Particles can't really be two places at once. But since we're knocking things around with our light beam, we can't say for sure where it is now -- so we instead talk in terms of probabilities of where the electron is, rather than saying matter-of-factly where it is. This is what quantum mechanics does, it calculates probabilities that the electron is in a certain place, probability it was going a certain speed, etc.

As others have mentioned, you are missing a couple of fundamental points of the double-slit experiement.

1) The pattern observed has nothing to do with the photons being hard to measure (classically photons are sent through the slits),
The pattern produced is exactly the interference pattern expected if light were actually a wave. The peaks and troughs of the two waves cancel each other out which results in the dark bands. Dual peaks or dual troughs reinforce each other, resulting in bright bands.

2) If this was a result of electric field build up and the "detector knocking particles around a bit", then it should also happen for a single slit (it doesn't). It also should not occur for photons (electrically neutral), but it does.

3) "when single particles are allowed thru, we see only single points on the detector"

This is incorrect, and the weirdest thing about the experiment. If two slits are opened, and particles are sent through one at a time, there is still the same interference pattern created. Individual particles behave as if they do not have a fixed location, but only a probability of existing at a specific location.

Heisenberg's principle is a result of quantum mechanics and wave-particle duality, not the cause.

Looks like a big swing and a miss for Verizon.

They should have advocated on behalf of children instead

"Net neutrality is bad for children! Won't somebody think of the children?!?"

I'm confused. I have one of your early prototypes, and when I aim it at your post it blinks like crazy!

That means your post is a scam. But if your post is a scam, my device shouldn't be blinking. But my device is blinking...so your post must be a scam.....but...

You're saying its a scam, what's your argument?

They claim in their technical brief that the energy harvestable from a typical home wi-fi is 10dBm.

This is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude (i.e. they claim at least 1000 times more than is actually available).

But, to say what they're claiming to be able to do is impossible? That's clearly wrong
...
Can they fit in something the size of a dog tag? I dunno, I'm not a miniaturization expert.

Your sentences need to have a little conversation with each other....

That's exactly one of the points. You can't fit a device that does what they claim in something the size of a dog tag. There's not enough space for the antenna. There's no way you fit an accelerometer, BT chip, speaker, magic energy harvester, magic battery and antenna in there. So yes, they are claiming to do the impossible.

There is not enough energy available to harvest to do what they are claiming.

There is no way they could fit all the different antennas they would require to harvest phone, television, wifi, radio, etc EM energy.

There is no way a BT antenna that size would operate at any orientation over the distances they claim.

There is no way this device could also have a speaker in it loud enough to hear from within the same room, never-mind throughout your house.

I was going to pledge, but I can't find my wallet.

If only there was some amazing small, cheap battery-less way of tracking my wallet...maybe run it on magic fairy dust or ground pixie wings....

But one day he also realized that he'll go down in history as a sleazebag.

Only on Slashdot. The thing that most extremist geek types don't get is that the public as a whole doesn't really care about tech infighting. Nobody but geeks care how Gates got his fortune.

Things people care about / will remember:
- Gates was the richest man in the world.
- He was a geek
- He was a college drop out
- He founded a huge charity
- He gave a bunch of his money to charity.

How Microsoft made money under Gates will be entirely ignored, or a footnote at best. It has nothing to do with his whitewashing....just really nobody else cares.

From the court order:

[53] Google submits that its advertising services are completely separate from its search services

Seriously?!?

I guess telling bald-faced lies in court doesn't fall under the category of "do no evil".

Simply put: without non-verbal intelligent behaviour we would not even know that other humans are intelligent

BS. Are you saying that we cannot tell that other people on forums / chat rooms / etc are not intelligent?

Alternately, if let's say, a famous physicist had a degenerative disease that limited all of of his communication to non-verbal, we wouldn't be able to tell he was intelligent?

Think about that for a second. Concluding, "If a computer can convince a judge it is the human more than 50% of the time we can say that it is 'really' intelligent" implies "If a woman can convince a judge she is male more than 50% of the time we can say she is 'really' a dude."

Nonsense. It doesn't imply that at all. The woman/man setup was simply an example Turing used in order to explain the parameters of the test.

