>the frogs were living in pristine habitats, unharmed by pollution or deforestation
And what's the point, then? If they cannot blame Western society, racism, the patriarchy or at least Donald Trump, the finding is worse than useless but in itself racist, misogynist and islamophobe.
I suggest the responsible scientists should be fired and sentenced to 10 years of compulsory gender sensibility and diversity training.
It's not about storing. Storing means that something can be retrieved. In that sense a qubit can store 2 classical bits (using superdense coding), the decoding procedure uses a additional "fresh" qubit and there is afaik no exponential buildup - so nothing to write home about.
Normalization reduces the degrees of freedom by one, the irrelevance of the overall phase also. So total number of real numbers is reduced by two. The state of n qubits can therefor be described by 2*2^n-2 real numbers (instead of 2*2^n). It does not store those numbers. (real numbers make a lousy measure of information capacity anyway, as a real number can be bijectively mapped onto a sequence of real numbers)
Another question is how accurately you can reconstruct a state by repeated measurements of identically prepared states (quantum tomography).
In all cases (as with any analog computer) noise and imperfections and (quantum specific) decoherence are the real limiting factors.
> Quantum computers get their parallelizing power because qubits don't have to be just 0 or 1, like the bits in an ordinary computer.
Not at all. This is a trivial property a quantum computer shares with any analog computer (quantum or not). They get their power from the fact, that the state spaces of interacting quantum subsystems combine with the tensor product (dimensions multiply) and not with the outer product (dimensions add), like classical systems do.
One qubit (ignoring phase and normalization) can be described by 2 complex numbers. 10 isolated qubits which only interact by classical signals form a product state which can be described by 2*10 = 20 complex numbers. But the state of 10 qubits entangled qubits (i.e. qubits which have interacted quantum mechanically in a non trivial way) needs 2^10 = 1024 complex numbers.
A measurement still only gives 10 classical bits of information, however, so the art is to manipulate the state such that interesting values get high and "dull" values get low probability.
[...] lead to depression and burn-outs because they drink less, smoke less, work harder, take better care of their health and is in many ways much less rebellious than in the past.
fixed that for you.
Todays Millennial lifestyle would have made dystopian sci-fi material not too long ago.
I agree that there is Babylonian confusion on the term "left" and "right". I have many older who self define as "left" and have nothing to do with Identity politics or mass immigration.
I, for one, derive my conception of left and right from there actual historic origins which far predate Karl Marx, namely the French revolution. The Jacobins set at the left of the speaker and this is where our political left-right scale comes from. The Terror of Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety was the first "modern" left government.
So "left" my book means totalitarian, etatist, revolutionary, anti-democratic and violent. They stand for total control of the individual, are opposed to personal liberties and want to destroy any cultural and historic identity of their subjects, which they call "progressive". A tell-tale sign of left ideologies is the use of the word "reactionary" for the political opposition.
This definition has served me well, as leftists are the habit of constantly changing and arguing about the ideological fineprint.
> SJWs have all the hallmarks of right-wing extremists
Its the other way around: National socialism is yet another left movement, historically grown out of opposition to Stalin's international (but in reality Russian, i.e. Sowjet-) socialism. The people saw what happened in Russia, considered the right (i.e. the conservatives) as too weak to protect them from the communist mob and turned to the Nazis - and got essentially the same deal. Shit happens.
I think my post has been sufficiently clear, so I will not reiterate everything.
The whole leftist concept of "diversity" and "identity politics" is broken. It's just an attempt to rebrand racism, sexism and whole host of other prejudices - and for the same purpose: To gain power over others. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. Altering the victims does not change that. Whoever uses a term like "toxic white male" is a racist and sexist asshole. And yes, labeling someone "toxic" is dehumanizing - and that's exactly how it is intended.
That being said, these are exactly the qualities which in a technical project do not matter at all. You need diversity, yes - in technical skills (esp. in larger projects). And you need homogeneity - in mission and purpose (there has to be a consensus about what the project is about). Race, sex, where you come from matter as much as your eye color, shoe size or blood group. If these random attributes, which can be shared by any dog, is what one considers his "identity", then he is not even acknowledging himself as a human being.
I really thought we would be over this bullshit since the 80ies - but it's coming back with a vengeance. Then it was the KKK, now it is the SJWs.
Another main point of yours: Yes, I consider software, and esp. open source software, which is what the manifesto is about, as free speech, just like art or other forms of human expression. It is a personal right and anyone and any group of people must be free to engage in it on their own terms. No one else has any say about it. No one has the right to pressure them to accept any "code of conduct" or to impose any "rules" on them. If you think you can do it better, then just do it, and otherwise mind your own business.
