then don't accept their conditions. If they say "we may track you to enhance our services" it means "we track you wherever we see it fit". What is there to misunderstand? Anyway, implicitely your location information will be stored as part of access logs etc.. I personally always assume that google maps keeps server logs for technical purposes.
He generalizes the situation in some subjects (e.g. philosophical sciences). The situation in natural sciences is different. Having a PhD in physics (and not being an idiot who does not look left or right) enables you to talk to a lot of people and understand a lot of people. And you usually get you degree in 3-5 years (after the master) and not 12. And yes, i agree with him, weed out the subjects in the PhD courses where people waste, badly supervised, their valuable lifetime and replace the PhD courses by more appropriate new topics and fields. My feeling however is that this is more a problem for the philosophical faculties than for the science faculties.
whether i prefer a school where my child learns chess or a school where any teacher may indoctrinate my child with fucked up fairytales under the false flag of "we dont know for sure", i prefer the chess school.
I dont care *which keys* generate the page up/page down signal. I can get used to the place to find a key i really need and want (and yes, the page jump keys are among these) quite quickly - i dont switch keyboards every ten seconds, but applications - but if the application does no react to me then i cant do anything about it.
(Actually as a non-apple user: fn+up and fn+down is straightforward)
They have gone down the drain when idiots who are not aware that a "page down" key exists on your keyboard were allowed to make flash controls displaying long texts in the web.
Honestly i curse always when i am presented with a really nice looking UI in the web which behaves exactly like the programer always believed an interface should behave and forgets to implement half of the expected semantics. Things i hate:
a) ESC does not finish dialogs
b) Return does not OK inputs
c) Tab does not jump between input fields
d) Links dont do anything
e) Deactivated options are not marked (of marked in a way you only understand after trial-and-error)
In that sense, the inconsistency we have with touchscreens only fits in.
Good for Wifi. Will prevent pollution. I live in a large Condo complex and i see 50 WLANs at the same time. If 20 of them are active its going to reduce my WLAN transfer rate. If i see only 5 active at the same time, it will be much better.
As a physicist: WLAN is not specified to go trough undefined materials. walls of houses are, in general, undefined materials. If you like good wlan coverage in your garden, then place an external antenna or at least an repeater close to the window (unless the window is also metal-coated...).
a) Cutting edge and well documented mathematical programs are matlab and mathematica. I am *not* going to use software in an exam where the exact range of the current functionality is not documented (and i use octave regularly).
b) What do i expect a student to know when he arrives in the lab where i am working? I expect him to be able to make *simple* estimations and caclulation in hois head or using a pencil, and he should know where the limits of sowftware are. Nothing which can be tested using a test which requires a calculator.
I do for my normal surfing. But sometimes i use another browser/machine to test sth and my usual set of extensions to make the web bearable is not installed.
There are certain flash ads on some web pages which make the fan of my laptop turn on. There are also badly written javascripts which do the same - for essenrially doing nothing.
having jokes in the Simpsons about nuclear catastrophes does not ridicule victims of nuclear catatrophes but rather people not taking the seriously enough. Deleting this jokes makes it sound like nobody ever thought about the possibility of such a thing, thus making the position of the people who do not take it seriously enough stronger.
Besides the vi vs. emacs thread below, where no nerd can resist to comment, let me say the following:
If you have the choice between havin the environment where the final product is going to be used under as a quick test environmen and another one, always choose the one where its goind to be used under,
I tend to learn programming languages/environments as i need them (and i am willing to invest my free time for that). I am not picky in that point. So in the eyes of the guy i am lucky that i did not need.net. But probably he would find other critical points (like TCL, LISP and postscript).
As far as i understand flexibility and the will to learn are now not valuable to modern companies, and as far as i understand the guy said: Sorry, if a customer asks us to develop a windows mobile client, tthen we just tell him: Sorry, we dont hire people undertsanding that for the sake of principle.
