Yes, sounds familiar to me, too. And the explanation given is so as well. In fact, what Deutsch does is to modify the experiment to four 'slits' and explaining an interference pattern with parallel universes.
In my opinion, the two slits would suffice to establish a notion of some parallel universe. It is interpreted that a photon does not travel through either of the slits, but rather trough both of them simultaneously. This is hard core quantum mechanics. Curiously, an interference pattern is observed, but were we to look for the slit through which the photon travels, there would be no interference pattern detectable. This is, of course an implication of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, but this could also be the basis for parallel universes: In one the photon travels right, in the other left and only by looking (measuring) it can we decide. I think to establish this particular theory, you do not need to modify the experiment.
Still, of course, this is no proof as such. I think it is the interpretation that matters and whether we can make new predictions from it. Curiously enough, the two slit experiment works with all sorts of particles, not only with photons. If we are to abandon the wavelike behaviour and adopt the parallel universes theory, this would make as much sense to me, at least looking at it briefly. Yet it sounds unfamiliar and difficult to accept. But physics does never care about what is difficult and what isn't.
Well. In the cellars of our Biology department, there are ten SGIs still packed and never taken care of for about five years because noone actually thought of programming those. Luckily, I did computational physics...
Karzan's explanation is on-the-spot.
True, it is but you see, language is living and since not all of us are studying Marx or Trotsky, we orient ourselves at what we see. Such behaviour is not uncommon, since we simply do not all have the time to do things, even if we'd like to. So what we see is countries that name themselves communist, although Orwellian might be much more apt. By saying communist, we usually mean countries such as China, Vietnam, North Corea, Cuba, SOVIET RUSSIA...
Happily however, there are some well educated people on/. that point out the errors we made. But just because we say things that in common language are totally understandable by most of us, we do not have a complete lack of understanding. I hate intellectual terrorism of this form. I think one has to distinguish between the various meanings and not just shoot at people whose reading lists do not include Marx at the top left. Please understand that there are folks here that have a lack of knowledge, but not of understanding. If you explain, surely we will follow.
I think the point here is that they are penalizing the wrong people. I mean, most of us probably download music legally when they get the opportunity. But then all you get is a fucking price hike. So you go like fuck RIAA I am going back to emule or whatever. The result is huge costs from lawsuits for the RIAA and not at all successful ones, because you cannot sue about I don't know how many people on this planet. Rather than seeing that online music stores are a great cash cow, they start making it unattractive again.
I think maths as such is not really an issue when it comes to programming. I mean, anybody can read about a certain algorithm or ways to derive a function most efficiently and so on. What does matter is the way you think. A computer is pure logics and that's the principle underlying mathematics. If you want to learn structural thinking, then basic mathematics are indispensable.
So I would suggest some basic knowledge in algebra (the part of maths that deals with collections of mathematical items, fields, groups, equations...) which lies at the very heart of maths. Then, some calculus to round it off (just in case someone wants you to calculate an integral...) and a little statistics (suppose you want to write analytical software). The real geeks might want to learn about number theory, too, but mainly for academic purposes (i.e. for fun). If you know your basic math, you can easily develop into other parts.
This is the programming part. I agree that if you just want to do web development, then the above seems questionable.
Anyway, where I studied, the department of computer science teaches the above subjects to students who want to obtain the bachelor. But as they grow, I observed that they do not really know much about maths...
I think this is illegal in most european countries.
The european council adheres to the opt-in principle, which basically means that you have to agree to marketing mails before it is legally sent to you.
AFAIK in the U.S. the opposite, namely the opt-out principle is in use, where, after having received unsolicited marketing stuff, you have to inform the sender that you don't want it. Rather inviting...
I mean, if I am to enter my mail somewhere on the internet, it's my (long deactivated) hotmail account that I am using exactly for this purposes. And on my everyday mail account, I don not get much spam on that one. I mean, come on. If you were thinking that free online services will stay free, then you did never think about the money one can make of advertising. So this is rather natural, I suppose. Why not move to another provider? There are lots...
