why didn't cars pop up from the ground by themselves. They've had plenty of time to apparently.
I think they did, after a fashion: their ecological niche, however, only came into existence with the advent of humans. Pretty soon after humans evolved, they evolved far enough to manufacture cars -- and the cars are so clever that they avoided the need of reproduction: they use humans for this. Moreover, in addition to usual Darwinian evolution, cars can also evolve in a Lamarckian fashion: traits that are discovered to be useful in a given generation can be passed on to the next generation. Again, humans serve as information storage device: they memorize, which traits are good, and implement them. (Darwinian evolution happens (a) via consruction errors and (b) ndirectly via evolution of humans).
How about the HI virus (including all its variants)?
Or if that's not lively enough for you: all those strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticid-resistant pests?
Bigger species take longer time, of course, but
for a selection of such cases see here. There is a recent report about speciation in progress (see also here)
But if you're thinking about "totally new life" (unrelated to what we have now) then I guess it just doesn't have a big chance to win through: if it's organic, then there's a huge chance, that it'll eaten before it turns from "interesting chemistry" into life.
Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
I think, President Bush should immediately endorse the teaching of the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory of the universe, as well as the Turtles-all-the-way-down-theory of geology.
Not to forget the Plutonium Atom Totality theory of particle physics.
I honestly cannot undestand why American students are not exposed to these refreshing and original thoughts in the classroom nor why President Bush is not using his influence to set this important matter right!
ZDnet reports that David Lynn and Cisco have agreed to a legal settlement. Lynn doesnt't talk about the matter at Blackhat or Defcon and returns all related material to Cisco. I suppose Cisco drops its charges against him, though that's not mentioned.
I'm glad for Michael Lynn that this affair ended quickly and not too harshly. Kudos to him for his courage.
for the GPL, e.g., the FSF does, see this article by Eben Moglen. Or other copyright holders do it, such as Harald Welte with the gpl violations project. (Successfully as you can see )
No one really likes the command line... plenty of people get by with it, but it's obviously the most primitive computer interface.
i disagree; i do like the command line - for many tasks it is the most advanced and suitable interface. Everytime I'm forced to use a Windows machine, I notice how much I miss a decent CLI and bash.
Software patents do exist in Europe and the only way to make them invalid is a directive that effectively excludes software from patentability. So the rejection of the proposed (pro-softpat) text does not really solve the problem.
true, but the SWPats that have been granted have been granted illegally and (as far as I know) have not been enforced yet in Europe (because enforcing illegal patents implies the significant risk of loosing them). So, yes, the rejection does not solve the problem, but at least avoids making it a lot worse. The best outcome, of course, would be the adoption of all the Buzek-Rocard-Duff amendments, which explicitly forbid SWPats.
hope dies last, as someone wrote before...
The amusing part about this is that the whole tirade against Java in OOo is nothing but a farce. A quick check of the 2.0 code finds almost nothing that violates these "concessions"[...]
It's not a farce at all. The problem is not what is now, but what might happen: We're not yet in the Java trap, and we have to avoid to fall in. That's why these concessions and, more importantly, raising the awareness of these matters among OOo users and developers is important NOW. I, for one, thank rms for his vigilance.
The Hurd is real software that works Right Now. It is not a research project or a proposal. You don't have to wait at all before you can start using and developing it.
O'Gara found out who she is, and definitely overstepped the bounds of decency by publishing street addresses for her and her son.
that's all assuming that what this so-called "journalist" purportedly "found out" is actually true. She could be making it up, got the wrong PJ misrepresent the facts or misunderstood what she's seen/heard. We have examples of all these mistakes in her prior writings.
We should just commit her drivel to/dev/null and move on...
One, if a literal interpretation of the Bible is correct, what about all these fossils?
They were placed there so that we find them, concoct abstruse theories, which we present at big conferences and elaborate on in lavishly illustrated tomes and generally mess up everyone's mind so that the mice finally find the Answer.
And of course there was intelligent design -- or who would say that Deep Thought was not intelligent?
Now I hope they'll teach more about that design that in schools someday;-)
This is just to point out that despite the encouraging language, the judge denied all of IBM's motions to strike material or for partial summary judgement, saying the latter would be premature. He says, that further discovery (especially all versions of AIX since the beginning of the world...;-) might still prove SCO's point. Hence, we'll see more delay. But still, i guess that generosity by the judge now will make the eventual defeat more difficult to appeal. What's one more year of SCO vs. IBM?
