But don't you see that if you had such a theory you'd want to answer when these new rules come into play, and for what reason? This is the point of science, and it's once again a minimalist approach.
I don't quite agree with the zero part. We detect a zero valued quantities all the time: when we detect nothing at all.
If you had any knowledge of modern theoretical physics, you wouldn't be putting such a strong separation between physics and maths. Some very fundamental principles of mathematics have crawled into fundamental ideas in physics. Eg. point set topologies as opposed to differential manifold topologies (which are localy metric). At my college researchers in pure maths are doing research in pretty much the sam fields as some theoretical physicists. Talking about well established theories: strange and intuitively 'un-physical' ideas are integral parts of the standard model. Interactions are introduced through invariance of quantum fields under gauge transformations, which are transformations in their purely 'mathematical' space.
Our mathematical concepts don't come from beyond the firmament. They come from the physics around us.
Quantum physics applies on all levels, however, (unlike for Newton's laws) physical effects are not indepenent of scale; things on scales in which delta x* delta y is comparable to planck's constant behave way differently than things on larger scales. Having said this, a few atoms can be arranged so that the uncertainty principle is not significant (for computing). There is nothing in physics preventing this on a scale of a few atoms. Eg. an atom in a crystal is in the vicinity of its lattice site with a very high certainty.
It seems almost obvious that if not ruled by one company, the proprietary softare market can be ruled by no more than a few comapnies. I mean, if a smaller company decides to make, for example, a closed source office suite, it will have an impossible time fighting Microsoft's market dominance. So through a natural process: the market hardly admits new players, companies quite often merge, and a few companies are left as a result. In the free software world these rules don't apply. Infact, as far as the market is concerned it exacly the opposite is true. Free software naturaly puts companies and users on a balance: companies can never control the software. This is why I love my computer, filled with free software, mmm...
If there was no alpha, there's no way microsoft could come up with an interface like the one shown in the screenshots. And not only can I feel the interface, I can feel the look, and taste it as well.
Of course it's not an argument against microsoft if that's all you see. But for me, the feel is blatantly alpha and pissed me off the second I saw the screenshots.
Slashdot Mirror
But don't you see that if you had such a theory you'd want to answer when these new rules come into play, and for what reason? This is the point of science, and it's once again a minimalist approach.
I don't quite agree with the zero part. We detect a zero valued quantities all the time: when we detect nothing at all.
If you had any knowledge of modern theoretical physics, you wouldn't be putting such a strong separation between physics and maths. Some very fundamental principles of mathematics have crawled into fundamental ideas in physics. Eg. point set topologies as opposed to differential manifold topologies (which are localy metric). At my college researchers in pure maths are doing research in pretty much the sam fields as some theoretical physicists. Talking about well established theories: strange and intuitively 'un-physical' ideas are integral parts of the standard model. Interactions are introduced through invariance of quantum fields under gauge transformations, which are transformations in their purely 'mathematical' space.
Our mathematical concepts don't come from beyond the firmament. They come from the physics around us.
Quantum physics applies on all levels, however, (unlike for Newton's laws) physical effects are not indepenent of scale; things on scales in which delta x* delta y is comparable to planck's constant behave way differently than things on larger scales. Having said this, a few atoms can be arranged so that the uncertainty principle is not significant (for computing). There is nothing in physics preventing this on a scale of a few atoms. Eg. an atom in a crystal is in the vicinity of its lattice site with a very high certainty.
hitting the forward button by accident. :o
It seems almost obvious that if not ruled by one company, the proprietary softare market can be ruled by no more than a few comapnies. I mean, if a smaller company decides to make, for example, a closed source office suite, it will have an impossible time fighting Microsoft's market dominance. So through a natural process: the market hardly admits new players, companies quite often merge, and a few companies are left as a result. In the free software world these rules don't apply. Infact, as far as the market is concerned it exacly the opposite is true. Free software naturaly puts companies and users on a balance: companies can never control the software. This is why I love my computer, filled with free software, mmm...
If there was no alpha, there's no way microsoft could come up with an interface like the one shown in the screenshots. And not only can I feel the interface, I can feel the look, and taste it as well.
Of course it's not an argument against microsoft if that's all you see. But for me, the feel is blatantly alpha and pissed me off the second I saw the screenshots.