I don't mean to be pedant, but the summary did not mention quantum computing, it only mentioned quantum cryptography which is what the article is about, for once.
But here's the thing. Earth's Moon was born in a catastrophic collision more than 4 billion years ago.
So is this established fact now? I thought the that was far from proven, and even a quite debated theory.
But maybe the impact hypothesis has gained traction in the science community since I heard of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Origin_and_histo ry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth#Moon
It has. What's not true is the theory that the Pacific ocean is the scar left by the collision: this doesn't fit with plate tectonics, and the collision must have happened when the earth was still hot and almost molten to the crust.
The main argument for the collision theory is that the moon is made of much lighter material than earth. Specifically, it has no iron core. However, the material composition of the moon is throughout almost the same as the earth's crust, so it is very plausible that the moon is made up from ejecta from the surface due to a collision that heppened after planetary differentiation (the processus where heavier materials, like iron, sink to the core).
for the Seattle Mariners - there's pretty much only one way to type that.
Yeah, right, Ciatel cannot be written any other way. Like every other word of the english language, Siahtel is the perfect example of a uniquely constructed word. Whether you live in See-attel or do not live in Sea-atle, the correct spelling of Seateul is obvious.
First of all, take off the scroll lock and pause/break keys. You need to read history books to figure out what they're for.
Then get rid of the windows key and that weird "Start menu" key on keyboards (not just microsoft keyboards nowadays, pretty much all keyboards have those).
Then get rid of the "Email" and "Media" and other buttons they so helpfully add to pad the top part of keyboards, because they weren't large enough already. What is "Email" suppose to do anyway? Is it receive, or send, or check inbox, or just open Outlook Express? Or is it a tube-cleaning button to make sure you receive all those internets as fast as possible?
THEN we can talk about the capslock, a key which I actually use from time to time.
That's the problem I have with most coops. One of my friend bought all his meat from a farm cooperative because he thought it was more fair than to pay a corporation, since everyone involved got a share of the money. But actually, the only members of the cooperative were the landowners. The delivery truck drivers were not part of it, nor were the people who built the tractors, nor the oil diggers for the gas, nor the people who made the fertilizer, nor the clerks and accountants, nor....you see my point. A cooperative is nothing else than an employee-owned corporation, and the only way to have a "fair" sharing of the price paid would be to include all the employees of all the companies that helped create the final product, and that doesn't exist.
Anyone tested support of Broadcom wireless cards with Freespire? I'm having a lot of trouble with a Acer Travelmate 2410 and I'd like to give it a try.
Ok, my definition of work might be a little arbitrary. You are right that electrons move around, however I call this a loss because that is not the point of a processor. The point of the processor is to arrange information represented by the position of the electrons. To go on with your analogy of a rock downhill, if you build a machine to bring rocks down which consists of a hill, then this machine is pretty efficient. However, if you build a computer out of rocks, where up the hill means one and down the hill means zero, then it's very inefficient because the gravitational energy is lost: you could have achieved the same result by using a much smaller amount of energy.
You're right about the 0K point, although the electrons won't stop spinning (but this is a field in itself). However, a process aribtrarily close can be arbitrarily efficient, even though the amount of energy extracted gets smaller. At 0K you get 100% of zero, but at (0+epsilon)K you can get 100% of something. Anyway, I am not suggesting that we cool processors to 0K: a different process would be needed.
This is true. The fact that all the energy produced by a light bulb ends up as heat is widely known, but not widely understood. In particular, this means that during winter, turning off the light does not save energy. The 60W that come off your light bulb all goes as heat, whether directly or when they hit a dark surface. This heat stays inside your house (except the small amount of light going out the window), so basically each 60W bulb means you can use 60W less on heating to keep the house at the same temperature.
Ok, strictly speaking there are moving parts, but there is no overall movement. At the end of the calculation, the processor does not shoot the result to another room. This is equivalent to a car on neutral: the gears rotate, it creates a lot of heat and noise, but at the end of the day, the car has not moved, so if you consider the efficient use of a car to be movement from point A to point B, then on neutral a car is 0% efficient.
