What exactly would happen if the Earth stopped spinning?
Not to mention everything would fly off into space because there wouldn't be appropriate gravitational forces anymore.
nooooo, gravity is caused by mass, not by spinning. At least that's what I've been told.
You've been told correctly. Gravity is a function of mass and distance. Having said that, if the Earth did stop rotating, and stopped VERY fast (in five seconds, let's say), everything would tend to fly around (though not into space).
The Earth rotates one full turn in a day. Duh. That means that at the equator, everything moves at 24000 miles per day, or 1000 miles per hour. That's faster than the speed of sound. If you are standing on an airplane (or a bullet train:) which is traveling at 1000 mph, and said craft decelerates, you will fly forward in true Hollywood Stuntman fashion. The difference between you and the stuntman is that you will die when you hit pavement at 998 mph.
Same situation if the Earth stops rotating, we will all keep moving, and we'll all fly east really fast. Unless you're near the poles, where the velocity will be very low.
BTW, the reason that we wouldn't all fly into space is that 1000mph is not escape velocity.
Never heard of Niven?!?!? I'm crushed. Why don't you like me?
... Psst. Look at my nick again.
Louis Wu is a recuring character in Niven's books. He plays a major role in the Ringworld series, he's seen in various Kzin stories, and he just crops up every now-and-then.
Occasionally a "spreadsheet problem" has one or two bits which are really "math-program problems". Your straight-forward calculation can sometimes have a quadratic in the middle, and sometimes it's a quintic, while other times it is a quartic - and then you have to integrate the bloody thing. If the equation was constant, you could just do the integration on paper and plug the equation into your spreadsheet and get-on-with-it. But you can't, you have to somehow make Excel (or Gnumeric) integrate your polynomial. And I don't think that they can.
Mathematica has an add-on available which lets you link to Excel, and link from Excel to Mathematica. You can send that equation over to Mathematica, have it evaluate it, and send it back.
I've never used this feature, but I hear that it's a real life-saver. Plus, Mathematica is one of the easiest math programs to start using, and one of the most powerful if you keep using it.
You have a budget? Wow, I'm working on our church group's site, and I plan on hosting it on my own site.:)
I bought this book a few months ago, and if I hadn't been down with pneumonia for a few weeks, I'd probably be done with it. But my experience so far has been very positive. I've gone through Learning Perl, and had a few classes in C and Fortran (Hooray for university programing requirements: Fortran. Sheesh.), and PfWSM is the best so far - it is teaching me useful bits while showing me the larger language.
Now if I had more content to put in the websites I'm managing, that would make things easier to automate. It's kinda hard to automate when your two test runs do all of the conversion you need.:)
Does this get rid of the karma cap? Or just make it hard to tell when you've hit it? I had ~38, and I'm now "excellent", so if I hit 50, will I be "Most Excellent"? (And then George Carlin will appear in a telephone booth to take me through time. "Party on dude!")
That might work, if you have the right people in your company. If you employ a few mechanical engineers, they had HVAC in school, so they can look over their old schoolbooks, spend some time working on it, and design your HVAC system. But remember to double the capacity they spec out; it's surprisingly easy to not put in enough. (If you have too much HVAC, you've spent too much money (and you can expand later without adding HVAC capacity), but if you don't have enough, you have a nightmare of new installations and reduced operational capacity.) If you don't have any ME's (EE's and programers in an electronics/software firm, for example), contract that out.
But you can get an estimate before you try in-house design. And it is hard to duplicate an architect's skills and experience. A college roommate was in architecture, and he was learning some esoteric stuff. If you need more than one isolated room, think about an architect, she can help you iron out the layout and plan for the future.
Talk to the professionals, get their estimates. You are making an investment, do it right.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "Command Center". Is that a room to oversee a network from? Or do you run physical machines (manufacturing plant, pump systems, etc)?
Bingo. Plus, what can Piers tell "the community" about his switch that would lead to making the switch easier for others in the future? What should be kept, what improved, what hidden by pretty GUI wrappers, and what should be tossed out? What pushed him through the problems? Which distro? (Asked only to gauge how hard those problems were. When I installed RH 7.2 I found it easier than my last Windows install.) I guess this question(s) goes beyond an interview, maybe a short description on his website.
OK, to clarify, I'm asking if the specific dept (the explosion-of-a-thousand-suns dept.) was inspired by The Court of a Thousand Suns. Although I do appreciate the explanation involving MAD magazine. It's been a while since I've read that.
Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. The crew of DS9 was on some backwater planet, and being chased by Gem'hadar. The conniving alien who controlled the Gem'hadar was proposing an aliance/end of hostilities, using his technical gear as leverage. He said something like, "I have this great technology here, and you have one of those famous StarFleet Engineers, who can create a warp drive with a roll of duct tape, three paperclips, and a tin can. Together we can get off of this horrible little rock we're stranded on."
