I take your point but honestly, Star-Wars era CGI can be performed on a laptop these days. Modern CGI is no substitute for a storyline and good acting.
The GP is not saying we should do away with profesionnal artists, on the contrary, but that we perhaps do not need the superstar system and an expensive studio setting, agents and whatnot. I've seen Kate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving on stage ; I'm sure they could make a good living without selling a single DVD.
Random members of the public cannot level accusations like this. It's the job of the owners of the works that are being shared illegally to find out who shares is (by IP numbers). Then they call this "high authority" HADOPI who subpoena the names from the ISPs. The first time the offenders gets a reminder e-mail, the second time a registered post mail and the third time the connection is cut from 1 month to a year depending on whether you admit your guilt or complain, respectively.
The "brilliant" idea of this law is that as a first measure the onus is on the majors to come up with IP numbers somehow. They are likely to do a terrible job of it.
This is a shame but the French government was dead set on passing this law so this is merely accelerating things by a few days.
At any rate all the technical experts said the law was inapplicable and too restricted. It only concerns P2P networks exchanges, dealing with French works shared on French soil, i.e. for which French law has jurisdiction. A wider law would have required European collaboration, however the European parliament has repeatedly voted against any kind of repressive Internet policy.
As it is, this law can easily be circumvented by using VPNs (e.g. the pirate bay one) or using other means of sharing which are not covered by this law.
A probably unintended side effect of this law is that French consumers will probably now turn even more than before to safe, non-French works, i.e. subtitled American, British or German TV drama, films and music to the detriment of the French entertainment industry.
The French entertainment industry will also probably face a boycott of some sort. Serves them right, if you ask me. Consumers are sheep only to a degree, as we have seem in the RIAA cases.
In this instance the French entertainment industry, like the RIAA, think they are entitled to continuing revenues no matter what. They haven't yet learned that suing or harassing one's public is a really bad idea. I think they will change their tune in a few year's time.
With zero tolerance policies enforcers throw away their powers of reasoning. A policy cannot be used to deny people their basic rights.
Plus in this case it was really really stupid and it seems to really have harmed the girl significantly. She was off school for months and eventually transfered.
Well, if you think parallel computation is hard, FPGA programming is yet another completely different ballgame. You have to worry about timing delays and the like. This is not for the faint of heart, and not all algorithms can be efficiently implemented in a FPGA. It works best on flow-like stuff but falls to slow CPU speed if you need to access memory randomly.
Indeed you can emulate hardware on an FPGA, but not *very* fast.
Really? How about someone who says that some nations are races are inferior, worthy of one's contempt, that their assets should be seized and they themselves possibly eliminated for the greatest good? Sounds familiar?
I would have thought the peak in ability to learn would be around 2-3 years of age when (young) people learn to talk, and by and large become a lot more independent.
Anyway it doesn't really matter too much. I think people around age 22 are by and large just through college and are learning at a full steam rate, hence appear faster/more intelligent.
Now recent study have shown that the aging brain does not really lose cells or the capacity to learn. Just keep learning then. Train yourself, read a lot, have engaging conversations, don't harm yourself with alcohol or other substances too much and you should do fine until you are in your 80s or so, probably longer by then.
This is a caricature and there are plenty of counter-examples. Look up Barbara Mc Clintock. She spent 40 years demonstrating gene transposition. Nobody believed her for the first 20. Pretty much all the successful women in science display single-minded dedication to some degree like you describe.
Thanks, very good point. In general the "hard" sciences nowadays are very competitive and short-term goals oriented: publish, get grants, churn out PhDs, etc. This is by and large leading to conservative science. It is now too risky to spend a few years thinking about a deep problem and come up with tentative answers. Universities want to see large numbers of publications.
So this is hurting everyone in the middle-to-long term.
That's usually only for the first year or so. There are another 4 years until school starts. Sure there might be a few more young ones to show up after the first but generally women could go back to working earlier.
