I'm concerned about the songs. I skipped over them after I read the hobbit the first time.
Frankly, though, I'm more concerned about the casting of Freeman: I've a nagging concern that I'll spend a significant portion of the movie looking at his "confused" face. I wonder if the casting people realise there are more than a half-dozen British actors out there...
I see, I think. You're saying that the difficulty in detecting Pluto comes not from its inclination, but from the very long period. That clears it up, thanks.
By the by, assuming a system where all the planets' orbits are on the same plane and given a sufficiently long observation, could one use something akin to Fourier analysis to determine the number, size, orbital period (and hence mass) of all the planets in that system? That's not even getting started on spectroscopy and all the other wonderful things one can learn about distant objects by simply looking at them!
Perhaps I'm being dense but why does the inclination of the target planet's orbit (relative to the other planets orbiting that star) matter? Can't a planet can be detected using the transit method so long as the orbit is one that causes the target to pass through our line of sight to the star?
Given the example of Pluto, I don't understand why it couldn't be observed by someone whose line of sight passes through both its orbit and the Sun. I must be missing something.
FWIW "being" is present tense, but not always in the way you suggest. Let's take another common legal use as an example. A last will and testament:
I, [name], being of sound mind and body...
In this case a little Shakespearian intonation might help: "being preparèd". If you look at it like that then the parent might have a valid point. Might, but I doubt very much that this was the intended meaning.
Isn't that like picking this weeks lottery numbers based on up to the minute analysis of how previous draws have gone?
No, there's more to the game than mere chance. In a way it's more akin to chess, where in a given situation some moves are more likely to lead to a win than others.
Disclaimer: I know bugger all about American football, other than it involves two goals and a ball.
If coaching introduced technology without limits, it'd end up like Wall Street: a massive technological arms race to compute the "right" outcome faster than the opponents, and humans would be eliminated from the picture. YMMV, but I'm not interested in watching a sporting contest like that.
...it would be legal for them to be used on us, but illegal for us to use them..
This isn't without precedent. Take the lawful use of force, deprivation of liberty... or life.
Of course, comparing surveillance to murder/execution is like apples and oranges. Just where does one draw the line? In an ideal world we pay our representatives to decide these things fairly, but in practice, well...
Why are political donations not anonymous? If the politicians do not know who gave the money, they can not be bribed.
Politician: Hi there, how are you today? Lobbyist: Oh, I'm fine thanks. By the way, you know that anonymous $50,000 contribution your campaign received last week? Politician: Yes, what of it? Lobbyist: If you want another one next month, please vote for $bill.
We should also find a way for talented people creating the content to be able to keep doing what they do and not having to get a job at McD which would cut into their time of producing their art. A little bit of socialism could help.
Sounds a lot like Communism to me, not that that's a bad thing in itself. From each... to each..., and all that.
Unfortunately there are still some compatibility issues with some games e.g. DK2 and Messiah (though that last one was hard enough to work even back in the day). Credit where credit's due, though, GOG have done some great work so I say good luck to them.
I don't know if there's an equivalent of FFCoder for Linux, but off the top of my head I'd say Handbrake will probably be of some use to you. Expression might work under Wine but in any case the scripting part, which you would definitely need (no batch processing without it), is in Powershell so you're SOL there I think.
The key with MP4 files is the audio: the XBox will only play files with two-channel AAC audio (the 4GB limit is mainly just a problem with HD stuff*). If you've a Mac then get a copy of MP4Tools - it works very well. For Windows I recommend FFCoder wholeheartedly. Note that the former is nagware but worth the few dollars it costs to fix that; the latter is free.
Personally I'd give my I teeth for MKV or at least soft-sub support.
*I've used WMV-HD and Expression Encoder - CLI scripting is there with a little work - but if I run up against anything with soft-subs I need to re-encode with something else and burn the subtitles in. Of course one needs as close to lossless encoding as is possible and that intermediate step practically doubles the amount of time it takes to get something that the XBox will play. Incidentally, WMV-HD is pretty damn good IMO, sub issues aside.