Obviously, we, as a society, need to relearn to accept each others freedoms again or we will end up in a dystopian totalitarian shithole.
- We do not believe that our value as human beings is intrinsically tied to our value as knowledge workers. Our professions do not define us; we are more than the work we do.
A strawman. An open source project is not a country. If you can't play football, there is not much point in joining a football team. You can still be a valuable human being - but probably not a valuable member of this particular team.
- We believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills.
In a technical project? Most certainly not. Without technical skills there is no project to begin with.
- We can add the most value as professionals by drawing on the diversity of our identities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
No you cannot. The most value in a technical project is invariably added by your technical contributions. " identities" (leftist newspeak for race and sex) add nothing, (non technical) backgrounds and experiences might add a little in some circumstances (internationalisation, barrier free access, etc.).
Homogeneity is an antipattern.
This is an anti-statement.
- We can be successful while leading rich, full lives. Our success and value is not dependent on exerting all of our energy on contributing to software.
This is up to you. Your value to the project and thus within the project will depend on your contribution, however.
We have the obligation to use our positions of privilege, however tenuous, to improve the lives of others.
No. You have an obligation not to harm others, but that's it.
- We must make room for people who are not like us to enter our field and succeed there. This means not only inviting them in, but making sure that they are supported and empowered.
No. We don't have to "make room" for anyone. Anyone can join, but there is no entitlement to anything. Just like a tennis club does not have to "make room" for football players.
- We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.
This is utter BS. e.g. Every OS software alternative hurts the well-being of ppl. trying to make a living from proprietary software in the same field. Almost anything can be used for good and evil purposes.
- We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors.
Most certainly not. The value of technical contributors in a technical project is obviously higher. Again, a software project is not a country.
- We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right.
Everyone is free to work on or start his own OS project, so yeah, of course it's a right, namely free speech and freedom of expression. The SJW want to make it a "privilege" by claiming the power to deny you this right.
- The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions.
I understand toxic substances, maybe even a "toxic" environment, put toxic people? What do they mean by that? "unworthy life", "vermin" that need to be exterminated or at least silenced - just by virtue of not agreeing with them. And they claim moral superiority? Disgusting.
- We are devoted to practicing compassion and not contempt.
Yeah, right!
We refuse to belittle other people because of their choices of tools, techniques, or languages.
No, you belittle them because of their opinions, their personality or how the go about their own projects, even if they make their work available to you free of charge and without even having to ask.
- The field of software development embraces technical change, and is made better by also accepting social change.
"social change" here means nothing less than "our rule".
- We strive to reflect our values in everything that we do. We recognize that values that are espoused but not practiced are not values at all.
In the light of the above, I can only interpret this as a threat.
We've read similar wording a thousand times, be it in academia, in schools or in corporate codes of conduct and the purpose is always the same:
It's a claim to power. It's an attempt to wrest control over projects from its creators. Those who have the skill, the talent and diligence to create valuable stuff should submit to the new masters by virtue of their claimed "moral superiority". And this "moral superiority" - backed by virtual or actual lynch mobs - is all they bring to the party. They usually have neither the skill, talent nor diligence to contribute anything valuable to the project - if they would, they would try to build a reputation the old fashioned way: by hard work and quality contributions. Instead, they want positions as "Chief diversity officers", political commissars and blockwarts - and obviously, merit can have nothing to do with it.
In the field of open source software, if anyone is uncontent with how a project is run, he (or rather she) is free to make her own fork and try to do a better job. But that is not what they want. It not about a job, nor about a piece of work - it's about control over other people. This is their one and only goal. The project itself is but a vehicle to this, and will be driven down and rendered dysfunctional in the process, just as the universities have been, only this time, it will take mere months instead of decades, as no diplomas, tenures and wealthy university funds are at line - the only currency in the Open Source world is the very meritocratic reputation, they set out to destroy. Once it's gone, the most valuable contributors will leave for greener pastures.
Ideas, even good ones, are one dime a dozen. With a project like the Linux Kernel, it's all about the quality of work and the minimization of errors. The last thing you want is even more dudes voicing ideas without without being willing or able to back them up by excellent code.
So the better question is: How many bad ideas, unmaintainable code and bugs have been spared us, because a not so brilliant individual was too afraid to bring it up in fear of facing bulling and ridicule?
