"But in the same way that it is impossible to build a sailing ship capable of escape velocity no matter how you design the sails or what materials you discover along the way"
It's impossible for now. But what if there is a physics system below the quantum mechanics we have today that allows us to circumvent gravity? quantum entanglement is quite a big hint that there might be such a system. And I am not talking about hidden variables.
"There are many problems in this world that simply cannot be solved."
Have patience. If God did, we can do it to. We are made after God's image anyway.
Perhaps the alien ship could not flight within Earth's atmosphere with FTL speed, either by choice (because generating a local wormhole (assuming that they used wormholes) would consume Earth) or because they had a malfunction in their equipment.
On the contrary, those intolerant people will suddenly feel much closer to the other humans, thanks to those aliens. And they will not dare declare war on aliens, since it would be almost impossible to win against a species with interstellar space faring capabilities.
"It is possible through the use of mathematics to prove that very long-range manned interstellar flight requires conflicting constraints, that no matter how good the technology of some pictured civilization, it will never be able to achieve such a goal."
You mean, our (i.e. human) mathematics. But since we have not yet discovered the grand unified theory, it's possible we are missing something which is vital for space travel.
Let's not forget mysteries like quantum entanglement...the universe is still full of surprises.
Bullied kids should go through martial arts training. When the bully hears you have some martial arts training, no matter how small, they will think twice about bullying you. The training does not need to be exhaustive (don't go for the championship!), but basic enough so as that the kid develops some self esteem and some basic skills.
I wonder what the pre-loaded O/S would be...for $525, these computers do not sound Vista capable, so I presume XP will be loaded on them. But wouldn't that hurt Microsoft's image?
If Linux distro's were women......I would have 3 of them waiting for me in my room (*cough* mom's basement *cough*), ready for me to turn them on, fsck them, apply my widgets on their desktop (with some penguins thrown in for fun), without ever blocking, denying me access, or saying the same stupid things ("you want to light a cigarette dear? cancel, deny or allow?") at the end...
"The OS should be broken up into fairly independent services and the protocol of each service known, shown, and loggable."
If only Microsoft had followed this advice...right now Windows is:
1) a big mess of monolithic kernel where every driver can bring the system down. 2) a big mess of a single API (Win32) which contains everything under the sun. 3) a big mess of a message queue which can deliver GUI messages, process-related messages (quit, shutdown etc), socket messages (some async socket functionality depends on it), and myriads of other things.
The words 'layers', 'services', 'modularity' are unknown to Microsoft...
"ID is unique because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data"
OH PLEEAAASE! what empirical data ID has? that the human eye is so complex that it could not evolve by itself? Please show us a site where empirical data that verify ID are posted.
"it shouldn't be religion because don't actually argue for a "God,""
Yeah right. Can you say 'hypocrisy'? "intelligent designer" means "creator of the universe" i.e. "god".
Being together with other people does not automatically mean not being anti-social. For example, being in a club full of people where the music is at 100 db does not give you a chance to communicate and form relationships. Same goes with LAN parties: everyone is fixated on the games, with little room for anything else.
Lots of Quantum-C jokes about pointers pointing to NULL and valid objects at the same time are possible here...oh, the horror of debugging a Quantum-C program!!!
The NOT gate is a simple bit inverter, but the CNOT gate (CONTROLLED-NOT) has two inputs, using the 2nd bit to invert or not the first bit. The article mentions the CNOT gate, not the NOT gate. In classic digital electronics, the CNOT gate equals the XOR gate:
We have 2 cases: a) the universe is deterministic, b) the universe is not deterministic (this one is favored by quantum mechanics).
In case a), the decisions you make are already predetermined by the paths of particles. No free will there, and an entity which knows the exact initial state of the universe can predict its outcome.
In case b), the world is truly random, it can not be predicted. Therefore, any decision you make, is the outcome of random processes. No free will there, as well: the universe drives your decision making process, albeit in a random way.
It's not possible to transmit information faster than light by using quantum teleportation (yet). Suppose we have two entangled particles A and B. If you measure particle A, the other particle B gets to a symmetrical state, but since you don't know what the state of A was before measuring it, you have to transfer the information to B by a classical way. If you don't do that, B will have a non-meaningful measurement.
Slashdot Mirror
"But in the same way that it is impossible to build a sailing ship capable of escape velocity no matter how you design the sails or what materials you discover along the way"
It's impossible for now. But what if there is a physics system below the quantum mechanics we have today that allows us to circumvent gravity? quantum entanglement is quite a big hint that there might be such a system. And I am not talking about hidden variables.
"There are many problems in this world that simply cannot be solved."
Have patience. If God did, we can do it to. We are made after God's image anyway.
