I wish to comment on why pure science matters. Before I write about that, I wanted to first cover why I think quantum mechanics is strange.
Seasoned experts on quantum mechanics will tell you that it doesn't make any sense. They might qualify it by saying that our big world differs from the small world inside things. But that doesn't explain away the really strange things that happen on small scales.
The experiment that really elucidated the the peculiarities for me was infamous Two Slit Experiment. I first read about it in Stephen Hawking's excellent book A Brief History of Time. It goes like this:
There was a long running argument back in the late 1800s and early 1900s concerning whether light (and electricity and magnetism) is a wave or a particle. There was evidence for both. If you shine some light through two slits in a board, it will create a pattern of lighter and darker areas on a screen behind it. This is evidence of waves interacting with each other — exactly like waves going around two poles in a lake. That effect was well known at the time.
Einstein was able to show that light is also made up of particles. This was a source of great stress and fascination for physicists of the time. Wave particle duality supposedly applies to particles as big as a baseball or a planet, but the particle is so big, you'd never be able to detect the wave portion of it's behavior.
Electrons, on the other hand, are ideal for playing with. To settle the question once and for all, experimenters fire single electrons through the two slits and record the single electron strike on a screen behind the two slits. The peculiarities of the detection should be relatively obvious to readers not using an LCD. Your CRT uses an electron gun (cathode ray tube) to shoot electrons at phosphorus detectors which produces the image you're reading.
Personally, I find it rather horrifying that when you record the single strikes of several thousand singly fired electrons, they'll create an interference pattern on the detector screen over time. What does that mean? The single electrons interfered with themselves? To do this, they have to pass through both slits at the same time!
Gross.
And it gets worse. In SCIAM this month, they wrote of an experiment you can do at home to demonstrate quantum erasure. The article covers the topic very well (in layman's terms thank god), so I'll be brief. If you know (or could have known) the path of the electron through the two slits, the interference patterns disappear.
That is, if you come up with some way to detect the path of the electrons through the slits (polarizing lenses in the SCIAM article); then the quantum superposition breaks down and it no longer goes through both slits. Most disturbing is that if you set up detectors to reveal the path of the electrons and then closer to the detector you set up a device that obscures that signal, the interference comes back!
The author's of the article are quick to point out that you can explain the interference pattens (and their erasure) with regular old wave theory. This, I think, is because your home-brew laser setup fires many millions of photons simultaneously. That's somewhat less convincing.
But in the lab version of the experiment, it is my understanding, they fire single particles through the slits. For a detector, they shoot another particle at the "beam" ... occasionally this will bounce some other particle to a detector across the room. The detector need not detect the path of the beam, the interference patterns go away because the information could have been detected.
For the erasure, they used a lens that obscures which path the particles actually took — in the case that the particle was actually deflected in the direction of the detector. The interference patterns come back with the lens in place. So interfering with what you can detect after the particles have already gone through the slits affects whether they go through both or not.
Gross.
That literally made me sick to my stomach the first time.
My first exposure to quantum effects was actually much earlier. I was utterly fascinated by the simplicity and the brilliance of the Ruttherford Gold Foil experiment. He was also shining single particles at something. His goal was to figure how how big atoms of gold really were (or something like that). They were expecting very small deflections and instead found that some of the alpha particles were coming nearly straight back. This was the first (really famous) indication of the existence of sub-atomic particles.
I learned of this experiment in a chemistry class shorly before we learned about the very odd shapes of electron orbitals. They take on the shape of spheres (expected), dough nuts, raindrop-lobe things, tetrahedrons (in molecules) and other assorted nonsense.
I could not reason out the possible path a particle could take while it was orbiting the nucleus. It just didn't make any sense. When I asked my teacher about it, he explained that the particles don't really "orbit" at all. In very carefully measured reality, they constnatly pop into and out of existence and that they're probably going to be found roughly inside the orbitals.
Gross.
At the big particle accelerators, they really do see particles pop in and out of existence and carefully measure the mass and electric charge on the particles. They have other measurable attributes as well. Having already overloaded positive/negative, north/south and various other ideas, some of these particles take on truly strange names: up/down, strange/charmed, etc...
