It certainly can bring out the best...
on
Death March
·
· Score: 1
I'm amazed at some of the code that I have written for programming contests. When I only have 3 hours to complete 5 programs, some strange things start to happen in the gray goo between my ears, and occasionally brilliant, often cryptic statements start to flow from my fingers.
That, and I can also compare to the quality of my school assignments when completed at 3am the night before they are due. Have you ever written an assembly program, which, in order to change states, would alter some of its own code in memory? Very efficient, horrible to debug, and the TA's didn't know what the hell was going on. Some of my best work.
The STM has a very fine metal tip. When voltage is applied to this tip and it is brought very close to the nanoparticles, a current flows from the particles into the tip. But by altering this voltage, the researchers were able to switch the current on and off, because their linker molecules were voltage-sensitive.
Wait a minute. You're using an STM, and you're amazed that when you drop the voltage, the current stops? Hello! The current is due to electrons tunnelling through the gap between the tip and the material. If you reduce the voltage, you reduce the energy of the electrons in the tip, and thus the probability that they will tunnel through the gap
Does anyone know if they tried applying a positive voltage of the same magnitude that caused the current to flow? If they haven't yet, I think that they would be *surprised* at the results. If they have, and there was no current, then I respectfully retract my rant.
Okay, I've read your other posts. I see your point about most of these posts having the wrong idea. However, could you please clarify what a P problem would be? Would that be one which is O(n^x) where x is any constant, and n is a parameter for the problem? For example, if this could be solved in O((length_of_board*width_of_board)^20) is that a P problem?
Surely there must be a better way to check consistancy than a brute force check of all mine positions possible in the unmarked squares. I think I have a new hobby now...
I think I broke through the 120 barrier. IIRC, my best is 114. God knows how I did it though. I think it happened at about 2:30 in the morning, and my eyes had dried out. Since I was unable to blink, there was a greater percentage of the time that I was looking at the board.
I think I remember a competition on my floor in residence where the best time was 97. No telling if that was without cheating though...
Well, I give you a congratulations for showing us just how gullible they are. Venn sysnopsis and psudo sychronisity fallout are very professional sounding. Just between you and me, do these moderators know who you are, and what your goal is, or are they just really dumb?
Yes, homophobia reared it's ugly head in Stranger, but if you look at the circumstances, Heinlein put a negative spin on it. It was displayed by Ben Caxton on his entry into the creche for the first time, and it wasn't long before Jubal pointed out how rediculous he was acting.
As for sexism, I can clearly recall sexism towards men in several other Heinlein books, notably The Number of the Beast and Friday, which, incedentally, portrayed lesbianism in a very tolerant and positive light.
The fact that Heinlein uses sex in his books simply reflects that he understands human culture, and how sex plays a large role in the interactions between men and women. It does not make his books "perverted filth."
To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.
It has been used for quite a few years now exclusively by developers. If you had a problem, but didn't know what exactly it was, it was best to go to someone who *grokked* the entire system. I defy you to find an olde english word which means the same thing. Language evolves. New words are added all the time, as soon as they gain mass public use/understanding.
...to actually make stuff. If there were no copyrights, and anyone could just make and distribute a free copy of any software (or anything else, for that matter), then what would be the motivation for the original developers? They only develop with the promise of being rewarded for their work. That reward is guaranteed by the copyrights. I'm definately not bashing open-source, but you can't get by in this world without a little dinero, and selling what they make is where these companies get theirs.
It's the same basic concept as patents. Companies are encouraged to develop new things on the promise that they will have the exclusive right to license or sell these things, for a certain period of time. It's a reward for their effort, both in time and development costs.
Of course, a 75 year copyright on software seems a little bit nuts nowadays, what with the rate at which everything is becoming obsolete and dropping out of use. Perhaps a new "copyright-style" entity should be designed to protect software during the lucrative years immediately following release, one that expires much sooner than 75 years.
