Domain: uchicago.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to uchicago.edu.
Comments · 708
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Re:Marginal effect on Linux
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Re:Bush WANTS
http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/WEBSTER.sh?WO
R D=terrorism
Terrorism (Page: 1489)
Ter"ror*ism (?), n. [Cf. F. terrorisme.] The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation. Jefferson. -
Re:Alumna reaction
Well, gee, since his name is THOMAS Black (http://dos.uchicago.edu/staff.html),I'm not surprised he never got back to you. It always helps to make sure of the name of the person you're talking to...shows a little respect.
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Re:Alumni reaction
As an alumni of the UofC, i have no idea what 'IS' and 'DCS' stand for. If one of those would now be called 'NSIT' or 'USITE' or something of that nature, then ok, i understand that.
I worked at the only NSIT independant computer lab on campus (http://maclab.cs.uchicago.edu/ and i'm very familiar with NSIT. While i never thought much of NSIT as an organization (company, actually), i have to say that in general they're pretty good about security; i would definitely like to know what component of their organization was responsible for this. -
Re:Software patents are unAmerican
I'll let a USAian explain the importance of Locke to Americanism. Anyone for Jefferson?
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Re:Performance of Skype over Sat?
I looked at satalite access a few years ago when I was looking at buying a house too far out of town to get broadband.
Geosynchronous Orbit is at 35,786 Kilometers. It takes light 120ms to get from earth to a geosync satalite. (source).
Hence, 240ms round trip. Back and forth, you to your provider. Another 240ms to get a responce.
The only reason I'd consider satalite access would be for bulk downloads. 540ms on an ssh session would quickly drive me insane.
So add that half second to whatever routing overhead there is involved in skype (I usually see about .3 to .6 of a second delay, talking to people within a few hundred kilometers). I'd say, all in all, pretty crappy experience.
But its better than nothing I suppose. -
Re:Big Toys for Big Boys
Well attributed by whom? I'm not saying you made it up (and it certainly sounds plausible... Roman punishments were quite harsh)
I can't find it either. Livy 25.31 reads:
- "It is recorded that amidst all the uproar and terror created by the soldiers who were rushing about the captured city in search of plunder, he was quietly absorbed in some geometrical figures which he had drawn on the sand, and was killed by a soldier who did not know who he was. Marcellus was much grieved and took care that his funeral was properly conducted; and after his relations had been discovered they were honoured and protected by the name and memory of Archimedes.
Plutarch's account can be found here it's chapter 19, and, giving slightly different accounts of the death, gives essentially the same account of Marcellus' reaction:
- it is generally agreed that Marcellus was afflicted at his death, and turned away from his slayer as from a polluted person, and sought out the kindred of Archimedes and paid them honour.
So no reward, perhaps, but no other punishment. Treated as polluted != tortured to death. Where is the other source? And don't be childish about it either, I don't have RE in front of me right now
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Re:Variation on Lessig: Property TaxesThat's a horrible idea. Real property is scarce. Physical and Intellectual property are entirely different. See what Jefferson had to say about it:
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
If IP creators don't want something to be copied, they can keep it to themselves. Copyright law gives temporary exclusivity to the owner as an incentive to the owner to share his idea with the rest of us. That is a good thing, but it is a fallacy to equate physical property to intellectual property. -
Re:This is sick
Getting Boy Scouts (of whatever nation) to honor someone else's property etc etc
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/ a1_8_8s12.html -
You missed one...
The art of looking under. I'll leave to your imagination exactly what they're looking under.
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A worthy study...
This is one of the really amazong stories to come out of modern genetics. There is an excellent book (for all people not just scientists) called The Seven Daughters of Eve which guides you thorugh the basics of the science. (The title despite its religious overtone is really about the 7 women that 95% of all Europeans can trace their ancestry to).
There are also technical papers (there are tons but these are good places to start) here and here (this one discusses the long unknown origins of Pacific Islanders which was one of the early successes of this technique).
This study is an incredible combination of biologic science and social science, which could has the possibility to answer questions that are not able to be answered by traditional archaelogy and anthropology. It is quite amazing to think that our ancestry has been preserved, not in rock and artifact, but in our own living bodies. -
Re:Tests
Not necessarily. A lot of the rise in violent crime is credited to increases in drunk pub violence and mobile phone robbery.
Before guns were outlawed, perps couldn't be sure that their intended victims were defenseless.
