You're just intent on disagreeing with the original post whilst simultaneously making the same argument he made, aren't you?
No, as you see below.
Microsoft's market share has increased only modestly, but their commercial competition has dropped precipitously.
No. For this to be true there would have to have been a phenomenal growth in FOSS in the server market, as the server market as a whole has grown, If MS has grown modesty, and all *commercial* competition has dropped 'precipitiously'.
This is not the situation. MS has grown modestly, and Linux has grown rapidly, but from a small base. Commercial competition has both grown and (recently) shrunk over the past few years, but definitely not precipitously. There is still a huge market for commercial server OSes out there. For example, even when IBM provide Linux, they are frequently providing it on top of a proprietary OS. Other server systems such as Netware are still out there, and still doing well.
So quit disagreeing with the original post unless you are actually posting a dissenting view.
I am certainly disagreeing with the original post. You are assuming that because I give Linux as an example of how Microsoft does not dominate a market that I'm implying that Linux is the only non-Microsoft player in that market. Also, You could hardly call RedHat Enterprise, with all its licencing and additional tools, FOSS.
If strong means less than 10% of the productivity tool market. M$ Windoze and Office account for 90+% of the market. Inertia has a very hard thing to control.
Yes, you are right. Part of what I meant by 'strong' is that Open Office is powerful enough to compete, even though it does not have a big market share yet.
An interesting post, but I disagree with many points, based on personal experience. Not even MS Office is 100% compatible with MS Office! Compatibility only has to be 'just good enough', not perfect. There has never been perfect document porting between software suites, not even between suites from the same manufacturer. The selling points of Open Office are that it does almost all of what you want, requires minimal retraining (with the exception of Access), and provides considerable financial savings.
The real killer selling point is that it allows companies to either proceed with or plan progressive migration away from Windows on the desktop. Having Open Office on Linux as well as Windows allows companies freedom to choose the appropriate desktop system and even to have a mix of operating systems. Even if companies don't go ahead with this, my experience is that having the choice to do so is very attractive.
So the aliens may be there (I sure hope so), but finding them is like looking for a microscopic needle in a cosmological haystack.
Not at all. We could detect TV signals from a culture like ours a significant fraction of the distance across the galaxy - these signals are broadcast in all directions.
The problem is that signals deliberately transmitted over interstellar distances are likely to be highly compressed, and a suffiently compress signal is indistinguishable from noise.
So, basically, we are only likely to pick up accidentally broadcast signals from relatively primitive technological cultures (like ours). I don't hold out much hope.
In specific server markets MS dominates completely.
There is no such market (at least that I know of). Microsoft competes with Linux at the low end (where Microsoft has a significant presence), and Unix + Linux + other Oses at the high end (where Microsoft has few sales).
They basically have the same enterprise market share (in a much larger market) that Novell once enjoyed,
Actually, Novell is still enjoying a share of this market - it just has not grown as fast as Microsoft and others.
Yes it is. And I hope it makes huge gains. But my comment speaks directly to the main article, 'The care and feeding of Open Source'.
I see what you mean. However, I was replying to the post that said that Microsoft has 'crushed all competition'.
Where would OO.o be today without intial care and feeding from Sun?
Not very far. Which is why the 'Sun is as bad as Microsoft' attitude which is common on Slashdot is so wrong. Sun has provided one of the killer apps for desktop Linux.
OpenOffice only exists in its current state because of the good graces of Sun and StarOffice. Where would it be had Sun not built (read paid for) StarOffice first, then broke off OpenOffice?
So? How is this relevant? It's still a strong competitor in the Office market.
You could just as well say 'Microsoft Office only exists in its current state because of the good graces of Microsoft'.
You started your reply seemingly to show him he's wrong by limiting your response to discussion of the last year or two and showing off the recent successes of FOSS.
No. Microsoft has been trying to dominate the server market for years, and has never succeeded. The competitors in that market have changed (with Linux replacing Unixes and proprietary systems), but Microsoft has remained just another player.
The point Microsoft is making is that a company can not utilize a high degfreedom and get support at the same time.
Well, of course.
Does that clarify my point?
