Sepiraph

Umm, no. All high schools should be blocking it because at the high school and university levels one should not be using Wikipedia to research reports. Blocking it at the high school level would eliminate one short cut to learning. Doing reports isn't just about learning about a specific subject. It is also about learning to do independent research and critical thinking. Wikipedia, however, tries to spoon feed both to the reader. Quite simply depending upon Wikipedia for one's studies is robbing one of a critical part of the educational experience.

I disagree, through wikipedia you can more easily find research papers. If you ever had to look for those research papers before wikipedia and internet became popular, you'd know what a hassle it was. Finding a research papers means you usually have to order the papers from a University library and then you'd have to usually photocopy them. It was a huge waste of time.

I understand most people are concerned about people taking the easy route through wikipedia, but no original research is ever going to come off from people who opted to take the easy route anyway. I'd rather pay attention to the people who use wikipedia as a general reference and as a reference points to dip deeper into the subject. For example, do you have any idea how amazing it is to find a translated version of Riemann original paper on the Zeta function nicely referenced at the end of wikipedia? A lot of scientific articles in wikipedia have very good reference papers, and together with google no library in the world could ever rival them.

Also don't even get me started on the subject of high school education, instead read Paul Graham's article on why the whole education system is worse than a farce.

I agree, "Are we playing God" is a truly meaningless question, often asked by people who also happened to be idiots. I would imagine when men first started to use fire, some of the monkeys around him was thinking along the same thoughts.

Actually I don't hate Paris Hilton at all, she seems like a decently attractive and extremely rich young lady that I wouldnt mind being friends with.

I actually hate the people who actually professed to hate Paris Hilton a lot more, to me they epitomize hypocrisy.

The library blocking Wikipedia sounds plausible, especially if the library is affiliated with a school that doesn't want its students using Wikipedia for "research".

Blocking wikipedia should be considered as an Internet crime.

At the very least it allows you to practice to be ambidextrous in writing (although nowaday I think people can either just type or use their cellphone for voice/video capture).

Although frankly I think reading textbooks and notes on my own has been far more useful than attending classes.

Same with embryonic stem cell research huh? Doesn't matter if it's a joke and adult stem cells already enjoy significant success, just as long as certain individuals in government get money to kill unborn babies huh?

No, that would be a false analogy and it was a rather poor attempt at strawman. Good attempt at fitting two logical fallacies in one post though!

ok were different maths course studied algebra,calculus,statistics,arithemitic. but really im looking for something from the ground up.

In that case, you can just go to your local library and grab a few math books. Generally, none of them are beyond high school level.

I'd like to see an article on the monetary value of the British subjects who came to the land of the Indians before they took everything over and called it America. (and do it relative to the Indians, I reckon it would be something that approaches negative infinity)

However having said that, I would probably voice the same concern as the Americans if tons of illegal immigrants started to go through our borders.

I see this as all much ado about nothing. Short of a MIRACL, missile defense is a flawed strategy. This is because missile defense systems are easily defeated by a combination of decoys and Multiple-Independent Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs)

 

Missile defense is a multibillion dollar boondoggle perpetrated upon the United States by defense contractors and those who would sell themselves out to sell such systems to the public (Reagan, Bush).

 

The simple truth is laser-based systems, which actually have the capacity to target multiple incoming warheads within a short period of time, can be thwarted by covering the warhead with a highly reflective surface. The downside to this approach is reentry is typically enough to compromise the reflectivity of a warhead. In this approach a laser-based system is a gamble, in that you must keep a laser trained on the warhead until reentry has compromised its reflectivity enough for it to absorb energy from a laser beam.

 

"Star Wars"/SDI originally pushed for a network of orbiting solar-powered satellite lasers. This was something of a pipe dream, for multiple reasons: electronic lasers were chosen over chemical lasers, as chemical lasers would require a service mission after firing. The fear was multiple waves of ICBMs could thwart an orbital chemical laser defense system, as the chemical fuel of such lasers could be exhausted.

 

However, electronic lasers are not powerful enough to shoot down warheads in flight. Chemical lasers, such as the MIRACL, are still the only viable approach. Technology is changing this as electronic lasers grow increasingly powerful, but they're not yet powerful enough.

 

Second, such networks were powered by satellite, as other sources of power are not renewable and are thus just as easy to thwart by multiple waves of ICBMs.

 

However, photovoltaic arrays cannot recharge satellites fast enough for this approach to be feasible. Dozens of waves of ICBMs could be launched in the time it takes a satellite to recharge itself via photovoltaic arrays to the point where it can shoot down another ICBM.

 

Given this, America has switched to a system of surface-to-air interceptor missiles. However, this system lacks the response time necessary to deal with a combination of MIRVs and decoys. Like SDI/"Star Wars" the system attempts to provide an illusion of security which is easily compromised by a simple analysis of flaws in the system.

