watt/hours? I think you mean watt-hours. I keep reading what you wrote as "watts per hour", which is not a unit of energy, but a rate of change of power.
Wait, actually I don't. Because I run Amarok 1 with KDE3 libs still installed, even with a KDE4 desktop. There are quite a few KDE3 apps I can run, in fact.
I started reading your linked blog, but got stuck at this:
Quantum computing is the only "scientific" field that is not only based on zero evidence but the evidence, if it did exist, can never be observed by definition. The entire quantum computing field is based on the conjecture that certain quantum properties can have multiple states simultaneously, even though the property in question only has room for one. Worse, this property can never be observed in its superposed states because, as soon as you try to observe it, nature does some weird magic called the "collapse of the wave function" and the property instantly takes on one state or another. Amazing, isnâ(TM)t it?
Quite clearly you have insufficient understanding of quantum mechanics to be able to make any justifiable criticism of it.
Superposition can be observed by comparing measurements of multiple copies of identically prepared systems done in the superposition basis to measurements done in the "standard" (for lack of a better word) basis. The results you get defy a probabilistic explanation.
To illustrate that admittedly daunting sentence above, here's an example that you might be able to understand, in terms of polarized light. The principles, however, apply to any system:
Start with a light source that's unpolarized. If you were to measure the polarization of its photons in the horizontal/vertical basis (take a polarizing beamsplitter, and put single-photon detectors at the outputs), you get 50% horizontal, and 50% vertical results. Say you rotate your measuring apparatus 45%, so now you're measuring in the "diagonal" and "antidiagonal" basis. Of course, you'll still get 50/50 results because the light is unpolarized. No matter what angle you measure at, you'll always get 50/50. Makes sense, right? Sounds probabilistic, and it is.
Stick in a polarizer at the light source, set so that the photons coming out are horizontally polarized. Now rotate the polarizer 45 degrees. What you've created is "diagonally" polarized photons. You can think of it as being in a superposition of horizontal and vertical polarizations (diagonal is, afterall, the sum of 1/sqrt(2) horizontal and 1/sqrt(2) vertical).
Or, if you're taking a probabilistic view, half the time a photon is horizontally polarized, and half the time its vertically polarized.
Do your measurements again, you'll find that measurements in the horizontal/vertical basis give 50/50 results. Hang on, that sounds probabilistic! Why yes, at that point it is. But then, getting even results is consistent with having equally superposed amounts of horizontal and vertical, too.
Now rotate your measurement device 45 degrees, and you find your results are diagonal/antidiagonal 100/0. This is how you measure superposition states, and shows the difference between them and probabilistic mixture states. You cannot obtain this result with a probabilistic picture, yet this is the result that you will get.
Light isn't in any way special. Many principles of quantum computers (as well as general quantum mechanics) have been demonstrated using light, and notably they completely agree with similar experiments done in other quantum systems, ion traps for example.
And I haven't even talked about interference experiments.
Claiming that there is no evidence for quantum superposition, or that it has never been observed, is just breathtakingly ignorant. But I'm sure you've been told all that before. Here's hoping someone learns something from this, if not yourself.
What percentage of the people using any OS know and trust the people rolling it?
Know? I have no idea. But that wasn't what he said
Trust? All of them. Otherwise they would not be using it.
I ultimately have to use something based on reputation and a solid dose of faith
How is doing that, then, not an allocation of a degree of trust? You trust that the reputation is accurate. Coupled with your "dose of faith", you trust that there is a low chance of the maintainer being malicious. Thus you trust the maintainer. If any sane user didn't trust these things, they would not use the distro.
The problem is that game censorship in Australia only goes to R15+ which still falls into the Child category.
It's supposed to be called "classification" (and that should be "M15+", not "R15+"). But your version is probably closer to the truth.
The only way to get games that are adult is to have a R18+ category however the present Government (Labour) as well as the previous Government (Liberal) don't appear to be interested in passing legislation for a R18+ category. It is not intransigence on the part of the gaming lobby groups since they really want this category it is the Government.
It's not the Government preventing it. It's one guy.
