"ตรวจสายต่อต่างๆก่อน"

วันนี้ผมได้ข่าวว่าผลที่นักวิทยาศาสตร์จับเวลาแล้วพบว่านิวตริโนวิ่งเร็วกว่าแสงอาจเกิดจากข้อผิดพลาดที่สายต่อแบบเส้นใยนำแสงต่อกับการ์ดในคอมพิวเตอร์ไม่แน่น พอไขให้แน่นแล้วพบว่าเวลาที่บอกว่านิวตริโนวิ่งมาถึงก่อนแสงจะหายไป จึงน่าจะเป็นสาเหตุที่ทำให้ผลการทดลองออกมาเป็นอย่างนั้น

พอผมได้ยินข่าวนี้ปุ๊บ ผมก็คิดถึงคำแนะนำที่มีประโยชน์กับผมมากมากว่า 25 ปีแล้ว คือถ้ามีปัญหาอะไรเกี่ยวกับคอมพิวเตอร์หรืออิเลคทรอนิคส์ทั้งหลาย ให้ตรวจดูก่อนว่าสายไฟและสายสัญญาณต่างๆต่ออยู่แน่นดีไหม ผมเห็นคำแนะนำนี้เป็นครั้งแรกในบทความของ Jerry Pournelle ตอนที่เขายังเขียนบทความให้นิตยสาร Byte อยู่ ผมจำคำแนะนำนี้ได้ขึ้นใจและใช้มันเสมอๆเมื่อต้องแก้ปัญหาเกี่ยวกับเครื่องไฟฟ้าอิเลคทรอนิคส์ทั้งหลาย

หวังว่าท่านผู้อ่านจะนำเอาไปใช้นะครับ ชีวิตท่านน่าจะดีขึ้นบ้าง :-)

Cannot Send Emails For Destinations Further Than 500 Miles

Here is a curious story of an email problem. It turned out that email destinations further than about 500 miles could not be reached. See if you can guess why it occurred after reading the first half of the story.

Living with slow Internet connections most of my online life and wrote some buggy programs to send emails in the past, I knew the cause right away :-D

Skynet* Is Coming!

Really, look at this A.I. and tell me you are not impressed.

I asked START, "Who is Norah Jones?", and it got info from Wikipedia and Biography.com in a good short summary. By the way, do you know that Norah Jones' full name is Geethali Norah Jones Shankar?

It knows answers to a lot of questions, such as "Why is the sky blue?", "Where is the deepest spot on Earth?", "What is a Terminator?", and "What is staccato?" However, when I asked "Who created Skynet?", it said "Sorry, I don't have this information."

*Skynet is the A.I. that decimated the human population in Terminator movies and series.

The Simulation Argument: Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.

You know, if we are in a simulation, we might be able to hack it.  Saying a proper sequence of words might produce magical effects. Avada Kedavra! If any of Harry Potter's spells works, we are probably a sim.

BTW, a "posthuman" = a much more technologically advanced human.  Maybe they can harness energy from galactic blackholes and modify spacetime for their entertainment or other ridiculously advanced stuff I cannot imagine.

Steel Poetry*: One Pilot's Description of His Plane

I found this essay about the SR-71 Blackbird very poetic.

The SR-71 Blackbird is one of my all-time favorite airplanes. (Others are A-10 Warthog (look at it's 30mm Gatling gun!), Messerschmitt Bf 109, P-51 Mustang, and F-4 Phantom. I spent a lot of time when I was between 10 to 16 poring over various weapon systems.)

Note that in the article, the plane flew at more than Mach 3 (or three times the speed of sound.) For comparison, handgun bullets travel around Mach 1. Rifle bullets travel around Mach 2. The SR-71 plane is literally faster than the speeding bullets!

More info about the plane at the Wikipedia article. A lot of interesting info. For example, do you know that when the plane is not flying, the fuel would leak from its body since it was designed to fly at high speed so the friction would heat up, expand, and seal the joints in the plane?

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*Actually, the title should be Titanium Poetry since the the plane is mostly titanium.