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Comment Re:How about someone who groks the math, comment? (Score 4, Informative) 197

A quantum state of position can be written as a superposition of a momentum states; the position is certain and the momentum is uncertain.

A quantum state of momentum can be written as a superposition of position states; the momentum is certain and the position is uncertain.

That's the duality and the extremes of the uncertainty principle. The mathematics can also show more generally, that the uncertainty in position and momentum is always more that a certain value (Planck's constant).

These things follow directly from the axioms of Quantum theory, Hilbert spaces and any two non-commutative operators. So I really don't see how Quantum Physics "just got less complicated". It's the same as it's always been. Although I've not read the paper yet, maybe that makes more sense.

Comment Re: Advertisement? (Score 1) 115

I tried both FreeNAS and NAS4Free for a home server, and they were both good for what they aim to do. The problem I had was when I wanted to run something other than a NAS on the same box, such as tvheadend. I consequently tried OpenMediaVault as this is based on linux. In the end, I concluded that these only work if you're running your box purely as NAS. After a look at virtualisation using docker, and concluding that this was overkill, if not a bad idea, I went with Ubuntu Server and webmin. The storage is using BTRFS. I could have used ZFS, but BTRFS seemed a better choice, for what I wanted, at the time.

Note that if you want proper NAS, you'll probably want to avoid everything I've done at home. :)

Comment Re:All the Kindles are on sale... (Score 1) 43

I have a Nook. This has a passive screen. Great for reading in bed before going to sleep or in direct sunlight. It doesn't shine a light into your eyes keeping you awake. I believe the Kindle Paperwhite does have a light, but I guess you could switch that off. I'd probably just get the Kindle if I didn't already have the Nook. I can't see any advantage with the Kindle Fire over my Nexus 7 though.

Comment Re:Nuclear weapons? (Score 4, Informative) 42

No. Even though it's called CERN. The research is very much sub-nuclear. And although the energies are higher, this also means the particles involved decay quickly. Similarly in nature, they're created with high energies, but don't last long. The A-bomb relies on the natural abundance of uranium or plutonium. These are unstable elements that can be triggered into decaying in a chain reaction. The particles at the LHC need a lot of energy to create, and they decay quickly. It's been suggested they could make an anti-matter bomb. You'd need to use a lot more energy making the anti-matter than would be released in the bomb. Anti-matter is hard to store: it will interact with any matter destructively. No one can make anti-matter in enough quantity. Even if they could, and despite the great energy efficiencies, plutonium and uranium is so much more practical, along with some fusion fuel, that the relatively low energy efficiencies of a nuclear bomb, isn't a problem.

Comment Re:umm.. what? (Score 1) 150

How about if I don't look, but the cat does?

The state consists of a superposition of the cat looking at itself, and it being dead.

Or how about instead of a cat, we put you in the box.

The state consists of a superposition of you seeing an alive cat, and you seeing a dead cat.

Are you alowed [sic.] to look at yourself or does it only work if I do it?

If you do it, it's a superposition. If I do it the cat is either dead of alive.

What if we're both in the box?

The cat is either dead or alive.

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