Well, actually it is. Star Wars had an adult theme to it.. war.
wrong. star wars is nothing even remotely like a realistic military film. It is a coming-of-age story with a bit of simple mystics and a technological veneer to it.
for a fair military film, watch S.P.Ryan, or the band-of-brothers miniseries. Apart from ignoring the roles of non-american forces completely, they seem quite accurate. They are films for adults.
I loved star wars when being a teenager, but after being a soldier, it seemed (all the parts, BTW) painfully ridiculus.
Harry Potter... seemed aimed at 8 year old kids....
yes, the movie really did seem so. but not the books. There are adult themes hidden in the HP books (child-neglect, orphanhood, trust of and relationship with authority, inter-class problems, and the interaction of children and adulescent society with the individual). But you need to read at least the first three to appreciate them.
IMHO she did a mistake creating the movie(s). Compared to a book, it is just a lesser medium in many regards.
Lord of the Rings is one thing since there's decent swordplay and orcs,
nice grown-up themes both;)
but this childish bullshit world of Harry Potter's little wizard school is gay.
I think the Ron-Hermione interaction is far from gay... But I think the word you were looking for is perhaps "lame". Usual children live in a world were consequences of actions are much less harsh than for adults . In the HP school, this is not always true. I find that interesting, just like I find Tom-Brown's schholdays interesting. To each his own...
Whoever wrote this movie had to be smoking crack because it's got to be the worst representation of wizardry I've ever seen.
Again, we must have different metrics. The wizardry in HP is interesting in a literary sense. i.e. there is a large body of mythological associations she builds on and takes from. (In this sense she is the ultimate IP thief;) ) The same is also interesting in the LOTR books.
[T]he United States Open University officially closed on July 31st 2002.
A pity. IMHO OU is one of the best ideas in higher education.
If I was an american, I'd sure as hell protest about this: adult education is one of the most important methods of raising the educational level of citizens. It is also actually one of the best manifestations of the american dream.
does anyone know why you americans abandoned this method ? is this a political thing ? did they get bought ? or was it that the ROI too low for the investors ?
I find it hard to believe there isn't a steady demand for the open-university's services in the US. Am I wrong in this?
Unfortunately, after two years doing Computer Science, it didn't turn out like that; the most expensive book I was expected to buy was "Learning to Program in Visual Basic 5"
where did you study, mickey mouse university ?
I'm not implying you're lame, I definately say the place where you studied is (you say that yourself) why? because all your examples actually have very little to do with C.S., they are all related to implementation stuff. Such a study program teaches all the nonsense, while neglecting the essence.
I've studied C.S.+MATH at the open university and at TAU, while TAU sure had it's fair share of mickey-mouse courses, many courses at both universities were both deep (most of the math courses, the "hardcore CS" ones, some advanced C.S.) and beneficial to my problem-solving skills. All in all I had to read just 2-3 language-related books, and it was done as a small side-effect of study.
(I still don't know VB, BTW, I'm sure I'll be able to pick it up if I need to, though, which is the important thing...)
so yes, you should pick and choose the university, but having picked the right one, I still think a degree is the best way to study for most people.
Oh, and BTW, just one thing: do NOT take courses just for good grades (unless you're about to fail) . That is the most common error students make, and all the experienced professionals I talked with after graduation said that in hind-sight this is a grave error they did (or not). Treat your studies (and yourself) with respect, choose the most interesting and deep courses, and it will benefit your career much more than raising your average grade a few points.
I just read books on what I want to learn and leave it at that.
That's the GOOD thing about a degree, it makes you learn some important stuff you did not want to learn. It also makes you solve problems, not just read the books for pleasure. Both are a good thing (TM).
I have nothing, along those lines, to prove to myself. I have a very successful software company and quite fulfilled.
But a degree is, in career terms, like having an insurance. What will happen if your company will fail (shit DOES happen...), and you will need to look for a job ? finding a job is definately easier with a degree. Will your children be any less hungry then because you are fulfiled today ?
I did the first year courses of math+C.S. degree at the open university, while serving in the army at the time.
the nature of my army-service (artillery, which is like a semi-combat position) did not allow for regular schedule, so I needed to study with a flexible schedule, and study mostly by myself (which I like).
