Spec tests for ProEngineer.
The Xeons may in fact run 64 BIT OSs and software better, but we have no data to show that.
We've found after extensive testing that the Xeon line, the 5000 series, and specifically the 5150@2.66, are several percentage points slower than the Core 2 line of processors. The Core 2 Duo 2.66 is faster than the 5150 2.66 processor. So buying the Xeon processors apparently only gets you SMP capability for the higher price(?)
From physics: It is easier to destroy a thing than to create or maintain a thing (in the face of entropy, the one-way stream).
Therefore a moral would be that "constructive" ideas, thoughts, works are better than "destructive" ones. Work against the stream. Being lazy is the devils work. Etc, etc.
Constructive'ism:
* To conserve what can be conserved.
* To help those that need help.
* To maintain, that which can or needs to be maintained.
* To build, that which can be built.
* To seek out, that which can be found, and to determine the limits of all knowledge.
All these are "good" in terms of a positive impact on society and individualism.
The flip side is being destructive, the lazy path. Consider all the amount of "positive" work lost when the planes stuck the twin towers on 9/11. Making a bomb is easy compared to the work to build that which a bomb can destroy.
This is one way to measure moral'ness.
God...
* is not "a him".
* is not even "an it".
* doesn't even have a definition that makes sense.
So...
* how can you "believe" in something you cannot accurately describe?
* how can you "believe" in an idea that doesn't make sense?
* Does believing that blue is red make it true?
Does anybody know what they are talking about when they say the word "God"? Because I certainly don't understand what people are talking about when they utter that cobbled word.
"I do think Firefox is far superior to other browsers on the market."
Far superior? I think you need to backup that painfully abstract and non-obvious statement.
I just cranked up my copy of Firefox 2.0.0.1 today after some time has passed since I last used it. I have it set to a blank page. You know what the first thing it asked me was after firing it up? It wanted to know if I wanted to set a "cookie" for the site "newsrss.bbc.co.uk" This would have been normal except for the fact that I hadn't yet even typed in a URL yet. You might say, "well, that's just the RSS news feeds doing its thing". And I'd say, "except for the fact that I'm not subscribed to any feeds!"
Web browsers need to work like newspapers with hyperlinks. That's about it.
"They would rather not sell it at all then sell it without DRM."
And not only do they want to sell it with DRM, they want to sell you the compressed stuff with DRM.
I have never understood why we need "listening tests" to determine the "quality" of what basically amounts to a comparison of/in digital mathematics.
The codec that "wins" should be the one that comes closest to the "real" uncompressed data stream (at a given bit rate) in a standard computation. The output numbers of such a comparison algorithm should be measured in a similar way to the way "total harmonic distortion" is measured. Something along the lines of 0 = totally different, and 1 = totally the same.
There's really no need for any listening tests. It's just a computation.
Doesn't flash memory have a maximum lifetime (R/W cycles)? If so, are these new drives designed to "degrade" gracefully so that as the flash "rots", more and more data is stored to the drive instead of the memory? If so, this would mean that the drives would "slow down" over time right?
I think you should think about that.
...narrow minded. Sorry for being blunt, but your "black" and "white" analysis is so flawed it staggers the mind. Yours is the viewpoint of a child, or at least early adolecent.
The universe is. We haven't lived long enough to piece together all the of the puzzle. So far, all the "data" seem to indicate that earlier in history the universe was "hotter" than it is now. It also appears that all the objects in the universe (sans the local group and virgo) seem to be running away from each other (the doppler effect). But we've only been in analysis of this data for less than 100 years. That span of time is but "half the blink of an eye" (metaphor).
You can't make something from nothing. It is impossible, it violates logic. No being, no matter how powerful can do that. The universe has "always existed", it has just changed forms? True, because the word "universe" includes everything that exists...it is "defined" that way. If an intelligence created the universe then the intelligence is part of the universe.
Whether it is oscillatory or not is up for debate. Whether it is steady state or not is up for debate. Whether we live in a black hole is up for debate. Whether the universe was created is up for debate. Whether the universe was created by an alien intelligence is up for debate. Whether we ourselves end up creating universes (and are the aliens) is up for debate.
As for "god", where does that "fit" into anything. What "god" are you talking about. What is a "god". We don't know what the word "GOD" stands for. The three letters "G", "O", and "D" strung together have no intrinsic meaning that everyone can agree on. Your god is not my god. Your god is bigger, faster, stronger, leaner, meaner, infinite this, omnipotent that... What the xell are you talking about? The mere concept of gods are for people with tiny little heads.
-1
In the new "non" net-neutral(ity) world, routing around trouble spots was not a service you paid for. If you need that service it will be an extra $10.00 a month. We love all our customers and hope your experience with our product is to your satisfaction. Now, if you would please take just a few moments and fill out our survey...
This is exactly the defining line between science and religion. Science can never include any religious concepts, like magic, miracles, etc. And what of this word "god"? People keep bandying the word around like they know exactly what it means. As if you can believe, disbelieve, or be agnostic about it. Not one person on this planet is sure what they mean when they say the word "god". I mean the word is "defined" in the dictionary as if it actually makes sense, but the longer you dwell on this "god" concept, it loses more and more of an idea that has a solid foundation. If the word turns out to be meaningless, or better yet "illogical" as Spock would say, then there's no justification in using it in any spoken or written context, except where you need to define an irrational "thing". The only concept for the word "god" to be accurately defined would be the universe itself, or "god" is the universe.
