Have you used one? It blows everyone else out of the water. I've yet to see an Android or iOS user that wasn't completely shocked and amazed when they get a few minutes hands-on with the PlayBook.
RIM is actually leading here. QNX is already in millions of cars on the road and they have a strong relationship with manufacturers like Porsche. Both Porsche and Renault have shown-off concept cars with PlayBook integration.
While I doubt we'll see auto manufacturers agree to anything close to a standard, open or not, I don't mind having a company like RIM, with a fantastic security track-record, and an OS as stable and reliable as QNX leading the way. RIM has always allowed "side loading" (we just call that regular loading) on devices without compromising security. I don't know what you need in way of interoperability, but I have little doubt that you'll get more from RIM than other players.
I made an error when I mentioned movie glasses. I did not realize at the time that they were circularly polarized. Implied, but not explicitly stated, is that the filters are linearly polarized.
After step 3 there is no interference pattern. Photos pass through one slit or the other but not both.
In step 4 we're "removing the which-path information" so that we can't tell which path the photon took by it's polarization. Rather than going through one slit or the other, photons pass through both like in Step 1.
A simpler explanation is that waves oscillating perpendicular to one another cannot interfere with each other at all.
Fun fact: The experiment works even when you send in a single photon at a time -- but you can't really take the experiment to that level in the average kitchen:)
The experiment in the article is... awesome. Though if history is any indication, hoards of raving Slashdoters will try their damnedest to force this into a classical mechanistic world-view.
So here's a fun experiment you can do at home! (Craftsmanship is important for good results.)
1) Start by setting up up a classic double-slit experiment. A laser pointer and some household junk is all you need.
* Observe the interference pattern.
2) Stop denying that you went to see "Avatar" 36 times and grab a couple pairs of 3D movie glasses. 2a) Alternately, you can just buy a polarizing filter sheet. (this is the better way)
3) Being careful to note orientation of the filter, place the filters in front of the slits with one oriented 90 degree to the other. (This is only tricky because the distance between the two slits is so small.)
* What happened to the interference pattern? You "tagged" the individual photons so that you could, in principle, know which slit they passed through, so instead of going through both, they went through just one.
4) Place a third sheet of polaroid between the slits and the detector screen, oriented half-way between the two other filters (if one sheet is vertically oriented and the other horizontally, this sheet will be oriented at 45 degrees)
* The interference pattern is back? WTF? You took the tag away, so that you couldn't know which slit a photon passed through. You "erased" the which-path information so each photon went through both slits, instead of just one of them.
Do the experiment. Accept that the physical world is weird as shit. Shut-up and calculate.
why on earth would you want to put a header anywhere other than the page header? Are there not other functions that do the job better?
No way, man! When I need a bunch of copies of the same thing, I just type out everything in the header and then just hold down the "Enter" key until I've got all the pages I need. Before I found that out, I had to retype my document over and over. I save hours of work!
so what does LaTeX get you? Marginally better equation editing
That should be "Significantly better equation editing". I've yet to find anything else that comes close in terms of speed and ease-of-use. Well, if you ignore the steep, but short, learning curve.
It's what we use for a variety of documents. A web front-end with some simple markup features creates a file in an intermediate format (easiest to generate/process) that is fed to another script to produce a LaTeX document according to some selected options. From there, a PDF or (in some cases) a DOC or ePub is generated.
The documents look fantastic and the end-users don't need to know anything about LaTeX -- which really isn't something the average user can handle.
I was under the impression that if you have an idea and you discuss it with anyone who has not signed a confidentiality agreement other than your spouse then it is considered by the patent office to have been publicly disclosed and thus ineligible to be patented.
In the US? You can patent anything here! Obvious stuff, stuff that's been around for years, stuff that's already patented, even stuff that isn't stuff!
The USPTO is like one of those loan consolidation places that advertise late at night. "Can't get a patent because you're idea is 'obvious', 'already exists', or 'isn't patentable'? No Problem! Call the USPTO in the next 20 minutes and we'll guarantee you get your very own patent! Other patent offices that have shady practices like standards and accountability, but the USPTO will patent virtually anything, guaranteed!"
What never occurred to me was the business model idea behind Facebook, namely, selling the privacy of your clients to the highest bidder. It is, as you say, complete shit. But some people spend 16 hours a damn day there. Who knew, right?
