It appears that there are many of us experiencing this "University of Michigan Testing" bug. By having agreed to test that system, now we can't see/use the Discussion2 system.
I suppose it's possible that the two systems are the same thing, but based on the few screenshots I've been able to find of Discussion2, it doesn't look like they are. Moreover the University of Michigan system is very slow and buggy--I have trouble believing this is the same interface everyone else is testing. (Maybe a precursor to it, though.)
This is obviously a bug, and it would be nice if someone would mod up one of these comments so that the coders are aware of the problem. (In addition to the bug report that we should file...)
Indeed. Businesses will lose out because international partners won't be as interested (or able) to fly to the States for face-to-face meetings.
In my field, research science, the effects of the strict US rules are very apparent. Foreign scientists are having a harder and harder time coming to the US to study, collaborate, or even go to a conference. Scientists are being denied visas or putting on long waiting lists (so that they miss the conference!). The end result is a decrease in the amount of scientific collaborations between US groups and those outside the US, and more emphasis being put on non-US conferences (in Europe, Canada, Japan, etc.).
This is having a real (though difficult to measure) impact on US science. In a subtle way, there is a decrease in the flow of "advanced technical knowledge" into the US, which is to the detriment of US labs. Through these border policies, the US is isolating itself. Since ultimately science and technology are big drivers of the US economy, I see this as a very poor choice on the part of the US administration.
You paint a stark picture of "anonymous random contributors" versus "academia and government"--but I think that is a false dichotomy. Wikipedia has always benefiting from the contributions of random individuals, as well as from expert academics. Whether or not those academics were told by their host institutes to contribute is actually immaterial (unless you think the academic holds different expertise/opinions in the two cases...).
To have governments actively allocate funding for people to contribute to Wikipedia in no way prevents or invalidates the tireless work of the rest of the community. Both groups should be contributing, and both groups should be checking each other's facts. There is no need (nor any ability) for governments to "take over wikipedia from within".
What we are seeing is a consolidation of efforts, and I hope other governments follow this lead. Government workers (who are inherently being paid from public funds) should not waste effort generating duplicate material. Rather than creating their own factoid-websites, they can do more good by extending and improving the vast material on Wikipedia (which, of course, is freely available to all).
The reason you see no difference between the big bang and religious creation myths is that you are misrepresenting (or misunderstanding) the big bang (and cosmology in general). You ask:
I mean, when both the explanations can't tell me really what where there before everything existed...I can't say one of them is more believable than the other one.
Answering the question "what was there before the universe?" is actually not the intent of the big bang theory (if indeed such questions have answers). The big bang is a model that was proposed to explain the measured expansion of the universe, and it turns out that it correctly predicted many of the features seen in the cosmos. The theory has been repeatedly modified to take into account new experimental results. The new modifications to the theory (e.g. inflation, dark energy) are providing us with unprecedented agreement with observations, and testable predictions.
The words in bold, by the way, apply to scientific reasoning but not to religion. So the big bang and religious creation myths are "the same" only if you completely throw out all the successful predictions and agreements of cosmology, and focus on one particular question that the big bang theory was never intended to answer.
In a more general sense, science never claims to give your life meaning, or to answer the "why?" questions. It merely provides predictive models, or in other words answers the "how?" questions. Science and religion are very different, and pretending they are the same is rather disingenuous.
It used to be all one had to do was go out and hunt for some food a couple ours a day
Really? I've heard that bold statement made many times, but I don't think it's the consensus in modern anthropology. To be honest, such statements about idyllic hunters working for an hour a day and then hanging out the rest of the time ignores just how difficult life in the great outdoors really is. I'm sure their day's activities included lots of other things, like arduous treks to new terrains, and rummaging for other sources of food when the local population of game was too low. And that is not to speak of quality of life, where I'm sure disease, and famine were commonplace.
Though people like to claim that new technology doesn't lead to more leisure time, I see just the opposite around me. People work for 8 hours a day, and then go home and chill out. They spend two days a week and many weeks out of the year "just having fun." And frankly a good percentage of our population works 8 hours a day not to "make ends meet" but because they enjoy a higher-than-average standard of living. A lawyer could probably work 8 hours a week and make enough to survive... but he would rather work a bit more and enjoy fantastic luxuries, health care, and overall quality of life that even kings in previous generations could not dream of. Yes, some people do have to work very hard to support their family, but that's been true since the dawn of time. The difference is that now a larger percentage of society has a good amount of "free time".
If you honestly believe that people could work so little in previous generations, then by all means move into the wilderness and hunt for only a few hours a day. (Note: you may have to move to another country to find a large enough expanse of wilderness to survive off of.) As for me, I'm going to finish my day's work, then go home and relax.
This will give MS more of a foothold in the market. They wanted this to happen! Now flash isn't the only cross platform game in town so now the marketing guys will be able to say YES IT WILL WORK ON LINUX so you dont just need to use flash!
Previously I was worried that any OSS support for Silverlight would just be giving MS an edge. But now I see it quite differently. One problem with Flash (in my opinion) is that there is no full open-source implementation. Some people may say "who cares?" since there are free (but not Free) flash players for every major OS (including Linux). But to me, those closed-sourced players are not so great, and I wish an open-source player (and development environment) existed.
But the problem with creating a FOSS version of Flash is that it's a matter of catch-up. With Silverlight, this team of coders is showing that they can keep up. Thus, instead of being behind in their implementation, they are showing that they can always deliver a feature-complete alternate (and FOSS) implementation.
Frankly I hope this displaces flash to some extent. Even if it gives MS's platform more exposure, it won't matter as long as there is also a feature-complete FOSS implementation. Creating marketplace competition is always good... and in this case we have competition to MS's Silverlight, and competition to Flash. This is good. I highly doubt that Microsoft expected or wanted this to happen. In fact, nothing could be worse for their longterm goals than for a FOSS equivalent to be as good (or maybe better?) than their implementation. Having a competing implementation, used by many people, will mean that they cannot "embrace and extend" and cannot lock people into their products. After all, if they try to change the Silverlight standard, who is to say whether the MS implementation or the FOSS implementation will become the defacto standard?
Yeah, I have to agree with you. The topic seems interesting, but I can't take any of the conclusions too seriously, because ultimately this person is just using random anecdotes to make a case. This sentence sums up the article in my mind:
I don't have the data to confirm whether or not a statistically significant shift has occurred but it was one of those things that just made me think.
At least the author acknowledges that there isn't sufficient data to say anything truly authoritative on the subject. I think the article is sufficiently interesting that it bears further (statistically significant!) analysis. Yet until such an analysis is done, this article is only an opinion piece. The different between discussing anecdotes and doing actual scientific studies is that when you recount anecdotes you will tend to recount those that support your preconceptions. So the content of the article could be more a reflection of the author's subconscious expectations about how class division relates to the websites in question. Ideally, a scientific study removes biases and exposes data more meaningfully.
