Any user who uses My.MP3.com is inherently giving up a remarkable amount of privacy. My.MP3.com knows every CD in a user's collection that they "beamed" to the server along with the user's e-mail address, network IP address and and Ethernet MAC address. An unscrupulous marketer could correlate musical preferences with other lifestyle choices and use this for targeted advertisement. MP3.com's pri-vacy policy 5 does not offer strong guarantees against this kind of behavior, and the ability to opt-out is at the bottom of the user-preferences page - something that most users will never do. And that is the reason for this sort of thing in a nutshell. While it sounds like a great idea for people who have a lot of CDs that they want to listen to both at home and at work, they will find themselves at the end of a barrage of "targetted" advertising. The spread of information from MP3.com will be exponential as more and more agencies sell your profile to interested parties. Oh joy, yet more spam. On the other hand, the lawsuit issue could be a good thing. MP3.com have a lot more money than the defendants in the other similar cases recently, and they are a company, able to organise their defence better than we've seen in the DeCSS trial so far. A victory in this case would have implications for the entire issue of people's right to use what they've bought, and for the digital media industry as a whole. Despite the privacy issues, which I don't like, I still hope MP3.com can win this case.
I arrive at work 9am, leave at 5.30, which, with an hour for lunch works out at 37 1/2 hours a week - quite standard for the UK.
Exactly the same hours I work, and I'm also here in the UK. While I'm not married or anything my job is not the overriding factor in my life - there's also the little matters of friends, my girlfriend and oh yes, just sitting down and relaxing. These things are essential to maintaining a normal life IMHO.
I don't get paid to work overtime, and so I generally don't - there have been exceptions when there's an important deadline, but those were more voluntary than forced. On the other hand, I get paid fuck all here which probably contributes some to my lack of willingness to work extra. But even if I was getting paid six figures, I'd still want to keep my job and my home lives separate, with time for each.
Anyway Slashdot talks about technology and tech issues things you people have to keep up on to stay at the top of the game. So yes time spent reading Slashdot dose count as work:) It's research....
I'll try to remember that when my boss asks me why I've spent 3 hours working and 4 hours reading/.:) Although I doubt he would see the very valid point I'd be making. Oh well...
I also am officially down for 37.5 hours a week, but for the money I'm getting I'm not working a single minute more than that. The job is not rewarding enough for me to put the extra effort into it, and I'll be leaving soon for sunnier pastures - I could hardly be paid less:)
God, you just descibed where I work in perfect detail. I for one, am sick of talking to customers on the phone after the support people (who get paid for this shit) don't have a clue about anything.
... and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
LOL. I'll have to remember that next time I talk to someone with religious views. Seriously though we can't even decide on a definition of consciousness, let alone prove it. We should probably start on humans before trying to tell whether a machine is conscious:)
Or in the transactional interpretation, at the moment of observation, a signal is sent backwards in time (since an electron travelling foward in time is quantum mechanically identical to a positron moving backwards in time and vice versa) to the moment of the decision, interacting with the system an that point and causing one choice to have been selected at that moment. Net result : there is always (and has always) either been an alive cat or a dead cat. Sorry, that's probably not the clearest of explanations is it?
I think what he's going on about at the end is Andrei Linde's chaotic inflation hypothesis in which the universe started as a random burst of inflation in a much larger multiverse. To us it looks as though a Big Bang has occured, to someone within the multiverse they would observe it occuring over and over again at different points and times, with different physical constants for each universe.
I think there might be a mix-up with another idea that it might be possible to pump enough energy into a microscopic wormhole to enable it to expand into a new universe (with its own separate 4 dimensions of course).
The question is moot, as the universe is not deterministic.
No, not on a quantum level. But a macroscopic system is made up from a vast number of microscopic quantum systems and statistically, the actions of all of these combine to give rise to classical, determinite behaviour. Whilst there is a chance of something non-classical happening on the macroscopic scale (such as you quantum tunnelling through your bedroom wall) the chance of this happening is so remote you'd have to wait far, far longer than the age of the universe for it to occur. So macroscopically, the universe is deterministic for all practical purposes.
This view is according to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which, while it has its critics (most notably Einstein), is accepted by the vast majority of Physicists, and is consistent with every test performed to date.