Your argument is the equivalent of:

Concluding:
"If a person can convince a judge they can speak Chinese more than 50% of the time, we can say they can really speak Chinese"
implies:
"If a person can convince a judge that they are really a child more than 50% of the time, we can conclude they are really a child"

You have changed the individual taking the test, the criteria for passing the test, AND the attribute being tested. You cannot make any logical conclusion from one statement to the other.

give us another few years

If by "few", you mean "a few hundred", then yes I would agree.

The "closer" we get to AI, the further out an actual artificially intelligent system seems to be.

I'd say we keep raising the bar.

"If a computer can play chess better than a human, it's intelligent."
"No, that's just a chess program."

"If a computer can fly a plane better than a human, it's intelligent."
"No, that's just an application of control theory."

"If a computer can solve a useful subset of the knapsack problem, it's intelligent."
"No, that's just a shipping center expert system."

"If a computer can understand the spoken word, it's intelligent."
"No, that's just a big pattern matching program."

"If a computer can beat top players at Jeopardy, it's intelligent."
"No, it's just a big fast database."

Who is this we you refer to? No serious AI researchers have ever used those criteria as a definition of intelligence.

Simple. A "large" number of humans would fail it. Many "Turing tests" are set up so that a phrase generator could pass the test, not a phrase response generator, but a simple list of sentences, played in order.

For sufficiently small values of "large", maybe. IMO, the Turing test has great value when used with scientific rigor.

1) There should be no silly restrictions. No 13 year old children, no foreign language constraints. No script restrictions.
2) It should be (as Turing originally proposed) a conversation involving 3 people. The examiner, a human and a computer. This way the examiner can compare in real time the responses of the human to the reponses of the computer.
3) The examiner should be well-versed in computers.

I suspect there are no existing chatbots that could pass a test described as above.

My simple definition of AI is any program capable of making something smarter than it. Humans fit that definition,

Then humans do not fit that definition. We don't create our children....children happen spontaneously as a result of (enjoyable) biological acts that we instigate. We have no control / input into their development prior to birth, at which point they are already pre-designed for AI. Put another way: are those people incapable of having children still intelligent?

But understanding isn't AI.

I disagree. Understanding is one of the central points of AI, and the point we have so far struggled with. What Searle (somewhat intentionally) misses in his argument is that although the individual doesn't understand Chinese, the system understands Chinese. His argument is similar to saying that an amputee with artificial limbs can't walk cause the person isn't doing the walking.

For places like Seattle where you still have a lot of people that don't have DSL or cable as an option,

My god, there are large urban areas in the US (and large ones at that), where cable internet is not available?!?

Do you have other conveniences like electricity & indoor plumbing?

Wow...I thought internet options in Canada were pretty limited.....guess I'll count my blessings...

They go by many names... Progressives, Liberals, Democrats, Socialists...

And here's why they win. They've convinced Americans that the battle lines are "left vs. right", "republican vs. democrat", "liberal vs. socialist".

This keeps people fighting amongst themselves, arguing whether their shade of grey is the "right" way to run a government.

It's pretty obvious to an outsider what the power division is in America. It's pretty obvious if you look at america's decline over the past decades & see how authority has been consolidated & maintained. It's pretty obvious if you look at how fear and uncertainty are utilized by the government to herd the population in the direction they want them to go.

The battle lines are: "rich vs. poor". They almost always have been.

Until people understand that, and as long as people believe that stupid side issues like minor health care reforms (and yes, they are quite minor), gay marriage, abortion, gun ownership, immigration reform, etc are what is going to ruin / save the country, the longer the people in power stay that way.

There are a ton of relatively affluent people here on Slashdot. It certainly wouldn't hurt you to allocate a small amount of money to EFF annually, and we know their results.

This.

Too many posts here are either "you should be willing to die for your rights, you sniveling cowards!", or "there's nothing we can do, nothing we should try, let's all go eat worms"...

Here's a simple, painless way to support the cause of protecting our rights. And as the court case shows, it is effective, if at nothing else than generating publicity regarding the crimes being committed by government on a daily basis.

Anyone who thinks what the NSA is doing is wrong should go and donate today.