The link in the parent is a forwarding link. It's a completely off-topic link he only added in order to increase click rates, and used the forwarding link to prevent others recognizing the link target (it's a "minicity"). Clicking it would promote his antisocial behaviour, so don't do it.
OT-note: If you really want to learn about myminicity, don't click his link anyway, but go to the myminicity main page instead. (And no, I'm not involved in the minicity web site [I do have my own minicity though, but I won't link to it here], I just want to prevent people to click on his link).
It's not his font, it's whatever font is set in your browser for fixed width content. In other words, it's your font which is too small. Change your browser settings and the font will get bigger (I know because I did so).
My personal experience was walking on hot coals that were hot enough to melt an aluminum can. I walked for 40 feet through the oak coals and not a burn on my feet.
Except that the trick here isn't your intent, but the fact that you were walking, so the head didn't have enough time to get to your feet before they lost contact to the coals. Had you been standing on the coals, your feet would have been burned, no matter how much you'd intended the opposite.
There's nothing involved here that isn't explained by the known laws of nature. More details can be found e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewalking (and no, that's not where I have my knowledge from, it's from a show on German TV quite some time ago, where they actually measured the temperature at the feet).
Yet the Hadamard is still the most essential and fundamental quantum operator, and one that has no classical equivalent.
How exactly do you propose to define the "fundamentalness" of a quantum operator? Basically an universal quantum computer needs to be able to do (at least approximately) any one-qubit unitary transformation (which can be done with Hadamard + phase shift, but equally well e.g. with square root of NOT and phase shift) and some non-trivial two-qubit operation (like CNOT). I don't see why the Hadamard operator should be more fundamental than the square root of CNOT, the phase gate, or any other non-classical one-qubit operator.
You're right that it has no classical equivalent. Nor has sqrt(NOT), phase shift, or any other one-qubit operation other than the identity and NOT.
Saying that the Hadamard operator is the fundamental quantum operator is wrong. Indeed, there's not much you can do with only a Hadamard operator (applying it twice recovers your original state). And even if you combine Hadamard with the quantum versions of classical operators (like CNOT), you still don't get all possible quantum operations, not even approximately. You'll have to add another operation (like a phase shifter gate).
With quantum computers, it's not a matter of the quantum computer just being "better" -- it has access to a way of doing things that is more powerful (in the mathematical sense) than classical computing.
That depends on your definition of "powerful". If "more powerful" means "can solve more problems", then no, the quantum computer cannot solve any problem which a classical computer cannot solve. If "more powerful" means "can solve problems in (asymptotically) less time", then yes, quantum computers can be more powerful (but how much more powerful isn't yet known; it gets exponential speedup for factorization relative to the known classical algorithms, but there's not yet any proof that there's no classical algorithm which could do that as well; however database search can be speeded up from O(N) to O(sqrt(N)), so there's definitively speedup).
For example, you can find an element in an unsorted array using a quantum computer in constant time.
Secret police (sometimes political police) are a police organization which operates in secrecy to maintain national security against internal threats to the state. Secret police forces are typically associated with totalitarian regimes, as they are often used to maintain the political power of the state rather than uphold the rule of law.
The passage you emphasized is something which does not belong to the definition of "secret police".
Yes, there is a solution. Lear the open source equivalent software instead. When asked if you can do the job, say "Yes" with confidence. Proceed to use the open source equivalent on the job, rather than wasting time learning to use an expensive proprietary interface which you won't be able to use at your next job anyhow. What if the job is e.g. to extend an existing Mathematica package?
We know the fundamental laws of physics which govern our brains (the areas of physics where we still have holes in our knowledge are not relevant for simulating our brain). Everything governed by those laws can in principle be simulated on a large enough computer (granted, it would be much larger than anything we can build today, but we are into principal arguments here). There's no principal reasons why we couldn't get a complete description of a human brain. Note that to do a simulation at this level we do not have to understand how the brain works on a higher level; we just have to know where to put our simulated atoms.
BTW, when arguing from a dualistic viewpoint: Why should whatever the non-material component of the mind is, bind to the brain but not to silicon circuits?
In my AI at college we discussed this. I would tend to say no from the chinese room argument. In a nutshell it's that computer software is only about syntactical knowledge (manipulating symbols), there's no semantic knowledge. The software doesn't understand what it is doing.
How do you determine that the software doesn't understand what it's doing?
What if the software was actually a complete simulation of the physics of the human brain? Unless you believe in a non-physical component of the mind, then the simulated brain should have exactly as much understanding as a real one.
From http://what-is-what.com/what_is/computer.html:
A computer is a device that accepts user input, processes it, and returns output. My digestive system seems to be a computer as well. After all, it accepts my input (food), processes it and returns output (which I then flush down the toilet).
