(Disclaimer: IANAP, but I do have a bachelor's in EE and a fair amount of self-study.) If you know what a probability distribution is, the basics aren't that hard. Shankar's list of the basic postulates of QM as compared to classical mechanics is helpful. The following refer to a particle in one space dimension:
1. Classical: The state of a particle at any given time is specified by two variables x(t) and p(t), i.e., as points in a two-dimensional phase space. Translation: Every particle's "state" (that is, what it's doing at any given time) is given by its position and momentum, both of which can change with time. Since these are just two numbers, you can think of them as representing a point (vector) in a plane.
Quantum: The state of a particle is represented by a vector |psi(t)> in a Hilbert space. Translation: In QM, the particle's state is given by a "wavefunction" or "state vector" -- the different names refer to slightly different mathematical formulations. A Hilbert space is an infinite-dimensional space. Don't get too excited about that, there's nothing special there -- all it says is that the state is a continuous function (hence "wavefunction"). If you think of each point of the function as being a component of a vector ("state vector"), you get an infinite number of components. The important thing here is that while in classical mechanics you only need two numbers to represent the state of the particle, in QM you need an infinite number. Why this is will become apparent in a moment.
2. Classical: Every dynamical variable w is a function of x and p: w=w(x,p). Translation: Since x and p determine the state of the particle, anything else you want to know can be related to those two variables.
Quantum: The independent variables x and p of classical mechanics are replaced by Hermitian operators X and P... Translation: We're using funky math to do basically the same thing as above. This isn't important for your purposes.
3. Classical: If the particle is in a state given by x and p, the measurement of the variable w will yield a value w(x,p). The state will remain unaffected. Translation: If you know the state of the particle, you can predict the results of experiments. The measurement is assumed to be "ideal", which means it has no uncertainty and doesn't interfere with the particle.
Quantum: If a particle is in a state |psi>, measurement of the variable corresponding to w will yield one of the eigenvalues with probability |<w|psi>|^2. The state of the system will change from |psi> to |w> as a result of this measurement. Translation: This is the weird part. The state vector/wavefunction can be turned into a probability distribution for the results of whatever measurement you're making (most commonly, position). If you have a bunch of particles in an identical state and measure the position of each one, the results will match the probability distribution. Measuring a particle changes its state, no matter how ideal your measurement is. This fact is the source of the weirdness in the double slit experiment -- measuring which slit the particle goes through changes its state, screwing up the diffraction. This is the "wavefunction collapse" that's the source of most of the difficulties with interpretation.
4. Classical: The state variables change with time according to Hamilton's equations/Newton's laws/etc. Translation: This is the "mechanics" in classical mechanics.
Quantum: The state vector obeys the Schroedinger equation. Translation: The Schroedinger equation is responsible for, among other things, the fact that quantum oscillators can only have discrete energy levels. It also gives us quantum tunneling, where part of a probability distribution can leak through a barrier that the particle shouldn't be able to penetrate, classically spea
I wish there was a filter for "Abuse of Modern Physics". Anyone want to explain what the article's *really* talking about, minus the stupid jokes? Wikipedia's a bit terse for something this high-level.
All electromagnetic radiation travels at the same speed. Different signals are placed into groups like radio and visible light based on their frequency spectra(that is, how the signal varies with time). It's just a convenience; physically they're still more or less the same thing.
Good question, and the short answer is that google needs to host wikipedia in order to co-opt it. They did it with usenet. Essentially the only way to access the vast majority of Usenet posts is through google... sure there are other obscure ways to read the news (maybe your ISP hosts an NNTP server), but if you sit down at some generic computer or want to see any non-current posts then you use google. Period. They took a free, public-domain source and ownzed it.
This is ignorance. ISP-hosted servers are hardly an obscure way to read newsgroups -- in fact, that's what people used to do *all the time*. Furthermore, Usenet archives have never been a public domain resource. Google Groups is the continuation of a service called Deja News which began in 1995, over a decade into the life of Usenet. Google Groups is in no way, shape, or form required to access everything Usenet has to offer. You should make sure you know what you're talking about if you want to avoid embarassing yourself further.
Although a Google search turns up other documents(mostly manuals of style for various organizations) that back up your claim.
The examples you mentioned don't bother me much. It's the completely random use of the apostrophe in other situations that drives me crazy. Next time you see an improper apostrophe, look at the text surrounding it. Odds are there will be at least four or five properly spelled words, with no noticeable pattern setting them apart from the error. The submitter, for example, spelled "Germans" correctly.
