Re: It's whether the degree is *hard* or *soft*

@FirstName "It's just the teensiest bit frustrating, sometimes, when you play so hard-to-get with any facts to back them up."

I'm often providing factual explainations as to why Unix systems are superior. They have a sold security model from the ground up, they are faster, require less powerful hardware to run, they run on more platforms and POSIX systems are open standards based. They come with superb window managers (from light weight to eye candy) a superb command line interface and much software that has API's that allow it to be run from the command line, in the Unix philosophy of piping output from one system to input to another system through stdin and stout.

In particular if you take Linux, it has additional advantages that come with being GPL open source. You are welcome to check these facts out for yourself, there is not enough space in this comment box to write a wikipedia article with citations.

Ultimately, if you're a Linux or Unix user, you can bask in warm feeling of superiority over your clueless windows brethren.

Re: It's whether the degree is *hard* or *soft*

@frank ly

"Eadon is still upset because none of those socialist girls on the Humanities degree courses wanted to practice their breeding techniques with him"

I'd be even more upset if they did, those commie socialist girls are all fat and fugly, not like the pretty capitalist lasses with nice eyes and tasteful make up plus brains and charm!

Re: Meh

@RonWheeler - If you do that with an ancient Linux then you're probably (but not definitely) OK, but do it with XP and the next time you log on with a newly discovered remote exploit, then - welcome to botnet land! (Assuming you are not already a member). Just being on the end of an internet connection with Windows is incredibly risky, even when that Windows is a more recent version.

Remember all those "Critical Patches" that appear week after week on patch Tuesday? Those are remote exploits.

Re: It's whether the degree is *hard* or *soft*

@cornz 1

It is completely relevant. Give a kid Windows and you make that kid into a buffoon. Give him Linux and you make him into a software engineer - by giving him the freedoms to experiment with the computer with total freedom, and by giving him a computer with the capabilities to do so. So what if this is a Pro-Linux statement. Linux is superior period and this is an IT site. Education is all about teaching kids about how to learn, and that is the Linus philosophy. Teaching kids how to pass adhoc tests is the trendy teaching method and the Windows philosophy, and that sucks.

That's why computer science as a degree is important, it teaches you, the advantages of UNIX-like systems, and open languages from a theoretical view point, and not some marketing BS. Mind you, I can imagine that MS "evangelists" (I met one of those idiots whose job it was to put WIndows into universities once) have infiltrated a lot of Uni's now and are forcing kids to "learn" on Windows systems. >Sigh<

Re: It's whether the degree is *hard* or *soft*

@AC 07.24 "While I agree with you to some extent I don't like you elitist tone"

What you like or dislike is irrelevant. Either I am right or I am wrong. There is nothing wrong with a system that distinguishes high quality from low quality, if that means it is elitist, so be it.

The issue with our country (fuelled by socialist government, and by socialist government I include Cameron's) is that we are terrified of pointing out that some kids are more talented than other kids. We make the fatal mistake of trying to make the poor performers better instead o making the great performers into even better performers. The latter strategy is actually the most productive in terms of returns.

The English are elitist, we are snobs. The chavs like to out-chav one another, the ASBO's like to out-ASBO one another, the posh out-posh one another, we're all proud in our own ways. That's why we had an Empire that civilised the world.

I for one will not apologise for my intellectual snobbery and elitism, so called. If you're good, you're good. And science degrees are worth social science degrees by a factor of a hundred. That's the way of the world. Our country is bad at promoting science, and that is why we are losing out to the BRIC nations right now. We are soft on kids. We should be forcing kids to do calculus at age 14 like the Victorians did. We are too soft. At the same time, we are teaching kids how to pass tests instead of making them talented.

Re: IANAS

@Jimbo Not Wales

"Somehow then, the other particle also undergoes wavefunction collapse"

When entangled, there is only ONE wavefunction. And that wave function can be considered as only one "particle". Only after the "collapse" of the wave function can two particles be considered to exist, instead of a single entity.

That is weird but QM is weird.

Re: Arxiv

And ditto in any publication

@James Hughes 1 "Isn't the atomic clock difference on probes down to their speed, not the gravity?"

Speed affects the clocks (special relativity) and so does gravity (general relativity)).

Re: Some context ...

@Paul Kinsler "Nevertheless, it is valuable to test both ideas"

Bohm's hidden variables model produces experimental results that are indistinguishable from the predictions from the equations of QM. You cannot make the test you mention even in theory (at time of writing).

Re: Spooky Action

@TechnicalBen "It has nothing to do with free will over measurements does it? "

It is one of the assumptions behind Bell's inequalities, which indicates violations of certain physics principles should entanglement not be "real".

Re: Fallacy?

@Steve 114 "You can't do without 'c' for spacetime"

- You can't do without C in *Einsteinian special relativity* is the what you are actually saying, which is a tautology. But does spacetime always obey that theory?

Re: IMHO

@Destroy All Monsters ">if you change the state of one "particle" you change the state of the other ...

"That's not how it works"

WTF - that *is* how entanglement works as the "two" particles are actually one single quantum wave function, to think of this wavefunction as two particles is not even correct - see below..

"It's two particles though they have correlated state"

That's a common layman error. Entanglement says that there is ONE system, one wave function. One particle, in effect. The system only breaks down into two particles once entanglement is disrupted by the environment (an "observation").

