"I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous ParaCausal Meteorological Phenomenon."
"Can you tell us what that means?"
"I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that. No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you said it is, but something we say it is. And if it turns out that you're right, you'll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a... er `Supernormal...' - not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a `Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer'. We'll probably want to shove a `Quasi' in there somewhere to protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my life. Admittedly, you wouldn't catch me going on holiday with him. "
"Thanks, that'll be all for now, other than to say `Hi!' to Wonko if he's watching."
Does anyone know of a good mp3 to ogg converter? I'd like to convert my collection to ogg, but I don't want to have to deal with each song individually. Is there are converter that can handle doing batch conversions on a slew of mp3's, and pick an appropriate compression rate for each one? I mean, I'd rather not have my low quality recordings suddenly turn into huge files, and I also don't want my high quality recordings to suffer.
I had an 1800T for a year, and just after the warentty expired, it started falling apart. The hard drive died a miserable death for no apparent reason. The case cracked at the hinge, and, depite all common sense, a peice of the case in the upper left corner cracked and broke out. The keys are pretty fragile, too; I lost the 'g' key by dropping a cordless phone on the keyboard. It breaking didn't bother me as much as the fix: I'd need to get a $100 keyboard when I probably broke about $.03 worth of plastic.
Too bad; until it started falling apart, I really thought highly of this laptop.
"What is the purpose of war?" "Well, thats simple. The purpose of war is to inflict maximum damage on the enemy. To eliminate his ability to retaliate."
--General Black & another in Failsafe
What is the purpose of these robots? They are to prevent our soldiers from being lost in war. The problem is that if we have robots that can be quickly manufactured, and don't cost us a human when they go down, then they are no longer primary targets. An enemy presented with an opposing army of robots would be more inclined to go after the people controling the robots than the robots themselves. So in a war between two more or less evenly matched opponants, I see two scenarios. First, each has his army of robots destroy the opposing army of robots, leaving both sides where they were before the battle began, and at a considerably loss for the cost of manufacturing the 'bots. The other scenario is that each army of 'bots goes after the people controling the other army, ignoring the other 'bots, circumventing the reason for having the robots in the first place, that is, to prevent the loss of human life.
Of course a key term is "evenly matched opponants". We can't stop developing new weapons, as pointless as it may be, because someone else might not stop, and then we'd be at a disadvantage.
I'm a big fan of cats, myself. The only problem is when they want to be the center of attention and jump up on they keyboard (or book or whatever else I happen to be holding between me and the rest of the world).
"It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature" - The Jargon Files
Although So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is by far my favorite in the series, and hence I was also very unhappy with Fenchurch's exit, I really liked MH. I enjoy having a series with a beginning and an end, and MH gave me that end. (Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime because it does the same) It takes guts from an author to close off a good series, especially one as good as HHGTTG, and I'm happy with Adams' closure of this series.
Bah, with even so few calculations, I knew I'd most likely screw up somewhere. I was just hoping it wouldn't be such a dumb mistake as reading from the "earth" column instead of the "moon" column.
Ok, new numbers... hmhmhm..
oops, looks like I divided by the radius instead of by twice the radius in one place... lets fix that, too..
That makes the band 27.3 km wide, for a grand total of 2.9e5 sq km, or about the size of Colorado.
My chances of getting it right this time? As always, probably pretty slim.
One Percent
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Just for kicks and giggles, I thought I'd try to figure out how much area you'd need to cover to pick up that 1% of energy hitting the moon.
So the area of a disc of that radius is 1.278e8 km^2.
One percent of that is of course 1.278e6 km^2.
Lets construct our solar panels in a band around the equator, so that at any given time, 1% of the sunlight is being collected.
Treating the band as approximately a rectanle, so I don't have to think too hard, 1.278e6/6378.1 = 100.18 km
Now this stripe on a flat disc needs to be translated back to a band on the surface of a shpere. Approximating that band as a cylender, with hight 100.18km, and radius as that of the moon, we get approximately 4.0e6 km^2. For reference, thats tad less than half the size of the United States (9.629e6 km^2).