What gets me still is the wave-particle duality of light. Working with photodiodes, I treat light exclusively as photons and everything else just makes my head hurt:)
Where I work we do experiments where we manipulate single photons with their wave properties. You know- polarization, path splitting (quantum superposition of single-photon paths) and interferometry, phase, interference, etc, all down to the single photon level.
Someone might come up with a pony-waste emissions processing plant. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if it could be somehow designed to convert the waste back into usable pony-fuel?
Of course, running the plant would itself cost energy, so it would have to be supplemented somehow. Solar, perhaps...
If, upon discovering the body, Hans said something along the lines of "Holy shit! WTF?! There was actually a body there?!" I'd be more inclined to believe the "lucky guess" story.
While you're right, and it would be pretty neat if that turns out to be the case, that would just mean that Einstein was mistaken to call it his "greatest mistake".:-P
I'm not trying to rag on Einstein, I'm just saying he wasn't an omniscient god. For that matter, no one is.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think it comes straight back to the point I was making: science is about making testable hypotheses and demonstrating them beyond reasonable doubt. Being unprovable in a formal arithmetical theory is a different beast entirely.
There will always be someone, no matter what evidence and arguments are presented, that will say we haven't gotten "real proof" until the damn thing is just turned on and we see what really happens.
Because Einstein was infallible. Just like how he was correct about God playing dice. Or the cosmological constant (which he later changed his mind about, though its still uncertain which answer to that one is correct).
Don't get me wrong, Einstein surely was a bright cookie, and came up with some very accurate results, but he was a man afterall - can't be expected to have *everything* right first go.
Depends on how you define "proof", of course. If you use the mathematical sense of "is derivable via logic", then no, things in physics can't be proved. But if you use the more commonly accepted colloquial "demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt", then there are a whole bunch of things in physics that are proven. (Technically, I should qualify this statement by talking about quantified uncertainty (error bars), but I'm lazy).
Just to mix it up a bit, E XOR F is a chunk of wikipedia_dump.tar.Z. So, are you sharing PD text, top 40 pop, terrorist plans, pedophile porn, or none of the above?
Ya know, on a completely tangential thought, if Wikipedia really was "a project that attempts to summarize all human knowledge" (as it claims on it's page about itself), then that last option would instead be "all of the above". Just saying.
For example, if it were truly random, then players might start appealing every call. If they have nothing to lose and a random chance at success, then why not?
Wimbeldon, IIRC, has a limit of 3 appeals. Just as an example.
If this actually encourages teaching the skills of objective critical thinking, I'm all for it. But I'm not going to kid myself that that is what will actually happen.
Slashdot Mirror
watt/hours? I think you mean watt-hours. I keep reading what you wrote as "watts per hour", which is not a unit of energy, but a rate of change of power.
I wish utilities companies just used joules...
So do I.
Wait, actually I don't. Because I run Amarok 1 with KDE3 libs still installed, even with a KDE4 desktop. There are quite a few KDE3 apps I can run, in fact.
I do believe he was practically asking for it. Preempting moderation often changes how something is moderated. It's kinda like quantum mechanics...
I started reading your linked blog, but got stuck at this:
Quite clearly you have insufficient understanding of quantum mechanics to be able to make any justifiable criticism of it.
Superposition can be observed by comparing measurements of multiple copies of identically prepared systems done in the superposition basis to measurements done in the "standard" (for lack of a better word) basis. The results you get defy a probabilistic explanation.
To illustrate that admittedly daunting sentence above, here's an example that you might be able to understand, in terms of polarized light. The principles, however, apply to any system:
Start with a light source that's unpolarized. If you were to measure the polarization of its photons in the horizontal/vertical basis (take a polarizing beamsplitter, and put single-photon detectors at the outputs), you get 50% horizontal, and 50% vertical results. Say you rotate your measuring apparatus 45%, so now you're measuring in the "diagonal" and "antidiagonal" basis. Of course, you'll still get 50/50 results because the light is unpolarized. No matter what angle you measure at, you'll always get 50/50. Makes sense, right? Sounds probabilistic, and it is.
Stick in a polarizer at the light source, set so that the photons coming out are horizontally polarized. Now rotate the polarizer 45 degrees. What you've created is "diagonally" polarized photons. You can think of it as being in a superposition of horizontal and vertical polarizations (diagonal is, afterall, the sum of 1/sqrt(2) horizontal and 1/sqrt(2) vertical).