The plural of "tsunami" is "tsunamis". There is no apostrophe. The apostrophe is not used to pluralize! EVER! If you use an apostrophe to make a plural you are doing something very bad and wrong. Please stop.
There are problems in Wikipedia, and there are problems in Britannica. But if I want a printed copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I have to spend hundreds of dollars. Wikipedia is free and instantaneous, and can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection. Even though it is not perfectly accurate, it is accurate enough to be useful. The benefits far, far outweigh the disadvantages.
Furthermore, Wikipedia articles often cite web pages that contain further information. This makes it even easier to find more information quickly, rather than having to go to a library to look up print references.
Re:No, check your facts bud...
on
Verified Voting
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I know you're desperate to justify Bush's continued existence, so you probably don't care about evidence, but here's some pictures anyway. Knock yourself out.
Historical accuracy aside, it's important to realize that the discrimination is taking place outside the game, not in it. Inviting women to play the game and then suddenly telling them that they can't play part of the game in the middle of the second season does seem kind of rude, if that's what happened.
A better question would be if this is consistant. Are women universally treated as slaves in the game? Have there been other side quests and story elements that locked women out? Are there any female-only parts of the game? If women are otherwise treated as equals in ability and options, then it doesn't make sense to cry historical accuracy now.
You can't say that this is ridiculous solely on the basis of the Slashdot writeup. Hopefully someone who knows more about the game will post further information, since the article is slashdotted right now.
And are you really surprised that the net is so heavily against Bush? Most of his policies(Americans are more important than anyone else, anti-gay rights, religious intolerance) directly conflict with the ideals behind the net--that who you are, where you are, and what you look like doesn't matter, it's your ideas that count. The CNN poll has been up for less than 24 hours, which means it's mostly drawing from serious net users, who are even more likely to share those ideals.
The cnn.com poll and the poll discussed in their article are not the same. From the article:
A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken right after the town hall meeting-style debate found respondents giving a slight, statistically insignificant edge to Kerry over Bush: 47 percent of them went for Kerry and 45 percent for Bush.
The net is not a good sample of voters, and AFAIK there's no fraud protection on the CNN online poll, so it's really not worth talking about.
Or the other option--he's part of an ideological movement which believes that attaining American "global leadership" should be our mission in the future, and that Iraq is a good first step to gaining a foothold in the Middle East. Check out:
I remember an old Time Magazine article that talked about secret Cold War-era plans to save special items like the constitution and the declaration of independence. Couldn't find a link, though.
Ban the bible from what, exactly? Being used as a morality bludgeon in government institutions? Certainly. But nobody's going to come confiscate your Christmas lights anytime soon.
So every chatroom in existence has to be rewritten in order to use the token scheme? Why would anyone go to the trouble of doing this? If schools want safe chatrooms, why don't they just set up their own network and do the authentication themselves? Expecting the whole world to change to support your authentication scheme seems a little farfetched.
It is an excellent recipe for civil war, however as candidates will simply pander to the small, densly populated urban centers - failing to address the concerns of much of rural America.
What do you make of the situation now, where a candidate can pander to sparsely populated rural areas and fail to address the concerns of urban America?
Re:Blind! Stop being PC long enough to read...
on
Cooking for Engineers
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Nobody said that this guy's recipes aren't different or that the idea isn't cool. What I dispute is the idea that a list of materials followed by a list of instructions is in any way tied to women, or that there was any justification for that comment. For comparison, go here and read any of the instructions on assembling desks. Surprise! They follow the same format! Maybe you should stop being anti-"PC" long enough to read what's actually being said.
On a side note, the original site's recipe format would work very well for furniture, too.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
Note in particular definition 2. The original sentence was a blanket statement with nothing to back it up and no purpose other than to say "hey, look, women are *different* and *weird*". Sexism is about more than calling people bad. If you must find an insult in there before you're satisfied, compare "funny" with "for engineers"; the implication being that the latter is superior while the former is odd and ineffective.
If there had been any context whatsoever for the statement, I wouldn't have bothered to say anything, but the fact that it was so out of place led me to speak up.
Slashdot Mirror
(Disclaimer: IANAP, but I do have a bachelor's in EE and a fair amount of self-study.)
If you know what a probability distribution is, the basics aren't that hard. Shankar's list of the basic postulates of QM as compared to classical mechanics is helpful. The following refer to a particle in one space dimension:
1. Classical: The state of a particle at any given time is specified by two variables x(t) and p(t), i.e., as points in a two-dimensional phase space.
Translation: Every particle's "state" (that is, what it's doing at any given time) is given by its position and momentum, both of which can change with time. Since these are just two numbers, you can think of them as representing a point (vector) in a plane.