I also feel like the author's persistent struggles with how to "define class" in the US would evaporate if a proper study were performed. Because, in a scientific study you don't have to "define class"--rather you simply report what variables correlate with website choice, and what variables don't. You can then divide the population into groups (if the data supports such a division) and see whether the group divisions correlate to income, education, ethnicity, etc. (without ever having to artificially apply class labels).
Food for thought, but unfortunately nothing meaningfully conclusive.
Ah... apparently the download link was redirecting to CNET. So I guess Microsoft can claim, as they do with the Novel coupons, that they are not the ones actually distributing the binaries hence not bound by the GPL.
Let's assume for the moment it was an employee joke.
Microsoft can certainly fire the employee, but they nevertheless distributed Ubuntu, which includes alot of GPL-software. This means that they are bound by the terms of the GPL. Among other things, this means that: 1. Anyone can ask for source code from Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn't give out source, then they are violating the GPL and hence copyright law. If they do give out the source code, then they better hope it doesn't infringe on other companie's patents, or they can be sued for patent violations. 2. If memory serves, even the GPLv2 has clauses about implicitly extending any licenses to whoever you distribute the software to. (The GPLv3 makes this much more explicit.) So that would mean that all of MS's claims of patent infringement disappear, since they have now given us permission to use their patents. (Am I wrong on this point?)
If it was a employee doing this, I suppose MS can argue in court that they suffered from sabotage and can't be held responsible. Is that a valid legal defense? Or are companies always bound by the actions of their employees, with their only recourse being to fire the employee?
I can easily imagine a disgruntled employee doing this to force Microsoft into a tough position. If they are now a Linux distributor, then they are in a tough spot.
Correction:
Copyright law tells people that they are not allowed to do certain things.
The GPL is a license that guarantees people certain additional freedoms, on condition that they agree that everyone else gets those freedoms too.
It's not that hard to understand why it is called a "Free Software License."
I've heard talk of something like decoherence in an assortment of philosophy classes before
That's good to hear! I have a friend who got a philosophy degree, and he was not nearly as well-versed in the philosophy and interpretation of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics as you obviously are.
I don't have problems with indeterminism in the local world so long as the "multiverse" (i.e. the superposition of all possible worlds) is deterministic
Part of me really wants to believe that the universe is ultimately deterministic, since that seems most 'elegant.' However I know this isn't very rational and that we must accept indeterminism if that's the way the universe really works. Like many, I find the many-worlds interpretation somehow compelling, yet as a scientist it is difficult to endorse an interpretation for which there is no experimental evidence. (Although some have claimed that we should be able to measure interference effects between different states of the global superposition of the multiverse, most analysis suggests that we can never obtain evidence of these 'other worlds.')
if it's really all a question of information transmission, and everything is constantly interacting with everything else (i.e. everything is constantly "observing" everything else), then shouldn't all events within our light cone be "collapsed" already, whether or not we've gone about making any measurements?
Well decoherence allows us to calculate what 'degree of entanglement' with the environment is necessary to cause a superposition to apparently collapse. If you imagine an atom in a vacuum, millions of years from anything else, then it's not hard to imagine that it will remain in a superposition for a long time. If you imagine a cat sitting in a box, it turns out that any superposition it enters will collapse in less than 1E-80 seconds, because of all the air molecules hitting it, etc. And of course there are many examples in between.
In fact they did a neat experiment with a beam of buckyballs. These spherical molecules are big enough that they decohere rapidly in some cases, but small enough that you can get them into superpositions sometimes. They found that the beam exhibited quantum interference effects when the constituent buckyballs were at low temperature, but that the beam lost that quantum effect when the beam was hotter. The effect matched decoherence predictions perfectly. If the bucykballs (in vacuum) are cold enough, they can maintain a coherent superposition for the duration of the experiment (a few seconds), whereas if they are too hot, they begin interacting with the environment (via emitting thermal radiation that is entangled with them, and becomes entangled with the sidewalls of the experimental chamber, etc.) and lose coherence before hitting the detector.
So it's easy to imagine that an atomic nucleus, which is insulated from most interactions, can maintain a state of 'decayed and not decayed' for a reasonably long time, or that a single electron can interfere with itself. However it's clearly not reasonable to say that a cat will exist in a superposition for any meaningful amount of time, because large, hot objects become entangled with their environment very quickly. So I believe the answer is: somethings will exhibit superpositions (which collapse when they become sufficiently entangled with the environment, i.e. they are measured) and other things cannot really get into superpositions (because they collapse effectively instantaneously).
Thank you for an interesting conversation.
Thank you too! It's always nice to have a real conversation on slashdot (amid all the trolls and rants)!
your use of "time symmetric" seems to be that when you play the model fowards and backwards and forwards and backwards and forward again, you replay over the exact same events
Yes that's what I mean by time-symmetry (I believe that's the accepted usage). Sorry for the confusion. Also, I was glossing over perhaps too much. For instance I was mostly referring to the more classical physics equations (even though I mixed in quantum arguments). E.g. the equations of mechanics, electromagnetism, and gravity are all time-symmetric (as you say, you can run them forwards and backwards and keep getting the same states). In the standard model, mechanics, electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong nuclear force are all time-symmetric. However, there is a small (but experimentally verified) violation of time symmetry in the weak nuclear force (called CP violation). So, really, the fundamental laws are known to be time-asymmetric... but it's still strange that you can construct a theory of black holes using just general relativity (no quantum mechanics, no time-symmetry violations). Actually CP-violation (and the whole discussion of CPT symmetries) is an incredible topic on its own.
are quantum laws, e.g. governing radioactive decay, time-asymmetric in precisely the same way that a black hole is, but in reverse?
Yeah I was hoping you wouldn't ask that! You're absolutely right... Quantum mechanics is divided into two regimes: (1) the deterministic, gradual, time-symmetric evolution of a system's wavefunction (regulated by the Schrodinger equation) and then (2) a sudden, non-deterministic (in fact, totally random) time-asymmetric change that occurs when a systems undergoes 'wavefunction collapse.' This time-asymmetry is actually the more troubling example of the universe not being time-symmetric (with, as you point out, information basically appearing out of nowhere). This process (2) has bothered physicists since it was introduced, since it didn't have clear rules and no equation was available for it.
