A group of us tried a "ruleless" session once. The only person that used dice was the DM, who occasionally made quick hidden rolls to choose from a few plausible outcomes of an action. There were otherwise no stats or rules; everything came down to either the DM's or our collective judgement. It was quite fun, and friendly to beginners like me due to the lack of rules, though I imagine it required a bit more skill on the part of the DM to pull it off.
True, but surrounding yourself with well-informed advisors requires the ability to recognize someone that is well-informed. This is difficult to do without having some level of knowledge yourself.
It seems to me something like MATLAB would be much more appropriate. MATLAB is designed for numerical computing, and has a programming language that allows for easy manipulation of vectors and matrices and creation of graphs. Lots of common functions that would be useful for physics are built in.
The low level details that computer science students should be concerned with, like the internal representation of a matrix, are things that most physics students probably don't need to worry about.
Presumably it'll follow a microtransaction model similar to that of Maple Story, where the core gameplay is free but there are optional enhancements that you can buy.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me. Stephen Hawking has had guest appearances and cameos on a number of TV shows, including "Alien Planet" on the Discovery Channel: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370071/
From everything I've read Stephen Hawking is quite good-natured and has a remarkable sense of humor. He has commented that he's flattered by "MC Hawking", and he showed he was willing to poke fun at himself on the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest I".
Nichols: It's about that rip in spacetime that you saw. Hawking: I call it a "Hawking hole". Fry: No fair! I saw it first! Hawking: Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?
Fry: So then my chair tilted back and I almost fell into this freezer thingy. Hawking: I call it a "Hawking chamber".
(Al Gore got the best line of the episode, though, with "I'm a 10th level Vice President!")
Think of the athletes, particularly ones competing in age-sensitive sports such as gymnastics. It's very uncommon for a gymnast--who likely trained for many hours a day for their entire childhood--to get to compete in more than two Olympics. More than three is almost unheard of (though there are rare exceptions like Oksana Chusovitina).
Taking away one Olympics from these athletes for political reasons would be highly unfair to them.
Along the same lines, we once had a Superhero party using a _very_ broad definition of "superhero". I remember one person came dressed as "Unit Vector Man"--basically he wore a shirt with a large i-hat symbol drawn on it, and a triangle-shaped hat so that he was shaped like an arrow pointing upward (when standing).
Apart from the costumes it was like any other party: dancing, drinking, talking, etc. But the silly costumes were great conversation starters.
If I need a few sentences on the history of someone or something, (background or related work), I'm not going to find it in a proper journal article, and there are a lot of people that don't have published biographies to look at.
If you only need a few sentences on something as background, there is a good chance that information can be considered "common knowledge" (even if you didn't happen to know it ahead of time) and probably doesn't need a citation.
The general rule--at least as I've been told--is not to avoid using encyclopedias but to avoid citing encyclopedias. Since information that is relevant to the main thesis of the paper needs to be properly cited, this rule is adequate to require proper research (beyond encyclopedias) without taking away a potentially useful tool.
Who uses them in the first place? I've been on several dozen flights--even flew first class a couple times--and I've never, ever seen anyone use the in-flight phone.
Presumably people in highly sensitive areas already need to identify themselves anytime they enter the premises. What if, after identifying themselves, they were given badges (selected at random) with RFID chips containing random numbers, and leaving meant dropping off said badges? Without access to the database tracking which people were assigned which badges, it would be impossible to tell which number is associated with which person at any given time. So the content stored by the RFID chip would be useless (assuming that the database is properly secured), and detecting just the presence of an RFID chip wouldn't necessarily give away information about that person.
It could not be at any other altitude without some kind of continuous propulsion (or other force besides gravity acting on it).