Not really. The point was that Microsoft mentioned specific distributions as if this was relevant to support. A Debian or Gentoo distribution can be just as 'locked down' in terms of applications and support as RedHat or SuSE, or any commercial Unix.
... FOSS has flourished in recent years is a tiny nuicance up in Seattle.
So tiny that Balmer spents a considerable amount of time each year flying out to meet governments and institutions in an effort to persuade them not to migrate to Linux.
Microsoft crushed (almost) all competitors in their main markets, OSes,
Microsoft has failed to control or dominate the server market, and is experiencing strong competition from Linux.
productivity suits
I don't see Open Office being crushed.
and browsers.
Erm. Firefox.
The only way to avoid this fate was to produce free software, using the same tactic MS has employed.
The same tactic? So Microsoft has published source code and provided free cross-platform versions of their products.
Now you're contradicting yourself. First you said that strings had to be made of some substance, because they're one dimensional, now you're saying that one-dimensional objects can't be made of a material.
I am just illustrating the logical gibberish of string theory. I am not the one talking about one-dimensional objects being made of material.
Uh, no, there is no law of physics that purely one-dimensional objects cannot exist, any more than there's a law of physics that says that zero-dimensional point particles can't exist.
Yes, actually, there is. It's called 'math'.
Here I have an object. How do I know I have an object? because I can interact with it. How do I interact with it? because it has non-zero has some substance. What do I mean by 'some'? It has volume. What is volume? A multiplication of dimensions. Length x width x height. But this is a string, so width = 0 and height = 0. So what is the volume? zero. So there is nothing there.
A purely one-dimensional feature can be an edge in something else, or an intersection, but it can't exist independently.
This is a pointless conversation. It has nothing to do with physics,
Of course it's to do with physics!
What's your point?
That some physicists need more training in philosophy. What happens is that some really neat math comes along and looks so wonderful that few of them stand back and look at the whether the model makes sense as reality and not just a model.
Of course they do. Particle physics is no different, except the particles are zero-dimensional.You seem inexplicably hung up on extended bodies. Strings are no more and no less "made of a material" than are particles.
This is what puzzles me. Why is this 'inexplicably hung up'? It seems to be to be nothing more than asking a reasonable question.
Look. Its very simple. If something is made of some material then it is possible to conceive of that material being divided or composite. If it is possible to conceive of this, then its up to the proposers of a theory to justify why the material is not composite.
Also, particles (assuming they are zero dimensional) don't have to be made of anything. That is the nature of a non-extended body.
That's up to experiment to decide. No law of logic or physics forbids strings from being fundamental.
Well, if we can't agree that non-zero size implies compositeness... I would definitely say that a 'law of logic' implies this.
No. Veneziano wrote down a perturbation series for a scattering amplitude that people thought might explain the strong nuclear force.
Yes. I was incorrect.
Strings, being extended bodies, have different points... There is no deeper structure in a string.
This is a contradiction. Bodies which have different points have deeper structure.
or that you can find any physical difference between points on the string.
Of course there is a physical difference between points on the string. If the string is extended, then different points have different physical locations. If a string is vibrating (in any real sense) then different points will have different velocities. (Unless the 'vibration' is one of those mis-uses of commonly used words to describe a non-obvious quantum property).
Oh give me a break. Who in string theory goes around claiming that string theory is some proven fact?
No-one is saying it is fact (that I know of), but plenty are saying its a reasonable model of reality.
If you don't want to call "strings" fundamental because they're made of a "material", then why don't you call "string material" fundamental??
Because a material can't be fundamental. Well, I guess it can be if you want simply give up any attempt to understand things further. But, anyone presented with a description of something that is complex or consists of some material is entitled to ask 'well, what is THAT made of', and is also entitled to be critical if the response is 'sorry - we give up there, your question is meaningless'.
Every theory has fundamental entities, ones in which everything else in the theory is described.
Yes, but many of them don't included extended entities made of some unexplainable 'material'.
And this material is...? (Or rather isn't, as if strings are truly one-dimensional there can be no material).
It cannot be broken up into more fundamental entities, unless you count breaking a string into two or more identical strings.
Then it can be broken up.
It is no more paradoxical to describe a macroscopic string with fundamental strings than it is to describe an elephant with fundamental strings.
