2) Try pinching with four fingers. It's not very comfortable, at all (the only practical way is to lift up the pinky).
...it's just as easy/comfortable to lift up the first finger instead of the pinky (possibly moreso) - my macbook touchpad has two-finger scrolling (it's an older model, and doesn't have the same multi-touch support as their newer models), and i generally use the second+third finger to scroll (and rest my pinky down when reading/not scrolling) - i find it more comfortable than using the first+second finger
that said, i imagine a four finger pinch (using thumb movement to pinch) is still not particularly accurate - but the proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say (ie. i would have to try it out to know for sure)
i'll put my hands up and say i've not read the article - and i'll certainly not be wasting my time doing so.
but is anyone really so stupid to think that email (which is based upon open standards and is already running on hundreds of thousands of servers and comes installed by default on most servers) will ever be replaced by fecebook and twatter???
a few years ago i guess the same idiots would also be including myspaz on that list too? (and what is next years fad?)
email dying? pffffft - what a bunch of idiots (can't they see that?)
Thanks for the henge references - I shall seek them out on my next trip to Europe!
enjoy - there's lots to see!:)
i might be wrong, but here in the UK the biggest concentration of neolithic sites is generally understood to be in the Wiltshire area - that's where you'll find Stonehenge (and its 'complex' / associated sites) and also Avebury and its 'complex' including Silbury Hill (plus lots of minor sites which are still interesting) - but there are also a lot of stone circles and henges in various parts of Scotland too.
personally i'd like to see the stuff in France like the awesome stone rows at Carnac - which are not just fascinating, they're truly mind boggling to comprehend imo!!
to be honest, sites that are simple henges - such as Thornborough in Yorkshire (which is undoubtedly of great significance), and many many others, aren't actually that interesting to visit - the more interesting sites are those which also feature standing stones. Avebury (and the sites in the surrounding area) is truly amazing - the henge is hundreds of meters across, and contains the whole village, pub and all! the stones are pretty huge, and the earthworks / bank and ditch is much bigger than that at Stonehenge - imo Stonehenge is only more impressive because of the trilithon arrangement of the stones. Silbury Hill (near Avebury) is (i believe) the largest man-made hill in Europe! - of course no one knows what it was for...
be sure to check out the recent 'Time Team' TV programme's episodes on Stonehenge (and indeed any of their other episodes on neolithic/prehistoric sites) which i linked to in another post of mine - hopefully you can still watch these from the US and they've not limited viewing to the UK only.
there's a wikipedia page on henges - though you've likely already seen that if you followed links from the pages i've already linked?
(btw, i'm not after mod points - i already have excellent slashdot karma, and have had for years - i'm just providing this info because this is something that i'm truly interested in)
i think they concluded the holes were sockets for stones for a number of reasons - one of which is because of the amount of chippings of Bluestone they found in the area, and another being that holes which have had stones in them have a variety of archaeological evidence to support such a conclusion, including the way the earth is packed, the way the hole is cut, and whether there's evidence for packing stones, etc, having been used to hold the stones in place.
the combination of this kind of evidence plus the lack of evidence needed to support the hypothesis of wooden posts being in the holes (organic material would likely be left if wooden posts had been in the sockets) is generally how archaeologists draw their conclusions -- it's become quite a science over the years, and, as time passes, technological advances combined with a greater understanding gathered from other excavations/investigations allows them to build a better picture.
they have found sites with sockets which they believe held wooden posts - so it's not as if they discount such a possibility outright, such things do indeed exist (see Woodhenge for example - but there are plenty of other sites which feature 'post holes', although not usually in large circular arrangements such as discovered at Woodhenge)
of course none of these conclusions/hypotheses can be proven as totally and absolutely 100% accurate, and it is often the case that archaeologists will draw new conclusions in later years, as technology improves and more information is gathered from other digs - which is exactly what they've been doing with these recent excavations in the Stonehenge area.
personally, i'm of the opinion that if they say they don't think it was wooden posts but it was stones, then they're likely right - they are experts after all, and they don't really just make this stuff up, it's based upon the evidence at hand at the site and the culmination of years of study and research across many similar sites.