The computer you want sounds like something not even Geordi + Data + Cheif O'Brien could make. But I do want one.:)
Is there anything on tv which is worth archiving? You are not going to watch Babylon 5 twice, or are you?
No, of course not. Twice is not nearly enough.
First there was watching it as it came out. That took five years. (Well, more, if you count the wait between the pilot movie and the beginning of the first season.) Then I watched them again, as I taped them on Sci-Fi. It was during this round that I started recording episode numbers and titles, to make certain that I got all of the episodes. Then I watched each episode again, looking for good quotes to copy down. (I collect quotes. One of these days I'll organize them.) I haven't watched the entire series since the quote copy round of seasons, but I have watched individual episodes; usually I rememeber a quote, look it up in my records, start reading the surrounding quotes, remember why I like that episode so much, and then pull out the tape and watch it again.
Let's see, that's at least three times I watched each episode. Twice, no, that's not nearly enough.
Re:Leftist Propaganda **SPOILERS**
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1
Don't know. I'm not terribly impressed by the media, but they would probably get to it after a year or so. The ~6 years it had been going suggests either an implausible plot hole, or a few canned "meetings" with the pre-cogs or people posing as pre-cogs.
Sounds to me like a plot hole. Where's my Mack truck when I need it?
Re:Leftist Propaganda **SPOILERS**
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 2
Oh, and of course everyone would be cool with them immersing the precogs in a vat of goo for all their lives. Starting the movie with this premise, something which would never be legitimate, and then breaking it down at the end to help us feel good about the conclusion is the cinematic equivalent of a straw man.
But, we learn from eaves-dropping that the public is told that "it's good to be a pre-cog". A tour guide explains that pre-cogs each get their own gym, and a few other things I don't remember. This happens when Cruise's character is outside of "Precrime", altering his face to let him go inside. He kneels down by a fountain, and we hear the tour guide describe a bit of how pre-cogs supposedly live.
The public is never let near the pre-cogs, so lies can be told about them quite easily.
One of the posts has already said that you infringe "When the lawyer says so."
There was a discussion on/. a year or two ago about how to learn programming without copying. One piece of advice was to read through the code/algorithm you're trying to learn, put it away, and try to implement it yourself. Without looking at the original - without 'cheating'. You could try having the developer spec out the "neat" solution, and have someone else implement it. But you still might run into lawyer trouble.
BTW, did the "neat" solution involve anything which was patented? If so, my suspicion of lawyers inclines me to pronounce this method DOA.
When I posted, the parent comment was Score:5, Funny, but the same guy posted the same comment (with slightly different formating) just 3 minutes before, and it's at Score:0, Redundant.
That which does not destroy you makes you stronger.
This seems to be a variation on one I've seen on a lot of 'tough guy' sports shirts: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger."
I heard this rather funny variation on that recently.
"That which does not kill me better start running."
Join AAA. You don't have to get their insurance, but their services will more than pay for themselves on this trip. If you need a tow, flash the AAA card. AAA can help you plan (keyword: 'trip-ticket', where AAA puts together a route you choose, giving you maps and stuff of the area you want to go. It's helped my family on decades worth of trips.), get you maps (members get maps free:), and it's nice to have that extra bit of security; if you get in car trouble, AAA helps.
Also look at Thomas Guides for maps. They don't cover the whole country, but if you plan on visiting a city they have a map for, get it. When I moved to the Seattle area a year ago, that was the first thing I bought, while filling up the rental car with gas. It's a big book with street-level detail maps, large overview maps, and a set of maps in between those scales. Handiest thing since sliced bread. (What was the standard by which sliced bread was measured?) Powerful, logical, not too hard to use; sounds like a good OS.:)
Speaking of which, I've been looking for ways to install programs as a priveleged user, but with access limited to only what's needed to install a program. Is there a way to do this? Do I need to create a user and manipulate permissions to do this? Is there an easier solution.
I haven't checked the authenticity of programs I've downloaded (it's a good thing that I haven't downloaded too much), so I'm living dangerously; I'd like to be safer.
Wouldn't this be very similar to the practice of having everyone log in on a traditional Unix, like the HP AIX we used at my university until the mid '90s? Are you talking about more than email access? Is this supposed to be a full-featured desktop for writing reports and creating presentations?
I'm intrigued by the idea, but please clarify some activities anticipated on these computers.
Slashdot Mirror
But, where are the underpants. We must have underpants.
The Earth rotates one full turn in a day. Duh. That means that at the equator, everything moves at 24000 miles per day, or 1000 miles per hour. That's faster than the speed of sound. If you are standing on an airplane (or a bullet train :) which is traveling at 1000 mph, and said craft decelerates, you will fly forward in true Hollywood Stuntman fashion. The difference between you and the stuntman is that you will die when you hit pavement at 998 mph.
