Built by the Webb Research Corporation in Falmouth, Mass., the new submersible has successfully traveled back and forth between two of the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Thomas and St. Croix, more than 20 times. WHOI researchers plan to use the data gathered by the craft to study ocean currents in the area.
Since when is something that physically exists and has been tested in the field vaporware?
Or fourth option: we're misinterpreting the text, helped along by reading our desired conclusion into it. Apparently another quote concerning the same object mentions that it had a flared rim "like a lily". So if you measure the diameter of the flared rim, but the circumference of the (narrower) cylindrical portion of the sides, you're definitely not going to end up with a good approximation of pi.
Personally I think there are much more valid reasons for criticising the scientific validity & alleged inerrancy of the Bible than that little gem. It really takes effort to read that quote as a statement that pi = 3.0.
There are other less credible justifications: eg, that the cubit was not a well defined unit (doubtful in my mind, you wouldn't be able to do very good architecture or even carpentry without a measurement unit consistent from one dimension of an object to another). And even utterly specious arguments hinging on numerological rubbish.
Maybe it was back then. Ever played Exalted?
It's not that hard to generate dice pools in the 20-30x d10 range.
Shadowrun is positively minimal in comparison.
Other game companies I know (eg Catalyst) fix errata in their rulebooks with every reprint. However, there are rarely actual changes to the rules, and a complete "delta" file is available off the web for the benefit of people with older printings (Games Workshop take note!). Personally I think it's a good idea.
For people who don't engage in peer to peer file sharing, 24mbit and 5GB/month is definitely the better deal. 5GB gets you a hell of a lot of net browsing, gaming & email, and would be sufficient quota for a very expensive iTunes music store habit. Once decent quality downloadable movies come on the scene, and Steam & its ilk start to dominate the PC gaming distribution channels, that 5GB would start to look a little pokey, though...
Create a universal interface table for all applications that can be written to by current software manufacturers. It should be small and light, and when you run the new OS, it should automatically collect what it needs from the Microsoft site or the primary vendor site. It would put most of the processing work on the original application and leave the OS safe to act as traffic cop without getting bogged down.
Ok. Evidently I fail at operating system architecture, because I can't even parse this paragraph. What on earth is he going on about? It seems like automated package/dependency management... (collecting what it needs from vendor or Microsoft's sites) or maybe kernel/userspace divisions or control of access to hardware (allowing the OS to act as traffic cop). I don't get it. Someone help me out?
I looked at the Wikipedia article about LIGO and noticed this interesting question in the discussion. No one has answered it there. Apparently it's from some forum somewhere. Maybe someone here can explain the solution to this "conundrum" for me?
Just getting back to LIGO for a while (sorry if this isn't strictly on topic), I understand that two long laser beams, at 90 degrees to each other, split from one laser source originally by a semi-silvered mirror, are re-combined at a sensitive detector to see whether their wave forms are cancelling or reinforcing. A passing gravity wave will sequentially lengthen and shorten the wavelength of only one of these light beams because the space-time continuum is distorted in only the direction of travel of the gravity wave. This, it is assumed, will cause the interference of the two laser beams to vary also - causing a variation in the light level measured at the detector. I still don't see why LIGO will work because a gravity wave is indiscriminate in the way it distorts things.
Everything is embedded in our 4-space, including the laser light waves lying along the direction taken by the gravity wave. As the gravity wave compresses and then dilates space-time, the LIGO tube and the laser beam within it will compress and dilate in perfect synchrony. Even the human observers' heads will compress and dilate as the gravity wave passes! The number of light waves per unit length of the LIGO tube (the laser wavelength) will appear unchanged because the actual physical length of the tube will shorten and lengthen as the light waves do, and as the eyeballs of the experimenters do too. If the waves of the re-united beams were re-inforcing peak-to-peak before the gravity wave arrived, they will remain peak-to-peak as the gravity wave passes through also. This alteration in the length of the tube, or arm, of the LIGO experiment, together with the variation in the wavelength of the laser beam, will be completely undetectable for that reason.
It's not a case of the gravity waves being too weak to detect, their influence is universal within our frame of reference and therefore cannot be directly detected.. by definition! The above is the way I see the situation. But dozens of scientists have spent billions of dollars designing LIGO, so I have to conclude I'm completely incorrect in my reasoning. Can anyone tell me how you can measure a distortion of space-time (4-space) if you, and every tool you use to measure the distortion, including light, are part of the same space-time being distorted?
I'd be fascinated to see what's wrong with the reasoning here!
There's plenty of humour that doesn't rely on aggression or put-downs, but instead simply surprising the brain. Wordplay & punning come to mind, where the humour derives from the creation of an unexpected combination or juxtaposition of concepts.
Who's the victim of aggression for a joke like this:
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1470.html
Has the tool's compliance to the tool's specification been certified 100% as well?
Otherwise you've just shifted the possibility of bugs out one layer: maybe there's a class of specification non-compliance that the compliance-checking tool can't find!
"Why is it that new products appear for the closed Windows platform before thet appear for the open Linux platform? They should appear simultaneously. [Emphasis mine]."