My opinion is: if there enough money/opprtunity for something then i should caclulate the expected gains vs the cost of learning what needed to do it.
You are right. Quantum computer have a handful of problems where expect them to excel (if they work). In all other problems, they are pretty useless. everything which requires copying of information wont work out well on a QC (thats a personal feeeling of mine, but i am not a theorist)
My point was actually: its possible (if not easy) to buid a circuit which behaves essentially classically.
You know, the funny thing is: i remember one of the first things i heard about semiconductors was the "o but we really get into trouble if we go deep below 1mum". That was around 1985.
uhm... well...
Maybe one should make a corollary to Moores law: "Half of the tech writers predict the end of Moores law in half of the time they already observed it" (or something similar)
I actually thought about a similar title. but i find in necessary to point out the own profession - unless the author of the article. That is because an electrical engineer or an chemist may have other conclusion - and i would find them very interesting. On the other hand i am really pissed that everybody who has hear the word "Uncertainity relation" believes that he can state things like "everything small must be quantum and tunnel" whereever he or she need to invoke the argument that classical physics does not hold (without understanding *when* it does not hold).
From weird analogies and a certain amount of misunderstanding things the excerpt draws strange conclusions.
a) Misunderstanding how the frequency spacing relates to required number of cycles: The correct assumption would be that if light has 10^14Hz and you restrict yourself to single-octave circuit (for the sake of simplicity: lets say 10% relative bw circuit), then you can if you "cram" ideall of modulate fast enough, 10^13bits*log2(S/N) bits per second. so probably 10^14bits/second - that is a lot.
b) limits to Moores Law: Moores law is an economic law. There is no physical limit which i see which can be reached technologically until 2020 (in mass production). There is a technological limit to what can be produced, but going in the third dimension and new materials will give opportunity to continue on the same course for a while. If you look at what physicists are currently looking at, you realize that the end of silicon/metal/oxide technology will not be the end of Moores Law or classical computing
c) "on the atomic level i cant know where the electron is". As it happens to be i work on quantum computation and i really hate to explain that: If you arrange a specific situation, then you cant know where the electron is on the atomic scale. If the statement would be as general as he makes it, it would be impossible to have different chemical configurations of the same stoichiometric mixtures. SIngle-molecule electronic/magnetic configurations. The quantum tunnel coupling in single molecule magnets between states can be designed, and i dont see a specific reason why it should be impossible to realize single molecule devices in which tunneling does not play a role
d) he does not understand FETs AFAIU
e) contrary to his opinion, very thin 2DEGs exist and i dont see a reason why upon (finding and) choosing the right layers, the confinement can be very steep in the third direction (not infinity, but also not requiring more than 50nm thickness)
The funny thing is that he forgot what already is and probably will (there *may* be ways out, like superconductors or ballistic transport but don't bet on it) really be a problem for all classical/room temperature computers: heat. While the designing smaller elements may be possible when using the right physics/technology, reducing the capacitances of lines (associated with an energy loss in the line resistance per switching) will be difficult. Once we *really* stack in the third dimension it will need a lot of clever computer scientists (and maybe mathematicians) to reduce thee needed interconnects, since otherwise stacking the third dimension wont give us anything besides memory capacity.
So to conclude: i believe until 2050 the definition of Moores law will be obsolete. but it will not break down because we are unable to make circuits smaller, but because it may be too expensive to make them smaller or powering and cooling the circuits may become impractical. We probably will have a replacement of moores law by an equivalent scaling law for power per switching.
Slashdot Mirror
then don't accept their conditions. If they say "we may track you to enhance our services" it means "we track you wherever we see it fit". What is there to misunderstand? Anyway, implicitely your location information will be stored as part of access logs etc.. I personally always assume that google maps keeps server logs for technical purposes.
*need* cable TV?
i did not need a TV since 1998. I took no severe mental damage and no severe withdrawal symptoms.
