I remember reading once about how the brain will recognize faces in natural formations (i.e. face on mars, clouds, etc).
Um...if you have a brain of your own (borrow one if you don't) you could try this out for yourself. It's not exactly some obscure experiment that you can only "read about".
The whole syntax/semantics distinctions smells to me like the evolution/microevolution distinction. An artificial distinction that has been made by fiat so that people can declare that we "never get to semantics". I can see how there is a clear distinction in the field of linguistics. I have no idea what the distinction is in the field of artificial intelligence. Searle's Chinese room argument does nothing to clear up the issue for me. I have absolutely no idea whay someone would say that a "Chinese room" that successfully simulates thinking isn't thinking and it seems to me that there is nothing that makes semantics incompatible with being merely enough of the right kind of syntax.
There are 10,000 new species discovered every year. Than means 10000/365 = 27+epsilon every day. So Slashdot is now reporting when news hasn't happened?
That's a pity. If there's no money to be made from inventing a time machine I don't think I'll bother working on mine any more. I'll just get back to my perpetual moction machine then.
Company uses dubious technology to demonstrate another company's product is effective. Both companies praise each other. Companies make press releases picked up by magazine. Excitement all round!
Yes, you don't need much grammar to communicate things like "You fuckers shoot the red monster. I'll grab the treasure". That you think this is comparable to reading a novel is quite telling.
I'm not surprised you "read" three or four pages a minute. It's obvious you must be doing something wrong in order to have read tens of thousands of pages of text and still fail to notice that "nazi's" isn't the plural of "Nazi" even though almost every single one of those pages must have contained literally dozens of plurals. I wonder how someone can fail to miss the pattern after being presented with tens of millions of examples.
I'm sorry. As I hint in my post, even when you can write grammatically correct sentences there is still an art to constructing sentences so as not to lead readers down the garden path. Because my ability in this art isn't all that great it's probably good that I don't edit a prominent news portal web site.
Do i have above average reading comprehension skills or something?
Below average I suspect. If you've never managed to reach the stage where your reading is pipelined then you won't be impacted much by grammatical errors.
i take that to mean that you implicitly accept all of thier points, as you only can basically nitpick their arguments.
Clearly you are one of those people who see discussion and argument as something to win rather than a way to share knowledge. Instead of trying to figure out how to communicate effectively you have instead invented a new rule for the game that allows you to 'win' the game if someone has trouble reading what you have written. You remind me of those kids who shout "but that was the practice game, the next one is the real one, don't you remember me saying that?" when they lose a game.
Talk about Karma whoring! A bunch of sentences culled from a variety of sources from someone who really doesn't know what they are talking about. Now that's dangerous.
Viruses are obviously first on the chopping block...
Non "obviously" at all. There are countless medical applications for X-ray crystallography. Any time you want to study the structure of a protein it comes in handy. Many diseases are attacked by researchers from the point of view of receptor binding - the binding together of proteins to other compounds like a lock and key. Such receptors act like switches activating or controlling biological processes. These are ubiquitous in nature and understanding the shape of these 'locks' and 'keys' can be useful in trying to understand the mechanisms of all kinds of diseases whether or not they are caused by pathogens.
Several similar mistakes have been made in reporting stories like this in recent years. It's not unusual for two physical systems to be described by similar mathematical models even though they are not in fact similar systems (at least not in the conventional sense of 'similar'). Studying one of these physical systems can give clues about how the other might behave. But it doesn't actually mean that a system of the first type is actually a system of the second type.
It's not just about wincing. The process of reading is pipelined. Humans can scan through text very quickly because while the eye is scanning one word you're parsing the sentence from a few words before and thinking about the meaning of what came before that. When you hit a grammatical or spelling error you cause a pipeline stall. If an incorrect word is used you can often continue for several more words before you discover that the sentence is impossible to parse forcing you to backtrack. Good writers intuitively know how to construct a sentence to lead you towards the correct parsing and make the process of reading as effortless as possible. The Slashdot editors often make reading a chore with readers being forced to scan sentences over and over again in an attempt to find a sensible reading.
People have been endeavouring to write well for centuries. It's funny how the Slashdot editors can suddenly decide that this entire tradition is worthless. Have they not noticed that writers have been trying to convey a message other than "I can spell" for aeons and yet still make the effort to spell correctly as a courtesy to their readers?
When you write text on a forum like Slashdot every minute you spend writing translates into thousands of minutes of reading. People would do well to remember that.
Now I reckon you haven't actually tasted bacon and egg ice cream. Given that the restaurant was voted best in the world, I like bacon and eggs, I don't mind ice cream, and the fact that the chef went to my school (name drop...), in the absence of having tasted the stuff myself I can only assume it's jolly scrumptious stuff.
Where do you get the idea that slashdot and geeks in general are "above hype"?
But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that geeks perceive themselves to be above the herd and so less susceptible to hype. You just have to read the many comments written on/. about hype to see that. So I see irony in the fact that they are just as prone to hype as any other group of people.