Fear of shame and ridicule is a powerful motivator - and an effective filter: Either you put in the extra effort, polish your contribution and double and triple check your code - or you shut up.
And also: How much pride can you take in praise from someone, who is "positive" about everything, regardless of quality.
The extremists from the left, the cultural Marxists, the SJWs have so far destroyed anything they got their hands on: Academia, schools, the media. Linux will be no exception.
If there is any doubt on their agenda, read "The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto", but in fact, the title says it all. What we're experiencing is a Maoist cultural revolution and the new mob rulers will install themselves in each and every corner of society.
No, that would be dignity. Everybody starts with it and I can only be harmed by your own actions (i.e. by undignified behavior). Dignity is an unalienable human right.
With respect, it's the other way around: Nobody starts with it, it has to be earned and it depends on how other people view you and thus only indirectly depends on your own actions. You have no right for the respect of other people.
You have to understand what is considered "extremist content" in those European countries (like my own) which already have similar regulation in their national law: criticising Islam, criticising EU-Migration Policies, reporting on crime, discussing non p.c. scientific findings, etc.
Essentially, anything can and will be deleted which the Government considers objectionable. A one-hour deadline guarantees that there is no possibility for carriers to even take a look at the material to be censored or raise objections. The requirement can only be met, if the deletion is essentially automatic.
This was called "emancipation" by then. And it used to be about equal rights and gender neutrality, not double standards and privileges for one sex at the cost of the other as the very term "feminism" already implies.
> Seriously, when in your life has the best answer to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it all works out for the best?
More often than I can count. Here in Austria, we even have a word for it: "aussitzen".
Also, there's a whole class of arbitrarily complex problems - mostly political in nature and involving attention seeking and vocal minorities seeking more than their fair share of power - where ignoring is the proper and only solution.
First distro was SLS in 1992, kernel 0.something on about 50 3.5" disks. 1994 i got the German Slackware version from "Software und System Entwicklung mbH" aka S.u.S.E., the fvwm-based desktop theme of which I am still using to this day (nothing beats the goodstuff pager), although it gets progressively harder to retrofit newer distros (currently debian 8.7 at home and debian 7.9 at work).
Theres a similar issue in German: v.Chr. (vor Christus = BC) and n.Chr. (nach Christus = AD). However, the only "scholars" who used v.u.Z. and n.u.Z. (vor / nach unserer Zeitrechnung) were the communists in the former GDR.
> You probably don't realize how threatening a room full of strange men feels to many women.
If this is the case, you either manage to cope with it really fast, or you are mentally unfit to work in a job, which requires you to be in a room full of strangers on a regular basis. It's really as simple as that.
According to the info on the linked wiki page, this seems to be a decent guy which worked as "professional wrestler, actor, political commentator, author, naval veteran, and politician". He was elected Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota before running for governor, so he had political experience and was certainly not a joke candidate.
in the same timespan. It's easy to deplore the numbers, but the actual decision on who exactly has to disappear to make room for a wild-life zoo - and why - is not so easy and can certainly not be avoided by dropping condoms form helicopters.
On the other hand, man is part of nature - and humans and his house-animals are not even included in the survey. Those should be worth a lot more than your random wild beast (for us, but slashdot [i]is[/i] a human website after all).
So they improved the decoherence by a factor of 10. This is nice, but no reason to abandon your RSA keys just yet. The real problem with quantum computing is not decoherence (i.e. the losing of superpositions due to uncontrolled entanglement with the environment) - its quantitative imperfections.
A quantum computer is basically an analog device. As you cannot observe states, there also is no way to "refresh" slightly inaccurate states, as a normal digital computer does. A NOT has to be exactly 180 degrees and not 179 or 181. No problem in toy or laboratory setups, where you only do a handful of gates and keeping your system isolated is the (currently) much bigger problem. 1% error might seem quite good in this setting.
But for any meaningful computation, you will require many millions of gates and your experimental accuracy will have to keep pace with that - in addition to keeping your system from decohering (which - at least in theory - can be mitigated by quantum error correction). Rotation angles would have to be not 1% but 0.0000001% accurate.
The problem is too remote to get much consideration now, but I'm sure that it will prove to be the final (and probably insurmountable) roadblock for any real-world use of quantum computers.
Slashdot Mirror
>the frogs were living in pristine habitats, unharmed by pollution or deforestation
And what's the point, then? If they cannot blame Western society, racism, the patriarchy or at least Donald Trump, the finding is worse than useless but in itself racist, misogynist and islamophobe.
I suggest the responsible scientists should be fired and sentenced to 10 years of compulsory gender sensibility and diversity training.