Quantum: The state of a particle is represented by a vector |psi(t)> in a Hilbert space.
Translation: In QM, the particle's state is given by a "wavefunction" or "state vector" -- the different names refer to slightly different mathematical formulations. A Hilbert space is an infinite-dimensional space. Don't get too excited about that, there's nothing special there -- all it says is that the state is a continuous function (hence "wavefunction"). If you think of each point of the function as being a component of a vector ("state vector"), you get an infinite number of components. The important thing here is that while in classical mechanics you only need two numbers to represent the state of the particle, in QM you need an infinite number. Why this is will become apparent in a moment.
2. Classical: Every dynamical variable w is a function of x and p: w=w(x,p).
Translation: Since x and p determine the state of the particle, anything else you want to know can be related to those two variables.
Quantum: The independent variables x and p of classical mechanics are replaced by Hermitian operators X and P...
Translation: We're using funky math to do basically the same thing as above. This isn't important for your purposes.
3. Classical: If the particle is in a state given by x and p, the measurement of the variable w will yield a value w(x,p). The state will remain unaffected.
Translation: If you know the state of the particle, you can predict the results of experiments. The measurement is assumed to be "ideal", which means it has no uncertainty and doesn't interfere with the particle.
Quantum: If a particle is in a state |psi>, measurement of the variable corresponding to w will yield one of the eigenvalues with probability |<w|psi>|^2. The state of the system will change from |psi> to |w> as a result of this measurement.
Translation: This is the weird part. The state vector/wavefunction can be turned into a probability distribution for the results of whatever measurement you're making (most commonly, position). If you have a bunch of particles in an identical state and measure the position of each one, the results will match the probability distribution. Measuring a particle changes its state, no matter how ideal your measurement is. This fact is the source of the weirdness in the double slit experiment -- measuring which slit the particle goes through changes its state, screwing up the diffraction. This is the "wavefunction collapse" that's the source of most of the difficulties with interpretation.
4. Classical: The state variables change with time according to Hamilton's equations/Newton's laws/etc.
Translation: This is the "mechanics" in classical mechanics.
Quantum: The state vector obeys the Schroedinger equation.
Translation: The Schroedinger equation is responsible for, among other things, the fact that quantum oscillators can only have discrete energy levels. It also gives us quantum tunneling, where part of a probability distribution can leak through a barrier that the particle shouldn't be able to penetrate, classically spea
I wish there was a filter for "Abuse of Modern Physics". Anyone want to explain what the article's *really* talking about, minus the stupid jokes? Wikipedia's a bit terse for something this high-level.
All electromagnetic radiation travels at the same speed. Different signals are placed into groups like radio and visible light based on their frequency spectra(that is, how the signal varies with time). It's just a convenience; physically they're still more or less the same thing.
Good question, and the short answer is that google needs to host wikipedia in order to co-opt it. They did it with usenet. Essentially the only way to access the vast majority of Usenet posts is through google... sure there are other obscure ways to read the news (maybe your ISP hosts an NNTP server), but if you sit down at some generic computer or want to see any non-current posts then you use google. Period. They took a free, public-domain source and ownzed it.
This is ignorance. ISP-hosted servers are hardly an obscure way to read newsgroups -- in fact, that's what people used to do *all the time*. Furthermore, Usenet archives have never been a public domain resource. Google Groups is the continuation of a service called Deja News which began in 1995, over a decade into the life of Usenet. Google Groups is in no way, shape, or form required to access everything Usenet has to offer. You should make sure you know what you're talking about if you want to avoid embarassing yourself further.
What's wrong with seeing movies the day after they open? Twenty-four hours too much for you?
That's what the Funny:-6 modifier is for. I find it works wonders for Slashdot as a whole.
Thanks for the corrections. Apparently this is disputed. Here are several sources that say not to use the apostrophe in those circumstances:
= 28 3493
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id
Although a Google search turns up other documents(mostly manuals of style for various organizations) that back up your claim.
The examples you mentioned don't bother me much. It's the completely random use of the apostrophe in other situations that drives me crazy. Next time you see an improper apostrophe, look at the text surrounding it. Odds are there will be at least four or five properly spelled words, with no noticeable pattern setting them apart from the error. The submitter, for example, spelled "Germans" correctly.
The plural of "tsunami" is "tsunamis". There is no apostrophe. The apostrophe is not used to pluralize! EVER! If you use an apostrophe to make a plural you are doing something very bad and wrong. Please stop.
Sorry, had to get that out.
