Linux-Advocacy Digest #669, Volume #34 Mon, 21 May 01 15:13:02 EDT
Contents:
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: Linux beats Win2K (again) (T. Max Devlin)
Re: How would you port this? (from RTOS to Linux) (Tuomo Takkula)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:28 GMT
Said GreyCloud in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 02:15:27
>Gary Hallock wrote:
>>
>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Karel Jansens"
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > But electromagnetic radiation is not carried by electrons in a vacuum,
>> > but by photons. Photons have no mass, so they are not affected by
>> > relativistic increases of mass: Zero times infinite still remains zero.
>>
>> To be precise, photons have zero rest mass.
>>
>> Gary
>
>That wasn't what I was taught. I was taught that photons are a quantum
>packet of energy. Light waves carry packets while traveling thru a
>media.
But if you're dealing with quantum particles (packets) then the fact is
that they don't travel "through a media". The math conclusively proves
that photons take *every possible path* between point A and B, including
a grand tour of the entire rest of the universe, a traveling salesman
problem only God could even contemplate. They only look like they go
"from A to B through a straight-line path" (as they all universally
appear to do, in direct observation) because the "sum of all paths"
statistically makes it look that way; they average out, you might say,
to a straight line. Yet to claim that the particle 'does' or 'does not'
take any particular path is nonsensical, in the mathematics.
Conversely, of course, to claim that the particle both 'does' and 'does
not' take any single path is nonsensical, in language.
>When changing media the quantum packets are dumped and exchanged
>so to speak and light will bend. Also heat is given up due to the
>exchange. Speed of the quantum packet is variable.
This MUST be one way of explaining it. There MUST also be other ways of
explaining it. In fact, I don't think it is ironic so much as it is
predictable that there are an infinite number of different linguistic
explanations that describe how the particle works moving through any
combination of contingencies between point A and point B. But to claim
that only one 'straight line' explanation, call it "proof C", is
correct, even though all of them would be grammatically correct,
comprehensible, and even valid explanations of the math, might be
thought of as a "sum of all possible explanations", which reduce to the
mathematical explanation alone.
So, know your math is correct, GreyCloud. But recognize your
explanation is, by definition, bollocks. Unless, of course, it is seen
by some observer as the least number of terms explaining all
contingencies, as the eminent scientist William of Ockam (Occam) proved
centuries ago; then it is 'correct' because it is accurate, consistent,
and practical *enough*, though it is never entirely any of them. It
really just all averages out, and the only explanation impervious to
Occam's razor is math, in any case where math is available.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:29 GMT
Said GreyCloud in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 02:21:00
>Gary Hallock wrote:
>>
>> In article
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> "GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > Radio waves are not light! Radio waves have been measured by the NBS at
>> > 88%.
>>
>> 88% of what? The speed of light? But what light? Visible light?
>> Infrared? Ultraviolet? Does the speed of light depend on the frequency?
>> You do realize that is exactly what you are saying, don't you?
>
>Of c.
>
>Radio waves are not the same as light waves.
The only difference is the *frequency*. The question is whether there
is any difference in the particles (quantum packets/photons) between
visible and radio frequencies waves. So far, your explanation has not
provided any, so your consideration of the frequency of the wave as
having anything to do with the speed of the particle are confusing.
>> > The speed of light has never been measured in a vacuum! It has been
>> > measured, tho, in space that light without quantum packets travels
>> > instantaneously. Otherwise, the appearance of distant galaxies would be
>> > totally distorted beyond recognition.
>> >
>> > But this is all irrelavant. Even if the speed of light were 1000 faster
>> > than what we know... the million light years of distance and time of a
>> > signal, let alone the attenuation of the inverse square of the distance
>> > would render any signal unreadable, let alone detectable.
>> >
>> > Interstellar space is full of energies... and full of unseen
>> > gravitational disturbances.
>>
>> Been watching too many cheap sci-fi movies?
>>
>> Gary
>
>No... seems you are the victim of the "giggle factor".
