try the feynman lectures. they are lectures from his actual class. much better than his books like 'six easy pieces' if you are actually trying to learn physics.
these papers are usually only readable by people in that field. even other physicists don't understand papers outside of their field.
Oh, and am I the only one that chortled at the fact that this paper, which lists the 100 most cited papers, had only 26 references?
heh, nope. and how about these?
Read before you cite! cond-mat/0212043 We report a method of estimating what percentage of people who cited a paper had actually read it. The method is based on a stochastic modeling of the citation process that explains empirical studies of misprint distributions in citations (which we show follows a Zipf law). Our estimate is only about 20% of citers read the original.
Copied citations create renowned papers? cond-mat/0305150 Recently we discovered (cond-mat/0212043) that the majority of scientific citations are copied from the lists of references used in other papers. Here we show that a model, in which a scientist picks three random papers, cites them,and also copies a quarter of their references accounts quantitatively for empirically observed citation distribution. Simple mathematical probability, not genius, can explain why some papers are cited a lot more than the other.
i bet the lack of manuals now a days is because printed word lends an air of permanentness and reliability. now we have programs being updated every week or so, with bugs being taken out and feautures being put in. (release early, release often a la the cathedral and the bazaar)
many printed manuals become obsolete quickly. and some developers may just not feel confident enough to put in writing what their software can and can't do. but a manual on a website can always be updated.
Yeah, sometimes i wish nbc could be banned from showing sports at all. Even the stuff they do cover (which, in my slightly biased opinion, consists of way too much gymnastics) shows up far too late. The sydney olympics were the worst. They showed events that had literally taken place over 30 hours earlier. And all, i suspect, because they have to do a big mock up story about every frickin event. Talk about it a half hour before they show it. Talk about if for half an hour after. Instead of just showing more events which would be faster and cheaper.
That and their half hour stories of the atheletes whole lives makes me glad i have access to sports channels from other countries.
i've been in some of those "dollar a day" countries in Africa, and the people who want internet access definately make much more than a dollar a day and can afford those rates.
in fact, that whole "dollar a day" characterization of a country is misleading. it's an average. there are lots of people in the country side who make zero dollars a day. they make/grow their food/clothes/homes. people in the cities are the ones who want and can afford paying a couple of dollars an hour for internet access.
i'm not saying these countries aren't poor, but obviously those are competitve rates that customers can afford, else internet cafes wouldnt turn a profit.
If you detected a photon, then you did something physical to collapse the wave function. So it doesn't matter if you throw the data away or not, the physical interaction still occured
You do just mean in the case when the information has propagated to some irreversible environment (like a macroscopic detector) right?
Cause there are
quantum eraser experiments where the 'observer' is a photon or some other microscopic particle. The information that the particle holds about the superpostition can be erased and the superposition remains for the rest of us
the cryptogrophy scheme could fail if a human screws up, but it can't fail the way mention in parent.
if someone reads the stream of photons, and tries to recreate it for the receiver, the original sender and receiver will know. After the message was sent, they publicly share, over classical channels, a small portion of the key. If the receiver's is different at all from the sender's they know someone intercepted it. The recreated quantum stream has to be different from the original for quantum reasons.
I use the Gimp on Linux and on Windows and am used to it, so it's not confusing. I have never used photoshop, but am sure that if i did i would be confused for some time by the ui because of it's un-Gimp-likeness. to each their own.
granted, i am not a designer, so my simple needs may be easier to meet. i don't usually have 18MB pics.
and what was the point of that crooked line in the article? that the author can't draw straight lines? i just opened up the Gimp just to see how hard it is to draw a straight nice looking line... it's not that hard.
kind of irritating that the review didn't point out that the iriver does play ogg.
more irritating that the review compared ipod to two mediocre players instead of iriver's hard drive player and rio's karma (both play ogg), which are considered better to many.
the only reason i started paying attention to linux was cause i was like 'hey, free (as in beer) software'. it wasn't until later that i started thinking about (and supporting) the open source idea.
in my lab we have lots of windows software that is free (to us students) cause we either have a site licence or it's pirated. and i still have a hard time explaining to my lab partners why i bother with linux when i can get windows for free.