Just a normal computer nowadays, isn't it? I mean the specs are not way off what I would consider a very fast machine, and I would definitely configure it that way even nowadays, exept for the graphics card and the processors that is. All I lack is the money and Windows whatever as an incentive to buy this. My Linux Box runs at virtually one-third the speed of everything that is suggested, and I do not get bored while loading kde. But then, I am used to work on medium sized Beowulf...
Sounds reasonable, too, but if you assume bones to be the bones of giants, then this probably leads to a tale about some giant (Simson comes to mind...). I think this is the way that stories evolved. Whatever. You can alway search for a reasonable cause for this and that story to emerge.
Math is NEVER about faith. A proof for the fact that 0.99999999... == 1 exists, in fact, you can do it yourself using nothing but algebra. You need not change to calculus. And things are NEVER close enough in mathematics, only in physics for that matter. Math is not affected by how the world is formed, but the world behaves according to mathematical equations. For example, one can build a system of euclidean geometry dealing with flat spaces. Yet, there is no such thing (or only incidentially) as a flat space in the universe. You need other mathematical tools do describe the real world, but the other concept is a valid mathematical principle nontheless.
Mathematical proof is absolute. Once a theorem is proved, ther is no way back, nor is there a way to falsify it. This is not about faith. Faith is just not a concept that is valid in maths. You can talk about logics that are not clear cut using Gödel's theorems, but even this would not be faith, since logics never say something about how things are believed to be, but how they ARE. Gödel showed that in a system that is free of contradictions, you cannot prove that this is actually the case. Hence, if a proof is found that maths is not consistent, we do not have to believe it is not, we KNOW. As in the other case, the question makes no sense. But you never have to resort to faith
As for the proof:
0.99999999...*10=9.999999999...
9.99999999... =9*SUM_{0}^{infinity}1/10
9*SUM_{0}^{infinity}1/10
=9*1/(1-1/10)=10
you end up with 0.9999999...*10=10 so if you divide by ten you get: 0.999999999999...=1, no trick, no magic, just expansion into a geometric series (for which the proof for convergence can be given by induction) and NO calculus, but pure algebra, as the equality holds in a strong sense. Always.
Exactly how do you specify the middle of a ball? I know I know the earth is no exact ball but it does for a distorted planet as well. And now, Plato's dialogues locate Atlantis beyond the Columns of Heracles, which would be Gibraltar, i. e. in the atlantic ocean. Again, I do not think Atlantis ever existed and perhaps Plato moved it deliberately OUT of the mediterranean (thanks for the ethymology, by the way), the middle of the earth.
Ok, although the name was not my main point, you might be right about that one, and atlas probably used his shoulders to carry the earth rather than merely his hands, and so on. What the hell is paranoid about just stating my point? Isn't this what/. is here for?
I doubt that a massive earthquake underseas or something similar apt to destroy an island is the will of a god. I rather think it is just the result of some plates of the earth's crust moving together/apart, some magma shooting out somewhere or things like that. Clearly sheer coincidence and Nothing more.
True, there are places not to be found, in the case of Atlantis most likely, as (and I am saying this again) Plato perhaps constructed it in order to show his ideal state. In that case it is no myth and no history nothing. It is just an idea (perhaps you remember Plato's use of this term...). Perhaps Plato wanted it to be the image of an island so that everyone could better understand what he means, but now I am clearly away with my philosophical education, and I did not read the Politeia in order to strengthen my opinion. All I wanted to state is that some places will not be found because they simply do not exist! This is not paranoid, but quite reasonable. As for your imagination, well of course you could be right, but science should never try to strive for things we believe in. Science is about trying to explain what appears not to be explicable, even if it does not fit with one's own beliefs
...about how many people are there (regardless of the country) that are used to electronic devices? I mean, come on, if there are lusers who cannot even put a simple hole in a piece of paper, how on earth are they supposed to e-vote??? We/.ers usually do forget that there are people that still bang the rocks together. I for one know lots of them. I think e-voting is still only feasible for a minority of people.