No need to worry fellow Britons! Thanks to the change of government we too will be getting elected police chiefs!
All this localism stuff is quite ingenious, really: when enough time has passed for simply blaming labour for everything to be implausible they'll be able to simply turn and say "you voted them in, blame yourselves you proles!"
In light of how woefully sparse iPlayer is in terms of the BBC's back catalogue (take a look) I'd like to see a test case of a UK resident sharing programmes with their countrymen. In principle, I don't see how Aunty could complain about us sharing between ourselves what we've already paid for. By way of comparison take a look at 4oD, another catch-up service from another free* UK broadcaster.
Of course, ensuring that only UK residents can access such a P2P system, there's the rub.
*They get a portion of the license fee, I believe, but supplement it with advertiser revenue.
Do mods really miss half-decent First Posts and then change their mind when they see a comment like this?
I doubt it.
Hell no. But I do mod comments like those as off-topic, as well as comments like this one. It's a good thing I'm not so mean-spirited as to click troll instead in the hopes of messing with their karma.
Seriously, though, guys give it a rest. You're not changing the mods' opinion (not favourably anyway) and you're pushing other potentially deserving comments further down the page.
If by win, you mean stand a fair chance of getting to the interview stage, probably. I suspect lacking a good answer to "How did you solve the problem?" would be a bit of an issue, until the whole thing was blown wide open anyway...
"Cheating is often more efficient." 7 of 9
I'm no expert, but isn't showing initiative a desirable quality in candidates?
No, it's not better. It just punts the problem from the unclear definition of "element" to the unclear definition of "chemically"
Very well, I'll try again, though I suspect I'll fare no better.
"You can't turn an atom of X into a lighter atom of Y just by mixing chemicals together in a beaker"
I can make Uranium into Thorium by mixing two chemicals - Uranium and Uranium (and then waiting for the reaction to finish). Your definition needs to make it clear WHY this is not a chemical reaction.
You can't make thorium from uranium by mixing it with more uranium. The uranium would decay anyway; you wouldn't have actually done anything to bring about the change. Perhaps it's just semantics but this is equivalent to saying you can make a hammer fall when you drop it by saying the magic word when you let go.
We arbitrarily draw a line between "chemical" events and "nuclear" events based on what particles are involved, what they're doing, and so on. But it's still an aribitrary destinction created by humans and there are still oddball situations that straddle the line.
I'm neither a physicist nor a chemist but I was taught that chemical reactions are all about interactions between atoms' electrons and that such interactions don't give rise to changes in the nucleus. I'm happy to be corrected on this point, and I'd be very happy to hear about the line-straddling situations you mention.
Some things just aren't made of atoms in the usual sense. There's positronium, free neutrons, atoms with a bound muon, neutron stars...
Indeed. No argument there.
The superheavy atoms in TFA are a case where the usual definition of element is a bit weak, since their real-world behavior is nothing like that of stable elements.
I'm not going to dispute this either, but I would ask that you consider the atom's point of view. As someone once said (I regret the name escapes me) "[subatomic particles] operate on a different timescale; it may not look like much on my watch but it's eternity to them". Superheavy elements seem to behave very differently to us, but aren't they very much like 'normal' elements albeit with an extremely short half-life?
It might be wiser to redefine "element" in a way that specifically excludes them and call them something else instead, much like we redefined "planet" to exclude Pluto and Eris.
What definition do you suggest? I was merely trying to improve on the faulty one given by saying you can't change one element into another through chemistry.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm concerned about the songs. I skipped over them after I read the hobbit the first time.
Frankly, though, I'm more concerned about the casting of Freeman: I've a nagging concern that I'll spend a significant portion of the movie looking at his "confused" face. I wonder if the casting people realise there are more than a half-dozen British actors out there...
I'd like to see a President/Congress with the balls to purchase and donate a few million doses for Africa.
The Gates Foundation seems a more likely candidate.
