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User: hanche

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Comments · 9

  1. Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain on How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? · · Score: 1

    The area of an A0 sheet is a square metre.

  2. Re:Yeah, but in the real world on How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Surely, everyone knows that the proper measure for fuel economy is the square millimetre (or millimeter for the other side of the pond). After all, we're dividing volume by distance here, so naturally we get an area. And this measure has an obvious geometric interpretation: Distribute the fuel needed to drive a certain distance as a very thin tube along that entire distance, and measure its cross section.

  3. Re:If it was smoke on A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia · · Score: 1
    The straightness of the trail seems to eliminate bugs. It is perfectly straight.

    It is not

    perfectly

    straight, as you'll find out if you draw a straight line next to it with your favourite image editor. Is it such a surprise that an insect carried on a moderate wind can have a nearly straight trajectory over a time span of 1/20 s? I think not.
  4. Re:My solution on A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia · · Score: 1

    So, any insect experts about? Is around 400 wingspans per second feasible?

    I'm not an insect expert, but don't forget the wind, coming from the right and behind. A tiny bug carried by the wind could travel that fast, surely?

  5. Re:I think I know what it is... on A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia · · Score: 1

    The insect theory doesn't really hold up when you think about it; how do you explain the flash of light?

    Easy; an insect close to the camera, out of focus and intensely lit up by the camera flash will look just like that.

  6. Re:It wasn't a bug on A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Look closely, and you'll see several pixels light up in the "parking lot" area during the "blast".

    All I see looks like sensor noise, with the odd bits of jpeg artifacts thrown in.

  7. Re:My solution on A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia · · Score: 1

    Uh, the original discussion site was on nightskylive.net, which got hosed. The new forum is at www.badastronomy.com. It looks just like the old one, but messages posted on nightskylive.net seem to be lost.

  8. Re:My solution on A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia · · Score: 1

    Why any decent photographer would use a flash for that shot? It happens easily with those little cameras, you just forget to readjust the setting after taking some flash pictures. Especially with the flash set to automatic you might not notice for a long time, since it won't fire in daylight. And if this was a series controlled by a computer, the photographer might not have been around to notice. Or there was enough daylight left that the flash wasn't that noticable.

    As for the prize, it is quite possible I was before you. I posted the solution to the other discussion site around 12:30 European time, before it got hosed. (But maybe it got hosed so bad I won't be able to prove it. Oh, well, never mind.)

  9. Re:Fixed the JS/CSS bug? on Netscape Communicator 4.72 Released · · Score: 2
    Have they finally fixed the bug where turning off JS disabled CSS even if you have CSS enabled?

    Not likely. That particular bug, after all, is there because CSS support is implemented by translating CSS into javascript. Hence, turning off the latter turns off the former.

    We should expect this silliness to end with Mozilla, of course.