Gary is an old master at that, in fact. Rarely does his first response
in any thread fail to contain a blanket rejection of the intelligence or
knowledge of the original poster.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:30 GMT
Said Gary Hallock in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 09:26:25
>In article
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>"GreyCloud" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Of c.
>>
>> Radio waves are not the same as light waves.
>
>If that were true, it would be a major upset to all of physics. Where is
>the evidence? What papers have been written about it. Has there been
>the proper peer review?
You'd have to be pretty clueless, Gary, not to be aware of the duality
of physics. If radio waves were the same as light waves, how come we
can't see them?
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:31 GMT
Said Kim G. S. OEyhus in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001
>As you said, it is garbage. It does not make sense at all.
>It is just physicsbabble, physics words put together somewhat
>randomly, without meaning.
For you, maybe. It made a lot of sense to me, in fact it was rather
fascinating, at least what I could gather given my ignorance of the math
and even some of the terms. I had never considered the issue of how
'particles' of light can 'speed up' after leaving an area of dense
matter.
GreyCloud's description and explanation has nothing to do with 'babble';
you seem to have missed the fact that he is trying to describe what
others have used *mathematics* to prove. Whether you explain it as 'the
quantum energy packet' going through some transformations, or just say
"the last electron which absorbed a photon in the dense matter can only
generate a photon traveling at full 'c'" are just two different
linguistic explanations (one or the other or both 'randomly put
together' to your perspective because you don't comprehend them
correctly) for the same math.
Arguing against one explanation might be logical, or even entertaining.
Trying to indicate an opponent is somehow 'doltish' for understanding
the explanation when you do not is ignorance, bigotry, and stupidity.
For instance, did you know that photons do *not* travel only in a
straight line? In fact, they take a path which is entirely "random,
without meaning", or should I say they take an infinite number of such
paths, between any arbitrary Point A and Point B.
The correctness of the explanation is a matter of perspective. Only the
math has any 'truth' to it.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:32 GMT
Said GreyCloud in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 02:28:47
[...]
>In air or media like glass or water, yes ... contains photons. But in a
>vacuum???
>An experiment in space someday will answer that question. There may be
>some observable phenomena from a great distance that may shed some light
>on this. Certain spiral galaxies are a long long ways away in terms of
>light years. These galaxies diameters are also measured in light
>years... (the particular one in mind is one slanted at an angle). The
>far back edge of that galaxy is farther away from the observer than the
>front edge is. Q: why is that spiral arm in such nice proportions then?
>It would seem that the back edge would be skewed by quite a bit.
But in proportion to the distance to the galaxy, I should think. IOW,
you would simply need both a very large and very far away galaxy to see
the difference, statistically. Perhaps even a galaxy which is more
light years across than it is light years away?
I don't think the idea that light is not made of photons when it is in a
vacuum is unsupportable by any valid theory, as far as I know (though I
must admit that you should know more about this than I to begin with).
So I can't help but think that in your "physics jumpstart" lessons, some
of the math might have been analytically distinct from the lingual
explanations you were given. Yet it is ironic that I should say this,
as I know far far far less about the math involved, and probably the
physics theory, then you do.
I think perhaps, though, your speculation that photons cease to exist
when matter is not around might dove-tail with the current speculation
that "empty space" is a "seething foam of sub-atomic particles". But
claiming that lightwaves aren't made up of photons in empty space is
even more counter-intuitive, yet still supportable at some level of
abstraction. Certainly in the macro world, it doesn't make a damn bit
of difference if you believe photons still exist even when they're not
bouncing off of something, since the only way to tell they are there is
to put something in their way to be affected by their 'bouncing'. The
entire standard model of physics indicates photons are "real" particles,
and string theory does not turn them into illusions, but quite the
opposite; makes photons only a special case of matter. One "vibrating"
in a "frequency" or "pattern" that _means_ "moving at c through three
extent dimensions".
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:33 GMT
Said Eric Remy in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 09:37:50
>In article
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>GreyCloud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>> > The speed of light has never been measured in a vacuum!
>>>
>>> It has. You can also calculate the speed of light without measuring it
>>> directly.
>>
>>Ah, but there is the rub... All light speed measurements have so far
>>been done in AIR!
