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Comment by sgt101 | Hacker News Reader

I had a wonderful discussion about reducing latency in about 2003 where I pointed out that there was a bound on everything imposed by the speed of light; I remember the investor attempting to use his MBA... "Ok, let's challenge that - how can we go about changing that assumption".

You can do anything if you try is a good moto for 4 year olds, but seriously, business schools should set traps for folk that still believe it in their 30's and empty those traps into [[horrid but funny slasher movie imagery removed to protect the innocent]] ^B^B somewhere where they can't do any more damage.

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While I can't speak to the intelligence of that particular VC, there are plenty of ways of "challenging that assumption" without necessarily breaking physical laws.

For example, you could figure out a way to move things closer together, you could build a prediction algorithm and speculatively execute on a result before an input came in, you could modify the UI so the perceived latency is lower, etc.

This is where we get issues where software engineers are expected to do things that are difficult to impossible (DRM, safe crypto backdoors, accurate copyright infringement detection, accurate censorship) and are told to just "do their magic" and make it work perfectly.

Even harder to debate about when it's something on the verge of stupid, but has been decided otherwise by the top brass.

This video seems relevant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

Hey, if someone wants to waste their money who am I to disagree if it lands in my pockets? :)

Your professional ethics should be guiding you to manage expectations.

"I'm happy to try this, but here are the limitations I'm aware of and some of these are unavoidable."

> Your professional ethics should be guiding you to manage expectations.

Of course. But if someone hires me and then they decide that we need to transfer information faster than at the speed of light there's only so much my professional ethics can do.

If someone asked me to do that, my first response would be to ask for a huge lab and a lot of PhDs for several decades.

When you made that comment what was your point? Because it reeks of that dismissive attitude that most people have that stops them from ever trying anything. "There is a bound on everything imposed by the speed of light." "OK. I will get my servers installed in the exchange itself." (http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=colo) In reality there is a lot that can be done to reduce latency before you are faced with the laws of physics.

Maybe he was thinking you could bend space time.

Other researchers are trying to bend the rules rather than break them. In fact, bending space-time is one theory of how superluminal – faster-than-light -- speeds in space travel might be reached.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/future-tech/information...

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Alcubierre

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