Another example of how you can creatively waste government funding for your personal projects. Atlantis is not even legend or mythology. Besides not even supposed to lie anywhere near Cyprus (rather in the Atlantic Ocean, hence the name...), Plato's Critias an Timaios are the only two dialogues that mention the island. It could very well be that the island never existed at all and was a construct of a philosopher designed for exemplification. Noah's ark however was designed to show why there is only a given number of animals surviving and perhaps it was used to explain dinosaur bones found at the time? Don't know exactly. But proof there will never be, since any old tree on ararat could be a remainder of the ark, and so could any stone that sunk when on cyprus they had a temple standing on the outmost rock over water, and that rock just broke off...
The point I want to make is that absolute proof does only exist in mathematics. Any other discipline is strongly affected by personal beliefs, as the above example shows, where the scientists not even think about Plato's location of all this. Proof stands in the way of faith, and to some people, it is just not understandable that this island with all the peaceful people on it could well be the brainchild of a brilliant mind.The problem now is that some scientists are in desperate need for money (because of their very special opinions probably). So they claim to have found something that everyone knows about, yet too little to be able do doubt the claim (Atlantis, Noah...) and therefore get today's headlines.
One has to be very careful with such pieces of information. They are not meant to be informative in any way, they are just here to be read and nothing more.
Theoretical Physisists always must refer to some real-life problem to show the usability of the theory put forward. After all, The paper puts a limit to Moore's law. Whether or not it is true, scientific or economic or whatnot does not really matter. The point is to give a certain limit to things. The argument proceeds along the line of "If there was a law that says this and that and blah blah about processor speeds etc. etc., then, this law cannot hold indefinitely". Nothing more, nothing less.
apt-get dist-upgrade with a default to the unstable distro and you're done. Who needs sarge anyway. By the time it's released, it contains old software and you can start out equally well using woody and modifying your sources.list.
The real strength of debian is its package manager, nothing else keeps me from using fedora.
There was never a trait between this words in newspeak. It is doubleplusungood. Don't you wonder if they vaporize you. But you never existed anyway.
Like doublethink...
Perhaps you can accept the following two axioms that help you cope with the situation:
1. There are theories that are not completely understandable, nor can we formulate them in an easy way.
2. General relativity will never be fully understood, even if you crunch your brain to pieces.
Don't expect anything to be faster than light. It was not observed as of now and will not, as a result of testing the special theory very deeply. All effects are well confirmed as of now. However, quantum physics is a different matter. If you wiggle one particle here, the particle at the other end does feel this because of quantum effects that just are plainly absent in relativity. Then, those particles have to know about each other, which means that you cannot do this to any random particle swirling about. They have to be what is called entangled to each other.
Einstein was aware of this, yet thought of it as a paradox (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-paradoxon), but nowadays, string theorists and super-symmetry guys are on their way to incorporate relativity into quantum theory. Then, any speed becomes effectively a pathological quantity by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So does of course the speed of light. It will become a distribution having a peak at the most likely value, but it is probable to go beyond, perhaps.
This is what can be sait about the faster thing.
Now. As long as GR holds (and it does so for much longer most physisists thought), there is an absolute speed, called the speed of light. It is important to see, that one of the fundamental ingredients of general relativity are so-called local inertial coordinate systems (LICS), where, being inertial, special relativity applies. From there we build space-time using Riemannian differential geometry, which basically makes predictions on local (NOT global) properties on space time. Think about livin on earth. How can we tell its a ball without looking from outside? We can only make measurements of lengths and angles: If the sum of angles in a triangle is bigger than 180 degrees, we live on a ball, if not, its another geometry. The same thing applies to space-time. We cannot see beyond, we have to measure, so all we can do is make local statements, and statements about the ways they are connected by using an arbitrary large set of LICSs . So this is not a totally useless concept. But in each LICS, the speed of light is a frontier not to be touched.