And the absolute peculiarity and sickening unreality of this small world is why I feel that Quantum Mechanics is very strange.
random links: blackboard bold, discordian, schadenfreude, subspace
2007-06-18
2007-04-09
The Windows Help System
I hate windows. I'm terrible at it. I dislike the UI, the desktop system, the lack of privilege separation (perhaps except in vista, I haven't tried it), the various APIs, the shell, the filesystem (why can't you delete a file that's in use if you're the administrator?) and various other systemic dislikes. My hatred of the OS is nothing personal. It's largely a matter of taste, therefore: if you like windows, you are not wrong, you are different. I don't.
Windows is a fact of life if you need foxpro for work. It's not reasonable to run foxpro in WINE, so I just live with my windows desktop. With cygwin and X loaded, I find the desktop pretty usable since I mainly just use it for the bash shell and xterm windows (and, of course, the occasional foxpro process). Mostly it just sits in the idle state looking very useful.
I'm a linux nerd.
I was having this problem where the initial login to my desktop was taking a terrible long time. It would sit on "Loading your personal settings..." for nearly a minute. I rarely reboot if I can help it so it took a while to get around to it, but today I began to track it down. Before you begin to wonder, msconfig and the registry \run\ locations were my first stops — but I had tried them before, and it just wasn't a startup program, so my heart wasn't in it.
When I have a problem like this in linux and I'm not sure where else to start, I usually run an strace on the offending program to see what it's getting stuck on. Normally debugging lasts about a minute after that. You can indeed run strace on the login processes (gdm, X, and various other things) if you know basically how the startup goes on your machine.
So I ask my windows friends, "Know of a way to track down what it is on my desktop/start-menu that takes like a minute to come up? It just says 'loading personal settings' and sits there for like a minute."
IdentityM says, "That means your profile is huge. There is a profile cleaner/shrinker somewhere on google."
"What is my profile? like my desktop?"
"Its your profile (ntuser.dat)" he says.
"My ntuser.dat is only 4 megs, is that huge?"
"No... but that's still what it is...your profile."
"I think it's more likely to be an icon I have that's on a network share or something... I wish there were some way to make windows verbosely describe what it is that 'loading settings' is doing. What I really want is to strace the gdm." I got ridiculed for saying icon (the blue e?!?), but I did literally mean icon. One of shortcuts to a particular foxpro program sometimes resets itself to use an icon from a shared directory. Random settings changes are part of life in windows, so I just ignore that problem as best I can.
IdentityP suggested I, "Rename your profile, create a new one."
Yeah, sure. I hate windows. I do not want to waste an hour with usernames and reboots and then have to re-arrange my desktop, background images, document history, startmenu icons, startup scripts, quicklaunch bar, and all that other stuff I dislike using. That sounded like a whole evening right there, so I choose to ignore it — but filed it away as a worst case solution that I may need later.
Thankfully, IdentityM argued, "I would log in as a diff user (admin) and rename the ntuser.dat of the busted one, and try logging in as that user."
IdentityP made sure to bite back, "I dont ever attempt to fix profiles cuz it turns out worse than when you started."
"Also, check out sysinternals.com, there is lots of stuff there I think you will find interesting and/or helpful. But, it's your hosed profile." IdentityM was clearly quite certain about this.
"Yeah, you said that before but without indicating why you think so ... I need to see it to believe it."
"Experience."
I've never worked with him, but I didn't really have any reason to doubt him. Generally speaking, windows needs to be reinstalled about once per year and I haven't reinstalled windows on this machine since I got it from dell. So I went through the trouble of a clean reboot to a fresh admin user and moved my ntuser.dat file to an oops.dat name. Unlike the advice of IdentityP, the advice of IdentityM can be undone.
The next login did not go well. I gave it 30 minutes to boot (while working on something else) but it never finished. I did a hard reset, booted to my fresh admin user and put the ntuser.dat file back. I decided to ignore IdentityM and IdentityP completely and started looking (again) for the actual source of the problem.