While the Copenhagen Interpretation is certainly consisten with every test to date, so are the other interpretations. My personal favourite is Feynmann and Wheeler's transactional interpretation, which removes the need for the role of a special observer from quantum mechanics. But that's just my opinion.
Oddly, the author is using Bell's Theorem (which I'm pretty sure is really Bohm's Theorem.)
Isn't Bohm's Theorem the pilot wave theorem? Which although requiring non-local effects isn't the same thing as Bell's Inequality, which simply states that if a certain condition is true then non-local effects must have occured and causality is broken at the quantum level.
As for a good reference, try reading the book Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin. It's got all the answers to what we're talking about, but unfortunately I don't have my copy here at work. Oh well.
Why is this not sufficient? Why do many physicists feel that there "must" be a quantum component to it?
Well I studied physics and while I'm not a physicist per se, it certainly has coloured the way I think of things. Anyway, the point. I have to agree with you I think that the issue of complexity is something which is still not dead - we are constantly finding new ways in which the brain interacts with itself - see my post in this topic which mentions the role of nitrous oxide as a neurotransmitter. The brain has a massively parallel structure involving electrical and chemical processes which provide a ridiculously large number of possible interactions/reactions. And this is without considering microtubles or their like, even without quantum effects.
I think it's just more conforting to people to think that there's something inherently special about their brains which puts them into a higher order than the rest of life. It's just a modern day rehash of the "Earth is at the centre of the Universe" argument.
Given that, and given that there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that we live in a foamy multiverse, and also given that the energy required to trigger the Inflation effect (which would create an entirely new Universe) requires energies we can acieve today (although not the energy density), it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
Are you referring to Andrei Linde's theory of chaotic inflation in which there is some kind of infinite universe (multiverse?) in which chaotically local inflation occurs - i.e. a Big Bang type event from the perspective of those inside the new, inflated region? Or if not, what else. Just curious.
It would take someone like Jon Katz to include spoilers like the author's conclusions in a book review.
Not really, if he'd just gone through some of the themes of the book I probably wouldn't think about getting it. Without knowing what the central thrust of the book is, I woudln't know whether I want to buy it to see if I agree or disagree with the author (probably disagree from the sound of it). It's not really like it's a murder mystery.
What is it? Where does it come from? What is its purpose?
The answer, says Walker, is in quantum and Newtonian physics. Using "Bell's Theorem" - the notion that one particle can instantly influence the behavior of another, Walker unveils his notions of the intricacies of electron tunneling in the brain.
Will some quantum effects are obviously going to come into play at the smallest levels of the brain there's still plenty more we don't know at even the more macroscopic scales. In the last few years neuropsychologists have discovered the important role that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) plays in the brain.
Whereas traditionally it was thought that all communication between different neurons in the brain occured along the synapses between them through electrochemical processes they found that there was a totally different medium used for neuronal communication. Nitrous oxide can be released in the brain and diffuse outwords rather than travel along specific paths. Because it spreads out it can affect a large number of other neurons, making it an important part in the massive parallelism of the human brain.
If we are still learning about important processes like this, then its still probably too early to begin talking about what gives rise to conscioussness.
The human mind, then, is a device for survival and reproduction, with reason just one of the techniques used to achieve that goal. All other functions of human consciousness - creativity, anger, exploration, adventure - exist either in support of this goal, or are inconsequential.
I've read a lot of stuff on genetics and I agree with a lot of the arguments for biological determination/influence on behaviour. However purely genetic reasons don't explain the myriad of human actions. We are somwhat more than just a vehicle for our genes, obeying hard-wired genetic imperatives. Those imperatives exist, but we can act against them - hence celibacy for instance. If the only reason we have is to pass our genes on, then celibacy is the single act which is most against nature. But it happens.
Quantum physics and mechanics create a mechanical picture of consciousness, Walker says, "consciousness arising out of the very observer-dependent processes that go on in the brain as they do in the laboratories of physicists, in the hearts of atoms, and in the cores of stars." With an observer in the brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world.
This statement relies heavily on one particular view of what quantum mechanics implied, called the Copenhagen Interpretation. It says that quantum systems are in indeterminate states until they are observed - the so-called "collapse of the wave function". However the key word here is Interpretation. There are other ways of interpreting what quantum mechanics means and all of them give rise to the same observable phenomena, but explain them in different ways. None of the many worlds theory, the transactional model or the pilot wave model require the observer which is elevated to such a pedestal in the Copenhagen Interpretation.