DaimlerChrysler certified (as requested by SCO) that they were in compliance with the Licence Agreement under which they had been using some Unix (bought from a SCO predecessor). (They also certified, that they had stopped using SCO-Unix long ago).
This is unrelated to the "Linux-IP" licence that SCO tries people to threaten into buying.
First, you have a patient who is trying to diagnosis and treat his own condition. A good analogy would be a newbie blindly editing his/her registry. I know its the "hacker" way, but hacking your own body can be dangerous. It's difficult to reboot or reformat the body as a system.
I think that's a bad analogy: if he was treating himself, it might be like editing the registry. But recording symptoms and diagnosing himself is more like reading (and trying to understand) error messages. That's what even a newbie could and should do. -- Especially if his hacker friend is too busy to listen to his problems...
My best best wishes to Patrick. I hope he gets well soon.
I am not usually reading computer books, but I'm currently one-third into "The Art of UNIX progrmming" by Eric Raymond and think that it is very rewarding reading. Certainly more entertaining than books telling me how to least suffer from MS-ware...
i fully agree that there are still big hurdles to overcome before any "quantum computation" is realized. However, I do not think that it matters much whether they use Cs or another Alkali. AFAIK, no BEC is needed for quantum computing: The initial state of the atoms in the lattice should be all atoms in the internal and motional ground state, and one per lattice site, i.e., not a BEC but e.g., the "Mott insulator" phase of the lattice. To start with a BEC and then inducing the Mott insulator phase transition appears to be a nice way to load the lattice, but it is not the only possiblity.
The entanglement needed for quantum computing can be achieved with Cs as with other atoms via the dipole interaction.
Don't worry, things will get better for the atomic qubits and for the solid-state qubits as well...;-)
How about proving that entanglement is for real and isn't just "spooky action at a distance"
All theories that try to explain what we observe without entanglement have been disproven time and again. Bell's inequalities have been violated to 10 (or was it 50?) standard deviations and in various physical systems.
Quantum mechanics is is probably the most tested theory around, and entanglement is an integral and unavoidable part of this theory - I dont think there is particular need to "prove that it is for real"[1]. Einsteins dream of a complete, local realistic theory to describe nature is unlikely to come - nature just does not behave that way. And, frankly, I think it's much more fun that way...
[1] One "regime" of quantum mechanics that has not been much explored (and where quantum computers would come in handy) is massive multi-particle entanglement: can hundreds, thousands or millions of particle be in strongly entangled states? Theory predicts it, few doubt it, quantum computers require it, but it has not yet been demonstrated. (If that was the intent of your comment, see this as a clarification, not an objection.)
could someone please explain in what way this is more interesting than what was achieved by IBM about 3 years ago?
NMR quantum computing as demonstrated by IBM has many drawbacks.
First, there's not a single quantum system doing the computation, but rather some 10^20 molecules in the liquid - and you need so many to generate a detectable signal.
Second, the NMR quantum register cannot be properly initialized, rather it is in a nearly random state with only a slight enhancement of "0" over "1". This is part of the reason why so many systems are needed and it prevents the currently realized systmes from displaying any entanglement.
Finally, it is not clear how to scale such a system (increase the number of nuclear spins on a molecule): the larger that number, the more difficult it is to address individual qubits.
For these reasons, liquid state NMR is not be considered to be scalable. Nevertheless, the NMR people have amazing control over the operations (logic gates) they can perform, and these ideas may (and have) fed back to other implementations. Moreover, there are attempts to overcome the mentioned difficulties (while keeping some advantages of NMR) by using nuclear spins in cold solids following Kane's proposal).
From the theorist's perspectice it doesn't really matter how you implement this stuff - if it works, all implementations are equivalent.
But of course ther are (and will remain) technical advantages of certain implementations. I do not think that currently anybody knows what the most promising physical system is. Trapped ions are probably most advanced at the moment. Compared to them neutral atoms in optical lattices might two advantages: optical lattices appear to be rather "scalable", i.e., one might go beyond 5 qubits rather quickly, once complete coherent control has been demonstrated. (In a linear ion trap there will be difficulties to go beyond 10-20 ions, though very promising ways around these difficulties have also been demonstrated.)
On the other hand, using neutral atoms (rather than charged ions) may make the qubits less susceptible to stray fields and other sources of decoherence.
At the current stage it is very reasonable to explore all possible routes to a QC (atoms, ions, photons, quantum dots, superconductors etc, a nice and readable uptodate overview is given in the Quantum Computation Roadmap): first, since it is not clear which will turn out to be most successful and second, because along the way lot of interesting physics can be expected from the coherent control of well isolated physical systems.