We are 20 years further down that road, my friend and you don't know how a Tokamak works. JET (Joint European Torus) was already able to sustain reactions of nearly a minute. The goal for ITER is 1000s or 20 minutes. It is not that far off.
I have a little legion of both theoretical and practical physicists who would be happy to discuss with you how they have ildly been wasting their time these past 20 years or so.
In short we are within a factor 10 of achieving ignition, meaning a long, self-sustained fusion reaction outputting more energy than is expended to maintain it. In 1968 we were within a factor of 1000 of achieving this.
Actually I've found my answer. I dug out my Misner-Thorne-Wheeler and found the answer on page 1014, diagram 37.3. Essentially, as a GW deforms an interferometer as it passes through it, the change in photons arrival time as they do a round-trip through the apparatus is non-local: it's cumulative and it's measurable.
Also GW are so usually weak because they result from "quadrupole" modes. The difference with electro-magnetic radiations is that *roughly* they result from negative charges orbiting positive charges (dipole radiation): each half the couple generate radiation: attracting or repulsing a test charge.
However for gravity, this is not the case. As gravity is only attractive, two masses orbiting each other will each generate waves that cancel each-other at long distances. Only the difference in time-of-arrival is measurable, which is much weaker in most situations.
I sort of worked out a picture of the process in my mind, that would make sense if we are measuring first order effects. If GW are distorting spacetime they are in effect creating acceleration and therefore an actual force that can actually contract and expand the arm, as if we were simultaneously accelerating one arm of the aparatus and decelerating the other. This would indeed be measureable.
I don't know if the picture is correct. I have about 800 pages of MTW to work through before I can lay down the equations. I might never get there in fact:-(
There exist low spatial and temporal frequency watermarks that resist compression and editing. In fact they are totally invisible frame by frame and almost impossible to detect by eye. To remove them you have to edit the whole film.
Quite simply, these are watermarks with a lot of redundancies, very resistant to almost anything.
Not really you know. Unemployment benefits are cut after 12 months in France as opposed to 6 months in the USA, not that much of a difference. Anyway with the Great Crisis upon us unemployment is over 8% in the US, we are all going to be chomeurs sans benefits.
How could that be modded informative? Especially the _always_? I didn't think Hemingway or Henry Miller complained too much about their stay in France.
Anyway, haven't you heard ? With Obama in office it's OK for the French to love the USA again.
Can I ask a question ? If I understand well, LIGO works by assuming GW will contract one arm of the laser path and simultaneously expand the other. I understand how this could be detected
However this sounds oversimplistic. I've tried to work through one of the more recent paper (nov 2007) describing the apparatus, but I cannot find a good description of what I'm looking for.
To me a GW will not just locally dilate or contract space, but *spacetime*. Correct or not ? in the latter case how can a system embedded in spacetime detect its own Lorentz-like contraction or expansion ? It's all relative. Intuitively to me LIGO should only be able to detect not the actual contration / expansion of spacetime but only the kind of secondary, tidal effect that this contraction/expantion creates.
In other words, picture a person falling into a small black hole of a few solar masses. As the person falls into the BH they are being contracted in the directions perpendicular to the fall, and expanded in the direction of the fall. However a person would not feel these effect directly as since this is spacetime which is contracted/expanded, they are contracted/expanded along with it and so fell no special "pressure". However they would definitely feel the *gradient* of spacetime expansion/contraction in the form of tidal effects. In the case of the fall into a BH these would eventually become very strong.
However in the case of LIGO I can only picture these effect as being extremely weak. Is that why GW are so hard to pick up?
Does any of this make any sense ? Thanks for your time.
Slashdot Mirror
I take your point but honestly, Star-Wars era CGI can be performed on a laptop these days. Modern CGI is no substitute for a storyline and good acting.
The GP is not saying we should do away with profesionnal artists, on the contrary, but that we perhaps do not need the superstar system and an expensive studio setting, agents and whatnot. I've seen Kate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving on stage ; I'm sure they could make a good living without selling a single DVD.