I see, I think. You're saying that the difficulty in detecting Pluto comes not from its inclination, but from the very long period. That clears it up, thanks.
By the by, assuming a system where all the planets' orbits are on the same plane and given a sufficiently long observation, could one use something akin to Fourier analysis to determine the number, size, orbital period (and hence mass) of all the planets in that system? That's not even getting started on spectroscopy and all the other wonderful things one can learn about distant objects by simply looking at them!
Perhaps I'm being dense but why does the inclination of the target planet's orbit (relative to the other planets orbiting that star) matter? Can't a planet can be detected using the transit method so long as the orbit is one that causes the target to pass through our line of sight to the star?
Given the example of Pluto, I don't understand why it couldn't be observed by someone whose line of sight passes through both its orbit and the Sun. I must be missing something.
FWIW "being" is present tense, but not always in the way you suggest. Let's take another common legal use as an example. A last will and testament:
I, [name], being of sound mind and body...
In this case a little Shakespearian intonation might help: "being preparèd". If you look at it like that then the parent might have a valid point.
Might, but I doubt very much that this was the intended meaning.
Isn't that like picking this weeks lottery numbers based on up to the minute analysis of how previous draws have gone?
No, there's more to the game than mere chance. In a way it's more akin to chess, where in a given situation some moves are more likely to lead to a win than others.
Disclaimer: I know bugger all about American football, other than it involves two goals and a ball.
If coaching introduced technology without limits, it'd end up like Wall Street: a massive technological arms race to compute the "right" outcome faster than the opponents, and humans would be eliminated from the picture. YMMV, but I'm not interested in watching a sporting contest like that.
So, like F1 then?
That depends, do you shit in the woods?
:P
There is nothing wrong with that unless, of course, you have reasons not to trust your government.
They're human beings, that about covers it.
Do tell me if you ever see a truly selfless one.
...it would be legal for them to be used on us, but illegal for us to use them..
This isn't without precedent. Take the lawful use of force, deprivation of liberty... or life.
Of course, comparing surveillance to murder/execution is like apples and oranges. Just where does one draw the line?
In an ideal world we pay our representatives to decide these things fairly, but in practice, well...
Oh, a grand vizier.
Aren't they usually the guys that try to usurp the throne and the king's lovely daughters?
Why are political donations not anonymous? If the politicians do not know who gave the money, they can not be bribed.
Politician: Hi there, how are you today?
Lobbyist: Oh, I'm fine thanks. By the way, you know that anonymous $50,000 contribution your campaign received last week?
Politician: Yes, what of it?
Lobbyist: If you want another one next month, please vote for $bill.
At least it's a change from Display Tech. of the Week.
We should also find a way for talented people creating the content to be able to keep doing what they do and not having to get a job at McD which would cut into their time of producing their art. A little bit of socialism could help.
Sounds a lot like Communism to me, not that that's a bad thing in itself. From each... to each..., and all that.
Emulated or a real one?
Just curious.
Unfortunately there are still some compatibility issues with some games e.g. DK2 and Messiah (though that last one was hard enough to work even back in the day). Credit where credit's due, though, GOG have done some great work so I say good luck to them.
Check before you buy.
Argh! I should have read more closely!
I don't know if there's an equivalent of FFCoder for Linux, but off the top of my head I'd say Handbrake will probably be of some use to you. Expression might work under Wine but in any case the scripting part, which you would definitely need (no batch processing without it), is in Powershell so you're SOL there I think.
The key with MP4 files is the audio: the XBox will only play files with two-channel AAC audio (the 4GB limit is mainly just a problem with HD stuff*). If you've a Mac then get a copy of MP4Tools - it works very well. For Windows I recommend FFCoder wholeheartedly. Note that the former is nagware but worth the few dollars it costs to fix that; the latter is free.
Personally I'd give my I teeth for MKV or at least soft-sub support.