Answering the questions "what causes wavefunction collapse?" and "is wavefunction collapse deterministic?" is not easy. The short answer is that it is an unsolved problem. We know that quantum mechanics leads to random events as seen by local observers, however we don't yet know whether quantum mechanics is, fundamentally, deterministic or non-deterministic (time-symmetric vs. time-asymmetric). However a lot of progress has been made on this topic in the last few decades, and unfortunately these results have not been picked up by most popular science sources that I've seen. (So, annoyingly, the version of quantum mechanics presented in most books is still "the old version", unaltered by all the recent experimental and theoretical advances.) One of the recent advances is analysis of decoherence. It explains why wavefunction collapse occurs, under what conditions it will occur, and why the final states will seem to be classical non-quantum states. In brief summary, the idea in decoherence is that when a quantum system (which could be in a superposition of states) starts becoming entangled with the 'environment' (i.e. the innumerable degrees of freedom of nearby atoms, air molecules, thermal radiation, etc.), this causes the system to lose quantum coherence between its constituent states. That is the system goes from being in a coherent superposition (the quantum states that are usually described as "a simultaneous mix of up and down" or whatever) to being in an incoherent mix of states (like "up or down, but we don't know which one). Thus the environment takes on the role of persistently monitoring the system, thereby inducing wavefunction collapse quite rapidly for nearly every system. So that's why, even though quantum superpositions occur all the time, they decohere quickly and frequently, and we see mostly classical stat
I'm curious: why not just put random information in there? There's effectively random information coming out of the black hole as it 'evaporates' over forward time, so what's wrong with having random particles 'fall out of' a black hole (so to speak) when you play the model backwards?
Indeed. That would solve the short-term mathematical problem, but not the deeper mismatch of the theories. Also, whether or not Hawking radiation is truly random, or whether it contains hidden information (in a non-trivially chaotic way, mind you) is the central question that people are trying to answer. It's an unsolved problem. Your suggestion would probably get the "right answer" for any real-life measurement we're going to make on black holes anytime soon. But the math may be hinting that there is an underlying physical principle we've been ignoring thus far. This is what has physicists excited: the possibility that this hint may lead to another revolution in our understanding of the universe.
I see no problem with a mathematical model which, when played in one direction, takes what we consider to be fixed, determined inputs... and sometimes spits out random outputs... and when played backwards takes those previous outputs as fixed inputs, runs them through the calculations, and spits out random outputs that may or may not be the same as the inputs that we put in when we ran the model forward
I see where you're coming from. We can't know whether the universe is fundamentally 'supposed' to be time-symmetric or time-asymmetric. So maybe the universe is ruled by equations of the sort you describe. However the really troubling thing is this: all the fundamental equations of physics are time-symmetric. These are the equations that are used to predict and model the existence of black holes. So it's really weird that time-symmetric equations predict the emergence of a time-asymmetric phenomenon. (If you have equations that don't differentiate between left and right, it would be surely astonishing if, after some algebra, the equation had a preference for left or right. Where did the preference come from? You probably made a mistake in your algebra!) The idea of time-symmetry suddenly being broken is tantalizing. It suggests that either we have a hidden assumption in our current models, or that the universe is really able to generate time-asymmetry from time-symmetric forces. Either realization, if proven, would be an important contribution to physics. So I guess it again comes down to physicists not just being uncomfortable with the inelegance of the current formalism, but also hoping that the resolution of this paradox will provide new insights.
I'm also very fond of this approach as a solution to the puzzle of why entropy appears to be time-asymmetric.
Since my background is in chemistry, I also tend to think of the problem in terms of entropy. In which case, to a large extent the emergence of time-asymmetry just amounts to the axiom "the universe started in a low-entropy state" after which statistical mechanics nicely predicts all the phenomena we readily observe. (The viewpoint you describe, where given enough time the universe will simply wander into a low-entropy state, is actually quite compelling.) But that actually makes the black holes all the more tantalizing. Because in statistical mechanics, as you noted, even when you go into high-entropy states, you are not really destroying information. All systems can, in principle, return to previous (even low-entropy) states. (In fact there are equations that allow you to approximate what the 'recurrence time' for a given system will be... where eventually it will return to its initial condition, even if it is a highly-ordered state.) However in a universe with black holes destroying information, this no longer holds true. If you follow the 'information' in such a un
So if a bit of matter is the center around which a black hole is forming, surely that bit of matter will be within the event horizon and its information will be lost?
That's a rather zen question, actually. In some ways it amounts to asking "What's the difference between the matter that forms the black hole, and the matter that is falling into it?" Conventionally, the answer would be: all the matter inside the event horizon is part of the black hole, and everything outside the event horizon is falling into it (or, rather, is being gravitationally attracted towards it, and may or may not actually fall).
If this new bit of theory is correct, then the answer actually becomes harder, because the event horizon never forms, so you can't really say that some matter is inside vs. outside. Of course there is probably a sensible way to define a "pseudo-horizon" based upon a threshold where the probability of light escaping sharply drops towards 0.
I guess another way of thinking about it would be to say that this hypothetical matter that is "at the center of where the black hole is forming" would inevitably be included into the collapsing mass and would thus, itself, become part of the black hole.
If you're feeling up to a challenge: how does matter get "evaporated" when EMR can't escape,
It's true that EMR that enters the event horizon cannot escape. The evaporation process, called Hawking radiation, is a quantum effect that has no conventional analogue. Basically, in quantum mechanics (or rather quantum field theory), it is predicted that "virtual particles" randomly appear and disappear all the time. These virtual particles actually carry the force of things like the electric fields, magnetic fields, gravitational fields, etc. (they also avoid 'action at a distance' problems...). So in the vacuum, you will get random particle-antiparticle pairs appearing at random, and annihilating each other a moment later (these constant fluctuations are very important in modern theories, actually). If you imagine one of these random fluctuations occurring right beside an event horizon, you can imagine that one of the two particles gets sucked into the event horizon, but the other one escapes and sails off into the universe. The particle entering the black hole will actually reduce its mass (not increase it, as one would normally expect... though the proof of this requires digging into the math quite a bit), and the particle that escapes thereby carries away some of the mass of the black hole. Thus, over time, the blackhole is basically emitting radiation and slowly 'evaporating.'
Now, I know this idea of "virtual particles" randomly appearing and disappearing sounds totally bizarre. In fact it sounds like pseudo-science or an overcomlicated story that particle physicists are weaving. However these effects do have experimental backing (e.g. Casimir forces).
why must information be preserved, and does this mean that after evaporating enough matter black holes would burst back out and let all the stuff they captured back out?
It turns out the rate of evaporation increases as you decrease in size. So really "micro black holes" (it is predicted that they will be created in upcoming particle accelerators) will evaporate very quickly. Big black holes will evaporate slowly at first, but then faster and faster as they shrink, until they get very small and release the last of their energy, in some sort of burst, yes. However a fundamental, unanswered, question is whether the radiation being emitted by the black hole contains 'information' about the states of things that went into the black hole. No one knows for sure. The conventional answer was that any information that goes into a black hole is lost forever.