Still thinking it had something to do with my start menu or my quick launch bar, I started CDing around in my user dirs from bash. I located some links to the K: drive (network share) and the T: drive under \NetHood\. After thinking about it briefly, I removed all my network shares completely and violla: My login was instantaneous again. So fast, in fact, I didn't even have time read the "Loading your personal settings" phrase to transcribe it to this article. I hadn't really expected that to fix it, but trying random easy to fix solutions is apparently the name of the game in windows, so I did it correctly (I guess).
Now, I appreciate their efforts, I really do. It takes a kind soul to want to help their friends fix their busted OS (particularly if they aren't any good at it); however, in this case I almost wish they hadn't have helped at all. They distracted me from the actual problem for almost an hour and nearly talked me into ruining my desktop for no particular reason.
I help quite a few people with their computers over the phone. One even switched to ubuntu, although I installed it for him and made him use the livecd semi-exclusively for an entire week before I would even go that far. One is my mother, who is becoming very good at diagnostics and computer security (compared to most parents anyway). One thing I always tell these users is to never (ever) try any advice that sounds like a lot of work without calling me first. It's better to get a quick phone call than a painful day at their house helping them fix their desktop — or mine in this case.
So I elected to mention it, "Removing all the shares made the login instantaneously snappy. Clearly removing and re-adding my user would not have worked. I would have had the same problem again in a day or so... so I'm glad I figured it out by hand."
My goal there was to try to indicate that, diagnostically speaking, they had no real reason to believe anything was wrong with my profile. In fact, I indicated that I thought it was somehow related to my network shares. They lead me on a terrible wild goose chase based on "experience."
The next response from IdentityM was a little indignant, "Well, you're welcome for us trying to help you, when you asked for it."
But I didn't really ask for a wild goose chase about profile corruption IdentityM. I asked for help figuring out what "Loading personal settings" was getting stuck on, particularly something like strace and probably relating to network shares. It wasn't actually help they were offering. They were trying to look like Genius Windows Masters rather than trying to actually help.
I did thank him, but I also said, "You have to learn to listen to the patient. Their self-diagnosis is usually wrong, but it contains hints of the actual problem." I left the channel, but I was still irritated enough to record the conversation on a blog in essay form (or something like it I think). There are some helpful lessons we can take away from this exchange:
random links: LaTeX, fxp.one, breeding perls, dbhome
Windows is a fact of life if you need foxpro for work. It's not reasonable to run foxpro in WINE, so I just live with my windows desktop. With cygwin and X loaded, I find the desktop pretty usable since I mainly just use it for the bash shell and xterm windows (and, of course, the occasional foxpro process). Mostly it just sits in the idle state looking very useful.
I'm a linux nerd.
I was having this problem where the initial login to my desktop was taking a terrible long time. It would sit on "Loading your personal settings..." for nearly a minute. I rarely reboot if I can help it so it took a while to get around to it, but today I began to track it down. Before you begin to wonder, msconfig and the registry \run\ locations were my first stops — but I had tried them before, and it just wasn't a startup program, so my heart wasn't in it.
When I have a problem like this in linux and I'm not sure where else to start, I usually run an strace on the offending program to see what it's getting stuck on. Normally debugging lasts about a minute after that. You can indeed run strace on the login processes (gdm, X, and various other things) if you know basically how the startup goes on your machine.
So I ask my windows friends, "Know of a way to track down what it is on my desktop/start-menu that takes like a minute to come up? It just says 'loading personal settings' and sits there for like a minute."
IdentityM says, "That means your profile is huge. There is a profile cleaner/shrinker somewhere on google."
"What is my profile? like my desktop?"
"Its your profile (ntuser.dat)" he says.
"My ntuser.dat is only 4 megs, is that huge?"
"No... but that's still what it is...your profile."
"I think it's more likely to be an icon I have that's on a network share or something... I wish there were some way to make windows verbosely describe what it is that 'loading settings' is doing. What I really want is to strace the gdm." I got ridiculed for saying icon (the blue e?!?), but I did literally mean icon. One of shortcuts to a particular foxpro program sometimes resets itself to use an icon from a shared directory. Random settings changes are part of life in windows, so I just ignore that problem as best I can.
IdentityP suggested I, "Rename your profile, create a new one."
Yeah, sure. I hate windows. I do not want to waste an hour with usernames and reboots and then have to re-arrange my desktop, background images, document history, startmenu icons, startup scripts, quicklaunch bar, and all that other stuff I dislike using. That sounded like a whole evening right there, so I choose to ignore it — but filed it away as a worst case solution that I may need later.