Re: Yummie crypto

"If this can be brought into commercial use you could have an interesting way to communicate"

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT Wrong. You can't use this technique to communicate information, not faster than the speed of light anyway. The reason is that if you only observe one of the particles, collapsing the wave function (so to speak) then you affect the twin, but at the other end the observer will just see a random event when he observes the state of the twin. It's an action at a distance but it is a random action.

Re: Speed of light fallacy

@Alan Firminger "Since our event horizon is limited by expansion at the speed of light"

Why is it? Our event horizon is simply limited by the speed of light, that is all. If the universe expands at faster than the speed of light, the event horizon is still the same distance away - the amount of time, in light-years, that have expired since the big bang. (Of course, stuff moves beyond the horizon so we can never see it, but that's not the same thing).

Penguins - as they are cool, like event horizons.

Re: seriously good research

Quantum Mechanics is weird as ANY of many well known interpretations sounds Crackpot except the unsatisfying "shut up and calculate", which dodges the question.

Re: Speed of light fallacy

@Destroy All Monsters - tunnelling is a fun metaphor, it adds to the richness of the quantum lexicon but each to their own. What would you suggest instead?

I humbly disagree with your disagreement - tunnelling has been shown to allow signals to arrive faster than light (but information cannot be transmitted faster than light this way). If you want me to google for a scientific paper then I will, but would rather you googled it first.

Paris - expert in tunnelling

Re: Im confused.

all that can be reasonably extrapolated is that the size of the universe beyond the observable universe (which is akin to the event horizon of a black hole but from the inside, is probably vastly larger than the observable universe. It is not known whether the universe is infinite in size or not. If the universe is infinite then everything happens infinitely often. But scientists have proved that linux is cool in all the cosmic scenarios that get played out.

@Dr Ellen

"but what determines the likelihood of going nova, or supernova?"

My understanding is that a nova is when material in the outershell ignites, which can happen once there is a critical build up of hydrogen on the surface and it fuses. A supernova happens if the star reaches a critical mass whereby gravity overcomes the radiation pressure within the star. Novae happen at a rate that is a thousand times higher than supernovae - give or take an order of magnitude.

Re: Supernovae as popcorn

"An elephant, whose mass may be neglected" - it was a trunkated question

Re: Ever wondered if...

"There is not a method of manufacturing Lithium in the fusion process" -

- how do you think that the lithium was made in the big bang then?

Re: Ever wondered if...

@ravenviz "How about a supernova remnant then"

Given that the remnant would be well over 4 billion years old and given that the sun orbits the galaxy every quarter of a billion years, then it's truly unlikely that any discernible remnants would be left. There is currently a search for the siblings of the sun, created in the same stellar nursery but long since scattered. Recently I believe they found a tentative candidate.

Re: It wouldn't be an article about Windows...

@AC 14:26

"the most used OS in the world is"

The most used OS in the world is Linux! Phones, servers, routers, super computers, grid systems, clouds, dvd players, desktops, tablets, games machines et cetera. Even rifles now come with Linux. Raspberry Pi has Linux. Android is Linux.

And so it is here, the commentards, such as AC 14:26, do not know what they are talking about. They present no technical argument whatsoever, just a personal bias based on ignorance. My efforts to provide erudition on technology seem to be in vain.

" But windows installs dwarf Linux on desktop so new logic applied"

That's because MS strong-arms the OEM's not to pre-install and promote Linux. There are few exceptions, but an example is Dell, who hide their Linux boxes out of site on their website and tend to over-price them. MS "Cut off the air supply" of Linux on PCs.

Re: No biggie

@Mikel - bad dog

Re: Good

@JP19 "With a price tag to match " - open source professional-class tools are literally free. There are increasingly excellent open source options for many professional tasks. Everything from Cloud / Enterprise computing stacks to Office Suits, drawing tools, operating systems, publishing tools and so on.

Re: Gartner are full of it

"None of that proves that tablets will kill PCs though"

Re-read my post, I didn't say that tabs would *kill* PC's, I said that they would reduce the size of the market.

Re: Gartner are full of it

@blcollier "Tablets will never kill PCs."

My friend bought his missus an android tab (£160), with a case with a keyboard (£10) and she loves it. For her, that is her PC.

PC's will always be necessary but they are selling in reduced numbers. That means huge losses for the players of the market. In particular, MS is cranking up enterprise licence fees to compensate for lost licence revenue from falling PC sales.

This means that the balance of power will continue move away from MS and towards Google and Apple, and, indeed, to open source players.

Re: PCs are being SNUFFED by crass pre-installed operating systems

@Anonymous Coward 101 "it has only led to confusion"

You mean like Windows 8? Windows RT, Windows Surface Pro?

It's a myth that Linux PC's get returned. Netbooks - sold like hot cakes with Linux, when MS forced the OEM's to shove Windows on them, the entire netbook market DIED.

Now the same is true of the PC market, The PC market is dying the moment an alternative - any alternative (Android tablets) becomes available.

It's not rocket science to see the correlation between windows and the moribund state of the hardware that it is foisted on. It's not even Windows 8 either - though that has made things much worse, the decline was happening during the Win 7 era.

Re: Uh, boss....

@Destroy All Monsters yes indeed. MS often provide "training" to government and enterprise staff in sunny locales where the lucky staff basically sit by the pool all day, a very sweet jolly indeed. I've heard stories from (technically illiterate) staff talking about MS in the most affectionate terms, after being pampered in this and similar ways. Bribery?