Reads like it's them; same number of laser, all focused onto a tiny pellet...
I remember reading that a lot of the technological hurdles for that project come from the fact that most of the laser-amplification technology they plan to use doesn't exist at their scale (yet), and that that'll be the most interesting part of getting this working, developing these new technologies.
I'd hope we get the manufacture of certain materials in space going, because I think they'll need it (ultra-pure glass, perfectly-shaped focusing lenses, etc...).
It's sort of ironic that it's politicians who created a military, the military created the Internet, and the Internet is the undoing of the politicians...
I never said I thought Java should go away either.
Maybe the answer would be to do like I suggested and change the way the computer works fundamentally:
Transputers.
Check out this page; it makes the case for a Java computer: the java code would BE the instruction set.
The next two pages are most relevant to our discussion. http://arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/x86fu ture/isa-future-5.html
Note; the whole article is about the future of the current (x86) instruction set, which doesn't seem to need to go away either.
At the end of the day, I feel whichever language is best to do matricial math in for you, hey, go for it, and if we use transputer technology to level the field, all the better.
Maybe it comes down to memory allocation.
I prefer to structure that stuff myself, rather than let an automated thing control resources like that, so I use C++.
>I find it utterly hilarious that people say that Swing proves Java is fast, because the really fast parts aren't written in Java.
Me too. Java apologists are funny that way.
When you get right down to it, a tight-loop algorithm using only native keywords and operators CAN'T be as fast in Java; it's interpreted.
All the cognitive dissonance you can throw at that fact can't change it, but the apologists keep trying anyway.
To be fair, I *do* like Java; as a teaching tool so students can pick up programming basics.
But if I had my way, everyone would learn assembler FIRST, because to my mind, that is the only true way of understanding what is REALLY going on in the computer.
I think that that is also why C (and C++) are so succesful and will never go away; they're the languages that map closest to assembler and are therefore relevant.
Until we design a computer that DOESN'T operate on the same principle as current ones do, C and C++ are never going away, and Java will always need apologists.
All the lies they've told so far have been disbunked to great effect in public forum just like Slashdot, so this'll just end with them getting turfed-out.
I own the Cosmos series on DVD, and he does say "Millions of Billions" or something like THAT, but he never say "Billions of Billions"
As a matter of fact, if you read his book Broca's Brain, he even states that he NEVER said that.
Note: I just read 3 of his books in the last month, it might have been in Cosmos, Demon-Haunted World or Broca's Brain that he denied saying the phrase, I'm not certain. One thing that IS certain is that Sagan himself never said "Billions of Billions"
Are you sure? I thought I read about an experiment where light particles were sent through something that split them apart and left each stream polarized in a certain direction, but that the stream was subject to entanglement, meaning if you changed the polarization on a twin particle, the other twin would also spontaneously change polarization...
>There actually is value in making something easy to set up and get running.
If that is your grain of truth, then consider this:
ANYONE can decide to write a setup program for Sendmail. Full availability of the source makes that possible.
Let's say you want to set up a Microsoft application. If the setup program is buggy or doesn't properly handle your requirements, tough luck. You get to be ignored when you ask Microsoft to fix it because you're not a "big" enough client.
What are your options? You don't have any because Microsoft decided not to give you any.
So if the state of the setup tools is the cornerstone of your argument, I can only say - watch the future; Microsoft will progressively restrict what and where you can install, leaving you and your requirements in the cold as Linux continues to grow and embrace EVERY computing platform and possibility on the globe.
It's already over, but the Microsoft-zombie will fight on until someone proverbially shoots it in the head.
I switched from Windows to Linux 9 months ago, and yes, it has been harder to set up, configure and all that. OK, I built it from source, so that's par from the course. I know there are distros that are as easy to set up as Windows, so that argument is worthless.
The real point is that in every way I can measure, Linux has shown itself to be more reliable, faster and just a lot more intelligently built than Windows.
Will I ever go back?
I doubt it. I KNOW for a fact that on the SAME hardware, Linux runs circles around Windows.
And with Windows, I'm a powerless grunt, with no say as to the way ANYTHING is. On Linux, if I really care enough, I can do ANYTHING I want.
Microsoft CAN'T give you freedom, they can only try to rob you of it.
I'm SO not interested in Windows anymore.
"Pssst, kid, want a pirated version of this-or-that Microsoft product?"
I have to roll my eyes and pause to wonder why I would ever use crapware like Windows again.
"Nope, not interested"
I don't even read articles referring to Microsoft anymore (excluding this one), as I now consider them essentially irrelevant and I have no time to waste on their dog & pony show.
But Jim, they wouldn't even HAVE to be measured twice:
The stream is sent with its polarization KNOWN, for examples, ALL the particles are spinning left.