It claims that the building blocks for the formation of life may have come from meteors, not life itself. This means that the carbon, hydrocarbons, and possibly even more complex compounds like amino acids came from outer space. Then, here on earth they spontaneously formed into whatever happened to be the first form of life.
I don't see why this should surprise anyone. The earth itself was formed by millions of meteors, asteroids, and specks of space dust coalescing into a big ball. If you really think about it, everything on the earth is made of atoms and molecules that, way way back, came from space.
I would have thought that the low pressure/temperature of the Martian atmosphere would cause most of the liquid CO2 to become gaseous and the rest to solidify into CO2 snow (dry ice).
If I remember correctly, this is how dry ice is made now. Cool CO2 enough that it becomes liquid, and then shoot it out into a lower pressure. The lower pressure makes most of it turn into a gas, but to get the thermal energy necessary to do that, it grabs heat from the rest, which solidifies.
Is there any evidence of a powdering of CO2 snow near those canals? Or were they formed long enough ago that any snow would have sublimed off into the atmosphere...
I hope they concentrate as much on the plot as they do in the RPG's. Sure, I play them for the graphics as well, but the main point to an RPG is to lose yourself in the ever-twisting plots and sub-plots. If this is used just as an excuse to show off their CG talents, it will be a visually stunning movie, with little to no entertainment value.
As I promised, I'm back. It took a while but a 200kg probe with 400kg of fuel, accelerating at full speed, will end up with a final velocity of (as previous post) 190km/s after 400 days. At that time, it will have travelled 2.69E+9 km, or roughly half-way to Pluto. It would take another 180 days to leave the solar system.
Okay, factoring in the weight of the fuel, assuming it is used at a constant rate, and acceleration becomes a function of time (because mass decreases over time). Now calculate v after 400 days by integrating a from 0 to (400days*#seconds=) 34560000, and after 400 days the probe is moving at 190km/s. Still quite respectable.
This is harder. Integrate v in terms of t to get the distance travelled in that time, and we have... Boy, this integral sucks... I'll get back to you...
This comment reminds me of a not-very-well-known H. G. Wells story called "The First Men on the Moon." Some crackpot inventor came up with a material that sheilded gravity. By covering a spherical spaceship with this, and then opening a "shutter" in the direction you would want to go, any mass in that direction would pull you towards it, whereas the sheilding layer would prevent all other mass from acting on you. All of a sudden, you were accelerating in the direction of the open "shutter."
That guy's not kidding about becoming the furthest man-made object from the sun. 80km/s may not sound like much after three months, but note that, amazingly, acceleration will remain constant because the size of the bubble will increase as the pressure of the solar wind decreases.
I did a little bit of math, and came up with 392 days to pass Pluto's orbit, at which time the probe would be travelling at a speed of almost 350 km/s. That's more than 0.01c, so we'd have to start figuring in relativistic effects, but damn that's fast.
Note: I'm on my co-op term now, so please excuse any mathematical mistakes as my brain has been turned off.
If you don't want even your anonymous viewing information (information that does not identify you or your household) used in any way, simply tell us by calling our toll-free telephone number (1-877-FOR-TiVo).
This annoys me almost as much as those tiny checkboxes that say "Check here if you don't want to be informed of further updates from (Insert Company Name Here)." Fer Chrissakes, why does the default behaviour always have to be so invasive?
...called "Silver Tower" by Dale Brown. They had a satellite with a high-powered laser, as well as a heck of a targeting system. They ended up beaming the information from the targeting system down to a ship, where it was displayed in a giant LCD tank, and bingo - you had a 3-D image of every object over 1 metre in length, within 1500 kilometres of the battlezone.
Of course, they used the targeting information to shoot down ICBM's, but I thought the 3-D representation of all forces in the area was a pretty cool concept.
1. In a couple of billion years, the sun will be too cold to support the existing life here on earth. A couple of billion years ago, it was warm enough to allow liquid water on Mars.
2. If the rotation of the earth took 4 more hours, I could get 10 hours of sleep each night and still spend 18 hours working/partying.
3. Um... nearly circular orbits are the norm for any forming solar system. Take any cloud of gas, start to condense it in free space, and bingo!