(in some ways it's like if i repair a pc, and tell my customer that i think it's a hard-disk failure - i've based my decision upon years of experience and the evidence at hand - in such a situation, ie. being the repair-man, i am the 'expert' in that equation - of course, Joe Public may say 'how do you know? it could be the motherboard or the power-supply or something' - and sure, it could be open to interpretation and later discoveries of related information, but i'm likely to be right)
evidence exists for literally hundreds and hundreds of henges across the UK - a lot of them don't have any stones (not because they've been removed, a lot of them just never had them) - the term 'henge' is generally taken to be a circular/oval bank and ditch earthwork.
Why isn't the word henge used more in day-to-day conversation?
...uhm, maybe it's because in day-to-day conversation people don't generally talk about pre-historic / neolithic sites very much? (sorry, couldn't resist pointing out the obvious there!;)
people familiar with ancient / pre-historic sites do often use the term henge when talking about this kind of thing - i guess it depends on where you live, and who you speak with? -- i'm kinda assuming from your question that you likely aren't living in the UK (or France) where there are a lot of henges (and barrows and standing stones / stone arrangements) scattered all over the countryside - some are big and impressive, like Stonehenge (obviously), Avebury and Thornborough, all of which are in the UK, and Carnac in France -- whereas others are only known about because of circular markings left in farmers fields (often only visible from the air nowadays), eg. Bow Henge.
here in the UK Channel 4's "Time Team" covered some of the recent excavations in the Stonehenge area in a couple of episodes earlier this year - this includes the initial discovery of this 'Bluehenge' site, although when the programmes were made they had not got as far as finding the evidence for a complete henge at this site.
check out the two 'specials' here and here. fwiw, the second programme is the more detailed of the two and covers more of the later discoveries.
these recent digs are particularly interesting because they're the most up-to-date excavations to have taken place in the Stonehenge area so far, and they also include the re-excavations of older digs which took place before we had some of our modern techniques, technologies and understanding.
would you mind telling me where you got your 30 degree size for the front-facing arc from? i couldn't find that info in either articles - maybe i missed something?
from a diagram on the back of the unit (shown in a photograph referenced in another post), the front-facing arc of effectiveness looks to be approximately 120 degrees, with semi-safe zones being to the far right and far left (being approx 30 degrees in size each, arcing towards the forward direction from left and right right-angles / tangents) -- with a safe zone behind the unit (of course).
if there's something about arc size in either article, i missed it, and would love to know where it is?!
hi - i read both the Guardian's article and the NYT's article - but i didn't see anywhere where it mentions the size of the arc / angle of effectiveness, in either of the linked articles (nor the Slashdot summary - although that's to be expected!;)
maybe i missed something? i'd love to know what the arc actually is, because i'd like to correct some calculations i made which were based upon visual estimates of arc size from a diagram on the back on the unit (whereupon it shows it to be approximately 120 degrees).
would you mind telling me which article it was? and/or perhaps quoting the part of the article where it says the arc size?
(forgive me if i seem stupid and have missed the obvious here...)
oh, my bad - if the red pie slice is approx 120 degrees, then the yellow pie slices to the left and right are not 35 degrees each, but 30 degrees each.
but that mistake doesn't affect any of the maths that follow - and i'm hoping that's my only mistake.
i did a few simple calculations for beam width, based, admittedly, on some fairly vague 'safety' information shown in a photograph of the back of the unit someone else posted.
i posted my calculations as a reply to the original post with the flickr link - you can find both here.
that's very interesting - especially as the post above yours (on my screen anyway) asks the obvious 'define narrow' - from looking at your photo showing the rear of the device in question one can clearly see a coloured schematic diagram in red/yellow/green, in the centre of the device, above the volume control, which appears to show angles of effect / danger areas in front of the device.
it's seems to show that the effective angle of the device is approximately 120 degrees, ie. from the front of the device this is about 60 degrees to the left and right (this is shown by the big red pie slice) - then it shows smaller areas (approx 35 degrees each) to the far left and far right of that arc which are presumably still classed as unsafe areas to be in (because they're shown as yellow pie slices) - the diagram reveals that the only safe area (green) is if you are more than 90 degrees to the left or right of the device, ie. if you are in fact behind the device itself.
ok, so my estimation of angles could be slightly amiss, but let's run with the basic angle of 120 degrees for this part of my conversation, and apply some basic trigonometry and try to see what's what exactly regarding the width of this 'narrow' beam.
ok, let's make this easy by working with two right angled triangles, allowing us to easily solve using soh-cah-toa -- ok, so we already know angle theta = 120 and half of that = 60, so let's solve / find the 'opposite' side's length for various distances of the 'adjacent' sideâ¦
that means we'll be working with angle theta and the length of the opposite and adjacent sides, so we're going to use the 'toa' part of our high-school mnemonic (ie. tan of theta = opp / adj), and we'll solve for 'o'. i'll show my working (as taught at school) so it's easier for someone to point out if i have any errors in my maths, and where they might be.