Now they can.
Perps now feel safe to commit more crimes.
In the United States, violent crime rates have declined in states where concealed carry has been legalized.
New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.
In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.
In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent. -
Re:TAKE THAT CALTECH
Meanwhile, at U of Chicago we're frantically dumpster diving in preparation for ScavHunt.
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Re:Oh I See!
Sometimes it's bad style, but it's not grammatically incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition. http://www.emich.edu/styleguide/prepositions.htm http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfa
q /cmosfaq.Prepositions.html http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/p/p0530700.html http://www.grammarmudge.cityslide.com/articles/art icle/1026513/8910.htm -
Re:We know quarks, but not this...Quote from the Chicago News article "Meanwhile, Nagel and his associates have completed another chapter in their ongoing research program that examines the surprising physics of everyday phenomena."
Nagel and his associates are quite famous for finding interesting physics in things like coffee stains and sand piles and crumpling paper. He taught me quantum while I was an undergrad at U of C, and he was a great teacher, even if I didn't appreciate it at the time.
It is quite true that there exist interesting physical phenomena right under our noses.
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Re:We know quarks, but not this...Quote from the Chicago News article "Meanwhile, Nagel and his associates have completed another chapter in their ongoing research program that examines the surprising physics of everyday phenomena."
Nagel and his associates are quite famous for finding interesting physics in things like coffee stains and sand piles and crumpling paper. He taught me quantum while I was an undergrad at U of C, and he was a great teacher, even if I didn't appreciate it at the time.
It is quite true that there exist interesting physical phenomena right under our noses.
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Re:We know quarks, but not this...Quote from the Chicago News article "Meanwhile, Nagel and his associates have completed another chapter in their ongoing research program that examines the surprising physics of everyday phenomena."
Nagel and his associates are quite famous for finding interesting physics in things like coffee stains and sand piles and crumpling paper. He taught me quantum while I was an undergrad at U of C, and he was a great teacher, even if I didn't appreciate it at the time.
It is quite true that there exist interesting physical phenomena right under our noses.
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Re:We know quarks, but not this...Quote from the Chicago News article "Meanwhile, Nagel and his associates have completed another chapter in their ongoing research program that examines the surprising physics of everyday phenomena."
Nagel and his associates are quite famous for finding interesting physics in things like coffee stains and sand piles and crumpling paper. He taught me quantum while I was an undergrad at U of C, and he was a great teacher, even if I didn't appreciate it at the time.
It is quite true that there exist interesting physical phenomena right under our noses.
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Re:An accessible page, more types of fluids tested
The link to the AVI is erroneous on the parent's linked-to page. It should be:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/05/050322.sp lash.avi
A marvelous movie! -
Re:An accessible page, more types of fluids tested
For everyone without real player just change the *.splash.rm to *.splash.avi on the video link since even the 'AVI format' link points to a real media file.
The movie seems to me much more effective than the jpg image, I was supprised by them skipping head so far between the 3rd and 4th frame, seems leaves out some of the important parts.. -
An accessible page, more types of fluids tested
Click here to see.
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Re:I'm not an expert...
But the [blogspot.com] doesn't exactly scream "CREDIBLE!", does it?
Perhaps it does not, however... -
Re:Gravity leaks
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Nonimaging Optics: Why bother to 'focus' at all?
Since the target is so close, why bother to actually use an optical system that focuses the light? Why not just use nonimaging optics that concentrate the light at the target. Such systems can generate phenomenal temperatures, which would probably produce much more interesting results.
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Re:Not Black holes
OK, here's a deeper explanation of how one gets from the shape of the curve to the baryon ratio, but still not much discussion of why it's only baryons that count. I suspect it's really only protons that count, as they're what gets dragged along as a fluid with the electron/photon soup, and there's a hidden asumption that any baryons are protons and any non-baryons are neutral (and otherwise weakly interacting with electrons and photons).
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Re:Not Black holes
Sorry, my off-the-cuff statement about the sound speed and baryon density wasn't really right. Certainly there is some effect there, but it isn't the important issue in determining the amplitude of the second peak. I teach this stuff, but I don't do research in it and I do need to look up the details sometimes.
The descreased amplitude of the second peak arises from an effect called baryon loading explained here. The suppression arises from a coupling of the barynons to the plasma prior to recombination. The non-baryonic matter is transparent. -
Re:Not Black holes
Ooops, here is that graph.