I found the courses in the OU clear, instructory and very well-intented (much more so than most of the profs I had to deal with later).
I propose to anyone which works, doesn't have a degree and considers it:
1) do it. you will benefit, period. 2) for the working person, or the young mother (very much a working person...) for which a flexible schedule is the best, the OU is the best option. it is actually designed for people with other constraints.
BTW, I am currently not affiliated with the O.U. in any way.
I'm sorry, but no one who is not a physics grad student should EVER pick up Jackson's Electromagnetism book.
please read my original post, it is intended for people with a fair mathematical background , which means second-year math/engineering/phys undergraduates, or people with the corresponding background from other sources.
I certainly do not agree only grads should read Jackson. In my university (HUJI, in my physics studies) it was the text of choice, and IIRC second-years usually handled it quite well. If it is too hard for most undergrads in your university, then perhaps something is lacking in the first-year studies.
Most interested novices, for interest, wouldn't even understand the phrase 'integrating around the poles'.
There is nothing to prove. The changelessness of spacetime is a natural consequence of the definition of spacetime. In other words, spacetime is changeless by definition!!
You've just stated an axiom of a model. This does not mean your model fits reality, or quantify how well it does so.
In fact, it is a well tested (though not so well understood) axiom of QM is that the process of measurement in QM abruptly changes the state of the meausred system.
IANA high-energy physicist, but IMHO this strongly implies (though by no means proves) that a theory combining QM and gravity should incorporate some kind of basic description of the geometry of the universe more general than 3+1 Riemannian manifold (+QFT fields defined on them). Since some mechanism of assigning probabilities to space-time configurations may be needed.
And if all this did not convince you that changelessness of space-time is by no means trivial, just think about the following question: how do you incorporate a feynmann-path-integral quantum approach (system moves through ALL possible paths) to gravity with an image of static, changeless space-time ?
It's been close to a hundred years since the idea of a physical time dimension was introduced. Why is it that physicists continue to preach their time travel crap in this day and age? Do I hear money? Do I hear political correctness? Do I hear crackpottery? You bet I do.
I feel really small when trying to discuss such intelectual behemuths, but let me humbly suggest a different interpretation: It's not PC, It's not money, It's not even pursuit of glory, It's just that we don't know. These smart people try very hard, and very skillfully, but they know our two most basic models of the world are still inconsistent, and this does leave open the possibilities of very weird phenomena. It is part of their jobs to point them out.
The HST was a PR thing anyway, for the same money they could of build several ground based telescopes that made the same nice pictures
Huh ? at what frequency regimes ? what about X-rays ? IR ? UV ?
besides, the atmosphere does distort image even for visible-light imagery. It is true that advances in image-fixing algorithms made, AFAIK, in the last decade attenuate the problem to a large degree, but, AFAIK, there was nothing like that in the seventies, and nothing is better than eliminating the problem altogether anyway.
perhaps today it will better to build bigger telescopes on earth than launch them (again, for the visible light regime. I very much doubt this is true for X, UV or IR imagery... ) but I don't think this was even remotely true when the HST was designed and built.
saying such a large project, with published scientific results, is "just PR" with no references to back up your claim seems like slander to me.
I wouldn't be amazed if somebody told me they fitted the broken mirror on purpose so they could go and fix it with the shuttle...
I wouldn't be amazed by a lot of things, but I don't ususally go slandering hard-working people just based on what I suspect they are capable of doing.
The US space program and NASA deserve (and get) a lot of criticism, much of it is quite pejorative, much of it is technically sound. I haven't seen any such thing in your post, which is IMHO just nasty unbased negative PR.
They obviously don't need very high performance, since it runs on 1970s hardware, but they do need high reliability and low development costs
this raizes an interesting question: how much better would a rocket with fast-response feedback mechanisms be ?
and what are the time-scales involved ?
how much can you raize efficiency and reliability (automated problem detection and solving) with better computing ?
would a "real-time" (at the time-scales involved) automated simulation and analysis of the machinery involved (using inputs from the hardware) be beneficial at all ? how ?
