Wrong sir, the square is still there. You don't multiply the exponents, you add them together.
1609.344 meters = 1 mile.
so
1609.344 * 261914 miles^2 = 421509724.416^2 meters of land area.
421509724.416^2 meters of land area/6,000,000,000 people = 0.070251620736 meters of land area per person
Learn how to do math... again, then come see me.
So, you're saying there are only 1609 square meters in a square mile?
Before you start getting confused by the numbers again, try to visualize it. 1609 square meters can be imagined as a patch 1 meter wide and 1609 meters long, however a square mile is 1609 time *that* (because it's 1609 meters on each side, making a square).... = 2,588,881 square meters
giving: 2588881 m * 261914 miles = 678,064,178,234 m
So... do you care to retract your statement about who needs to learn math;-)
Or maybe they're mad because you didn't use the present perfect of "gibt es," which made your joke kinda grammatically unsound.
Well he did have an error, but in fact present perfect tense would make it even worse, since Germans only use that as an actual past tense. In fact the big error was using 'für' which is a typical error English speakers make in German, as well as the ordering, since the 'time' part of the phrase has to be moved up in the sentence; the rule of thumb in German sentence order is: "Time, manner, place". Then there's the inflections....
So, instead of "Sagen sie! Im Amerika gibt es ein Insekt overlord für sechs Jahre!"
it should be:
"Sagen Sie! In Amerika gibt es seit sechs Jahren einenInsektenoberherr!"
Disclaimer - I'm not a native speaker either, though I have lived in Germany for 11 years.
If you want to play an FPS that can keep a jaded gamer such as myself engaged all the way through, try F.E.A.R. Surprises are actually unexpected and its scares are almost never cheap.
I'll second this. There is no game I've seen which can compare to F.E.A.R. for a suspenseful atmosphere. Maybe parts of the Max Payne games, but it's hard to compare since Max Payne had slighty more deeply developed characters and a different kind of story - but then both are great. Anyways, what I've been saying to everyone about F.E.A.R. is that no other game has ever had me so scared/on-edge during so many parts where there was *no enemy* that I wasted precious ammo shooting at shadows. Awesome game, and my favorite MP game right now - I love the melee combat, especially in CTF games.
Re:The problem with guis is they don't work
on
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Hopefully it was obvious, but I am trying to mock the (Karl) Rovian technique of branding anyone who wants to discuss the invasion of Iraq as "cut and run" people.
Not only is it obvious, but I think it's a wonderful turn of their phrase! You should send it to the Democrats - I'm serious.
That is how we say it in Australia, and it's how it's said in England, where the word comes from
Where the word comes from?!?! Words don't come from places, they come from people. There is no geographic affinity to a word any more than you would expect a child to genetically diverge from his parent merely because he moves away.
This is one of my pet peeves when discussions of "proper" English come up. The British isles do not have some kind of magic authority because of being the place where English evolved from some old Germanic dialects with a heavy influence from the Normans. That's as absurd as saying people in Africa are closer to 'original' humans because humans evolved there. Only it's more so since languages tend to change more *slowly* in colonies and such.
Wait, I have a better example for people on Slashdot: A software engineering team at company A develops a large complex system. They split, with half the team going to a start-up, company B, taking a copy of the system (let's say it's open source, so no license issues) with them. 30 years later all the people from the original team have retired and handed over their work to their respective replacements. Both companies have developed their respective copies of the system further and continue to do so though the original developers are long gone. Is the version maintained at Company A the more "correct" version merely by virtue of Company A being "where it came from"?
Specifically, in the case of English, the dialects spoken on the British isles have been very heavily influenced by the mainland European languages, which has led to e.g. the soft "r" at the end of syllables in most British dialects (Irish English is one exception). The "r" used in most American dialects (Boston being a famous exception), is actually closer to "original English", and is the way Shakespeare probably pronounced it.
That doesn't mean that one is more correct than the other since there are also examples which go the other way, it just shows how absurd it is to treat natural languages as if they had a pedigree, or as if they were the implementation of an ISO standard.
