I was recently in Utah and we were chatting with the waitress in the bar. We'd been a little surprised at the "recommended" 18% tip since arriving in Utah. She told us that minimum wage for servers was something ridiculous like $2.50. So we all tipped 20%, cash, handed directly to her.
In sane places, minimum wage is minimum wage, no matter what you're doing. Tips are not a way for restaurants to advertise cheaper rates, they're an optional incentive the customer can use to reward good service. Anything else is just a false advertising scam.
You seem to be confusing c, the speed of light in a vacuum, with 3.00 x 10^8, the number describing the speed of light in a vacuum using units defined to particular international standards. The speed of light doesn't change when you measure it in m/s, km/h or ft/day. You can of course define any units you want, with any silly inconsistencies you want, and can make up all kinds of silly results based on those. Real measurements aren't arbitrary, although they can be made to seem so when you choose an inconsistent measurement system. We try not to do that.
A star's gravity is a very efficient containment field for a fusion generator. It generates pressures easily capable of sustaining a fusion reaction, and doesn't use any power. We've had great difficulty duplicating that on a smaller scale.
I don't think you properly understand the implications of changing bases, possibly because you say you learned about it from Slashdot. Mathematics doesn't care what base you use. When I took honours calculus we didn't really use numbers at all - everything was symbolic. Number systems are just convenient ways we use to represent values that are larger (or smaller) than the number of unique symbols we care to make use of. As someone else pointed out, pi is pi no matter what base you use. If you calculate the circumference of a circle from the radius using base-whatever (using precisely the regular formula), the result, converted into base-something-else will be the same as if you'd done the whole computation in base-something-else. The math doesn't care.
You started with the (incorrect) idea that math only works in base 10 and ended up with the (also incorrect) idea that math changes depending on what base you use. That's like expecting math to only work in English, or change if you speak French instead of English.
Also, there's no such thing as a base-zero system. A counting system that doesn't use any symbols is useless because it can't represent any numbers.
Just to give a silly example, if I define a meter to be the width of an atom, or if I define a second to be the time required for the earth to go around the sun a thousand times, I can easily travel faster than c. So how does this apply to cosmology and general relativity?
That's a pretty silly example, seeing as how it's wrong. If you choose to define a "metre" as the "width of an atom" then you will still not be able to win a race with a beam of light any more than I could run faster than a Ferrari. You might be able to travel more metres per second, but so would the light.
You can only detect the superimposition given information transmitted in a normal way, so you can never detect it faster than a normal signal takes to travel to you.
We're very good at measurement. Quantum mechanics only says that you can't measure everything exactly at the same time, you have to make lots of measurements and use statistics. Which is what we do anyway.
I knew a guy in grad school who made oil by putting animal crap in the microwave. I guess you could call the microwave an "oil printer" if you wanted to be colourful. You also didn't want to warm up your lunch in his lab.
You've failed to understand the US pro-gun lobby. Their basic point is that Americans can't be compared to anybody else in the world because they're special. American violent crime stats are high because Americans are inherently violent. Furthermore, the gun-ownership to violence relationship works oppositely in the US. So if you want to see absolutely over the top violence, take away their guns!
Personally I think it's hogwash and the average American is just like the average anybody else except he is more likely to own a gun.
"I was educated about the nature of Base-10 computing. Prior to this, I'd spent my entire life thinking that Base-10 WAS mathematics."
Really? We had to do some base-10 computing in undergrad, of the BCD nature. It was a pain in the ass and everyone was glad to get back to good old base 2. And that was base-10 coded in base-2. I haven't heard of a computer using base-10 natively since the ones in the middle of the 20th century that wore skirts.
It would presumably get it's ass kicked. The D-Wave solves an annealing optimization problem. The analog computer called "my lunch" solves those problems on a far larger scale every time I put it in the microwave and the cheese melts.
Except that, as per the article, somebody has shown a purely classical algorithm that reproduces the bimodal success distribution. The blog author in the article actually accepts that distribution as evidence (finally) that the D-Wave is actually doing something quantum, but then has to back off on it when that result comes up.
Maybe you can't, but when I was in university we had to wire up transistors to make gates, then wire up gates to make adders, then wire up adders to make ALUs, then wire up ALUs to make computers. Then we went and wrote assemblers and compilers to run on those. They were simple and limited, yes, but the concepts are just the same. The problem with D-Wave is that nobody is really sure how their computers work, on any level.
That's the problem - nobody is sure if it really IS a quantum computer. If it were just a slow quantum computer, it would be interesting. If it's a slow classical computer, it's not. Some people would like to know which it is before they buy one and their engineers invest a lot of time "learn[ing] what kinds of problems can be solved on the hardware."
Also the "get much more powerful going forward" is in doubt. There's a lot of expert criticism that D-Wave's approach cannot be easily scaled up because they've neglected error correction and some other things. In fact, that's where much of the suggestion that D-Wave's machines are not quantum computers comes from - they've already managed to scale WAY past what other people can do, and the suggestion is that in so doing they've lost the quantum part of the quantum computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I was recently in Utah and we were chatting with the waitress in the bar. We'd been a little surprised at the "recommended" 18% tip since arriving in Utah. She told us that minimum wage for servers was something ridiculous like $2.50. So we all tipped 20%, cash, handed directly to her.
In sane places, minimum wage is minimum wage, no matter what you're doing. Tips are not a way for restaurants to advertise cheaper rates, they're an optional incentive the customer can use to reward good service. Anything else is just a false advertising scam.