Re:A primer on Casimir Effect
on
The Casimir Effect
·
· Score: 3, Informative
first, very nice intro, mostly correct.
photons are not influenced by charge
photons are eigenvectors of pure EM hamiltonian. In this approximation, they are indeed uneffected by charge. However, there is matter-radiation interaction (the (P-e/c*A)^2 parts) terms in the more general hamiltonian, and radiation does indeed interact with charged matter (not just exciting atoms: lookup bremsstrahlung radiation)
so, in short: photons are not eigenkets of the general EM+matter hamiltonian, therefore they do interact with charged matter.
n = (speed of light in vacuum)/(speed of light in medium),
another definition, IIRC, is c/sqrt(mu*epsilon)
mu = permeability epsilon = permittivity
both are coeeficients of the linear response of meterials to the EM field.
now, if the linear response of a material to EM fields is complex, I guess you can have negative (or imaginary) n.
imaginary means exponential decay or growth, BTW, but of course in the case of growth the material stops responding linearly at some point, thus changing the dependance.
IIAC, negative n does not really mean the speed of light reverses.
Now, convenctional wisdom and all modern science says c is always the bigger value, so n is always >= 1
AFAIK you're right in saying c is always the bigger value, however there exist superluminal photons , which have phase velocity higher than c.
This is not, again AFAIK, related to the response medium but to other quantum phenomenas.
The universe can do some weird, convoluted vodoo...
also, It is not so well known that Freeman Dyson, among his many other ideas, also suggested a device to store vacuum energy (Casimir Force) known (IIRC) as Dyson-Plates.
His biggest contribution (AFAIK) is the Dyson Interaction picture of QM and QFT, on which Feynman diagrams are built. (they were friends and coworkers, BTW).
personal note: for me it was significant to know about a person in the context of a Sci-Fi writer, and then study some of his (considerable) contributions to other fields... sort of a geekish sense of closure;)
One has to wonder wether we would have moved on to asyncronous computing by now, at least inside the core, if marketing didn't need to push the clock speed
asynchronous designs are orders of magnitude harder to verify than synchronous ones. This is why no such major design (IIRC) has left the academia in the last couple of decades.
Not everything is the blame of the great satan of marketing.
One had to spend much more time 'documenting' and chasing every last stylistic 'error' in the document than doing the actual work. viz. it seemed that one spent more time writing up papers and working and working and working on them than doing the actual research behind the paper..
for me, clarity of expression == clarity of tought.
when I make 'stylistic errors' , this usually means my modelling of the problem and solution is either too simplistic, or otherwize flawed.
In this respect, writing is actually an integral part of the scientific "work" itself, not only the comunicative part.
I am ignoring the pill because it's irrelevant. The reason I don't cheat on my intended is not because I might get caught, it's because I believe it is wrong.
and education and society had no effect on your values, on your determination that it's wrong ?
The pill has nothing to do with that decision.
again, not directly on your personal decision, but on monogamy as a whole and it's effect on moral-values ( i.e. what's right/wrong in your society) the pill definately affects, and this in turn, like it or not, affects you.
IMHO, A person should not dispair of all moral issues and decisions because they are subject to historic, genetic, economic, and memetic influences. However, a person would be naive to accept them w/o questioning such influences, their origin and their affect on himself and others.
So yeah, the human race as a whole might still be sorta confused about these new factors, but individuals need not be.
see above, one should not be confused, but rather be skeptical and aware when making important decisions.
As far as gay marriages go, I don't understand the brouhaha.
My point was to give an example on how procreation-related technology (artificial insemination today, genetic modification tommorow) affects the relation between sex and procreation, whose most important manifestation is the institution of marriage (gay or hetro). It seems you have missed that point, perhaps due to me not being clear enough.
I'd be happy to have the law changed so that there are no tax considerations to marriage...I don't think it's appropriate for the State to get involved in what goes on in a bedroom, whether you're gay or straight. At that point, gay couples could put rings on each other's fingers, say "we're married!" and go on about their business. Everybody's happy.
again, you try to answer many questions I did not mention, imply or even am very interested in.