"A universe that has only matter cannot have consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes. "The picture painted to explain the material world, orderly but without God, has failed to work." Einstein, writes Walker, could see "the print of God's hand" on creation exteding to the edges of the cosmos, but he failed to see us there, he failed to see the implications of mind for physics, and he failed to see anything but the shadow of God." Walker sees all those things.
Well, he's not afraid to make sweeping statements about, well pretty much all of the biggest questions mankind has. Call me cautious but I'm generally suspicious of people making such grandiose claims, even if they do have knowledge to back it up - which is kind of a novelty for these kind of books.
While I totally agree this isn't really worthy of the tag "nano" it does have some similarities with what Drexler's vision is. The logo was made from custom-made polymers which had certain properties which allowed them to self-assemble into the required shape. I think that's why this is being pushed as nano, but maybe I'm just reading more into this than whoever wrote the article. Probably - "hey it's small, it must be nano!"
Why should Lucas have to cast actors based on their ethnic/social backgrounds as opposed to their acting ability?
...
What he should do instead is seek a talented cast.
LOL. George Lucas doesn't exactly have a good track record with the acting ability displayed by characters in his films. I can't say there's any emotive acting anywhere in the four films to date and chances are he will continue his unbroken run in the next two movies.
Fortunately coming from the UK, a country with no written constitution, an unelected upper house, video cameras on every street corner, an enormous (£101) approx $160/year tax on every television set, no right to silence, and an authoritarian "socialist" government whose only principle is to cling to power at all costs, I think I can rest easy.
But I'd still rather live here than in America:)
P.S. If that is you dmg have you done any decent trolls recently? Trolltalk isn't what it used to be for finding out intersting trolls.
<sarcasm> Well, thank you, that just made my day that little bit more cheerful. Any other stories of despair and abuse so we can bask in the sunny glow of human kindness? </sarcasm>
Is the first thing anyone ever does with this sort of fancy new technology is to create a fancy little logo? I mean, you'd almost think they were actually frustrated artists:) This must have taken far longer to do than just a simple pattern or whatever. Maybe the extra grant money from the US government means we'll be seeing a whole load more minature pictures...
Ha ha, that's funny. And what's even funnier is that even if George Lucas put all those in his next film, it still couldn't have any less depth. Although I'm sure he'll come up with something to suprise us all.
Generally, they look at the tracks left behind in the detector, which is a complicated 5-stage affair which I looked at in a lot of detail some years ago and then promptly forgot:) Since the detector exerts a very powerful magnetic field (approx 1 Tesla) the particles resulting from the collision travel in a curved path with the curvature showing the amount of charge and the direction it's curving in showing the sign of the charge. The other layers all have varying properties so that certain types of particle are stopped at certain points so that they can tell some of the properties of the debris.
Once they know all this information, they can compare it with the properites of quarks they have already worked out from lower energy collision experiments over the last 20 years or so. If they match, it's a reasonable assumption that they've found quarks.
The zero point is the lowest energy state in evidence. To "tap" it would require finding a lower state, and then you aren't really do anything special.
Okay, you could be right, but here's my rebuttal for what it's worth:) The vacuum contains a constant flux of virtual particles of varying energies and hence wave functions of differering wavelengths. The Casimir effect involves placing two flat plates very close to each other in empty space. Since between the two plates only certain wavefunctions are possible (those which have nodes at each plate) this means that only virtual particles with energies corresponding to these wavelengths can form between the plates. Hence the energy density between the plates is less than it is outside of the plates and there is a pressure forcing the plates together. The effect is minimal but it is there and does deliver a way of tapping the vacuum energy.
Of course this is not exactly the answer to any of the world's energy problems at the moment, but it does provide proof that it is feasible to extract some kind of energy from the vacuum.
Slashdot Mirror
Try the Python Language website, here.
