In my understading of the multiverse theory, there are infinitely many parallel universes. This article seems to be talking about probability, which in the face of an infinite number of chances, is moot. It's guaranteed to happen. Obviously, this isn't the case. Someone want to clear this up for me?
Let's go back to our trusty two slit experiement. We have a pattern on our wall. That pattern is a distribution of photons. The question you have to ask is: "Can we predict where a photon is going to land on our pattern?"
Well, where there is darkness, we know the probability of a photon landing there is very small. In the bright areas its a rather good probability but other than that we can't say much. We can't before the time tell which bright fringe a photon will land at.
The many worlds theory explains this by saying that there is a different universe in which the photon lands in each of the bright strips. We see it land in whichever strip because we happen to be in one of those universes
It depends on your Interpretation of the underlying quantum mechanics.
The normal double slit experiment doesn't actually tell you very much. It's when you do the double slit experiment with *single* photons that the truth becomes spooky.
The reason being that even with single photons you get the same pattern on the wall. The question is did the photon interfere with itself or was there a 'ghost' photon that went through the second hole that interfered with our photon but this ghost exists in a Parallel universe?
Well, if you read the Feynman lectures in physics he does a good thought experiment to clear this up a bit. Imagine we have a second single photon beam. The idea is that we measure the photon going through the slits to see which slit it actually goes through. At first the frequency is too high and it destroys the interference pattern.
As we turn the frequency down the pattern begins to reappear but at the precise moment that the pattern does reappear we are unable to view which slit the photon went through. The frequency of the light is too low to clearly resolve the slits and hense which slit the particle went through - they've blurred into one slit.
So the question of which intepretation is correct is more a point of philosophy. We can't decide which one is correct because quantum mechanics wont let us take a measurement.
As agents of free-will, the aliens are self-aware of good and evil, thus convertible to some terrestrial religion
Even if Aliens know the difference between right and wrong but they might not be able to understand the concept of god. Even if the did understand god I doubt you could convert a space faring race to any of our religions in their current form. It makes the earth too special and they'd probably wouldn't take kindly to that. I do suspect religion will transform in to a 'many games of chess' set-up. Adam and Eve was Earth's story. Kalcknor and voltak was Vulcan's story etc etc.
Nonsense Squared! This is really unreal. I'm not a linux zealot but open source is at
the *VERY least* as secure as closed source and has the potential to totally surpass it through the ability to get such a large amount of peer review.
I don't see how companies saving money is going to lead to the end of the American way anyhow.
I just love it when people say open source is anti-capitalist and unamerican. I think quite the opposite. It embodies the spirit of America. Capitalism is about maximising profit. Open source achieves that by being free (as in beer) on the whole. American's also love freedom of speech. Open source is more than freedom of speech. It's freedom of information. Companies don't like this fredom because they can't control it. It is cancerous but this isn't a bad cancer.
If I put my blood and sweat into a piece of software and GPL it I sure as hell don't want a closed sourced vendor to take my hard work and make money from it - I don't see how that is unammerican. It's not
Marxist, as some suggest, I still believe the code is mine and there's ownership to that code. It's just that i've made it freely available provided you follow some simple rules.
Another point. The business value of code is not tied to applications as such.. it's tied to the code that bridges those applications. That's where you pay money the money for programmers. Open source will generally have no effect on the value of this important intellectual property. It just means you may not have to reinvent the wheel to do a job that's partly been done before..
And besides, even if his logic was sane, if people are outsourcing jobs to india to save money then by the same token the open source neutron bomb should be able to take a chunk out of the market value of a few corporations. You can't have your cake and eat it.
I've recently read an interesting idea here of starting a new P2P client then patenting every way of scanning that application for illegal downloaders.
e.g. Invention: "A general method by which to search [My new P2P application]"
Then think of every algorithm under the sun to do that and stick in the patent. If your feeling really adventurous you try patenting:
Invention: "A method of filling for copyright infringement against users of [My new P2P application]"
Where's the prior art? Sure people have sued before but they've not sued against people for the use of your app. If your very tight about your definitions you could probably get it patented.
Notice that the goal here is not to promote illegal filesharing. The goal is to raise awareness of the stupidity of the patent system.