When energy is used to do work (i.e. lighting a room), then yes, the heat generated is due to an inefficient process, but that doesn't mean that it is possible to have a 100% efficient process. Actually, the second (?) law of thermodynamics states that a 100% efficient process is only possible at absolute zero.
On the other hand, a processor produces no work, i.e. there are no moving parts, it doesn't produce light, it doesn't make sound or an electric current. The only thing it does is move electrons around, i.e. changes its entropy. You need energy to do that, but it's not work: the total (useful) energy emitted by the processor is zero, and all energy used goes off as heat. There is a theoretical limit to the amount of energy needed to flip a bit, spintronic might approach that limit better than electronics, but wil not break it, and this energy will still be emitted as heat.
Just for fun, pick a piece of paper that, folded, will be about a cubic inch. Unfold it. How many characters can you write on it? And I bet the readout is faster, too.
I've always wondered what is the exact meaning of the life expectancy statistic. Is it the average age at which people died this year, the average age at which people born this year are expected to live to, or is it a weighted average of both? When we see each year the "Life expectancy is longer by 0.x years in 200y" article, it makes a huge difference!
Parent is right. To Visa, you are a much more important customer than Telus is. There is no way Telus is ever going to refuse payement via VISA cards, but you, on the other hand, could just as easily switch to MasterCard. If you simply refuse paying, the credit card company is on your side. If Telus request paymenet from VISA, they will ask for a copy of the contract, signed, and won't pay up until they see it. If you're right, they keep their loyal customer. If you're wrong, then you'll have to pay and they get their interest fee. VISA has a win-win situation if they're on your side, but have nothing to win being on Telus' side.
The ruling allows companies to withhold information, but does not force them to do so. Some, like Vidéotron, already gave the info to the CRIA, and seemed happy to do it.
But now let me introduct a new eye colour - purple. OK, YUK.
Really? Well, here's your social reason, I'm sure I would like purple-eyed vegetarians! Of course, I doubt our species will ever develop "natural" contact lenses....
But the problem with that example is that you assume eye color to be not advantageous nor disadvantageous. Wisdom teeth ARE dangerous! At least I hope they are, otherwise my dentist screwed me for some 100's of dollars (plus, those painkillers don't kill ALL the pain!). People can die of an infection. The rate is low, I admit, but it is there.
Yes there's a new gene. But nothing has evolved, because the old genes are still there too.
What is the difference? What if the disappearance of a gene creates the purple eyes? What if some freak chance means that purple eyed people can only breed with each other because the same protein also codes for reproductive functions? Where do you draw the line of what is evolution and what isn't?
As a model it sounds ok but a model is supposed to help us predict what happens to the group - the individual however is allowed the freedom to be on the extremes of the gauss curve.
What's wrong with using statistics? I am not trying to say to an individual will die because of wisdom teeth, an evolutionary argument is intrisically a statistical one. As you said an individual can always be on the extreme of the gaussian, but right now having no teeth is the extreme and having them is the average. Eventually, these could be reversed.
So I don't mean to bore you with this stuff,...
Actually, I enjoy this! I myself am a physicist, so I always saw this from a more mathematical point of view. We always assume that our simple formulae represent the real world, but making sure they actually make sense is just as interesting. But I don't mean to bore you either, I guess this could go on for a long time....;-)
I, me again. I thought about what I've written and I realized that I said "I understand the difference between speciation and variation" then use two paragraphs explaining how they are exactly the same. Maybe I need to think about it a little longer...;-)
Also, when you say that a branch must die out in order to have evolution, that is not true. You do not need to instantly kill all members of a species to destroy it, if they are competing for the same ressources, even a very slight advantage will ensure the survival of the fittest because population increase exponentially while ressources stay constant. From the point of view of a the disavantaged party, the presence of a stronger competitor is the same as any natural catastrophe.