Its paradoxical to describe tension (say the tension in a stretched string) in terms of tension in fundamental particles.
A macroscopic string is not truly one-dimensional, it is made up of all kinds of particles, has inhomogeneities, detailed internal structure, etc. A string theory string does not.
If a string theory string is purely one-dimensional then it is nothing more than a mathematical construct, and can have no real existence.
They could be as complex as they want. Complexity has nothing to do with "fundamental". They just don't have to be made up of simpler entitities that are different from the "fundamental" entities.
This kind of argument reminds me of those put forward by biologists centuries ago. What were cells made of? Nothing but 'protoplasm', a fundamental material that was intrinsically 'alive'. No further explanation was needed.
It does make predictions, such as sparticles, or super-symmetric particles, but are currently out of our experimental reach. The energies required are very very high and we may not be able to prove them for much time.
The problem is that other theories make the same predictions, and even with the String theories there are alternative formulations that cannot be distinguished.
and neither is general evolution because of the time scales involced.
Not true. There have been examples of observed evolution in recent decades, and also evolution predicts what is likely to be found in future fossil discoveries: for example, the discovery of a 400 million year old mammalian fossil would certainly disprove evolution.
Tell the users "We'd like to enable you to work faster. From this point forward, just doubleclick this. We installed a new version of Office and Internet explorer, they are called OpenOffice and Firefox. If you don't like this, feel free to use your Windows98 system."
I had zero Win98 users within a month, and zero Windows XP users within 3 months. That's a 400+ user environment.
Excellent!
I have managed the same thing, even with users who were very familiar with Windows. After many complaints that extensive training would be needed for a new platform, they just got on and used the Linux desktop, with no productivity loss.
You are quoting the point about gentoo and debian out of context. The point was that the debian and gentoo allow you to cut your own versions of apps but those custom versions are unsupportable in a major vendor fashion.
You can do this in Windows as well: add services or features to existing apps that change their behaviour. Office applications can be hacked and customised beyond recognition.
The 'freeness' or otherwise of an OS is irrelevant to the degree to which it can be customised.
So it does not make sense to ask about structure or processes inside such regions.
As you probably can guess, I have trouble when someone says 'it does not make sense to ask'. I tend to feel that such prohibitions are a sign that we don't know enough about the situation.
You, probably, feel it too, that is why you have put (at least in some sence) qualification to term 'vibration'. My take on it that they vibrate in the same sence as Standard Model particles spin.
Well yes, because being the pedant I am I would be a lot happier if physicists stopped using terms (like 'spin') which give (I believe) a false impression of the underlying reality. If strings 'vibrate' rather than really vibrate, why use the word and confuse poor humble novice physicists like me?
As I understand Mark Hadley's ideas, he tries to describe particles as distortions of the space-time so the 'moving parts' are also in there in which case it might be more or less equivalent to string theory proposal that space-time consists of strings.
Yes, but in this model, the particles aren't really fundamental. They are distortions in something more fundamental (space-time). In this circumstance, I feel it makes perfect sense to talk about 'parts', unlike in String Theory.
If you asked me what TOE may look like, I would go with a like of the holographic principle, where notions of 3+1 space-time continuum, matter, energy and so on are 'generated' as the natural result of our attempt to acquire information about our surroundings, i.e. it is not that nature does, indeed, work this way, but rather is our (observer's) way to cognize the information coherently.
I have been hearing a lot about the holographic principle recently, but will need to do a lot more reading before I understand it!
You haven nothing but philosophical prejudice to back up your statements.
You are correct.
Remember that the universe itself is complex and requires a certain number of assumptions to start with.
That is not, as I recall, why string theory was devised. Simplifying hugely, it was because doing some math for a model of the universe which had point-like particles did not work, so math was tried on non-point-like entities. There was no justification about anything being real, or about the assumptions of complexity - just a way to make math possible. Finding a model that seems to work mathematically and then saying that this model IS how the universe actually works, without a detail series of tests of the assumptions, is very poor science.
What's so darn complicated about "length" or "tension", anyway?
If they aren't complicated. why bother with particle physics at all? Why not just say that macroscopic objects have 'fundamental' properties?
'length' and 'tension' are complicated because, at least in general use they imply a relationship between parts. If this is not their use here, are there better words?
