Re: Again?
It's like Bad Santa has finally arrived outside of Hollywood movies.
16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008
clandestine Russian spacecraft
What you say? Clandestine? Not cleared with the American Empire? Unacceptable! HARDER SANCTIONS NOW, BOOTS ON THE GROUND, ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE (except sexual ones, probably).
Seriously, does a nation need to contat an international clearinghouse dealing in space stuff? I suppose it's a good idea to phone ahead to other nations of a launch lest someone push the red button in undue haste, but apart from that?
To put that another way: if we know that a quantum computer can be made to outperform a classical machine, we've got a bit more confidence that the research money isn't being wasted.
We DO know the former. If it turns out that for some as-yet-unknown reasons, the QC actually does NOT manage to follow the mathematical description of QM, that would be monster spectacular and open the road for re-evaluation. Shurely not a waste of money one way or the other.
”The theory cannot be expressed pictorially and mere words mean nothing” (Heisenberg)
A those nuggets of the wise ancients, like alchemical musings they are. Just add mandragore.
Meanwhile:
The quantum mechanical formalism doesn't support our intuition, nor does it elucidate the key concepts that govern the behaviour of the entities that are subject to the laws of quantum physics. The arrays of complex numbers are kin to the arrays of 0s and 1s of the early days of computer programming practice. In this review we present steps towards a diagrammatic `high-level' alternative for the Hilbert space formalism, one which appeals to our intuition. It allows for intuitive reasoning about interacting quantum systems, and trivialises many otherwise involved and tedious computations. It clearly exposes limitations such as the no-cloning theorem, and phenomena such as quantum teleportation. As a logic, it supports `automation'. It allows for a wider variety of underlying theories, and can be easily modified, having the potential to provide the required step-stone towards a deeper conceptual understanding of quantum theory, as well as its unification with other physical theories. Specific applications discussed here are purely diagrammatic proofs of several quantum computational schemes, as well as an analysis of the structural origin of quantum non-locality. The underlying mathematical foundation of this high-level diagrammatic formalism relies on so-called monoidal categories, a product of a fairly recent development in mathematics. These monoidal categories do not only provide a natural foundation for physical theories, but also for proof theory, logic, programming languages, biology, cooking, ... The challenge is to discover the necessary additional pieces of structure that allow us to predict genuine quantum phenomena.
And also:
”Cultural anxieties during 1920s Germany were ultimately the reason why the founders of Quantum Mechanics placed randomness at the centre of their theory”.
This bodes well for new advances in the early 21st century, where permanent observation, economic and cultural upheavals and the death throes of the american empire are sure to lead to new metaphors.
Well, you can get both now, plus sourly commuters pressed into Métro like SAUCISSONS, and possibly gang fights / a stolen wallet / extremely overpriced coffee / taxis shamelessly fleecing you / CRS feeling, if not beating you up because you were caught near a protest action by Force Ouvrière.
It's like Upper Volta with a Tour Eiffel.
which outer solar system mission would you rather was abandoned completely so that this mission might be able to get a small amount of additional science done?
Because pols and green freaks can't find their arse with both hands we are left with the choice:
"Do you want to suck a lot or to suck a whole lot?"
(And protest placards will go up in any case while much handwringing will occur in the corridors of power and questions are asked whether that Europa probe might not be better powered with renewable energies)
"The shirt I wore this week … I made a big mistake, and I offended many people and I am very sorry about this,"
BIG MISTAKE.
Tell all those motherfuckers off, dude! Seriously, punch them in their fucking FACE even the FEMALES. These zombified people wouldn't even DARE to say something from behind their assorted neurotic complexes when you met them in the street.
Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993
So is this, like, a production system for the cloud?
At launch, the service supports writing Lamba functions in JavaScript – specifically, Node.js
Most shitty idea every. Bad client-side language and a worse framework from Sophomore Acme Productions that tries to lift it to a server-side language and just creates problems in concurrency and exception handling ready to snag the poor sods that decided to invest in it.
Proper actor languages? No, we are catering to people who think JavaScript is COOL and STARTUPPY.
Not even once.
WHERE IS YOUR WHITE WHALE NOW?
Sorry, I mean ... finance IMMEDIATELY a second mission with my dear TAX EUROS instead of feeding them into maw of entitled civil euroserpents (who permanently detect "austerity" == a conspicious failure to upgrade their paycheck for now particular reason)
such as cultural differences in maths skills
I see the hedging you did there.
Unfortunately, reality won't be denied.
what you would expect if mating was the payoff for travel
We have arrived at the level where NOT mating is the payback for travel, so I'm sure it's gonna even out eventually. Luckily we have electronic maps these days.
That's because "Das Kapital" was trashed by Böhm Bawerk even before WWI and only hipsters sporting Che T-Shirts find any redeeming value in that multi-tome work.
Note that Marx conveniently died before managed to finish his Magnum Opus so he never had to deliver on his promise that we would explain eventually how all of the demagoguery culled from a few centuries of communist collectivist dogma and moaning (always ending in tears and people being shot for not following the line to peasant freedom) actually makes any sense.
Most rectconned book of all times. Rewritten several times and redacted according to prevalent dogma / papal edicts. The older part was about removing kebabs, chosen people being strong for their tribe and relentless hailing of genocide, with some rape throw in. Also possibly written at the time when human consciousness underwent deep remodeling, though that is evidently debatable.
Flaming Bush icon, of course.
P.S. "A Brief History of Time" on 3rd place? Utterly Ridiculous.
Assume a spherical cowhot fudge sundae with the following physical characteristics:
Mass ~1.0 ×10^13 kg
Mean density ~0.4 g/cm³
This yields a sphere of ~1800m radius if I am not mistaken, so all the mass underneath will attract you with 2 * 10^(-4) N/kg at the ball's surface.
This is not much.
I'm sure Americans will learn where Finland is as soon as Putin pops round under the guise of re-unifying Karelia.
Madame Victoria Nuland-Kagan, please go back to your inside-the-beltway psycho grottothink tank.
Mangy dog. I would immediately cancel my membership and possibly sue for "misuse of funds to pursue goals not in accordance with stated purpose and causing of rage, great psychological harm and irreparable febrility due to increased blood pressure".
"The lease gives Google unprecedented control of a federal facility to use as its own playground,” said John M. Simpson, director of the body's Privacy Project.
And this a problem how exactly?