At least, not until I have a line longer than fits on the editor window. :-)
You can use \ at the end of a line to continue it onto the next line, where you can indent it as you please, so you can do:
def foo():print "hello " \
"world"
Any user who uses My.MP3.com is inherently giving up a remarkable amount of privacy. My.MP3.com knows every CD in a user's collection that they "beamed" to the server along with the user's e-mail address, network IP address and and Ethernet MAC address. An unscrupulous marketer could correlate musical preferences with other lifestyle choices and use this for targeted advertisement. MP3.com's pri-vacy policy 5 does not offer strong guarantees against this kind of behavior, and the ability to opt-out is at the bottom of the user-preferences page - something that most users will never do. And that is the reason for this sort of thing in a nutshell. While it sounds like a great idea for people who have a lot of CDs that they want to listen to both at home and at work, they will find themselves at the end of a barrage of "targetted" advertising. The spread of information from MP3.com will be exponential as more and more agencies sell your profile to interested parties. Oh joy, yet more spam. On the other hand, the lawsuit issue could be a good thing. MP3.com have a lot more money than the defendants in the other similar cases recently, and they are a company, able to organise their defence better than we've seen in the DeCSS trial so far. A victory in this case would have implications for the entire issue of people's right to use what they've bought, and for the digital media industry as a whole. Despite the privacy issues, which I don't like, I still hope MP3.com can win this case.
I arrive at work 9am, leave at 5.30, which, with an hour for lunch works out at 37 1/2 hours a week - quite standard for the UK.
Exactly the same hours I work, and I'm also here in the UK. While I'm not married or anything my job is not the overriding factor in my life - there's also the little matters of friends, my girlfriend and oh yes, just sitting down and relaxing. These things are essential to maintaining a normal life IMHO.
I don't get paid to work overtime, and so I generally don't - there have been exceptions when there's an important deadline, but those were more voluntary than forced. On the other hand, I get paid fuck all here which probably contributes some to my lack of willingness to work extra. But even if I was getting paid six figures, I'd still want to keep my job and my home lives separate, with time for each.
Anyway Slashdot talks about technology and tech issues things you people have to keep up on to stay at the top of the game. So yes time spent reading Slashdot dose count as work :) It's research....
I'll try to remember that when my boss asks me why I've spent 3 hours working and 4 hours reading /. :) Although I doubt he would see the very valid point I'd be making. Oh well...
I also am officially down for 37.5 hours a week, but for the money I'm getting I'm not working a single minute more than that. The job is not rewarding enough for me to put the extra effort into it, and I'll be leaving soon for sunnier pastures - I could hardly be paid less :)
God, you just descibed where I work in perfect detail. I for one, am sick of talking to customers on the phone after the support people (who get paid for this shit) don't have a clue about anything.
... and if they want to feel that they are a special, unique creation of the invisible sky pixie, that's what they will believe.
LOL. I'll have to remember that next time I talk to someone with religious views. Seriously though we can't even decide on a definition of consciousness, let alone prove it. We should probably start on humans before trying to tell whether a machine is conscious :)
Or in the transactional interpretation, at the moment of observation, a signal is sent backwards in time (since an electron travelling foward in time is quantum mechanically identical to a positron moving backwards in time and vice versa) to the moment of the decision, interacting with the system an that point and causing one choice to have been selected at that moment. Net result : there is always (and has always) either been an alive cat or a dead cat. Sorry, that's probably not the clearest of explanations is it?
I think what he's going on about at the end is Andrei Linde's chaotic inflation hypothesis in which the universe started as a random burst of inflation in a much larger multiverse. To us it looks as though a Big Bang has occured, to someone within the multiverse they would observe it occuring over and over again at different points and times, with different physical constants for each universe.
I think there might be a mix-up with another idea that it might be possible to pump enough energy into a microscopic wormhole to enable it to expand into a new universe (with its own separate 4 dimensions of course).
The question is moot, as the universe is not deterministic.
No, not on a quantum level. But a macroscopic system is made up from a vast number of microscopic quantum systems and statistically, the actions of all of these combine to give rise to classical, determinite behaviour. Whilst there is a chance of something non-classical happening on the macroscopic scale (such as you quantum tunnelling through your bedroom wall) the chance of this happening is so remote you'd have to wait far, far longer than the age of the universe for it to occur. So macroscopically, the universe is deterministic for all practical purposes.
This view is according to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which, while it has its critics (most notably Einstein), is accepted by the vast majority of Physicists, and is consistent with every test performed to date.