;)
Basic misunderstandings with "god"...
* A "god" has "feelings" of any kind. No infinitely _____ful "being"? would need feelings, these are human frailties.
* A "god" thinks. No infinitely _____ful "being"? needs to think, everything is already known and there is no outcome to "think" about.
* A "god" needs, or requires worship. No infinitely ____ful "being"? needs acceptance of any kind, the act of doing so is simply superfluous. This also goes for a "god" having any "needs" whatsoever.
* A "god" performs any actions at all. Why? All outcomes are already known, there is simply nothing to alter.
* A "god" cares about us. Again, caring is an emotion, a human trait which no all ______ful "being" would do.
* A "god" planned all this. What good is planning when everything there is to do is already been done, is known, and would be pointless anyway?
There are a few things we as humans in the 21st century should know...
* The universe exists.
* The universe exists forever (it just exists in different forms).
* We exist as a part of the universe.
* Our past, present, and future are already "set".
* We will never be able to "predict" the future (to any great extent) so for all practical purposes we have "free will".
* We exist now, we existed before, and we will exist again.
* "You" are not the body (or memories) in which you inhabit. "You" are the second level meta-recognition of "being", simply recognizing existance. Most human minds recognize their existance in and a part from the universe. This "recognizer" is you, simply to say "I" exist. Your "I", is no different than my "I". We are conscious, we are the same. Only our memories, bodies, and environmental living conditions make us different.
* There is no possible way to exist forever, since this would require an infinite medium. The only medium we know to exist is the universe itself. (memories require a medium for storage)
* The universe itself may in fact be finite (we don't currently know for certain).
* There may be "other" universes besides our own.
* The depth of either heirarchy must be infinite. (A single universe in an infinite volume would represent an illogical anomaly.)
So again, what is this "god" thing for which I'm supposed to believe, disbelieve, or be agnostic about, and why should I care?
Mostly rambling at this point.
If the universe does not work on principles of logic (and hence mathematics), then fairies and pink unicorns do roam the plains of Nebraska, while miracles occur via Mother Theresa, and Jesus walks on water. I mean what business are scientists in if they don't think that the universe follows some order? To say it follows this or that order some of the time is just crazy right? If things can happen in the universe without any cause or reason, then what is the point of science? What exactly are we investigating? Alice would have more hope in wonderland based on a world irrational.
;-)
The above statement being made, I do know that at the quantum level it appears that particles are popping into and going out of existence all the time, and that it may be possible that "all of this", everything we know of is just TEMPORARY. It could be possible that if the entire universe is simply a completely random event then nothing matters anyway. The only flip side to these types of arguments is the argument of infinite complexity, which could only manifest itself in a world of infinite energy and infinite time. But if the universe is closed and bounded then like a finite state machine, it must run its course. These principles are known, well defined, and are as the saying goes "not subject to negotiation".
I've often wondered whether we already know, down deep, instinctively that the universe must ultimately relinquish all information to be "reset" in the end. This is because there probably isn't infinite energy to store all the bits of information that could possibly be encoded. Eventually, either you run out of storage for information, or you run out of information to store which is the result being the same...a dead end. These thoughts occur to me because of the religious idea of the "afterlife". Taking a completely scientific view of things, if we are machines and all machines are made of the stuff (that is the universe itself), then when machines are disassembled they get reassembled at some point in the future into some other thing. So when we are born, we begin to encode all the information that occurs throughout our lifetime. When we die, that information is dumped. It must be, because simply if we lived forever we would need an infinite amount of storage. So taking a maximal extrapolation from that I find that we in fact may have lived before, and we may in fact live again (in some other person, or form), its just that the universe forces us to forget...because that is just we way it is, that is how the universe works. Ultimately the universe itself must "reset" because there is no "infinitely extended sequence of digits" that will "be spat out" buy the Turing machine that will be different from anything that came before.
Of course all this is mere speculation at this point because we don't have sufficient data to make final statements here. But one thing is guaranteed, within the resolution of your own computers monitor, there are only a finite number of images that can be seen. If God exists, and can be seen, then his/her/its image must be representable on your computers monitor within the resolution. And if you could see a God, then you could ultimately write out the code necessary to produce "Gods image".
Enough already, I need to get back to work.
Enjoy.
...the keyboard should only really have one key anyway. ;)
+8
You are being very "smarty" with your reply, but it is very likely the parent poster did mean main memory. The bottleneck for most software is main memory. These days your level 1 and level 2 cache is barely enough to hold even the simplest code without overflowing. With the addition of each new core, you divide those internal caches by approximately 2. Consider the Java runtime engine. Try to put that inside the CPU caches. But the problem is even larger. Most all pure data passes through the cache as well and modern data requirments are going into the Gigabyte range. The main memory bandwidth is a problem, and needs to be addressed for multiple cores, otherwise you've just replaced one poor performance marketing scheme, processor frequency, with another, multiple cores.
+2