I've occasionally thought about this illusion and I believe the explanation is simple. For a cylinder of height H and width W, you have
Volume = H * pi * W^2 / 4
I think people often judge the size a container by its sideways cross-sectional area -- especially in this case where the cylinder has the same area from all sides (not counting top and bottom). The area is W * H.
Let's say you keep the volume constant and make the glass shorter. The decrease in H must be compensated by increase in W^2, not just W. The area W * H gets smaller due to this effect, even though volume stays constant.
Similarly, for different glasses with the same cross-sectional area, the wider cylinder will have bigger volume.
You probably get similar illusions in many different cases, due to the fact that human vision is really only 2D (two flat retinas) and we have to do some extra thinking to deduce what's going on in 3D.
you must be one of those eunuchs I've been hearing so much about.
This is a eunuchs site after all, if you pardon the misspelling... and with the evil proprietary eunuchs systems, it's time someone started developing a free clone.. we could call it Girls Not Eunuchs or something.
"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never
understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only
becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher
throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" -
notice how the real issue was again about _latency_)."
-- Linus Torvalds
What about ADSL? The spec maximum is 8M down, 1M up, and the new ADSL2[+] only increases downstream capacity.
IIRC the asymmetry has its basis in some old regulation, which limits the transmission power of consumer devices, but I have no references and it seems too weird and arbitrary to be true.
The maximum volume that you can transfer over atmospheric air is less than 200 dB. I forget the actual value though. There is a maximum because pressure variations can only go down to zero from the mean of 1 bar.
Movies are traded on P2P because people like getting shit for free.
I download shit because it's the easiest way to get it. I would pay for something that was even more convenient.
The problem is, of course, that for legal paid-for downloads you need a system for money transfer, which always adds some complexity. Then again, there is no economic basis for capitalism in duplicatable goods.
There's also the difference between fun and funny. Some of the suggestions seem like they're trying to use funny things to enforce fun in dull situations, which in my experience is a bad idea.
Dvorak is better because it's more comfortable to type with, because you don't have to move your fingers around as much
I'm not so sure if less movement means better health. It might be so in this case, but generally bodyparts seem to stay in better shape when they are exercised.
Right now most people use duration for repeat, but using it to map a key to shifted form might be ok...
IMHO, it's not such a good idea, because you'd have to wait longer for the desired effect.
i also rather like the idea of hitting the keys very hard to generate caps.
I've thought about this too, as I play keyboards. The only problem might be that you'd have to adjust the level to suit different typing styles, which makes using other people's keyboards a little inconvenient.
"How many keys does your keyboard have that you have NEVER used?"
Pause/Break, CapsLock, Windows keys (and all of the multimedia/internet keys if present)
I used to map Windows keys to do something useful in X, but I dropped the habit as I wanted to stay consistent with my other machines which don't have the special keys.
I'd say that practice has proven his ideas sound and quite applicable in the real world.
Right on! Most of this Free Software stuff is basically the scientific method applied to computing. History tells that science didn't achieve much of anything while its practice was restricted to an elite of clergymen and alchemists. Modern science took off around the time of Galilei, Newton and other whose open rational arguments eventually won the fight against the 'closed source' of church.
Information is by nature easy to duplicate and difficult to destroy, especially in the digital era. Whether or not information 'should' be free is another question, really.
I'd paraphrase it so that information, inherently, is free. People often want to make it less free, which in many cases can be considered a good thing. The information doesn't mind if you distribute a movie to everyone without the creators' permission, but the creators probably do mind.
Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor.
I thought the idea of WYSIWYG goes completely against HTML's separation of content from presentation. I can't imagine why TBL would say something like this, perhaps his meaning of WYSIWYG is different from mine?
Slashdot Mirror
Godwin to the rescue!!!1
Volume = H * pi * W^2 / 4
I think people often judge the size a container by its sideways cross-sectional area -- especially in this case where the cylinder has the same area from all sides (not counting top and bottom). The area is W * H.
Let's say you keep the volume constant and make the glass shorter. The decrease in H must be compensated by increase in W^2, not just W. The area W * H gets smaller due to this effect, even though volume stays constant.
Similarly, for different glasses with the same cross-sectional area, the wider cylinder will have bigger volume.
You probably get similar illusions in many different cases, due to the fact that human vision is really only 2D (two flat retinas) and we have to do some extra thinking to deduce what's going on in 3D.
This is a eunuchs site after all, if you pardon the misspelling... and with the evil proprietary eunuchs systems, it's time someone started developing a free clone.. we could call it Girls Not Eunuchs or something.
Must be fun waiting for 10 seconds for each bit...
"Why people think "performace" means "throughput" is something I'll never understand. Throughput is _always_ secondary to latency, and really only becomes interesting when it becomes a latency number (ie "I need higher throughput in order to process these jobs in 4 hours instead of 8" - notice how the real issue was again about _latency_)."
-- Linus Torvalds
IIRC the asymmetry has its basis in some old regulation, which limits the transmission power of consumer devices, but I have no references and it seems too weird and arbitrary to be true.
I'll think of something as soon as I stop laughing at the notion of "American intellectual property".
Except the one that makes Old no.7 Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey :-P
#include <nitpick.h>
The maximum volume that you can transfer over atmospheric air is less than 200 dB. I forget the actual value though. There is a maximum because pressure variations can only go down to zero from the mean of 1 bar.
I download shit because it's the easiest way to get it. I would pay for something that was even more convenient.
The problem is, of course, that for legal paid-for downloads you need a system for money transfer, which always adds some complexity. Then again, there is no economic basis for capitalism in duplicatable goods.
There's also the difference between fun and funny. Some of the suggestions seem like they're trying to use funny things to enforce fun in dull situations, which in my experience is a bad idea.
Duh, the grandparent is obviously referring to free software. Someone has to be the adult to throw away proprietary toys.
It's all thanks to Rudolph the red-shift reindeer!
My dyslexic friends wait for Satan Claws each Xmas, and I think that guy is mentioned in the Bible...
I use distcc and ccache, but in this case I just emerged openoffice-bin.
I'm not so sure if less movement means better health. It might be so in this case, but generally bodyparts seem to stay in better shape when they are exercised.
IMHO, it's not such a good idea, because you'd have to wait longer for the desired effect.
i also rather like the idea of hitting the keys very hard to generate caps.
I've thought about this too, as I play keyboards. The only problem might be that you'd have to adjust the level to suit different typing styles, which makes using other people's keyboards a little inconvenient.
Pause/Break, CapsLock, Windows keys (and all of the multimedia/internet keys if present)
I used to map Windows keys to do something useful in X, but I dropped the habit as I wanted to stay consistent with my other machines which don't have the special keys.
Right on! Most of this Free Software stuff is basically the scientific method applied to computing. History tells that science didn't achieve much of anything while its practice was restricted to an elite of clergymen and alchemists. Modern science took off around the time of Galilei, Newton and other whose open rational arguments eventually won the fight against the 'closed source' of church.
I'd paraphrase it so that information, inherently, is free. People often want to make it less free, which in many cases can be considered a good thing. The information doesn't mind if you distribute a movie to everyone without the creators' permission, but the creators probably do mind.
Hello, this is Bill Gates and I pronounce "linups" as "lineups".
The same amount I've raised using illegal business practices.
Yes, but GUI does not imply WYSIWYG. For example XEmacs has a GUI, but WYSIWYG implies a fixed layout of elements.