So then, how can the EU legislate: A. An American site doing this with euro user data?
It can't, of course.
B. A site keeping it's logs on its own and then, at a later date, transmitting them to Google?
If the site is in the EU, very simple: Just pass a law.
Who owns the logs?
First of all, simply keeping the log longer than necessary already is illegal in the EU. Second, just because you own something doesn't mean you are free to do anything you want with it. For example, you may own a very fast car, but you'll still get a ticket for speeding.
What I mean is, we tried hard for about a century to find cracks in Einstein's theories, and while there are many things that are wrong with it (i.e. you can't marry it with quantum mechanics too well)
Special relativity can be married with quantum mechanics very well. The result of this is relativistic quantum mechanics (who would have guessed:-)) and quantum field theory. One of the predictions which came from relativistic quantum mechanics was the existence of antimatter, which was confirmed afterwards. And the QED, which is the best-tested theory we have, is completely relativistic as well.
What we have problems with is marrying general relativity and quantum mechanics.
There are actually only to possibilities. Either the things continue to work the same way they did before, or they don't. If they do, then acting on the assumption that they do is clearly the right choice. If they don't, then we have no idea what to do; whatever we do could be right or wrong. Therefore the rational behaviour is to assume that the rules continue to work.
Yes, and our current problem in physics is that we have two forks of Newtonian Physics. In one branch, we fixed the description of gravitation, in the other branch we fixed the description of subatomic particles. Both branches are very successful in their respective area. Now we try to merge those branches, however it turns out that the patches are not compatible, and we don't know what is the right way to combine them.
However, from a quantum-mechanical standpoint, and electron has no size...it is a point particle.
This causes an issue if we take both of these results together...as you approach an electron, the electric field should approach infinity.
We know that this doesn't happen, so one of the two theories must be incomplete.
Actually for electrodynamics the problem is completely solved. Basically the idea is that around the electron the vacuum polarization causes the field to me modified, so what you see as electron isn't actually the "naked" electron, but the electron plus vacuum polarization. So if you get closer to the electron (or equivalently, are scattering at higher energies), you have to modify the coupling constant (that is, basically the charge). The procedure is called renormalization and can remove the infinities from the theory.
The problem with General Relativity is that if you quantize it, you cannot get rid of the infinities through renormalization.
Conceptually, quantum mechanics is radically different than classical mechanics. Classical mechanics is founded on a concept that simply doesn't exist in quantum mechanics: The trajectory of a particle. However in the classical limit, you get wave packets which (almost) move like classical particles, so you won't see the difference.
His name was neither Schwatzchild nor Schwarzchild, but Schwarzschild. Which fits much better anyway, because "Schwarzschild" in German means "black shield", and what could be a better description of the event horizon his solution describes...
What if the laws of physics aren't the same in all systems?
Then we need a new theory.
I have occasionally toyed with the idea that the heliosphere acts as a kind of lens distorting the apparent operations of the outside universe. Sort of an updated sublunar/supralunar idea.
Well, "the same in all systems" in the post above didn't refer to "at different places in the universe", but "as seen/described by different observers in the same part of the universe". That doesn't mean we don't also assume that the laws of nature are always and everywhere the same. Indeed, that's basically always assumed.
How can we test if the laws of physics operate the same on all scales?
By applying the laws we found locally to observations of distant objects, and seeing if they fit. For example, we can look at the spectra of distant stars and look if we get the same atomic spectral lines as on earth. This works great; so we know that atomic physics obviously works the same in distant stars. Also we can observe the 21cm hydrogen line everywhere in space, so atomic physics seems to apply also in between the stars.
Where we do have some problems is with large scale gravitation (what we describe with dark matter and dark energy). However, the local effects of those deviations are small enough that we couldn't measure them directly anyway, so it's also no evidence that the local laws of physics are different than the distant ones, even if those effects are to be described with modified theories.
Could the Voyager Anomaly be evidence that "local" physics is not universal?
No, it's much too small for that. To be an indication for different physics "outside" it would have to be such a large deviation that we would have to have detected the difference if it applied to Earth.
Recently, paradigms in physics have been interesting in this respect as the new perfectly subsume the prior in their limits. I am not sure that this is a tautology of science, but it is an elegant means of progression.
Actually, it's quite simple: The old theory correctly describes the old experiments. If the new theory is to be right, it must also correctly describe the old experiments, therefore under those conditions it must not differ from the old theory any more than the measurement errors.