"The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
It's not about storing. Storing means that something can be retrieved. In that sense a qubit can store 2 classical bits (using superdense coding), the decoding procedure uses a additional "fresh" qubit and there is afaik no exponential buildup - so nothing to write home about.
Normalization reduces the degrees of freedom by one, the irrelevance of the overall phase also. So total number of real numbers is reduced by two. The state of n qubits can therefor be described by 2*2^n-2 real numbers (instead of 2*2^n). It does not store those numbers. (real numbers make a lousy measure of information capacity anyway, as a real number can be bijectively mapped onto a sequence of real numbers)
Another question is how accurately you can reconstruct a state by repeated measurements of identically prepared states (quantum tomography).
In all cases (as with any analog computer) noise and imperfections and (quantum specific) decoherence are the real limiting factors.
> Quantum computers get their parallelizing power because qubits don't have to be just 0 or 1, like the bits in an ordinary computer.
Not at all. This is a trivial property a quantum computer shares with any analog computer (quantum or not). They get their power from the fact, that the state spaces of interacting quantum subsystems combine with the tensor product (dimensions multiply) and not with the outer product (dimensions add), like classical systems do.
One qubit (ignoring phase and normalization) can be described by 2 complex numbers. 10 isolated qubits which only interact by classical signals form a product state which can be described by 2*10 = 20 complex numbers. But the state of 10 qubits entangled qubits (i.e. qubits which have interacted quantum mechanically in a non trivial way) needs 2^10 = 1024 complex numbers.
A measurement still only gives 10 classical bits of information, however, so the art is to manipulate the state such that interesting values get high and "dull" values get low probability.
ignatius
[...] lead to depression and burn-outs because they drink less, smoke less, work harder, take better care of their health and is in many ways much less rebellious than in the past.
fixed that for you.
Todays Millennial lifestyle would have made dystopian sci-fi material not too long ago.
I agree that there is Babylonian confusion on the term "left" and "right". I have many older who self define as "left" and have nothing to do with Identity politics or mass immigration.
I, for one, derive my conception of left and right from there actual historic origins which far predate Karl Marx, namely the French revolution. The Jacobins set at the left of the speaker and this is where our political left-right scale comes from. The Terror of Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety was the first "modern" left government.
So "left" my book means totalitarian, etatist, revolutionary, anti-democratic and violent. They stand for total control of the individual, are opposed to personal liberties and want to destroy any cultural and historic identity of their subjects, which they call "progressive". A tell-tale sign of left ideologies is the use of the word "reactionary" for the political opposition.
This definition has served me well, as leftists are the habit of constantly changing and arguing about the ideological fineprint.
> SJWs have all the hallmarks of right-wing extremists
Its the other way around: National socialism is yet another left movement, historically grown out of opposition to Stalin's international (but in reality Russian, i.e. Sowjet-) socialism. The people saw what happened in Russia, considered the right (i.e. the conservatives) as too weak to protect them from the communist mob and turned to the Nazis - and got essentially the same deal. Shit happens.
Torvalds 2.0: Patricia Torvalds on computing, college, feminism, and increasing diversity in tech
https://opensource.com/life/15/8/patricia-torvalds-interview
"stand in a sitting manner"
"shout in a silent manner"
This simply makes no sense, sorry.
Excellent example for Orwellian doublethink, though.
I think my post has been sufficiently clear, so I will not reiterate everything.
The whole leftist concept of "diversity" and "identity politics" is broken. It's just an attempt to rebrand racism, sexism and whole host of other prejudices - and for the same purpose: To gain power over others. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. Altering the victims does not change that. Whoever uses a term like "toxic white male" is a racist and sexist asshole. And yes, labeling someone "toxic" is dehumanizing - and that's exactly how it is intended.
That being said, these are exactly the qualities which in a technical project do not matter at all. You need diversity, yes - in technical skills (esp. in larger projects). And you need homogeneity - in mission and purpose (there has to be a consensus about what the project is about). Race, sex, where you come from matter as much as your eye color, shoe size or blood group. If these random attributes, which can be shared by any dog, is what one considers his "identity", then he is not even acknowledging himself as a human being.
I really thought we would be over this bullshit since the 80ies - but it's coming back with a vengeance. Then it was the KKK, now it is the SJWs.
Another main point of yours: Yes, I consider software, and esp. open source software, which is what the manifesto is about, as free speech, just like art or other forms of human expression. It is a personal right and anyone and any group of people must be free to engage in it on their own terms. No one else has any say about it. No one has the right to pressure them to accept any "code of conduct" or to impose any "rules" on them. If you think you can do it better, then just do it, and otherwise mind your own business.