You seem to be confusing c, the speed of light in a vacuum, with 3.00 x 10^8, the number describing the speed of light in a vacuum using units defined to particular international standards. The speed of light doesn't change when you measure it in m/s, km/h or ft/day. You can of course define any units you want, with any silly inconsistencies you want, and can make up all kinds of silly results based on those. Real measurements aren't arbitrary, although they can be made to seem so when you choose an inconsistent measurement system. We try not to do that.
A star's gravity is a very efficient containment field for a fusion generator. It generates pressures easily capable of sustaining a fusion reaction, and doesn't use any power. We've had great difficulty duplicating that on a smaller scale.
You seem to have an odd disdain for gravity.
If you're trying to understand, perhaps you should read the explanation without dismissing it as pedantic.
Ah, so colourful, the Slashdot crazies.
I don't think you properly understand the implications of changing bases, possibly because you say you learned about it from Slashdot. Mathematics doesn't care what base you use. When I took honours calculus we didn't really use numbers at all - everything was symbolic. Number systems are just convenient ways we use to represent values that are larger (or smaller) than the number of unique symbols we care to make use of. As someone else pointed out, pi is pi no matter what base you use. If you calculate the circumference of a circle from the radius using base-whatever (using precisely the regular formula), the result, converted into base-something-else will be the same as if you'd done the whole computation in base-something-else. The math doesn't care.
You started with the (incorrect) idea that math only works in base 10 and ended up with the (also incorrect) idea that math changes depending on what base you use. That's like expecting math to only work in English, or change if you speak French instead of English.
Also, there's no such thing as a base-zero system. A counting system that doesn't use any symbols is useless because it can't represent any numbers.
That bunch of shit generates a very efficient containment field. We have trouble doing that on a smaller scale.
Fine. I'll pass on the unstructured plastic armour, thanks.
Kevlar is only useful for repelling bullets if it's spun and woven into fabric. In other words, you don't want a printer, you want a loom.
Thanks, but I like having things like modern electronics. I think there are some Luddite groups that might like to have you though.
The Chewbacca defense applied to quantum mechanics. Congratulations.
Do you not believe that the Sun is moving?
That's a pretty silly example, seeing as how it's wrong. If you choose to define a "metre" as the "width of an atom" then you will still not be able to win a race with a beam of light any more than I could run faster than a Ferrari. You might be able to travel more metres per second, but so would the light.
You can only detect the superimposition given information transmitted in a normal way, so you can never detect it faster than a normal signal takes to travel to you.
We're very good at measurement. Quantum mechanics only says that you can't measure everything exactly at the same time, you have to make lots of measurements and use statistics. Which is what we do anyway.
I knew a guy in grad school who made oil by putting animal crap in the microwave. I guess you could call the microwave an "oil printer" if you wanted to be colourful. You also didn't want to warm up your lunch in his lab.
"How much birth control does the average person give to impoverished nations?"
Not as much as we should, because it's unpopular with the religious lobby?
I think I'll pass on the plastic armour.
You've failed to understand the US pro-gun lobby. Their basic point is that Americans can't be compared to anybody else in the world because they're special. American violent crime stats are high because Americans are inherently violent. Furthermore, the gun-ownership to violence relationship works oppositely in the US. So if you want to see absolutely over the top violence, take away their guns!
Personally I think it's hogwash and the average American is just like the average anybody else except he is more likely to own a gun.
That might be considerably overestimating the world market for $15 million machines that don't do what they say they do.
"I was educated about the nature of Base-10 computing. Prior to this, I'd spent my entire life thinking that Base-10 WAS mathematics."
Really? We had to do some base-10 computing in undergrad, of the BCD nature. It was a pain in the ass and everyone was glad to get back to good old base 2. And that was base-10 coded in base-2. I haven't heard of a computer using base-10 natively since the ones in the middle of the 20th century that wore skirts.
It would presumably get it's ass kicked. The D-Wave solves an annealing optimization problem. The analog computer called "my lunch" solves those problems on a far larger scale every time I put it in the microwave and the cheese melts.
Except that, as per the article, somebody has shown a purely classical algorithm that reproduces the bimodal success distribution. The blog author in the article actually accepts that distribution as evidence (finally) that the D-Wave is actually doing something quantum, but then has to back off on it when that result comes up.
Maybe you can't, but when I was in university we had to wire up transistors to make gates, then wire up gates to make adders, then wire up adders to make ALUs, then wire up ALUs to make computers. Then we went and wrote assemblers and compilers to run on those. They were simple and limited, yes, but the concepts are just the same. The problem with D-Wave is that nobody is really sure how their computers work, on any level.
That's the problem - nobody is sure if it really IS a quantum computer. If it were just a slow quantum computer, it would be interesting. If it's a slow classical computer, it's not. Some people would like to know which it is before they buy one and their engineers invest a lot of time "learn[ing] what kinds of problems can be solved on the hardware."
Also the "get much more powerful going forward" is in doubt. There's a lot of expert criticism that D-Wave's approach cannot be easily scaled up because they've neglected error correction and some other things. In fact, that's where much of the suggestion that D-Wave's machines are not quantum computers comes from - they've already managed to scale WAY past what other people can do, and the suggestion is that in so doing they've lost the quantum part of the quantum computer.
Dear World,
Our previous $15 million dollar machine wasn't as fast as your Dell, but this one is, honest!
Experimental machines people are writing academic papers about are one thing, but this is a commercial product, with commercial claims made about it.