Then presumably we want companies to research such techniques. But companies will only research them if they're profitable. If the product of the research is easily reverse-engineered and copied companies won't be motivated to do GE research unless they are protected by patent. So I guess the original question boils down to "Do you want the products of genetic engineering?"
I can't wait to get the stuff and play Final Fantasy X under Linux. Now that the PS2 has a real OS FFX will run much faster and crash less often. And with a preempting multitasking OS I'll be able to play Silent Hill 2 in another windows during the boring cut sequences FFX. This has to be the greatest thing that's happened in video games.
I have had my machine running, without even a crash, not even ONCE, for almost two years
Well I guess I'd better counter this anecdotal evidence with some of my own. I have used Indigos, Indigo2s and O2s up until about 2 years ago and then switched to W2K. In my experience the W2K machines crash less often - though you might need to clarify exactly what 'crash' means.
Oh yeah, if you roll your own software for a Pentium for the visual effects business and know how to use SSE2 you'll leave the SGIs standing at the starting line.
That's kinda missing the point. You could push the blade simultaneously (in the scissors rest frame) all the way along its length rather than have a signal from the handles propagate at the speed of sound in steel.
Good point. There are a great many hazards associated with transparent building materials and for some years now I've been campaigning to have them curtailed or even removed from building entirely. One such material is glass and the hazards are well known: risk of fracture, the ease of accident causation (eg. walking into glass doors) and, as you point out, risk of fire due to caustics produced by the curvature of glass. There are other more subtle risks such as the yearly loss of revenue due to espionage caused by the fact that just about every company has great big transparent regions in every room allowing spies to look in using binoculars (which themselves are testament the hazards of allowing the public free access to transparent materials).
To add to these risks the hazards associated with translucent or transparent concrete is surely foolhardy. We already have far too much transparency in our society and it's time to bring this madness to a halt.
...fake some more evidence of life in outer space so as to increase public interest and get more money out of the government. Meanwhile they should spend the money on doing some real research.
Er...no. You don't need to be a physicist to measure the velocity or understand the concept of a velocity and I strongly suspect the original poster understands these ideas quite well.
I think you are missing a point. The original poster seems to think that not only is there some speed limit at c but also a limit to your ability to measure speeds greater than c. There's some interesting idea in the guy's head that makes him think this even though no popular (or unpopular) article on science says any such thing. I'd love to know where this idea came from.
To follow through with your analogy: if someone had said to a brain surgeon "how can you possibly operate on that person they weigh more that 100kg?" I suspect that not a few people would be very curious to know what the questioner was talking about.
Your comment is a bit of a non sequitur as the original 'pulses' are not a form of communication. However what you say is otherwise an accurate statement - within the context of relativity FTL is the same as travel back in time.
Unlike Quantum Gravity in 4 dimensions where nobody has a clue Quantum Gravity in 3 dimensions (with no mass, two space, 1 time) has been solved. (OK, sounds silly because with no mass there is no gravity - but that's not the case - think random fluctuations of spacetime).
Well here's the interesting thing about 3D QG (or at least one type of 3D QG): you can express it as a bunch of partial differential equations which means it's basically about continuous fields that aren't discrete in any way. But you can also write it in a completely discrete way where you do calculations on a kind of spacetime tesselated into (4 dimensional) tetrahedra. Guess what? They are exactly equivalent. So it's your pick whether to think about it being 'pixellated' or not - both views are correct.
So articles like this give me a fuzzy flow, because they intimate that reality is granular
Yes and no. A good analogy is with the notes you can play on a guitar string. You can play the fundamental or various higher harmonics but you can't play the notes in between without changing the length. But you can play various blends of different harmonics. So there's still a continuous infinity of different sounds you can produce. Well QM's a bit like that. It's very different from being pixellated.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just like it, it is looking into the past.
Then presumably we want companies to research such techniques. But companies will only research them if they're profitable. If the product of the research is easily reverse-engineered and copied companies won't be motivated to do GE research unless they are protected by patent. So I guess the original question boils down to "Do you want the products of genetic engineering?"
I waste more time reading your reply than the original post. Damn! Now I'm wasting someone else's time...
to see how well this technique actually works. Dr. Mandelbrot is, above all, a very good seller of himself.
Well I'm giving you permission not to.
Good game BTW. You finished it yet?
If you want to discuss that you know my email address.
I can't wait to get the stuff and play Final Fantasy X under Linux. Now that the PS2 has a real OS FFX will run much faster and crash less often. And with a preempting multitasking OS I'll be able to play Silent Hill 2 in another windows during the boring cut sequences FFX. This has to be the greatest thing that's happened in video games.
It could be science by
Look again. I think you'll find quite a few W2K boxes both on the render farms and desktops in the movie biz.
Well I guess I'd better counter this anecdotal evidence with some of my own. I have used Indigos, Indigo2s and O2s up until about 2 years ago and then switched to W2K. In my experience the W2K machines crash less often - though you might need to clarify exactly what 'crash' means.
Oh yeah, if you roll your own software for a Pentium for the visual effects business and know how to use SSE2 you'll leave the SGIs standing at the starting line.
That's kinda missing the point. You could push the blade simultaneously (in the scissors rest frame) all the way along its length rather than have a signal from the handles propagate at the speed of sound in steel.
To add to these risks the hazards associated with translucent or transparent concrete is surely foolhardy. We already have far too much transparency in our society and it's time to bring this madness to a halt.
...fake some more evidence of life in outer space so as to increase public interest and get more money out of the government. Meanwhile they should spend the money on doing some real research.
Ha! I'm going to patent joke templates. The first example will be the patent joke template joke template.
I think you are missing a point. The original poster seems to think that not only is there some speed limit at c but also a limit to your ability to measure speeds greater than c. There's some interesting idea in the guy's head that makes him think this even though no popular (or unpopular) article on science says any such thing. I'd love to know where this idea came from.
To follow through with your analogy: if someone had said to a brain surgeon "how can you possibly operate on that person they weigh more that 100kg?" I suspect that not a few people would be very curious to know what the questioner was talking about.
As a bit of a physicist I can't help but wonder why you think there's a difficulty with measuring a velocity faster than that of light???
Your comment is a bit of a non sequitur as the original 'pulses' are not a form of communication. However what you say is otherwise an accurate statement - within the context of relativity FTL is the same as travel back in time.
There's nothing unusual or fantastical about this claim. Group velocity/phase velocity 'n' all that stuff is basic undergrad material.
What's a mainframe? Never heard of it.
If you're going to repeat a joke that's been repeated a million times before you really have absolutely no excuse to spell it wrong. Shame on you.
What about QM doesn't make sense? Makes sense to me.
Well here's the interesting thing about 3D QG (or at least one type of 3D QG): you can express it as a bunch of partial differential equations which means it's basically about continuous fields that aren't discrete in any way. But you can also write it in a completely discrete way where you do calculations on a kind of spacetime tesselated into (4 dimensional) tetrahedra. Guess what? They are exactly equivalent. So it's your pick whether to think about it being 'pixellated' or not - both views are correct.
Some info on this can be found here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week19.html/
And I think people should open their wallets and start spending a bit of money on getting them there. I mean, of course, humans.
Yes and no. A good analogy is with the notes you can play on a guitar string. You can play the fundamental or various higher harmonics but you can't play the notes in between without changing the length. But you can play various blends of different harmonics. So there's still a continuous infinity of different sounds you can produce. Well QM's a bit like that. It's very different from being pixellated.