Thankfully, IdentityM argued, "I would log in as a diff user (admin) and rename the ntuser.dat of the busted one, and try logging in as that user."
IdentityP made sure to bite back, "I dont ever attempt to fix profiles cuz it turns out worse than when you started."
"Also, check out sysinternals.com, there is lots of stuff there I think you will find interesting and/or helpful. But, it's your hosed profile." IdentityM was clearly quite certain about this.
"Yeah, you said that before but without indicating why you think so ... I need to see it to believe it."
"Experience."
I've never worked with him, but I didn't really have any reason to doubt him. Generally speaking, windows needs to be reinstalled about once per year and I haven't reinstalled windows on this machine since I got it from dell. So I went through the trouble of a clean reboot to a fresh admin user and moved my ntuser.dat file to an oops.dat name. Unlike the advice of IdentityP, the advice of IdentityM can be undone.
The next login did not go well. I gave it 30 minutes to boot (while working on something else) but it never finished. I did a hard reset, booted to my fresh admin user and put the ntuser.dat file back. I decided to ignore IdentityM and IdentityP completely and started looking (again) for the actual source of the problem.
Still thinking it had something to do with my start menu or my quick launch bar, I started CDing around in my user dirs from bash. I located some links to the K: drive (network share) and the T: drive under \NetHood\. After thinking about it briefly, I removed all my network shares completely and violla: My login was instantaneous again. So fast, in fact, I didn't even have time read the "Loading your personal settings" phrase to transcribe it to this article. I hadn't really expected that to fix it, but trying random easy to fix solutions is apparently the name of the game in windows, so I did it correctly (I guess).
Now, I appreciate their efforts, I really do. It takes a kind soul to want to help their friends fix their busted OS (particularly if they aren't any good at it); however, in this case I almost wish they hadn't have helped at all. They distracted me from the actual problem for almost an hour and nearly talked me into ruining my desktop for no particular reason.
I help quite a few people with their computers over the phone. One even switched to ubuntu, although I installed it for him and made him use the livecd semi-exclusively for an entire week before I would even go that far. One is my mother, who is becoming very good at diagnostics and computer security (compared to most parents anyway). One thing I always tell these users is to never (ever) try any advice that sounds like a lot of work without calling me first. It's better to get a quick phone call than a painful day at their house helping them fix their desktop — or mine in this case.
So I elected to mention it, "Removing all the shares made the login instantaneously snappy. Clearly removing and re-adding my user would not have worked. I would have had the same problem again in a day or so... so I'm glad I figured it out by hand."
My goal there was to try to indicate that, diagnostically speaking, they had no real reason to believe anything was wrong with my profile. In fact, I indicated that I thought it was somehow related to my network shares. They lead me on a terrible wild goose chase based on "experience."
The next response from IdentityM was a little indignant, "Well, you're welcome for us trying to help you, when you asked for it."
But I didn't really ask for a wild goose chase about profile corruption IdentityM. I asked for help figuring out what "Loading personal settings" was getting stuck on, particularly something like strace and probably relating to network shares. It wasn't actually help they were offering. They were trying to look like Genius Windows Masters rather than trying to actually help.
I did thank him, but I also said, "You have to learn to listen to the patient. Their self-diagnosis is usually wrong, but it contains hints of the actual problem." I left the channel, but I was still irritated enough to record the conversation on a blog in essay form (or something like it I think). There are some helpful lessons we can take away from this exchange:
- It's ok to not know something. A lack of an answer on my IM client would have given me more time to use google and try some more trial and error. It's probably better to just ignore the question than jump to conclusions. Another option is to suggest, "It could be ProblemDescription." Even if your absolutely certain, with a total lack of any evidence, it's better not to pretend your diagnosis is definitely correct.
- Do not accept advice based on "experience" unless the giver can also help demonstrate the conclusion with a diagnostic tool (or at least point you to the correct diagnostic tool). In this case, renaming my user and making a new one would have wasted hours and not actually helped with anything!