While the Copenhagen Interpretation is certainly consisten with every test to date, so are the other interpretations. My personal favourite is Feynmann and Wheeler's transactional interpretation, which removes the need for the role of a special observer from quantum mechanics. But that's just my opinion.
Oddly, the author is using Bell's Theorem (which I'm pretty sure is really Bohm's Theorem.)
Isn't Bohm's Theorem the pilot wave theorem? Which although requiring non-local effects isn't the same thing as Bell's Inequality, which simply states that if a certain condition is true then non-local effects must have occured and causality is broken at the quantum level.
As for a good reference, try reading the book Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin. It's got all the answers to what we're talking about, but unfortunately I don't have my copy here at work. Oh well.
Why is this not sufficient? Why do many physicists feel that there "must" be a quantum component to it?
Well I studied physics and while I'm not a physicist per se, it certainly has coloured the way I think of things. Anyway, the point. I have to agree with you I think that the issue of complexity is something which is still not dead - we are constantly finding new ways in which the brain interacts with itself - see my post in this topic which mentions the role of nitrous oxide as a neurotransmitter. The brain has a massively parallel structure involving electrical and chemical processes which provide a ridiculously large number of possible interactions/reactions. And this is without considering microtubles or their like, even without quantum effects.
I think it's just more conforting to people to think that there's something inherently special about their brains which puts them into a higher order than the rest of life. It's just a modern day rehash of the "Earth is at the centre of the Universe" argument.
Given that, and given that there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that we live in a foamy multiverse, and also given that the energy required to trigger the Inflation effect (which would create an entirely new Universe) requires energies we can acieve today (although not the energy density), it is ENTIRLEY within the realms of physical science to talk about someone creating a Universe. As such, it is patently stupid for any scientist to reject the possibility that this did, indeed, happen in the case of THIS Universe.
Are you referring to Andrei Linde's theory of chaotic inflation in which there is some kind of infinite universe (multiverse?) in which chaotically local inflation occurs - i.e. a Big Bang type event from the perspective of those inside the new, inflated region? Or if not, what else. Just curious.
It would take someone like Jon Katz to include spoilers like the author's conclusions in a book review.
Not really, if he'd just gone through some of the themes of the book I probably wouldn't think about getting it. Without knowing what the central thrust of the book is, I woudln't know whether I want to buy it to see if I agree or disagree with the author (probably disagree from the sound of it). It's not really like it's a murder mystery.
What is it? Where does it come from? What is its purpose?
The answer, says Walker, is in quantum and Newtonian physics. Using "Bell's Theorem" - the notion that one particle can instantly influence the behavior of another, Walker unveils his notions of the intricacies of electron tunneling in the brain.
Will some quantum effects are obviously going to come into play at the smallest levels of the brain there's still plenty more we don't know at even the more macroscopic scales. In the last few years neuropsychologists have discovered the important role that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) plays in the brain.
Whereas traditionally it was thought that all communication between different neurons in the brain occured along the synapses between them through electrochemical processes they found that there was a totally different medium used for neuronal communication. Nitrous oxide can be released in the brain and diffuse outwords rather than travel along specific paths. Because it spreads out it can affect a large number of other neurons, making it an important part in the massive parallelism of the human brain.
If we are still learning about important processes like this, then its still probably too early to begin talking about what gives rise to conscioussness.
The human mind, then, is a device for survival and reproduction, with reason just one of the techniques used to achieve that goal. All other functions of human consciousness - creativity, anger, exploration, adventure - exist either in support of this goal, or are inconsequential.
I've read a lot of stuff on genetics and I agree with a lot of the arguments for biological determination/influence on behaviour. However purely genetic reasons don't explain the myriad of human actions. We are somwhat more than just a vehicle for our genes, obeying hard-wired genetic imperatives. Those imperatives exist, but we can act against them - hence celibacy for instance. If the only reason we have is to pass our genes on, then celibacy is the single act which is most against nature. But it happens.
Quantum physics and mechanics create a mechanical picture of consciousness, Walker says, "consciousness arising out of the very observer-dependent processes that go on in the brain as they do in the laboratories of physicists, in the hearts of atoms, and in the cores of stars." With an observer in the brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world.