So when you are measuring them on Neptune, you already know they should all be like that, any particles received spinning the other way were sent as a bit of information.
Maybe I am missing something here. Please shed light.
OK, I am not a licensed physicist, but here's what I *think* I understand.
The entanglement DOESN'T end simply by measuring it; from what I understand, the particle's spin can be changed, and the entangled twin's spin will instantly change its spin to complement.
I'm not sure if this precludes changing the spin of one of the particles AGAIN... Never mind that for now though.
What if you directed a stream of particles who are all spinning in the same way towards Neptune, let's say. Could you then modulate the stream here (like encoding binary bits) by changing the spin of some of the twins so that someone on Neptune would also see the particles spin changing?
Wouldn't that be a way to send "subspace communications" ?
Trek away. Even if I'm wrong, I'm sure that we can do something with this.
Seagate only needs to pay him up front the two years salary Western digital was promising him and he can then stay at home and do nothing. Otherwise, he should go work for the competitor, anything else bars him from earning a living in his field of expertise for two years, and it CANNOT be legal to make someone either starve or work in a field they don't want to work in. No contract can be made that damages an individual right like that, it's unconstituional. Simple, really.
Although security may be a concern when running Windows, I think the parent poster was trying to stress the need for a smaller code-base.
Statistically, the less lines of code your application requires the less bugs there might be.
Windows is up there (hundreds of millions of lines of code), so if you use a small embedded OS, you reduce the complexity and most likely the amount of problems when the code-base changes (like when there is an upgrade).
Could you elaborate your question a little? Which theory? The one about collapsing quantum probability waves or the one about using self-replicating robots to explore space?
As for Fermi, maybe we are the only place in our region to develop technology, it doesn't rule out other forms of life.
If you take the universe's diameter, maybe 14 billion light years. We (humans) have been around for 0.0000000000006% of it, possibly sentience is a recent development; if we take ourselves as examples and speculate that we are among the first, others, transmissions may only reach us in a million years, and maybe OUR messages are able to reach someone right now, but they're at their stone-age.
Or they've developed beyond what technology could bring them and we'll only be able to observe them when we will have sufficiently evolved.
After all, no one could really believe that "technology" is the end, could they?
Our situation with regard to the physical parameters of our corner of the universe seems to be average: Average sun Average location in the galaxy (OK, maybe a little out in the backwater, but we have traversed more dense regions of the spirals of our galaxy in the last x billion years). Average matter content (gases, etc...)
What might be the case could very simply be that space is awfully big, and we have only scanned a tiny portion of it in a tiny portion of the ways possible to scan it.
I mean come on, if the observable universe is TINY, and we've only examined a TINY portion of that, isn't it a bit too early to say "That's it, we're all alone" ?
After all, why have such a huge place all for the likes of us? What a waste...
I'm not sure I understand everything in your post, but I will comment on your last point;
Disagreements will happen, surely, and they're the hallmarks of good projects, because as long as you consider the points of views of others in the project and try to get your point across without shoving down anyone's throat, we all win.
Sure, sometimes good projects lose people and the project may have a much tougher time progressing afterwards, but come on, you can't have prima donnas throwing temper-tantrums and hijacking projects any more than you should expect EVERYONE to agree, right?
So projects can literally fork-off (I know, it reads almost like F----off) if enough people, or even if ONE person feels deeply enough about a direction.
I don't use Debian, I run Gentoo, but I respect the Debian team because they produce an exceptionally fine version of Linux.
The aim of open source is freedom, and I think it's great that the Debian team, the Fedora team, and the Gentoo team each try to further the cause in their own way, each with their own focus, giving everyone so much choice.
Look how at-home Linux is on EVERY computing platform; THAT is beauty. THAT is truth, THAT is freedom!
I know I'll come off like a Microsoft (or ANY OTHER monopoly) - basher, but the days of closed-source-we-decide-what-is-best-for-you are OVER!
Thank you very much, development teams, engineers, beta-testers and users!
I'm not surprised that great men of science and science-fiction recognize it.
I bought and read Fallen Angels before it went into the public domain. Great book. wyciwyg://0/http://www.baen.com/library/067 172052X/067172052X___1.htm
If I remember correctly, the ice age had arrived, and human societies had changed and isolated themselves...
Slashdot Mirror
Reads like it's them; same number of laser, all focused onto a tiny pellet...
I remember reading that a lot of the technological hurdles for that project come from the fact that most of the laser-amplification technology they plan to use doesn't exist at their scale (yet), and that that'll be the most interesting part of getting this working, developing these new technologies.
I'd hope we get the manufacture of certain materials in space going, because I think they'll need it (ultra-pure glass, perfectly-shaped focusing lenses, etc...).
Space is the place.
Even if you build it on the moon, you still have to transfer the power back towards consumers on earth, and THAT'S a big problem.
