Re: POLL: Would you use Ada more if...

[Dmitry A.Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

Robert Dewar wrote:

> ada@polarhome.com (Anatoly Chernyshev) wrote in message
> news:<2a038d0e.0208271023.6b0fc44e@posting.google.com>...
>> Dmitry A.Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
>> news:<akflgg$1hdrbh$1@ID-77047.news.dfncis.de>...
> 
>> This is just an estimation made for fun, so I may be totally wrong.
> 
> Well in general it is certainly possible to store information in devices
> where the mass of a 0 and 1 are identical. For example, consider a slider
> with a weight sliding on it. If the weight is at one end it is a 0 and
> if it is at the other, it is a 1. Clearly the mass is the same in both
> cases, so I think the argument from entropy change is bogus :-)

[ I do not think it is that simple. There is no information without a 
reading device. The whole system shoud be considered. I belive that even a 
mechanical system would have states having different levels of energy. ]

[Even more OT] Approx. 10 years ago in Scientific American there was a 
paper considering implementation of Maxwell's daemons. Authors criticized 
the common point of view that solely a measuring process were the reason 
why a daemon could not work. They pointed that actually it could be 
possible to avoid that loss. But energy would get lost when information 
were erased, i.e. when the system had to be brought to a definite state 
before a new cycle.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de