He generalizes the situation in some subjects (e.g. philosophical sciences). The situation in natural sciences is different. Having a PhD in physics (and not being an idiot who does not look left or right) enables you to talk to a lot of people and understand a lot of people. And you usually get you degree in 3-5 years (after the master) and not 12. And yes, i agree with him, weed out the subjects in the PhD courses where people waste, badly supervised, their valuable lifetime and replace the PhD courses by more appropriate new topics and fields. My feeling however is that this is more a problem for the philosophical faculties than for the science faculties.
A little bit less arrogance would not hurt.
whether i prefer a school where my child learns chess or a school where any teacher may indoctrinate my child with fucked up fairytales under the false flag of "we dont know for sure", i prefer the chess school.
I dont care *which keys* generate the page up/page down signal. I can get used to the place to find a key i really need and want (and yes, the page jump keys are among these) quite quickly - i dont switch keyboards every ten seconds, but applications - but if the application does no react to me then i cant do anything about it.
(Actually as a non-apple user: fn+up and fn+down is straightforward)
They have gone down the drain when idiots who are not aware that a "page down" key exists on your keyboard were allowed to make flash controls displaying long texts in the web.
Honestly i curse always when i am presented with a really nice looking UI in the web which behaves exactly like the programer always believed an interface should behave and forgets to implement half of the expected semantics. Things i hate:
a) ESC does not finish dialogs
b) Return does not OK inputs
c) Tab does not jump between input fields
d) Links dont do anything
e) Deactivated options are not marked (of marked in a way you only understand after trial-and-error)
In that sense, the inconsistency we have with touchscreens only fits in.
Good for Wifi. Will prevent pollution. I live in a large Condo complex and i see 50 WLANs at the same time. If 20 of them are active its going to reduce my WLAN transfer rate. If i see only 5 active at the same time, it will be much better.
As a physicist: WLAN is not specified to go trough undefined materials. walls of houses are, in general, undefined materials. If you like good wlan coverage in your garden, then place an external antenna or at least an repeater close to the window (unless the window is also metal-coated...).
a) Dont be criminal
b) if you are, dont believe that some hacking of army systems will give you positive karma
c) If you nevertheless insist in that you have the right to do everything based on your own laws, then dont talk about that in television
a) Cutting edge and well documented mathematical programs are matlab and mathematica. I am *not* going to use software in an exam where the exact range of the current functionality is not documented (and i use octave regularly).
b) What do i expect a student to know when he arrives in the lab where i am working? I expect him to be able to make *simple* estimations and caclulation in hois head or using a pencil, and he should know where the limits of sowftware are. Nothing which can be tested using a test which requires a calculator.
Yes it is.
I do for my normal surfing. But sometimes i use another browser/machine to test sth and my usual set of extensions to make the web bearable is not installed.
There are certain flash ads on some web pages which make the fan of my laptop turn on. There are also badly written javascripts which do the same - for essenrially doing nothing.
having jokes in the Simpsons about nuclear catastrophes does not ridicule victims of nuclear catatrophes but rather people not taking the seriously enough. Deleting this jokes makes it sound like nobody ever thought about the possibility of such a thing, thus making the position of the people who do not take it seriously enough stronger.
Besides the vi vs. emacs thread below, where no nerd can resist to comment, let me say the following:
If you have the choice between havin the environment where the final product is going to be used under as a quick test environmen and another one, always choose the one where its goind to be used under,
The only command you need to know in vi is how to swicth to the ex` mode.
I tend to learn programming languages/environments as i need them (and i am willing to invest my free time for that). I am not picky in that point. So in the eyes of the guy i am lucky that i did not need .net. But probably he would find other critical points (like TCL, LISP and postscript).
As far as i understand flexibility and the will to learn are now not valuable to modern companies, and as far as i understand the guy said: Sorry, if a customer asks us to develop a windows mobile client, tthen we just tell him: Sorry, we dont hire people undertsanding that for the sake of principle.