You can simulate this easily. Write a code with two variables. On each loop, increase one variable by x% and the other one by (x+d)%. d is your reproduction advantage which can be however small you choose. Once in a while decrease the population of one variable by y% and the other by (y+e)%; this is your war/famine/environmental catastrophe which affects both species differently. My scenario is one where d is non-zero and e is zero; your scenario is one where e is non-zero and d is zero. In both cases, the second species is rapidly wiped out and evolution occured. The speed of this evolution will depend on the size of d and e.
Actually, I think we have an argument about definitions. I understand the difference between variation and speciation, and I think you exposed it right. However, I always took variation as being an integral part of "The theory of evolution". In The Origin of Species, Darwin clearly presents speciation as being an extreme form of isolated variation. So you are right in saying that if population can mix, than we do not get a new population, just a mutant one. However, the process of speciation is exactly the same process as that of variation, except on separate populations.
To come back to your example of dogs, thousands of year ago you had a single species from which dogs and wolves both evolved (don't blame me if my timeline is wrong, I am using an example for the sake of argument here). Some members of this species were domesticated by men, others did not. The wild and domesticated branches both underwent variation, but since they did not interbreed, there was no way for the new mutations of a branch to be propagated into the other. Eventually both branches became so separated that they could not breed (can they? let's assume they cannot). This is what you call evolution. Note that it did not need any special external pressure, just the pressure of needing to get food was sufficient. If there never had been any domestication of the original species, the present-day wolves would have underwent the exact same process of variations that they did, except there would be no dogs to allow us to make a difference. I do not think it would be fair not to call this process evolution, as it is basically the same.
What we are witnessing in humans is the same process that happened in wolves. The difference is that we do not have dogs. If there were two types of human population, one which ate raw meat and vegetables and the other our diet, and we did not interbreed for geographical or social reasons, over time we would probably lose our wisdom teeth and not them, plus others changes, which would eventually lead to speciation. The absence of people who eat only raw meat does not change anything to the process that is happening in us.
I must say I don't have any relaible source, this really boils down to "my dentist said so". But I have no reason to believe he would lie to me. It could also be a short-term quirk, I admit that.
Now, as for your understanding of evolution, I think you are wrong. It is not as if any evolution must lead to speciation. It is possible that due to a mutation, some individual do not grow wisdom teeth. Now, growing wisdom teeth is not going to automatically kill you, but let's say not having them gives you a 0.00001% higher chance to survive up to the age of reproduction. Then over time more people without wisdom teeth will reproduce, thus passing that mutation to their children. This will not lead to a new species unless the non-wisdom-teeth-growing humans are isolated, but it is still called evolution as it modifies the average genetic code of the species.
And, by the way, I am a scientist. Please refrain from insulting people.
Something that not many people know: you can actually witness evolution happening right now! It has been shown that less and less people actually grow wisdom teeth. Since the human mouth is now usually too small to accomodate them, these teeth have no purpose and are actually dangerous. Take the number of people who do not grow them, plot against time, and you see a statistically significant trend.
If you need balck holes to be "observed as such" in order to believe in them, you will wait for a long time. Black holes are black, therefore they cannot be "observed", their presence can only be deduced.
I doubt that dark energy stars would lead to more "direct" observations. If you only allow for direct observations, all we see are dots in space of different colors and intensity.
I think it's important to point out that what these people are doinmg is not the whole story about quantum dots. They use a particular technique, and they found a way to improve it, but other people are using completely different techniques that have different advantages and disadvantages. Using "Scientists Find Flaw in Quantum Dot Construction" as a title is very misleading; it's like if an amelioration to firefox was reported as "Scientists find flaw in networking that could fix the internet".
If it's cheaper to buy an new one than to repair the old one, than India and China will also find it more efficient to build a new one. Why would it be cheaper to build a new one for NASA, but more expensive for China?
No, a quantum computer does not have to have a power of 2 has a number of states, just as a classical computer does not have to. Intel could very well decide that 0 is -5V, 1 is ground and 2 is +5V. But there's no point in doing that. Similarly, most quantum computer designs use powers of 2 because it's simpler.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mean to be pedant, but the summary did not mention quantum computing, it only mentioned quantum cryptography which is what the article is about, for once.