-chris
P.S. Oh, and the word 'Patent' doesn't come from England, it comes from Rome, so we should actually ask a Roman how to pronounce it, right?;-)
When I was in the army we were tested on how well we could handle tear gas.
Ummmm, no you weren't. I guess they explained that to us in the Navy better, or, seeing as that was the Army, maybe they just wanted to appeal to your macho side. That wasn't to test how well you could 'handle' tear gas, it was to convincingly demonstrate to you that the gas mask was actually doing something; since the gas is invisible it's easy to feel like the air you're sucking through that filter is completely normal. Taking the mask off teaches you 2 things in a way you don't forget: 1. The mask really makes a difference! 2. Just because the air looks clear doesn't mean it's safe to take your gas mask off.
I know this is a bit "off topic", but where does the saying "Smoke filled room" come from? I keep hearing it all the time, and what does the smoke symbolize? (Blame it on my English as a 2nd language, if you wish.)
It refers to the traditional image of "those in power" being old (white) men smoking cigars around a table in a small room as they make their plans, or divvy up the world, or whatever.
Why do PC gamers get to define what is or is not a "real RPG".
It's not that we "get to define" it. It's that the definition predates both PC and Console RPGs. Fact is, RPGs have always been characterized by 2 things: 1. The actual 'role-playing', which has no real equivalent in video games (yet?) 2. Character development. This is characterized (ha!) by e.g. things like skills which can be gained/improved, and attributes (strength, intelligence, etc.) which set your character apart from other characters with the same skills.
I admit I don't know the console 'RPGs' that well, but as far as I know none of them has anything more than a rudimentary implementations of point 2, whereas the PC ones... well there's really no comparison.
...I wouldn't want the USSR to know where our ballistic subs were (are,)...
I know this is off-topic, but as a former submariner who served on a ballistic sub, I can assure you that not even our government knows exactly where the subs are. They are given a fairly large operational area, then go to complete radio silence and cruise around at the discretion of the Captain. Only the crewmembers who have a need to know (e.g. officers, navigators) even know where the sub is, so there is little chance of an enemy discovering that unless they can actually detect the sub with their own subs.
The gov't wants to hook a computer up to a telephone exchanges to monitor all trafic for works like "Mohamed", "Jihad", or maybe even anyone speaking Farsi or Arabic and begins taping when it picks up one of any number of suspect words. Does the Fed Gov't need get 300 million warrants?
Yes.
Or, does the gov't only get warrants for the KNOWN terrorists for "manual" monitoring and hope we don't miss anyone?
Yes.
That was easy wasn't it? That's the whole point of protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and yes they will miss some. Oh well. Do you think "innocent until proven guilty" will convict all 'normal' murderers? Or do you think we might "miss some"? Are you willing to give up that principle too?
That's only the Bay area. Even the rest of California really wants them to quit using that stupid sounding term.
Really? I'm not even sure if it's the *entire* Bay area. When I moved from Berkeley to Marin County in 1989 I got grief from my friends all the time for using that:-P
The point of this is that "gender" doesn't make so much sense as a grammatical term
Sure it does. For Linguists gender refers to a specific type of noun class system which classifies nouns into 2 or 3 of masculine, feminine, and neuter. As you and your link correctly state, the Dyirbal examples are not 'genders' but 'noun classes'. That doesn't change the fact that the German noun class system is based on grammatical gender.
(I've never understood the rationale for "Das Mädchen" in German. Probably because there is no rationale.)
I'm afraid there is a rationale, though it's not particularly rational;-) In German all dimunitives created -chen and -lein are neuter. 'Mädchen' comes from 'Mägdchen', the diminutive of 'Magd', so it essentially means "little maid". It's the same with 'Das Männlein', "the little man".
How, exactly? It might be redundant, except that, although 'language' appears twice, it's referring to 2 different kinds of language: a "programming language" expressed in a "markup language".
"Congress shall make no law" doesn't say anything about the Senate...