Looks like Dan Ravicher is onto something that could do with all our support.
exactly, and what better
way to celebrate today's victory, than to donate to PubPat.
What joy it would be to see all these stupid Trivialities be rejected and get confirmed that all those mighty emperors do not have any clothes on;-))
Randall Davis, possibly THE leading authority on software copyright issues wipes out all claims of SysV Unix copyright infringement in Linux, whether by IBM or anyone else.
Davis has compared only those contributions of IBM to Linux that SCO has named as containing infringing code. At least his declaration makes no statement about other parts of Linux.
(For SCO's lawsuit that is damning enough, though.)
I hope I'm not boring you with yet another reply;-)
Now I understand the disagreement. You are talking about an experiment; some of us are talking about communication technology based on the science being done in the experiment.
I wasn't referring to any practical/experimental difficulties (that might be overcome as engineering progresses). My point holds for a perfect system (no noise, no errors), all signal travelling at light speed and measurements that take as good as no time to perform.
When *using* this "teleportation" thingy:
Distribute the entangled state. As before. Takes place at sublight speed.
A perturbs the state of the system, thus sending a signal.
*B* performs the measurement, thereby receiving the signal.
i have objections to both point 2. and 3.
My argument is that A cannot send a signal by perturbing his system because no matter what he does to his system, it does not change the state that B has! Only when he tells B about his measurement result the state of B's system is changed (and the quantum teleportation concluded).
See Reinhard Werners very nice introductory article for a more eloquent and thorough discussion of this point (esp. the first few pages on "impossible machines" in which he discusses the "Bell telephone" and why it doesn't work in very clear terms without any math); later the article gets harder.
The difference between your three events and mine represents a whole lotta science and engineering, but it seems to a lot of people here that the new report moves us a lot closer to being able to impress a signal on the system and recover it elsewhere without destroying the system.
to my regret it is much more than engineering between your events and mine;-) your event 2. would require a different theory than quantum mechanics to hold.
sorry, not Joan Baez (whose word on physics matters I have no reason to trust in particular;-) but John Baez, who is an eminent mathematical physicist (doing research on quantum gravity) and one of the moderators and chief contributors to the sci.physics.research newsgroup (where I am constantly impressed by his grasp of physics and the explanatory ability (check out his web page, it's fun!)). He was quoted in the New Scientist article I cited, that's why I mentioned the name.
Slashdot Mirror
why didn't cars pop up from the ground by themselves. They've had plenty of time to apparently.
I think they did, after a fashion: their ecological niche, however, only came into existence with the advent of humans. Pretty soon after humans evolved, they evolved far enough to manufacture cars -- and the cars are so clever that they avoided the need of reproduction: they use humans for this. Moreover, in addition to usual Darwinian evolution, cars can also evolve in a Lamarckian fashion: traits that are discovered to be useful in a given generation can be passed on to the next generation. Again, humans serve as information storage device: they memorize, which traits are good, and implement them. (Darwinian evolution happens (a) via consruction errors and (b) ndirectly via evolution of humans).How about the HI virus (including all its variants)?
But if you're thinking about "totally new life" (unrelated to what we have now) then I guess it just doesn't have a big chance to win through: if it's organic, then there's a huge chance, that it'll eaten before it turns from "interesting chemistry" into life.Or if that's not lively enough for you: all those strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticid-resistant pests?
Bigger species take longer time, of course, but for a selection of such cases see here. There is a recent report about speciation in progress (see also here)
Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
I think, President Bush should immediately endorse the teaching of the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory of the universe, as well as the Turtles-all-the-way-down-theory of geology. Not to forget the Plutonium Atom Totality theory of particle physics.
A concerned citizen of Old Europe.I honestly cannot undestand why American students are not exposed to these refreshing and original thoughts in the classroom nor why President Bush is not using his influence to set this important matter right!
ZDnet reports that David Lynn and Cisco have agreed
should have been Michael, of course. it's too late...
ZDnet reports that David Lynn and Cisco have agreed to a legal settlement. Lynn doesnt't talk about the matter at Blackhat or Defcon and returns all related material to Cisco. I suppose Cisco drops its charges against him, though that's not mentioned.
I'm glad for Michael Lynn that this affair ended quickly and not too harshly. Kudos to him for his courage.