Personally, I dont think you should be able to file for a patent when your turn-over is greater than say 10 million dollars.. That'd even up the playing field.
Call my stupid.. but how exactly do you sue an open source project? I can understand suing Redhat or Suse.. but what about non-commericial distributions? How could a judge award damages for lost revenue when you didn't make any money out of their idea anyway?
Simon.
Re:Please.. Mr Blunket/Random authority.. Get a cl
on
Cry To Beat Iris Scanners
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
haha.. Lesson 2 in security. Authenticating a person doesn't tell you their motive.
Simon.
Re:Please.. Mr Blunket/Random authority.. Get a cl
on
Cry To Beat Iris Scanners
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Furthermore, even if the biometric identifiers are not reliable enough to be able to distinguish between hundreds of millions of people in centralized databases, governments are also assuming that they can make id cards that are sufficiently forgery-proof to make "just getting a *real* id in a fake name" rather difficult.
A UK reporter was able to obtain a *real* fake ID for just over a grand. Through a network of bribes.. It's not as hard as you think..
Ask yourself this: How much do you recon they pay their staff at the passport issuing office? Now ask yourself how much that passport could be worth to someone! The math does itself.
ID cards are flawed because you can't secure a system that large. Criminals have cash to 'invest' in perverting your system.
Simon
Please.. Mr Blunket/Random authority.. Get a clue!
on
Cry To Beat Iris Scanners
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
For the 123rd time. *How* does biometric data prevent terrorism or halt illegal immigration or any of the things it's meant to do?|
Terrorists: Is any (known) terrorist worth his/her salt going to fly on their own passport. What's stopping them getting a *real* passport with the correct Biometerics on a different name?
Immigration: Anyone who wants to immigrate enough will get the *real* id in a fake name!
Stopping Criminals: Yes because criminals are moral enough not to have fakes!
The trade off isn't worth it. The only person this effects is you: the law abiding honest citizen. Life is no harder for any of the above groups.
GR is perhaps the most well-tested physical theory yet developed and, as such, you can't say that it's "wrong". It plainly isn't once you remain within its field of reference.
You miss the point.. I'm citing the effects as evidence the theory is incorrect.
I think the answer to the dark matter problem and the quantum theory of gravity is one in the same. Our description of gravity is wrong. It has recently been discovered that dark matter is 'missing' from three elliptic galaxies. One would think that on the scale of something as big as a galaxy and with WIMPs being so massive that you ought to detect some quite major effect..
Add that to the fact that the universe's acceleration is getting quicker rather than slowing down and I think we have a strong case for our description of gravity being incorrect.
I've got a three suggestions for Microsoft on the issue of security:
1. Dump lots of features. While beta testing and what not irons out the performance bugs.. catching security bugs is another problem all together. The more code you have the intractable secuirty becomes
2. Stop using languages/tools that allow you have buffer overflows in code. That'll cut out 90% of critical updates in one swoop.
3. Stop having 20 ways of doing the same thing. A simple case in point is.NET and the Win32 API. Even if.NET wraps the Win32API.. that's another layer a security bug can leak into.
Like the airlines think Saftey, Saftey, Saftey - Microsoft need to adopt the slogan.. Security Security Security
I think the BBC is an object unlike any other in the world.
Take the company I work for.. We deal in disposing waste. Some of our revenue comes from taking care of the local government's home waste recycling centres. They outsource to us essentially.
Now just because part of our revenue stream is based on these contracts that doesn't mean that we're in some way an instrument of the state. Even if all our revenue [1] came from these centres we still wouldn't be an instrument of the state.
The BBC is a corporation in this sense. It's like the government outsourced the job of making an independant media to a company.
Just like our (council) taxes pay for these home waste recycling centres which get outsourced to us. The government taxes the people who watch TV to pay the BBC.
The BBC is different in that it's a company who's existance is mandated in a statute. Does this make the BBC an arm of the state? Well, I don't think that's a question you can answer objectively. I think the best thing to do is look at how successful they are in (part of) their (full) mandate to provide impartial news.
Take the Iraq issue and the Hutton report. The BBC took an anti-government stance with regard to iraq and accussed the government of sexing up the 'dodgy' dossier.