Obviously, we, as a society, need to relearn to accept each others freedoms again or we will end up in a dystopian totalitarian shithole.
OK, I bite ...
- We do not believe that our value as human beings is intrinsically tied to our value as knowledge workers. Our professions do not define us; we are more than the work we do.
A strawman. An open source project is not a country. If you can't play football, there is not much point in joining a football team. You can still be a valuable human being - but probably not a valuable member of this particular team.
- We believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills.
In a technical project? Most certainly not. Without technical skills there is no project to begin with.
- We can add the most value as professionals by drawing on the diversity of our identities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.
No you cannot. The most value in a technical project is invariably added by your technical contributions. " identities" (leftist newspeak for race and sex) add nothing, (non technical) backgrounds and experiences might add a little in some circumstances (internationalisation, barrier free access, etc.).
Homogeneity is an antipattern.
This is an anti-statement.
- We can be successful while leading rich, full lives. Our success and value is not dependent on exerting all of our energy on contributing to software.
This is up to you. Your value to the project and thus within the project will depend on your contribution, however.
We have the obligation to use our positions of privilege, however tenuous, to improve the lives of others.
No. You have an obligation not to harm others, but that's it.
- We must make room for people who are not like us to enter our field and succeed there. This means not only inviting them in, but making sure that they are supported and empowered.
No. We don't have to "make room" for anyone. Anyone can join, but there is no entitlement to anything. Just like a tennis club does not have to "make room" for football players.
- We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.
This is utter BS. e.g. Every OS software alternative hurts the well-being of ppl. trying to make a living from proprietary software in the same field. Almost anything can be used for good and evil purposes.
- We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors.
Most certainly not. The value of technical contributors in a technical project is obviously higher. Again, a software project is not a country.
- We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right.
Everyone is free to work on or start his own OS project, so yeah, of course it's a right, namely free speech and freedom of expression. The SJW want to make it a "privilege" by claiming the power to deny you this right.
- The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions.
I understand toxic substances, maybe even a "toxic" environment, put toxic people? What do they mean by that? "unworthy life", "vermin" that need to be exterminated or at least silenced - just by virtue of not agreeing with them. And they claim moral superiority? Disgusting.
- We are devoted to practicing compassion and not contempt.
Yeah, right!
We refuse to belittle other people because of their choices of tools, techniques, or languages.
No, you belittle them because of their opinions, their personality or how the go about their own projects, even if they make their work available to you free of charge and without even having to ask.
- The field of software development embraces technical change, and is made better by also accepting social change.
"social change" here means nothing less than "our rule".
- We strive to reflect our values in everything that we do. We recognize that values that are espoused but not practiced are not values at all.
In the light of the above, I can only interpret this as a threat.
We've read similar wording a thousand times, be it in academia, in schools or in corporate codes of conduct and the purpose is always the same:
It's a claim to power. It's an attempt to wrest control over projects from its creators. Those who have the skill, the talent and diligence to create valuable stuff should submit to the new masters by virtue of their claimed "moral superiority". And this "moral superiority" - backed by virtual or actual lynch mobs - is all they bring to the party. They usually have neither the skill, talent nor diligence to contribute anything valuable to the project - if they would, they would try to build a reputation the old fashioned way: by hard work and quality contributions. Instead, they want positions as "Chief diversity officers", political commissars and blockwarts - and obviously, merit can have nothing to do with it.
In the field of open source software, if anyone is uncontent with how a project is run, he (or rather she) is free to make her own fork and try to do a better job. But that is not what they want. It not about a job, nor about a piece of work - it's about control over other people. This is their one and only goal. The project itself is but a vehicle to this, and will be driven down and rendered dysfunctional in the process, just as the universities have been, only this time, it will take mere months instead of decades, as no diplomas, tenures and wealthy university funds are at line - the only currency in the Open Source world is the very meritocratic reputation, they set out to destroy. Once it's gone, the most valuable contributors will leave for greener pastures.
Ideas, even good ones, are one dime a dozen. With a project like the Linux Kernel, it's all about the quality of work and the minimization of errors. The last thing you want is even more dudes voicing ideas without without being willing or able to back them up by excellent code.
So the better question is: How many bad ideas, unmaintainable code and bugs have been spared us, because a not so brilliant individual was too afraid to bring it up in fear of facing bulling and ridicule?