>
>So I supposed that air extends all the way out to the Pioneer spacecraft?
>
>GreyCloud, you're wrong. Completely. The speed of light in vacuum is
>known to tremendous precision. If it wasn't, NASA wouldn't be able to
>track spacecraft light hours away nor use radio ranging systems to
>measure distances.
I just love this shit. "GreyCloud, you are wrong; completely."
GreyCloud didn't say a damn thing about whether the speed of light in
vacuum is _known_ to any arbitrary precision. He pointed out that it is
not *experimentally proven*, and in fact cannot be, since in order to
measure light's speed, you must change its velocity, according to
Heisenburg. Once Shroedinger's cat is out of the box, you can't stuff
him back in and hope he isn't "really dead".
I think the problem GreyCloud is having making himself comprehensible
(hence, Eric's difficulty in providing any reasoning to counter it,
resorting to the asinine 'you are completely wrong' bullshit) is
confusion over the distinction between the terms "quantum packet of
energy" and "particle [of light]", which is subtle but does exist. Both
qualify for the word "photon", but the math you use must be distinct.
GreyCloud's 'quantum packet' speeds up and slows down around matter, and
does not achieve full c except in a perfect vacuum and taking Hiesenburg
into account using statistics (requiring the counter-intuitive reading
in certain trials of photons traveling at greater than c, proving even
that a gedanken experiment, not an empirical one). But the photon
always travels at c in all mediums; it is only the repetitive absorbtion
and later emitting of photons by atoms of matter that seem to "slow them
down" in a medium.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:34 GMT
Said GreyCloud in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 02:32:10
>"T. Max Devlin" wrote:
[...]
>> Through air, maybe; through the vacuum of space, it's a lot closer to
>> 100%.
>
>That is what I've been getting at. But you see no one has made a
>special trip in space to measure the speed of light there. For me its
>open for study.
>All measurements known so far have been done in air to determine light
>speed.
This is untrue, though; many measurements have been done through both
air and relative vacuum. Wasn't there a laser reflection experiment
performed during the moon landings? They did have to take into account
the different media, and if light didn't travel at c through vacuum,
these numbers would show an error which did not appear.
The problem is you don't seem to understand that air is just a special
case of "empty space". Especially in terms of things as tiny as
photons, where the term 'tiny' itself ceases to have any meaning.
This won't prevent your *math* from making sense, GreyCloud. But your
explanations do become incomprehensible, even unreasonable, when you
claim that experimental proof of the speed of light in vacuum is somehow
uncertain. If you want it to remain open for study for you, and
everyone else, this potential glitch you've found in physics theory,
then you have to revise your explanation so that it makes sense without
having to linguistically refute evidence that is still mathematically
unrefuted.
You'd probably be safer in claiming that the photon stays still in empty
space, and it is the rest of the universe which travels at the speed of
light.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:35 GMT
Said Edward Rosten in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001
[GreyCloud:]
>> I thought you were educated? Time to go back to class...
>>
>> radio waves travel slower than light...
>
>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!
>
>I love that: saying you thought I was educated, then contradicting my
>correct statement with complete gibberish.
>
>If you don't believe me, solve Maxewell's equation in free space with
>periodic (in time) boundery conditions. You'll find that if the
>permitivity is independent of frequency, (which it is in free space) then
>the velocity of propogation of waves is independent of frequency too.
>
>In free space, radio waves travel at *exactly* the speed of light.
Just how many other people here are unaware that Maxwell's equations are
no more correct in all cases than Newton's are, Bohr's, or Einstein's
are? Claiming that light travels at the speed of light *because* you
can't solve Maxwell's equations any other way is just the kind of
gibberish you've accused GreyCloud of.
In fact, IIRC, wasn't it the failure of Maxwell's equations to solve the
'black body' problem correctly that caused quantum physics to first be
considered?
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:36 GMT
Said Jasper in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 12:29:14 GMT;
>On 20 May 2001 13:35:11 -0500, "Jan Johanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>I thought you were educated? Time to go back to class...
>>
>>radio waves travel slower than light...
>
>How embarrissing. Radio waves are light.
