Nice thing about paper record players is that they last a long time. I have one that is 32 years old, and still works.... That means of course that the idea is not really new.....
See http://bit.ly/happy1979 for a recording I made today of this old masterpiece: an audio "Happy New Year" card in 4 languages.
Can some physicist explain the relation of this story with Einstein's relativity theory? AFAICS, Einstein tells us that time difference, and even the order in which events take place is not a universal property, but are all tied to an observer. How can we speak about beetlejuice blowing up in 1411 in that light? Would there not be a possible viewpoint in the universe where the nova event would take place much closer to our time? Or even, "after" we see it?
In my opinion, the sad truth is that Linux is not more difficult to use than Windows, but that the difficulty is accepted for Windows because it has market domination (your neighbour can help, and otherwise you buy that book "Windows for dummies", or "100000 tips to make your XP experience more effective", or "EYEWTK about Windows"). Since everybody seems to be able to use Windows, people just try a bit harder themselves.
Users are willing to go through a complete overhaul and relearning phase every time there is a new version of Windows. That is considered to be "worth it". But when these same people try Linux, they expect it to be exactly like what they have experience with, and otherwise it is too difficult.
Heck, even the API changes all the time in Windows. And every time a new version of visual studio comes out, programs break. And programmers accept that. Unix programs written in 1985 still run on Linux without change....
Scientific American once had a nice paper about time. I remember these two facts:
At an accuracy of 10^-17, the earths gravity makes that two identical clocks, one of which is 5cm higher up than the other one, will start deviating from each other (i.e. time really IS different 5 cm up, at this accuracy)
At an accuracy for 10^-17, relativistic effects start playing a role at walking speeds (i.e. time really IS different at walking speed than at rest, at this accuracy).
I think 5cm and 5km/hour are reasonable usability limits, hence an accuracy of better than 1:10^17 would not make much sense to me.
Yes, you are missing something. The vibrations have to be counted, but this is not trivial. In fact, such clocks make use of a separate electronic oscillator and then try to keep it in sync with the atoms vibrations. Sometimes a cycle can be missed, offsetting the clock.
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Nice thing about paper record players is that they last a long time. I have one that is 32 years old, and still works.... That means of course that the idea is not really new..... See http://bit.ly/happy1979 for a recording I made today of this old masterpiece: an audio "Happy New Year" card in 4 languages.
Can some physicist explain the relation of this story with Einstein's relativity theory? AFAICS, Einstein tells us that time difference, and even the order in which events take place is not a universal property, but are all tied to an observer. How can we speak about beetlejuice blowing up in 1411 in that light? Would there not be a possible viewpoint in the universe where the nova event would take place much closer to our time? Or even, "after" we see it?
Users are willing to go through a complete overhaul and relearning phase every time there is a new version of Windows. That is considered to be "worth it". But when these same people try Linux, they expect it to be exactly like what they have experience with, and otherwise it is too difficult.
Heck, even the API changes all the time in Windows. And every time a new version of visual studio comes out, programs break. And programmers accept that. Unix programs written in 1985 still run on Linux without change....
- At an accuracy of 10^-17, the earths gravity makes that two identical clocks, one of which is 5cm higher up than the other one, will start deviating from each other (i.e. time really IS different 5 cm up, at this accuracy)
- At an accuracy for 10^-17, relativistic effects start playing a role at walking speeds (i.e. time really IS different at walking speed than at rest, at this accuracy).
I think 5cm and 5km/hour are reasonable usability limits, hence an accuracy of better than 1:10^17 would not make much sense to me.Yes, you are missing something. The vibrations have to be counted, but this is not trivial. In fact, such clocks make use of a separate electronic oscillator and then try to keep it in sync with the atoms vibrations. Sometimes a cycle can be missed, offsetting the clock.