 

I contend that the best approach is a combination of the two systems: ground-based chemical lasers which are easily serviced by personnel manning them, which can target warheads rapidly enough to take out both MIRVs and decoys. This, combined with a satellite-based tracking network (already built) should be sufficient to build a feasible missile defense system.

 

However, previous bias against laser-based systems due to the massive stupidity of the system advanced by the Reagan administration have left lasers like MIRACL in a prototype state. No one wants to seriously propose a national laser-based missile defense system, because thanks to "Star Wars" such a system now sounds fantastic. Instead, we push an antequated system based around interceptor missiles, with the full knowledge that such a system is vulnerable to decoys.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, that's what you call a boondoggle

Well said. It doesn't really matter if their missile defense system is a joke as long as the defense contractors and certain individuals in government would get billions for it.

Super-human at what? At killing people and using weapons, putting themsleves in danger and risking their own lives while taking orders from some politicians seem like super-human at being dumb.

I just starting to get into the stage of university physics that deals with quantum mechanics and i was curious about what types of mathematics are most prevalent in an introdutory course. I supose i know the math already due to the fact that i have the prerequisites. It would help me a great deal though if somepersons could tell me if there is any other math that would also be helpful, what math is mostly used so i don't get caught off guard, or a website where i can start early on quantum mechanics itself.

thank you

 

A Fool

Depending on the level but the basic mathematics required would be linear algebra (Hilbert space, matrix theory etc.), differential equation (ODE, PDE), calculus of variation etc. You should just grab a few QM texts from your University library.

That's because it is relativity! Maxwell's equations are relativisticly invariant (which is not bad for 1861, being 44 years before Einstein's Special relativity in 1905).

Being a E & M theory, it has to be if it was to be correct ...

Although I think Einstien deserves the credit for special relativity, his insight goes beyond merely a E & M theory.

I think you understand the principle behind Occam's Razor, but you are applying it incorrectly. The examples you provided has to do with incorrect conclusion (possibly due to incorrect understanding) rather than using extraneous assumptions to reach a conclusion.

as I confess to be, what is meant by "OP"? Thank you for accepting my incompetence! imp

I believe it is generally meant to refer to the "original post" or "original poster", depending on the context being used.

How can (solely) the passing of information manifest into something that's self-replicating, has a respiratory system, struggles to survive et.c et.c I'm at a loss to how that can possibly come about.

That's a good question, but I don't think resipiratory system is necessary at all and perhaps you should re-think the order of the question. I think the important criteria are for an entity to: 1) self-replicate and 2)"evolve" or adapt (and allowing the possibillity for the increase in its complexity). Then it seems that the passing of information is merely the necessary condition in order to achieve these criteria.

Also we know that life happened, at least once, on Earth in carbon-based form because we are here. So what makes anyone presume that it cannot happen again in a digital (perhaps sillicon-based) form?

I prefer the original Google Zeitgeist, I have no idea why Google replaced it with Hot Trend since it seems much worse (and sounds terrible too). The international Zeitgeist was pretty interesting: http://www.google.com/press/intl-zeitgeist.html

In some primitive way, many species in Nature already exercised certain degree of this "designer babies" syndrome by being selective in their matings. For humans, this manifested itself in the perception of physical and (perhaps somewhat lesser) mental attractiveness. So designer babies can be in some sense be seen as a more intelligence-driven form of selection.

And really we aren't talking about transhumanism, but more along the line of making sure that your babies don't have genetic defects. Therefore I don't see how one can argue against it, especially if they don't force everyone to have designer babies. However, I can think of special cases where genetic disorder runs prominently in a family where one may still choose to be an irresponsible parent by not taking advantage of this technology, then I personally cannot agree with allowing that type of stupidity to happen.

I think the internet that we are creating right now is rather like the "structure" that will one day support digital lifeform of the future. So in some sense we are literally creating an early digital universe. My thoughts have been influenced by Steven Levy's Artificial Life and the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex. I think encountering the ideas from those sources really open ones' perspective of the question: What is life?

Actually most of my thoughts on the Singularity have come about through my own introspection. I've been trying to put together something that outlines my specific view, but I've talked about it at length around here.

Interesting, I also happened to independently think of similar ideas back in the early nineties, although I was partially influenced by John Wyndham's The Chrysalids that I read while I was in high school.

But where in the blue world did we get the scientific law that particles had information IN THEM in the FIRST PLACE? I thought information was entirely a human invention. Software, if I may, and it couldn't be manipulated because it doesn't physically exist. Things arranged in a certain pattern, such as ink showing certain symbols on a piece of paper, represent this information, but in order for this paradox to have a legitamate claim in the first place, information has to take on a physical form, and I never heard that information was any more than a thought.

