Author: dabacon

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CSE 322 Spring 2008, Week 1

This quarter I am teaching CSE 322: Introduction to Formal Models in Computer Science. Good fun. As part of my teaching I am LaTeXing up lecture notes from the class, which follow closely the book we are using, Sipser’s “Introduction to the Theory of Computation.” Here are the first three lectures for those with nothing better to do during their weekend:

  • Lecture 1: Welcome and Introduction
  • Lecture 2: Formal Definition of Deterministic Finite Automata
  • Lecture 3: Regular Operations on Languages

The notes are certainly full of many typos and such, but maybe there is a young teenager who isn’t in college, but who is bright, and wants to learn something cool about theory, and thus might actually click on those links. Comments and criticisms by others are also greatly appreciated.

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An ArXiv PDF Mime Fix for Firefox 3.0

Previously, I had found a way to get a Mac running Firefox to not choke on recognizing pdfs correctly when downloaded from the arxiv.org. Commenter Dan has tracked down the reason for this and suggested another way to fix this which should be compatible with the latest versions of Firefox:

Update:
It seems that the source of this bug is the following problem:
Arxiv.org does not like Macs! :-O
Fortunately, there is an easy work around: Using the UserAgent Switcher extension, you fool arxiv.org into thinking your web-browser is running Windows.
Then the PDF download problem goes away! No MIME type hackery is needed.
The technical reasons for this are explained in this thread:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=3322008

Thanks, Dan!

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Best Title Ever Competition: Quantum Flatland Edition

Today, I looked on the arxiv and found arXiv:0804.0272:

arXiv:0804.0272
Quantum computing using shortcuts through higher dimensions
Authors: B. P. Lanyon, M. Barbieri, M. P. Almeida, T. Jennewein, T. C. Ralph, K. J. Resch, G. J. Pryde, J. L. O’Brien, A. Gilchrist, A. G. White

and nearly fell out of my chair. What an awesome title. A least for me, when I first parsed the title of the paper, the first thing that popped into my head was using spatial dimensions to speed up quantum computation (as opposed to using higher dimensional quantum systems.) Gots to get me some string theories to build my quantum computer 🙂 (Oh and the paper is pretty cool as well!)

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Let's Make Them Fight Each Other

Oh no: do the Christian creationists know that by taking down Darwin they might inadvertently aid Eastern religions? Witness: the Bhaktivedanta Institute Newsletter. Personally I want a grunge match between the Discovery Institute and the Bhaktivedanta Institute to see who can out pseudoscience each other. “No my psychogenetic fallacy definitely trumps your silly fallacy of division!”
Continue reading “Let's Make Them Fight Each Other”

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Quantum Diet

Eat anything you want and lose weight? How? By using quantum physics of course!:

Freedom From Food looks at food and weight from a unique vantage point. It examines the mind/body connection – how your thoughts and emotions affect your body. The book points out that there is abundant scientific evidence in quantum physics to show that our thoughts and emotions directly affect our physical form. From this perspective, food is not seen as “good” or “bad” for the body.

I’m still looking through the postulates of quantum physics to find how thoughts and emotions are used in quantum theory? Anyone?
Continue reading “Quantum Diet”

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Fafblog Returns?!?!

Is it really true? Is Fafblog back? All that praying to the April Fool’s Day Jackalope has finally paid off!

“Screw this dump!” says Giblets. “This universe is old and fat and smells like smelling and Giblets is busting out!”
“Should we go over the wall or take the tunnel?” says me. I been diggin a tunnel.
“Nuts to the tunnel!” says Giblets. “What we do is we make like we’re sick. Then when God comes in to check on us we punch im in the liver an run out the door!”…

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Hot Quantum Computing!

Normally when I think about quantum computers, I think about systems which are pretty cold, since a thermal equilibrium state at high temperature is a very mixed state. But is it really true that a quantum computer needs to be cold to quantum compute? I’ve often wondered (some would say pontificated) about this, and so I was excited when I found this Physical Review Letter describing quantum computing using plasmas.
Continue reading “Hot Quantum Computing!”