Teddy Bloggie Blog Blogging

Note about physics and other mathy fields:

For half a decade the first equation of quantum theory was there. But nobody knew how to read it.

It is this "what if we took this equation seriously?" factor that is, to my mind at least, the spookiest thing about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics. Take the h in Max Planck's equation seriously, and you have the quantum principle--something that was not in Planck's brain when he wrote the equation down. Take seriously the symmetry in Maxwell's equations between the force generated when you move a magnet near a wire and the force and the force generated when you move a wire near a magnet, and you have Special Relativity--something that was not in Maxwell's brain when he wrote down the equation. Take Newton's gravitational force law's equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass seriously and you have General Relativity--something never in Newton's mind. And take the mathematical pathology at r = 2M in the Schwarzchild metric for the space-time metric around a point mass seriously, and you have black holes and event horizons.

I bought a dell 700m notebook recently and went shopping for ram. Kingston Technology sells two types: one that's verified to work with my laptop, and one that's generic. The two are price accordingly with 1gb price being 206.99 (buy.com) and 109 (outpost.com after rebate), respectively. This seems to be a clear case of price discrimination since computer components are sold with such exacting standards.

I went with the cheaper ram and it works ok in my laptop. I can get it to work if I remove the original 256mb that it came with and install it in the slot underneath the keyboard. It won't work in tandem with the 256mb oem stick. I'm not sure why that is, but the memory diagnostic I ran (Memtest86+) seem to find everything fine with the 1gb of generic memory. If I could afford to order the "verified to work with" stick I'd do some comparisons. Now it could be that the 700m doesn't like the different memory sizes in each bank when installed together or there is some slight incompatibilities. I'll leave that to anyone's guess... Anyway, price discrimination in this case may be working through our own fears of installing some "generic" piece of component into our shiny new laptop. When I called Kingston before making my purchase, they told me that, "no, the KVR333 model won't work with your computer. You should get the KTD-INSP5150." But it does work (under the conditions stated above).

Ok, just thought I'd share this in case anyone wondered about this. I'm sure someone will google this topic. If you have any additional information about how the memory components are different, I'd like to know...

Now -- to sell that ol' 256mb stick on ebay.