But here's the thing. Earth's Moon was born in a catastrophic collision more than 4 billion years ago.
o ry n
So is this established fact now? I thought the that was far from proven, and even a quite debated theory. But maybe the impact hypothesis has gained traction in the science community since I heard of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Origin_and_hist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth#Moo
It has. What's not true is the theory that the Pacific ocean is the scar left by the collision: this doesn't fit with plate tectonics, and the collision must have happened when the earth was still hot and almost molten to the crust.
The main argument for the collision theory is that the moon is made of much lighter material than earth. Specifically, it has no iron core. However, the material composition of the moon is throughout almost the same as the earth's crust, so it is very plausible that the moon is made up from ejecta from the surface due to a collision that heppened after planetary differentiation (the processus where heavier materials, like iron, sink to the core).
for the Seattle Mariners - there's pretty much only one way to type that.
Yeah, right, Ciatel cannot be written any other way. Like every other word of the english language, Siahtel is the perfect example of a uniquely constructed word. Whether you live in See-attel or do not live in Sea-atle, the correct spelling of Seateul is obvious.
First of all, take off the scroll lock and pause/break keys. You need to read history books to figure out what they're for. Then get rid of the windows key and that weird "Start menu" key on keyboards (not just microsoft keyboards nowadays, pretty much all keyboards have those). Then get rid of the "Email" and "Media" and other buttons they so helpfully add to pad the top part of keyboards, because they weren't large enough already. What is "Email" suppose to do anyway? Is it receive, or send, or check inbox, or just open Outlook Express? Or is it a tube-cleaning button to make sure you receive all those internets as fast as possible? THEN we can talk about the capslock, a key which I actually use from time to time.
That's the problem I have with most coops. One of my friend bought all his meat from a farm cooperative because he thought it was more fair than to pay a corporation, since everyone involved got a share of the money. But actually, the only members of the cooperative were the landowners. The delivery truck drivers were not part of it, nor were the people who built the tractors, nor the oil diggers for the gas, nor the people who made the fertilizer, nor the clerks and accountants, nor....you see my point. A cooperative is nothing else than an employee-owned corporation, and the only way to have a "fair" sharing of the price paid would be to include all the employees of all the companies that helped create the final product, and that doesn't exist.
Anyone tested support of Broadcom wireless cards with Freespire? I'm having a lot of trouble with a Acer Travelmate 2410 and I'd like to give it a try.
Ok, my definition of work might be a little arbitrary. You are right that electrons move around, however I call this a loss because that is not the point of a processor. The point of the processor is to arrange information represented by the position of the electrons. To go on with your analogy of a rock downhill, if you build a machine to bring rocks down which consists of a hill, then this machine is pretty efficient. However, if you build a computer out of rocks, where up the hill means one and down the hill means zero, then it's very inefficient because the gravitational energy is lost: you could have achieved the same result by using a much smaller amount of energy.
You're right about the 0K point, although the electrons won't stop spinning (but this is a field in itself). However, a process aribtrarily close can be arbitrarily efficient, even though the amount of energy extracted gets smaller. At 0K you get 100% of zero, but at (0+epsilon)K you can get 100% of something. Anyway, I am not suggesting that we cool processors to 0K: a different process would be needed.
This is true. The fact that all the energy produced by a light bulb ends up as heat is widely known, but not widely understood. In particular, this means that during winter, turning off the light does not save energy. The 60W that come off your light bulb all goes as heat, whether directly or when they hit a dark surface. This heat stays inside your house (except the small amount of light going out the window), so basically each 60W bulb means you can use 60W less on heating to keep the house at the same temperature.
Ok, strictly speaking there are moving parts, but there is no overall movement. At the end of the calculation, the processor does not shoot the result to another room. This is equivalent to a car on neutral: the gears rotate, it creates a lot of heat and noise, but at the end of the day, the car has not moved, so if you consider the efficient use of a car to be movement from point A to point B, then on neutral a car is 0% efficient.
