Reality is not a wave function. It's a useful model, but it's absurd to think of it as real and physical.

The cat isn't really both alive and dead. It's either still alive or it died. It certainly knows.

Reality is reality and models are models.

Except that now we are finding the cat is both dead and alive. The question is, which universe do you inhabit? The only way for you to find out is to measure the result, collapse the probability, and determine which reality you inhabit. Your copy (the one you're so desparate to believe doesn't exist, perhaps because s/he threatens your sense of uniqueness, or free will, or whatever), if s/he opens the box and looks, will find s/he inhabits a universe with a different outcome.

As for self determination and uniqueness, this need not really trouble people. In an infinite set of universes, any outcome will be statistical in nature. Like predicting which atom will decay during the half-life of a radioactive material, no prediction can be made as to a particular state (or decision) you or I, as individuals in an indivual timeline, will make. We are still perfectly free to make decisions, and perfectly responisble for their outcomes, regardless of whether the decision we make matches that of 90% of our duplicates, or 0.0001%.

We may not be unique, but that doesn't mean we don't have free will. (Of course, we may not, but that doesn't follow from quantum physics, repetition in an infinite set, or any of the other variations of parallelism that appear more and more to be a fundamental property of our reality).

So people just need to chill, and see where the math and science actually take us. If it turns out we do inhabit a single, unqiue universe, then we get our uniqueness back and those bothered by parallelism are in luck (though it will be a short lived relief, geologically speaking, and ultimately fatal, astrophysically speaking). If it turns out otherwise, then so what? We still live our lives, with or without determinism. Whether we debate that in the context of a single unique timeline, or multiple, perhaps infinite timelines, doesn't really matter.

The only real loser is religion, whic presupposes just the one timeline. But then, religion has a long history of losing out to science and changing its teachings accordingly (like cockroaches, the memes don't die, they just adapt), so even that is unlikely to change if or when the multi-world hypothesis is proven.

So even the most dogmatic mind need not be threatened by either outcome...except perhaps for someone like the character in Star Trek, who is driven mad at the thought of another person in another universe just like them and spends eternity trying to hunt down and kill his duplicate. In which case, if reality is other than what they desire, tough shit.

Fuck that. If the populace keeps electing people who pass these laws, then representative democracy is working as it should. You don't withdraw your support from a government by "resisting". You lawfully withdraw your support from a government by expatriating (paying any required exit taxes on your way out the door), and denying it the revenue stream from your future taxes.

The US has a very effective financial Berlin wall built around the country. American Citizens and Permanent Residents (Green Card holders) are taxed on the basis of their citizenship/residency, irrespective of where they live. Want to renounce your citizenship? Fine. You'll still be taxed for an additional 10 years.

Good luck "sticking it to the man" through emigration.

It's GPLed, anyone can fork it. The trick is to get a critical mass of users and constributers to buy into your fork.

Take for example my fork of the GIMP, entitled QuitYourPurileBitchingAboutCallingTheGimpTheGimp. Exactly the same feature set as the Gimp, and it's even launchable via a shorthand symlink "QuitYourBitching".

Not much uptake, though.

However, in the current acquisition process, Motorola can take no action without the explicit consent of Google, especially for legal actions (suing or granting licenses) because those actions would be binding to Google after the acquisition.

True, but didn't Motorola start this litagion before the merger was agreed? In which case, they wouldn't have needed, or sought, Google's approval.

I can easily believe intelligence agencies have got a lot better over time, not to mention ruthless and focused, but it seems that if these guys can pull off a devastating attack then basically anyone can and we may as well give up now. No need for "training in Pakistan" for those guys.

Pakistan isn't a necessary venue to learn how to do this sort of thing, but it (or similar isolated areas where brainwashing can occur with no external influences to offset) appears necessary to warp people into being willing to commit these sort of atrocities.

"But Pakistan is our ally!" I hear someone saying ... well, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

e-books will not seriously take off until they are suitably cheap. Once they're like iOS "games", selling for $1-2, people will start to buy them when selling portals are integrated into the various ereaders.

That won't happen for a very long time, book publishers are terrified of losing control of the entire distribution and "scarcity" control.

That won't happen soon because of Amazon's pricing model. If you price a book for under $2.99, you only get 30% royalties (as opposed to 70% for $2.99 and greater if you organize your account right). If it were 70% all the way down, more authoris might be willing to price lower, but who wants to write a book just to give Amazon 70%?

You might as well go with the old guard publishers in that case (well, not really, they pay even less, but still, at leat they'll give you an advance, and some distribution muscle.)

Presumably, one could extend this cable to increase the amount of time between Alice and Bob's measurement and Victor's decision to entangle or not.