However to many scientists, this answer was unsatisfactory.
So the latest solution to the Hawking paradox is "black holes don't exist"?!
In a strict sense, yes. However, the objects people typically think of as "black holes" would still exist. Let me be more clear.
To my understanding, the suggestion is that the collapsing matter will never create a true event horizon (a boundary from which nothing can ever escape). However this doesn't prevent the matter from collapsing to an arbitrarily high density and creating an increasingly large escape velocity. Think of a dense chunk of matter (but not infinitely dense). It will warp spacetime around it significantly, and it will bend the direction of light rays significantly. If a ray of light strays too close to the center of this quasi-singularity, it will get caught in a tight orbit. Now, the orbit won't be truly stable, and the light ray will, after some rotations around the gravity well, finally escape.
The denser the quasi-singularity is, the more rays will get trapped (temporarily) in these orbits, and the longer they will stay trapped. At a certain point, when light is being trapped for 10E80 year, the object could very sensibly be called a black hole. For all intents and purposes, infalling light does not escape. In principle, in a very long time the light may escape. Or, according to this new theory, the black hole may evaporate before actually forming (although this, too, will take a long time). But the massive curvature of spacetime will still lead to all the light-trapping and time-dilating effects normally predicted for black holes. This theory is merely suggesting that the containment is not absolute. Eventually, the stuff will escape. (Although for material objects, they will have been crushed and distorted beyond recognition. But at least in principle, the 'information' about them wasn't lost.)
Under the new theory, objects of near-infinite density still form, and still (in any practical sense) trap all incoming matter. However the question comes down to whether the singularity at the center is a true singularity with a true event horizon, or a perpetually-collapsing mass that has not quite yet reached the point of being a true black hole.
The article preprint (Warning: PDF) is fairly readable (although obviously still quite technical). This is my understanding based upon that preprint. Note that I'm not a cosmologist, so I would appreciate others to point out any mistakes I make.
Firstly, they emphasize in their paper that they are considering their problem from the point of view of an external observer, rather than the point of view of an observer falling into the black hole. They write:
The process of black hole formation is generally discussed from the viewpoint of an infalling observer. However, in all physical settings it is the viewpoint of the asymptotic observer that is relevant. More concretely, if a black hole is formed in the Large Hadron Collider, it has to be observed by physicists sitting on the CERN campus.
They also contrast their results with previously accepted analysis of black hole formation:
In Sec. III we verify the standard result that the formation of an event horizon takes an infinite (Schwarzschild)time if we consider classical collapse. This is not surprising and is often viewed as a limitation of the Schwarzschild coordinate system. To see if this result changes when quantum effects are taken into account, we address the problem of quantum collapse using a minisuperspace version of the functional Schrodinger equation [2] in Sec. IV. We find that even in this case the black hole takes an infinite time to form, contrary to some speculations in the literature [3].
So, in essence, they are presenting findings that suggest that even quantum effects are taken into account, the collapse takes an infinite amount of time. This is signficant because it means that while the collapsing mass can appear to get closer and closer to being a singularity, it can never really achieve this final state to an external observer. How this relates to information loss is then described:
the shell, even as it collapses, radiates away its energy in a finite amount of time... we conclude that the evaporation time is shorter than what would be taken by objects to fall through a
black hole horizon.
So, in essence, the collapse of the black hole takes an infinite amount of time, during which time the black hole will evaporate via Hawking radiation. So objects falling into a black hole will never actually be swallowed up into the black hole (though they will get arbitrarily close and arbitrarily crushed!). Since the collapse is never really complete, information about the objects is never entirely lost. The emitted radiation will thus contain 'information' about the infalling objects. This in some way can be seen to resolve the seeming information paradox, whereby black holes were seemingly able to 'swallow up' information and completely destroy it (whereas no other process in the universe appeared able to do so).
Quite right. Lessig specifically emphasizes this in his post:
I am someone who believes that a free society -- free of the "corruption" that defines our current society -- is necessary for free culture, and much more. For that reason, I turn my energy elsewhere for now.
I think he's done tremendous good. However during his work towards "sane copyright" he has seen how the system isn't able to work in the public's best interests. Having identified certain weaknesses in the current implementation of democracy, he's going to try to fix those problems. If those problems are fixed, then things like copyright reform (which is to the public's benefit) will come about naturally. So he's still very much working towards Free Culture. But as he says, a necessary condition for Free Culture is a non-corrupt (or less corrupt) legal system.
It's strange, though, because he is now tackling a problem that is much bigger and harder to solve. Rather than just get one set of laws fixed (copyright laws), he is now hoping to change all the laws that affect governance. Yet, he is undoubtedly right that without fundamental changes in the way governance occurs, any "wins" in other domains (be it copyright law, privacy, etc.) will be tenuous and short-lived.
The best system for districting the US seems to me to be the one based on post offices. Each post office does define a community, especially in Federal services terms.
Not to be a cynic (because the idea you present does have merit), but wouldn't this simply result in new political games where they work hard to open new post offices, and close old ones, so as to redefine political boundaries? This is bad in two ways: (1) it still allows for rigging the votes; and (2) it would impose severe inefficiencies into the postal system.
The proposals to have districting based on an approved mathematical algorithm (which takes population distribution as an input, but no other factors, like political affiliation, race, etc.) which generates the district boundaries is the only fair way. Leaving the districting in the hands of the people (with their inherent biases) will always cause problems. With an algorithm, anyone can verify that the presented distribution indeed matches what it's supposed to (assuming the input population data has not been tampered with).
People have proposed to specify a mathematical algorithm that would split a state into a set number of districts along population lines. Really it would be easy to have an 'approved' algorithm whose only input was population distribution (and NOT political affiliation).
Not only has IBM given them 15 years to sort out their financial situation, they even decided to not charge interest. From TFA:
A letter from IBM Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge to district Superintendent Bruce Harter called the repayment plan "generous" on the part of IBM because the company is not charging interest.
So they have already decided to allow a 15-year grace period and no interest. Given the time-value of money, I'm guessing that even as-is, IBM has de facto given them the computers at below cost. They've no doubt lost money on the deal, and have been extremely generous already.
To me this seems like gross mismanagement of funds on the part of the school board. And, frankly, forgiving their debt will not compel them to manage their funds any better in the future.
I'm all for trying to get the best deal you can on any purchase. However one of the recommendations is:
3. Extended warranty for laptops...Once your model is off the refurb site, drop it. Voila! New laptop.
So, basically, the recommendation is to purposefully destroy your laptop, and then file a claim under the "accidental damage" provision of Dell's extended care insurance. The insurance, by the way, does not cover purposeful damage to the property. So basically this 'tip' is "commit insurance fraud."