When energy is used to do work (i.e. lighting a room), then yes, the heat generated is due to an inefficient process, but that doesn't mean that it is possible to have a 100% efficient process. Actually, the second (?) law of thermodynamics states that a 100% efficient process is only possible at absolute zero. On the other hand, a processor produces no work, i.e. there are no moving parts, it doesn't produce light, it doesn't make sound or an electric current. The only thing it does is move electrons around, i.e. changes its entropy. You need energy to do that, but it's not work: the total (useful) energy emitted by the processor is zero, and all energy used goes off as heat. There is a theoretical limit to the amount of energy needed to flip a bit, spintronic might approach that limit better than electronics, but wil not break it, and this energy will still be emitted as heat.
Just for fun, pick a piece of paper that, folded, will be about a cubic inch. Unfold it. How many characters can you write on it? And I bet the readout is faster, too.
I've always wondered what is the exact meaning of the life expectancy statistic. Is it the average age at which people died this year, the average age at which people born this year are expected to live to, or is it a weighted average of both? When we see each year the "Life expectancy is longer by 0.x years in 200y" article, it makes a huge difference!
Parent is right. To Visa, you are a much more important customer than Telus is. There is no way Telus is ever going to refuse payement via VISA cards, but you, on the other hand, could just as easily switch to MasterCard. If you simply refuse paying, the credit card company is on your side. If Telus request paymenet from VISA, they will ask for a copy of the contract, signed, and won't pay up until they see it. If you're right, they keep their loyal customer. If you're wrong, then you'll have to pay and they get their interest fee. VISA has a win-win situation if they're on your side, but have nothing to win being on Telus' side.
Oh! Thanks for the information. I guess this shows of much of a poor job the media does at reporting legal battles.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/6357.cfm
The ruling allows companies to withhold information, but does not force them to do so. Some, like Vidéotron, already gave the info to the CRIA, and seemed happy to do it.
But now let me introduct a new eye colour - purple. OK, YUK.
Really? Well, here's your social reason, I'm sure I would like purple-eyed vegetarians! Of course, I doubt our species will ever develop "natural" contact lenses....
But the problem with that example is that you assume eye color to be not advantageous nor disadvantageous. Wisdom teeth ARE dangerous! At least I hope they are, otherwise my dentist screwed me for some 100's of dollars (plus, those painkillers don't kill ALL the pain!). People can die of an infection. The rate is low, I admit, but it is there.
Yes there's a new gene. But nothing has evolved, because the old genes are still there too.
What is the difference? What if the disappearance of a gene creates the purple eyes? What if some freak chance means that purple eyed people can only breed with each other because the same protein also codes for reproductive functions? Where do you draw the line of what is evolution and what isn't?
As a model it sounds ok but a model is supposed to help us predict what happens to the group - the individual however is allowed the freedom to be on the extremes of the gauss curve.
What's wrong with using statistics? I am not trying to say to an individual will die because of wisdom teeth, an evolutionary argument is intrisically a statistical one. As you said an individual can always be on the extreme of the gaussian, but right now having no teeth is the extreme and having them is the average. Eventually, these could be reversed.
So I don't mean to bore you with this stuff,...
Actually, I enjoy this! I myself am a physicist, so I always saw this from a more mathematical point of view. We always assume that our simple formulae represent the real world, but making sure they actually make sense is just as interesting. But I don't mean to bore you either, I guess this could go on for a long time....;-)
I, me again. I thought about what I've written and I realized that I said "I understand the difference between speciation and variation" then use two paragraphs explaining how they are exactly the same. Maybe I need to think about it a little longer...;-)
Also, when you say that a branch must die out in order to have evolution, that is not true. You do not need to instantly kill all members of a species to destroy it, if they are competing for the same ressources, even a very slight advantage will ensure the survival of the fittest because population increase exponentially while ressources stay constant. From the point of view of a the disavantaged party, the presence of a stronger competitor is the same as any natural catastrophe.