Works well for my parents. And my girlfriend's parents. And the parents of my best friends.
What worked well for them may very probably NOT work well for us:
you're ignoring a major factor here: the pill. I believe the pill is the major reason for the sexual revolutions and backlashes of the second half of last century. Seperating procreation from sex was a major destabilizer for monogamy (that, and the the women joining the work-force, thus giving them options they didn't have before).
My point is: the human race is still in the after-effects of the seperation of sex from procreation, and in this respect, we ARE different from our parents.
Our descendants may go even further down this road: even today you see lesbian couples using genetic material from sperm-banks, what will the notion of marriage mean, in genetic,social and financial terms, when you'll be able to screen the child and transplant foreign, "better" genetic material to the offsprings ?
rocketry is DANGEROUS, caution and skepticism are not negative, they are an asset. (you don't want the thing dropping on bystanders head, right ? )
about this kind of thing being better left to the professionals.
Of course the R&D team should be made primarily of prefessionalists (see above). But except for carmack and, perhaps, Widget the armadillo, my guess is most of the team IS made of professionalists.
Do you really think that the professionals can do any better?
again, in such areas only professionals can do any good, but they should work in an environment encouraging both real progress and methodical, rational QA.
You have to give Carmack credit in that he's experimenting and moving forward
no disagreement from me, any man making such a move deserves my respect.
good luck for his team and the others (serious) teams working on such projects. Their success are the human race's.
It is sad that in the last decade of so, CEOs like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have gained so much public recognition while people Dijkstra languish in relative anonymity.
and in his time, whom do you think was more famous, Newton or his King/Queen ? Lagrange or whatever Louie ruled then ?
True metal survives the acid test of time. The ornamentations, the hype-sellers, the gates'es and Bezos'es, will be forgotten by everyone (except historians) by the next century.
Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm and other works will be remembered in centuries to come.
you have a point there, but IMHO it is limited in scope.
why ? because just like in biology, when a parasite is very successful, the infected population usually devellops cheap and effective counter-measures. so, if these super-bugs will be percieved as a large-scale injustice, as an illegitimate thing, it is not unlikely to predict large-scale, cheap solutions develloped and widely deployed, giben enough time.
so I reiterate my original point: the problem is of preception of legitimacy , i.e. it is political in nature.
this is even implicit in the your post: to quote:
"If its okay to use them to stop Bin Laden - why not use them to stop wife beaters, and drug dealers, and tax dodgers, and litterers, and over-eaters... "
note everything you said in last paragraph relates to the perception of the public of what is legitimate what is not.
-- but then again, my predictions could be wrong...
I can say that at my company, I'm highly valued for my 10 years of experience, and my skills. But when I've attempted to find jobs elsewhere, I have trouble getting people interested in paying me more than half of what I'm making now.
then you're taking a large risk: what happens if your current project closes or if there's a new pointy-headed boss that simply dislikes you ?
IMHO, you should invest the time and money and study for a degree part-time. It will make your career more robust.
I have trouble believing anyone will take tech people seriously these days without a degree
AFAIK M.C. Escher was not a tech person...
but I think it's great to see that there's still an opportunity for a true genius to break that belief.
1) Escher lived ~100 years ago. Things (for scientists as well as for artists) are MUCH harder now.
2) Perhaps you really are that true genius. But even if you are, you'll probably need to study a LOT before you'll be able to make a deep impression. Studying is much easier when making a degree in a serious institution, than when studying alone. A degree is not a must, but it makes you study (professional) things you don't know about, and sometimes don't like very much, but will be beneficial for your future career.
in short: studying is a must. formal education is not the only education form in existance, but it has many advantages.
Besides, if you're the Autodeductive type, you can try studying at the open university.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, actually it is. Star Wars had an adult theme to it.. war.
wrong. star wars is nothing even remotely like a realistic military film. It is a coming-of-age story with a bit of simple mystics and a technological veneer to it.
for a fair military film, watch S.P.Ryan, or the band-of-brothers miniseries. Apart from ignoring the roles of non-american forces completely, they seem quite accurate. They are films for adults.
I loved star wars when being a teenager, but after being a soldier, it seemed (all the parts, BTW) painfully ridiculus.
