Yes, true, but missing the point. This is still no different to the athletic ability I'm comparing it to. One guy knocking off 0.1s over 100m on a track is just as useful as some researchers coming up with a few more digits of pi, i.e. not at all. Even if what those achievements represent might be.
So how can you suggest that the enhancement in running time and the enhancement in number crunching capability are not akin? Both are indicative of improvements in respective fields through demonstrations that are themselves ultimately pointless.
You could couch the argument as not regarding whole universes, but rather regarding only the quantum system (computer) involved. It's basically the same argument: the system splits into many states, they must be kept in coherence, and then they recombine at the end when you perform the measurement and get your answer.
Copenhagen just has that extra measurement step which disconnects the observer and the system (which IMHO is a bit arbitrary), but otherwise it's very similar. And you can simply generalise the system in the above argument to include the entire universe and we're right back where we started.
Nearly, but not quite. With Superman switching places really fast, Superman is really ever only in one place at a time. Qubits are not - they really can be in two different states at the same time.
The bit about state operations isn't really true. You can't do twice as many operations, but with quantum mechanics you can do some new, really funky operations that you can't do with classical bits. Like entanglement.
It's possible to figure out ways to use these multiple states and funky operations to solve problems faster than you can classically, but it's really hard to understand them on any intuitive level.
When I said "subscription" I should've said "registration". It's a free trial, but I don't need yet another account on yet another website with yet more reason to bug me about "upgrading to a full (paid) membership" just to read one paper.
When I go to the link, the options I see are "Institution Subscribers", "Free Trial User", "Buy this article", and "Member Subscribers".
On your other topics: It is? I guess this non sequitur is a reference to my website. I'll point out that the background is not black, it's a variable dark navy pattern. Also, I personally prefer reading white text on a dark background (on screen). You may have a different preference, but it is certainly not a universal one.
As for LyX, if you use it without formulas then you're simply missing out on one primary feature of the program. It's fine to use like that, although you may yet have to divorce yourself from the WYSIWYG mindset. To each their own, right tool for the job, etc. But LyX is very good at what it is: a friendly layer on top of the power of LaTeX.
There's a bunch, but I know you can construct command line operations with this one. I imagine you could construct a system from this and the parent program that will find dupes, then nuke the poorer quality of each, or whatever.
That sort of approach is wonderful for science, since science has a target: the true state and function of the universe. But it's not so simple for something that amounts to a work of art like a game. There is not an absolute target; the target is arbitrary fiction. Without good central leadership the artistic expression risks becoming fragmented. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible for the open approach to work, but suggesting that it's equivalent to the progress of human knowledge is missing an important complication.
I've had to program in LabVIEW in my day job, regularly. It's a visual programming language, based on data flow. You place boxes that represent functions on a plane and wire up inputs and outputs to/from other functions. There's structures and loops and stuff, but the relevant point here is that it's all visual, not textual. You need a pointing device of some kind, because trying to type "commands" will get you nowhere: there *are no* commands.
I would be surprised if the submitter actually had this situation in mind, but the point is, in the wide world of programming languages, there are certainly conditions where you program with the mouse. I have done it, and not an insignificant amount of it. (Though I might have been better off using a tablet. I'll try that one day. Might be partly why I don't actually like visual programming languages much.)
One thing I've noticed about some LCDs, at least all the ones I've seen, is that in landscape orientation they favour looking down at them slightly. The optimal viewing angle is not perpendicular to the screen. This sucks when you rotate the thing into portrait mode, because now the screen really does have a "best side".
Just like there's no water in hydrogen or oxygen, there are no *free electrons* in atoms, either. You can argue that a bound electron has the potential to become a free electron (with the addition of a photon), but I don't see how that is fundamentally different to how a tank of oxygen can become a tank of water (energetic water, with the addition of hydrogen).
I wasn't implying that "creating" has anything to do with chemical composition. I'm suggesting that "creating" necessarily has to be interpreted, fundamentally, as changing of state in the general sense. You can't create something from nothing in this universe; it all comes from changing the state of one or more inputs into one or more products.
I guess I'm thinking of all this in terms closer to fundamental information principles than chemistry. The fact that I work in quantum information science probably has something to do with that. We talk about "creating" quantum states all the time.
In this vein, you can view free electrons as a completely separate entity class with their own properties, similar to but not the same as, bound electrons. In order to "create" free electrons, your inputs are bound electrons and photons. I do not see how this logical construction is incorrect.
It creates "free electrons" from photons and bound electrons. By freeing the bound electrons using the photon's energy. Really, either way of phrasing it is fine. As far as I'm concerned, it's the same phrasal construction as "creating water", from hydrogen and oxygen.
It's incredibly weird that it hasn't embraced the new medium, the Internet.
The industry by and large refuses to recognize that its medium has changed from a discrete physical one (CD media) to the Internet.
IMO, you have the answer right there. All media changes in the past have been from one physical medium to another, allowing the industry to charge for what is basically the same content multiple times, and keep a relative handle on where the content can go. What we're entering into now is a situation where the industry can no longer control the physicality of the content - it becomes ethereal - and I reckon this scares the hell out of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, true, but missing the point. This is still no different to the athletic ability I'm comparing it to. One guy knocking off 0.1s over 100m on a track is just as useful as some researchers coming up with a few more digits of pi, i.e. not at all. Even if what those achievements represent might be.
So how can you suggest that the enhancement in running time and the enhancement in number crunching capability are not akin? Both are indicative of improvements in respective fields through demonstrations that are themselves ultimately pointless.
And the ability to perform a vast number of computations fast is not something we want to have?