*I've used WMV-HD and Expression Encoder - CLI scripting is there with a little work - but if I run up against anything with soft-subs I need to re-encode with something else and burn the subtitles in. Of course one needs as close to lossless encoding as is possible and that intermediate step practically doubles the amount of time it takes to get something that the XBox will play. Incidentally, WMV-HD is pretty damn good IMO, sub issues aside.
Newton would like a word with you.
Why? It's not like Newton had much to do with thermodynamics as we currently understand it, assuming you were talking about perfect recycling.
Even then there's nothing I know of in the laws of thermodynamics that prevents such a thing.
No need to worry fellow Britons! Thanks to the change of government we too will be getting elected police chiefs!
All this localism stuff is quite ingenious, really: when enough time has passed for simply blaming labour for everything to be implausible they'll be able to simply turn and say "you voted them in, blame yourselves you proles!"
In light of how woefully sparse iPlayer is in terms of the BBC's back catalogue (take a look) I'd like to see a test case of a UK resident sharing programmes with their countrymen. In principle, I don't see how Aunty could complain about us sharing between ourselves what we've already paid for. By way of comparison take a look at 4oD, another catch-up service from another free* UK broadcaster.
Of course, ensuring that only UK residents can access such a P2P system, there's the rub.
*They get a portion of the license fee, I believe, but supplement it with advertiser revenue.
Do mods really miss half-decent First Posts and then change their mind when they see a comment like this?
I doubt it.
Hell no. But I do mod comments like those as off-topic, as well as comments like this one. It's a good thing I'm not so mean-spirited as to click troll instead in the hopes of messing with their karma.
Seriously, though, guys give it a rest. You're not changing the mods' opinion (not favourably anyway) and you're pushing other potentially deserving comments further down the page.
...a simple matter of engineering.
Frankly, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
If by win, you mean stand a fair chance of getting to the interview stage, probably. I suspect lacking a good answer to "How did you solve the problem?" would be a bit of an issue, until the whole thing was blown wide open anyway...
"Cheating is often more efficient." 7 of 9
I'm no expert, but isn't showing initiative a desirable quality in candidates?
No, it's not better. It just punts the problem from the unclear definition of "element" to the unclear definition of "chemically"
Very well, I'll try again, though I suspect I'll fare no better.
"You can't turn an atom of X into a lighter atom of Y just by mixing chemicals together in a beaker"
I can make Uranium into Thorium by mixing two chemicals - Uranium and Uranium (and then waiting for the reaction to finish). Your definition needs to make it clear WHY this is not a chemical reaction.
You can't make thorium from uranium by mixing it with more uranium. The uranium would decay anyway; you wouldn't have actually done anything to bring about the change. Perhaps it's just semantics but this is equivalent to saying you can make a hammer fall when you drop it by saying the magic word when you let go.
We arbitrarily draw a line between "chemical" events and "nuclear" events based on what particles are involved, what they're doing, and so on. But it's still an aribitrary destinction created by humans and there are still oddball situations that straddle the line.
I'm neither a physicist nor a chemist but I was taught that chemical reactions are all about interactions between atoms' electrons and that such interactions don't give rise to changes in the nucleus. I'm happy to be corrected on this point, and I'd be very happy to hear about the line-straddling situations you mention.
Some things just aren't made of atoms in the usual sense. There's positronium, free neutrons, atoms with a bound muon, neutron stars...
Indeed. No argument there.
The superheavy atoms in TFA are a case where the usual definition of element is a bit weak, since their real-world behavior is nothing like that of stable elements.
I'm not going to dispute this either, but I would ask that you consider the atom's point of view. As someone once said (I regret the name escapes me) "[subatomic particles] operate on a different timescale; it may not look like much on my watch but it's eternity to them". Superheavy elements seem to behave very differently to us, but aren't they very much like 'normal' elements albeit with an extremely short half-life?
It might be wiser to redefine "element" in a way that specifically excludes them and call them something else instead, much like we redefined "planet" to exclude Pluto and Eris.
What definition do you suggest? I was merely trying to improve on the faulty one given by saying you can't change one element into another through chemistry.