Harry Potter
yes, the movie really did seem so. but not the books. There are adult themes hidden in the HP books (child-neglect, orphanhood, trust of and relationship with authority, inter-class problems, and the interaction of children and adulescent society with the individual). But you need to read at least the first three to appreciate them.
IMHO she did a mistake creating the movie(s). Compared to a book, it is just a lesser medium in many regards.
Lord of the Rings is one thing since there's decent swordplay and orcs,
nice grown-up themes both
but this childish bullshit world of Harry Potter's little wizard school is gay.
I think the Ron-Hermione interaction is far from gay
Whoever wrote this movie had to be smoking crack because it's got to be the worst representation of wizardry I've ever seen.
Again, we must have different metrics. The wizardry in HP is interesting in a literary sense. i.e. there is a large body of mythological associations she builds on and takes from.
(In this sense she is the ultimate IP thief
The same is also interesting in the LOTR books.
[T]he United States Open University officially closed on July 31st 2002.
A pity. IMHO OU is one of the best ideas in higher education.
If I was an american, I'd sure as hell protest about this: adult education is one of the most important methods of raising the educational level of citizens. It is also actually one of the best manifestations of the american dream
does anyone know why you americans abandoned this method ? is this a political thing ? did they get bought ? or was it that the ROI too low for the investors ?
I find it hard to believe there isn't a steady demand for the open-university's services in the US. Am I wrong in this?
Unfortunately, after two years doing Computer Science, it didn't turn out like that; the most expensive book I was expected to buy was "Learning to Program in Visual Basic 5"
...)
where did you study, mickey mouse university ?
I'm not implying you're lame, I definately say the place where you studied is (you say that yourself)
why? because all your examples actually have very little to do with C.S., they are all related to implementation stuff. Such a study program teaches all the nonsense, while neglecting the essence.
I've studied C.S.+MATH at the open university and at TAU, while TAU sure had it's fair share of mickey-mouse courses, many courses at both universities were both deep (most of the math courses, the "hardcore CS" ones, some advanced C.S.) and beneficial to my problem-solving skills. All in all I had to read just 2-3 language-related books, and it was done as a small side-effect of study.
(I still don't know VB, BTW, I'm sure I'll be able to pick it up if I need to, though, which is the important thing
so yes, you should pick and choose the university, but having picked the right one, I still think a degree is the best way to study for most people.
Oh, and BTW, just one thing: do NOT take courses just for good grades (unless you're about to fail) . That is the most common error students make, and all the experienced professionals I talked with after graduation said that in hind-sight this is a grave error they did (or not).
Treat your studies (and yourself) with respect, choose the most interesting and deep courses, and it will benefit your career much more than raising your average grade a few points.
I just read books on what I want to learn and leave it at that.
...), and you will need to look for a job ? finding a job is definately easier with a degree. Will your children be any less hungry then because you are fulfiled today ?
That's the GOOD thing about a degree, it makes you learn some important stuff you did not want to learn. It also makes you solve problems, not just read the books for pleasure. Both are a good thing (TM).
I have nothing, along those lines, to prove to myself. I have a very successful software company and quite fulfilled.
But a degree is, in career terms, like having an insurance. What will happen if your company will fail (shit DOES happen
I did the first year courses of math+C.S. degree at the open university, while serving in the army at the time.
the nature of my army-service (artillery, which is like a semi-combat position) did not allow for regular schedule, so I needed to study with a flexible schedule, and study mostly by myself (which I like).
I found the courses in the OU clear, instructory and very well-intented (much more so than most of the profs I had to deal with later).
I propose to anyone which works, doesn't have a degree and considers it:
1) do it. you will benefit, period.
2) for the working person, or the young mother (very much a working person...) for which a flexible schedule is the best, the OU is the best option. it is actually designed for people with other constraints.
BTW, I am currently not affiliated with the O.U. in any way.
I'm sorry, but no one who is not a physics grad student should EVER pick up Jackson's Electromagnetism book.
please read my original post, it is intended for people with a fair mathematical background , which means second-year math/engineering/phys undergraduates, or people with the corresponding background from other sources.