Random members of the public cannot level accusations like this. It's the job of the owners of the works that are being shared illegally to find out who shares is (by IP numbers). Then they call this "high authority" HADOPI who subpoena the names from the ISPs. The first time the offenders gets a reminder e-mail, the second time a registered post mail and the third time the connection is cut from 1 month to a year depending on whether you admit your guilt or complain, respectively.
The "brilliant" idea of this law is that as a first measure the onus is on the majors to come up with IP numbers somehow. They are likely to do a terrible job of it.
This is a shame but the French government was dead set on passing this law so this is merely accelerating things by a few days.
At any rate all the technical experts said the law was inapplicable and too restricted. It only concerns P2P networks exchanges, dealing with French works shared on French soil, i.e. for which French law has jurisdiction. A wider law would have required European collaboration, however the European parliament has repeatedly voted against any kind of repressive Internet policy.
As it is, this law can easily be circumvented by using VPNs (e.g. the pirate bay one) or using other means of sharing which are not covered by this law.
A probably unintended side effect of this law is that French consumers will probably now turn even more than before to safe, non-French works, i.e. subtitled American, British or German TV drama, films and music to the detriment of the French entertainment industry.
The French entertainment industry will also probably face a boycott of some sort. Serves them right, if you ask me. Consumers are sheep only to a degree, as we have seem in the RIAA cases.
In this instance the French entertainment industry, like the RIAA, think they are entitled to continuing revenues no matter what. They haven't yet learned that suing or harassing one's public is a really bad idea. I think they will change their tune in a few year's time.
With zero tolerance policies enforcers throw away their powers of reasoning. A policy cannot be used to deny people their basic rights.
Plus in this case it was really really stupid and it seems to really have harmed the girl significantly. She was off school for months and eventually transfered.
Caching proxies routinely save traffic and are usually a good investment, especially now.
Well, if you think parallel computation is hard, FPGA programming is yet another completely different ballgame. You have to worry about timing delays and the like. This is not for the faint of heart, and not all algorithms can be efficiently implemented in a FPGA. It works best on flow-like stuff but falls to slow CPU speed if you need to access memory randomly.
Indeed you can emulate hardware on an FPGA, but not *very* fast.
Right, why don't you read up on UNICEF, UNDCP, UNDP, UNAIDS and all the hundreds of programs that the UN runs and then come back to us.
Really? How about someone who says that some nations are races are inferior, worthy of one's contempt, that their assets should be seized and they themselves possibly eliminated for the greatest good? Sounds familiar?
I would have thought the peak in ability to learn would be around 2-3 years of age when (young) people learn to talk, and by and large become a lot more independent.
Anyway it doesn't really matter too much. I think people around age 22 are by and large just through college and are learning at a full steam rate, hence
appear faster/more intelligent.
Now recent study have shown that the aging brain does not really lose cells or the capacity to learn. Just keep learning then. Train yourself, read a lot, have engaging conversations, don't harm yourself with alcohol or other substances too much and you should do fine until you are in your 80s or so, probably longer by then.
The physics tells you are eventually limited by the point-spread function of the lens system.
This is more or less where we are at right now. Any more megapixels will simply mean extra blurry megapixels.
This is a caricature and there are plenty of counter-examples. Look up Barbara Mc Clintock. She spent 40 years demonstrating gene transposition. Nobody believed her for the first 20. Pretty much all the successful women in science display single-minded dedication to some degree like you describe.
Thanks, very good point. In general the "hard" sciences nowadays are very competitive and short-term goals oriented: publish, get grants, churn out PhDs, etc. This is by and large leading to conservative science. It is now too risky to spend a few years thinking about a deep problem and come up with tentative answers. Universities want to see large numbers of publications.
So this is hurting everyone in the middle-to-long term.
That's usually only for the first year or so. There are another 4 years until school starts. Sure there might be a few more young ones to show up after the first but generally women could go back to working earlier.
ITER is USA's ITER. They have joined the program again I believe.
We are 20 years further down that road, my friend and you don't know how a Tokamak works. JET (Joint European Torus) was already able to sustain reactions of nearly a minute. The goal for ITER is 1000s or 20 minutes. It is not that far off.