And as for the general theory. It was invented because there is just no simple way to include gravity (as thought of by Newton) into the special theory. Whilst electrodynamics, governed by Maxwell's equations is consisten with the Lorentz transformation (as opposed to Galilean transformations in classical mechanics), there are no real problems. In fact Einstein did incorporate relativistic mechanics with electrodynamics in his 1905 paper introducing special relativity.
Now, Newton's equation is not consistent with Lorentz-transformations, and therefore has to be modified. General relativity was the answer that took Einstein about 10 years to figure out. I think of him as one of the most brilliant minds ever to takle the question of how it all fits together. On a par with Newton perhaps. So, while classical electrodynamics was the field-theory of electricity and magnetism, general relativity is the field-theory of gravity. Now in Einstein's days, these where the only fundamental interactions known. Today we are up to four of them: electromagnetism, weak and strong interaction and gravity. The former three of them have already been incorporated in one giant theory, yet gravity waits to be formulated consistently in quantum mechanics. This could be a flaw in general relativity, but in toppling older theories, one always has to bear in mind that they stood so long because they are magnificent and, most importantly, tested and found to accord with what we call reality. So even if one gets disappointed about that one, I don't think that there will be something usable that's faster than light for the next few decades, sorry folks.
I'm not sure if mom would actually use oracle software though...
I think the best OS is the sysadmin. Mom does not want to install a soundcard and would not understand any of the XP blahblah for configuration. But then, she's a MAC user and just does not take questions from a computer, she just orders it to do what she wants... And the sysadmin is not bothered much. So a software based (compared to bioware based) OS is good if the sysadmin has enough time to read/.
True, but hey, once you start to actually send/receive email on a regular basis, it's getting costly. Then, you want to shop at amazon and this is where it's going to get you down. So my conclusion would be: One uses the internet at work and/or school, where there is enough bandwidth and you just have done everything you need to by the time you get home and therefore, you do not need a faster line (e. g. my girlfriend...), or you are sick and tired of looking at the www via telnet to port 80 just to make it faster (e. g. me) and switch so that I can send pointless slashdot poll at 1am just because it gives me the thrill...
The reason the percentages stay the same is that an equal share of people, as you say, do not want to do anything more on the internet, which of course is exactly what made the dot-com bubble blow, but that's a different story.
Slashdot Mirror
In my opinion, the two slits would suffice to establish a notion of some parallel universe. It is interpreted that a photon does not travel through either of the slits, but rather trough both of them simultaneously. This is hard core quantum mechanics. Curiously, an interference pattern is observed, but were we to look for the slit through which the photon travels, there would be no interference pattern detectable. This is, of course an implication of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, but this could also be the basis for parallel universes: In one the photon travels right, in the other left and only by looking (measuring) it can we decide. I think to establish this particular theory, you do not need to modify the experiment.
Still, of course, this is no proof as such. I think it is the interpretation that matters and whether we can make new predictions from it. Curiously enough, the two slit experiment works with all sorts of particles, not only with photons. If we are to abandon the wavelike behaviour and adopt the parallel universes theory, this would make as much sense to me, at least looking at it briefly. Yet it sounds unfamiliar and difficult to accept. But physics does never care about what is difficult and what isn't.
Well. In the cellars of our Biology department, there are ten SGIs still packed and never taken care of for about five years because noone actually thought of programming those. Luckily, I did computational physics...
True, it is but you see, language is living and since not all of us are studying Marx or Trotsky, we orient ourselves at what we see. Such behaviour is not uncommon, since we simply do not all have the time to do things, even if we'd like to. So what we see is countries that name themselves communist, although Orwellian might be much more apt. By saying communist, we usually mean countries such as China, Vietnam, North Corea, Cuba, SOVIET RUSSIA...