Tell me, who enforces open source license?
for the GPL, e.g., the FSF does, see this article by Eben Moglen. Or other copyright holders do it, such as Harald Welte with the gpl violations project. (Successfully as you can see )No one really likes the command line... plenty of people get by with it, but it's obviously the most primitive computer interface.
i disagree; i do like the command line - for many tasks it is the most advanced and suitable interface. Everytime I'm forced to use a Windows machine, I notice how much I miss a decent CLI and bash.So who would you vote for? The 1984 Party, The State-Wreckers, The soft saps or the racist thugs?
Th Official Monster Raving Loony Party of course, who else?scnr
Software patents do exist in Europe and the only way to make them invalid is a directive that effectively excludes software from patentability. So the rejection of the proposed (pro-softpat) text does not really solve the problem.
true, but the SWPats that have been granted have been granted illegally and (as far as I know) have not been enforced yet in Europe (because enforcing illegal patents implies the significant risk of loosing them). So, yes, the rejection does not solve the problem, but at least avoids making it a lot worse. The best outcome, of course, would be the adoption of all the Buzek-Rocard-Duff amendments, which explicitly forbid SWPats.hope dies last, as someone wrote before...
The amusing part about this is that the whole tirade against Java in OOo is nothing but a farce. A quick check of the 2.0 code finds almost nothing that violates these "concessions"[...]
It's not a farce at all. The problem is not what is now, but what might happen: We're not yet in the Java trap, and we have to avoid to fall in. That's why these concessions and, more importantly, raising the awareness of these matters among OOo users and developers is important NOW. I, for one, thank rms for his vigilance.BTW, Mr. Stallman. How's Hurd coming along?
since rms has better things to do than worry about your flamebait: why don't you have a look at http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html to see for yourself?The Hurd is real software that works Right Now. It is not a research project or a proposal. You don't have to wait at all before you can start using and developing it.
O'Gara found out who she is, and definitely overstepped the bounds of decency by publishing street addresses for her and her son.
that's all assuming that what this so-called "journalist" purportedly "found out" is actually true. She could be making it up, got the wrong PJ misrepresent the facts or misunderstood what she's seen/heard. We have examples of all these mistakes in her prior writings.We should just commit her drivel to
One, if a literal interpretation of the Bible is correct, what about all these fossils?
They were placed there so that we find them, concoct abstruse theories, which we present at big conferences and elaborate on in lavishly illustrated tomes and generally mess up everyone's mind so that the mice finally find the Answer.And of course there was intelligent design -- or who would say that Deep Thought was not intelligent?
Now I hope they'll teach more about that design that in schools someday
This is just to point out that despite the encouraging language, the judge denied all of IBM's motions to strike material or for partial summary judgement, saying the latter would be premature. He says, that further discovery (especially all versions of AIX since the beginning of the world... ;-) might still prove SCO's point. Hence, we'll see more delay. But still, i guess that generosity by the judge now will make the eventual defeat more difficult to appeal. What's one more year of SCO vs. IBM?
This is unrelated to the "Linux-IP" licence that SCO tries people to threaten into buying.
I think that's a bad analogy: if he was treating himself, it might be like editing the registry. But recording symptoms and diagnosing himself is more like reading (and trying to understand) error messages. That's what even a newbie could and should do. -- Especially if his hacker friend is too busy to listen to his problems...
My best best wishes to Patrick. I hope he gets well soon.I am not usually reading computer books, but I'm currently one-third into "The Art of UNIX progrmming" by Eric Raymond and think that it is very rewarding reading. Certainly more entertaining than books telling me how to least suffer from MS-ware...
i fully agree that there are still big hurdles to overcome before any "quantum computation" is realized. However, I do not think that it matters much whether they use Cs or another Alkali. AFAIK, no BEC is needed for quantum computing: The initial state of the atoms in the lattice should be all atoms in the internal and motional ground state, and one per lattice site, i.e., not a BEC but e.g., the "Mott insulator" phase of the lattice. To start with a BEC and then inducing the Mott insulator phase transition appears to be a nice way to load the lattice, but it is not the only possiblity. ;-)
The entanglement needed for quantum computing can be achieved with Cs as with other atoms via the dipole interaction.
Don't worry, things will get better for the atomic qubits and for the solid-state qubits as well...
All theories that try to explain what we observe without entanglement have been disproven time and again. Bell's inequalities have been violated to 10 (or was it 50?) standard deviations and in various physical systems.