I have a little legion of both theoretical and practical physicists who would be happy to discuss with you how they have ildly been wasting their time these past 20 years or so.
You've seen little advance because you're not reading much on the matter I think
this for instance
or that
or maybe this
In short we are within a factor 10 of achieving ignition, meaning a long, self-sustained fusion reaction outputting more energy than is expended to maintain it. In 1968 we were within a factor of 1000 of achieving this.
The ITER deadline for achieving his is 2020.
Had Japan also had nuclear weapons in 1945 and the means to deliver them to Washington DC, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would probably not have been bombed.
That was the point of the parent, I believe.
Actually I've found my answer. I dug out my Misner-Thorne-Wheeler and found the answer on page 1014, diagram 37.3. Essentially, as a GW deforms an interferometer as it passes through it, the change in photons arrival time as they do a round-trip through the apparatus is non-local: it's cumulative and it's measurable.
Also GW are so usually weak because they result from "quadrupole" modes. The difference with electro-magnetic radiations is that *roughly* they result from negative charges orbiting positive charges (dipole radiation): each half the couple generate radiation: attracting or repulsing a test charge.
However for gravity, this is not the case. As gravity is only attractive, two masses orbiting each other will each generate waves that cancel each-other at long distances. Only the difference in time-of-arrival is measurable, which is much weaker in most situations.
Thanks for your reply, very informative anyway !
I sort of worked out a picture of the process in my mind, that would make sense if we are measuring first order effects. If GW are distorting spacetime they are in effect creating acceleration and therefore an actual force that can actually contract and expand the arm, as if we were simultaneously accelerating one arm of the aparatus and decelerating the other. This would indeed be measureable.
I don't know if the picture is correct. I have about 800 pages of MTW to work through before I can lay down the equations. I might never get there in fact :-(
There exist low spatial and temporal frequency watermarks that resist compression and editing. In fact they are totally invisible frame by frame and almost impossible to detect by eye. To remove them you have to edit the whole film.
Quite simply, these are watermarks with a lot of redundancies, very resistant to almost anything.
Not really you know. Unemployment benefits are cut after 12 months in France as opposed to 6 months in the USA, not that much of a difference. Anyway with the Great Crisis upon us unemployment is over 8% in the US, we are all going to be chomeurs sans benefits.
How could that be modded informative? Especially the _always_? I didn't think Hemingway or Henry Miller complained too much about their stay in France.
Anyway, haven't you heard ? With Obama in office it's OK for the French to love the USA again.
Hello Photonic,
Can I ask a question ? If I understand well, LIGO works by assuming GW will contract one arm of the laser path and simultaneously expand the other. I understand how this could be detected
However this sounds oversimplistic. I've tried to work through one of the more recent paper (nov 2007) describing the apparatus, but I cannot find a good description of what I'm looking for.
To me a GW will not just locally dilate or contract space, but *spacetime*. Correct or not ? in the latter case how can a system embedded in spacetime detect its own Lorentz-like contraction or expansion ? It's all relative. Intuitively to me LIGO should only be able to detect not the actual contration / expansion of spacetime but only the kind of secondary, tidal effect that this contraction/expantion creates.
In other words, picture a person falling into a small black hole of a few solar masses. As the person falls into the BH they are being contracted in the directions perpendicular to the fall, and expanded in the direction of the fall. However a person would not feel these effect directly as since this is spacetime which is contracted/expanded, they are contracted/expanded along with it and so fell no special "pressure". However they would definitely feel the *gradient* of spacetime expansion/contraction in the form of tidal effects. In the case of the fall into a BH these would eventually become very strong.
However in the case of LIGO I can only picture these effect as being extremely weak. Is that why GW are so hard to pick up?
Does any of this make any sense ? Thanks for your time.
No, it's real easy. Just sort of flay your arms about at little, that ought to do it.
Ah, you mean *significantly*, as in: to have any kind of measurable effect? sorry :-)
Informative, mod parent up please.