Microwaves? Too dangerous.
Space elevator relay? Theoretically possible, but practically impossible to build, and costly...
It's sort of ironic that it's politicians who created a military, the military created the Internet, and the Internet is the undoing of the politicians...
I never said I thought Java should go away either.
u ture/isa-future-5.html
Maybe the answer would be to do like I suggested and change the way the computer works fundamentally:
Transputers.
Check out this page; it makes the case for a Java computer: the java code would BE the instruction set.
The next two pages are most relevant to our discussion.
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/x86f
Note; the whole article is about the future of the current (x86) instruction set, which doesn't seem to need to go away either.
At the end of the day, I feel whichever language is best to do matricial math in for you, hey, go for it, and if we use transputer technology to level the field, all the better.
Maybe it comes down to memory allocation.
I prefer to structure that stuff myself, rather than let an automated thing control resources like that, so I use C++.
*brrrzzzzt*
Wrong! But thank you for playing!
I worked professionally as a Java programmer for two years.
>I find it utterly hilarious that people say that Swing proves Java is fast, because the really fast parts aren't written in Java.
Me too.
Java apologists are funny that way.
When you get right down to it, a tight-loop algorithm using only native keywords and operators CAN'T be as fast in Java; it's interpreted.
All the cognitive dissonance you can throw at that fact can't change it, but the apologists keep trying anyway.
To be fair, I *do* like Java; as a teaching tool so students can pick up programming basics.
But if I had my way, everyone would learn assembler FIRST, because to my mind, that is the only true way of understanding what is REALLY going on in the computer.
I think that that is also why C (and C++) are so succesful and will never go away; they're the languages that map closest to assembler and are therefore relevant.
Until we design a computer that DOESN'T operate on the same principle as current ones do, C and C++ are never going away, and Java will always need apologists.
All the lies they've told so far have been disbunked to great effect in public forum just like Slashdot, so this'll just end with them getting turfed-out.
aren't pro-copyright lawyers often referred to as weasels?
>Whatever, you're totally OT now. My point was that it is "a matter of scale". Geez, you're as bad as the grammar nazis!
You're right. Sorry.
Feel free to point out my copious spelling errors!
I know I made a couple of doozies in the last post.
Anyhow, I REALLY like Sagan. If you liked Cosmos (so incredible, words fail me), I encourage you to read Demon-Haunted World.
Nope.
I own the Cosmos series on DVD, and he does say "Millions of Billions" or something like THAT, but he never say "Billions of Billions"
As a matter of fact, if you read his book Broca's Brain, he even states that he NEVER said that.
Note: I just read 3 of his books in the last month, it might have been in Cosmos, Demon-Haunted World or Broca's Brain that he denied saying the phrase, I'm not certain. One thing that IS certain is that Sagan himself never said "Billions of Billions"
Are you sure?
I thought I read about an experiment where light particles were sent through something that split them apart and left each stream polarized in a certain direction, but that the stream was subject to entanglement, meaning if you changed the polarization on a twin particle, the other twin would also spontaneously change polarization...
Maybe I'm just not getting it though... *sigh*
>(to quote Dr. Sagan) billions and billions of stars.
He never said that.
>There actually is value in making something easy to set up and get running.
If that is your grain of truth, then consider this:
ANYONE can decide to write a setup program for Sendmail. Full availability of the source makes that possible.
Let's say you want to set up a Microsoft application. If the setup program is buggy or doesn't properly handle your requirements, tough luck. You get to be ignored when you ask Microsoft to fix it because you're not a "big" enough client.
What are your options?
You don't have any because Microsoft decided not to give you any.
So if the state of the setup tools is the cornerstone of your argument, I can only say - watch the future; Microsoft will progressively restrict what and where you can install, leaving you and your requirements in the cold as Linux continues to grow and embrace EVERY computing platform and possibility on the globe.
It's already over, but the Microsoft-zombie will fight on until someone proverbially shoots it in the head.
Speaking from experience
I switched from Windows to Linux 9 months ago, and yes, it has been harder to set up, configure and all that. OK, I built it from source, so that's par from the course. I know there are distros that are as easy to set up as Windows, so that argument is worthless.
The real point is that in every way I can measure, Linux has shown itself to be more reliable, faster and just a lot more intelligently built than Windows.
Will I ever go back?
I doubt it. I KNOW for a fact that on the SAME hardware, Linux runs circles around Windows.
And with Windows, I'm a powerless grunt, with no say as to the way ANYTHING is. On Linux, if I really care enough, I can do ANYTHING I want.
Microsoft CAN'T give you freedom, they can only try to rob you of it.
I'm SO not interested in Windows anymore.
"Pssst, kid, want a pirated version of this-or-that Microsoft product?"
I have to roll my eyes and pause to wonder why I would ever use crapware like Windows again.