i recently got one lab partner to try openoffice, and my main selling point was that she wouldn't have to worry about microsoft killing her OS because she had a pirated version of MS Office.
there are several types of dark matter that have been proposed. some are pretty exotic (rare, hard to observe particles) and some is pretty straight forward.
one type we know to exist merely from looking at the rotational velocity of galaxies. looking at the visible matter (stars) of a galaxy allows one to calculate it's visible mass. stuff on the outer rim of galaxies is moving far too fast to be held in place by the gravitational attraction of the visible matter alone. therefore there must be more mass in the galaxy than we can see. we can't see it so it's called dark matter. nothing exciting, no CMB measurements involved.
on a side note, the existence of anything we observe is inferred from it's effects on other things. when i see something, i infer that it exists from the photons that have bounced off of it and into my eye. gravity is just a valid observational tool as light is.
have you tried soulseek? my uni also blocks all major file sharing services except for this one 'cause it's still flying under the radar. but still has alot of users/music
Iriver is the #2 selling mp3 maker, with about 25% of world sales. or so i heard. so they already have substantial name recognition from their solid state players
i'm all for the space program, but given who we're talking about, i can't help but be pessimistic. how many billions of dollars are going to be spent on space 'defense'? spy sattelites, rockets, space-bourne bombers. how high up does a country's air space go anyway?
this could be great, but it could be another way that this government is trying to entrench it's self as the world's only super power.
man, i never sounded like such a radical left conspiracy nut before this guy took office
The development of railroad, harbor, electrical and road infrastructure in former European colonies was strictly to bring raw materials like gold, diamonds, palm oil and other commodities out of the region to sell on the world market for the colonizers profit.
As for written languages, civil laws and medicine; sure colonisers brought those, but trade also brings those things to an 'unenlightened people' without the oppresion. Trade and exploration is the natural way to spread enlightenment. If Europe was all about upliftment, there would have been only missionaries and no armies.
And as for schools, the vast majority of African universities were founded after colonialism ended.
Furthurmore, if you look into the sentiments of the time it's clear that every nearly European country had the goal of being a world power. From the new world to the 'scramble for Africa', no European country wanted to be left out of acquiring vast foreign empires. It was about status and world prestige and power. Sure, some missionaries actually wanted to help, but they were in the minority.
It's not hard to find examples where not only did the colonizers not help the indiginous population, but they actively tried to exterminate them. Try googling 'Herero genocide' sometime.
Meanwhile you can go next door to Botswana where colonization was relatively benign. (In fact it was never technically a colony). Nearly all their improvements due to western scientific knowledge came from Europeans sharing with the people there. And to this day Botswana is one of the most stable, well managed countries in Africa. An example of what enlightenment without the oppression can do.
If you don't agree please just point out where i'm wrong without any insults.
Re:Go ask a Korean where science development occur
on
Human Accomplishment
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If you want to look at true human achievement, look at what the world is becoming. Only now do Asian, African, and other non-European begin to contribute to the arts and the sciences. Only now do you see advances in political and economical thought coming from there as well. This is all due to our natural sharing attitude, where we would rather teach and lift and bring others to our level than maintain our superiority with an iron fist.
Teach and uplift and bring others to our level? This is certainly not what Europe was doing between the 1500s and 50 years ago. Granted, scientific achievement in the west is superior in my possibly biased opinion. But as for the rest of the world, well it's hard to do research when you're struggling under colonialism. The book review mentions that certain demographics acheived much more when legal equality was gained. A large portion of the world didn't gain legal equality Until the latter half of the 20th century. Thus "Only now do Asian, African, and other non-European begin to contribute to the arts and the sciences"
Slashdot Mirror
you're right
sometimes it's easy to forget how little we used to know
try the feynman lectures. they are lectures from his actual class. much better than his books like 'six easy pieces' if you are actually trying to learn physics.
these papers are usually only readable by people in that field. even other physicists don't understand papers outside of their field.
Oh, and am I the only one that chortled at the fact that this paper, which lists the 100 most cited papers, had only 26 references?
heh, nope.
and how about these?