The material of the string isn't any different at the ends than the middle.
The use of the word 'material' implies that strings have some sort of 'substance', and hence are composite. Sorry if this sounds pendantic.
There's nothing wrong with fundamental entities having physical properties like composite entities do!
I agree, but that is not what I am saying. The problem as I see it is that these so-called fundamental entities have physical properties which change along one or more dimensions. They have extension, for example, so there must be some sort of 'material' that links one part of a string to another. This may not be the case in the mathematical models which describe strings, but we are assuming here that strings are real entities, not just a tool for computing.
If you say that there is nothing paradoxical about using 'vibrating strings' to explain the properties of macroscopic things such as vibrating strings, I'm afraid I can only disagree. Look at it this way - how complex would 'fundamental' enties need to be for you to consider them non-fundamental?
Re:I know this isn't a book review, but...
on
100 Years of Einstein
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is a somewhat strange position (even for a philosopher,) since the whole philosophy of physics is, that it is infinities that are not natural. That is the problem with infinitely small electron, infinitely small distances etc. Which means that even fundamental building blocks of Nature must have property as finite spacial extent, energy density or information content.
The infinities are nothing to do with nature - they are to do with the mathematics that are used to model nature. They result from the way we model forces.
The problem with String theory is that it uses the term 'fundamental' for entities which are composite: they have end parts and non-end parts, so are not, by definition, fundamental. They also vibrate, so (at least in some sense) have parts which move relative to other parts. This seems highly paradoxical and recursive - after all, particle physics is supposed to explain features such as vibration, extension and tension in macroscopic objects. A theory which requires these features would seem to require a deeper level of explanation.
I have no idea what a fundamental theory should look like. Perhaps something like Mark Hadley's ideas of building all particles out of spacetime is simple enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes in theory someone could take a distribution made from Gentoo and support it commercially but in no meaningful sense is it Gentoo anymore.
I see what you mean. Good point.
You're just intent on disagreeing with the original post whilst simultaneously making the same argument he made, aren't you?
No, as you see below.
Microsoft's market share has increased only modestly, but their commercial competition has dropped precipitously.
No. For this to be true there would have to have been a phenomenal growth in FOSS in the server market, as the server market as a whole has grown, If MS has grown modesty, and all *commercial* competition has dropped 'precipitiously'.
This is not the situation. MS has grown modestly, and Linux has grown rapidly, but from a small base. Commercial competition has both grown and (recently) shrunk over the past few years, but definitely not precipitously. There is still a huge market for commercial server OSes out there. For example, even when IBM provide Linux, they are frequently providing it on top of a proprietary OS. Other server systems such as Netware are still out there, and still doing well.
So quit disagreeing with the original post unless you are actually posting a dissenting view.
I am certainly disagreeing with the original post. You are assuming that because I give Linux as an example of how Microsoft does not dominate a market that I'm implying that Linux is the only non-Microsoft player in that market. Also, You could hardly call RedHat Enterprise, with all its licencing and additional tools, FOSS.
Umm, I think the grandparent was referring to the reasons why FOSS is taking off, not the reslts of its taking off (ie, describing cause, not effect.)
The parent (which is what I was replying to) was making assertions I felt needed correcting, for example that 'FOSS is a tiny nuisance in Seattle'.
If strong means less than 10% of the productivity tool market. M$ Windoze and Office account for 90+% of the market. Inertia has a very hard thing to control.
a rketingFLOSS
Yes, you are right. Part of what I meant by 'strong' is that Open Office is powerful enough to compete, even though it does not have a big market share yet.
http://www.users.on.net/~farnik/wikicgi/wiki.pl?M
An interesting post, but I disagree with many points, based on personal experience. Not even MS Office is 100% compatible with MS Office! Compatibility only has to be 'just good enough', not perfect. There has never been perfect document porting between software suites, not even between suites from the same manufacturer. The selling points of Open Office are that it does almost all of what you want, requires minimal retraining (with the exception of Access), and provides considerable financial savings.
The real killer selling point is that it allows companies to either proceed with or plan progressive migration away from Windows on the desktop. Having Open Office on Linux as well as Windows allows companies freedom to choose the appropriate desktop system and even to have a mix of operating systems. Even if companies don't go ahead with this, my experience is that having the choice to do so is very attractive.