[1] One "regime" of quantum mechanics that has not been much explored (and where quantum computers would come in handy) is massive multi-particle entanglement: can hundreds, thousands or millions of particle be in strongly entangled states? Theory predicts it, few doubt it, quantum computers require it, but it has not yet been demonstrated. (If that was the intent of your comment, see this as a clarification, not an objection.)Quantum mechanics is is probably the most tested theory around, and entanglement is an integral and unavoidable part of this theory - I dont think there is particular need to "prove that it is for real"[1]. Einsteins dream of a complete, local realistic theory to describe nature is unlikely to come - nature just does not behave that way. And, frankly, I think it's much more fun that way...
NMR quantum computing as demonstrated by IBM has many drawbacks.
For these reasons, liquid state NMR is not be considered to be scalable. Nevertheless, the NMR people have amazing control over the operations (logic gates) they can perform, and these ideas may (and have) fed back to other implementations. Moreover, there are attempts to overcome the mentioned difficulties (while keeping some advantages of NMR) by using nuclear spins in cold solids following Kane's proposal).First, there's not a single quantum system doing the computation, but rather some 10^20 molecules in the liquid - and you need so many to generate a detectable signal.
Second, the NMR quantum register cannot be properly initialized, rather it is in a nearly random state with only a slight enhancement of "0" over "1". This is part of the reason why so many systems are needed and it prevents the currently realized systmes from displaying any entanglement.
Finally, it is not clear how to scale such a system (increase the number of nuclear spins on a molecule): the larger that number, the more difficult it is to address individual qubits.
From the theorist's perspectice it doesn't really matter how you implement this stuff - if it works, all implementations are equivalent.
At the current stage it is very reasonable to explore all possible routes to a QC (atoms, ions, photons, quantum dots, superconductors etc, a nice and readable uptodate overview is given in the Quantum Computation Roadmap): first, since it is not clear which will turn out to be most successful and second, because along the way lot of interesting physics can be expected from the coherent control of well isolated physical systems.But of course ther are (and will remain) technical advantages of certain implementations. I do not think that currently anybody knows what the most promising physical system is. Trapped ions are probably most advanced at the moment. Compared to them neutral atoms in optical lattices might two advantages: optical lattices appear to be rather "scalable", i.e., one might go beyond 5 qubits rather quickly, once complete coherent control has been demonstrated. (In a linear ion trap there will be difficulties to go beyond 10-20 ions, though very promising ways around these difficulties have also been demonstrated.) On the other hand, using neutral atoms (rather than charged ions) may make the qubits less susceptible to stray fields and other sources of decoherence.
exactly, and what better way to celebrate today's victory, than to donate to PubPat. ;-))
What joy it would be to see all these stupid Trivialities be rejected and get confirmed that all those mighty emperors do not have any clothes on
Davis has compared only those contributions of IBM to Linux that SCO has named as containing infringing code. At least his declaration makes no statement about other parts of Linux.
(For SCO's lawsuit that is damning enough, though.)Did I miss something or is it the first time the overlords are supposed to be intelligent?
That might be something to welcome indeed.
Now I understand the disagreement. You are talking about an experiment; some of us are talking about communication technology based on the science being done in the experiment.
I wasn't referring to any practical/experimental difficulties (that might be overcome as engineering progresses). My point holds for a perfect system (no noise, no errors), all signal travelling at light speed and measurements that take as good as no time to perform.
When *using* this "teleportation" thingy:i have objections to both point 2. and 3.
See Reinhard Werners very nice introductory article for a more eloquent and thorough discussion of this point (esp. the first few pages on "impossible machines" in which he discusses the "Bell telephone" and why it doesn't work in very clear terms without any math); later the article gets harder. The difference between your three events and mine represents a whole lotta science and engineering, but it seems to a lot of people here that the new report moves us a lot closer to being able to impress a signal on the system and recover it elsewhere without destroying the system. to my regret it is much more than engineering between your events and mineMy argument is that A cannot send a signal by perturbing his system because no matter what he does to his system, it does not change the state that B has! Only when he tells B about his measurement result the state of B's system is changed (and the quantum teleportation concluded).
sorry, not Joan Baez (whose word on physics matters I have no reason to trust in particular ;-) but John Baez, who is an eminent mathematical physicist (doing research on quantum gravity) and one of the moderators and chief contributors to the sci.physics.research newsgroup (where I am constantly impressed by his grasp of physics and the explanatory ability (check out his web page, it's fun!)). He was quoted in the New Scientist article I cited, that's why I mentioned the name.