The Hutton report blamed the BBC for the tragedy but it is my opinion (and that of the
majority of British) that Hutton wasn't told the whole truth.
In both cases the BBC stood firm against the government. This is what is important! A media that is independant of government and not a whore to a business model. The BBC isn't perfect but it's superior to most other models.
Take a look at Italy if you need more convincing.
Simon
[1] It's quite possible to have all your revenue come from these centres. There are around a thousand of them in England and acquiring the contract for just one site adds an average of 300,000 to your turnover.
The question is why didn't the design hubble to be repaired in this way in the first place? The cost launching the space shuttle is around 375 million dollars.. Probably more for a space walk..
I don't accept that you can't design a repair bot for under that launch cost?
Also remember the moore's law doesn't apply to factoring algorithms.. This is because for the GNFS the *memory* speed is what's important and that isn't growing nearly as quickly..
Not convinced? Look at the linear proportionality in this graph
In the olden days they used to candles with a mirror as to create a source of coherent light. The idea was that by using the reflection of the candle light together with the candle light itself you could have two sources of light that are pretty much in step to do experiments with.
Of course a laser is superior.. but the effect should be quite easy to demonstrate even with such a crude mechanism.
Simon.
Have to wonder
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm not a religious man myself but I wonder how successful this will be. I mean, i thought that meeting up in church wasn't just about the worship but was about the social interaction with others - the feeling of unity with your peers. How can an "SimChurch" emulate that side of it?
Watching a webcast or something like it just isn't the same. Anyone who's watched the BBC program "songs of praise" will back me up on that one.
I mean, amazon already makes a $$$ off books, videos and games, so I ask why do they have to go all 1984 on us. Google have some kind of legitimate excuse already in that advertising is the only real way for google to make money.
Is targeted advertising on the internet really worth it? I mean serious.. how much is the bad PR costing them?
Slashdot Mirror
In my understading of the multiverse theory, there are infinitely many parallel universes. This article seems to be talking about probability, which in the face of an infinite number of chances, is moot. It's guaranteed to happen. Obviously, this isn't the case. Someone want to clear this up for me?
Let's go back to our trusty two slit experiement. We have a pattern on our wall. That pattern is a distribution of photons. The question you have to ask is: "Can we predict where a photon is going to land on our pattern?"
Well, where there is darkness, we know the probability of a photon landing there is very small. In the bright areas its a rather good probability but other than that we can't say much. We can't before the time tell which bright fringe a photon will land at.
The many worlds theory explains this by saying that there is a different universe in which the photon lands in each of the bright strips. We see it land in whichever strip because we happen to be in one of those universes
Simon
It depends on your Interpretation of the underlying quantum mechanics.
The normal double slit experiment doesn't actually tell you very much. It's when you do the double slit experiment with *single* photons that the truth becomes spooky.
The reason being that even with single photons you get the same pattern on the wall. The question is did the photon interfere with itself or was there a 'ghost' photon that went through the second hole that interfered with our photon but this ghost exists in a Parallel universe?
Well, if you read the Feynman lectures in physics he does a good thought experiment to clear this up a bit. Imagine we have a second single photon beam. The idea is that we measure the photon going through the slits to see which slit it actually goes through. At first the frequency is too high and it destroys the interference pattern.
As we turn the frequency down the pattern begins to reappear but at the precise moment that the pattern does reappear we are unable to view which slit the photon went through. The frequency of the light is too low to clearly resolve the slits and hense which slit the particle went through - they've blurred into one slit.
So the question of which intepretation is correct is more a point of philosophy. We can't decide which one is correct because quantum mechanics wont let us take a measurement.
Simon.
Where can I get a USB-compatible wooden ship's wheel for my computer
I doubt it's USB since NT4 doesn't support USB.. :P Probably PS2 or a Serial connector :)
Simon
As agents of free-will, the aliens are self-aware of good and evil, thus convertible to some terrestrial religion
Even if Aliens know the difference between right and wrong but they might not be able to understand the concept of god. Even if the did understand god I doubt you could convert a space faring race to any of our religions in their current form. It makes the earth too special and they'd probably wouldn't take kindly to that. I do suspect religion will transform in to a 'many games of chess' set-up. Adam and Eve was Earth's story. Kalcknor and voltak was Vulcan's story etc etc.