Surely that's obvious.
It comes down to one thing: Google's products are intended to be profitable, not primarily to serve an ideology. Sure, Google does have an ideology, but they are also a business.
And when it comes down to actually making a crust, what's more important... supporting an ideologically-rewarding OS, or actually getting your products out to a significant share of the marketplace?
Without wanting to disrespect your preferences, I find that for infrequently used programs, I'm much better off typing the first few letters in the search box which is conveniently close to the Start button.
That gets the shortcuts to appear in the Start menu pretty much right away for me - far faster than I could parse the huge list of shortcuts and navigate through 2-3 submenus in XP, anyway.
Personally the new Start menu is one of my favourite things about Vista. The other is the well integrated & really quite effective search & indexing. The rest, I could take or leave.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh well. At least the article doesn't have mention the word "bricked".
Or fourth option: we're misinterpreting the text, helped along by reading our desired conclusion into it. Apparently another quote concerning the same object mentions that it had a flared rim "like a lily". So if you measure the diameter of the flared rim, but the circumference of the (narrower) cylindrical portion of the sides, you're definitely not going to end up with a good approximation of pi. Personally I think there are much more valid reasons for criticising the scientific validity & alleged inerrancy of the Bible than that little gem. It really takes effort to read that quote as a statement that pi = 3.0. There are other less credible justifications: eg, that the cubit was not a well defined unit (doubtful in my mind, you wouldn't be able to do very good architecture or even carpentry without a measurement unit consistent from one dimension of an object to another). And even utterly specious arguments hinging on numerological rubbish.
Maybe it was back then. Ever played Exalted? It's not that hard to generate dice pools in the 20-30x d10 range. Shadowrun is positively minimal in comparison.
Other game companies I know (eg Catalyst) fix errata in their rulebooks with every reprint. However, there are rarely actual changes to the rules, and a complete "delta" file is available off the web for the benefit of people with older printings (Games Workshop take note!). Personally I think it's a good idea.
Speaking of fourth editions and rulesets of potential disastrousness... what do you think of SR4?
For people who don't engage in peer to peer file sharing, 24mbit and 5GB/month is definitely the better deal. 5GB gets you a hell of a lot of net browsing, gaming & email, and would be sufficient quota for a very expensive iTunes music store habit. Once decent quality downloadable movies come on the scene, and Steam & its ilk start to dominate the PC gaming distribution channels, that 5GB would start to look a little pokey, though...
That simultaneously encapsulates everything awesome and awful about GURPS.
I looked at the Wikipedia article about LIGO and noticed this interesting question in the discussion. No one has answered it there. Apparently it's from some forum somewhere. Maybe someone here can explain the solution to this "conundrum" for me?
I'd be fascinated to see what's wrong with the reasoning here!
There's plenty of humour that doesn't rely on aggression or put-downs, but instead simply surprising the brain. Wordplay & punning come to mind, where the humour derives from the creation of an unexpected combination or juxtaposition of concepts. Who's the victim of aggression for a joke like this: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1470.html
Has the tool's compliance to the tool's specification been certified 100% as well?
Otherwise you've just shifted the possibility of bugs out one layer: maybe there's a class of specification non-compliance that the compliance-checking tool can't find!
Atheism may not be a religion per se according to your criteria. However, it is undeniably a religious position & statement of belief.
Feh. Theocracies hardly have a monopoly on death and persecution.
I'd say that theocracy & death/persecution are, in fact, pretty much orthogonal to each other.
Of COURSE you can choose.
:D
Do you want Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate?
That's *FIVE* choices!
"Why is it that new products appear for the closed Windows platform before thet appear for the open Linux platform? They should appear simultaneously. [Emphasis mine]."
Surely that's obvious.
It comes down to one thing: Google's products are intended to be profitable, not primarily to serve an ideology. Sure, Google does have an ideology, but they are also a business.
And when it comes down to actually making a crust, what's more important... supporting an ideologically-rewarding OS, or actually getting your products out to a significant share of the marketplace?
Without wanting to disrespect your preferences, I find that for infrequently used programs, I'm much better off typing the first few letters in the search box which is conveniently close to the Start button. That gets the shortcuts to appear in the Start menu pretty much right away for me - far faster than I could parse the huge list of shortcuts and navigate through 2-3 submenus in XP, anyway. Personally the new Start menu is one of my favourite things about Vista. The other is the well integrated & really quite effective search & indexing. The rest, I could take or leave.
Because no one ever installs programs from the Control Panel, so the name was confusing?
RIAA: "[I]llegally copied music usually sounds 'atrocious.'"
:)
That'll be thanks to the wonderful lossless, digital ripping technology we have now!
At least, Occam's Razor tells me that's the most likely explanation for the sound of Top 40 pirate tracks...
Ahem. Sorry...
So, the students don't run Linux... they bicycle it instead!
Huh. I must be the only person whose reaction was "why are athletes taking combat drugs?"
Hey, it lets them shave a few characters out of "Hello, world."
Who says code optimization is dead!