This statement relies heavily on one particular view of what quantum mechanics implied, called the Copenhagen Interpretation. It says that quantum systems are in indeterminate states until they are observed - the so-called "collapse of the wave function". However the key word here is Interpretation. There are other ways of interpreting what quantum mechanics means and all of them give rise to the same observable phenomena, but explain them in different ways. None of the many worlds theory, the transactional model or the pilot wave model require the observer which is elevated to such a pedestal in the Copenhagen Interpretation.
"A universe that has only matter cannot have consciousness and cannot have will," he concludes. "The picture painted to explain the material world, orderly but without God, has failed to work." Einstein, writes Walker, could see "the print of God's hand" on creation exteding to the edges of the cosmos, but he failed to see us there, he failed to see the implications of mind for physics, and he failed to see anything but the shadow of God." Walker sees all those things.
Well, he's not afraid to make sweeping statements about, well pretty much all of the biggest questions mankind has. Call me cautious but I'm generally suspicious of people making such grandiose claims, even if they do have knowledge to back it up - which is kind of a novelty for these kind of books.
While I totally agree this isn't really worthy of the tag "nano" it does have some similarities with what Drexler's vision is. The logo was made from custom-made polymers which had certain properties which allowed them to self-assemble into the required shape. I think that's why this is being pushed as nano, but maybe I'm just reading more into this than whoever wrote the article. Probably - "hey it's small, it must be nano!"
Why should Lucas have to cast actors based on their ethnic/social backgrounds as opposed to their acting ability?
...
What he should do instead is seek a talented cast.
LOL. George Lucas doesn't exactly have a good track record with the acting ability displayed by characters in his films. I can't say there's any emotive acting anywhere in the four films to date and chances are he will continue his unbroken run in the next two movies.
Fortunately coming from the UK, a country with no written constitution, an unelected upper house, video cameras on every street corner, an enormous (£101) approx $160/year tax on every television set, no right to silence, and an authoritarian "socialist" government whose only principle is to cling to power at all costs, I think I can rest easy.
But I'd still rather live here than in America :)
P.S. If that is you dmg have you done any decent trolls recently? Trolltalk isn't what it used to be for finding out intersting trolls.
<sarcasm>
Well, thank you, that just made my day that little bit more cheerful. Any other stories of despair and abuse so we can bask in the sunny glow of human kindness?
</sarcasm>
Is the first thing anyone ever does with this sort of fancy new technology is to create a fancy little logo? I mean, you'd almost think they were actually frustrated artists :) This must have taken far longer to do than just a simple pattern or whatever. Maybe the extra grant money from the US government means we'll be seeing a whole load more minature pictures...
Ha ha, that's funny. And what's even funnier is that even if George Lucas put all those in his next film, it still couldn't have any less depth. Although I'm sure he'll come up with something to suprise us all.
Errm, really? Sorry, I don't get your point.
Generally, they look at the tracks left behind in the detector, which is a complicated 5-stage affair which I looked at in a lot of detail some years ago and then promptly forgot :) Since the detector exerts a very powerful magnetic field (approx 1 Tesla) the particles resulting from the collision travel in a curved path with the curvature showing the amount of charge and the direction it's curving in showing the sign of the charge. The other layers all have varying properties so that certain types of particle are stopped at certain points so that they can tell some of the properties of the debris.
Once they know all this information, they can compare it with the properites of quarks they have already worked out from lower energy collision experiments over the last 20 years or so. If they match, it's a reasonable assumption that they've found quarks.
The zero point is the lowest energy state in evidence. To "tap" it would require finding a lower state, and then you aren't really do anything special.
Okay, you could be right, but here's my rebuttal for what it's worth :) The vacuum contains a constant flux of virtual particles of varying energies and hence wave functions of differering wavelengths. The Casimir effect involves placing two flat plates very close to each other in empty space. Since between the two plates only certain wavefunctions are possible (those which have nodes at each plate) this means that only virtual particles with energies corresponding to these wavelengths can form between the plates. Hence the energy density between the plates is less than it is outside of the plates and there is a pressure forcing the plates together. The effect is minimal but it is there and does deliver a way of tapping the vacuum energy.
Of course this is not exactly the answer to any of the world's energy problems at the moment, but it does provide proof that it is feasible to extract some kind of energy from the vacuum.