4. These same gases cause Venus to be a raging cauldron of heat.
5. And if it were only 60 feet away, it would plow over all tall buildings, making construction of anything more than mud huts very dangerous.
6. Damn. I just dug a hole in my back yard. Guess we're all gonna die now.
7. The tropics experience no appreciable change in climate due to the tilt of the axis. They always recieve direct sunlight. Stuff still grows there.
8. Venus also has an atmosphere. So does Jupiter, so does Saturn...
9. Well, who put those meteors out there in the first place, eh?
10. What is to say that a different sized planet would not simply give rise to a different form of life?
11. Again, see previous comment. Essential to all forms of life that we know. Seeing as we have a very limited experience, this isn't really fair.
12. Sorry, I'm running out of snarky comments.
13. Again, life as we know it.
You're probably bored of reading this by now, but if you are not, consider this: In an infinite universe of infinite possibilities, assume there is a finite chance that the conditions necessary for life will arise. This leads to an infinite number of worlds which will support and contain life, and of course, at least one person who will insist that HIS world is special, that it was manually created by some greater being specifically for HIM.
I've always had a place in my heart for the series (and resulting movie) starring Adam West. Love those sound effects! Kapow! Kazaam! Wonk! My favourite line from Batman & Robin is where they land on the island and Robin proclaims "Holy rusty metal, Batman!" I laughed my ass off, I don't think anyone else in the theatre got the joke.
Needless to say, I've never been too impressed with the plots of the "recent" set of Batman movies. They're corny, but portrayed as serious. Bleah.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm amazed at some of the code that I have written for programming contests. When I only have 3 hours to complete 5 programs, some strange things start to happen in the gray goo between my ears, and occasionally brilliant, often cryptic statements start to flow from my fingers.
That, and I can also compare to the quality of my school assignments when completed at 3am the night before they are due. Have you ever written an assembly program, which, in order to change states, would alter some of its own code in memory? Very efficient, horrible to debug, and the TA's didn't know what the hell was going on. Some of my best work.
The STM has a very fine metal tip. When voltage is applied to this tip and it is brought very close to the nanoparticles, a current flows from the particles into the tip. But by altering this voltage, the researchers were able to switch the current on and off, because their linker molecules were voltage-sensitive.
Wait a minute. You're using an STM, and you're amazed that when you drop the voltage, the current stops? Hello! The current is due to electrons tunnelling through the gap between the tip and the material. If you reduce the voltage, you reduce the energy of the electrons in the tip, and thus the probability that they will tunnel through the gap
Does anyone know if they tried applying a positive voltage of the same magnitude that caused the current to flow? If they haven't yet, I think that they would be *surprised* at the results. If they have, and there was no current, then I respectfully retract my rant.
Okay, I've read your other posts. I see your point about most of these posts having the wrong idea. However, could you please clarify what a P problem would be? Would that be one which is O(n^x) where x is any constant, and n is a parameter for the problem? For example, if this could be solved in O((length_of_board*width_of_board)^20) is that a P problem?
Surely there must be a better way to check consistancy than a brute force check of all mine positions possible in the unmarked squares. I think I have a new hobby now...
I think I broke through the 120 barrier. IIRC, my best is 114. God knows how I did it though. I think it happened at about 2:30 in the morning, and my eyes had dried out. Since I was unable to blink, there was a greater percentage of the time that I was looking at the board.
I think I remember a competition on my floor in residence where the best time was 97. No telling if that was without cheating though...
Consider the following situation, against the top edge of the board:
--------
01?10
13?31
1***1
12321
In my experience, this usually happens around the edge of the board, but there are times when it will happen smack dab in the middle as well.
I'm sure you can find a pub somewhere that will serve you a glass of Murphy's. A fine alternative if you want to stick it to Guiness.
Well, I give you a congratulations for showing us just how gullible they are. Venn sysnopsis and psudo sychronisity fallout are very professional sounding. Just between you and me, do these moderators know who you are, and what your goal is, or are they just really dumb?