So the aliens may be there (I sure hope so), but finding them is like looking for a microscopic needle in a cosmological haystack.
Not at all. We could detect TV signals from a culture like ours a significant fraction of the distance across the galaxy - these signals are broadcast in all directions.
The problem is that signals deliberately transmitted over interstellar distances are likely to be highly compressed, and a suffiently compress signal is indistinguishable from noise.
So, basically, we are only likely to pick up accidentally broadcast signals from relatively primitive technological cultures (like ours). I don't hold out much hope.
In specific server markets MS dominates completely.
There is no such market (at least that I know of). Microsoft competes with Linux at the low end (where Microsoft has a significant presence), and Unix + Linux + other Oses at the high end (where Microsoft has few sales).
They basically have the same enterprise market share (in a much larger market) that Novell once enjoyed,
Actually, Novell is still enjoying a share of this market - it just has not grown as fast as Microsoft and others.
Yes it is. And I hope it makes huge gains. But my comment speaks directly to the main article, 'The care and feeding of Open Source'.
I see what you mean. However, I was replying to the post that said that Microsoft has 'crushed all competition'.
Where would OO.o be today without intial care and feeding from Sun?
Not very far. Which is why the 'Sun is as bad as Microsoft' attitude which is common on Slashdot is so wrong. Sun has provided one of the killer apps for desktop Linux.
OpenOffice only exists in its current state because of the good graces of Sun and StarOffice. Where would it be had Sun not built (read paid for) StarOffice first, then broke off OpenOffice?
So? How is this relevant? It's still a strong competitor in the Office market.
You could just as well say 'Microsoft Office only exists in its current state because of the good graces of Microsoft'.
Make that "crushed all commercial competitors".
I think IBM and RedHat may well disagree with you!
You started your reply seemingly to show him he's wrong by limiting your response to discussion of the last year or two and showing off the recent successes of FOSS.
No. Microsoft has been trying to dominate the server market for years, and has never succeeded. The competitors in that market have changed (with Linux replacing Unixes and proprietary systems), but Microsoft has remained just another player.
The point Microsoft is making is that a company can not utilize a high degfreedom and get support at the same time.
Well, of course.
Does that clarify my point?
Not really. The point was that Microsoft mentioned specific distributions as if this was relevant to support. A Debian or Gentoo distribution can be just as 'locked down' in terms of applications and support as RedHat or SuSE, or any commercial Unix.
history is inevitable.
Well, yes. But the future is uncertain....
... FOSS has flourished in recent years is a tiny nuicance up in Seattle.
So tiny that Balmer spents a considerable amount of time each year flying out to meet governments and institutions in an effort to persuade them not to migrate to Linux.
Microsoft crushed (almost) all competitors in their main markets, OSes,
Microsoft has failed to control or dominate the server market, and is experiencing strong competition from Linux.
productivity suits
I don't see Open Office being crushed.
and browsers.
Erm. Firefox.
The only way to avoid this fate was to produce free software, using the same tactic MS has employed.
The same tactic? So Microsoft has published source code and provided free cross-platform versions of their products.
Now you're contradicting yourself. First you said that strings had to be made of some substance, because they're one dimensional, now you're saying that one-dimensional objects can't be made of a material.
I am just illustrating the logical gibberish of string theory. I am not the one talking about one-dimensional objects being made of material.
Uh, no, there is no law of physics that purely one-dimensional objects cannot exist, any more than there's a law of physics that says that zero-dimensional point particles can't exist.
Yes, actually, there is. It's called 'math'.
Here I have an object. How do I know I have an object? because I can interact with it. How do I interact with it? because it has non-zero has some substance. What do I mean by 'some'? It has volume. What is volume? A multiplication of dimensions. Length x width x height. But this is a string, so width = 0 and height = 0. So what is the volume? zero. So there is nothing there.
A purely one-dimensional feature can be an edge in something else, or an intersection, but it can't exist independently.
This is a pointless conversation. It has nothing to do with physics,
Of course it's to do with physics!
What's your point?
That some physicists need more training in philosophy. What happens is that some really neat math comes along and looks so wonderful that few of them stand back and look at the whether the model makes sense as reality and not just a model.