Okay, you basically proved my point, with your tensorial shorthand of 2x2=1+3. That is not simple vector addition, at least not in my book.
This gives no insight into quantum computing, it's about spin. Spin can be a bit tricky. But classical angular momentum is tricky too. How many people can predict the outcomes of this experiment? And yet it's entirely predictable from some intuitively simple ideas like F=ma. Same goes for quantum computing and quantum mechanics: there are hard problems in these fields but you can get started in both without dressing it up in mysticism and enigma.
And since qubits ARE representations of SU(2)...
Just about any vector space carries a representation of any classical Lie group. The reason to study the representation of a particular group is that the system has that group as a (possibly approximate) symmetry. But in quantum computers you're looking at systems that don't have SU(2) symmetry. The computer itself does, but the particular system of interest, with basis |0> and |1> doesn't. For example a NOT gate maps |0> to |1> so if you're representing bits by spin states you're not conserving angular momentum. Ie. the Hamiltonian for a NOT gate is not SU(2)-invariant. (The reason it's not conserving angular momentum is that the NOT gate is typically implemented by some piece of hardware that locally breaks SU(2) symmetry, eg, by using an external magnetic field with a particular orientation. You need to consider the Hamiltonian for the entire system - qubits plus magnetic field and other hardware to recover SU(2) symmetry. A computer scientist doesn't care about this other stuff, they just want to consider the qubits themselves.)
And you don't need to understand SU(2) to understand entanglement. A state like |0,0>+|1,1> represents a pair of entangled bits and you can do interesting stuff with such a state without the need to understand SU(2). For example such a state is useful in quantum teleportation. Understanding quantum teleportation requires nothing more than understanding how a simple linear operator acts on a fairly small basis.
BTW I'm not sure what methods you're referring to that use redundancy to work around the no-cloning theorem. Maybe you're just talking about quantum error correcting code. These don't really use redundancy but instead distribute qubits over several underlying qubits in places that the Hamiltonian for external interaction can't see them. Eg. you find some elements of the Hamiltonian matrix that are zero in some basis and smuggle the qubits into the corresponding space.
BTW, what do you think of this applet
When I get to a machine with Java installed. And I think I really need to write a Dummy's Guide to Quantum Computing some time...
What is your field of research?
Er...computer graphics for Hollywood, and though I work in an R&D group of a supposedly cutting-edge company I'd be embarassed to compare the 'R' in that to what you do!
What he is trying to say is that the same people who reject pseudo-scientific concepts like "intelligent design", seem to be willing to accept equally laughable pseudo-scientific concepts like "Gia Earth Theory".
That's not very polite. Obviously the original poster can't be trying to imply what you say because the people who are most vociferous against Intelligent Design are precisely the same people who are strongest in rejecting "Gaia Earth Theory" because it conflicts with what we know about evolution. You're be implying the original poster is incredibly stupid, or incredibly ignorant, and that's not very nice.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Develop protoype
2. Demo prototype
3. ?
4. Profit
Isn't this, what every, hardware, and, software company has always, done?
I've no idea how this works. But I assume that when it's all over I'll still own a piece of something.
How can that be? What about the piece I own? It's only worth a few thousand but until they tear that stock from my fingers they won't be sole owner.
Let me guess. You heard a few anecdotes about people who can think and now you assume that just about anyone can do it.
Why not? We're talking about when we schedule parties, not the timing of some scientific experiment.
You're confusing cause an effect. A person says they are dead because they have determined that they have ascended to Heaven (or descended to Hell).
There are more organs than the brain in a human body.
Well now you have three less. They were pretty easy to clear up. Maybe you'd like to get onto the hard stuff next.
Um...if you have a brain of your own (borrow one if you don't) you could try this out for yourself. It's not exactly some obscure experiment that you can only "read about".
The whole syntax/semantics distinctions smells to me like the evolution/microevolution distinction. An artificial distinction that has been made by fiat so that people can declare that we "never get to semantics". I can see how there is a clear distinction in the field of linguistics. I have no idea what the distinction is in the field of artificial intelligence. Searle's Chinese room argument does nothing to clear up the issue for me. I have absolutely no idea whay someone would say that a "Chinese room" that successfully simulates thinking isn't thinking and it seems to me that there is nothing that makes semantics incompatible with being merely enough of the right kind of syntax.
There are 10,000 new species discovered every year. Than means 10000/365 = 27+epsilon every day. So Slashdot is now reporting when news hasn't happened?
Down boy, down!
That's a pity. If there's no money to be made from inventing a time machine I don't think I'll bother working on mine any more. I'll just get back to my perpetual moction machine then.
Oh well. As long as you can communicate what you want to the people you care about communicating with then you're fine.
Company uses dubious technology to demonstrate another company's product is effective. Both companies praise each other. Companies make press releases picked up by magazine. Excitement all round!
I'm not surprised you "read" three or four pages a minute. It's obvious you must be doing something wrong in order to have read tens of thousands of pages of text and still fail to notice that "nazi's" isn't the plural of "Nazi" even though almost every single one of those pages must have contained literally dozens of plurals. I wonder how someone can fail to miss the pattern after being presented with tens of millions of examples.