Simon
How does removing aerial photographs improve security? Security through obsecurity is no security at all.
Security should be robust even if the attacker knows everything there is to know about the system.
Simon.
Linger at 62 miles up where there nearly no air? More like falling to earth at over the speed of sound
Simon
Nonsense Squared! This is really unreal. I'm not a linux zealot but open source is at the *VERY least* as secure as closed source and has the potential to totally surpass it through the ability to get such a large amount of peer review.
I don't see how companies saving money is going to lead to the end of the American way anyhow.
I just love it when people say open source is anti-capitalist and unamerican. I think quite the opposite. It embodies the spirit of America. Capitalism is about maximising profit. Open source achieves that by being free (as in beer) on the whole. American's also love freedom of speech. Open source is more than freedom of speech. It's freedom of information. Companies don't like this fredom because they can't control it. It is cancerous but this isn't a bad cancer.
If I put my blood and sweat into a piece of software and GPL it I sure as hell don't want a closed sourced vendor to take my hard work and make money from it - I don't see how that is unammerican. It's not Marxist, as some suggest, I still believe the code is mine and there's ownership to that code. It's just that i've made it freely available provided you follow some simple rules.
Another point. The business value of code is not tied to applications as such.. it's tied to the code that bridges those applications. That's where you pay money the money for programmers. Open source will generally have no effect on the value of this important intellectual property. It just means you may not have to reinvent the wheel to do a job that's partly been done before..
And besides, even if his logic was sane, if people are outsourcing jobs to india to save money then by the same token the open source neutron bomb should be able to take a chunk out of the market value of a few corporations. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Simon.
I've recently read an interesting idea here of starting a new P2P client then patenting every way of scanning that application for illegal downloaders.
e.g. Invention: "A general method by which to search [My new P2P application]"
Then think of every algorithm under the sun to do that and stick in the patent. If your feeling really adventurous you try patenting:
Invention: "A method of filling for copyright infringement against users of [My new P2P application]"
Where's the prior art? Sure people have sued before but they've not sued against people for the use of your app. If your very tight about your definitions you could probably get it patented.
Notice that the goal here is not to promote illegal filesharing. The goal is to raise awareness of the stupidity of the patent system.
Personally, I dont think you should be able to file for a patent when your turn-over is greater than say 10 million dollars.. That'd even up the playing field.
Simon.
Call my stupid.. but how exactly do you sue an open source project? I can understand suing Redhat or Suse.. but what about non-commericial distributions?
How could a judge award damages for lost revenue when you didn't make any money out of their idea anyway?
Simon.
haha.. Lesson 2 in security. Authenticating a person doesn't tell you their motive.
Simon.
Furthermore, even if the biometric identifiers are not reliable enough to be able to distinguish between hundreds of millions of people in centralized databases, governments are also assuming that they can make id cards that are sufficiently forgery-proof to make "just getting a *real* id in a fake name" rather difficult.
A UK reporter was able to obtain a *real* fake ID for just over a grand. Through a network of bribes.. It's not as hard as you think..
Ask yourself this: How much do you recon they pay their staff at the passport issuing office? Now ask yourself how much that passport could be worth to someone! The math does itself.
ID cards are flawed because you can't secure a system that large. Criminals have cash to 'invest' in perverting your system.
Simon
For the 123rd time. *How* does biometric data prevent terrorism or halt illegal immigration or any of the things it's meant to do?|
Terrorists: Is any (known) terrorist worth his/her salt going to fly on their own passport. What's stopping them getting a *real* passport with the correct Biometerics on a different name?
Immigration: Anyone who wants to immigrate enough will get the *real* id in a fake name!
Stopping Criminals: Yes because criminals are moral enough not to have fakes!
The trade off isn't worth it. The only person this effects is you: the law abiding honest citizen. Life is no harder for any of the above groups.
Simon.
GR is perhaps the most well-tested physical theory yet developed and, as such, you can't say that it's "wrong". It plainly isn't once you remain within its field of reference.