Einstein's theories of relativity basically start by saying something to the effect of "Let us assume the speed of light to be the fastest anything can travel. If we assume this, then..."
Wrong. Special relativity is built on two principles:
The speed of light is the same in all inertial systems
The laws of physics look the same in each inertial system
(actually, if you take Maxwell's equation into account, the first is just a special case of the second). Especially it does not postulate that there's nothing faster than light. Rather,
it is a result of SR that anything slower than light cannot be accelerated to a speed faster than light (you'd need infinitely much energy to get it just to the speed of light)
any action which goes faster than light would violate causality, so if in addition to SR we also assume causality, FTL cannot exist.
However, you can describe hypothetical faster-than-light particles in SRT (so-called tachyons; those cannot be decelerated to below the speed of light), and AFAIK there have been experiments to look for them. Note however that as soon as you add quantum mechanics to the picture, even with tachyons no information can be transmitted faster than light (local disturbances in he quantum tachyon field only propagate with light speed).
General relativity adds the equivalence principle (locally you cannot distinguish between gravitation and acceleration) and the demand of general covariance (the equations must look the same regardless of choice of coordinates, even if those don't correspond to an inertial system).
That's assuming you use an interpretation where there's a causal connection between the measurements of the entangled partners. Those interpretations are supported only by a minority of physicists.
Note that quantum mechanics fulfills the no-signaling condition: You cannot use entanglement (or any other quantum effect) to communicate faster than light.
The DNA probably wasn't of much direct use back then. But I guess it could already be expected that it would be of more use later on. And it was probably much easier to pass such a law at times where you couldn't do that much with it.
Also note that most people born back than are still alive. And you'd probably have a much harder time to get their DNA now. And both facts could already be predicted quite easily back then.
It's funny to me that the people who complain about spam the most are also the "information wants to be free" types.
And if you get caught lying to the tax office about your income, you probably also pull the argument that free speech, as guaranteed by the constitution, also covers lying to the tax office, right?
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you may (mis-)use any medium to tell your opinion. It just says that you must have the possibility to do so, and to do so in public. It doesn't say you have the right to fill up private mailboxes with it. I reserve the right to decide what I want to have in my(!) mailbox. If you want to tell the world about how great your replica watches are, or how much you like the Democrats or Republicans, you are invited to do on any public channel. But keep it out of my mailbox. It's my mailbox. It is not public.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's a German business, it's bound by German law. Having the webhosting in the U.S. won't help in that case.
It can't, of course.
If the site is in the EU, very simple: Just pass a law.
First of all, simply keeping the log longer than necessary already is illegal in the EU. Second, just because you own something doesn't mean you are free to do anything you want with it. For example, you may own a very fast car, but you'll still get a ticket for speeding.
Well, actually it's fast. The problem is, they made it so fast that it got relativistic, and therefore time dilation makes it seem slow.
Special relativity can be married with quantum mechanics very well. The result of this is relativistic quantum mechanics (who would have guessed :-)) and quantum field theory. One of the predictions which came from relativistic quantum mechanics was the existence of antimatter, which was confirmed afterwards. And the QED, which is the best-tested theory we have, is completely relativistic as well.
What we have problems with is marrying general relativity and quantum mechanics.
It's not currently thought to be impossible, it's proven to be impossible if quantum mechanics is correct.
There are actually only to possibilities. Either the things continue to work the same way they did before, or they don't. If they do, then acting on the assumption that they do is clearly the right choice. If they don't, then we have no idea what to do; whatever we do could be right or wrong. Therefore the rational behaviour is to assume that the rules continue to work.
Yes, and our current problem in physics is that we have two forks of Newtonian Physics. In one branch, we fixed the description of gravitation, in the other branch we fixed the description of subatomic particles. Both branches are very successful in their respective area. Now we try to merge those branches, however it turns out that the patches are not compatible, and we don't know what is the right way to combine them.
Anything that goes against the dark matter nonsense works for me.
It's always interesting how quick some people without deeper knowledge of the matter are with labeling something as nonsense.
And indeed, "better" is what counts.
Kepler's ellipses were not more accurate than epicycles. But they were clearly more elegant.
Well, if you are prepared to handle many infinite numbers instead of just one oo, that indeed works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreal_number
You can even go further: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surreal_number
Nah, don't worry. In a few years it'll all be glommed together again as space-time-matter-energy with one spiffy equation to rule them all.
... and in the dark matter bind them.