"Nope, not interested"
I don't even read articles referring to Microsoft anymore (excluding this one), as I now consider them essentially irrelevant and I have no time to waste on their dog & pony show.
But Jim, they wouldn't even HAVE to be measured twice:
The stream is sent with its polarization KNOWN, for examples, ALL the particles are spinning left.
So when you are measuring them on Neptune, you already know they should all be like that, any particles received spinning the other way were sent as a bit of information.
Maybe I am missing something here. Please shed light.
OK, I am not a licensed physicist, but here's what I *think* I understand.
The entanglement DOESN'T end simply by measuring it; from what I understand, the particle's spin can be changed, and the entangled twin's spin will instantly change its spin to complement.
I'm not sure if this precludes changing the spin of one of the particles AGAIN... Never mind that for now though.
What if you directed a stream of particles who are all spinning in the same way towards Neptune, let's say. Could you then modulate the stream here (like encoding binary bits) by changing the spin of some of the twins so that someone on Neptune would also see the particles spin changing?
Wouldn't that be a way to send "subspace communications" ?
Trek away. Even if I'm wrong, I'm sure that we can do something with this.
I call them mistakes perpetrated in certain jurisdictions, ofr the most part.
Seagate only needs to pay him up front the two years salary Western digital was promising him and he can then stay at home and do nothing.
Otherwise, he should go work for the competitor, anything else bars him from earning a living in his field of expertise for two years, and it CANNOT be legal to make someone either starve or work in a field they don't want to work in. No contract can be made that damages an individual right like that, it's unconstituional.
Simple, really.
Although security may be a concern when running Windows, I think the parent poster was trying to stress the need for a smaller code-base.
Statistically, the less lines of code your application requires the less bugs there might be.
Windows is up there (hundreds of millions of lines of code), so if you use a small embedded OS, you reduce the complexity and most likely the amount of problems when the code-base changes (like when there is an upgrade).
Could you elaborate your question a little?
Which theory? The one about collapsing quantum probability waves or the one about using self-replicating robots to explore space?
As for Fermi, maybe we are the only place in our region to develop technology, it doesn't rule out other forms of life.
If you take the universe's diameter, maybe 14 billion light years. We (humans) have been around for 0.0000000000006% of it, possibly sentience is a recent development; if we take ourselves as examples and speculate that we are among the first, others, transmissions may only reach us in a million years, and maybe OUR messages are able to reach someone right now, but they're at their stone-age.
Or they've developed beyond what technology could bring them and we'll only be able to observe them when we will have sufficiently evolved.
After all, no one could really believe that "technology" is the end, could they?
He'll be missed for a really mind-bogglingly long time.
Our situation with regard to the physical parameters of our corner of the universe seems to be average:
Average sun
Average location in the galaxy (OK, maybe a little out in the backwater, but we have traversed more dense regions of the spirals of our galaxy in the last x billion years).
Average matter content (gases, etc...)
What might be the case could very simply be that space is awfully big, and we have only scanned a tiny portion of it in a tiny portion of the ways possible to scan it.
I mean come on, if the observable universe is TINY, and we've only examined a TINY portion of that, isn't it a bit too early to say "That's it, we're all alone" ?
After all, why have such a huge place all for the likes of us? What a waste...
I'm not sure I understand everything in your post, but I will comment on your last point;
Disagreements will happen, surely, and they're the hallmarks of good projects, because as long as you consider the points of views of others in the project and try to get your point across without shoving down anyone's throat, we all win.
Sure, sometimes good projects lose people and the project may have a much tougher time progressing afterwards, but come on, you can't have prima donnas throwing temper-tantrums and hijacking projects any more than you should expect EVERYONE to agree, right?
So projects can literally fork-off (I know, it reads almost like F----off) if enough people, or even if ONE person feels deeply enough about a direction.
Developers are still free.
I don't use Debian, I run Gentoo, but I respect the Debian team because they produce an exceptionally fine version of Linux.
The aim of open source is freedom, and I think it's great that the Debian team, the Fedora team, and the Gentoo team each try to further the cause in their own way, each with their own focus, giving everyone so much choice.
Look how at-home Linux is on EVERY computing platform; THAT is beauty. THAT is truth, THAT is freedom!
I know I'll come off like a Microsoft (or ANY OTHER monopoly) - basher, but the days of closed-source-we-decide-what-is-best-for-you are OVER!
Thank you very much, development teams, engineers, beta-testers and users!
Ever onward! Excelsior!
I'm not surprised that great men of science and science-fiction recognize it.
7 172052X/067172052X___1.htm
I bought and read Fallen Angels before it went into the public domain. Great book.
wyciwyg://0/http://www.baen.com/library/06
If I remember correctly, the ice age had arrived, and human societies had changed and isolated themselves...