You can simulate this easily. Write a code with two variables. On each loop, increase one variable by x% and the other one by (x+d)%. d is your reproduction advantage which can be however small you choose. Once in a while decrease the population of one variable by y% and the other by (y+e)%; this is your war/famine/environmental catastrophe which affects both species differently. My scenario is one where d is non-zero and e is zero; your scenario is one where e is non-zero and d is zero. In both cases, the second species is rapidly wiped out and evolution occured. The speed of this evolution will depend on the size of d and e.
Actually, I think we have an argument about definitions. I understand the difference between variation and speciation, and I think you exposed it right. However, I always took variation as being an integral part of "The theory of evolution". In The Origin of Species, Darwin clearly presents speciation as being an extreme form of isolated variation. So you are right in saying that if population can mix, than we do not get a new population, just a mutant one. However, the process of speciation is exactly the same process as that of variation, except on separate populations.
To come back to your example of dogs, thousands of year ago you had a single species from which dogs and wolves both evolved (don't blame me if my timeline is wrong, I am using an example for the sake of argument here). Some members of this species were domesticated by men, others did not. The wild and domesticated branches both underwent variation, but since they did not interbreed, there was no way for the new mutations of a branch to be propagated into the other. Eventually both branches became so separated that they could not breed (can they? let's assume they cannot). This is what you call evolution. Note that it did not need any special external pressure, just the pressure of needing to get food was sufficient. If there never had been any domestication of the original species, the present-day wolves would have underwent the exact same process of variations that they did, except there would be no dogs to allow us to make a difference. I do not think it would be fair not to call this process evolution, as it is basically the same.
What we are witnessing in humans is the same process that happened in wolves. The difference is that we do not have dogs. If there were two types of human population, one which ate raw meat and vegetables and the other our diet, and we did not interbreed for geographical or social reasons, over time we would probably lose our wisdom teeth and not them, plus others changes, which would eventually lead to speciation. The absence of people who eat only raw meat does not change anything to the process that is happening in us.
I must say I don't have any relaible source, this really boils down to "my dentist said so". But I have no reason to believe he would lie to me. It could also be a short-term quirk, I admit that.
Now, as for your understanding of evolution, I think you are wrong. It is not as if any evolution must lead to speciation. It is possible that due to a mutation, some individual do not grow wisdom teeth. Now, growing wisdom teeth is not going to automatically kill you, but let's say not having them gives you a 0.00001% higher chance to survive up to the age of reproduction. Then over time more people without wisdom teeth will reproduce, thus passing that mutation to their children. This will not lead to a new species unless the non-wisdom-teeth-growing humans are isolated, but it is still called evolution as it modifies the average genetic code of the species.
And, by the way, I am a scientist. Please refrain from insulting people.
Something that not many people know: you can actually witness evolution happening right now! It has been shown that less and less people actually grow wisdom teeth. Since the human mouth is now usually too small to accomodate them, these teeth have no purpose and are actually dangerous. Take the number of people who do not grow them, plot against time, and you see a statistically significant trend.
Another example of previous art:
http://map.search.ch/
If you need balck holes to be "observed as such" in order to believe in them, you will wait for a long time. Black holes are black, therefore they cannot be "observed", their presence can only be deduced. I doubt that dark energy stars would lead to more "direct" observations. If you only allow for direct observations, all we see are dots in space of different colors and intensity.
I think it's important to point out that what these people are doinmg is not the whole story about quantum dots. They use a particular technique, and they found a way to improve it, but other people are using completely different techniques that have different advantages and disadvantages. Using "Scientists Find Flaw in Quantum Dot Construction" as a title is very misleading; it's like if an amelioration to firefox was reported as "Scientists find flaw in networking that could fix the internet".
If it's cheaper to buy an new one than to repair the old one, than India and China will also find it more efficient to build a new one. Why would it be cheaper to build a new one for NASA, but more expensive for China?
No, a quantum computer does not have to have a power of 2 has a number of states, just as a classical computer does not have to. Intel could very well decide that 0 is -5V, 1 is ground and 2 is +5V. But there's no point in doing that. Similarly, most quantum computer designs use powers of 2 because it's simpler.