You miss the point.. I'm citing the effects as evidence the theory is incorrect.
Simon.
I think the answer to the dark matter problem and the quantum theory of gravity is one in the same. Our description of gravity is wrong. It has recently been discovered that dark matter is 'missing' from three elliptic galaxies. One would think that on the scale of something as big as a galaxy and with WIMPs being so massive that you ought to detect some quite major effect..
Add that to the fact that the universe's acceleration is getting quicker rather than slowing down and I think we have a strong case for our description of gravity being incorrect.
Simon.
I've got a three suggestions for Microsoft on the issue of security:
Like the airlines think Saftey, Saftey, Saftey - Microsoft need to adopt the slogan.. Security Security Security
Simon
I think the BBC is an object unlike any other in the world.
Take the company I work for.. We deal in disposing waste. Some of our revenue comes from taking care of the local government's home waste recycling centres. They outsource to us essentially.
Now just because part of our revenue stream is based on these contracts that doesn't mean that we're in some way an instrument of the state. Even if all our revenue [1] came from these centres we still wouldn't be an instrument of the state.
The BBC is a corporation in this sense. It's like the government outsourced the job of making an independant media to a company.
Just like our (council) taxes pay for these home waste recycling centres which get outsourced to us. The government taxes the people who watch TV to pay the BBC.
The BBC is different in that it's a company who's existance is mandated in a statute. Does this make the BBC an arm of the state? Well, I don't think that's a question you can answer objectively. I think the best thing to do is look at how successful they are in (part of) their (full) mandate to provide impartial news.
Take the Iraq issue and the Hutton report. The BBC took an anti-government stance with regard to iraq and accussed the government of sexing up the 'dodgy' dossier.
The Hutton report blamed the BBC for the tragedy but it is my opinion (and that of the majority of British) that Hutton wasn't told the whole truth.
In both cases the BBC stood firm against the government. This is what is important! A media that is independant of government and not a whore to a business model. The BBC isn't perfect but it's superior to most other models.
Take a look at Italy if you need more convincing.
Simon
[1] It's quite possible to have all your revenue come from these centres. There are around a thousand of them in England and acquiring the contract for just one site adds an average of 300,000 to your turnover.
USA == Land of the not so free.
Why the hell did they put the ISS so far from Hubble? Shouldn't they be, like, next door, or at least just up the block?
The space station has to be easily accessible to the Ruskis
Simon
The question is why didn't the design hubble to be repaired in this way in the first place? The cost launching the space shuttle is around 375 million dollars.. Probably more for a space walk..
I don't accept that you can't design a repair bot for under that launch cost?
Simon
Wow nice random word generator.. Can I have a go?
Seriosuly, It's utter rubbish. I mean please explain to me how you stack an S-box into a corner of a cryptographic chamber..
It's just a substitution you muppet.. And cryptography isn't all hardware speed.. I mean WEP
was broken with trivial computing power!Simon.
Also remember the moore's law doesn't apply to factoring algorithms.. This is because for the GNFS the *memory* speed is what's important and that isn't growing nearly as quickly..
Not convinced? Look at the linear proportionality in this graph
Simon.
Slashdot gets sued for trademark infringement..
hehe
Si.
In the olden days they used to candles with a mirror as to create a source of coherent light. The idea was that by using the reflection of the candle light together with the candle light itself you could have two sources of light that are pretty much in step to do experiments with.
Of course a laser is superior.. but the effect should be quite easy to demonstrate even with such a crude mechanism.
Simon.
I'm not a religious man myself but I wonder how successful this will be.
I mean, i thought that meeting up in church wasn't just about the worship
but was about the social interaction with others - the feeling of unity with
your peers. How can an "SimChurch" emulate that side of it?
Watching a webcast or something like it just isn't the same. Anyone who's watched the BBC program "songs of praise" will back me up on that one.
Simon.
What is it about evil corporations?
I mean, amazon already makes a $$$ off books, videos and games, so I ask why do they have to go all 1984 on us. Google have some kind of legitimate excuse already in that advertising is the only real way for google to make money.
Is targeted advertising on the internet really worth it? I mean serious.. how much is the bad PR costing them?
Simon