Who knew? Lot's of people! The biggest roadblock was, and remains, attracting and maintaining users.
The idea, the business model, the code, etc. is meaningless if you can't attract users. Facebook was certainly success, but luck is undoubtedly the dominant factor there.
Look at the problems that Google+ is having attracting and maintaining users.
Really, I don't think you can point to a single thing that Facebook did specifically that made them successful over the competition -- neither the idea or the business model are in any way unique. When they fail (and they will) we'll just point at their competition and say "who knew?" Of course not!
Those who say 'ideas are a dime a dozen' are usually wanting to get good ideas for cheap or free.
No. I've said that in this thread already. Rest assured, I'm not lurking around, waiting to steal someones great idea. I don't want ideas. I have plenty. What I want is to stop the flood of terrible ideas I'm bombarded with constantly.
When someone says "I have and idea..." it's usually the only one they've ever had, and have been keeping it secret for years. It's guaranteed to be total shit.
Thinking is skilled work. Anyone who has capitalized on an idea in the past knows that it takes a lot of time and effort to develop the idea beyond the elevator-pitch-sized "basic idea" stage.
If you think that giving away any hint about your idea will "risk" it in any way, it's obvious that you haven't put any work in to developing your idea at all. You have no idea if it will work, if it's viable, if a market exists, or if there is anything similar on the market already. You're guaranteed not to have a design document, or even any detailed notes. What you have, is absolutely nothing.
But I'll be that if I agree to sign an NDA and do all the work you'd be happy to "split the profits" -- after all, you're a "genius" that came up with the "million dollar" idea -- "you'll be getting in on the ground floor". Ugh. Half of Slashdot has been given that offer (with and without NDA) more times than they can count -- and they're just as sick of it as I am.
Ideas are dime a dozen -- and they are severely overpriced at that rate. I should start charging people to listen to them.
Do you know what regular people do when they have what they think is a good idea? They discuss it with friends and colleagues, try to find problems and solutions, do some trivial market research, and otherwise work to "flesh it out". If it's still good, they make it a bit more formal, write it out in more detail including sketches and notes. They may even produce a design document. After that, they work on an implementation plan.
When they're looking for a developer, they say "here's my basic idea, are you interested?" If the developer is interested, then they break out the NDA (if they feel they need that level of protection) before sharing the rest of the project.
Ideas are a dime a dozen -- and most of them are worth far less than that.
Here's what "idea guys" don't realize: Their idea is very unlikely to be unique. If it is, it's very likely to be complete shit.
If you happen to have a stunning idea for something that will make a lot of money and need to hire a programmer, there's nothing to stop the programmer from thinking, "Hey, I could have thought of that!" and then build the software or website himself. This happens all the time.
Nonsense! The programmer in that situation says "Wow, what a moron! Lol, 'Just like facebook, but with pictures of feet instead.'! How did this guy manage to survive to adulthood?"
Most of the time what you get from "idea guys" is a deal where you work completely on my own for free and we'll 'split the profits' even though this moron doesn't have a business plan, doesn't have capital, and can't describe his idea without resorting immediately to an analogy e.g. "It should be really easy to make. It's like twitter but with pictures!"
I've got plenty of ideas of my own, thanks, and plenty of people telling me about their idiotic ideas without an NDA.
every single parent (whether you think so or not) loves their children
Oh, how wrong that is!
A local baby died last winter because the idiot parents were sick of hearing it cry and put it out on the porch over-night.
My useless sister-in-law gave up her baby to her "baby-daddy's" mother (who lives just a couple block away from her) a few months after it was born and hasn't seen the child since -- even though she could just drop-by any time she wants. It's a five-minute walk. Tell me she has any attachment at all to that child, let alone anything approaching 'love'.
There are many selfish people in this world. Some of them become parents and change for the better. There are others, however...
I think VisiCalc sold more Apple II's than any marketing effort on Apples part at the time.
They did well in primary education as well -- I don't remember what they did to get Apple II's in seemingly every K-6 school (or classroom!) in the 1980's -- clever, though.
Of course I know what metaphysics means, and it does not mean "non-sense". (It also has no hyphen)
I guess that you're proud of the fact that you know that nonsense has no hyphen? (I did not hyphenate that word in any previous posts.)
f your metaphysics includes dualism, or other more offbeat beliefs, then of course you will not find my arguments for a simple relation of the brain and mind compelling.