we know that:-
tan(theta) = opposite / adjacent
which, when rearranged, simply becomes:-
tan(theta) * adjacent = opposite
in this equation, we already have theta (half our total frontal angle), and the 'adjacent' side, which is our range for which we are calculating (half of) the beam-width - the half-of-full-beam-width being the 'opposite' side of our triangle. (hope everyone's still following and i've not made an error yet!)
so, for a given range of 20 metres, we can calculate:-
tan(60) * 20 (metres range) * 2 (to convert half to full beam width) = 69.3 (total beam width in metres, at 20m)
and, for a given range of 50 metres, we can calculate:-
tan(60) * 50 * 2 = 173.2 (total beam width in metres, at 50m)
again, for a given range of 100 metres, we see:-
tan(60) * 100 * 2 = 376.4 (total beam width in metres, at 100m)
now, i don't know much about the mathematics involved in the falloff of sound over distance, so the above is really not the full story, it's only part of the picture -- BUT what it says to me is that this so-called 'narrow beam' is in fact FAR from narrow, as it seems it could be about 70m wide at a distance of only 20m in front of the device, and over 170m in width at 50m distance.
how they can say that an effective angle of 120 degrees is 'narrow' defies belief!!! (although it comes as no real surprise, i guess) - of course i must remind you that this angle isn't based upon any technical documentation i've read, it's based on a little coloured diagram on the back of the unit in question - so it may not be very accurate because of that.
(isn't this a bit like saying a sawn-off shotgun has a narrow range? - you know, you won't get shot if you stand behind it?)
of course: if my maths is wrong, then please speak up - or, indeed, if you want to confirm that my calculations are in fact correct, then let me know too!
also, if you have any hard technical data on the device then speak up also! it is easy to re-work these numbers if we get more accurate information about the angle-of-effect.
agreed, i spoke before reading the article - but what i say isn't an absolute untruth, it's really just a hastily made comment!:)
the point i was specifically trying to make was that this wasn't the kind of low-level cloning involving dna and rna (like in 'jurassic park') but that this is cloning in the horticultural sense, which is about taking a cutting (living tissue) from a plant and seducing it into growing roots.
in my second post (below) you'll see that i acknowledge this isn't easy for all plants - indeed i am an amateur when it comes to this topic, but my layman's explanation was merely trying to give more of a clue to some of the clueless out there.
i am glad to stand corrected (and to be further informed) by someone with greater knowledge than myself, because it is a topic i have a mild interest in. but i don't think my somewhat ignorant comment was really an absolute untruth.:)
(fwiw i still think the linked news article is a pretty spectacular fail - but that may be my ignorance just as much as it is the main-stream press journalist's)
i'll reply to myself...! (now i've read the article - heh)
having said all that, i should point out that whilst cloning / taking cuttings in general is fairly simple process, some plants are harder to root than others - indeed, the article states that rooting these particular cuttings without them dying (blackening) isn't the primary problem, they say they're also having problems when potting-up/transplanting them because the plant has particularly sensitive roots.
one of the linked articles said that the plant is a 'genetic freak' because of its method of reproduction - this isn't true either, there are a lot of other plants which reproduce naturally through the growth of suckers.
and root-rot (of various kinds, including the specific fungus mentioned) is a very common problem - some plants being more hardy towards it than others.
so, i take it back, this is newsworthy, but not really because of any of the techniques used, instead moreso because they are preserving such an old species which is so low in numbers / near to extinction
but don't be fooled by the reporting journo's lack of horticultural understanding -- this isn't massively high-tech for the horticultural world by a long stretch!
it is worth noting that in horticulture 'cloning' is simply the technical name for the process of propagating a plant through the use of cuttings.
you need no lab to do it - just simply a pair of scissors (or a scalpel), some rooting gel/powder and a rooting medium (compost will do), and a healthy donor ('mother') plant to work from. using a propagation unit will also give better results (perhaps better still if it's heated). 'cloning' plants in this fashion is actually very easy to do - my mum's a keen gardener and she does it with all kinds of plants all the time (one poster here claims to have cloned a plant at age 6 - and i have no reason to doubt that at all!!).