Perhaps the alien ship could not flight within Earth's atmosphere with FTL speed, either by choice (because generating a local wormhole (assuming that they used wormholes) would consume Earth) or because they had a malfunction in their equipment.
On the contrary, those intolerant people will suddenly feel much closer to the other humans, thanks to those aliens. And they will not dare declare war on aliens, since it would be almost impossible to win against a species with interstellar space faring capabilities.
"It is possible through the use of mathematics to prove that very long-range manned interstellar flight requires conflicting constraints, that no matter how good the technology of some pictured civilization, it will never be able to achieve such a goal."
You mean, our (i.e. human) mathematics. But since we have not yet discovered the grand unified theory, it's possible we are missing something which is vital for space travel.
Let's not forget mysteries like quantum entanglement...the universe is still full of surprises.
But the whole thing was started by USA's actions. America is not directly responsible for those deaths, but it is ethically guilty for those events.
Except if DNF goes gold at that time...
Neither view (i.e. the infinitely existing universe vs the big bang) makes sense, because neither answers the question of 'why'.
Bullied kids should go through martial arts training. When the bully hears you have some martial arts training, no matter how small, they will think twice about bullying you. The training does not need to be exhaustive (don't go for the championship!), but basic enough so as that the kid develops some self esteem and some basic skills.
I wonder what the pre-loaded O/S would be...for $525, these computers do not sound Vista capable, so I presume XP will be loaded on them. But wouldn't that hurt Microsoft's image?
If Linux distro's were women... ...I would have 3 of them waiting for me in my room (*cough* mom's basement *cough*), ready for me to turn them on, fsck them, apply my widgets on their desktop (with some penguins thrown in for fun), without ever blocking, denying me access, or saying the same stupid things ("you want to light a cigarette dear? cancel, deny or allow?") at the end...
"The OS should be broken up into fairly independent services and the protocol of each service known, shown, and loggable."
If only Microsoft had followed this advice...right now Windows is:
1) a big mess of monolithic kernel where every driver can bring the system down.
2) a big mess of a single API (Win32) which contains everything under the sun.
3) a big mess of a message queue which can deliver GUI messages, process-related messages (quit, shutdown etc), socket messages (some async socket functionality depends on it), and myriads of other things.
The words 'layers', 'services', 'modularity' are unknown to Microsoft...
You must be German.
Could it run Duke Nukem Forever though?
"ID is unique because it really is not straight philosophy as it has too many ties to empirical data"
OH PLEEAAASE! what empirical data ID has? that the human eye is so complex that it could not evolve by itself? Please show us a site where empirical data that verify ID are posted.
"it shouldn't be religion because don't actually argue for a "God,""
Yeah right. Can you say 'hypocrisy'? "intelligent designer" means "creator of the universe" i.e. "god".
Being together with other people does not automatically mean not being anti-social. For example, being in a club full of people where the music is at 100 db does not give you a chance to communicate and form relationships. Same goes with LAN parties: everyone is fixated on the games, with little room for anything else.
"Mars needs mass"
So perhaps we can send a certain Microsoft person there first? and a few chairs?
"For me, Babylon 5 developed characters and story arcs in a credible and realistic way. People are stupid, weak, selfish and greedy."
Exactly the thing I do not want to see in a sci-fi show. That's why I loved ST-TNG.
Oh please...everybody knows that in 2272 was the year that Kirk's 5-year mission ended...
Why should RFID chips be implanted? can't we just have them in the form of electronic cards?
Lots of Quantum-C jokes about pointers pointing to NULL and valid objects at the same time are possible here...oh, the horror of debugging a Quantum-C program!!!
The NOT gate is a simple bit inverter, but the CNOT gate (CONTROLLED-NOT) has two inputs, using the 2nd bit to invert or not the first bit. The article mentions the CNOT gate, not the NOT gate. In classic digital electronics, the CNOT gate equals the XOR gate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnot
We have 2 cases: a) the universe is deterministic, b) the universe is not deterministic (this one is favored by quantum mechanics).
In case a), the decisions you make are already predetermined by the paths of particles. No free will there, and an entity which knows the exact initial state of the universe can predict its outcome.
In case b), the world is truly random, it can not be predicted. Therefore, any decision you make, is the outcome of random processes. No free will there, as well: the universe drives your decision making process, albeit in a random way.
It's not possible to transmit information faster than light by using quantum teleportation (yet). Suppose we have two entangled particles A and B. If you measure particle A, the other particle B gets to a symmetrical state, but since you don't know what the state of A was before measuring it, you have to transfer the information to B by a classical way. If you don't do that, B will have a non-meaningful measurement.
"In Microsoft-land, e-mail does you."
...simply because it's a marketing term with no connection to technology.