Or, if you're taking a probabilistic view, half the time a photon is horizontally polarized, and half the time its vertically polarized.
Do your measurements again, you'll find that measurements in the horizontal/vertical basis give 50/50 results. Hang on, that sounds probabilistic! Why yes, at that point it is. But then, getting even results is consistent with having equally superposed amounts of horizontal and vertical, too.
Now rotate your measurement device 45 degrees, and you find your results are diagonal/antidiagonal 100/0. This is how you measure superposition states, and shows the difference between them and probabilistic mixture states. You cannot obtain this result with a probabilistic picture, yet this is the result that you will get.
Light isn't in any way special. Many principles of quantum computers (as well as general quantum mechanics) have been demonstrated using light, and notably they completely agree with similar experiments done in other quantum systems, ion traps for example.
And I haven't even talked about interference experiments.
Claiming that there is no evidence for quantum superposition, or that it has never been observed, is just breathtakingly ignorant. But I'm sure you've been told all that before. Here's hoping someone learns something from this, if not yourself.
You forgot your sarcasm tilde. :)
Put simply, no. See: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/01/msg00001.html
So, it's like grinding.
Santa's a bit busy fighting warcrimes charges, at the moment.
There is a difference between losing something and not obtaining something (that was otherwise expected/sought/what-have-you).
Know? I have no idea. But that wasn't what he said
Trust? All of them. Otherwise they would not be using it.
How is doing that, then, not an allocation of a degree of trust? You trust that the reputation is accurate. Coupled with your "dose of faith", you trust that there is a low chance of the maintainer being malicious. Thus you trust the maintainer. If any sane user didn't trust these things, they would not use the distro.
It's supposed to be called "classification" (and that should be "M15+", not "R15+"). But your version is probably closer to the truth.
It's not the Government preventing it. It's one guy.
Where I work we do experiments where we manipulate single photons with their wave properties. You know- polarization, path splitting (quantum superposition of single-photon paths) and interferometry, phase, interference, etc, all down to the single photon level.
Ow. *Goes to lie down, again*
Someone might come up with a pony-waste emissions processing plant. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if it could be somehow designed to convert the waste back into usable pony-fuel?
Of course, running the plant would itself cost energy, so it would have to be supplemented somehow. Solar, perhaps...
If, upon discovering the body, Hans said something along the lines of "Holy shit! WTF?! There was actually a body there?!" I'd be more inclined to believe the "lucky guess" story.
While you're right, and it would be pretty neat if that turns out to be the case, that would just mean that Einstein was mistaken to call it his "greatest mistake". :-P
I'm not trying to rag on Einstein, I'm just saying he wasn't an omniscient god. For that matter, no one is.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think it comes straight back to the point I was making: science is about making testable hypotheses and demonstrating them beyond reasonable doubt. Being unprovable in a formal arithmetical theory is a different beast entirely.
There will always be someone, no matter what evidence and arguments are presented, that will say we haven't gotten "real proof" until the damn thing is just turned on and we see what really happens.
Because Einstein was infallible. Just like how he was correct about God playing dice. Or the cosmological constant (which he later changed his mind about, though its still uncertain which answer to that one is correct).
Don't get me wrong, Einstein surely was a bright cookie, and came up with some very accurate results, but he was a man afterall - can't be expected to have *everything* right first go.
Depends on how you define "proof", of course. If you use the mathematical sense of "is derivable via logic", then no, things in physics can't be proved. But if you use the more commonly accepted colloquial "demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt", then there are a whole bunch of things in physics that are proven. (Technically, I should qualify this statement by talking about quantified uncertainty (error bars), but I'm lazy).
If your rate is 50%, your profiling method is quite flawed.
Ya know, on a completely tangential thought, if Wikipedia really was "a project that attempts to summarize all human knowledge" (as it claims on it's page about itself), then that last option would instead be "all of the above". Just saying.
Wimbeldon, IIRC, has a limit of 3 appeals. Just as an example.
If this actually encourages teaching the skills of objective critical thinking, I'm all for it. But I'm not going to kid myself that that is what will actually happen.
But: Moore's law -> more cores on a single CPU -> more power.