Happily however, there are some well educated people on /. that point out the errors we made. But just because we say things that in common language are totally understandable by most of us, we do not have a complete lack of understanding. I hate intellectual terrorism of this form. I think one has to distinguish between the various meanings and not just shoot at people whose reading lists do not include Marx at the top left. Please understand that there are folks here that have a lack of knowledge, but not of understanding. If you explain, surely we will follow.
There are NO icebears in Antarctica. But perhaps the penguins that live there would eat you???
I think the point here is that they are penalizing the wrong people. I mean, most of us probably download music legally when they get the opportunity. But then all you get is a fucking price hike. So you go like fuck RIAA I am going back to emule or whatever. The result is huge costs from lawsuits for the RIAA and not at all successful ones, because you cannot sue about I don't know how many people on this planet. Rather than seeing that online music stores are a great cash cow, they start making it unattractive again.
apt does the job alright.
So I would suggest some basic knowledge in algebra (the part of maths that deals with collections of mathematical items, fields, groups, equations...) which lies at the very heart of maths. Then, some calculus to round it off (just in case someone wants you to calculate an integral...) and a little statistics (suppose you want to write analytical software). The real geeks might want to learn about number theory, too, but mainly for academic purposes (i.e. for fun). If you know your basic math, you can easily develop into other parts.
This is the programming part. I agree that if you just want to do web development, then the above seems questionable.
Anyway, where I studied, the department of computer science teaches the above subjects to students who want to obtain the bachelor. But as they grow, I observed that they do not really know much about maths...
AFAIK in the U.S. the opposite, namely the opt-out principle is in use, where, after having received unsolicited marketing stuff, you have to inform the sender that you don't want it. Rather inviting...
I mean, if I am to enter my mail somewhere on the internet, it's my (long deactivated) hotmail account that I am using exactly for this purposes. And on my everyday mail account, I don not get much spam on that one. I mean, come on. If you were thinking that free online services will stay free, then you did never think about the money one can make of advertising. So this is rather natural, I suppose. Why not move to another provider? There are lots...
Just a normal computer nowadays, isn't it? I mean the specs are not way off what I would consider a very fast machine, and I would definitely configure it that way even nowadays, exept for the graphics card and the processors that is. All I lack is the money and Windows whatever as an incentive to buy this. My Linux Box runs at virtually one-third the speed of everything that is suggested, and I do not get bored while loading kde. But then, I am used to work on medium sized Beowulf...
Sounds reasonable, too, but if you assume bones to be the bones of giants, then this probably leads to a tale about some giant (Simson comes to mind...). I think this is the way that stories evolved. Whatever. You can alway search for a reasonable cause for this and that story to emerge.
Mathematical proof is absolute. Once a theorem is proved, ther is no way back, nor is there a way to falsify it. This is not about faith. Faith is just not a concept that is valid in maths. You can talk about logics that are not clear cut using Gödel's theorems, but even this would not be faith, since logics never say something about how things are believed to be, but how they ARE. Gödel showed that in a system that is free of contradictions, you cannot prove that this is actually the case. Hence, if a proof is found that maths is not consistent, we do not have to believe it is not, we KNOW. As in the other case, the question makes no sense. But you never have to resort to faith
As for the proof:
Exactly how do you specify the middle of a ball? I know I know the earth is no exact ball but it does for a distorted planet as well. And now, Plato's dialogues locate Atlantis beyond the Columns of Heracles, which would be Gibraltar, i. e. in the atlantic ocean. Again, I do not think Atlantis ever existed and perhaps Plato moved it deliberately OUT of the mediterranean (thanks for the ethymology, by the way), the middle of the earth.
