Sadly, at the moment, the only limit is the zombo.com bandwidth limits.

The Higgs Gremlin? [*rimshot*]

Can we use this for FTL communication? Short answer: no.

Longer answer: you can only observe the state of a pair of entangled particles, you can't control the state. So, you can't "wiggle" one particle to force the other entangled particle into a complementary state at will.

Then you'd come across as someone with an attitude. Good luck with that.

The reason an interviewer asks you to write a sort routine is to separate you from the candidates who can't (of which there are many, sadly.) The interviewer wants to see how you approach a simple problem and how you solve it.

Recently they uncovered the following fragment:

Money has value because we all agree that it has value. Therefore, its value is conceptual, not intrinsic.

Well, you can say the same about money (dollars, euros, bitcoin, whatever.) And we don't consider its value to expire (aside from effects such as inflation, statewide economic failures, etc.)

I do agree with virtually all of your other points. I just think that you can't defeat IP merely because it is a concept.

I loathe the term "intellectual property" because it is an oxymoron of sorts. But someone should be able to profit from their intellectual creations for a period of time, without having someone else steal them. One can argue in good faith what an acceptable period of time would be (or in the current discussion, what constitutes "theft") but I think 0 years is just as unreasonable as 70 years.

It did. Sort of.

The emacs dude ran M-x knife-fight.

The vi dude ran :s/knife/pillow/g.

The rest of the fight was obscured by flying feathers.

Let's see ... they were fighting over Android vs. iPhone. That sounds like many Slashdot posts on a typical day. So yes, it's news for nerds.

I'm just going to leave this here.

Didn't it just bend? :-P

I assume you're implying radiation pressure could push things out of orbit. Perhaps, but that device doesn't demonstrate radiation pressure.

The Crookes Radiometer depends on air molecules being present to work. It spins with the dark side of the veins trailing, in the opposite direction you would expect from light pressure (for which the light side has a greater impulse due to recoil of the photons instead of absorption.)

In theory, radiation pressure could indeed push objects out of orbit, but I'm too busy/lazy right now to run the numbers to find out how much energy it would require. Also, consider Newton's third law: any decent impulse given to space junk by the ISS using radiation pressure would affect the ISS as well.

That argument is defeated easily. If a criminal convicts a crime for which the sentence is death, then obviously the sentence was not a deterrent.

On the contrary. The purpose of a deterrent is to discourage someone from committing a crime in the first place. That is fundamental, not "nice to have."

I agree completely. I just thought I'd start the thread with the pragmatic reasons, because they tend to make proponents less defensive. And that reminds me of another one: the lack of evidence that it is an effective deterrent compared to incarceration:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-...

Put them in jail instead.

It's cheaper and a wrongful conviction can be reversed.

The majority of countries no longer have the death penalty.