- In windows, you must guess. There is no way to determine what is actually happening and it's better to just reinstall the OS (or the user, or whatever) when it malfunctions. I find #3 to be completely impossible to believe, but that's what people keep telling me. At least we know to start with things that are easy to fix first and upgrade to hard stuff later.
- Don't let windows "automatically reconnect" network shares at login on a laptop... Half of them won't be there when you change locations and your login will then take minutes (literally) to complete.
net use t: \\hostname\tdrive password /user:nonlogindomain\nonloginusernameViolla!! I have my network shares where I need them as batch files on my start menu and I enjoy instantaneous logins to my desktop.
net use s: \\hostname\sdrive password /user:nonlogindomain\nonloginusername
net use /P:No
random links: LaTeX, fxp.one, breeding perls, dbhome
2007-03-22
Death Penalty
I'm generally against the death penalty.
It's not necessarily that it's wrong to kill someone that deserves it; that doesn't sound like the ultimate evil to me. I just don't think the US judicial system is accurate enough to make that determination — or anything close to it. It's definitely a working system, just not accurate enough to inflict death. When the system learns it was inaccurate (which it does with alarming frequency), it releases the convicted from prison. You can't give someone their life back if you execute them...
It's just not worth it. We're wrong too often.
That said, there are some things for which I would vote in favor of the death penalty, but as far as I know none of them are even against any law.
1. People should be executed (after a fair trial) for going 80% of the posted speed limit. In an unposted speed zone, you should go 60 miles per hour. I suspect the usual excuse for going 45 in a 55 (unposted) is not knowing the speed limit. Well, in my system it'd be safe to go 55 just in case — or risk certain death in traffic court. Why someone would go 45mph in a posted 55mph zone is a total mystery. I like to assume it has something to do with engine trouble, but that would mean some 10% of the cars on the road are unable to go 55mph. I find that somewhat unlikely.
Let me put it another way: I lose about twelve minutes (and that's generous) on each trip to and from work, five times per week, fifty-two weeks per year. (I have carefully measured the difference at 3am numerous times.) I generally sleep for about six hours per night, so that works out to an approximate loss of 5.78 days of my life to people drifting around at 45mph in 55mph zones. I want my entire week of vacation back assholes. Die.
2. People who come to nearly a complete stop and then enter the marked turn lane deserve death. What the hell do these people think those other lanes are for? (Parking would be my guess.) In my system, people would be too afraid of slowing traffic to risk it. They would get out of the way and then stop every time!
I'm sure there are many more, but those were the two that really leaped out at me while I was driving to work this morning.
random links: sudoku, dspam, ruby.obj, distrowatch
It's not necessarily that it's wrong to kill someone that deserves it; that doesn't sound like the ultimate evil to me. I just don't think the US judicial system is accurate enough to make that determination — or anything close to it. It's definitely a working system, just not accurate enough to inflict death. When the system learns it was inaccurate (which it does with alarming frequency), it releases the convicted from prison. You can't give someone their life back if you execute them...
It's just not worth it. We're wrong too often.
That said, there are some things for which I would vote in favor of the death penalty, but as far as I know none of them are even against any law.
1. People should be executed (after a fair trial) for going 80% of the posted speed limit. In an unposted speed zone, you should go 60 miles per hour. I suspect the usual excuse for going 45 in a 55 (unposted) is not knowing the speed limit. Well, in my system it'd be safe to go 55 just in case — or risk certain death in traffic court. Why someone would go 45mph in a posted 55mph zone is a total mystery. I like to assume it has something to do with engine trouble, but that would mean some 10% of the cars on the road are unable to go 55mph. I find that somewhat unlikely.
Let me put it another way: I lose about twelve minutes (and that's generous) on each trip to and from work, five times per week, fifty-two weeks per year. (I have carefully measured the difference at 3am numerous times.) I generally sleep for about six hours per night, so that works out to an approximate loss of 5.78 days of my life to people drifting around at 45mph in 55mph zones. I want my entire week of vacation back assholes. Die.
2. People who come to nearly a complete stop and then enter the marked turn lane deserve death. What the hell do these people think those other lanes are for? (Parking would be my guess.) In my system, people would be too afraid of slowing traffic to risk it. They would get out of the way and then stop every time!