Presumably long enough for Alice and Bob to send the result of their measurement to Victor.

And then instead of an RNG, Victor chooses to entangle based on whatever would contradict Alice and Bob's measurement.

Come on, we have to try...

Unfortunatley, unless you know of a way to remove yourself from the causality timestream, you'll never see a contradictory result. Even if you tell Victor, and he does the opposite, history will simply rewrite itself to align the results, and you'll just end up with an argument with Alice and Bob lambasting Victor for not sticking to plan, and doing the opposite.

t0 Alice+Bob=Non-entangled
t1 Alice+Bob tell Victor
t2 Victor "does the opposite" and doens't entangle
--change propogates backward to t0
t0' Alice+Bob=Non-entangled
t1' Alice+Bob tell Victor ...
either you're stuck in an infinite loop, or more likely, t1' is muddled such that the communication to Victor remains the same (or doesn't happen) and Alice and Bob are pissed as hell at Victor for "spoiling" the experiment by not doing what was "agreed."

I'm more interested in the trading applications of this, particularly if you can put together a 24 light-hour loop of cable and respond to "go/no-go" trading decisions. :-)

I recall your post from the last time a meta-analysis was performed concluding 75%, then ~90% likelihood of life found on Mars by Viking.

This is the 3rd meta-analysis to conclude the same thing, yet even the science shows like CBC's Quirks & Quarks haven't addressed the issue.

I find it very frustrating that possibly the most significant discovery in history has been virtually ignored.

These results threaten the central dogmas of most Abrahamic-derived religions (certainly most Islamic and Christian dogmas). Some sects will adjust their beliefs to fit the new science, but many (probably most) will react badly.

Because NASA clearly violated protocols and made a point of issuing results that are antithetical to the experimental results, it is clear this decision was political. It may in part be a fear of issuing press releases only to have them debunked later, but that doesn't explain burying and ignoring mathematical analyses that clearly support the original, positive results. So clearly this goes beyond PR, and is deeply political. The only political segment of our society that benefits, or would insist, on a negative result is the religious right (or one or two powerfully placed individuals with that bent, as the overt political power of the right was not as readily apparent then).

The authorities at the very least appear to have feared public reaction to this, probably more from the religious right as most others find the possiblity fascinating. They may have also feared the broader debunking of religion in general, particularly as we were in the height of the Cold War, and such results would have vindicated the Soviet stance on religion over the western stance.

Embarrassing and humiliating to anyone with any scientific or intellectual integrity, to think these results were skewed by (at best) PR motives and (more likely) religious-political agendas. Of course, it could be something else entirely, but that seems rather unlikely.

What would you do if you knew whose system was compromised? Tie up the courts with lawsuits? Head over in a mob and smash their front windows? What are you going to do if their initial suspect turns out not to be at fault? File more suits? Form more mobs?

What a silly assumption. I can't speak for the poster, but as one who agrees with him 100%, I'll tell you what I would do:

STOP GIVING THE COMPROMISED VENDOR MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER

If it's a parking garage I use, I'd start paying the bill in cash, with receipt. Ditto for any other vendor I need to use but is compromised. If it is someone I don't need to use, I'd dump them for a smarter or less corrupt competitor. Probably someone who vets their employees, or at least doesn't use a call center housed in the local penitentary.

I don't think anyone (except you) is thinking law suits, smashed windows, or forming mobs. We're just thinking about how to avoid having it happen a second (or third, or fourth) time.

But if the bank won't tell you who is stealing your credit card, you have no way of taking preventative measures, and getting a new credit card is a pain in the ass, particularly if you've set up most of your bills to clear through the card to amass reward points (which at 2-5% of your purchases can be very worthwhile), and have to go back through and do it all again, all the time wondering if one of them is the culprit.

Gah
^lower common denominator^lowest common denominator

Let countries maintain their own TLDs and give jurisdiction over the international ones to a UN body.

That is a terrible idea. If you understood the simple fact that the UN does not, never has, and never will represent you or any other single, individual Human Being, you would understand the rediculousness of what you propose.

The UN represents GOVERNMENTS, most of whome are actively oppressing their own people to one degree or another. Cede control of key Internet infrastructure to that organization, and you cede control to an organization that represents the interests of REGIMES, not people. Censorship, filtering, domain seizures, etc. will follow the path of least resistence, and the lower common denominator. Governments will be pleased, and rarely will one stand up for you unless a specific political interest crosses enough borders, and gains enough attention (e.g. maybe Tibet, or Dafur, certainly not YOU, me, or anyone else on slashdot, in the EFF, the FSF, etc.).

You think American suppression of speech is bad? It is, but no where near as bad as it will be if we cede that authority "to a UN body."