For a machine, to grok human emotion would probably also come down to using a set of heuristic rules. Well, when communicating with another human, you also can only use heuristic rules to detect his emotions! The only difference is that you know a basic set of heuristic rules from your personal experience (i.e. you know how you would react having certain emotions, and therefore for a first approximation can use that as rules). Also over your lifetime you already accumulated a lot of extra heuristics about the behaviour of other people.
Slashdot Mirror
The link in the parent is a forwarding link. It's a completely off-topic link he only added in order to increase click rates, and used the forwarding link to prevent others recognizing the link target (it's a "minicity"). Clicking it would promote his antisocial behaviour, so don't do it.
OT-note: If you really want to learn about myminicity, don't click his link anyway, but go to the myminicity main page instead. (And no, I'm not involved in the minicity web site [I do have my own minicity though, but I won't link to it here], I just want to prevent people to click on his link).
Mo, 200 megabytes would be 200MB. Since he said 200mb, it's 200 millibits. In other words, you may download for free one bit every five months.
SCNR
It's not his font, it's whatever font is set in your browser for fixed width content. In other words, it's your font which is too small. Change your browser settings and the font will get bigger (I know because I did so).
Without tinyurl, it would have been less hidden that the link target isn't in any way related to OpenOffice, Telstra, or the story.
I've got the world formula! Here it is:
A=0
Unfortunately, I still can't figure out the definition of A.
You might start searching for buffer overflows which would enable you to change our reality.
Except that the trick here isn't your intent, but the fact that you were walking, so the head didn't have enough time to get to your feet before they lost contact to the coals. Had you been standing on the coals, your feet would have been burned, no matter how much you'd intended the opposite.
There's nothing involved here that isn't explained by the known laws of nature. More details can be found e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewalking (and no, that's not where I have my knowledge from, it's from a show on German TV quite some time ago, where they actually measured the temperature at the feet).
Bears.
However the statement "If all those axioms are true, then so is this theorem" is an absolute truth, isn't it?
SCNR
How exactly do you propose to define the "fundamentalness" of a quantum operator? Basically an universal quantum computer needs to be able to do (at least approximately) any one-qubit unitary transformation (which can be done with Hadamard + phase shift, but equally well e.g. with square root of NOT and phase shift) and some non-trivial two-qubit operation (like CNOT). I don't see why the Hadamard operator should be more fundamental than the square root of CNOT, the phase gate, or any other non-classical one-qubit operator.
You're right that it has no classical equivalent. Nor has sqrt(NOT), phase shift, or any other one-qubit operation other than the identity and NOT.
But quantum people say "dupe" and "not dupe" at the same time!
Saying that the Hadamard operator is the fundamental quantum operator is wrong. Indeed, there's not much you can do with only a Hadamard operator (applying it twice recovers your original state). And even if you combine Hadamard with the quantum versions of classical operators (like CNOT), you still don't get all possible quantum operations, not even approximately. You'll have to add another operation (like a phase shifter gate).
That depends on your definition of "powerful". If "more powerful" means "can solve more problems", then no, the quantum computer cannot solve any problem which a classical computer cannot solve. If "more powerful" means "can solve problems in (asymptotically) less time", then yes, quantum computers can be more powerful (but how much more powerful isn't yet known; it gets exponential speedup for factorization relative to the known classical algorithms, but there's not yet any proof that there's no classical algorithm which could do that as well; however database search can be speeded up from O(N) to O(sqrt(N)), so there's definitively speedup).
No, just in O(sqrt(N)) time.
Of course for that to be a perfect definition, you first have to perfectly define "ratio", "1", "circle", "diameter" and "circumference".
More like, "But how many copies of Doom does it play at once?" One. But at 100000 fps.
The passage you emphasized is something which does not belong to the definition of "secret police".
Wow, you are really that old?
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=384051&cid=21631367
Maybe he thought your bot was an electric monk.
We know the fundamental laws of physics which govern our brains (the areas of physics where we still have holes in our knowledge are not relevant for simulating our brain). Everything governed by those laws can in principle be simulated on a large enough computer (granted, it would be much larger than anything we can build today, but we are into principal arguments here). There's no principal reasons why we couldn't get a complete description of a human brain. Note that to do a simulation at this level we do not have to understand how the brain works on a higher level; we just have to know where to put our simulated atoms.
BTW, when arguing from a dualistic viewpoint: Why should whatever the non-material component of the mind is, bind to the brain but not to silicon circuits?
How do you determine that the software doesn't understand what it's doing?
What if the software was actually a complete simulation of the physics of the human brain? Unless you believe in a non-physical component of the mind, then the simulated brain should have exactly as much understanding as a real one.
For a machine, to grok human emotion would probably also come down to using a set of heuristic rules. Well, when communicating with another human, you also can only use heuristic rules to detect his emotions! The only difference is that you know a basic set of heuristic rules from your personal experience (i.e. you know how you would react having certain emotions, and therefore for a first approximation can use that as rules). Also over your lifetime you already accumulated a lot of extra heuristics about the behaviour of other people.