Can you please explain "how we instantly know?" I see this bandied about. If by "instantly know" there is an observable change in the particles pair, that seems to me a form of FTL transmission. We each send a series of entangled particles to/from a distant location. We carefully time observing the particles or not observing the particles so as to send bits of information. I would think that is not possible.

Otherwise, if you mean "instantly know" by simply knowing that the other particle must be the opposite of what you have observed with a high statically likelihood, it sounds like not spooky action at a distance but what Frango Assado saids is Bohm's interpretation. I guess I am having a hard time understanding how something can be spooky action at a distance without transmitting information.

I have never been able to find a place to answer this idea: Is it possible that quantum entanglement is actually just fixing two particles to a stable spin?

(If I understand it correctly) If a person takes two entangled particles and take each one to a place farther than it takes the speed of light to travels, each can be measured faster than it would take for light to travel to "inform the other" of its state, yet each particle will always have the opposite of the other's state. The kicker for me is: one cannot know what state each will be, only that they will be opposites. This is why there is no information transfer. There is a correlation of behavior, not an inducement of behavior.

It seems to me this can be explained with the mind-experiment of replacing the two particles with a pair of coins. The two would naturally align and "stick," although in opposite directions, such as heads to heads or tails to tails. Quantum entanglement means the reduction of "noise" from space itself. If no longer being disturbed by interactions with the universe, physics would suggest they would continue to keep the the same momentum. If they are separated without being disturbed, distance is not relevant. Whenever, wherever, and as long as they are "viewed the same way" they will have opposite ends showing because they have kept the same rate of momentum. The catch is this is happening in more dimensions than our normal three, so the spin doesn't make sense in classical term.

P.S. I am an armchair physicist. I apologize for any misuse of a term.

The very point of a patent is to publicly give out your understanding of an implementation for protection for a period of time from anyone else being able to use that implementation.

Specifically, if a person writes code that uses a patent, Microsoft cannot claim ownership of the code (because it is copyrighted), but Microsoft can sue you to prevent you from using the code because they own the idea.

It is a misunderstanding to say that the laws are coming into conflict. As an example, if it was against the law to drive less than 50 mph and above 40 mph on a road, you are guilty of one or both for driving on the road. Law is about one question: which, if any laws, have you violated. For those with which you are guilty, what should be your punishment. This is why the law is about people finding people guilty or not guilty. Innocence is not a part of law. Unfortunately, laws that are astutely obvious get struck down because there is enough outrage.

The DMCA was written specifically to kill fair use without actually striking down fair use. In an admiring-an-evil-genus way, I'm impressed withe DMCA.

The reason why you are confused is because you're used to a compiled environment, where every call is an immediate action. A C/C++ program must be coded to (i.e. explicitly) deletes memory references. If you explicitly delete, you can also tie in other explicit behavior; therefore, it's common "duh this is how you do it" practice to tie "finalize" behavior to the object's deletion. But remember, it is your program's logic that has decided when to get rid of it. In a GC environment, deletion is no longer an explicit event--it is autonomous, automatic; therefore, it is illogical to tie anything to the deletion of the memory reference to anything other than deletion of the memory reference. There is no connection between when the object was dereferenced and when the GC chooses to clean up the reference. Generally, the only events that are tied to the finalize method are sanity checks to make sure non-Java code knows the reference is going away. Put differently: in Java, memory deallocation is not a part of the running logic of your program and so the program must create an explicit method of releasing resources in your program's logic. In other words, do what you were doing before, just don't call it finalize. That's a gripe of mine about Java: It confuses C++ users who are used to using the function finalize because Java gives finalize a specific purpose that cannot act the same way.