cloning is the primary method used to produce lots of (genetically) identical baby plants for use in commercial growing of all kinds (including, afaiu, in the illegal production of marijuana)
personally, i don't think this is particularly newsworthy, even if they are doing this with one of the oldest plant species in the world.
i agree with a lot of what you say - 'sick of all the same stuff' is a regular conversation between me and my mates.
i think that real in-game rewards is definitely a much better idea than rewarding grind-time - although i quite like the idea of in-game trading myself, it does bring with it a whole heap of unwanted problems as you rightly mention, to which there's no decent solution currently.
when you say "Non power curved (so there won't be n00bst0mping, instead levels give you flexibility)" - could you expand a little on your ideas behind "levels give you flexibility" please?
somewhat amusingly, the 'sensor' to detect if a cellphone has been immersed in water is often just a sticker with a coloured 'spot' on it that changes colour if it gets wet - it's usually in the battery compartment.
...via a trojan in the video file's drm protection layer as far as i can make out.
although to date this only seems to apply to.wmv files (thanks microsoft). the issue was originally reported in 2005, so i don't know whether it's very common, or indeed if it's still an issue nowadays.
we need to stop looking at unemployment as being a problem...
i think it may have been Robert Anton Wilson who said "unemployment is a benefit of a technologically advanced society" - and i have to agree with that view really. afterall, we are always inventing 'labour saving devices' - and this is really just an extreme extension of that, indeed perhaps one should say it's the ultimate extension of that. i believe we will eventually replace most human work (whether it be thinking-based or labour-based work) with that of machines. (sure, it may be some time off, and some countries may do it before others of course, but it will happen eventually)
how we go about 'solving' this issue exactly, with 'welfare' or 'benefits' (as the system is called here in the UK) is still an unanswered question. (and maybe the AIs will come up with a solution for that too, given the right data and a bit of time to 'think' about it)
fwiw i think that that view of unemployment as being a problem is deep rooted - take for example yourself, your view expressed above fails to encompass the fact that eventually/you too/ will probably be out of work eventually, alongside 'them (the stupid people)'.
we/all/ need to think differently with regards to this, because if AI begins to take-off in this manner then it probably won't be very long before we're/all/ shown as being less intelligent than the machine AIs - it won't be very long before that bar is raised.
it's not like there's much fundamental difference between those who are 'stupid' and have to do the lower jobs of society and those who are 'intelligent' and get more choice about what they are able to do regarding employment/work/jobs - we're all human, and mostly just the victims of circumstance, and the education that arose because of those circumstances.
i, for one, welcome our up-and-coming AI overlords!
(what's going on with slashdot these days?!? - i really hope my comment has better formatting than any of these previews seem to show - i've even chosen html now, and added p-tags around all my paragraphs, and/still/ it looks a state in the preview view [sigh])
ok - i've listened to the linked mp3, and have also done some googling...
it seems that Bohlen-Pierce is an alternative scale/mode/tuning method, and not a band/artist as a first thought. -- that in itself is quite interesting, so cheers very much.
i think the track 'stick men' is ok, but not entirely my cup of tea. it reminds me a little of Kate Bush, or perhaps even Bjork at a push.
my ears don't have any problems as such with the scales/tunings used in it, albeit rather alien sounding in some ways it is also quite beautiful - but so is arabic/chinese/indonesian/japanese music too in a similar fashion, although that's modally different yet with a tuning that is western compatible, i think - whereas my initial understanding of BP music is that it's a different tuning albeit a subtle difference (crikey, i'm on the edge of my knowledge here, and in danger of straying out of my depth)
but can i just ask who is the actual artist for that track to which you link? -- there's nothing useful in its id3 tags. and being rather anal with my music collection (you have to be to keep 30000 tracks organised) i'd like to make sure it's got the correct details (as opposed to none at all)
cheers, i have learnt something both interesting and new today!
Slashdot Mirror
2) Try pinching with four fingers. It's not very comfortable, at all (the only practical way is to lift up the pinky).
...it's just as easy/comfortable to lift up the first finger instead of the pinky (possibly moreso) - my macbook touchpad has two-finger scrolling (it's an older model, and doesn't have the same multi-touch support as their newer models), and i generally use the second+third finger to scroll (and rest my pinky down when reading/not scrolling) - i find it more comfortable than using the first+second finger
that said, i imagine a four finger pinch (using thumb movement to pinch) is still not particularly accurate - but the proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say (ie. i would have to try it out to know for sure)
i'll put my hands up and say i've not read the article - and i'll certainly not be wasting my time doing so.
but is anyone really so stupid to think that email (which is based upon open standards and is already running on hundreds of thousands of servers and comes installed by default on most servers) will ever be replaced by fecebook and twatter???
a few years ago i guess the same idiots would also be including myspaz on that list too? (and what is next years fad?)
email dying? pffffft - what a bunch of idiots (can't they see that?)