When did I advocate that? I just used that as an example of a belief that is commonly held without evidence as it is a necessary consequence of a common set of metaphysical assumptions.
It is my firm opinion that any metaphysics that includes the supernatural is based on woefully wishful thinking.
Where are you getting this supernatural bit from? I think that you're very confused. Are you responding to the wrong post?
The idea that a luminiferous aether was required to propagate light was not due to metaphysics. It was due to the belief that all waves needed a medium to propagate in.
Yeah... because of the the dominant metaphysic of the time -- reductive mechanism. If you knew your history, you'd know that Newton rejected earlier wave models of light for that reason. He even had is own struggles with gravity on the same basis! He actually broke from the dominant metaphysics of his day when posited a new quantity called 'mass'. (He actual tried a number of other things after Principia including "elastic spirit" and an "immaterial medium" -- he new very well that his understanding of the material world was unsustainable.)
Now, I have made some strong statements here, basically dismissing whole schools of though as fuzzy and mistaken.
Let's not forget that your dismissal is completely out-of-hand; no argument has been offered by you to support your assertions:)
I am eager to here your defence of a special status of the human mind.
Why? I didn't advocate that position, why should I defend it? (It's becoming increasingly clear that you missed the entire point of my post.)
Now, if you really want to talk about it, I suppose I could dig through the literature and put together a defense, but I don't think that's what you're actually after.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like someone *still* doesn't understand BES!
Here's a hint: RIM's servers need not enter the equation.
Do you really need to ask?
Honestly, a quick google search and you'll go "oh, no wonder RIM is loved by IT departments everywhere".
Commercial failure? Sure. From a technical and user interface perspective it's completely unmatched.
The Playbook is still a disaster.
Have you used one? It blows everyone else out of the water. I've yet to see an Android or iOS user that wasn't completely shocked and amazed when they get a few minutes hands-on with the PlayBook.
Also the latest RIM devices are no-longer monochrome devices that last days on a charge
That's true. They're now full-color touch-screen devices that last for days on a charge.
RIM is actually leading here. QNX is already in millions of cars on the road and they have a strong relationship with manufacturers like Porsche. Both Porsche and Renault have shown-off concept cars with PlayBook integration.
While I doubt we'll see auto manufacturers agree to anything close to a standard, open or not, I don't mind having a company like RIM, with a fantastic security track-record, and an OS as stable and reliable as QNX leading the way. RIM has always allowed "side loading" (we just call that regular loading) on devices without compromising security. I don't know what you need in way of interoperability, but I have little doubt that you'll get more from RIM than other players.
I made an error when I mentioned movie glasses. I did not realize at the time that they were circularly polarized. Implied, but not explicitly stated, is that the filters are linearly polarized.
After step 3 there is no interference pattern. Photos pass through one slit or the other but not both.
In step 4 we're "removing the which-path information" so that we can't tell which path the photon took by it's polarization. Rather than going through one slit or the other, photons pass through both like in Step 1.
Yes, it's weird.
Anyhow, you can read more about the experiment in this Scientific American article from 2007.
through the ever-unpopular hidden variables approach
Local hidden variables are out. Bell's inequality has been violated experimentally.
Non-local hidden variables are still on the table, but they're not exactly in-vogue -- and for good reason.
A simpler explanation is that waves oscillating perpendicular to one another cannot interfere with each other at all.
Fun fact: The experiment works even when you send in a single photon at a time -- but you can't really take the experiment to that level in the average kitchen :)
For this experiment you want some cheapo sunglasses.
ZZ Top? Is that you?
Their "equipments' observation" is their observation.
Prove it :)
Don't feel too bad. No one else can prove it either.
The experiment in the article is ... awesome. Though if history is any indication, hoards of raving Slashdoters will try their damnedest to force this into a classical mechanistic world-view.
So here's a fun experiment you can do at home! (Craftsmanship is important for good results.)
1) Start by setting up up a classic double-slit experiment. A laser pointer and some household junk is all you need.
* Observe the interference pattern.
2) Stop denying that you went to see "Avatar" 36 times and grab a couple pairs of 3D movie glasses.