I feel exactly the same way, only about that guy who ran 100m really fast earlier this week, and many other sports events too.
You could couch the argument as not regarding whole universes, but rather regarding only the quantum system (computer) involved. It's basically the same argument: the system splits into many states, they must be kept in coherence, and then they recombine at the end when you perform the measurement and get your answer.
Copenhagen just has that extra measurement step which disconnects the observer and the system (which IMHO is a bit arbitrary), but otherwise it's very similar. And you can simply generalise the system in the above argument to include the entire universe and we're right back where we started.
Nearly, but not quite. With Superman switching places really fast, Superman is really ever only in one place at a time. Qubits are not - they really can be in two different states at the same time.
The bit about state operations isn't really true. You can't do twice as many operations, but with quantum mechanics you can do some new, really funky operations that you can't do with classical bits. Like entanglement.
It's possible to figure out ways to use these multiple states and funky operations to solve problems faster than you can classically, but it's really hard to understand them on any intuitive level.
What are you talking about? Cat's keep us around. You'd have to ask them why.
I'm envisioning a line of "My Little Mozzie" children's animal dolls...
When I said "subscription" I should've said "registration". It's a free trial, but I don't need yet another account on yet another website with yet more reason to bug me about "upgrading to a full (paid) membership" just to read one paper.
When I go to the link, the options I see are "Institution Subscribers", "Free Trial User", "Buy this article", and "Member Subscribers".
On your other topics: It is? I guess this non sequitur is a reference to my website. I'll point out that the background is not black, it's a variable dark navy pattern. Also, I personally prefer reading white text on a dark background (on screen). You may have a different preference, but it is certainly not a universal one.
As for LyX, if you use it without formulas then you're simply missing out on one primary feature of the program. It's fine to use like that, although you may yet have to divorce yourself from the WYSIWYG mindset. To each their own, right tool for the job, etc. But LyX is very good at what it is: a friendly layer on top of the power of LaTeX.
"(Free)"
Subscription required (limited access). Or free if your institution pays for access for you.
I hope there's a good way to decohere the light. The speckledness would really annoy me after a while.
So, the argument is that DRM is a scam perpetrated on the content manufacturers, rather than the consumers?
http://www.jhnc.org/findimagedupes/
There's a bunch, but I know you can construct command line operations with this one. I imagine you could construct a system from this and the parent program that will find dupes, then nuke the poorer quality of each, or whatever.
That sort of approach is wonderful for science, since science has a target: the true state and function of the universe. But it's not so simple for something that amounts to a work of art like a game. There is not an absolute target; the target is arbitrary fiction. Without good central leadership the artistic expression risks becoming fragmented. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible for the open approach to work, but suggesting that it's equivalent to the progress of human knowledge is missing an important complication.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/simpsonsstyle-cartoon-is-child-porn/2008/12/08/1228584707575.html
Not just charged, convicted.
Yes he did, and we all know that a single data point proves a general trend.
Score:5, Funny. /. confirms it.
Admittedly this is also subjective, but third party apps that require Windows 7 are worthless to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language
I've had to program in LabVIEW in my day job, regularly. It's a visual programming language, based on data flow. You place boxes that represent functions on a plane and wire up inputs and outputs to/from other functions. There's structures and loops and stuff, but the relevant point here is that it's all visual, not textual. You need a pointing device of some kind, because trying to type "commands" will get you nowhere: there *are no* commands.
I would be surprised if the submitter actually had this situation in mind, but the point is, in the wide world of programming languages, there are certainly conditions where you program with the mouse. I have done it, and not an insignificant amount of it. (Though I might have been better off using a tablet. I'll try that one day. Might be partly why I don't actually like visual programming languages much.)
One thing I've noticed about some LCDs, at least all the ones I've seen, is that in landscape orientation they favour looking down at them slightly. The optimal viewing angle is not perpendicular to the screen. This sucks when you rotate the thing into portrait mode, because now the screen really does have a "best side".
Just like there's no water in hydrogen or oxygen, there are no *free electrons* in atoms, either. You can argue that a bound electron has the potential to become a free electron (with the addition of a photon), but I don't see how that is fundamentally different to how a tank of oxygen can become a tank of water (energetic water, with the addition of hydrogen).
I wasn't implying that "creating" has anything to do with chemical composition. I'm suggesting that "creating" necessarily has to be interpreted, fundamentally, as changing of state in the general sense. You can't create something from nothing in this universe; it all comes from changing the state of one or more inputs into one or more products.
I guess I'm thinking of all this in terms closer to fundamental information principles than chemistry. The fact that I work in quantum information science probably has something to do with that. We talk about "creating" quantum states all the time.
In this vein, you can view free electrons as a completely separate entity class with their own properties, similar to but not the same as, bound electrons. In order to "create" free electrons, your inputs are bound electrons and photons. I do not see how this logical construction is incorrect.
It creates "free electrons" from photons and bound electrons. By freeing the bound electrons using the photon's energy. Really, either way of phrasing it is fine. As far as I'm concerned, it's the same phrasal construction as "creating water", from hydrogen and oxygen.
IMO, you have the answer right there. All media changes in the past have been from one physical medium to another, allowing the industry to charge for what is basically the same content multiple times, and keep a relative handle on where the content can go. What we're entering into now is a situation where the industry can no longer control the physicality of the content - it becomes ethereal - and I reckon this scares the hell out of them.
Televised, presumably.
"The actual ideal would be base e"
Interesting. Got a reference for that? This isn't meant to be a snarky "[Citation needed]", I actually want to know. :-)