Re: Layman describes something in layman's terms.

Ok. Still, I'm checking amazon for used chinese language course books now.

The idea is...

So, I'm notta looking up Wikipedia, but reciting entirely from memory:

1) We need an Ansatz about what a "mechanical procedure" is to discuss Hilbert's problem of "whether there is a mechanical procedure to decide whether a theorem is true or not"

2) Turing identifies the "mechanical procedure" with the Turing machine, a device controlled by a hardcoded instruction matrix able to read and write symbols on a infinite tape. This is not a practical device, it is a Gedankenexperiment.

3) It immediately turns out that said machine is not powerful enough to solve Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem in general. This is done by diagonalizing: trying to prove on TM "A" that TM "A" halts while proving that TM "A" halts. This pleases Gödel as unprovable theorems are expected in any "sufficiently complicated" axiomated system (though for some reason, they seem hard to come by in practice).

4) Unfortunately no more powerful "mechanical procedure" has ever been found, and it also turns out that the power of the TM is equal to Lamba Calculus and Stack Automatons (which were invented somewhat earlier I think). Breathless tales of "breaking the Turing Barrier" and "hypercomputing" are just that.

5) The question arises whether there is a special Turing Machine "U" that can emulate (by a hardcoded instruction matrix) any other Turing Machine "M" for which a suitable description can be found on the tape. It immediately turns out that yes, there is such a machine (actually, there is an infinite set of such machines). That set is the "Universal Turing Machine".

6) Practial applications or engineering do not come into this. For actual early universal symbol processing machines, see Babbage's Analytical Engine, Atanasoff-Berry Computer etc.

That's just a political decision that can be made tomorrow.

I'm sure some people would be very relieved.

"Donald Trump comes out of Trump Tower and sees a beggar hanging around on the sidewalk. He turns to his valet and says 'Why is this man begging? He has three billion USD more than me!"

> Would they have lived to 100 if there had been no power plant?

Would they have lived if they hadn't died?

I do feel that the "wind turbines make me sick" thing is pure imagination, but there is no reason to go for the "nuclear power plants do me in" thing. If the latter were the case, then it would be evident. Greenfags and Gaiaists have been crawling all over the stats for half a century now. It's like the "overhead high voltage lines cancer me up" thing.

The dishwashing universe!

More on this from Jester at Résonaances:

I was a bit surprised by how much emphasis in today's press conferences was put on the small glitches at low multipoles. It seems that Planck people are also a bit frustrated the fact that their results are nothing but a triumphant confirmation of old paradigms. Even at the LHC nobody would make a big deal of a 2.5 sigma anomaly, and in the present case we're in the area of astrophysics where errors are treated more loosely ;-) Moreover, according to Planck, the l=2 quadrupole mode of the fluctuation spectrum is aligned with the ecliptic, which suggests some unknown background or pesky systematics at large angular scales. Of course, many a theorist will come up with a beautiful explanation of the low multipole anomaly. But not because it's convincing, but because there's nothing else to ponder on...

In summary, the cosmological results from Planck are really impressive. We're looking into a pretty wide range of complex physical phenomena occurring billions of years ago. And, at the end of the day, we're getting a perfect description with a fairly simple model. If this is not a moment to cry out "science works bitches", nothing is. Particle physicists, however, can find little inspiration in the Planck results. For us, what Planck has observed is by no means an almost perfect universe... it's rather the most boring universe.

Re: Everyone's got it wrong...

However, it looks like for some reason, we are seriously on the right track, although lots of questions may never be decidable or experimentally verifiable.

If at the end a mathematical structure pops out that has no free parameters and maps perfectly well to the real world, I would consider this, job done, you can has cake!

(Yes, I consider Portal a tale on the fight against a psychopathic, sadistic mother nature. And maybe there is a way to get behind the obviously fake theater props that are offered to us)

See also:

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Re: wow

> pollution capable of killing life millions of years in the future long after our species has disappeared

You will find that this is certainly not true. Expecting Chuck-Norris-like-killscale via the few tons of slowly decaying crud is RIDICULOUS. Even today, the fauna and flora around Pripyat are nowhere near dead. You realise that granite is highly radioactive and uranium is a 100% natural product?

Additionally: "species dead" ---> NO ONE CARES

Additionally: "millions of years in the future" ---> A bit of planetary extinction event will probably have come along anyway. Take that, greens.

I am Bear ... WELCOME TO RUSSIA!

Amazingly, it seems that in spite of the Yurop and the USUK FEARTRAIN, fast breeders are being built. Mainly in Russia though (insert picture of a flaming taxi with bear riding shotgun barrelling down a street):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants

Re: Here... the moment this spot was created.

What do you Lilim know about that? Nothing.

Study more Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Planck Data Release is also being LIVE BLOGGED. Those modern scientists!

In particular, we find:

Finally, the emphasis on "anomalies" in the media conference and press release seems like headline-bait to me. By and large these were already known from the WMAP data, and are at large angular scales -- where Planck and WMAP should​ overlap with one another. Any dataset has anomalies and by stressing these, the ESA media-monkeys detract from the huge advance this dataset represents. Planck has provided us with a picture of the early universe with unprecedented clarity and precision, and every cosmologist in the world will have to do their job differently on the strength of it. Working out what it tells us may take years, but it is going to be fun.