Will this work? Yes. I knew a guy who did this with Dell's plan... got a nice upgrade for "free." I'm not convinced, however, that insurance fraud is really such a great idea. Nor am I convinced that this guy should be encouraging people to commit crimes.
I agree with half your post. This is the part I agree with:
This sort of behaviour is precisely what the patent system is meant to stop;
Indeed that is what the patent system is meant to stop. This, however:
But big companies have convinced the world that patents are evil; and thus their effectiveness are being destroyed through FUD
Doesnt' sound right to me. Big companies, currently, like patents. The problem with the patent system is that it is a system. Like all systems, it has rules that can be gamed and contorted. And, as always, the people who are most able to take advantage of a system are those with the most money. Thus big companies are able to take advantage of political loopholes (e.g. lobbying) and are also able to take advantage of the patent system (e.g. flooding it with bogus patents). Big companies win the patent game because they can afford to pay the legal fees, to sue others, and to protect themselves with patent war-chests. The little guys can't.
So, in the current patent climate, the little guys would actually thrive if patents were repealed. This, to me, is why much of the debate about patents misses the mark. Even though in principle the patent system encourages innovation, in practice every system you create is yet another system that the rich (or the "currently entrenched," if you prefer) will use to prevent the poor (or the "newcomers" if you prefer) from gaining power (or money). Which is why, despite all the good that the patent system does, I believe we are reaching the point where it is inhibiting more innovation than it is encouraging.
The effect is instantaneous, but no information is transmitted.
Correlation means that the outcome of the wavefunction collapse on the two entangled particles are strongly related to one another. So when you "compare notes" later you'll find a high degree of correlation between what states entangled particles wound up in.
However the hidden assumption in your train-of-logic is that you can *control* wavefunction collapse and pick out whatever state you want (and then the entangled particle will have the corresponding state). It doesn't work like that, unfortunately. Wavefunction collapse is effectively random. It's so random that it's the basis of the most faithful random-number generators (e.g. data from radioactive decay).
I agree that at first glance when you read a description of quantum entanglement experiments, it seems like it should be trivial to force a particle into a given state, thereby forcing the entangled co-particle into a corresponding state. Alas, this cannot be done. If a particle is in a true superposition of states (say it is mixed being being 'spin up' and 'spin down'), you have absolutely no control over which state it collapses into. You don't get to pick.
You may try to pick its state by, for example, measuring it's state and then altering its state if necessary. However the entanglement has collapsed during that first measurement. After that, the particles are no longer entangled, and altering the state of your particle won't continue to affect the other one.
It's certainly not obvious that this is how it works, but experiments have confirmed this quite exhaustively.
I think of the experiments they've done sending quantumly-entangled particles across some distance X, trapping them locally, and then pinging them to communicate faster than the speed of light.
You've mis-understood those experiments. Quantum entanglement establishes instantaneous correlations between distant particles, but you cannot use this to communicate information (the 'wavefunction collapse' is random). There is no way to transmit information faster than the speed of light (according to modern relativity and quantum mechanics).
Would it be possible to create a network of quantumly-entangled particles that don't subsequently rely on optical fiber to transmit information, and which can't be blocked, jammed, surveilled, or otherwise censored?
No. To use entangled particles (e.g. photons) you still need to transmit the entangled photons to the two parties in question. So that means using fiber optics or free-space optics. In either case these can be blocked.
The arms race toward quantum encryption would then be almost totally irrelevant, because there would be no discernible signal to encrypt/decrypt, just a quantumly entangled particle in a basement talking to another quantumly entangled particle in another basement somewhere else.
Sorry... but there is no known way to transmit information without sending some form of energy from sender to receiver. That's a fairly well-established law of physics, unlikely to be proven wrong. What quantum mechanics does allow for, as you mention, is encryption that is provably unbreakable. Further, quantum encryption allows you to notice when someone is eavesdropping on the channel, so you can be confident that your communication was not intercepted. This leaves the "bad guys" with two options: to block all encrypted traffic, or to block none of it.
Sorry to be a downer... but quantum mechanics doesn't work that way. On the other hand, the ability of quantum mechanics to enable provably secure communications is quite significant. If quantum encryption became the norm, then censorship would be considerably more difficult. When all transmission are encrypted, spying or censoring becomes rather impractical.
The argument here is predicated on the ridiculous premise that can only reach you need to reach your Doctor or Lawyer urgently (not so bad so far), but you can only do so though email.
No, that was just an example. It was an exaggerated example to "get your attention," but the author makes it rather more concrete when he describes how mailing-list operators will have to spend $1000 per notice to reach their recipients. And although you can phone up your doctor, you can't phone up all the mailing-list recipients.
Email isn't an urgent communications medium.
Why not? Or rather... why shouldn't it be? I know lots of people who use it for time-sensitive communications (maybe not life-and-death, but certainly for important issues where money is involved). Sometimes the only contact details you have are email. You can phone someone to talk about something, but to send that urgent electronic document, what are you going to do? Email is useful for lots of things, when it works. This scheme on the part of the ISPs basically makes email less reliable and less functional. (In addition to all your previous worries, now you have to think about whether the recipient ISP is using Goodmail?) Why should we be favor of something that makes it less useful, rather than pushing email towards being more robust and truly suitable for emergency-communication... ?
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that there are many of us experiencing this "University of Michigan Testing" bug. By having agreed to test that system, now we can't see/use the Discussion2 system.
I suppose it's possible that the two systems are the same thing, but based on the few screenshots I've been able to find of Discussion2, it doesn't look like they are. Moreover the University of Michigan system is very slow and buggy--I have trouble believing this is the same interface everyone else is testing. (Maybe a precursor to it, though.)
This is obviously a bug, and it would be nice if someone would mod up one of these comments so that the coders are aware of the problem. (In addition to the bug report that we should file...)
Indeed. Businesses will lose out because international partners won't be as interested (or able) to fly to the States for face-to-face meetings.
In my field, research science, the effects of the strict US rules are very apparent. Foreign scientists are having a harder and harder time coming to the US to study, collaborate, or even go to a conference. Scientists are being denied visas or putting on long waiting lists (so that they miss the conference!). The end result is a decrease in the amount of scientific collaborations between US groups and those outside the US, and more emphasis being put on non-US conferences (in Europe, Canada, Japan, etc.).
This is having a real (though difficult to measure) impact on US science. In a subtle way, there is a decrease in the flow of "advanced technical knowledge" into the US, which is to the detriment of US labs. Through these border policies, the US is isolating itself. Since ultimately science and technology are big drivers of the US economy, I see this as a very poor choice on the part of the US administration.