I certainly do not agree only grads should read Jackson. In my university (HUJI, in my physics studies) it was the text of choice, and IIRC second-years usually handled it quite well. If it is too hard for most undergrads in your university, then perhaps something is lacking in the first-year studies.
Most interested novices, for interest, wouldn't even understand the phrase 'integrating around the poles'.
reread my comment about math background.
if you have fair mathematical background I suggest:
classical mechanics: Herbert Goldstein.
Electromagnetism: Jackson.
basic QM: Resnick.
QM: Cohen-Tanoudjy + Sakurai.
solid-state: Ashcroft-Merman.
these are, IMHO, the best undergraduate texts I read. If you don't have enough copies in the library, invest your dollars in them, it will pay.
other nice texts are:
statistical physics: Greiner, Neise and Stocker.
Q.M.: Merzbacher (advanced)
plasma physics: Krall & Trivelpiece.
There is nothing to prove. The changelessness of spacetime is a natural consequence of the definition of spacetime. In other words, spacetime is changeless by definition!!
You've just stated an axiom of a model. This does not mean your model fits reality, or quantify how well it does so.
In fact, it is a well tested (though not so well understood) axiom of QM is that the process of measurement in QM abruptly changes the state of the meausred system.
IANA high-energy physicist, but IMHO this strongly implies (though by no means proves) that a theory combining QM and gravity should incorporate some kind of basic description of the geometry of the universe more general than 3+1 Riemannian manifold (+QFT fields defined on them). Since some mechanism of assigning probabilities to space-time configurations may be needed.
And if all this did not convince you that changelessness of space-time is by no means trivial, just think about the following question: how do you incorporate a feynmann-path-integral quantum approach (system moves through ALL possible paths) to gravity with an image of static, changeless space-time ?
It's been close to a hundred years since the idea of a physical time dimension was introduced. Why is it that physicists continue to preach their time travel crap in this day and age? Do I hear money? Do I hear political correctness? Do I hear crackpottery? You bet I do.
I feel really small when trying to discuss such intelectual behemuths, but let me humbly suggest a different interpretation:
It's not PC, It's not money, It's not even pursuit of glory, It's just that we don't know. These smart people try very hard, and very skillfully, but they know our two most basic models of the world are still inconsistent, and this does leave open the possibilities of very weird phenomena. It is part of their jobs to point them out.
The HST was a PR thing anyway, for the same money they could of build several ground based telescopes that made the same nice pictures
... ) but I don't think this was even remotely true when the HST was designed and built.
.
Huh ? at what frequency regimes ? what about X-rays ? IR ? UV ?
besides, the atmosphere does distort image even for visible-light imagery. It is true that advances in image-fixing algorithms made, AFAIK, in the last decade attenuate the problem to a large degree, but, AFAIK, there was nothing like that in the seventies, and nothing is better than eliminating the problem altogether anyway.
perhaps today it will better to build bigger telescopes on earth than launch them (again, for the visible light regime. I very much doubt this is true for X, UV or IR imagery
saying such a large project, with published scientific results, is "just PR" with no references to back up your claim seems like slander to me.
I wouldn't be amazed if somebody told me they fitted the broken mirror on purpose so they could go and fix it with the shuttle...
I wouldn't be amazed by a lot of things, but I don't ususally go slandering hard-working people just based on what I suspect they are capable of doing.
The US space program and NASA deserve (and get) a lot of criticism, much of it is quite pejorative, much of it is technically sound. I haven't seen any such thing in your post, which is IMHO just nasty unbased negative PR
They obviously don't need very high performance, since it runs on 1970s hardware, but they do need high reliability and low development costs
this raizes an interesting question: how much better would a rocket with fast-response feedback mechanisms be ?
and what are the time-scales involved ?
how much can you raize efficiency and reliability (automated problem detection and solving) with better computing ?
would a "real-time" (at the time-scales involved) automated simulation and analysis of the machinery involved (using inputs from the hardware) be beneficial at all ? how ?
first, very nice intro, mostly correct.
photons are not influenced by charge
photons are eigenvectors of pure EM hamiltonian. In this approximation, they are indeed uneffected by charge.