My opinion is: if there enough money/opprtunity for something then i should caclulate the expected gains vs the cost of learning what needed to do it.
If you think the keyboard is missing at a tablet, then dont buy one.
oh that... i just ran dadadodo over the current archive abstracts....
You are right. Quantum computer have a handful of problems where expect them to excel (if they work). In all other problems, they are pretty useless. everything which requires copying of information wont work out well on a QC (thats a personal feeeling of mine, but i am not a theorist)
My point was actually: its possible (if not easy) to buid a circuit which behaves essentially classically.
You know, the funny thing is: i remember one of the first things i heard about semiconductors was the "o but we really get into trouble if we go deep below 1mum". That was around 1985.
uhm... well...
Maybe one should make a corollary to Moores law:
"Half of the tech writers predict the end of Moores law in half of the time they already observed it" (or something similar)
I actually thought about a similar title. but i find in necessary to point out the own profession - unless the author of the article. That is because an electrical engineer or an chemist may have other conclusion - and i would find them very interesting. On the other hand i am really pissed that everybody who has hear the word "Uncertainity relation" believes that he can state things like "everything small must be quantum and tunnel" whereever he or she need to invoke the argument that classical physics does not hold (without understanding *when* it does not hold).
From weird analogies and a certain amount of misunderstanding things the excerpt draws strange conclusions.
a) Misunderstanding how the frequency spacing relates to required number of cycles: The correct assumption would be that if light has 10^14Hz and you restrict yourself to single-octave circuit (for the sake of simplicity: lets say 10% relative bw circuit), then you can if you "cram" ideall of modulate fast enough, 10^13bits*log2(S/N) bits per second. so probably 10^14bits/second - that is a lot.
b) limits to Moores Law: Moores law is an economic law. There is no physical limit which i see which can be reached technologically until 2020 (in mass production). There is a technological limit to what can be produced, but going in the third dimension and new materials will give opportunity to continue on the same course for a while. If you look at what physicists are currently looking at, you realize that the end of silicon/metal/oxide technology will not be the end of Moores Law or classical computing
c) "on the atomic level i cant know where the electron is". As it happens to be i work on quantum computation and i really hate to explain that: If you arrange a specific situation, then you cant know where the electron is on the atomic scale. If the statement would be as general as he makes it, it would be impossible to have different chemical configurations of the same stoichiometric mixtures. SIngle-molecule electronic/magnetic configurations. The quantum tunnel coupling in single molecule magnets between states can be designed, and i dont see a specific reason why it should be impossible to realize single molecule devices in which tunneling does not play a role
d) he does not understand FETs AFAIU
e) contrary to his opinion, very thin 2DEGs exist and i dont see a reason why upon (finding and) choosing the right layers, the confinement can be very steep in the third direction (not infinity, but also not requiring more than 50nm thickness)
The funny thing is that he forgot what already is and probably will (there *may* be ways out, like superconductors or ballistic transport but don't bet on it) really be a problem for all classical/room temperature computers: heat. While the designing smaller elements may be possible when using the right physics/technology, reducing the capacitances of lines (associated with an energy loss in the line resistance per switching) will be difficult. Once we *really* stack in the third dimension it will need a lot of clever computer scientists (and maybe mathematicians) to reduce thee needed interconnects, since otherwise stacking the third dimension wont give us anything besides memory capacity.
So to conclude: i believe until 2050 the definition of Moores law will be obsolete. but it will not break down because we are unable to make circuits smaller, but because it may be too expensive to make them smaller or powering and cooling the circuits may become impractical. We probably will have a replacement of moores law by an equivalent scaling law for power per switching.
With problem i obviously meant homophobia and not homosexuality, to be clear on that.
a) apple does not censor apps at all
b) we try to deal with the problem by education and information instead of forbidding it
c) If its free, rate the app down (i dont have an iphone). Write comments like "a friend tried it and is now severely depressed".