Read before you cite!
cond-mat/0212043
We report a method of estimating what percentage of people who cited a paper had actually read it. The method is based on a stochastic modeling of the citation process that explains empirical studies of misprint distributions in citations (which we show follows a Zipf law). Our estimate is only about 20% of citers read the original.
Copied citations create renowned papers?
cond-mat/0305150
Recently we discovered (cond-mat/0212043) that the majority of scientific citations are copied from the lists of references used in other papers. Here we show that a model, in which a scientist picks three random papers, cites them,and also copies a quarter of their references accounts quantitatively for empirically observed citation distribution. Simple mathematical probability, not genius, can explain why some papers are cited a lot more than the other.
i bet the lack of manuals now a days is because printed word lends an air of permanentness and reliability. now we have programs being updated every week or so, with bugs being taken out and feautures being put in. (release early, release often a la the cathedral and the bazaar)
many printed manuals become obsolete quickly. and some developers may just not feel confident enough to put in writing what their software can and can't do. but a manual on a website can always be updated.
they do have alot of oil
Yeah, sometimes i wish nbc could be banned from showing sports at all.
Even the stuff they do cover (which, in my slightly biased opinion, consists of way too much gymnastics) shows up far too late. The sydney olympics were the worst. They showed events that had literally taken place over 30 hours earlier. And all, i suspect, because they have to do a big mock up story about every frickin event. Talk about it a half hour before they show it. Talk about if for half an hour after. Instead of just showing more events which would be faster and cheaper.
That and their half hour stories of the atheletes whole lives makes me glad i have access to sports channels from other countries.
agreed,
i've been in some of those "dollar a day" countries in Africa, and the people who want internet access definately make much more than a dollar a day and can afford those rates.
in fact, that whole "dollar a day" characterization of a country is misleading. it's an average. there are lots of people in the country side who make zero dollars a day. they make/grow their food/clothes/homes. people in the cities are the ones who want and can afford paying a couple of dollars an hour for internet access.
i'm not saying these countries aren't poor, but obviously those are competitve rates that customers can afford, else internet cafes wouldnt turn a profit.
that's what i used to say.
but after this many screw ups by IE, i'm starting to think even i could take advantage of one of their vulnerabilities.
hey everybody, keep using IE!
Sheesh, I'd swear people down there are capable of holding complete and intricate conversations using solely that word
and you'd be right!
uses of the word
"Monkeys flying out you know what comes next!"
i *don't* know what comes next. this looks like the kind of phrase/rant i would like to use, but i have to know how it ends.
maybe alot of Canadians, ones who don't spend time on slashdot, think it's just as illegal here as in the states.
i remember some puretracks adds where their pitch was that we should buy from them instead of 'illegally' downloading so that we don't get sued.
If you detected a photon, then you did something physical to collapse the wave function. So it doesn't matter if you throw the data away or not, the physical interaction still occured
You do just mean in the case when the information has propagated to some irreversible environment (like a macroscopic detector) right?
Cause there are quantum eraser experiments where the 'observer' is a photon or some other microscopic particle. The information that the particle holds about the superpostition can be erased and the superposition remains for the rest of us
the cryptogrophy scheme could fail if a human screws up, but it can't fail the way mention in parent.
if someone reads the stream of photons, and tries to recreate it for the receiver, the original sender and receiver will know. After the message was sent, they publicly share, over classical channels, a small portion of the key. If the receiver's is different at all from the sender's they know someone intercepted it. The recreated quantum stream has to be different from the original for quantum reasons.
I use the Gimp on Linux and on Windows and am used to it, so it's not confusing. I have never used photoshop, but am sure that if i did i would be confused for some time by the ui because of it's un-Gimp-likeness. to each their own.
granted, i am not a designer, so my simple needs may be easier to meet. i don't usually have 18MB pics.
and what was the point of that crooked line in the article? that the author can't draw straight lines? i just opened up the Gimp just to see how hard it is to draw a straight nice looking line... it's not that hard.
the last time an eclipse was viewable in my area, i used a couple of polarizers to look at it and it worked pretty well
you adjust the light that gets through easily by just turning them with respect to each other.
might even work in front of a telescope
kind of irritating that the review didn't point out that the iriver does play ogg.
