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Comment Having your Muon and Keeping it (Score 1) 136

I wish physicists would stop using the word "measurement" when talking about quantum mechanics....We don't get to keep the original particle after we're done.

Actually that is not true if you go to high enough energy: have a look at this. Those four tracks coming out of the centre of the ATLAS detector at the LHC are muons, a heavy cousin of the electron. The muons are neither stopped nor destroyed by the detector but they do lose a little of their energy as they pass through it but for high energy particles this really is a very small, non-instrusive fraction of their energy. We can even use the curvature of the track in ATLAS' magnetic fields to measure the momentum of the particle.

Even if you stay at low energies there are biophysicists who can use lasers to pull apart single DNA and other organic molecules in non-destructive ways to study how they fold which involves quantum transitions between different folding states. So there are plenty of non-destructive QM based measurements which we can do both on fundamental, and non-fundamental particles.

If your objection is that we have 'changed' the system by making the measurement then perhaps it is worth reflecting that, at a fundamental level, everything is quantum mechanical. Hence there is no measurement that you can make which will not involve changing the system you are measuring. So if your criterion is that your measurement must not change the system you have just ruled out any measurement which any scientist has ever made.

Comment Two photons will interfere (Score 1) 136

every dual slit experiment shows light behaving as both particle and wave, because every photon only interferes with itself. Two or more photons never interfere with each other.

If you want to see two photons interfering in a double slit experiment you don't have to do anything more complex that direct a laser pointer at a narrow slit. This is generally what happens in almost all double slit experiments ever performed by school kids and undergrads to demonstrate diffraction. You are talking about a special version of it to show that photons self-interfere but this does not exclude them interfering with other photons if there are some present.

Comment Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score 1) 533

He just demonstrates to Muslims that even a non-Muslim can tell ISIS isn't Muslim

More than a quarter of British Muslims recently polled said they support militant Islamists who attack westerners they consider out of line with jihaddi sensibilities. That's 27% who applaud the slaughter of magazine publishers by ISIS-associated Muslim fanboys/girls. Those people think that ISIS is very Muslim, and is in fact a better example of practicing Islam than the more "moderate" groups who don't practice or support such violence. What is it, exactly, that you think Obama is demonstrating to those millions of people who simply laugh at his assessment of the Muslim-ness of one group or the next?

bombs don't differentiate whether someone is Muslim or not

With whom are you having that debate? Bombs aren't supposed to make distinctions between innocent people and medieval-minded wackadoos following the Koran's guidance and lopping heads off of the local insufficiently-Islmaic villagers. It's human intel, targeting, and decisions that make that distinction.

totally misunderstand the meaning of the words others say

No, you're just annoyed that someone actually paid attention to the words someone said.

Comment Re: A giant lagoon dam (Score 1) 197

I'm sorry, but I agree with that. If you on the UK want us to dam up our rivers and build roads out to geothermal areas and tap into our resources, and raise our local power prices in the process, all for the benefit of the UK, our government better damn well profit as much as possible from it and reduce our taxes / improve our services in exchange for that.

Unfortunately, xB and xD do not agree.

Comment Re: A giant lagoon dam (Score 1) 197

Better negotiate the contract during a Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn / Framsóknarflokkurinn (conservative) government. Samfylkingin would approve it under the condition that the Icelandic government's share of the sales are so high that you would barely save any money on the imported power, and Vinstri Grænir would outright reject it no matter what you offered. But Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn and Framsóknarflokkurinn would let you dam up whatever rivers you want and take gigawatts of power in exchange for a handful of shiny trinkets and a couple magic beans.

Comment Re:YES (Score 1) 375

All three of your examples are value judgments, not facts.

Yes, that was rather my point, really. But to some people they are "facts", and important facts to prevent anyone from having a "non-factual" view on! Given Google's history of censorship, it wouldn't surprise me to see their own bias creep in as to what sort of thing is a fact.

Comment Re:Answers for both (Score 1) 235

No, we want a quick way to do a 100% reboot

I'm an IOS developer and I've never had to do anything more than a device reset (which is instant). Usually powering off and on is enough (though not as quick, it's still pretty quick at around a minute total).

If that's really your reason it's even more absurd.

Comment Re: Closed source GPUs (Score 1) 112

agreed (and they know it) - this is probably their 18-month holding pattern while the Israel team gets the power out of Iris. Not having a market position until then is a worse option for them. Not paying a video royalty is obviously better for cost/profitability and developers.

Comment Re:I don't think Obama is really paying attention (Score 1) 533

So, here you are, twisting and turning, trying to avoid the actual commented-on issue, which asserts that Obama has the power to "take away" Islamist street cred, or bestow it. Limit your comments to whether that's actually true, or not. Which Muslim, in which country, is going to be thinking one moment that ISIS adherents are strictly faithful Muslims fighting the good fight against evil things like women who want to read and write, and then based on something Obama says, change their mind and decide that position (and thus ISIS) is no longer actually Islamic? What kind of person do you think holds ISIS as being defender of the faith but who also holds Obama as someone they should listen to as an authority on what is, or is not, authentically Muslim? Can you point to a single person, anywhere, who holds both positions?

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