Accelerando - Charlie Stross
simply superb! :)
Thanks for the henge references - I shall seek them out on my next trip to Europe!
enjoy - there's lots to see! :)
i might be wrong, but here in the UK the biggest concentration of neolithic sites is generally understood to be in the Wiltshire area - that's where you'll find Stonehenge (and its 'complex' / associated sites) and also Avebury and its 'complex' including Silbury Hill (plus lots of minor sites which are still interesting) - but there are also a lot of stone circles and henges in various parts of Scotland too.
personally i'd like to see the stuff in France like the awesome stone rows at Carnac - which are not just fascinating, they're truly mind boggling to comprehend imo!!
to be honest, sites that are simple henges - such as Thornborough in Yorkshire (which is undoubtedly of great significance), and many many others, aren't actually that interesting to visit - the more interesting sites are those which also feature standing stones. Avebury (and the sites in the surrounding area) is truly amazing - the henge is hundreds of meters across, and contains the whole village, pub and all! the stones are pretty huge, and the earthworks / bank and ditch is much bigger than that at Stonehenge - imo Stonehenge is only more impressive because of the trilithon arrangement of the stones. Silbury Hill (near Avebury) is (i believe) the largest man-made hill in Europe! - of course no one knows what it was for...
be sure to check out the recent 'Time Team' TV programme's episodes on Stonehenge (and indeed any of their other episodes on neolithic/prehistoric sites) which i linked to in another post of mine - hopefully you can still watch these from the US and they've not limited viewing to the UK only.
there's a wikipedia page on henges - though you've likely already seen that if you followed links from the pages i've already linked?
(btw, i'm not after mod points - i already have excellent slashdot karma, and have had for years - i'm just providing this info because this is something that i'm truly interested in)
have fun! :)
i think they concluded the holes were sockets for stones for a number of reasons - one of which is because of the amount of chippings of Bluestone they found in the area, and another being that holes which have had stones in them have a variety of archaeological evidence to support such a conclusion, including the way the earth is packed, the way the hole is cut, and whether there's evidence for packing stones, etc, having been used to hold the stones in place.
the combination of this kind of evidence plus the lack of evidence needed to support the hypothesis of wooden posts being in the holes (organic material would likely be left if wooden posts had been in the sockets) is generally how archaeologists draw their conclusions -- it's become quite a science over the years, and, as time passes, technological advances combined with a greater understanding gathered from other excavations/investigations allows them to build a better picture.
they have found sites with sockets which they believe held wooden posts - so it's not as if they discount such a possibility outright, such things do indeed exist (see Woodhenge for example - but there are plenty of other sites which feature 'post holes', although not usually in large circular arrangements such as discovered at Woodhenge)
of course none of these conclusions/hypotheses can be proven as totally and absolutely 100% accurate, and it is often the case that archaeologists will draw new conclusions in later years, as technology improves and more information is gathered from other digs - which is exactly what they've been doing with these recent excavations in the Stonehenge area.
personally, i'm of the opinion that if they say they don't think it was wooden posts but it was stones, then they're likely right - they are experts after all, and they don't really just make this stuff up, it's based upon the evidence at hand at the site and the culmination of years of study and research across many similar sites.
(in some ways it's like if i repair a pc, and tell my customer that i think it's a hard-disk failure - i've based my decision upon years of experience and the evidence at hand - in such a situation, ie. being the repair-man, i am the 'expert' in that equation - of course, Joe Public may say 'how do you know? it could be the motherboard or the power-supply or something' - and sure, it could be open to interpretation and later discoveries of related information, but i'm likely to be right)
How many more henges are we going to find?
evidence exists for literally hundreds and hundreds of henges across the UK - a lot of them don't have any stones (not because they've been removed, a lot of them just never had them) - the term 'henge' is generally taken to be a circular/oval bank and ditch earthwork.
Why isn't the word henge used more in day-to-day conversation?