Of course they do. Particle physics is no different, except the particles are zero-dimensional.You seem inexplicably hung up on extended bodies. Strings are no more and no less "made of a material" than are particles.
This is what puzzles me. Why is this 'inexplicably hung up'? It seems to be to be nothing more than asking a reasonable question.
Look. Its very simple. If something is made of some material then it is possible to conceive of that material being divided or composite. If it is possible to conceive of this, then its up to the proposers of a theory to justify why the material is not composite.
Also, particles (assuming they are zero dimensional) don't have to be made of anything. That is the nature of a non-extended body.
That's up to experiment to decide. No law of logic or physics forbids strings from being fundamental.
Well, if we can't agree that non-zero size implies compositeness... I would definitely say that a 'law of logic' implies this.
No. Veneziano wrote down a perturbation series for a scattering amplitude that people thought might explain the strong nuclear force.
Yes. I was incorrect.
Strings, being extended bodies, have different points... There is no deeper structure in a string.
This is a contradiction. Bodies which have different points have deeper structure.
or that you can find any physical difference between points on the string.
Of course there is a physical difference between points on the string. If the string is extended, then different points have different physical locations. If a string is vibrating (in any real sense) then different points will have different velocities. (Unless the 'vibration' is one of those mis-uses of commonly used words to describe a non-obvious quantum property).
Oh give me a break. Who in string theory goes around claiming that string theory is some proven fact?
No-one is saying it is fact (that I know of), but plenty are saying its a reasonable model of reality.
If you don't want to call "strings" fundamental because they're made of a "material", then why don't you call "string material" fundamental??
Because a material can't be fundamental. Well, I guess it can be if you want simply give up any attempt to understand things further. But, anyone presented with a description of something that is complex or consists of some material is entitled to ask 'well, what is THAT made of', and is also entitled to be critical if the response is 'sorry - we give up there, your question is meaningless'.
Every theory has fundamental entities, ones in which everything else in the theory is described.
Yes, but many of them don't included extended entities made of some unexplainable 'material'.
It's a uniform, undifferentiated material.
And this material is...? (Or rather isn't, as if strings are truly one-dimensional there can be no material).
It cannot be broken up into more fundamental entities, unless you count breaking a string into two or more identical strings.
Then it can be broken up.
It is no more paradoxical to describe a macroscopic string with fundamental strings than it is to describe an elephant with fundamental strings.
Its paradoxical to describe tension (say the tension in a stretched string) in terms of tension in fundamental particles.
A macroscopic string is not truly one-dimensional, it is made up of all kinds of particles, has inhomogeneities, detailed internal structure, etc. A string theory string does not.
If a string theory string is purely one-dimensional then it is nothing more than a mathematical construct, and can have no real existence.
They could be as complex as they want. Complexity has nothing to do with "fundamental". They just don't have to be made up of simpler entitities that are different from the "fundamental" entities.
This kind of argument reminds me of those put forward by biologists centuries ago. What were cells made of? Nothing but 'protoplasm', a fundamental material that was intrinsically 'alive'. No further explanation was needed.
It does make predictions, such as sparticles, or super-symmetric particles, but are currently out of our experimental reach. The energies required are very very high and we may not be able to prove them for much time.
The problem is that other theories make the same predictions, and even with the String theories there are alternative formulations that cannot be distinguished.
and neither is general evolution because of the time scales involced.
Not true. There have been examples of observed evolution in recent decades, and also evolution predicts what is likely to be found in future fossil discoveries: for example, the discovery of a 400 million year old mammalian fossil would certainly disprove evolution.
Tell the users "We'd like to enable you to work faster. From this point forward, just doubleclick this. We installed a new version of Office and Internet explorer, they are called OpenOffice and Firefox. If you don't like this, feel free to use your Windows98 system."
I had zero Win98 users within a month, and zero Windows XP users within 3 months. That's a 400+ user environment.
Excellent!
I have managed the same thing, even with users who were very familiar with Windows. After many complaints that extensive training would be needed for a new platform, they just got on and used the Linux desktop, with no productivity loss.