Re: wow

The WHO certainly does not "report to the IAEA".

It may be "underreporting" (it probably is) but the brickshitting "overreporting" by Gaiaists is not helpful either.

Re: Err...not sure 'the planet' is at risk...

But the "infestation" is the only chance this differently abled Gaia lass has of being relevant at all.

Re: Obama's goals

Why is Ann Coulter posting here?

And getting upvotes?

Re: Nothing new under the sun

Yeah but the Economist was also justifying the war on Afghanistan and on Iraq, so...

"Where do you want to your money to go today?"

Now there is a 15 trillion dollar debt carter and 120 trillion uncovered social security benefits (with the wealth increasingly going to political entrepreneurs). And that's just the US.

Asteroid deflection? Not soon.

learn2economy, ffs!

> People who work for cheap drag down rates for all. Well done guys!

Sounds like someone wants a cartel or negotiator that doesn't hesistate to use force to impose monopoly pricing on wages, aka "trade union".

> If you take low wages then you deserve to never recover in your salary in punishment of the damage to the market rates you are doing

Yeah, definitely a cartel. The "market rate" is what people are asking. You cannot "damage" it, because that would mean there is a magical "right price" or "guaranteed price". Once that concept appears, your problems really start. It' just normal that people get lower pay if the benefits are better. Otherwise they are not benefits, they are "entitlements".

In this here very central European country named after a confectionary, public employees get better benefits, better pay, basically cannot be fired, see their salary increased by law during a depression and have a trade union that does not hesitate to block the capital. On the other hand they very often do shit work (if they are not outright corrupt and are actively soliciting bribes). That doesn't help anyone.

Re: Pretty good!!

But the radiation is bundled by the parabolic antenna, so it's less than inverse square...

Re: "This is a wake-up call for operators of these infrastructures"

Natanz was a USB stickjob IIRC, so no Internet involved, at least directly.

Re: This just in

> GIven we see as many attacks on SSH ports listening on non-standard ports as those on the standard one

Interesting as I don' see that at all. I specifically moved the port to get rid of all the stupid login scans in the log...

Re: So there are people out there looking for these systems with the tools to do damage.

Ex-employees haxxoring out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories?

Re: America's so called Bogeyman is supposed to be a source of risk

Obligatory DOOM CHART

Re: So there are people out there looking for these systems with the tools to do damage.

While I conceive that protecting these systems is just good business practice (aka. "Striving for Excellence" in a Total Quality Management program), please do explain why "board level staff" should "do time" when the recommended quality assurance processes are not in place or handled well.

If your arse depends on these systems being locked down, why -- you know how to order up audits, dontcha?

And then we have the "gov't owned" stuff letting it all hang out. What you gonna do about it? Probably wait until horse bolted, then slap on the wrist, then more money injections.

Respect muh authority! This WILL be fully prosecuted.

This is activity seems to be on the level of "urban exploration". On a bad day you may end up being chased by rats, guard dogs, mafiosi and coppers. Or come too near a radioactive landfill site. Or give an old lady a premature heart attack. On a good day, you come away with a set of nice high-resolution pictures.

There is always the chance that the scan hits the Internet-connected widely open medical device controller, which would be bad. I still wouldn't get into a tizzy over "ethics", which are often just a convenient bullet-pointed-and-ordered-by-priority way of pretending that tradeoffs and fast or dubious decisions don't exist in the real world. Or worse, that one is whiter than driven snow...

Re: NO..

> A script kiddie could have done this.

LOLNO.

I do hope your professional abilities are better than your evident lack of judgement would suggest.

Re: Nice, but still just a fancy kettle

Yeah so what. Nuclear fission is ENTROPY UNLEASHED. What's wrong with using it to build up a head of steam?

Nothing.

For some reason, it looks unreasonable to people who have read too many Larry Niven Magic Tech Everywhere books. But so what.

Re: Its real enemy.

Sounds suspicious ... are the companies building reactors the same as the ones getting the Uranium out of the earth? I don't think so.

No, it is the job of the state to keep the wolves hidden from the sheep.

Property rights enforcement can be done privately, too.

Blinded by the light!

Dude, there is a FRICKING ENORMOUS SUN between the sender and the receiver.

If you wanna route around that thing, be my guest but I'm not sure that there are currently many transmission nodes running Licklider Transmission Protocol hanging around the solar system yet.

Once we get off this rock, things will be better, I'm sure.

Re: That's what safe mode is for...

In other contexts: REACTOR SCRAM

Psst, young rover. Wanna try this URL "origin://blumars.exe?cmd=chinastrong.dll"?

Not necessarily. This was an "unrelated file", so may not have been picked up at all.

Re: I guess we don't need to write our own guidebook for people going to America...

America is nothing like in a Moore movie. He's filming from a progressive standpoint. Might as well watch "Sin CIty - CAPITALISM" for realism.

Re: From the land where the consumer is king?

Isn't this why the consumer is king... and not Brussels?