You paint a stark picture of "anonymous random contributors" versus "academia and government"--but I think that is a false dichotomy. Wikipedia has always benefiting from the contributions of random individuals, as well as from expert academics. Whether or not those academics were told by their host institutes to contribute is actually immaterial (unless you think the academic holds different expertise/opinions in the two cases...).
To have governments actively allocate funding for people to contribute to Wikipedia in no way prevents or invalidates the tireless work of the rest of the community. Both groups should be contributing, and both groups should be checking each other's facts. There is no need (nor any ability) for governments to "take over wikipedia from within".
What we are seeing is a consolidation of efforts, and I hope other governments follow this lead. Government workers (who are inherently being paid from public funds) should not waste effort generating duplicate material. Rather than creating their own factoid-websites, they can do more good by extending and improving the vast material on Wikipedia (which, of course, is freely available to all).
The words in bold, by the way, apply to scientific reasoning but not to religion. So the big bang and religious creation myths are "the same" only if you completely throw out all the successful predictions and agreements of cosmology, and focus on one particular question that the big bang theory was never intended to answer.
In a more general sense, science never claims to give your life meaning, or to answer the "why?" questions. It merely provides predictive models, or in other words answers the "how?" questions. Science and religion are very different, and pretending they are the same is rather disingenuous.
Though people like to claim that new technology doesn't lead to more leisure time, I see just the opposite around me. People work for 8 hours a day, and then go home and chill out. They spend two days a week and many weeks out of the year "just having fun." And frankly a good percentage of our population works 8 hours a day not to "make ends meet" but because they enjoy a higher-than-average standard of living. A lawyer could probably work 8 hours a week and make enough to survive... but he would rather work a bit more and enjoy fantastic luxuries, health care, and overall quality of life that even kings in previous generations could not dream of. Yes, some people do have to work very hard to support their family, but that's been true since the dawn of time. The difference is that now a larger percentage of society has a good amount of "free time".
If you honestly believe that people could work so little in previous generations, then by all means move into the wilderness and hunt for only a few hours a day. (Note: you may have to move to another country to find a large enough expanse of wilderness to survive off of.) As for me, I'm going to finish my day's work, then go home and relax.
But the problem with creating a FOSS version of Flash is that it's a matter of catch-up. With Silverlight, this team of coders is showing that they can keep up. Thus, instead of being behind in their implementation, they are showing that they can always deliver a feature-complete alternate (and FOSS) implementation.
Frankly I hope this displaces flash to some extent. Even if it gives MS's platform more exposure, it won't matter as long as there is also a feature-complete FOSS implementation. Creating marketplace competition is always good... and in this case we have competition to MS's Silverlight, and competition to Flash. This is good. I highly doubt that Microsoft expected or wanted this to happen. In fact, nothing could be worse for their longterm goals than for a FOSS equivalent to be as good (or maybe better?) than their implementation. Having a competing implementation, used by many people, will mean that they cannot "embrace and extend" and cannot lock people into their products. After all, if they try to change the Silverlight standard, who is to say whether the MS implementation or the FOSS implementation will become the defacto standard?
I also feel like the author's persistent struggles with how to "define class" in the US would evaporate if a proper study were performed. Because, in a scientific study you don't have to "define class"--rather you simply report what variables correlate with website choice, and what variables don't. You can then divide the population into groups (if the data supports such a division) and see whether the group divisions correlate to income, education, ethnicity, etc. (without ever having to artificially apply class labels).
Food for thought, but unfortunately nothing meaningfully conclusive.
Ah... apparently the download link was redirecting to CNET. So I guess Microsoft can claim, as they do with the Novel coupons, that they are not the ones actually distributing the binaries hence not bound by the GPL.
Let's assume for the moment it was an employee joke.
Microsoft can certainly fire the employee, but they nevertheless distributed Ubuntu, which includes alot of GPL-software. This means that they are bound by the terms of the GPL. Among other things, this means that:
1. Anyone can ask for source code from Microsoft. If Microsoft doesn't give out source, then they are violating the GPL and hence copyright law. If they do give out the source code, then they better hope it doesn't infringe on other companie's patents, or they can be sued for patent violations.
2. If memory serves, even the GPLv2 has clauses about implicitly extending any licenses to whoever you distribute the software to. (The GPLv3 makes this much more explicit.) So that would mean that all of MS's claims of patent infringement disappear, since they have now given us permission to use their patents. (Am I wrong on this point?)
If it was a employee doing this, I suppose MS can argue in court that they suffered from sabotage and can't be held responsible. Is that a valid legal defense? Or are companies always bound by the actions of their employees, with their only recourse being to fire the employee?
I can easily imagine a disgruntled employee doing this to force Microsoft into a tough position. If they are now a Linux distributor, then they are in a tough spot.
Correction: Copyright law tells people that they are not allowed to do certain things. The GPL is a license that guarantees people certain additional freedoms, on condition that they agree that everyone else gets those freedoms too. It's not that hard to understand why it is called a "Free Software License."
In fact they did a neat experiment with a beam of buckyballs. These spherical molecules are big enough that they decohere rapidly in some cases, but small enough that you can get them into superpositions sometimes. They found that the beam exhibited quantum interference effects when the constituent buckyballs were at low temperature, but that the beam lost that quantum effect when the beam was hotter. The effect matched decoherence predictions perfectly. If the bucykballs (in vacuum) are cold enough, they can maintain a coherent superposition for the duration of the experiment (a few seconds), whereas if they are too hot, they begin interacting with the environment (via emitting thermal radiation that is entangled with them, and becomes entangled with the sidewalls of the experimental chamber, etc.) and lose coherence before hitting the detector.
So it's easy to imagine that an atomic nucleus, which is insulated from most interactions, can maintain a state of 'decayed and not decayed' for a reasonably long time, or that a single electron can interfere with itself. However it's clearly not reasonable to say that a cat will exist in a superposition for any meaningful amount of time, because large, hot objects become entangled with their environment very quickly. So I believe the answer is: somethings will exhibit superpositions (which collapse when they become sufficiently entangled with the environment, i.e. they are measured) and other things cannot really get into superpositions (because they collapse effectively instantaneously). Thank you too! It's always nice to have a real conversation on slashdot (amid all the trolls and rants)!
Yes that's what I mean by time-symmetry (I believe that's the accepted usage). Sorry for the confusion. Also, I was glossing over perhaps too much. For instance I was mostly referring to the more classical physics equations (even though I mixed in quantum arguments). E.g. the equations of mechanics, electromagnetism, and gravity are all time-symmetric (as you say, you can run them forwards and backwards and keep getting the same states). In the standard model, mechanics, electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong nuclear force are all time-symmetric. However, there is a small (but experimentally verified) violation of time symmetry in the weak nuclear force (called CP violation). So, really, the fundamental laws are known to be time-asymmetric... but it's still strange that you can construct a theory of black holes using just general relativity (no quantum mechanics, no time-symmetry violations). Actually CP-violation (and the whole discussion of CPT symmetries) is an incredible topic on its own.