How embarrassing? Light is radio waves, too; yet as waves, some
frequencies travel slower than others.
I would have thought that people on technical newsgroups, even advocacy
groups, would be aware of the duality of physics, and not waste time
quibbling about these things as if Usenet discussion will prove
conclusively something that all the great physicists in the world cannot
yet sort out.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux beats Win2K (again)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 19:08:37 GMT
Said GreyCloud in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Mon, 21 May 2001 02:43:23
>Mig wrote:
>> GreyCloud wrote:
>> > I think the SETI program is a farce! No offense to you, but I often
>> > wonder what good does it do them? Radio waves travel a little slower
>> > than the speed of light. And if the radio waves are coming from many
>> > million light years away I'd say it was very old news we would be
>> > receiving. But I doubt they will get anything from it as they advertise
>> > they are looking for. All I know is that the end user gets a block of
>> > data to crunch... do we really know what this data is? Could it be
>> > entirely something else?
>>
>> Wow... thats new to me. Here en Europe all electromagnetic waves travel at
>> the same speed in the same medium..Didnt knew there was a difference on the
>> other side of the Atlantic
>> Who cares if the news are mio. of years old. The purpose is to detect life
>> elsewhere.
>>
>> Cheers
>
>But that life may not be there anymore. So far nothing has been
>detected.
This "but" is rather nonsensical. Yes, that life may not be there
anymore. How would this change the fact that discovery of logical proof
of extraterrestrial intelligence would be an unqualified scientific
discovery of major proportions and widespread impact on the human
condition?
>Even Congress killed the funding to SETI... figured it was a waste of
>money.
Thus, it is no longer a waste of money. Congress, after all, is simply
a waste of time, as they are unable to distinguish (and apparently you
follow them in this error) between politics and science. Your political
argument against SETI does not rate as valid as theirs, however, since
you are trying to argue (in various forms, a tell-tale that you may be
trying in vain to come up with a reasonable argument) that it is
scientifically fruitless, not merely politically "wasteful" of federal
funds due to the speculative nature of the endeavor.
Would that we could simply say "we're going to discover signs of
extraterrestrial intelligence before this decade is over." But plenty
of people argued precisely the same cases as you are, against that.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
------------------------------
From: Tuomo Takkula <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How would you port this? (from RTOS to Linux)
Date: 21 May 2001 21:08:51 +0200
Bill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Hi,
> I am new to the GNU/Linux world. I have a general system design
> question. I am porting some existing software written for a Real Time
> OS to GNU/Linux. I will give a brief description of my current system,
> hopefully you can give me some design ideas for a GNU/Linux port.
> I have a master program that reads several configuration files.
> These files detail what tasks must started, both sequenced and event
> driven. These tasks handle such things as network I/O, event handling &
>
> logging, system monitoring, subsystem I/O, a text based user interface
> console, and many other algorithms/tasks that interpret input from
> external subsystems and make corresponding requests to these
> subsystems. The master program creates all of these tasks and provides
> an API for all of these other executable modules to run in. The master
> program also provides a round robin scheduler for sequenced tasks. This
>
> architecture has one interface to the user; from the console I am able
> to determine the status of every task that is running, and
> enable/disable run time debugging. The modular design of my system
> allows components to be added and removed from the system by changing a
> configuration file only, there is no need to change source code and
> rebuild.
> The RTOS I am using provides a great API, semaphores, mailboxes,
> shared memory, processes, and threads.
> I would prefer to emulate the same architecture in GNU/Linux, as
> compared to running all of these tasks independently.
> What kind of experiences have you had with this type of
> architecture? Do you recommend any other type of design?
>
> Thanks for any comments and experience you can provide,
> ----Bill Rooney
couldn't really figure out what requirements you have. Linux is not a
RTOS, so you loose all the guarantees that you might want to have in a
RTOS.
On the other hand, there is RT-Linux (Real-Time Linux) which runs a
real-time environment on top of Linux (or rather underneath). I don't
have the link, but google will certainly find it. I don't remember
whether it was hard or soft RT, either.
Best regards
Tuomo
------------------------------
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