2a) Alternately, you can just buy a polarizing filter sheet. (this is the better way)
3) Being careful to note orientation of the filter, place the filters in front of the slits with one oriented 90 degree to the other. (This is only tricky because the distance between the two slits is so small.)
* What happened to the interference pattern? You "tagged" the individual photons so that you could, in principle, know which slit they passed through, so instead of going through both, they went through just one.
4) Place a third sheet of polaroid between the slits and the detector screen, oriented half-way between the two other filters (if one sheet is vertically oriented and the other horizontally, this sheet will be oriented at 45 degrees)
* The interference pattern is back? WTF? You took the tag away, so that you couldn't know which slit a photon passed through. You "erased" the which-path information so each photon went through both slits, instead of just one of them.
Do the experiment. Accept that the physical world is weird as shit. Shut-up and calculate.
I would have to say I'm infected, but not affected by it.
Either way, you're fected.
why on earth would you want to put a header anywhere other than the page header? Are there not other functions that do the job better?
No way, man! When I need a bunch of copies of the same thing, I just type out everything in the header and then just hold down the "Enter" key until I've got all the pages I need. Before I found that out, I had to retype my document over and over. I save hours of work!
so what does LaTeX get you? Marginally better equation editing
That should be "Significantly better equation editing". I've yet to find anything else that comes close in terms of speed and ease-of-use. Well, if you ignore the steep, but short, learning curve.
It's what we use for a variety of documents. A web front-end with some simple markup features creates a file in an intermediate format (easiest to generate/process) that is fed to another script to produce a LaTeX document according to some selected options. From there, a PDF or (in some cases) a DOC or ePub is generated.
The documents look fantastic and the end-users don't need to know anything about LaTeX -- which really isn't something the average user can handle.
I was under the impression that if you have an idea and you discuss it with anyone who has not signed a confidentiality agreement other than your spouse then it is considered by the patent office to have been publicly disclosed and thus ineligible to be patented.
In the US? You can patent anything here! Obvious stuff, stuff that's been around for years, stuff that's already patented, even stuff that isn't stuff!
The USPTO is like one of those loan consolidation places that advertise late at night. "Can't get a patent because you're idea is 'obvious', 'already exists', or 'isn't patentable'? No Problem! Call the USPTO in the next 20 minutes and we'll guarantee you get your very own patent! Other patent offices that have shady practices like standards and accountability, but the USPTO will patent virtually anything, guaranteed!"
Taxed at an extraordinarily low rate...
What never occurred to me was the business model idea behind Facebook, namely, selling the privacy of your clients to the highest bidder. It is, as you say, complete shit. But some people spend 16 hours a damn day there. Who knew, right?
Who knew? Lot's of people! The biggest roadblock was, and remains, attracting and maintaining users.
The idea, the business model, the code, etc. is meaningless if you can't attract users. Facebook was certainly success, but luck is undoubtedly the dominant factor there.
Look at the problems that Google+ is having attracting and maintaining users.
Really, I don't think you can point to a single thing that Facebook did specifically that made them successful over the competition -- neither the idea or the business model are in any way unique. When they fail (and they will) we'll just point at their competition and say "who knew?" Of course not!
Zynga? They don't steal and idea until *after* it has proven to be reasonably successful. They're like Rovio that way.
An NDA doesn't keep people from stealing ideas you've already implemented and offered for sale.
Those who say 'ideas are a dime a dozen' are usually wanting to get good ideas for cheap or free.
No. I've said that in this thread already. Rest assured, I'm not lurking around, waiting to steal someones great idea. I don't want ideas. I have plenty. What I want is to stop the flood of terrible ideas I'm bombarded with constantly.
When someone says "I have and idea..." it's usually the only one they've ever had, and have been keeping it secret for years. It's guaranteed to be total shit.
Thinking is skilled work. Anyone who has capitalized on an idea in the past knows that it takes a lot of time and effort to develop the idea beyond the elevator-pitch-sized "basic idea" stage.
If you think that giving away any hint about your idea will "risk" it in any way, it's obvious that you haven't put any work in to developing your idea at all. You have no idea if it will work, if it's viable, if a market exists, or if there is anything similar on the market already. You're guaranteed not to have a design document, or even any detailed notes. What you have, is absolutely nothing.