Yeah I was hoping you wouldn't ask that! You're absolutely right... Quantum mechanics is divided into two regimes: (1) the deterministic, gradual, time-symmetric evolution of a system's wavefunction (regulated by the Schrodinger equation) and then (2) a sudden, non-deterministic (in fact, totally random) time-asymmetric change that occurs when a systems undergoes 'wavefunction collapse.' This time-asymmetry is actually the more troubling example of the universe not being time-symmetric (with, as you point out, information basically appearing out of nowhere). This process (2) has bothered physicists since it was introduced, since it didn't have clear rules and no equation was available for it.
Answering the questions "what causes wavefunction collapse?" and "is wavefunction collapse deterministic?" is not easy. The short answer is that it is an unsolved problem. We know that quantum mechanics leads to random events as seen by local observers, however we don't yet know whether quantum mechanics is, fundamentally, deterministic or non-deterministic (time-symmetric vs. time-asymmetric). However a lot of progress has been made on this topic in the last few decades, and unfortunately these results have not been picked up by most popular science sources that I've seen. (So, annoyingly, the version of quantum mechanics presented in most books is still "the old version", unaltered by all the recent experimental and theoretical advances.) One of the recent advances is analysis of decoherence. It explains why wavefunction collapse occurs, under what conditions it will occur, and why the final states will seem to be classical non-quantum states. In brief summary, the idea in decoherence is that when a quantum system (which could be in a superposition of states) starts becoming entangled with the 'environment' (i.e. the innumerable degrees of freedom of nearby atoms, air molecules, thermal radiation, etc.), this causes the system to lose quantum coherence between its constituent states. That is the system goes from being in a coherent superposition (the quantum states that are usually described as "a simultaneous mix of up and down" or whatever) to being in an incoherent mix of states (like "up or down, but we don't know which one). Thus the environment takes on the role of persistently monitoring the system, thereby inducing wavefunction collapse quite rapidly for nearly every system. So that's why, even though quantum superpositions occur all the time, they decohere quickly and frequently, and we see mostly classical stat
Indeed. That would solve the short-term mathematical problem, but not the deeper mismatch of the theories. Also, whether or not Hawking radiation is truly random, or whether it contains hidden information (in a non-trivially chaotic way, mind you) is the central question that people are trying to answer. It's an unsolved problem. Your suggestion would probably get the "right answer" for any real-life measurement we're going to make on black holes anytime soon. But the math may be hinting that there is an underlying physical principle we've been ignoring thus far. This is what has physicists excited: the possibility that this hint may lead to another revolution in our understanding of the universe.
I see where you're coming from. We can't know whether the universe is fundamentally 'supposed' to be time-symmetric or time-asymmetric. So maybe the universe is ruled by equations of the sort you describe. However the really troubling thing is this: all the fundamental equations of physics are time-symmetric. These are the equations that are used to predict and model the existence of black holes. So it's really weird that time-symmetric equations predict the emergence of a time-asymmetric phenomenon. (If you have equations that don't differentiate between left and right, it would be surely astonishing if, after some algebra, the equation had a preference for left or right. Where did the preference come from? You probably made a mistake in your algebra!) The idea of time-symmetry suddenly being broken is tantalizing. It suggests that either we have a hidden assumption in our current models, or that the universe is really able to generate time-asymmetry from time-symmetric forces. Either realization, if proven, would be an important contribution to physics. So I guess it again comes down to physicists not just being uncomfortable with the inelegance of the current formalism, but also hoping that the resolution of this paradox will provide new insights.
Since my background is in chemistry, I also tend to think of the problem in terms of entropy. In which case, to a large extent the emergence of time-asymmetry just amounts to the axiom "the universe started in a low-entropy state" after which statistical mechanics nicely predicts all the phenomena we readily observe. (The viewpoint you describe, where given enough time the universe will simply wander into a low-entropy state, is actually quite compelling.) But that actually makes the black holes all the more tantalizing. Because in statistical mechanics, as you noted, even when you go into high-entropy states, you are not really destroying information. All systems can, in principle, return to previous (even low-entropy) states. (In fact there are equations that allow you to approximate what the 'recurrence time' for a given system will be... where eventually it will return to its initial condition, even if it is a highly-ordered state.) However in a universe with black holes destroying information, this no longer holds true. If you follow the 'information' in such a un
That's a rather zen question, actually. In some ways it amounts to asking "What's the difference between the matter that forms the black hole, and the matter that is falling into it?" Conventionally, the answer would be: all the matter inside the event horizon is part of the black hole, and everything outside the event horizon is falling into it (or, rather, is being gravitationally attracted towards it, and may or may not actually fall).
If this new bit of theory is correct, then the answer actually becomes harder, because the event horizon never forms, so you can't really say that some matter is inside vs. outside. Of course there is probably a sensible way to define a "pseudo-horizon" based upon a threshold where the probability of light escaping sharply drops towards 0.
I guess another way of thinking about it would be to say that this hypothetical matter that is "at the center of where the black hole is forming" would inevitably be included into the collapsing mass and would thus, itself, become part of the black hole.
It's true that EMR that enters the event horizon cannot escape. The evaporation process, called Hawking radiation, is a quantum effect that has no conventional analogue. Basically, in quantum mechanics (or rather quantum field theory), it is predicted that "virtual particles" randomly appear and disappear all the time. These virtual particles actually carry the force of things like the electric fields, magnetic fields, gravitational fields, etc. (they also avoid 'action at a distance' problems...). So in the vacuum, you will get random particle-antiparticle pairs appearing at random, and annihilating each other a moment later (these constant fluctuations are very important in modern theories, actually). If you imagine one of these random fluctuations occurring right beside an event horizon, you can imagine that one of the two particles gets sucked into the event horizon, but the other one escapes and sails off into the universe. The particle entering the black hole will actually reduce its mass (not increase it, as one would normally expect... though the proof of this requires digging into the math quite a bit), and the particle that escapes thereby carries away some of the mass of the black hole. Thus, over time, the blackhole is basically emitting radiation and slowly 'evaporating.'
Now, I know this idea of "virtual particles" randomly appearing and disappearing sounds totally bizarre. In fact it sounds like pseudo-science or an overcomlicated story that particle physicists are weaving. However these effects do have experimental backing (e.g. Casimir forces).