more irritating that the review compared ipod to two mediocre players instead of iriver's hard drive player and rio's karma (both play ogg), which are considered better to many.
agreed,
the only reason i started paying attention to linux was cause i was like 'hey, free (as in beer) software'. it wasn't until later that i started thinking about (and supporting) the open source idea.
in my lab we have lots of windows software that is free (to us students) cause we either have a site licence or it's pirated. and i still have a hard time explaining to my lab partners why i bother with linux when i can get windows for free.
i recently got one lab partner to try openoffice, and my main selling point was that she wouldn't have to worry about microsoft killing her OS because she had a pirated version of MS Office.
seeing as even federal government agencies already believe in the GPL.
there are several types of dark matter that have been proposed. some are pretty exotic (rare, hard to observe particles) and some is pretty straight forward.
one type we know to exist merely from looking at the rotational velocity of galaxies. looking at the visible matter (stars) of a galaxy allows one to calculate it's visible mass. stuff on the outer rim of galaxies is moving far too fast to be held in place by the gravitational attraction of the visible matter alone. therefore there must be more mass in the galaxy than we can see. we can't see it so it's called dark matter. nothing exciting, no CMB measurements involved.
on a side note, the existence of anything we observe is inferred from it's effects on other things. when i see something, i infer that it exists from the photons that have bounced off of it and into my eye. gravity is just a valid observational tool as light is.
have you tried soulseek? my uni also blocks all major file sharing services except for this one 'cause it's still flying under the radar. but still has alot of users/music
actually,
Iriver is the #2 selling mp3 maker, with about 25% of world sales. or so i heard.
so they already have substantial name recognition from their solid state players
his name is pronounced "lee-nus"??
good thing he didn't grow up in an english speaking country
i'm all for the space program, but given who we're talking about, i can't help but be pessimistic. how many billions of dollars are going to be spent on space 'defense'? spy sattelites, rockets, space-bourne bombers. how high up does a country's air space go anyway?
this could be great, but it could be another way that this government is trying to entrench it's self as the world's only super power.
man, i never sounded like such a radical left conspiracy nut before this guy took office
The development of railroad, harbor, electrical and road infrastructure in former European colonies was strictly to bring raw materials like gold, diamonds, palm oil and other commodities out of the region to sell on the world market for the colonizers profit.
As for written languages, civil laws and medicine; sure colonisers brought those, but trade also brings those things to an 'unenlightened people' without the oppresion. Trade and exploration is the natural way to spread enlightenment. If Europe was all about upliftment, there would have been only missionaries and no armies.
And as for schools, the vast majority of African universities were founded after colonialism ended.
Furthurmore, if you look into the sentiments of the time it's clear that every nearly European country had the goal of being a world power. From the new world to the 'scramble for Africa', no European country wanted to be left out of acquiring vast foreign empires. It was about status and world prestige and power. Sure, some missionaries actually wanted to help, but they were in the minority.
It's not hard to find examples where not only did the colonizers not help the indiginous population, but they actively tried to exterminate them. Try googling 'Herero genocide' sometime.
Meanwhile you can go next door to Botswana where colonization was relatively benign. (In fact it was never technically a colony). Nearly all their improvements due to western scientific knowledge came from Europeans sharing with the people there. And to this day Botswana is one of the most stable, well managed countries in Africa. An example of what enlightenment without the oppression can do.
If you don't agree please just point out where i'm wrong without any insults.
If you want to look at true human achievement, look at what the world is becoming. Only now do Asian, African, and other non-European begin to contribute to the arts and the sciences. Only now do you see advances in political and economical thought coming from there as well. This is all due to our natural sharing attitude, where we would rather teach and lift and bring others to our level than maintain our superiority with an iron fist.
Teach and uplift and bring others to our level? This is certainly not what Europe was doing between the 1500s and 50 years ago. Granted, scientific achievement in the west is superior in my possibly biased opinion. But as for the rest of the world, well it's hard to do research when you're struggling under colonialism. The book review mentions that certain demographics acheived much more when legal equality was gained. A large portion of the world didn't gain legal equality Until the latter half of the 20th century. Thus "Only now do Asian, African, and other non-European begin to contribute to the arts and the sciences"