Some of my favourites are:
Postal Service
Government Worker
Country Music
Jumbo Shrimp
Microsoft Works
Military Intelligence
Yes, homophobia reared it's ugly head in Stranger, but if you look at the circumstances, Heinlein put a negative spin on it. It was displayed by Ben Caxton on his entry into the creche for the first time, and it wasn't long before Jubal pointed out how rediculous he was acting.
As for sexism, I can clearly recall sexism towards men in several other Heinlein books, notably The Number of the Beast and Friday, which, incedentally, portrayed lesbianism in a very tolerant and positive light.
The fact that Heinlein uses sex in his books simply reflects that he understands human culture, and how sex plays a large role in the interactions between men and women. It does not make his books "perverted filth."
To understand profoundly through intuition or empathy.
It has been used for quite a few years now exclusively by developers. If you had a problem, but didn't know what exactly it was, it was best to go to someone who *grokked* the entire system. I defy you to find an olde english word which means the same thing. Language evolves. New words are added all the time, as soon as they gain mass public use/understanding.
...to actually make stuff. If there were no copyrights, and anyone could just make and distribute a free copy of any software (or anything else, for that matter), then what would be the motivation for the original developers? They only develop with the promise of being rewarded for their work. That reward is guaranteed by the copyrights. I'm definately not bashing open-source, but you can't get by in this world without a little dinero, and selling what they make is where these companies get theirs.
It's the same basic concept as patents. Companies are encouraged to develop new things on the promise that they will have the exclusive right to license or sell these things, for a certain period of time. It's a reward for their effort, both in time and development costs.
Of course, a 75 year copyright on software seems a little bit nuts nowadays, what with the rate at which everything is becoming obsolete and dropping out of use. Perhaps a new "copyright-style" entity should be designed to protect software during the lucrative years immediately following release, one that expires much sooner than 75 years.
It claims that the building blocks for the formation of life may have come from meteors, not life itself. This means that the carbon, hydrocarbons, and possibly even more complex compounds like amino acids came from outer space. Then, here on earth they spontaneously formed into whatever happened to be the first form of life.
I don't see why this should surprise anyone. The earth itself was formed by millions of meteors, asteroids, and specks of space dust coalescing into a big ball. If you really think about it, everything on the earth is made of atoms and molecules that, way way back, came from space.
I would have thought that the low pressure/temperature of the Martian atmosphere would cause most of the liquid CO2 to become gaseous and the rest to solidify into CO2 snow (dry ice).
If I remember correctly, this is how dry ice is made now. Cool CO2 enough that it becomes liquid, and then shoot it out into a lower pressure. The lower pressure makes most of it turn into a gas, but to get the thermal energy necessary to do that, it grabs heat from the rest, which solidifies.
Is there any evidence of a powdering of CO2 snow near those canals? Or were they formed long enough ago that any snow would have sublimed off into the atmosphere...
According to www.upcomingmovies.com
I hope they can get a voice as good as the radio broadcast one for Marvin the Paranoid Android!
I hope they concentrate as much on the plot as they do in the RPG's. Sure, I play them for the graphics as well, but the main point to an RPG is to lose yourself in the ever-twisting plots and sub-plots. If this is used just as an excuse to show off their CG talents, it will be a visually stunning movie, with little to no entertainment value.
It's a recipe including, among other things, 2 1/2 oz. baking soda, and a cup of fresh lemon juice. Swedish Lemon Angels
Also see some pictures.
As I promised, I'm back. It took a while but a 200kg probe with 400kg of fuel, accelerating at full speed, will end up with a final velocity of (as previous post) 190km/s after 400 days. At that time, it will have travelled 2.69E+9 km, or roughly half-way to Pluto. It would take another 180 days to leave the solar system.
Okay, factoring in the weight of the fuel, assuming it is used at a constant rate, and acceleration becomes a function of time (because mass decreases over time). Now calculate v after 400 days by integrating a from 0 to (400days*#seconds=) 34560000, and after 400 days the probe is moving at 190km/s. Still quite respectable.