It turns out the rate of evaporation increases as you decrease in size. So really "micro black holes" (it is predicted that they will be created in upcoming particle accelerators) will evaporate very quickly. Big black holes will evaporate slowly at first, but then faster and faster as they shrink, until they get very small and release the last of their energy, in some sort of burst, yes. However a fundamental, unanswered, question is whether the radiation being emitted by the black hole contains 'information' about the states of things that went into the black hole. No one knows for sure. The conventional answer was that any information that goes into a black hole is lost forever.
However to many scientists, this answer was unsatisfactory.
To my understanding, the suggestion is that the collapsing matter will never create a true event horizon (a boundary from which nothing can ever escape). However this doesn't prevent the matter from collapsing to an arbitrarily high density and creating an increasingly large escape velocity. Think of a dense chunk of matter (but not infinitely dense). It will warp spacetime around it significantly, and it will bend the direction of light rays significantly. If a ray of light strays too close to the center of this quasi-singularity, it will get caught in a tight orbit. Now, the orbit won't be truly stable, and the light ray will, after some rotations around the gravity well, finally escape.
The denser the quasi-singularity is, the more rays will get trapped (temporarily) in these orbits, and the longer they will stay trapped. At a certain point, when light is being trapped for 10E80 year, the object could very sensibly be called a black hole. For all intents and purposes, infalling light does not escape. In principle, in a very long time the light may escape. Or, according to this new theory, the black hole may evaporate before actually forming (although this, too, will take a long time). But the massive curvature of spacetime will still lead to all the light-trapping and time-dilating effects normally predicted for black holes. This theory is merely suggesting that the containment is not absolute. Eventually, the stuff will escape. (Although for material objects, they will have been crushed and distorted beyond recognition. But at least in principle, the 'information' about them wasn't lost.)
Under the new theory, objects of near-infinite density still form, and still (in any practical sense) trap all incoming matter. However the question comes down to whether the singularity at the center is a true singularity with a true event horizon, or a perpetually-collapsing mass that has not quite yet reached the point of being a true black hole.
Firstly, they emphasize in their paper that they are considering their problem from the point of view of an external observer, rather than the point of view of an observer falling into the black hole. They write: They also contrast their results with previously accepted analysis of black hole formation: So, in essence, they are presenting findings that suggest that even quantum effects are taken into account, the collapse takes an infinite amount of time. This is signficant because it means that while the collapsing mass can appear to get closer and closer to being a singularity, it can never really achieve this final state to an external observer. How this relates to information loss is then described: So, in essence, the collapse of the black hole takes an infinite amount of time, during which time the black hole will evaporate via Hawking radiation. So objects falling into a black hole will never actually be swallowed up into the black hole (though they will get arbitrarily close and arbitrarily crushed!). Since the collapse is never really complete, information about the objects is never entirely lost. The emitted radiation will thus contain 'information' about the infalling objects. This in some way can be seen to resolve the seeming information paradox, whereby black holes were seemingly able to 'swallow up' information and completely destroy it (whereas no other process in the universe appeared able to do so).
It's strange, though, because he is now tackling a problem that is much bigger and harder to solve. Rather than just get one set of laws fixed (copyright laws), he is now hoping to change all the laws that affect governance. Yet, he is undoubtedly right that without fundamental changes in the way governance occurs, any "wins" in other domains (be it copyright law, privacy, etc.) will be tenuous and short-lived.
The proposals to have districting based on an approved mathematical algorithm (which takes population distribution as an input, but no other factors, like political affiliation, race, etc.) which generates the district boundaries is the only fair way. Leaving the districting in the hands of the people (with their inherent biases) will always cause problems. With an algorithm, anyone can verify that the presented distribution indeed matches what it's supposed to (assuming the input population data has not been tampered with).
People have proposed to specify a mathematical algorithm that would split a state into a set number of districts along population lines. Really it would be easy to have an 'approved' algorithm whose only input was population distribution (and NOT political affiliation).
One example from Wikipedia.
To me this seems like gross mismanagement of funds on the part of the school board. And, frankly, forgiving their debt will not compel them to manage their funds any better in the future.
Will this work? Yes. I knew a guy who did this with Dell's plan... got a nice upgrade for "free." I'm not convinced, however, that insurance fraud is really such a great idea. Nor am I convinced that this guy should be encouraging people to commit crimes.
So, in the current patent climate, the little guys would actually thrive if patents were repealed. This, to me, is why much of the debate about patents misses the mark. Even though in principle the patent system encourages innovation, in practice every system you create is yet another system that the rich (or the "currently entrenched," if you prefer) will use to prevent the poor (or the "newcomers" if you prefer) from gaining power (or money). Which is why, despite all the good that the patent system does, I believe we are reaching the point where it is inhibiting more innovation than it is encouraging.
The effect is instantaneous, but no information is transmitted.
Correlation means that the outcome of the wavefunction collapse on the two entangled particles are strongly related to one another. So when you "compare notes" later you'll find a high degree of correlation between what states entangled particles wound up in.
However the hidden assumption in your train-of-logic is that you can *control* wavefunction collapse and pick out whatever state you want (and then the entangled particle will have the corresponding state). It doesn't work like that, unfortunately. Wavefunction collapse is effectively random. It's so random that it's the basis of the most faithful random-number generators (e.g. data from radioactive decay).
I agree that at first glance when you read a description of quantum entanglement experiments, it seems like it should be trivial to force a particle into a given state, thereby forcing the entangled co-particle into a corresponding state. Alas, this cannot be done. If a particle is in a true superposition of states (say it is mixed being being 'spin up' and 'spin down'), you have absolutely no control over which state it collapses into. You don't get to pick.
You may try to pick its state by, for example, measuring it's state and then altering its state if necessary. However the entanglement has collapsed during that first measurement. After that, the particles are no longer entangled, and altering the state of your particle won't continue to affect the other one.
It's certainly not obvious that this is how it works, but experiments have confirmed this quite exhaustively.
Sorry to be a downer... but quantum mechanics doesn't work that way. On the other hand, the ability of quantum mechanics to enable provably secure communications is quite significant. If quantum encryption became the norm, then censorship would be considerably more difficult. When all transmission are encrypted, spying or censoring becomes rather impractical.
Why not? Or rather... why shouldn't it be? I know lots of people who use it for time-sensitive communications (maybe not life-and-death, but certainly for important issues where money is involved). Sometimes the only contact details you have are email. You can phone someone to talk about something, but to send that urgent electronic document, what are you going to do? Email is useful for lots of things, when it works. This scheme on the part of the ISPs basically makes email less reliable and less functional. (In addition to all your previous worries, now you have to think about whether the recipient ISP is using Goodmail?) Why should we be favor of something that makes it less useful, rather than pushing email towards being more robust and truly suitable for emergency-communication