...uhm, maybe it's because in day-to-day conversation people don't generally talk about pre-historic / neolithic sites very much? (sorry, couldn't resist pointing out the obvious there! ;)
people familiar with ancient / pre-historic sites do often use the term henge when talking about this kind of thing - i guess it depends on where you live, and who you speak with? -- i'm kinda assuming from your question that you likely aren't living in the UK (or France) where there are a lot of henges (and barrows and standing stones / stone arrangements) scattered all over the countryside - some are big and impressive, like Stonehenge (obviously), Avebury and Thornborough, all of which are in the UK, and Carnac in France -- whereas others are only known about because of circular markings left in farmers fields (often only visible from the air nowadays), eg. Bow Henge.
hth
here in the UK Channel 4's "Time Team" covered some of the recent excavations in the Stonehenge area in a couple of episodes earlier this year - this includes the initial discovery of this 'Bluehenge' site, although when the programmes were made they had not got as far as finding the evidence for a complete henge at this site.
check out the two 'specials' here and here. fwiw, the second programme is the more detailed of the two and covers more of the later discoveries.
these recent digs are particularly interesting because they're the most up-to-date excavations to have taken place in the Stonehenge area so far, and they also include the re-excavations of older digs which took place before we had some of our modern techniques, technologies and understanding.
truly fascinating stuff! :)
hi,
would you mind telling me where you got your 30 degree size for the front-facing arc from? i couldn't find that info in either articles - maybe i missed something?
from a diagram on the back of the unit (shown in a photograph referenced in another post), the front-facing arc of effectiveness looks to be approximately 120 degrees, with semi-safe zones being to the far right and far left (being approx 30 degrees in size each, arcing towards the forward direction from left and right right-angles / tangents) -- with a safe zone behind the unit (of course).
if there's something about arc size in either article, i missed it, and would love to know where it is?!
hi - i read both the Guardian's article and the NYT's article - but i didn't see anywhere where it mentions the size of the arc / angle of effectiveness, in either of the linked articles (nor the Slashdot summary - although that's to be expected! ;)
maybe i missed something? i'd love to know what the arc actually is, because i'd like to correct some calculations i made which were based upon visual estimates of arc size from a diagram on the back on the unit (whereupon it shows it to be approximately 120 degrees).
would you mind telling me which article it was? and/or perhaps quoting the part of the article where it says the arc size?
(forgive me if i seem stupid and have missed the obvious here...)
thanks! x
oh, my bad - if the red pie slice is approx 120 degrees, then the yellow pie slices to the left and right are not 35 degrees each, but 30 degrees each.
but that mistake doesn't affect any of the maths that follow - and i'm hoping that's my only mistake.
hi
i did a few simple calculations for beam width, based, admittedly, on some fairly vague 'safety' information shown in a photograph of the back of the unit someone else posted.
i posted my calculations as a reply to the original post with the flickr link - you can find both here.
hth?
(heh, i'm hoping my maths is correct!)
that's very interesting - especially as the post above yours (on my screen anyway) asks the obvious 'define narrow' - from looking at your photo showing the rear of the device in question one can clearly see a coloured schematic diagram in red/yellow/green, in the centre of the device, above the volume control, which appears to show angles of effect / danger areas in front of the device.
it's seems to show that the effective angle of the device is approximately 120 degrees, ie. from the front of the device this is about 60 degrees to the left and right (this is shown by the big red pie slice) - then it shows smaller areas (approx 35 degrees each) to the far left and far right of that arc which are presumably still classed as unsafe areas to be in (because they're shown as yellow pie slices) - the diagram reveals that the only safe area (green) is if you are more than 90 degrees to the left or right of the device, ie. if you are in fact behind the device itself.
ok, so my estimation of angles could be slightly amiss, but let's run with the basic angle of 120 degrees for this part of my conversation, and apply some basic trigonometry and try to see what's what exactly regarding the width of this 'narrow' beam.
ok, let's make this easy by working with two right angled triangles, allowing us to easily solve using soh-cah-toa -- ok, so we already know angle theta = 120 and half of that = 60, so let's solve / find the 'opposite' side's length for various distances of the 'adjacent' sideâ¦
that means we'll be working with angle theta and the length of the opposite and adjacent sides, so we're going to use the 'toa' part of our high-school mnemonic (ie. tan of theta = opp / adj), and we'll solve for 'o'. i'll show my working (as taught at school) so it's easier for someone to point out if i have any errors in my maths, and where they might be.