However, there is matter-radiation interaction (the (P-e/c*A)^2 parts) terms in the more general hamiltonian, and radiation does indeed interact with charged matter (not just exciting atoms: lookup bremsstrahlung radiation)
so, in short: photons are not eigenkets of the general EM+matter hamiltonian, therefore they do interact with charged matter.
I thought the index of refraction was defined as:
.
...
n = (speed of light in vacuum)/(speed of light in medium),
another definition, IIRC, is c/sqrt(mu*epsilon)
mu = permeability
epsilon = permittivity
both are coeeficients of the linear response of meterials to the EM field.
now, if the linear response of a material to EM fields is complex, I guess you can have negative (or imaginary) n.
imaginary means exponential decay or growth, BTW, but of course in the case of growth the material stops responding linearly at some point, thus changing the dependance.
IIAC, negative n does not really mean the speed of light reverses
Now, convenctional wisdom and all modern science says c is always the bigger value, so n is always >= 1
AFAIK you're right in saying c is always the bigger value, however there exist superluminal photons , which have phase velocity higher than c.
This is not, again AFAIK, related to the response medium but to other quantum phenomenas.
The universe can do some weird, convoluted vodoo
why ? verification.
:) ):
It's the oldest engineering axiom, but it seems to need to be stressed out more (in bold font, even
if it is not tested, it doesn't work !!!
and verifying orion means you need many test flights (for statistical confidence).
So your attitude of "build it just in case, but don't fly it." although a nice idea, is impractical. to build it requires that you test it.
also, It is not so well known that Freeman Dyson, among his many other ideas, also suggested a device to store vacuum energy (Casimir Force) known (IIRC) as Dyson-Plates.
His biggest contribution (AFAIK) is the Dyson Interaction picture of QM and QFT, on which Feynman diagrams are built. (they were friends and coworkers, BTW).
personal note: for me it was significant to know about a person in the context of a Sci-Fi writer, and then study some of his (considerable) contributions to other fields
One has to wonder wether we would have moved on to asyncronous computing by now, at least inside the core, if marketing didn't need to push the clock speed
asynchronous designs are orders of magnitude harder to verify than synchronous ones. This is why no such major design (IIRC) has left the academia in the last couple of decades.
Not everything is the blame of the great satan of marketing.
One had to spend much more time 'documenting' and chasing every last stylistic 'error' in the document than doing the actual work. viz. it seemed that one spent more time writing up papers and working and working and working on them than doing the actual research behind the paper..
for me, clarity of expression == clarity of tought.
when I make 'stylistic errors' , this usually means my modelling of the problem and solution is either too simplistic, or otherwize flawed.
In this respect, writing is actually an integral part of the scientific "work" itself, not only the comunicative part.
I am ignoring the pill because it's irrelevant. The reason I don't cheat on my intended is not because I might get caught, it's because I believe it is wrong.
and education and society had no effect on your values, on your determination that it's wrong ?
The pill has nothing to do with that decision.
again, not directly on your personal decision, but on monogamy as a whole and it's effect on moral-values ( i.e. what's right/wrong in your society) the pill definately affects, and this in turn, like it or not, affects you.
IMHO, A person should not dispair of all moral issues and decisions because they are subject to historic, genetic, economic, and memetic influences. However, a person would be naive to accept them w/o questioning such influences, their origin and their affect on himself and others.
So yeah, the human race as a whole might still be sorta confused about these new factors, but individuals need not be.
see above, one should not be confused, but rather be skeptical and aware when making important decisions.
As far as gay marriages go, I don't understand the brouhaha.
My point was to give an example on how procreation-related technology (artificial insemination today, genetic modification tommorow) affects the relation between sex and procreation, whose most important manifestation is the institution of marriage (gay or hetro). It seems you have missed that point, perhaps due to me not being clear enough.
I'd be happy to have the law changed so that there are no tax considerations to marriage...I don't think it's appropriate for the State to get involved in what goes on in a bedroom, whether you're gay or straight. At that point, gay couples could put rings on each other's fingers, say "we're married!" and go on about their business. Everybody's happy.
again, you try to answer many questions I did not mention, imply or even am very interested in.