You are quoting the point about gentoo and debian out of context. The point was that the debian and gentoo allow you to cut your own versions of apps but those custom versions are unsupportable in a major vendor fashion.
You can do this in Windows as well: add services or features to existing apps that change their behaviour. Office applications can be hacked and customised beyond recognition.
The 'freeness' or otherwise of an OS is irrelevant to the degree to which it can be customised.
So it does not make sense to ask about structure or processes inside such regions.
As you probably can guess, I have trouble when someone says 'it does not make sense to ask'. I tend to feel that such prohibitions are a sign that we don't know enough about the situation.
You, probably, feel it too, that is why you have put (at least in some sence) qualification to term 'vibration'. My take on it that they vibrate in the same sence as Standard Model particles spin.
Well yes, because being the pedant I am I would be a lot happier if physicists stopped using terms (like 'spin') which give (I believe) a false impression of the underlying reality. If strings 'vibrate' rather than really vibrate, why use the word and confuse poor humble novice physicists like me?
As I understand Mark Hadley's ideas, he tries to describe particles as distortions of the space-time so the 'moving parts' are also in there in which case it might be more or less equivalent to string theory proposal that space-time consists of strings.
Yes, but in this model, the particles aren't really fundamental. They are distortions in something more fundamental (space-time). In this circumstance, I feel it makes perfect sense to talk about 'parts', unlike in String Theory.
If you asked me what TOE may look like, I would go with a like of the holographic principle, where notions of 3+1 space-time continuum, matter, energy and so on are 'generated' as the natural result of our attempt to acquire information about our surroundings, i.e. it is not that nature does, indeed, work this way, but rather is our (observer's) way to cognize the information coherently.
I have been hearing a lot about the holographic principle recently, but will need to do a lot more reading before I understand it!
You haven nothing but philosophical prejudice to back up your statements.
You are correct.
Remember that the universe itself is complex and requires a certain number of assumptions to start with.
That is not, as I recall, why string theory was devised. Simplifying hugely, it was because doing some math for a model of the universe which had point-like particles did not work, so math was tried on non-point-like entities. There was no justification about anything being real, or about the assumptions of complexity - just a way to make math possible. Finding a model that seems to work mathematically and then saying that this model IS how the universe actually works, without a detail series of tests of the assumptions, is very poor science.
What's so darn complicated about "length" or "tension", anyway?
If they aren't complicated. why bother with particle physics at all? Why not just say that macroscopic objects have 'fundamental' properties?
'length' and 'tension' are complicated because, at least in general use they imply a relationship between parts. If this is not their use here, are there better words?
The material of the string isn't any different at the ends than the middle.
The use of the word 'material' implies that strings have some sort of 'substance', and hence are composite. Sorry if this sounds pendantic.
There's nothing wrong with fundamental entities having physical properties like composite entities do!
I agree, but that is not what I am saying. The problem as I see it is that these so-called fundamental entities have physical properties which change along one or more dimensions. They have extension, for example, so there must be some sort of 'material' that links one part of a string to another. This may not be the case in the mathematical models which describe strings, but we are assuming here that strings are real entities, not just a tool for computing.
If you say that there is nothing paradoxical about using 'vibrating strings' to explain the properties of macroscopic things such as vibrating strings, I'm afraid I can only disagree. Look at it this way - how complex would 'fundamental' enties need to be for you to consider them non-fundamental?
This is a somewhat strange position (even for a philosopher,) since the whole philosophy of physics is, that it is infinities that are not natural. That is the problem with infinitely small electron, infinitely small distances etc. Which means that even fundamental building blocks of Nature must have property as finite spacial extent, energy density or information content.
The infinities are nothing to do with nature - they are to do with the mathematics that are used to model nature. They result from the way we model forces.
The problem with String theory is that it uses the term 'fundamental' for entities which are composite: they have end parts and non-end parts, so are not, by definition, fundamental. They also vibrate, so (at least in some sense) have parts which move relative to other parts. This seems highly paradoxical and recursive - after all, particle physics is supposed to explain features such as vibration, extension and tension in macroscopic objects. A theory which requires these features would seem to require a deeper level of explanation.
I have no idea what a fundamental theory should look like. Perhaps something like Mark Hadley's ideas of building all particles out of spacetime is simple enough.