This is harder. Integrate v in terms of t to get the distance travelled in that time, and we have... Boy, this integral sucks... I'll get back to you...
This comment reminds me of a not-very-well-known H. G. Wells story called "The First Men on the Moon." Some crackpot inventor came up with a material that sheilded gravity. By covering a spherical spaceship with this, and then opening a "shutter" in the direction you would want to go, any mass in that direction would pull you towards it, whereas the sheilding layer would prevent all other mass from acting on you. All of a sudden, you were accelerating in the direction of the open "shutter."
Isn't science fiction great?
That guy's not kidding about becoming the furthest man-made object from the sun. 80km/s may not sound like much after three months, but note that, amazingly, acceleration will remain constant because the size of the bubble will increase as the pressure of the solar wind decreases.
I did a little bit of math, and came up with 392 days to pass Pluto's orbit, at which time the probe would be travelling at a speed of almost 350 km/s. That's more than 0.01c, so we'd have to start figuring in relativistic effects, but damn that's fast.
Note: I'm on my co-op term now, so please excuse any mathematical mistakes as my brain has been turned off.
If you don't want even your anonymous viewing information (information that does not identify you or your household) used in any way, simply tell us by calling our toll-free telephone number (1-877-FOR-TiVo).
This annoys me almost as much as those tiny checkboxes that say "Check here if you don't want to be informed of further updates from (Insert Company Name Here)." Fer Chrissakes, why does the default behaviour always have to be so invasive?
...called "Silver Tower" by Dale Brown. They had a satellite with a high-powered laser, as well as a heck of a targeting system. They ended up beaming the information from the targeting system down to a ship, where it was displayed in a giant LCD tank, and bingo - you had a 3-D image of every object over 1 metre in length, within 1500 kilometres of the battlezone.
Of course, they used the targeting information to shoot down ICBM's, but I thought the 3-D representation of all forces in the area was a pretty cool concept.
1. In a couple of billion years, the sun will be too cold to support the existing life here on earth. A couple of billion years ago, it was warm enough to allow liquid water on Mars.
2. If the rotation of the earth took 4 more hours, I could get 10 hours of sleep each night and still spend 18 hours working/partying.
3. Um... nearly circular orbits are the norm for any forming solar system. Take any cloud of gas, start to condense it in free space, and bingo!
4. These same gases cause Venus to be a raging cauldron of heat.
5. And if it were only 60 feet away, it would plow over all tall buildings, making construction of anything more than mud huts very dangerous.
6. Damn. I just dug a hole in my back yard. Guess we're all gonna die now.
7. The tropics experience no appreciable change in climate due to the tilt of the axis. They always recieve direct sunlight. Stuff still grows there.
8. Venus also has an atmosphere. So does Jupiter, so does Saturn...
9. Well, who put those meteors out there in the first place, eh?
10. What is to say that a different sized planet would not simply give rise to a different form of life?
11. Again, see previous comment. Essential to all forms of life that we know. Seeing as we have a very limited experience, this isn't really fair.
12. Sorry, I'm running out of snarky comments.
13. Again, life as we know it.
You're probably bored of reading this by now, but if you are not, consider this: In an infinite universe of infinite possibilities, assume there is a finite chance that the conditions necessary for life will arise. This leads to an infinite number of worlds which will support and contain life, and of course, at least one person who will insist that HIS world is special, that it was manually created by some greater being specifically for HIM.
'Cause you've got pictures of the Olympics, and NBC has exclusive broadcasting rights...
I've always had a place in my heart for the series (and resulting movie) starring Adam West. Love those sound effects! Kapow! Kazaam! Wonk! My favourite line from Batman & Robin is where they land on the island and Robin proclaims "Holy rusty metal, Batman!" I laughed my ass off, I don't think anyone else in the theatre got the joke.
Needless to say, I've never been too impressed with the plots of the "recent" set of Batman movies. They're corny, but portrayed as serious. Bleah.