we know that:-
tan(theta) = opposite / adjacent
which, when rearranged, simply becomes:-
tan(theta) * adjacent = opposite
in this equation, we already have theta (half our total frontal angle), and the 'adjacent' side, which is our range for which we are calculating (half of) the beam-width - the half-of-full-beam-width being the 'opposite' side of our triangle. (hope everyone's still following and i've not made an error yet!)
so, for a given range of 20 metres, we can calculate:-
tan(60) * 20 (metres range) * 2 (to convert half to full beam width) = 69.3 (total beam width in metres, at 20m)
and, for a given range of 50 metres, we can calculate:-
tan(60) * 50 * 2 = 173.2 (total beam width in metres, at 50m)
again, for a given range of 100 metres, we see:-
tan(60) * 100 * 2 = 376.4 (total beam width in metres, at 100m)
now, i don't know much about the mathematics involved in the falloff of sound over distance, so the above is really not the full story, it's only part of the picture -- BUT what it says to me is that this so-called 'narrow beam' is in fact FAR from narrow, as it seems it could be about 70m wide at a distance of only 20m in front of the device, and over 170m in width at 50m distance.
how they can say that an effective angle of 120 degrees is 'narrow' defies belief!!! (although it comes as no real surprise, i guess) - of course i must remind you that this angle isn't based upon any technical documentation i've read, it's based on a little coloured diagram on the back of the unit in question - so it may not be very accurate because of that.
(isn't this a bit like saying a sawn-off shotgun has a narrow range? - you know, you won't get shot if you stand behind it?)
of course: if my maths is wrong, then please speak up - or, indeed, if you want to confirm that my calculations are in fact correct, then let me know too!
also, if you have any hard technical data on the device then speak up also! it is easy to re-work these numbers if we get more accurate information about the angle-of-effect.
...comments?
to be less of an 'absolute untruth' ;) and for the sake of clarity, perhaps what i meant say was:-
in its simplest form you need no lab to do it - [...]
agreed, i spoke before reading the article - but what i say isn't an absolute untruth, it's really just a hastily made comment! :)
the point i was specifically trying to make was that this wasn't the kind of low-level cloning involving dna and rna (like in 'jurassic park') but that this is cloning in the horticultural sense, which is about taking a cutting (living tissue) from a plant and seducing it into growing roots.
in my second post (below) you'll see that i acknowledge this isn't easy for all plants - indeed i am an amateur when it comes to this topic, but my layman's explanation was merely trying to give more of a clue to some of the clueless out there.
i am glad to stand corrected (and to be further informed) by someone with greater knowledge than myself, because it is a topic i have a mild interest in. but i don't think my somewhat ignorant comment was really an absolute untruth. :)
(fwiw i still think the linked news article is a pretty spectacular fail - but that may be my ignorance just as much as it is the main-stream press journalist's)
i'll reply to myself...! (now i've read the article - heh)
having said all that, i should point out that whilst cloning / taking cuttings in general is fairly simple process, some plants are harder to root than others - indeed, the article states that rooting these particular cuttings without them dying (blackening) isn't the primary problem, they say they're also having problems when potting-up/transplanting them because the plant has particularly sensitive roots.
one of the linked articles said that the plant is a 'genetic freak' because of its method of reproduction - this isn't true either, there are a lot of other plants which reproduce naturally through the growth of suckers.
and root-rot (of various kinds, including the specific fungus mentioned) is a very common problem - some plants being more hardy towards it than others.
so, i take it back, this is newsworthy, but not really because of any of the techniques used, instead moreso because they are preserving such an old species which is so low in numbers / near to extinction
but don't be fooled by the reporting journo's lack of horticultural understanding -- this isn't massively high-tech for the horticultural world by a long stretch!
it is worth noting that in horticulture 'cloning' is simply the technical name for the process of propagating a plant through the use of cuttings.
you need no lab to do it - just simply a pair of scissors (or a scalpel), some rooting gel/powder and a rooting medium (compost will do), and a healthy donor ('mother') plant to work from. using a propagation unit will also give better results (perhaps better still if it's heated). 'cloning' plants in this fashion is actually very easy to do - my mum's a keen gardener and she does it with all kinds of plants all the time (one poster here claims to have cloned a plant at age 6 - and i have no reason to doubt that at all!!).
cloning is the primary method used to produce lots of (genetically) identical baby plants for use in commercial growing of all kinds (including, afaiu, in the illegal production of marijuana)
personally, i don't think this is particularly newsworthy, even if they are doing this with one of the oldest plant species in the world.