 

So can someone give me the information (pun intended) I need?

Claude Shannon work in the 40s established the field of information theory, and in his "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" he introduced the concept of Information entropy. This established a connection to the work done in the 19th century in the fields of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Specifically, there are relationship between the statistical mechanical definition of the entrophy of a physical system and the concept of information entropy.

The paradigm shift is that information is physical. Later physicsts, mathematicans and computer scientists such as Szilard, Landauer, Fredkin, etc investigated this idea. Some later speculated about the idea of a computational universe, which has its root traced back from the early days during the development of the digital computer, as the mathematican Ulam already speculated about the possibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory

Basically, if you really want to know, you needed some understanding of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Specifically, the field of quantum computation happens to link these fields together.

I haven't, but I studied physics in University. I do have something to say about biology courses that I took as electives though, I think they do rely too much on rote memorization and not much actual understanding. For example, I took a 3rd year, core biology evolutionary genetics course where they did talk a lot on genetics, but mainly from a historical perspective. One thing that bothered me is that they never even mention the genetic algorithm, which I think is more interesting and important than almost anything else that was said in the entire course. Also there is almost no math at all in any of the biology course that I took.

Can you expand on what you mean with that statement? Gravitational interactions certainly isn´t part of the Standard Model so what would you expect from finding or not finding the Higgs boson?

And please don´t use ugly colors .

Although gravitational interaction isn't included in the Standard Model, there is certainly the hypothetical elementary particle of graviton to describe gravity in the framework of quantum field theory. In regards to Higgs boson, I think a correct understanding in the mechanism on the origins of the mass of other elementary particles would be important in contributing to the understanding of gravity, or perhaps you have good reasons to naysay otherwise?

Otherwise, I just happen to find argument on nomenclature rather trivial, afterall if you call a rose by any other name would it smell as sweet?

Disclaimer: I'm certainly not an expert on quantum gravity or String Theory.

p.s. I haven't violated any forum rules in using a colour that I find pleasing, and as a forum that strive to promote sharing and learning, I think the freedom of expression in the use of different colours should be encourged, rather than stifled. If you happen to find it ugly, that's fine and it is your own personal aesthetic. (Also you browser has an option to set a default to all the text colour).

What part of it do you not understand? I have to know this stuff also since I'm taking the CCNA exam soon, are you by any chance planning to take as well?.

Regarding wildcard, ACL uses a wildcard mask to define the portion of the IP address that should be examined. The wildcard mask's 0 and 1 bit specify the matching logic: 0 bit in the wildcard corresponds to address bit that must be compared while 1 bit instructs the router that the corresponding address bit do not need to be compared.

As an example:

Wildcard Mask: 0.0.0.0

Binary Version: 00000000.00000000.00000000.00000000

Meaning: Entire IP address must match

Example 2

Wildcard Mask: 255.255.255.255

Binary Version: 11111111.11111111.11111111.11111111

Meaning: Automatically considered to match

Example 3

Wildcard Mask: 0.0.0.15

Binary Version: 00000000.00000000.00000000.00001111

Meaning: First 28 bits must match

The most surprising fact that I personally find regarding this development is the actual technology that they ended up using: superconduction material. http://www.dwavesys.com/index.php?page=hardware

I mean it seems rather brilliant and maybe even obvious in hindsight. But even as recent as only 3 years ago, when I did my undergrad. thesis on Quantum Computation, they have still toying around (or even focusing on, at least based on my impression) with other ideas such as using Atomic lasers traps, optical circuits, or Liquid NMR (the one topic that I chose).

Hello to the fellow members of SFN, I'm fairly new here (but definitely not to forum & been using BBS since the early 90s) so I figure I should introduce myself.

I'm 27, graduated with a B.Sc in Physics in 04. My interests are (rather obviously) scientific and mathematical in nature. Specifically I'm fascinated by in areas of A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), A.F. (Artificial Life) and A.C. (Artificial Consciousness). In mathematics, I loved Calculus/Analysis (e.g. vector calculus and complex analysis) and Abstract Algebra (e.g. Linear Algebra, Field Theory, Group Theory, and a bit of Galois Theory). After my graduation, I took a few years to "find myself", so to speak, and at the end of that process I came to a conclusion in which I was able to find a surprising yet satisfying answer to the meaning of life and my own self-identity.

Professionally, I am currently studying in areas in the field of computer networking.

The nomenclature of calling gravity a force or not is really rather irrelevant, ultimately we'll just have to wait and see if the Higgs boson can be found to test our model of gravity within the QFT/SM framework.

Keep in mind, however that the Newtonian force-vector approach of gravity works very well classically, so really there is no argument macroscopically.