Just a nitpick: The Senate is part of Congress. Congress refers to both the House of Representatives and the Senate. "Congressman" is used to describe Representatives (from the House) basically because it's easier to say.
That's strange. AFAIK, all digital camcorders still record everything in (mini-)DV format which is a well-established standard. That's what my camcorder (Sony) uses, and it's well supported in Linux:
And if you want to do both of those as well as programming, web surfing, and e-mail? Buy a general purpose device, something which can 'compute' different kinds of stuff..... hmmmmmm....
As a non-US person I would be quite happy if you would criticise wiretapping foreign countries as much as wiretapping people in your own country. We like are our privacy as much as you like yours. But that would probably be too much to ask.
Ummm, well actually it is; to much to ask, I mean. Come on be serious; *all* governments spy on other countries (and therefore their citizens). The point is that *your* country can attempt to stop that spying and protect *its* citizens, but who protects the citizens from their *own* government?
That's not to say it's right, but as a matter of pragmatism it's pointless to worry about. I mean, I'd be kind of annoyed if, say, China were spying on my communications; but it's not like they can arrest me here (in Germany), nor can they cause me any kind of trouble with the authorities because of information they might gather in their spying.
Ever heard of 'mmv' (multiple move)? In at least SuSe it's standard. It allows globbing, regexes, placeholders, and it refuses to do anything which looks remotely unsafe (like overwrite any files without confirmation, etc.)
That's the only tool I use on the command line for renaming/moving more than one file.
Slashdot Mirror
wow. it just gets worse and worse. Being wrong is one thing, but then you have the gall to be wrong and smug at the same time, lol.
Wrong sir, the square is still there. You don't multiply the exponents, you add them together.
;-)
1609.344 meters = 1 mile.
so
1609.344 * 261914 miles^2 = 421509724.416^2 meters of land area.
421509724.416^2 meters of land area/6,000,000,000 people = 0.070251620736 meters of land area per person
Learn how to do math... again, then come see me.
So, you're saying there are only 1609 square meters in a square mile?
Before you start getting confused by the numbers again, try to visualize it. 1609 square meters can be imagined as a patch 1 meter wide and 1609 meters long, however a square mile is 1609 time *that* (because it's 1609 meters on each side, making a square).... = 2,588,881 square meters
giving: 2588881 m * 261914 miles = 678,064,178,234 m
So... do you care to retract your statement about who needs to learn math
Or maybe they're mad because you didn't use the present perfect of "gibt es," which made your joke kinda grammatically unsound.
:-D
Well he did have an error, but in fact present perfect tense would make it even worse, since Germans only use that as an actual past tense. In fact the big error was using 'für' which is a typical error English speakers make in German, as well as the ordering, since the 'time' part of the phrase has to be moved up in the sentence; the rule of thumb in German sentence order is: "Time, manner, place". Then there's the inflections....
So, instead of "Sagen sie! Im Amerika gibt es ein Insekt overlord für sechs Jahre!"
it should be:
"Sagen Sie! In Amerika gibt es seit sechs Jahren einen Insektenoberherr!"
Disclaimer - I'm not a native speaker either, though I have lived in Germany for 11 years.
In any case, I agree, good joke
If you want to play an FPS that can keep a jaded gamer such as myself engaged all the way through, try F.E.A.R. Surprises are actually unexpected and its scares are almost never cheap.
I'll second this. There is no game I've seen which can compare to F.E.A.R. for a suspenseful atmosphere. Maybe parts of the Max Payne games, but it's hard to compare since Max Payne had slighty more deeply developed characters and a different kind of story - but then both are great. Anyways, what I've been saying to everyone about F.E.A.R. is that no other game has ever had me so scared/on-edge during so many parts where there was *no enemy* that I wasted precious ammo shooting at shadows. Awesome game, and my favorite MP game right now - I love the melee combat, especially in CTF games.
I liked the first version better ;-)
Hopefully it was obvious, but I am trying to mock the (Karl) Rovian technique of branding anyone who wants to discuss the invasion of Iraq as "cut and run" people.