But I'll be that if I agree to sign an NDA and do all the work you'd be happy to "split the profits" -- after all, you're a "genius" that came up with the "million dollar" idea -- "you'll be getting in on the ground floor". Ugh. Half of Slashdot has been given that offer (with and without NDA) more times than they can count -- and they're just as sick of it as I am.
Ideas are dime a dozen -- and they are severely overpriced at that rate. I should start charging people to listen to them.
Do you know what regular people do when they have what they think is a good idea? They discuss it with friends and colleagues, try to find problems and solutions, do some trivial market research, and otherwise work to "flesh it out". If it's still good, they make it a bit more formal, write it out in more detail including sketches and notes. They may even produce a design document. After that, they work on an implementation plan.
When they're looking for a developer, they say "here's my basic idea, are you interested?" If the developer is interested, then they break out the NDA (if they feel they need that level of protection) before sharing the rest of the project.
Ideas are a dime a dozen -- and most of them are worth far less than that.
Here's what "idea guys" don't realize: Their idea is very unlikely to be unique. If it is, it's very likely to be complete shit.
If you happen to have a stunning idea for something that will make a lot of money and need to hire a programmer, there's nothing to stop the programmer from thinking, "Hey, I could have thought of that!" and then build the software or website himself. This happens all the time.
Nonsense! The programmer in that situation says "Wow, what a moron! Lol, 'Just like facebook, but with pictures of feet instead.'! How did this guy manage to survive to adulthood?"
Most of the time what you get from "idea guys" is a deal where you work completely on my own for free and we'll 'split the profits' even though this moron doesn't have a business plan, doesn't have capital, and can't describe his idea without resorting immediately to an analogy e.g. "It should be really easy to make. It's like twitter but with pictures!"
I've got plenty of ideas of my own, thanks, and plenty of people telling me about their idiotic ideas without an NDA.
every single parent (whether you think so or not) loves their children
Oh, how wrong that is!
A local baby died last winter because the idiot parents were sick of hearing it cry and put it out on the porch over-night.
My useless sister-in-law gave up her baby to her "baby-daddy's" mother (who lives just a couple block away from her) a few months after it was born and hasn't seen the child since -- even though she could just drop-by any time she wants. It's a five-minute walk. Tell me she has any attachment at all to that child, let alone anything approaching 'love'.
There are many selfish people in this world. Some of them become parents and change for the better. There are others, however ...
I think VisiCalc sold more Apple II's than any marketing effort on Apples part at the time.
They did well in primary education as well -- I don't remember what they did to get Apple II's in seemingly every K-6 school (or classroom!) in the 1980's -- clever, though.
Of course I know what metaphysics means, and it does not mean "non-sense". (It also has no hyphen)
I guess that you're proud of the fact that you know that nonsense has no hyphen? (I did not hyphenate that word in any previous posts.)
f your metaphysics includes dualism, or other more offbeat beliefs, then of course you will not find my arguments for a simple relation of the brain and mind compelling.
When did I advocate that? I just used that as an example of a belief that is commonly held without evidence as it is a necessary consequence of a common set of metaphysical assumptions.
It is my firm opinion that any metaphysics that includes the supernatural is based on woefully wishful thinking.
Where are you getting this supernatural bit from? I think that you're very confused. Are you responding to the wrong post?
The idea that a luminiferous aether was required to propagate light was not due to metaphysics. It was due to the belief that all waves needed a medium to propagate in.
Yeah ... because of the the dominant metaphysic of the time -- reductive mechanism. If you knew your history, you'd know that Newton rejected earlier wave models of light for that reason. He even had is own struggles with gravity on the same basis! He actually broke from the dominant metaphysics of his day when posited a new quantity called 'mass'. (He actual tried a number of other things after Principia including "elastic spirit" and an "immaterial medium" -- he new very well that his understanding of the material world was unsustainable.)
Now, I have made some strong statements here, basically dismissing whole schools of though as fuzzy and mistaken.
Let's not forget that your dismissal is completely out-of-hand; no argument has been offered by you to support your assertions :)
I am eager to here your defence of a special status of the human mind.
Why? I didn't advocate that position, why should I defend it? (It's becoming increasingly clear that you missed the entire point of my post.)
Now, if you really want to talk about it, I suppose I could dig through the literature and put together a defense, but I don't think that's what you're actually after.