Ok, although the name was not my main point, you might be right about that one, and atlas probably used his shoulders to carry the earth rather than merely his hands, and so on. What the hell is paranoid about just stating my point? Isn't this what /. is here for?
I doubt that a massive earthquake underseas or something similar apt to destroy an island is the will of a god. I rather think it is just the result of some plates of the earth's crust moving together/apart, some magma shooting out somewhere or things like that. Clearly sheer coincidence and Nothing more.
True, there are places not to be found, in the case of Atlantis most likely, as (and I am saying this again) Plato perhaps constructed it in order to show his ideal state. In that case it is no myth and no history nothing. It is just an idea (perhaps you remember Plato's use of this term...). Perhaps Plato wanted it to be the image of an island so that everyone could better understand what he means, but now I am clearly away with my philosophical education, and I did not read the Politeia in order to strengthen my opinion. All I wanted to state is that some places will not be found because they simply do not exist! This is not paranoid, but quite reasonable. As for your imagination, well of course you could be right, but science should never try to strive for things we believe in. Science is about trying to explain what appears not to be explicable, even if it does not fit with one's own beliefs
I always place a mike in front of the fan and plug it into the amp of my stereo so everybody coming into my room thinks I am running a Beowulf...
...about how many people are there (regardless of the country) that are used to electronic devices? I mean, come on, if there are lusers who cannot even put a simple hole in a piece of paper, how on earth are they supposed to e-vote??? We /.ers usually do forget that there are people that still bang the rocks together. I for one know lots of them. I think e-voting is still only feasible for a minority of people.
Another example of how you can creatively waste government funding for your personal projects. Atlantis is not even legend or mythology. Besides not even supposed to lie anywhere near Cyprus (rather in the Atlantic Ocean, hence the name...), Plato's Critias an Timaios are the only two dialogues that mention the island. It could very well be that the island never existed at all and was a construct of a philosopher designed for exemplification. Noah's ark however was designed to show why there is only a given number of animals surviving and perhaps it was used to explain dinosaur bones found at the time? Don't know exactly. But proof there will never be, since any old tree on ararat could be a remainder of the ark, and so could any stone that sunk when on cyprus they had a temple standing on the outmost rock over water, and that rock just broke off...
The point I want to make is that absolute proof does only exist in mathematics. Any other discipline is strongly affected by personal beliefs, as the above example shows, where the scientists not even think about Plato's location of all this. Proof stands in the way of faith, and to some people, it is just not understandable that this island with all the peaceful people on it could well be the brainchild of a brilliant mind.The problem now is that some scientists are in desperate need for money (because of their very special opinions probably). So they claim to have found something that everyone knows about, yet too little to be able do doubt the claim (Atlantis, Noah...) and therefore get today's headlines.
One has to be very careful with such pieces of information. They are not meant to be informative in any way, they are just here to be read and nothing more.Yet there are institutes that help you recover from the effects of drinking one... Check out The official Page to find one.
Theoretical Physisists always must refer to some real-life problem to show the usability of the theory put forward. After all, The paper puts a limit to Moore's law. Whether or not it is true, scientific or economic or whatnot does not really matter. The point is to give a certain limit to things. The argument proceeds along the line of "If there was a law that says this and that and blah blah about processor speeds etc. etc., then, this law cannot hold indefinitely". Nothing more, nothing less.
apt-get dist-upgrade with a default to the unstable distro and you're done. Who needs sarge anyway. By the time it's released, it contains old software and you can start out equally well using woody and modifying your sources.list. The real strength of debian is its package manager, nothing else keeps me from using fedora.
Money for idiot expenses from tax-payers.
There was never a trait between this words in newspeak. It is doubleplusungood. Don't you wonder if they vaporize you. But you never existed anyway.
Like doublethink...