Not only is it obvious, but I think it's a wonderful turn of their phrase! You should send it to the Democrats - I'm serious.
Cue Siouxsie and the Banshees :-)
"Drink the water with jagged glass
Eat the cactus with bleeding mouth
Not 91 or 93, but 92 Fahrenheit degrees"
-chris
That is how we say it in Australia, and it's how it's said in England, where the word comes from
;-)
Where the word comes from?!?! Words don't come from places, they come from people. There is no geographic affinity to a word any more than you would expect a child to genetically diverge from his parent merely because he moves away.
This is one of my pet peeves when discussions of "proper" English come up. The British isles do not have some kind of magic authority because of being the place where English evolved from some old Germanic dialects with a heavy influence from the Normans. That's as absurd as saying people in Africa are closer to 'original' humans because humans evolved there. Only it's more so since languages tend to change more *slowly* in colonies and such.
Wait, I have a better example for people on Slashdot: A software engineering team at company A develops a large complex system. They split, with half the team going to a start-up, company B, taking a copy of the system (let's say it's open source, so no license issues) with them. 30 years later all the people from the original team have retired and handed over their work to their respective replacements. Both companies have developed their respective copies of the system further and continue to do so though the original developers are long gone. Is the version maintained at Company A the more "correct" version merely by virtue of Company A being "where it came from"?
Specifically, in the case of English, the dialects spoken on the British isles have been very heavily influenced by the mainland European languages, which has led to e.g. the soft "r" at the end of syllables in most British dialects (Irish English is one exception). The "r" used in most American dialects (Boston being a famous exception), is actually closer to "original English", and is the way Shakespeare probably pronounced it.
That doesn't mean that one is more correct than the other since there are also examples which go the other way, it just shows how absurd it is to treat natural languages as if they had a pedigree, or as if they were the implementation of an ISO standard.
-chris
P.S. Oh, and the word 'Patent' doesn't come from England, it comes from Rome, so we should actually ask a Roman how to pronounce it, right?
When I was in the army we were tested on how well we could handle tear gas.
Ummmm, no you weren't. I guess they explained that to us in the Navy better, or, seeing as that was the Army, maybe they just wanted to appeal to your macho side. That wasn't to test how well you could 'handle' tear gas, it was to convincingly demonstrate to you that the gas mask was actually doing something; since the gas is invisible it's easy to feel like the air you're sucking through that filter is completely normal. Taking the mask off teaches you 2 things in a way you don't forget:
1. The mask really makes a difference!
2. Just because the air looks clear doesn't mean it's safe to take your gas mask off.
-chris
...by the chief executive of one of the most powerful states in the union.
;-)
As a Californian, I have to take exception to this: What do you mean by "one of"?
-chris
I know this is a bit "off topic", but where does the saying "Smoke filled room" come from? I keep hearing it all the time, and what does the smoke symbolize? (Blame it on my English as a 2nd language, if you wish.)
It refers to the traditional image of "those in power" being old (white) men smoking cigars around a table in a small room as they make their plans, or divvy up the world, or whatever.
-chris
Why do PC gamers get to define what is or is not a "real RPG".
It's not that we "get to define" it. It's that the definition predates both PC and Console RPGs. Fact is, RPGs have always been characterized by 2 things:
1. The actual 'role-playing', which has no real equivalent in video games (yet?)
2. Character development. This is characterized (ha!) by e.g. things like skills which can be gained/improved, and attributes (strength, intelligence, etc.) which set your character apart from other characters with the same skills.
I admit I don't know the console 'RPGs' that well, but as far as I know none of them has anything more than a rudimentary implementations of point 2, whereas the PC ones... well there's really no comparison.
-chris
...I wouldn't want the USSR to know where our ballistic subs were (are,)...
I know this is off-topic, but as a former submariner who served on a ballistic sub, I can assure you that not even our government knows exactly where the subs are. They are given a fairly large operational area, then go to complete radio silence and cruise around at the discretion of the Captain. Only the crewmembers who have a need to know (e.g. officers, navigators) even know where the sub is, so there is little chance of an enemy discovering that unless they can actually detect the sub with their own subs.
