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Comment Schrodinger's grad student (Score 1) 530

We're all familiar with Schrodinger's cat thought-experiment, right? A quantum phenomenon may or may not kill a cat in a sealed box.

This article seems to suggest that the meta-experiment-- Lock a grad student in a sealed box with the boxed cat, and have him observe the condition-- has implications about the nature of time.

Consider instructing the grad student to write a PhD thesis based on what he observes of the lifespan of the cat (check on it every minute). When we (the unentangled observer) open the box, we may find either a complete or partially-written thesis, or a live cat. The quantum state of the box-grad-box-cat system is in the superposition of states that correspond to the progress of time within that system, but that progress is completely unobservable from outside the box, regardless of how God-like the outside observer is.

Now compare the state probabilities recorded by two outside observers in relative motion. They will not agree on the amount of time that has elapsed inside the box, but must agree on the probabilities involved (otherwise there would be a preferred reference frame). So they would have to agree that time in the box doesn't exist.

Unfortunately, I don't have the background to make this thought experiment mathematically rigorous for publication.

Comment Re:If Windows is dead, then we're in deep shit (Score 1) 863

Another question: how would you transfer your Windows-based data to this Linux OS without being a knowledgeable techie?

The same way you would transfer your Windows (7 or XP)-based data to your new Windows (8) OS: Pay a knowledgeable techie to do it, or try to find all of the places that an application may have squirreled away your data, copy it to some sort of removable media (CD, DVD, or USB) and hope that the new version of the equivalent software can recognize that the data's there.

Comment Re:Kill it with FIRE (Score 1) 150

it's significantly easier to parse javascript source, determine its validity and generate machine code from it

Hahahahahaha. Considering that it is quite common now for DOM elements (other than <script>) to contain javascript source, often encoded in ParseInteger with an arbitrarily-chosen base value, then passed to eval(), you clearly don't understand what "javascript source" is these days.

It all comes down to the ability to run arbitrary untrusted code downloaded from the Internet, thinking that some sort of "sandbox" will protect you. Don't.

--Joe

Comment Good, send up another one (Score 3, Interesting) 79

Now that NASA has demonstrated that the rover technology in Curiosity works, why aren't we sending more of them up?

The Skycrane landing had never been attempted before, but Curiosity landed intact. The analysis machines are working well, and are delivering good results from the rocks that are within 2 meters of the probe, but what about the rest of the planet? At the end of Curiosity's time on mars, we will have less than a square kilometer of the surface explored in detail.

Why don't we send a few (dozen) more up to explore other valleys? This is like trying to figure out the Earth's geology by driving from Chicago to Gary, IN. (and only looking out the right side of the car)

--Joe

Comment Re:Dammit (Score 4, Informative) 464

And if you don't require 386 support frankly a $25 ARM thumbstick will give you much more work per watt while being even lower powered than the Bobcat or Atom.

Even if you do, your ARM thumbstick can probably emulate the 386 instruction set at a faster rate than the original chips, via Bochs or QEMU.

--Joe

Comment tmpfs (Score 1) 210

Go with tmpfs. It has the highest performance of any of the "standard kernel" filesystems, and if you use it for your personal webserver/blogserver/mailserver/etc, it will never lose any valuable data if the server reboots unexpectedly.

--Joe

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