interesting, cheers for that.
i've not played PlanetSide - i will likely take a look...
hi
i agree with a lot of what you say - 'sick of all the same stuff' is a regular conversation between me and my mates.
i think that real in-game rewards is definitely a much better idea than rewarding grind-time - although i quite like the idea of in-game trading myself, it does bring with it a whole heap of unwanted problems as you rightly mention, to which there's no decent solution currently.
when you say "Non power curved (so there won't be n00bst0mping, instead levels give you flexibility)" - could you expand a little on your ideas behind "levels give you flexibility" please?
cheers :)
/frogg
somewhat amusingly, the 'sensor' to detect if a cellphone has been immersed in water is often just a sticker with a coloured 'spot' on it that changes colour if it gets wet - it's usually in the battery compartment.
not very high tech - but it works.
more info - plus photos - here:-
http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2006/10/17/the-tell-tale-part/
> How would a video file deliver a virus payload?
...via a trojan in the video file's drm protection layer as far as i can make out.
although to date this only seems to apply to .wmv files (thanks microsoft). the issue was originally reported in 2005, so i don't know whether it's very common, or indeed if it's still an issue nowadays.
for more info see here:-
http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2005/Jan/0130.html
here's a link to a blog by someone on the mars rover team:- Mars and Me
...fascinating stuff!! :)
we need to stop looking at unemployment as being a problem...
i think it may have been Robert Anton Wilson who said "unemployment is a benefit of a technologically advanced society" - and i have to agree with that view really. afterall, we are always inventing 'labour saving devices' - and this is really just an extreme extension of that, indeed perhaps one should say it's the ultimate extension of that. i believe we will eventually replace most human work (whether it be thinking-based or labour-based work) with that of machines. (sure, it may be some time off, and some countries may do it before others of course, but it will happen eventually)
how we go about 'solving' this issue exactly, with 'welfare' or 'benefits' (as the system is called here in the UK) is still an unanswered question. (and maybe the AIs will come up with a solution for that too, given the right data and a bit of time to 'think' about it)
fwiw i think that that view of unemployment as being a problem is deep rooted - take for example yourself, your view expressed above fails to encompass the fact that eventually /you too/ will probably be out of work eventually, alongside 'them (the stupid people)'.
we /all/ need to think differently with regards to this, because if AI begins to take-off in this manner then it probably won't be very long before we're /all/ shown as being less intelligent than the machine AIs - it won't be very long before that bar is raised.
it's not like there's much fundamental difference between those who are 'stupid' and have to do the lower jobs of society and those who are 'intelligent' and get more choice about what they are able to do regarding employment/work/jobs - we're all human, and mostly just the victims of circumstance, and the education that arose because of those circumstances.
i, for one, welcome our up-and-coming AI overlords!
(what's going on with slashdot these days?!? - i really hope my comment has better formatting than any of these previews seem to show - i've even chosen html now, and added p-tags around all my paragraphs, and /still/ it looks a state in the preview view [sigh])
(continuing the conversation with myself now)
ok - found it...
the track you link to, Stick Men, is by Elaine Walker, 2001
and afaict, it was written for research/experimental purposes - there's a pdf out there to accompany it which can be easily found with google.
interesting...
ok - i've listened to the linked mp3, and have also done some googling...
it seems that Bohlen-Pierce is an alternative scale/mode/tuning method, and not a band/artist as a first thought. -- that in itself is quite interesting, so cheers very much.
i think the track 'stick men' is ok, but not entirely my cup of tea. it reminds me a little of Kate Bush, or perhaps even Bjork at a push.
my ears don't have any problems as such with the scales/tunings used in it, albeit rather alien sounding in some ways it is also quite beautiful - but so is arabic/chinese/indonesian/japanese music too in a similar fashion, although that's modally different yet with a tuning that is western compatible, i think - whereas my initial understanding of BP music is that it's a different tuning albeit a subtle difference (crikey, i'm on the edge of my knowledge here, and in danger of straying out of my depth)
but can i just ask who is the actual artist for that track to which you link? -- there's nothing useful in its id3 tags. and being rather anal with my music collection (you have to be to keep 30000 tracks organised) i'd like to make sure it's got the correct details (as opposed to none at all)
cheers, i have learnt something both interesting and new today!
blimey - now i'm logged in, i have all sigs disabled!
but i will ineed take a look... cheers for the tip.