-chris
The gov't wants to hook a computer up to a telephone exchanges to monitor all trafic for works like "Mohamed", "Jihad", or maybe even anyone speaking Farsi or Arabic and begins taping when it picks up one of any number of suspect words. Does the Fed Gov't need get 300 million warrants?
Yes.
Or, does the gov't only get warrants for the KNOWN terrorists for "manual" monitoring and hope we don't miss anyone?
Yes.
That was easy wasn't it? That's the whole point of protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and yes they will miss some. Oh well. Do you think "innocent until proven guilty" will convict all 'normal' murderers? Or do you think we might "miss some"? Are you willing to give up that principle too?
I'm waiting for the Snakes on a Plane game ;-)
That's only the Bay area.
:-P
Even the rest of California really wants them to quit using that stupid sounding term.
Really? I'm not even sure if it's the *entire* Bay area. When I moved from Berkeley to Marin County in 1989 I got grief from my friends all the time for using that
-chris
The point of this is that "gender" doesn't make so much sense as a grammatical term
;-) In German all dimunitives created -chen and -lein are neuter. 'Mädchen' comes from 'Mägdchen', the diminutive of 'Magd', so it essentially means "little maid". It's the same with 'Das Männlein', "the little man".
Sure it does. For Linguists gender refers to a specific type of noun class system which classifies nouns into 2 or 3 of masculine, feminine, and neuter. As you and your link correctly state, the Dyirbal examples are not 'genders' but 'noun classes'. That doesn't change the fact that the German noun class system is based on grammatical gender.
(I've never understood the rationale for "Das Mädchen" in German. Probably because there is no rationale.)
I'm afraid there is a rationale, though it's not particularly rational
-chris
"XML based programming language" is an oxymoron.
How, exactly? It might be redundant, except that, although 'language' appears twice, it's referring to 2 different kinds of language: a "programming language" expressed in a "markup language".
-chris
"Congress shall make no law" doesn't say anything about the Senate...
Just a nitpick: The Senate is part of Congress. Congress refers to both the House of Representatives and the Senate. "Congressman" is used to describe Representatives (from the House) basically because it's easier to say.
-chris
Yet, we can give old men woodies, and change people's physical gender.
;-)
It's all a matter of priorities
-chris
That's strange. AFAIK, all digital camcorders still record everything in (mini-)DV format which is a well-established standard. That's what my camcorder (Sony) uses, and it's well supported in Linux:
The reference for Linux is Kino, but Freshmeat has several projects for software to interact with DV stuff: http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=dv+video
-chris
IF you want to watch movies buy a DVD player.
If you want to play games buy a console.
And if you want to do both of those as well as programming, web surfing, and e-mail? Buy a general purpose device, something which can 'compute' different kinds of stuff..... hmmmmmm....
I've got it! A computer.
sheesh.
-chris
This was modded interesting?
A question which generates this many informative/interesting replies is, by definition, "interesting". It's merely not "informative".
-Chris
As a non-US person I would be quite happy if you would criticise wiretapping foreign countries as much as wiretapping people in your own country. We like are our privacy as much as you like yours. But that would probably be too much to ask.
Ummm, well actually it is; to much to ask, I mean. Come on be serious; *all* governments spy on other countries (and therefore their citizens). The point is that *your* country can attempt to stop that spying and protect *its* citizens, but who protects the citizens from their *own* government?
That's not to say it's right, but as a matter of pragmatism it's pointless to worry about. I mean, I'd be kind of annoyed if, say, China were spying on my communications; but it's not like they can arrest me here (in Germany), nor can they cause me any kind of trouble with the authorities because of information they might gather in their spying.
Ever heard of 'mmv' (multiple move)? In at least SuSe it's standard. It allows globbing, regexes, placeholders, and it refuses to do anything which looks remotely unsafe (like overwrite any files without confirmation, etc.)
That's the only tool I use on the command line for renaming/moving more than one file.
-chrs