The problem is that with that definition:
0 = oo - oo = (1+oo) - oo = 1 + (oo - oo) = 1 + 0 = 1
and
1 = oo / oo = (2 * oo) / oo = 2 * (oo/oo) = 2 * 1 = 2
Actually for electrodynamics the problem is completely solved. Basically the idea is that around the electron the vacuum polarization causes the field to me modified, so what you see as electron isn't actually the "naked" electron, but the electron plus vacuum polarization. So if you get closer to the electron (or equivalently, are scattering at higher energies), you have to modify the coupling constant (that is, basically the charge). The procedure is called renormalization and can remove the infinities from the theory.
The problem with General Relativity is that if you quantize it, you cannot get rid of the infinities through renormalization.
Conceptually, quantum mechanics is radically different than classical mechanics. Classical mechanics is founded on a concept that simply doesn't exist in quantum mechanics: The trajectory of a particle. However in the classical limit, you get wave packets which (almost) move like classical particles, so you won't see the difference.
His name was neither Schwatzchild nor Schwarzchild, but Schwarzschild. Which fits much better anyway, because "Schwarzschild" in German means "black shield", and what could be a better description of the event horizon his solution describes ...
Then we need a new theory.
Well, "the same in all systems" in the post above didn't refer to "at different places in the universe", but "as seen/described by different observers in the same part of the universe".
That doesn't mean we don't also assume that the laws of nature are always and everywhere the same. Indeed, that's basically always assumed.
By applying the laws we found locally to observations of distant objects, and seeing if they fit. For example, we can look at the spectra of distant stars and look if we get the same atomic spectral lines as on earth. This works great; so we know that atomic physics obviously works the same in distant stars. Also we can observe the 21cm hydrogen line everywhere in space, so atomic physics seems to apply also in between the stars.
Where we do have some problems is with large scale gravitation (what we describe with dark matter and dark energy). However, the local effects of those deviations are small enough that we couldn't measure them directly anyway, so it's also no evidence that the local laws of physics are different than the distant ones, even if those effects are to be described with modified theories.
No, it's much too small for that. To be an indication for different physics "outside" it would have to be such a large deviation that we would have to have detected the difference if it applied to Earth.
Actually, it's quite simple: The old theory correctly describes the old experiments. If the new theory is to be right, it must also correctly describe the old experiments, therefore under those conditions it must not differ from the old theory any more than the measurement errors.
No. Jesus is thinking inside the box. It's just another box, labeled "Christian religion".
Wrong.
Special relativity is built on two principles:
(actually, if you take Maxwell's equation into account, the first is just a special case of the second). Especially it does not postulate that there's nothing faster than light. Rather,
However, you can describe hypothetical faster-than-light particles in SRT (so-called tachyons; those cannot be decelerated to below the speed of light), and AFAIK there have been experiments to look for them. Note however that as soon as you add quantum mechanics to the picture, even with tachyons no information can be transmitted faster than light (local disturbances in he quantum tachyon field only propagate with light speed).
General relativity adds the equivalence principle (locally you cannot distinguish between gravitation and acceleration) and the demand of general covariance (the equations must look the same regardless of choice of coordinates, even if those don't correspond to an inertial system).
That's assuming you use an interpretation where there's a causal connection between the measurements of the entangled partners. Those interpretations are supported only by a minority of physicists.
Note that quantum mechanics fulfills the no-signaling condition: You cannot use entanglement (or any other quantum effect) to communicate faster than light.
The DNA probably wasn't of much direct use back then. But I guess it could already be expected that it would be of more use later on. And it was probably much easier to pass such a law at times where you couldn't do that much with it.
Also note that most people born back than are still alive. And you'd probably have a much harder time to get their DNA now. And both facts could already be predicted quite easily back then.
But that won't help you if you cannot install it.
man tivoization
Or they'll just become more used to using Google Apps exclusively.
And if you get caught lying to the tax office about your income, you probably also pull the argument that free speech, as guaranteed by the constitution, also covers lying to the tax office, right?
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you may (mis-)use any medium to tell your opinion. It just says that you must have the possibility to do so, and to do so in public. It doesn't say you have the right to fill up private mailboxes with it. I reserve the right to decide what I want to have in my(!) mailbox. If you want to tell the world about how great your replica watches are, or how much you like the Democrats or Republicans, you are invited to do on any public channel. But keep it out of my mailbox. It's my mailbox. It is not public.
But if it's coming through an unfiltered data stream anyway, what sense does it make to make it look like English text?