Works well for my parents. And my girlfriend's parents. And the parents of my best friends.
,social and financial terms, when you'll be able to screen the child and transplant foreign, "better" genetic material to the offsprings ?
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What worked well for them may very probably NOT work well for us:
you're ignoring a major factor here: the pill.
I believe the pill is the major reason for the sexual revolutions and backlashes of the second half of last century. Seperating procreation from sex was a major destabilizer for monogamy (that, and the the women joining the work-force, thus giving them options they didn't have before).
My point is: the human race is still in the after-effects of the seperation of sex from procreation, and in this respect, we ARE different from our parents.
Our descendants may go even further down this road: even today you see lesbian couples using genetic material from sperm-banks, what will the notion of marriage mean, in genetic
I guess they'll live in ingteresting times
Enough with the negativity
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rocketry is DANGEROUS, caution and skepticism are not negative, they are an asset. (you don't want the thing dropping on bystanders head, right ? )
about this kind of thing being better left to the professionals.
Of course the R&D team should be made primarily of prefessionalists (see above). But except for carmack and, perhaps, Widget the armadillo, my guess is most of the team IS made of professionalists.
Do you really think that the professionals can do any better?
again, in such areas only professionals can do any good, but they should work in an environment encouraging both real progress and methodical, rational QA.
You have to give Carmack credit in that he's experimenting and moving forward
no disagreement from me, any man making such a move deserves my respect.
good luck for his team and the others (serious) teams working on such projects. Their success are the human race's
It is sad that in the last decade of so, CEOs like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have gained so much public recognition while people Dijkstra languish in relative anonymity.
and in his time, whom do you think was more famous, Newton or his King/Queen ? Lagrange or whatever Louie ruled then ?
True metal survives the acid test of time. The ornamentations, the hype-sellers, the gates'es and Bezos'es, will be forgotten by everyone (except historians) by the next century.
Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm and other works will be remembered in centuries to come.
what is the possible reasons and limitations for cancelling an EPO patent once given ?
how do you compare with USPTO in this regard ?
I would agree with you but for one thing. Money.
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you have a point there, but IMHO it is limited in scope.
why ? because just like in biology, when a parasite is very successful, the infected population usually devellops cheap and effective counter-measures.
so, if these super-bugs will be percieved as a large-scale injustice, as an illegitimate thing, it is not unlikely to predict large-scale, cheap solutions develloped and widely deployed, giben enough time.
so I reiterate my original point: the problem is of preception of legitimacy , i.e. it is political in nature.
this is even implicit in the your post: to quote:
"If its okay to use them to stop Bin Laden - why not use them to stop wife beaters, and drug dealers, and tax dodgers, and litterers, and over-eaters
note everything you said in last paragraph relates to the perception of the public of what is legitimate what is not.
-- but then again, my predictions could be wrong
I can say that at my company, I'm highly valued for my 10 years of experience, and my skills. But when I've attempted to find jobs elsewhere, I have trouble getting people interested in paying me more than half of what I'm making now.
then you're taking a large risk: what happens if your current project closes or if there's a new pointy-headed boss that simply dislikes you ?
IMHO, you should invest the time and money and study for a degree part-time. It will make your career more robust.
you're right, he was born in 1898, but his works are more like 40-80 years old, not 100.
like I said though, Escher, with no disregard to his briliance, did not do his main work in a technical field.
I have trouble believing anyone will take tech people seriously these days without a degree
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AFAIK M.C. Escher was not a tech person
but I think it's great to see that there's still an opportunity for a true genius to break that belief.
1) Escher lived ~100 years ago. Things (for scientists as well as for artists) are MUCH harder now.
2) Perhaps you really are that true genius. But even if you are, you'll probably need to study a LOT before you'll be able to make a deep impression.
Studying is much easier when making a degree in a serious institution, than when studying alone. A degree is not a must, but it makes you study (professional) things you don't know about, and sometimes don't like very much, but will be beneficial for your future career.
in short: studying is a must. formal education is not the only education form in existance, but it has many advantages.
Besides, if you're the Autodeductive type, you can try studying at the open university.