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Re:Not Black holes
Yes, right, neutrinos can only contribute a tiny amount.
Similar to galactic rotation curves, galaxy velocities in clusters are too high without large amounts of dark matter.
The best evidence at this stage probably comes from the microwave background acoustic peaks. The amplitudes of the second and third peaks depend on the amount of baryonic matter (second peak) and the total amount of matter (third peak), and indicate about six times as much non-bayonic matter as baryonic matter. We still don't know what it is, but know how much there is to two significant figures.
I've alerady linked to it already in this thread, but I'll do it again because it is a very nice pedagogical website about these results. Check out Wayne Hu's webapages. -
Re:Black holes?
There's some information from the public WMAP webpage here. You might also look at Wayne Hu's excellent webpages here. Start with the intructory materials and move up from there. It has only been in the last couple of years that we've been finally confident about the values of the cosmological parameters and that the universal geometry is flat. The dark matter and dark energy both are still confusing, to be sure, but the picture of the fundamental nature (age, curvature, etc.) of the universe is pretty solid at this point.
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Re:Anyone Question the Existence of Dark Matter?
No, that's absolutely incorrect. When scientists talk about dark matter they really do mean some actual stuff, not just a problem with gravity. We do have plenty of reason to believe in this magical material (too many for me to list here in fact, short list of acronym soup: BBN, CMB, LSS).
There are quite a few models for what dark matter could be, many motivated by our theories of particle physics.
If you want to learn more, here is an excellent review on the subject, written at a very basic level.
Essentially all you need is a massive particle with a very low probability of reaction (cross section). There are people who are trying to use techniques similar to neutrino detection to find evidence of actual dark matter particles (come back in 5-10 years and we may have detected dark matter particles).
We may also be able to see gamma rays from dark matter particle annihilation at the center of our galaxy, or at the centers of dwarf satellite galaxies (the Milky way may be difficult, the signal would be higher, but you also have confusion with other high-energy sources).
Doug -
Re:Some slashdot lore.
Chess is fun
Bah, chess... -
Re:According to "sources".I'm fairly sure the PS1 was out when I was in High school. It's which was 10 years ago.
Here they claim it's been out since 1994.
Which puts it between at least 10, possibly 11 years now.
Not sure if that's authoratative, but it's at least a date I found via a quick google search.
It's been obsoleted by the PS2 for what a little over 4 years? (It came out during the Christmas shopping season of 2000 if I remember correctly).
However, it's not like a lot of titles are being released. It's not like the blockbuster games are being dual ported.
I'd see fewer problems with this, if the X-Box 2 was going to be backwards compatible with the X-Box. However, from everything I've read, it's nearly a technical impossibility to do that if what has been publically guessed about the X-Box is true (I'm not sure if Microsoft has officially said anything besides that ATI will be making the video cards). I'm not paying that much attention. I believe it's supposedly going to have a PPC chip of some time (possibly a Cell, which is PPC + an array of vector processing chips if I understand it correctly).
If they released backwards compat consoles ever 2-3 years, I wouldn't care. However, releasing non-compatible ones every 2-4 years is just insane from a consumers perspective. However, as Microsoft is just gettings it's feet wet, I could see why they are doing this (fix thier previous mistakes, and get a head of the game on the hardware cycle is probably a good idea from a business perspective, especially if they can finance the losses).
Kirby
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Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
Wayne Hu at the university of Chicago has a great set of webpages that explain these results. If you don't have much of a background, start with the lowest level and work up. To get to the hard numbers (two significant figures), check out the "experiments and data" link. They're based on the relative amplitudes of the acoustic peaks in the microwave background.
The page can be found here. -
Re:While we're talking about the social structure.
Ask Harvard University President Lawrence Summers
Then again, maybe you better not -
Form Follows Function
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Re:Sig Advice
I like your version better than my original, but not for the reason you cited. Yours places the emphasis where it belongs. The reasons are something that only a writer or hard-core (human) language geek would appreciate.
As for splitting infinitives, the Chicago Manual of Style no longer considers that to be universally wrong. Their advice implies that one should not adopt it as a new idiom, but it is to no longer be feared. ;-)
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Re:WRONG... dead wrong
THANK YOU!