Not terribly geeky, but I climb all the time, and its amazing how fast it gets you in shape. Or at least builds up your arms. And its definately got that "I'm going to figure out how to get past this" mentality.
"You pull the string and its really hot"
on
Space Ramen!
·
· Score: 1
I'm waiting for pull-string instant noodles, like in the Cowboy Bebop movies. 3 minutes in the microwave is way too long to wait.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doens't using a space elavator to lift things steal from the angular momentum of the earth? I mean, you'd only lose a negligable amount from lifting satellites, and space stations, but CowboyNeal? I don't want to end up on the "permanant dark side of the earth".
Back when I was a wee lad, we my dad for some reason agreed to let this guy come to our house to sell us this food service thing, where we'd get a freezer and have food delivered every so often, or some such thing.
My mother wasn't taking well to the pitch at all but it was when the guy said "our beef is higher quality than what you'll get in the supermarket. Our cows are fed a healthy diet of [corn or some cow food I forget]. The cows that go to your supermarket are fed only sticks and rocks" that my mother finally gave him the boot.
I remember having to use this weird thing instead of a mouse. I looked on google for a bit but couldn't find a picture or anything. I guess knowing what it was called would help. It consisted of two mouse-like bits, but instead of having a ball, each one had a knob that controlled one axis of movement. I imagine there was a button or two somewhere, but I don't remember exactally.
I'm another Freecell addict. I like to sit and stare at a new game for about 20 minutes, solve it in a flurry of action the next minute.
Descent 3 is always good. My rank seems to be going down despite the fact that I seem to be doing better. Go figure.
Finally, my Nethack addiction seems to be tapering off, since I fought my way right to the tower of the Wizard of Yendor, and found myself terribly short of resources. I haven't had the heart to go and play that charactor to the bitter end.
I managed to drop a cordless phone on my compaq laptop, and broke off the 'g' key. Why they make laptop keys out of so many little plastic pieces, I don't know, but I managed to break all but the little scissorlike things that hold the key up. Compaq support told me I'd need to take it to a service center to get it fixed, for something like $40. A cheap tube of superglue got the key back on instead, but it still types unreliably.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this present time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous ParaCausal Meteorological Phenomenon."
... er `Supernormal ...' - not paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those mean now, no, a `Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer'. We'll probably want to shove a `Quasi' in there somewhere to protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my life. Admittedly, you wouldn't catch me going on holiday with him. "
"Can you tell us what that means?"
"I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that.
No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not what you said it is, but something we say it is.
And if it turns out that you're right, you'll still be wrong, because we will simply call him a
"Thanks, that'll be all for now, other than to say `Hi!' to Wonko if he's watching."
Does anyone know of a good mp3 to ogg converter? I'd like to convert my collection to ogg, but I don't want to have to deal with each song individually. Is there are converter that can handle doing batch conversions on a slew of mp3's, and pick an appropriate compression rate for each one? I mean, I'd rather not have my low quality recordings suddenly turn into huge files, and I also don't want my high quality recordings to suffer.
Any reccommendations?
I had an 1800T for a year, and just after the warentty expired, it started falling apart. The hard drive died a miserable death for no apparent reason. The case cracked at the hinge, and, depite all common sense, a peice of the case in the upper left corner cracked and broke out. The keys are pretty fragile, too; I lost the 'g' key by dropping a cordless phone on the keyboard. It breaking didn't bother me as much as the fix: I'd need to get a $100 keyboard when I probably broke about $.03 worth of plastic.
Too bad; until it started falling apart, I really thought highly of this laptop.
For those who don't know what it is, and, like me, don't feel like registering to get into the NYT, here's the prisoners' Dilemma.
...at Sluggy Freelance
"What is the purpose of war?"
"Well, thats simple. The purpose of war is to inflict maximum damage on the enemy. To eliminate his ability to retaliate."