This is why any kind of Hacking intent should never be combined with monetary interests.

That is true, but since the source is Fox News (Rupert Mudoch), as another poster pointed out we need to take this with a huge dose of salt.

If, however, this should turn out to be true, I find it disturbing on so many levels. Is anyone reminded of 1984 at all? The government running an underground resistence organization, to attract and arrest "revolutionaries." I'm not a fan of lulzsec at all, but this story, if at all true, is one of the more overtly Orwellian things I've seen, and living in an age of Orwellian behavior, with western democracies perched on the precipice of right-wing fascism, the middle east largely given over to their brand of sectarian fascism, and authoritarianism on the rise in Russia, China, and elsewhere, that is saying a lot.

What is even more telling, is how blase people are about the idea of a countercultural "leader" inciting criminality and then handing those he's managed to influence over to the authorities for "processing." Too many of us don't even seem to know enough to be ashamed, or appalled, by this kind of thing, so few in fact, that the GOP mouthpiece is essentially bragging about using such methods to take down a group they've found so easy to demonize. A process made easier no doubt, if the story is true, by the very behavior their mole incited and coordinated in the first place. Agent provocateur on steriods.

If this turns out to be at all true, and if we were a healthy democracy, the "leader" and his handlers would be facing serious jailtime, while those incited into this behavior would see a blackmark on their record and probation, hopefully scared straight. But those days died out sometime in the early naughties, and things have only gone downhill from there.

1. Simply ignore prior art and claim everything as your own invention.

2. Make a trivial change and then claim that and bamboozle the patent office into believing you have therefore invented the wheel.

You left out:

3. Simply pay the US Patent Office Bribe, I mean "Fee". Patent approved, no questions asked.

(And quietly, from one patent lawyer at the USPTO to another, at Corporation X, or defending defendent Y: go forth and make money!. We win, the only losers are the corporations who filed, and the innovators who "violated" the bogus patent. Extra points if you get a judge who was once a patent attorney. Any way you slice it: Profit!).

The Supreme Court found that the people who formed Citizens United had the right to form such a corporation in order to say certain things and the fact that they had formed a corporation did not diminish their right to say those things.

Which completely ignores the emergent properties of large groups and corporations, such as the mutliplicative effect of mob power, the internal enforcement of speech and attitude (if you say something that pisses off the group, you're out of the group), and the power of the mob to deny others their rights. It also ignores the inequalities between one person speaking their mind, and an organization pommelling back with organized propoganda at a scale only an organization can achieve. To equate the two is idiocy...unless your goal is to replace democracy with corpratism, which more and more circumstancial evidence seems to indicate that the majority of supreme court justices are looking to achieve.

Worse, and more fundamental, the Supreme Court seems to think money equals speech. Which maybe it does for people used to being bribed, but for human beings with a modicum of ethical sense and knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, the two things are clearly and fundamentally different. But not anymore, thanks to the Citizen United Abortion of Justice.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, because people really need to wake up, smell the coffee, and internalize this:

The UN doesn't represent YOU, or any other PERSON. It represents GOVERNMENTS. Governments are their constituents, not humaity.

Let me repeat that: The UN's constituents are GOVERNMENTS, not humanity. If you understand that, you will understand UN policy and why they do things that otherwise seem bizarr or incompetent.

And from the point of view of virtually every government, no matter how "benign" it may appear, the Internet is most certainly broken. Why? Because they cannot easily control it, control the content on it, or control what the people using it see and say. This impacts their ability to govern the way they would like to (and the way they used to) by feeding an official line to the media and have it echoed into every home and automobile, often without much question.

What humanity sees as a working, functioning internet that has democratized information and allowed an unprecedented level of collaboration, cooperation, and exchange of ideas, our governments one and all see as their biggest threat. What better way to reign in that threat than to turn control over to the UN, then agree by treaty how it is to be "governend". What they tried with SOPA and ACTA they'll be able to easily achieve through a simple UN governance mandate.

Sianara Internet, sianara freedom of communication. Welcome your new overlords, same as the olds ones, but with less compunction about smacking you down into place. With perfect political cover to the ostensibly liberal western democracies: to the public: "we regret the UN's decision to implement X, but are bound by treaty to abide their decision. This minor erosion of internet expression won't impact our fundamental freedoms any, and we'll learn to cope", to the Koch brothers (or Soros if you're on the other side of the aisle): "Problem solved. Can I count on your campaign contribution to my superpac next season?" Multiply across every politician, in every political system, in every government, and diversify by whatever means is appropriate to the local political climate, wether it's campaign contributions, secret tribunals, or shells raining down on opposition cities.