Also potentially of interest: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/v1ch3 .html -
Re:photographic memory
As you age, your vision gradually yellows (or has another poster had said, browns). Psilocybin is rumored to temporarily increase visual acuity, comparable to youthful eyesight.
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Thomas Jefferson (was Re:Disturbed)
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--35
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/ v1ch16s25.html
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.
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Sorry folks, this is my canned response on this topic. Because yes, some of us really do not "get it." Thomas Jefferson is the man you are quoting, and you clearly do not understand the kinds of radical limits he placed upon IP rights. And right, the intent of the person quoted is of no consequence...
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Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson
13 Aug. 1813Writings 13:333--35
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/ v1ch16s25.html
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured. -
food for geeks
Well, in my experience geeks like Chinese food, so I suggest The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters by the late James McCawley, a linguist and connaisseur of Chinese food. It teaches you to read Chinese menus. Long out of print, it was reprinted last year. You can get it from the publisher (link above) or Barnes and Noble.
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Kanji AliveTake a look at Kanji Alive at the University of Chicago. It's called "a web-based teaching aid to help students learn to write, read and memorize kanji in their own time, outside of the classroom" by the guys who wrote it. It shows the user the proper way to draw kanji (order of strokes), and also has demonstrations of how to pronounce words by native speakers. You can't learn japanese with this alone, but it is a good tool for getting a little practice in.
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Kanji AliveTake a look at Kanji Alive at the University of Chicago. It's called "a web-based teaching aid to help students learn to write, read and memorize kanji in their own time, outside of the classroom" by the guys who wrote it. It shows the user the proper way to draw kanji (order of strokes), and also has demonstrations of how to pronounce words by native speakers. You can't learn japanese with this alone, but it is a good tool for getting a little practice in.
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Re:Global warming has happened many times
Not so. It is estimated that as late as the start of the mammalian era C02 levels were between 4 and 8 times higher than they currently are.
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Re:You insensitive clodAh but has your cat published a paper in Physical Review Letters?
More about the second author of that paper (scroll down to "Hetherington and Willard article)
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Re:Odds Are Against It
"*If* there were anything living on Mars in the first place, it would die long before we ever knew it got here."
That's a rather breathtaking generalization, even for Slashdot.
We're talking about a whole planet here with nearly as varied conditions for life as on Terra. Here is a mid-level overview of Mars Seasons, Weather, Exploration, Life. A cursory look at Atmospheric Temperature, Seasons and Pressures, reveals that Mars is remarkably similar to our own planet. If recent research has proved anything about life, it seems to be that given any kind of opportunity at all, life will flourish.
There is a small possibility that some of Mars' mantle may already have splashed onto our own planet. Can you say with any certainty that Martian microbes aren't already here? -
steaming ahead - taking back distributionI purchased the game via Steam and downloaded it in the space of about three hours. I have experienced no problems in playing the game.
Just as I predicted. In Buying the latest build comment in the Half-Life 2 Finally Activated thread. Posters bemoaned the *cost* of steam compared to the boxed set in stores. "Why is the cost the same?" was a common question. Well the cost reflects the latest build.
It is great to see a e-version superior product compared to the boxed version. With the uptake of broadband resellers beware. Your power is being eroded by metcalf, moore and coarse.
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Re:Draft Copy?
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Re:I made a cloud chamber once...
pfft, this guy built a cyclotron IN HIGH SCHOOL by himself and used it to demonstrate "particle mass resonace" he won the ISEF (used to be westinghouse) with it. Oh and he also was a consultant on accelerator technology for the show "stephen hawkings universe" shown on bbc and pbs. Not cool enough for you. Well he also built a breeder reactor to win a scavenger hunt.
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Re:Yeesh
But how did you get to be the last person in the world remembering to place a quote mark (or what passes for one) outside the period?
Since you mention "the world", I'll point out that the stylistic guideline you're referring to is peculiarly American. The British have always had the (far more sensible, IMO) rule that the punctuation only goes inside the quotes if it's actually found in the material being quoted. And over the last twenty or thirty years, the so-called "British Rule" has become acceptable in American English as well.
Here's a tip for ya: The Elements of Style is a great book for improving your own writing, but it absolutely fails to distinguish between rules, guidelines, and mere suggestions, which makes it a terrible resource for criticizing the works of others. For that, I recommend you obtain the Chicago Manual of Style, which (unlike Strunk & White) is used by professional editors throughout the US.