There are problems in Wikipedia, and there are problems in Britannica. But if I want a printed copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I have to spend hundreds of dollars. Wikipedia is free and instantaneous, and can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection. Even though it is not perfectly accurate, it is accurate enough to be useful. The benefits far, far outweigh the disadvantages.
Furthermore, Wikipedia articles often cite web pages that contain further information. This makes it even easier to find more information quickly, rather than having to go to a library to look up print references.
If you want good deals, you go online.
http://www.newegg.com/
I know you're desperate to justify Bush's continued existence, so you probably don't care about evidence, but here's some pictures anyway. Knock yourself out.
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3741.html?cat=1
The Slashdot crowd doesn't catch on to a lot of things, especially when they have the chance to scream about "feminazis" instead. :(
No, because you know up front that choosing a non-Jedi character means you don't get Jedi powers.
Historical accuracy aside, it's important to realize that the discrimination is taking place outside the game, not in it. Inviting women to play the game and then suddenly telling them that they can't play part of the game in the middle of the second season does seem kind of rude, if that's what happened.
A better question would be if this is consistant. Are women universally treated as slaves in the game? Have there been other side quests and story elements that locked women out? Are there any female-only parts of the game? If women are otherwise treated as equals in ability and options, then it doesn't make sense to cry historical accuracy now.
You can't say that this is ridiculous solely on the basis of the Slashdot writeup. Hopefully someone who knows more about the game will post further information, since the article is slashdotted right now.
It's spelled "Kerry".
And are you really surprised that the net is so heavily against Bush? Most of his policies(Americans are more important than anyone else, anti-gay rights, religious intolerance) directly conflict with the ideals behind the net--that who you are, where you are, and what you look like doesn't matter, it's your ideas that count. The CNN poll has been up for less than 24 hours, which means it's mostly drawing from serious net users, who are even more likely to share those ideals.
The cnn.com poll and the poll discussed in their article are not the same. From the article:
A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken right after the town hall meeting-style debate found respondents giving a slight, statistically insignificant edge to Kerry over Bush: 47 percent of them went for Kerry and 45 percent for Bush.
The net is not a good sample of voters, and AFAIK there's no fraud protection on the CNN online poll, so it's really not worth talking about.
Did you even read that? It's about funding Iraqi resistance groups, not installing our own puppet government.
Or the other option--he's part of an ideological movement which believes that attaining American "global leadership" should be our mission in the future, and that Iraq is a good first step to gaining a foothold in the Middle East. Check out:
c iples.htm
e r.htm
http://www.newamericancentury.org
Here's their statement of principles(note the signatures):
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprin
Look, here's a letter to President Clinton from 1998 advocating a regime change in Iraq, for the same ridiculous reasons(again, note the signatures):
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonlett
I remember an old Time Magazine article that talked about secret Cold War-era plans to save special items like the constitution and the declaration of independence. Couldn't find a link, though.
Ban the bible from what, exactly? Being used as a morality bludgeon in government institutions? Certainly. But nobody's going to come confiscate your Christmas lights anytime soon.
So every chatroom in existence has to be rewritten in order to use the token scheme? Why would anyone go to the trouble of doing this? If schools want safe chatrooms, why don't they just set up their own network and do the authentication themselves? Expecting the whole world to change to support your authentication scheme seems a little farfetched.
It is an excellent recipe for civil war, however as candidates will simply pander to the small, densly populated urban centers - failing to address the concerns of much of rural America.
What do you make of the situation now, where a candidate can pander to sparsely populated rural areas and fail to address the concerns of urban America?
Nobody said that this guy's recipes aren't different or that the idea isn't cool. What I dispute is the idea that a list of materials followed by a list of instructions is in any way tied to women, or that there was any justification for that comment. For comparison, go here and read any of the instructions on assembling desks. Surprise! They follow the same format! Maybe you should stop being anti-"PC" long enough to read what's actually being said.
On a side note, the original site's recipe format would work very well for furniture, too.
sexism (skszm)
n.
1. Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2. Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
Note in particular definition 2. The original sentence was a blanket statement with nothing to back it up and no purpose other than to say "hey, look, women are *different* and *weird*". Sexism is about more than calling people bad. If you must find an insult in there before you're satisfied, compare "funny" with "for engineers"; the implication being that the latter is superior while the former is odd and ineffective.
If there had been any context whatsoever for the statement, I wouldn't have bothered to say anything, but the fact that it was so out of place led me to speak up.
It sounded like it was serious to me. Jokes usually have some sort of context or flow naturally from the previous sentence. That line had neither.
:)
If it was a joke, it wasn't a good one, but that's hardly uncommon on Slashdot.