I'm sure there are many more, but those were the two that really leaped out at me while I was driving to work this morning.
random links: sudoku, dspam, ruby.obj, distrowatch
2007-03-14
Fog
This morning, on the drive to work, there was a dense layer of fog for a short part of the drive. I usually dislike driving in fog, but I welcomed it this morning. I'm really tired of the drive and it added some variety. It hurt my eyes a bit, which got me thinking.
What is it about fog that hurts my eyes? I'm pretty sure it's my brains. Brains are pretty good at spotting shapes. In fact, they're so good at it that they start to spot things that aren't actually there at all. Spotting things that aren't there is known as apparently known as pareidolia (from the greek for amiss image, if the wiki can be trusted). I was spotting all sorts of dangerous things that weren't there.
Then I started unspotting the real ones. Apparently, when my brain got tired of spotting dangerous things that weren't there it over-corrected and started turning real things into things that shouldn't be there and that didn't even make sense. Then back, which seems to come in waves.
I think it's the waves that hurt my eyes. It's at least partially psycho semantic I suspect, but also partially not. I'm reasonably sure that as my brain spots and un-spots things that do and don't exist that the focal depth of my eyes keeps rapidly changing. I think that's going to produce an achy feeling no matter what.
random links: help vampires, inno setup
What is it about fog that hurts my eyes? I'm pretty sure it's my brains. Brains are pretty good at spotting shapes. In fact, they're so good at it that they start to spot things that aren't actually there at all. Spotting things that aren't there is known as apparently known as pareidolia (from the greek for amiss image, if the wiki can be trusted). I was spotting all sorts of dangerous things that weren't there.
Then I started unspotting the real ones. Apparently, when my brain got tired of spotting dangerous things that weren't there it over-corrected and started turning real things into things that shouldn't be there and that didn't even make sense. Then back, which seems to come in waves.
I think it's the waves that hurt my eyes. It's at least partially psycho semantic I suspect, but also partially not. I'm reasonably sure that as my brain spots and un-spots things that do and don't exist that the focal depth of my eyes keeps rapidly changing. I think that's going to produce an achy feeling no matter what.
random links: help vampires, inno setup
2007-03-09
I'm Blogging!1!!
I couldn't think of anything to put here so I asked on my chatroom.
random links: kdrive, presto, valhalla, explosm
Ripper asks, "What are you feeling right now?"And on that note: I'm not really feeling anything except the tyranny of my cable company. There's nothing on the radio, nor my feed from proton. I think I'll start that up actually. I'm completely obsessed with blue. I don't really think about killing myself.
Ripper asks, "What song is on the radio?"
Ripper asks, "What's your favorite color?"
Nichus says, "blog about the use of the word faggot."And concerning faggot, this Ann Coulter thing has caused quite a stir. I work in a pretty rural area and there was a great deal of discussion about how you can't use the world faggot "anymore." Evidentally, it's considered offensive "now."
Ripper says, "Sweet, now I really don't need a blog because my thoughts are entered for me."That's correct Ripper.
Bojo says, "dev blogs are interesting."(Bojo maintains a dev blog nobody reads...)
random links: kdrive, presto, valhalla, explosm
Huh, that was easy
It is ridiculously easy to get a blog going I guess. Huh. I'm going to publish this unfit thought just because ... well, that's the name of the game I guess.
I'm basically pretty sure nobody will ever read this post, but ... if you are, and you're wondering how much effort it took to set this up ... the answer is: 0 effort. Try it. I signed in using my google account (although, I zoomed into the iframe to make sure they weren't just storying my password in mysql and laughing at me).
The interface is really slick. I even added a myopenid server redirect to the header of my blog in just a couple seconds and used http://unfitthoughts.blogspot.com/ to log into jyte. magic.
I'm basically pretty sure nobody will ever read this post, but ... if you are, and you're wondering how much effort it took to set this up ... the answer is: 0 effort. Try it. I signed in using my google account (although, I zoomed into the iframe to make sure they weren't just storying my password in mysql and laughing at me).
The interface is really slick. I even added a myopenid server redirect to the header of my blog in just a couple seconds and used http://unfitthoughts.blogspot.com/ to log into jyte. magic.
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