If I remember right (it's been a while since I've studied any physics) a simplified explanation looks something like this: (1) a = v^2 / r [equation for centripetal acceleration]. For an object to maintain a constant speed in a circular path, it must accelerate at a rate of v^2 / r perpendicular to the direction of motion, where v = velocity and r = radius of circle. (2) a = m_Earth G / r^2 [equation for gravitational acceleration]. The acceleration must be due to the Earth's gravity alone, so we use the equation for acceleration due to gravity. m_Earth is a constant (the mass of the earth); G is the gravitational constant. (3) v = 2 pi r / t_rotation. For the orbit to be geosynchronous, it must take the same length of time to complete one orbit as it takes the Earth to complete one rotation (t_rotation). (4) r = r_altitude + r_Earth. The center of the earth is the center of the satellite's orbit; the radius of the circle is the altitude of the satellite (distance from satellite to surface of the Earth) plus the radius of the Earth at the equator (distance from the surface of the Earth to the center). It must be at the equator because the direction of motion of the satellite must be the same as the direction of the Earth's surface below the satellite.
Solving these equations simultaneously for r_altitude, you get: r_altitude = (m_Earth G t_rotation^2 / 4 pi^2)^(1/3) - r_Earth
Plug in approximate values for the constants: m_Earth = 5.97 * 10^24 [kg] G = 6.67 * 10^(-11) [m^3 / (kg s^2)] t_rotation = 86400 [s] pi = 3.14 r_Earth = 6.38 * 10^6 [m]
And you get 3.59*10^7 meters, or 22,300 miles. You can substitute in the mass, time of rotation, and radius of any other planet/moon/etc. to find the altitude of a geostationary orbit around something other than Earth.
Don't forget the 2-3 hours spent in the initial airport for security screening and all, and the time spent in the destination airport at the baggage claim.
I have never used a Netbook, but was pleased with the 5mx that I used years ago (though not for world travel or mountain climbing or anything like that). It fit in my pocket, had a VERY comfortable keyboard for its size (I could type at roughly 2/3 of the speed that I type on a full-sized keyboard) and ran for a good 30 hours or so on a pair of AA batteries. It survived a number of short falls--about 3 feet onto hard surfaces--without any problems.
Both use CompactFlash for removable storage, and can be used with a cell phone or modem for Internet access. The Netbook has a PCMCIA slot as well, which (with appropriate cards) adds Ethernet or wireless capabilities. http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?p=321802
The 5mx probably won't be of much help when it comes to creating backup copies of photos, but the Netbook might with appropriate accessories (either sending them over the Internet or mailing home CompactFlash cards).
EverQuest is a relatively low-bandwidth game. Keep in mind that it is designed to work with a dialup connection, and there are still people that play it that way, typically people living in rural areas as they are less likely to have broadband options available.
Until several years ago the meter in the upper left corner of the screen included bytes transferred. The traffic--presumably counting incoming traffic only--rarely exceeded 1 KB/sec, excluding overhead. It occasionally spiked to 2-3 KB in a second in a busy area, but seconds with several hundred bytes transferred were far more common. (The meter has since been simplified and now only shows ping time and a percentage roughly corresponding to packet loss.)
I actually prefer the "nipple mouse" to a touchpad or even a conventional mouse, especially when combined with a scroll button for my thumb. Switching between typing and using the mouse requires a lot less movement.
I don't think that's the case. If I remember right, the Planck length is the smallest distance that can be measured in principle, which should set an upper bound on the amount of information that can be encoded in the physical arrangement of a fixed number of atoms (however many atoms make up a vinyl record).
I suppose you could argue that an arbitrary number of atoms could be crammed into an object with the shape of a vinyl record, but eventually the object would become so massive that it would collapse and form a black hole, by which point it would no longer meet the definition of a vinyl record.
Slashdot Mirror
A group of us tried a "ruleless" session once. The only person that used dice was the DM, who occasionally made quick hidden rolls to choose from a few plausible outcomes of an action. There were otherwise no stats or rules; everything came down to either the DM's or our collective judgement. It was quite fun, and friendly to beginners like me due to the lack of rules, though I imagine it required a bit more skill on the part of the DM to pull it off.
I seem to remember the original Myst being Hypercard based.
True, but surrounding yourself with well-informed advisors requires the ability to recognize someone that is well-informed. This is difficult to do without having some level of knowledge yourself.
It seems to me something like MATLAB would be much more appropriate. MATLAB is designed for numerical computing, and has a programming language that allows for easy manipulation of vectors and matrices and creation of graphs. Lots of common functions that would be useful for physics are built in.
