This software interface simply overwhelms me. There is too much onscreen for my eyes to cope with, a normal program will bring up a dialog box which clearly separates the current active process from the background, Blender does not.
I have a long 3d heritage starting way back on the Amiga with Real3d and Lightwave, I went through Imagine and more recently have gotten used to Poser. I do use a wide variety of software and don't ever expect myself to be even remotely good at using things until I have had a great deal of experience with them.
I am not against adapting to software and give each program I need enough time to learn, however Blender is one of the only programs I have ever used which has made me literally pull my hair out because I just can't see it.
I have attempted to follow the instructions and have read numerous online manuals and books about it because I genuinely want to use it. I would love for a simple standard interface version and clearer separators.
I incidentally get a similar feeling when I am in a shop and I stand too close to the shelves. I have to stand back to see the products without getting distracted by the contents on the labels (instead of looking for a specific magazine my eyes feel overpowered by all the different images).
Every single time I have tried it I get lost. I am certain its really powerful, but when I cannot even use the file request dialog (oh wait, sorry its just a panel that blends in with the rest of the UI and has no hint of a "Select" or "Open" button).
I can normally find my way around software but its been enough to make me curse it a few times - every single time I swear to myself I will try the next version in the hopes of getting something usable.
In the UK now, Sky TV and the cable companies have digital tv replay features, you can go and re-watch popular recent shows at any time of the day - even if they were on over the watershed.
However, for those shows and movies which would not normally be shown before the watershed you have to enter you PIN to watch.
I believe this is an acceptable compromise - if you don't want your kids watching dodgy stuff, don't let them know your PIN.
I said this computer was snake oil when I saw it and I stand by this. Here is my take on their quantum computer,
They have a device which contains a collection of cells of liquidy stuff. They start each cell out at a different temperature to represent the different states in the input array. They then drop the temperature further and see where the collective group ends up. Wave height or combined temperature or something other measurable (measuring though interrupts the cells hence making another measurement invalid).
For each calculation you have to carefully configure the cell parameters to the inputs and stabilise the environment. You then begin cooling in a very balanced rate.
Another take would be like having a round bowl and placing balls around the edge (at different heights to reflect inputs) then letting them go at the same time and watching where a single target ball placed in the centre ends up (after bouncing around for a while).
Both these rely on quantum elements as does your example and they can all be considered quantum computers in a sense but you can only perform one single specific type of calculation on them.
I doubt we will ever see a computer that can see into the future and guess what result you want to any equation just by feeding it data. Each problem requires a formula and different utilisation of data and I believe we hold most hope in computing power with simple massively parallel processors (as similar are currently being considered by Intel and Amd).
Because they spent however million building a ship capable of a return voyage. It will be wasted if they just give up. I think this is invaluable research and has taken a tremendous effort by the crew to even get this far. There may not be humans on-board this time but years in the future someone may end up being saved by lessons learnt in the Hayabusa incident.
When I set up linux on old hardware as a router, I was doing the same thing. I've never released the firewall scripts I tweaked up, or even told anybody upstream of a couple of bugs I've fixed for myself.
Thats fine, you are entitled to do that and I really hope the devices work well for you. However, the minute you start making and or distributing these devices to other people, you better make those mods available as per the license you followed.
A quantum computer is really quick. It can answer really advanced problems, like "given all these bricks what is the tallest structure you can build?"
A traditional computer program would get the dimensions of one brick and the quantity of bricks and calculate the height.
A quantum computer could tell you how tall the structure is, but in order that you can do it, you have to build the structure for it so it can measure it.
I see all this crap as smoke and mirrors and nothing has so far given me anything to change my mind.
Its all lies. The camera is not sending back corrupted images, it is selectively censoring the portions of mars which contain sensitive terrorist targets.
All is not lost yet though, just look at one of the amazing images from todays bundle, it shows gullies within a crater. I really hope they manage to solve this problem.
I thought more about a Battlestar Galactica script.
The seven continents are destroyed by robots we created and must set out in a rag tag fleet of ships across the world in search of a mythological place called SeedVault. Along the way there will be plenty of wobbling cameras and infighting and they might even find a temporary home along the way.
What happens when I buy a new game and it connects to the other players in a tight mesh. It might send out a storm of packets to each of the possibly hundreds of other servers.
Will it be blocked, if so who do you see to get it unblocked, what happens if my ISP are running this software?
Kids go through phases. One week everyone is racing around the streets on their bikes, the next its football.
Then someones grandma will get a new console or a skateboard or anything else.
Inevitably, along the way, some kids will become wizards at the fad and join a school team or they will enrol in a club and the heroes of tomorrow are born.
It is not a general quantum computer. It is a single instance specific formula calculator.
Any problem that can be recast as a two-dimensional Ising model in a magnetic field problem (AKA quadratic integer programming) can in principle be solved using the approach we'll be demo'ing.
Slashdot Mirror
This software interface simply overwhelms me. There is too much onscreen for my eyes to cope with, a normal program will bring up a dialog box which clearly separates the current active process from the background, Blender does not.
I have a long 3d heritage starting way back on the Amiga with Real3d and Lightwave, I went through Imagine and more recently have gotten used to Poser. I do use a wide variety of software and don't ever expect myself to be even remotely good at using things until I have had a great deal of experience with them.
I am not against adapting to software and give each program I need enough time to learn, however Blender is one of the only programs I have ever used which has made me literally pull my hair out because I just can't see it.