Same situation if the Earth stops rotating, we will all keep moving, and we'll all fly east really fast. Unless you're near the poles, where the velocity will be very low.
BTW, the reason that we wouldn't all fly into space is that 1000mph is not escape velocity.
Louis Wu is a recuring character in Niven's books. He plays a major role in the Ringworld series, he's seen in various Kzin stories, and he just crops up every now-and-then.
In a related story, the earth is getting fatter. Growing at the equator. Hmmm, sounds familiar.
Enter Mathematica.
Mathematica has an add-on available which lets you link to Excel, and link from Excel to Mathematica. You can send that equation over to Mathematica, have it evaluate it, and send it back.
I've never used this feature, but I hear that it's a real life-saver. Plus, Mathematica is one of the easiest math programs to start using, and one of the most powerful if you keep using it.
What year was that, again? :)
I bought this book a few months ago, and if I hadn't been down with pneumonia for a few weeks, I'd probably be done with it. But my experience so far has been very positive. I've gone through Learning Perl, and had a few classes in C and Fortran (Hooray for university programing requirements: Fortran. Sheesh.), and PfWSM is the best so far - it is teaching me useful bits while showing me the larger language.
Now if I had more content to put in the websites I'm managing, that would make things easier to automate. It's kinda hard to automate when your two test runs do all of the conversion you need. :)
But you can get an estimate before you try in-house design. And it is hard to duplicate an architect's skills and experience. A college roommate was in architecture, and he was learning some esoteric stuff. If you need more than one isolated room, think about an architect, she can help you iron out the layout and plan for the future.
Talk to the professionals, get their estimates. You are making an investment, do it right.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "Command Center". Is that a room to oversee a network from? Or do you run physical machines (manufacturing plant, pump systems, etc)?
Bingo. Plus, what can Piers tell "the community" about his switch that would lead to making the switch easier for others in the future? What should be kept, what improved, what hidden by pretty GUI wrappers, and what should be tossed out? What pushed him through the problems? Which distro? (Asked only to gauge how hard those problems were. When I installed RH 7.2 I found it easier than my last Windows install.) I guess this question(s) goes beyond an interview, maybe a short description on his website.
True, but the commercial aired during the year 1984, during the Superbowl, in fact.
OK, to clarify, I'm asking if the specific dept (the explosion-of-a-thousand-suns dept.) was inspired by The Court of a Thousand Suns. Although I do appreciate the explanation involving MAD magazine. It's been a while since I've read that.
Is the from the dept of ... a reference to the third Sten book, The Court of a Thousand Suns, by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole?
The computer you want sounds like something not even Geordi + Data + Cheif O'Brien could make. But I do want one. :)
First there was watching it as it came out. That took five years. (Well, more, if you count the wait between the pilot movie and the beginning of the first season.) Then I watched them again, as I taped them on Sci-Fi. It was during this round that I started recording episode numbers and titles, to make certain that I got all of the episodes. Then I watched each episode again, looking for good quotes to copy down. (I collect quotes. One of these days I'll organize them.) I haven't watched the entire series since the quote copy round of seasons, but I have watched individual episodes; usually I rememeber a quote, look it up in my records, start reading the surrounding quotes, remember why I like that episode so much, and then pull out the tape and watch it again.
Let's see, that's at least three times I watched each episode. Twice, no, that's not nearly enough.
Sounds to me like a plot hole. Where's my Mack truck when I need it?
The public is never let near the pre-cogs, so lies can be told about them quite easily.
There was a discussion on /. a year or two ago about how to learn programming without copying. One piece of advice was to read through the code/algorithm you're trying to learn, put it away, and try to implement it yourself. Without looking at the original - without 'cheating'. You could try having the developer spec out the "neat" solution, and have someone else implement it. But you still might run into lawyer trouble.
BTW, did the "neat" solution involve anything which was patented? If so, my suspicion of lawyers inclines me to pronounce this method DOA.
For a definition of randomness, see /. moderation.
Also look at Thomas Guides for maps. They don't cover the whole country, but if you plan on visiting a city they have a map for, get it. When I moved to the Seattle area a year ago, that was the first thing I bought, while filling up the rental car with gas. It's a big book with street-level detail maps, large overview maps, and a set of maps in between those scales. Handiest thing since sliced bread. (What was the standard by which sliced bread was measured?) Powerful, logical, not too hard to use; sounds like a good OS. :)
Enjoy the trip. Bring TP.
I might have to take off my aluminum foil hat to do that! :) Thanks for the advice, I'd forgotten about No-Such-Agency's mod.
I haven't checked the authenticity of programs I've downloaded (it's a good thing that I haven't downloaded too much), so I'm living dangerously; I'd like to be safer.
I'm intrigued by the idea, but please clarify some activities anticipated on these computers.