The low level details that computer science students should be concerned with, like the internal representation of a matrix, are things that most physics students probably don't need to worry about.
Presumably it'll follow a microtransaction model similar to that of Maple Story, where the core gameplay is free but there are optional enhancements that you can buy.
How is this different from what compilers and linkers need to do?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370071/
From everything I've read Stephen Hawking is quite good-natured and has a remarkable sense of humor. He has commented that he's flattered by "MC Hawking", and he showed he was willing to poke fun at himself on the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest I".
(Al Gore got the best line of the episode, though, with "I'm a 10th level Vice President!")
Think of the athletes, particularly ones competing in age-sensitive sports such as gymnastics. It's very uncommon for a gymnast--who likely trained for many hours a day for their entire childhood--to get to compete in more than two Olympics. More than three is almost unheard of (though there are rare exceptions like Oksana Chusovitina).
Taking away one Olympics from these athletes for political reasons would be highly unfair to them.
Along the same lines, we once had a Superhero party using a _very_ broad definition of "superhero". I remember one person came dressed as "Unit Vector Man"--basically he wore a shirt with a large i-hat symbol drawn on it, and a triangle-shaped hat so that he was shaped like an arrow pointing upward (when standing).
Apart from the costumes it was like any other party: dancing, drinking, talking, etc. But the silly costumes were great conversation starters.
If you only need a few sentences on something as background, there is a good chance that information can be considered "common knowledge" (even if you didn't happen to know it ahead of time) and probably doesn't need a citation.
The general rule--at least as I've been told--is not to avoid using encyclopedias but to avoid citing encyclopedias. Since information that is relevant to the main thesis of the paper needs to be properly cited, this rule is adequate to require proper research (beyond encyclopedias) without taking away a potentially useful tool.
Who uses them in the first place?
I've been on several dozen flights--even flew first class a couple times--and I've never, ever seen anyone use the in-flight phone.
Presumably people in highly sensitive areas already need to identify themselves anytime they enter the premises. What if, after identifying themselves, they were given badges (selected at random) with RFID chips containing random numbers, and leaving meant dropping off said badges? Without access to the database tracking which people were assigned which badges, it would be impossible to tell which number is associated with which person at any given time. So the content stored by the RFID chip would be useless (assuming that the database is properly secured), and detecting just the presence of an RFID chip wouldn't necessarily give away information about that person.
At a glance the patent "Method and apparatus for identifying unique client users from user behavioral data" seems to apply: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7092926-description.html
Maybe the penalty for losing or dropping out of a civil lawsuit should be partly related to how many lawsuits that party initiated?
The more lawsuits you file, the greater your responsibility should be to make sure they aren't frivolous.
The surface of Venus might not allow for colonization, but what about the upper atmosphere of Venus?
Most of you can figure this out yourselves, I'm sure, but just in case, here's one way:
/etc/hosts"
$ whois cuba-hemingway.com
[...]
Name Servers:
ns1.digitalpanorama.net
ns2.digitalpanorama.net
[...]
$ nslookup www.cuba-hemingway.com ns1.digitalpanorama.net
Server: ns1.digitalpanorama.net
Address: 24.244.141.113#53
www.cuba-hemingway.com canonical name = cuba-hemingway.com.
Name: cuba-hemingway.com
Address: 24.244.141.117
$ sudo sh -c "echo 24.244.141.117 www.cuba-hemingway.com >>
Repeat for each domain.
Sorry! is a Parker Brothers game.
It could not be at any other altitude without some kind of continuous propulsion (or other force besides gravity acting on it).
If I remember right (it's been a while since I've studied any physics) a simplified explanation looks something like this:
(1) a = v^2 / r [equation for centripetal acceleration]. For an object to maintain a constant speed in a circular path, it must accelerate at a rate of v^2 / r perpendicular to the direction of motion, where v = velocity and r = radius of circle.
(2) a = m_Earth G / r^2 [equation for gravitational acceleration]. The acceleration must be due to the Earth's gravity alone, so we use the equation for acceleration due to gravity. m_Earth is a constant (the mass of the earth); G is the gravitational constant.