Fear of shame and ridicule is a powerful motivator - and an effective filter: Either you put in the extra effort, polish your contribution and double and triple check your code - or you shut up.
And also: How much pride can you take in praise from someone, who is "positive" about everything, regardless of quality.
The extremists from the left, the cultural Marxists, the SJWs have so far destroyed anything they got their hands on: Academia, schools, the media. Linux will be no exception.
If there is any doubt on their agenda, read "The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto", but in fact, the title says it all. What we're experiencing is a Maoist cultural revolution and the new mob rulers will install themselves in each and every corner of society.
Pop quiz: who deserves respect?
Answer: everyone.
No, that would be dignity. Everybody starts with it and I can only be harmed by your own actions (i.e. by undignified behavior). Dignity is an unalienable human right.
With respect, it's the other way around: Nobody starts with it, it has to be earned and it depends on how other people view you and thus only indirectly depends on your own actions. You have no right for the respect of other people.
ignatius
You have to understand what is considered "extremist content" in those European countries (like my own) which already have similar regulation in their national law: criticising Islam, criticising EU-Migration Policies, reporting on crime, discussing non p.c. scientific findings, etc.
Essentially, anything can and will be deleted which the Government considers objectionable. A one-hour deadline guarantees that there is no possibility for carriers to even take a look at the material to be censored or raise objections. The requirement can only be met, if the deletion is essentially automatic.
This was called "emancipation" by then. And it used to be about equal rights and gender neutrality, not double standards and privileges for one sex at the cost of the other as the very term "feminism" already implies.
> Seriously, when in your life has the best answer to a complex problem been to ignore it and hope it all works out for the best?
More often than I can count. Here in Austria, we even have a word for it: "aussitzen".
Also, there's a whole class of arbitrarily complex problems - mostly political in nature and involving attention seeking and vocal minorities seeking more than their fair share of power - where ignoring is the proper and only solution.
ignatius
First distro was SLS in 1992, kernel 0.something on about 50 3.5" disks. 1994 i got the German Slackware version from "Software und System Entwicklung mbH" aka S.u.S.E., the fvwm-based desktop theme of which I am still using to this day (nothing beats the goodstuff pager), although it gets progressively harder to retrofit newer distros (currently debian 8.7 at home and debian 7.9 at work).
Theres a similar issue in German: v.Chr. (vor Christus = BC) and n.Chr. (nach Christus = AD). However, the only "scholars" who used v.u.Z. and n.u.Z. (vor / nach unserer Zeitrechnung) were the communists in the former GDR.
Don't you think that the concept of "thought crime" is already bad enough?
> You probably don't realize how threatening a room full of strange men feels to many women.
If this is the case, you either manage to cope with it really fast, or you are mentally unfit to work in a job, which requires you to be in a room full of strangers on a regular basis. It's really as simple as that.
According to the info on the linked wiki page, this seems to be a decent guy which worked as "professional wrestler, actor, political commentator, author, naval veteran, and politician". He was elected Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota before running for governor, so he had political experience and was certainly not a joke candidate.
in the same timespan. It's easy to deplore the numbers, but the actual decision on who exactly has to disappear to make room for a wild-life zoo - and why - is not so easy and can certainly not be avoided by dropping condoms form helicopters.
On the other hand, man is part of nature - and humans and his house-animals are not even included in the survey. Those should be worth a lot more than your random wild beast (for us, but slashdot [i]is[/i] a human website after all).
So they improved the decoherence by a factor of 10. This is nice, but no reason to abandon your RSA keys just yet. The real problem with quantum computing is not decoherence (i.e. the losing of superpositions due to uncontrolled entanglement with the environment) - its quantitative imperfections.
A quantum computer is basically an analog device. As you cannot observe states, there also is no way to "refresh" slightly inaccurate states, as a normal digital computer does. A NOT has to be exactly 180 degrees and not 179 or 181. No problem in toy or laboratory setups, where you only do a handful of gates and keeping your system isolated is the (currently) much bigger problem. 1% error might seem quite good in this setting.
But for any meaningful computation, you will require many millions of gates and your experimental accuracy will have to keep pace with that - in addition to keeping your system from decohering (which - at least in theory - can be mitigated by quantum error correction). Rotation angles would have to be not 1% but 0.0000001% accurate.
The problem is too remote to get much consideration now, but I'm sure that it will prove to be the final (and probably insurmountable) roadblock for any real-world use of quantum computers.
ignatius
Looks like the company was a bit too eager to hit its planned obsolescence targets.
ignatius