I have attempted to follow the instructions and have read numerous online manuals and books about it because I genuinely want to use it. I would love for a simple standard interface version and clearer separators.
I incidentally get a similar feeling when I am in a shop and I stand too close to the shelves. I have to stand back to see the products without getting distracted by the contents on the labels (instead of looking for a specific magazine my eyes feel overpowered by all the different images).
Every single time I have tried it I get lost.
I am certain its really powerful, but when I cannot even use the file request dialog (oh wait, sorry its just a panel that blends in with the rest of the UI and has no hint of a "Select" or "Open" button).
I can normally find my way around software but its been enough to make me curse it a few times - every single time I swear to myself I will try the next version in the hopes of getting something usable.
Stop global warming.
Turn the frikking laser beam off.
That looks like a good use for tech.
On a related note, what kind of disease is this meant to cure?
Or is this the cause for the stroke in the first place?
In the UK now, Sky TV and the cable companies have digital tv replay features, you can go and re-watch popular recent shows at any time of the day - even if they were on over the watershed.
However, for those shows and movies which would not normally be shown before the watershed you have to enter you PIN to watch.
I believe this is an acceptable compromise - if you don't want your kids watching dodgy stuff, don't let them know your PIN.
I thought more about the shock from some prankster 'toothing goatse images around to unsuspecting phones.
I said this computer was snake oil when I saw it and I stand by this.
Here is my take on their quantum computer,
They have a device which contains a collection of cells of liquidy stuff.
They start each cell out at a different temperature to represent the different states in the input array.
They then drop the temperature further and see where the collective group ends up.
Wave height or combined temperature or something other measurable (measuring though interrupts the cells hence making another measurement invalid).
For each calculation you have to carefully configure the cell parameters to the inputs and stabilise the environment.
You then begin cooling in a very balanced rate.
Another take would be like having a round bowl and placing balls around the edge (at different heights to reflect inputs) then letting them go at the same time and watching where a single target ball placed in the centre ends up (after bouncing around for a while).
Both these rely on quantum elements as does your example and they can all be considered quantum computers in a sense but you can only perform one single specific type of calculation on them.
I doubt we will ever see a computer that can see into the future and guess what result you want to any equation just by feeding it data.
Each problem requires a formula and different utilisation of data and I believe we hold most hope in computing power with simple massively parallel processors (as similar are currently being considered by Intel and Amd).
Because they spent however million building a ship capable of a return voyage.
It will be wasted if they just give up.
I think this is invaluable research and has taken a tremendous effort by the crew to even get this far.
There may not be humans on-board this time but years in the future someone may end up being saved by lessons learnt in the Hayabusa incident.
(yes, it does sound star trekkish)
When I set up linux on old hardware as a router, I was doing the same thing. I've never released the firewall scripts I tweaked up, or even told anybody upstream of a couple of bugs I've fixed for myself.
Thats fine, you are entitled to do that and I really hope the devices work well for you.
However, the minute you start making and or distributing these devices to other people, you better make those mods available as per the license you followed.
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A quantum computer is really quick.
It can answer really advanced problems, like "given all these bricks what is the tallest structure you can build?"
A traditional computer program would get the dimensions of one brick and the quantity of bricks and calculate the height.
A quantum computer could tell you how tall the structure is, but in order that you can do it, you have to build the structure for it so it can measure it.
I see all this crap as smoke and mirrors and nothing has so far given me anything to change my mind.
So, Captain copyright is dead.
Is it 85 years after death that his copyright expires and we can create our own free version of him?
Only 84 years 11 months and 3 weeks to go...
Sounds like Clippy has been re-incarnated.
*shudder*
If thats the case, divx avi movies rule the world ;)
Its all lies.
The camera is not sending back corrupted images, it is selectively censoring the portions of mars which contain sensitive terrorist targets.
All is not lost yet though, just look at one of the amazing images from todays bundle, it shows gullies within a crater.
I really hope they manage to solve this problem.
Open-source trojans.
Can somebody point me to the repository so I can include them in my projects?
Thats gotta be a pretty massive database, any ideas about the tech running underneath?
It can't work that well.
Afterall, you are posting in one of his articles.
I thought more about a Battlestar Galactica script.
The seven continents are destroyed by robots we created and must set out in a rag tag fleet of ships across the world in search of a mythological place called SeedVault.
Along the way there will be plenty of wobbling cameras and infighting and they might even find a temporary home along the way.
Perhaps it performs its detection based upon the evil bit.
What happens when I buy a new game and it connects to the other players in a tight mesh.
It might send out a storm of packets to each of the possibly hundreds of other servers.
Will it be blocked, if so who do you see to get it unblocked, what happens if my ISP are running this software?
Kids go through phases.
One week everyone is racing around the streets on their bikes, the next its football.
Then someones grandma will get a new console or a skateboard or anything else.
Inevitably, along the way, some kids will become wizards at the fad and join a school team or they will enrol in a club and the heroes of tomorrow are born.
Just wait until they take you to a small off-campus building and lock you up there for a while.
Those MIT hackers won't get away with it again.
Actually, this won't crack vista, but apparantly it will confirm the seating plan for a wedding.
It is not a general quantum computer.
It is a single instance specific formula calculator.
Any problem that can be recast as a two-dimensional Ising model in a magnetic field problem (AKA quadratic integer programming) can in principle be solved using the approach we'll be demo'ing.
Thats from their blog
There were some interesting questions asked and lots of people are sceptical.