(3) v = 2 pi r / t_rotation. For the orbit to be geosynchronous, it must take the same length of time to complete one orbit as it takes the Earth to complete one rotation (t_rotation).
(4) r = r_altitude + r_Earth. The center of the earth is the center of the satellite's orbit; the radius of the circle is the altitude of the satellite (distance from satellite to surface of the Earth) plus the radius of the Earth at the equator (distance from the surface of the Earth to the center). It must be at the equator because the direction of motion of the satellite must be the same as the direction of the Earth's surface below the satellite.
Solving these equations simultaneously for r_altitude, you get:
r_altitude = (m_Earth G t_rotation^2 / 4 pi^2)^(1/3) - r_Earth
Plug in approximate values for the constants:
m_Earth = 5.97 * 10^24 [kg]
G = 6.67 * 10^(-11) [m^3 / (kg s^2)]
t_rotation = 86400 [s]
pi = 3.14
r_Earth = 6.38 * 10^6 [m]
And you get 3.59*10^7 meters, or 22,300 miles. You can substitute in the mass, time of rotation, and radius of any other planet/moon/etc. to find the altitude of a geostationary orbit around something other than Earth.
It probably requires a net hack.
Don't forget the 2-3 hours spent in the initial airport for security screening and all, and the time spent in the destination airport at the baggage claim.
Both the 5mx and Netbook have been used successfully by mountaineers; the Netbook in particular was used by a Hungarian team while climbing Mount Everest. They have been out of production for years but it shouldn't be difficult to pick them up (probably used) for a small fraction of what a normal laptop would cost.
http://www.psionteklogix.com/public.aspx?s=us&p=News&POid=367
http://www.project-himalaya.com/news-00-shishapangma.html
I have never used a Netbook, but was pleased with the 5mx that I used years ago (though not for world travel or mountain climbing or anything like that). It fit in my pocket, had a VERY comfortable keyboard for its size (I could type at roughly 2/3 of the speed that I type on a full-sized keyboard) and ran for a good 30 hours or so on a pair of AA batteries. It survived a number of short falls--about 3 feet onto hard surfaces--without any problems.
Both use CompactFlash for removable storage, and can be used with a cell phone or modem for Internet access. The Netbook has a PCMCIA slot as well, which (with appropriate cards) adds Ethernet or wireless capabilities.
http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?p=321802
The 5mx probably won't be of much help when it comes to creating backup copies of photos, but the Netbook might with appropriate accessories (either sending them over the Internet or mailing home CompactFlash cards).
And yes, both will run Linux if you choose, though there are some limitiations.
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/howtos/netbook_new/index.htm
http://staff.washington.edu/dushaw/psion/openpsion/
http://linux-7110.sourceforge.net/howtos/series5mx_new/index.htm
EverQuest is a relatively low-bandwidth game. Keep in mind that it is designed to work with a dialup connection, and there are still people that play it that way, typically people living in rural areas as they are less likely to have broadband options available.
Until several years ago the meter in the upper left corner of the screen included bytes transferred. The traffic--presumably counting incoming traffic only--rarely exceeded 1 KB/sec, excluding overhead. It occasionally spiked to 2-3 KB in a second in a busy area, but seconds with several hundred bytes transferred were far more common. (The meter has since been simplified and now only shows ping time and a percentage roughly corresponding to packet loss.)
I actually prefer the "nipple mouse" to a touchpad or even a conventional mouse, especially when combined with a scroll button for my thumb. Switching between typing and using the mouse requires a lot less movement.
I don't think that's the case. If I remember right, the Planck length is the smallest distance that can be measured in principle, which should set an upper bound on the amount of information that can be encoded in the physical arrangement of a fixed number of atoms (however many atoms make up a vinyl record).
I suppose you could argue that an arbitrary number of atoms could be crammed into an object with the shape of a vinyl record, but eventually the object would become so massive that it would collapse and form a black hole, by which point it would no longer meet the definition of a vinyl record.
The copyright notice will be in white.