Perhaps you can accept the following two axioms that help you cope with the situation: 1. There are theories that are not completely understandable, nor can we formulate them in an easy way. 2. General relativity will never be fully understood, even if you crunch your brain to pieces. Don't expect anything to be faster than light. It was not observed as of now and will not, as a result of testing the special theory very deeply. All effects are well confirmed as of now. However, quantum physics is a different matter. If you wiggle one particle here, the particle at the other end does feel this because of quantum effects that just are plainly absent in relativity. Then, those particles have to know about each other, which means that you cannot do this to any random particle swirling about. They have to be what is called entangled to each other. Einstein was aware of this, yet thought of it as a paradox (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-paradoxon), but nowadays, string theorists and super-symmetry guys are on their way to incorporate relativity into quantum theory. Then, any speed becomes effectively a pathological quantity by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So does of course the speed of light. It will become a distribution having a peak at the most likely value, but it is probable to go beyond, perhaps. This is what can be sait about the faster thing. Now. As long as GR holds (and it does so for much longer most physisists thought), there is an absolute speed, called the speed of light. It is important to see, that one of the fundamental ingredients of general relativity are so-called local inertial coordinate systems (LICS), where, being inertial, special relativity applies. From there we build space-time using Riemannian differential geometry, which basically makes predictions on local (NOT global) properties on space time. Think about livin on earth. How can we tell its a ball without looking from outside? We can only make measurements of lengths and angles: If the sum of angles in a triangle is bigger than 180 degrees, we live on a ball, if not, its another geometry. The same thing applies to space-time. We cannot see beyond, we have to measure, so all we can do is make local statements, and statements about the ways they are connected by using an arbitrary large set of LICSs . So this is not a totally useless concept. But in each LICS, the speed of light is a frontier not to be touched. And as for the general theory. It was invented because there is just no simple way to include gravity (as thought of by Newton) into the special theory. Whilst electrodynamics, governed by Maxwell's equations is consisten with the Lorentz transformation (as opposed to Galilean transformations in classical mechanics), there are no real problems. In fact Einstein did incorporate relativistic mechanics with electrodynamics in his 1905 paper introducing special relativity. Now, Newton's equation is not consistent with Lorentz-transformations, and therefore has to be modified. General relativity was the answer that took Einstein about 10 years to figure out. I think of him as one of the most brilliant minds ever to takle the question of how it all fits together. On a par with Newton perhaps. So, while classical electrodynamics was the field-theory of electricity and magnetism, general relativity is the field-theory of gravity. Now in Einstein's days, these where the only fundamental interactions known. Today we are up to four of them: electromagnetism, weak and strong interaction and gravity. The former three of them have already been incorporated in one giant theory, yet gravity waits to be formulated consistently in quantum mechanics. This could be a flaw in general relativity, but in toppling older theories, one always has to bear in mind that they stood so long because they are magnificent and, most importantly, tested and found to accord with what we call reality. So even if one gets disappointed about that one, I don't think that there will be something usable that's faster than light for the next few decades, sorry folks.
I'm not sure if mom would actually use oracle software though... I think the best OS is the sysadmin. Mom does not want to install a soundcard and would not understand any of the XP blahblah for configuration. But then, she's a MAC user and just does not take questions from a computer, she just orders it to do what she wants... And the sysadmin is not bothered much. So a software based (compared to bioware based) OS is good if the sysadmin has enough time to read /.
True, but hey, once you start to actually send/receive email on a regular basis, it's getting costly. Then, you want to shop at amazon and this is where it's going to get you down. So my conclusion would be: One uses the internet at work and/or school, where there is enough bandwidth and you just have done everything you need to by the time you get home and therefore, you do not need a faster line (e. g. my girlfriend...), or you are sick and tired of looking at the www via telnet to port 80 just to make it faster (e. g. me) and switch so that I can send pointless slashdot poll at 1am just because it gives me the thrill... The reason the percentages stay the same is that an equal share of people, as you say, do not want to do anything more on the internet, which of course is exactly what made the dot-com bubble blow, but that's a different story.