I won't deny that there is some truth to what you say.
I'm sorry. As I hint in my post, even when you can write grammatically correct sentences there is still an art to constructing sentences so as not to lead readers down the garden path. Because my ability in this art isn't all that great it's probably good that I don't edit a prominent news portal web site.
Below average I suspect. If you've never managed to reach the stage where your reading is pipelined then you won't be impacted much by grammatical errors.
Clearly you are one of those people who see discussion and argument as something to win rather than a way to share knowledge. Instead of trying to figure out how to communicate effectively you have instead invented a new rule for the game that allows you to 'win' the game if someone has trouble reading what you have written. You remind me of those kids who shout "but that was the practice game, the next one is the real one, don't you remember me saying that?" when they lose a game.
Non "obviously" at all. There are countless medical applications for X-ray crystallography. Any time you want to study the structure of a protein it comes in handy. Many diseases are attacked by researchers from the point of view of receptor binding - the binding together of proteins to other compounds like a lock and key. Such receptors act like switches activating or controlling biological processes. These are ubiquitous in nature and understanding the shape of these 'locks' and 'keys' can be useful in trying to understand the mechanisms of all kinds of diseases whether or not they are caused by pathogens.
Several similar mistakes have been made in reporting stories like this in recent years. It's not unusual for two physical systems to be described by similar mathematical models even though they are not in fact similar systems (at least not in the conventional sense of 'similar'). Studying one of these physical systems can give clues about how the other might behave. But it doesn't actually mean that a system of the first type is actually a system of the second type.
People have been endeavouring to write well for centuries. It's funny how the Slashdot editors can suddenly decide that this entire tradition is worthless. Have they not noticed that writers have been trying to convey a message other than "I can spell" for aeons and yet still make the effort to spell correctly as a courtesy to their readers?
When you write text on a forum like Slashdot every minute you spend writing translates into thousands of minutes of reading. People would do well to remember that.
Julius Caesar wore a dress so he doesn't count as a man.
Now I reckon you haven't actually tasted bacon and egg ice cream. Given that the restaurant was voted best in the world, I like bacon and eggs, I don't mind ice cream, and the fact that the chef went to my school (name drop...), in the absence of having tasted the stuff myself I can only assume it's jolly scrumptious stuff.
But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that geeks perceive themselves to be above the herd and so less susceptible to hype. You just have to read the many comments written on
Actually it's a bit unfair to diss British cooking.
This gives no insight into quantum computing, it's about spin. Spin can be a bit tricky. But classical angular momentum is tricky too. How many people can predict the outcomes of this experiment? And yet it's entirely predictable from some intuitively simple ideas like F=ma. Same goes for quantum computing and quantum mechanics: there are hard problems in these fields but you can get started in both without dressing it up in mysticism and enigma.
Just about any vector space carries a representation of any classical Lie group. The reason to study the representation of a particular group is that the system has that group as a (possibly approximate) symmetry. But in quantum computers you're looking at systems that don't have SU(2) symmetry. The computer itself does, but the particular system of interest, with basis |0> and |1> doesn't. For example a NOT gate maps |0> to |1> so if you're representing bits by spin states you're not conserving angular momentum. Ie. the Hamiltonian for a NOT gate is not SU(2)-invariant. (The reason it's not conserving angular momentum is that the NOT gate is typically implemented by some piece of hardware that locally breaks SU(2) symmetry, eg, by using an external magnetic field with a particular orientation. You need to consider the Hamiltonian for the entire system - qubits plus magnetic field and other hardware to recover SU(2) symmetry. A computer scientist doesn't care about this other stuff, they just want to consider the qubits themselves.)
And you don't need to understand SU(2) to understand entanglement. A state like |0,0>+|1,1> represents a pair of entangled bits and you can do interesting stuff with such a state without the need to understand SU(2). For example such a state is useful in quantum teleportation. Understanding quantum teleportation requires nothing more than understanding how a simple linear operator acts on a fairly small basis.
BTW I'm not sure what methods you're referring to that use redundancy to work around the no-cloning theorem. Maybe you're just talking about quantum error correcting code. These don't really use redundancy but instead distribute qubits over several underlying qubits in places that the Hamiltonian for external interaction can't see them. Eg. you find some elements of the Hamiltonian matrix that are zero in some basis and smuggle the qubits into the corresponding space.
When I get to a machine with Java installed. And I think I really need to write a Dummy's Guide to Quantum Computing some time...
Er...computer graphics for Hollywood, and though I work in an R&D group of a supposedly cutting-edge company I'd be embarassed to compare the 'R' in that to what you do!
That's not very polite. Obviously the original poster can't be trying to imply what you say because the people who are most vociferous against Intelligent Design are precisely the same people who are strongest in rejecting "Gaia Earth Theory" because it conflicts with what we know about evolution. You're be implying the original poster is incredibly stupid, or incredibly ignorant, and that's not very nice.