--General Black & another in Failsafe
What is the purpose of these robots? They are to prevent our soldiers from being lost in war. The problem is that if we have robots that can be quickly manufactured, and don't cost us a human when they go down, then they are no longer primary targets. An enemy presented with an opposing army of robots would be more inclined to go after the people controling the robots than the robots themselves. So in a war between two more or less evenly matched opponants, I see two scenarios. First, each has his army of robots destroy the opposing army of robots, leaving both sides where they were before the battle began, and at a considerably loss for the cost of manufacturing the 'bots. The other scenario is that each army of 'bots goes after the people controling the other army, ignoring the other 'bots, circumventing the reason for having the robots in the first place, that is, to prevent the loss of human life.
Of course a key term is "evenly matched opponants". We can't stop developing new weapons, as pointless as it may be, because someone else might not stop, and then we'd be at a disadvantage.
Oh well. Just some ramblings that came to mind.
I'm a big fan of cats, myself. The only problem is when they want to be the center of attention and jump up on they keyboard (or book or whatever else I happen to be holding between me and the rest of the world).
"It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature" - The Jargon Files
I wanted to mod this as funny, but that isn't right. we need a (+1 my god, he's right. we're idiots)
Although So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is by far my favorite in the series, and hence I was also very unhappy with Fenchurch's exit, I really liked MH. I enjoy having a series with a beginning and an end, and MH gave me that end. (Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime because it does the same) It takes guts from an author to close off a good series, especially one as good as HHGTTG, and I'm happy with Adams' closure of this series.
I caught some virus that changed my suit to plaid, and it won't let me change it back!
Bah, with even so few calculations, I knew I'd most likely screw up somewhere. I was just hoping it wouldn't be such a dumb mistake as reading from the "earth" column instead of the "moon" column.
Ok, new numbers... hmhmhm..
oops, looks like I divided by the radius instead of by twice the radius in one place... lets fix that, too..
That makes the band 27.3 km wide, for a grand total of 2.9e5 sq km, or about the size of Colorado.
My chances of getting it right this time? As always, probably pretty slim.
Just for kicks and giggles, I thought I'd try to figure out how much area you'd need to cover to pick up that 1% of energy hitting the moon.
Radius of the moon: 6378.1 km
So the area of a disc of that radius is 1.278e8 km^2.
One percent of that is of course 1.278e6 km^2.
Lets construct our solar panels in a band around the equator, so that at any given time, 1% of the sunlight is being collected.
Treating the band as approximately a rectanle, so I don't have to think too hard, 1.278e6/6378.1 = 100.18 km
Now this stripe on a flat disc needs to be translated back to a band on the surface of a shpere. Approximating that band as a cylender, with hight 100.18km, and radius as that of the moon, we get approximately 4.0e6 km^2. For reference, thats tad less than half the size of the United States (9.629e6 km^2).
Not terribly geeky, but I climb all the time, and its amazing how fast it gets you in shape. Or at least builds up your arms. And its definately got that "I'm going to figure out how to get past this" mentality.
I'm waiting for pull-string instant noodles, like in the Cowboy Bebop movies. 3 minutes in the microwave is way too long to wait.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doens't using a space elavator to lift things steal from the angular momentum of the earth? I mean, you'd only lose a negligable amount from lifting satellites, and space stations, but CowboyNeal? I don't want to end up on the "permanant dark side of the earth".
Well certainly. Those with youngun's frequently have to pass references to other things to dress.
Back when I was a wee lad, we my dad for some reason agreed to let this guy come to our house to sell us this food service thing, where we'd get a freezer and have food delivered every so often, or some such thing.
My mother wasn't taking well to the pitch at all but it was when the guy said "our beef is higher quality than what you'll get in the supermarket. Our cows are fed a healthy diet of [corn or some cow food I forget]. The cows that go to your supermarket are fed only sticks and rocks" that my mother finally gave him the boot.
"Does anybody care what this guy thinks?"
*gasp!*
I remember having to use this weird thing instead of a mouse. I looked on google for a bit but couldn't find a picture or anything. I guess knowing what it was called would help. It consisted of two mouse-like bits, but instead of having a ball, each one had a knob that controlled one axis of movement. I imagine there was a button or two somewhere, but I don't remember exactally.
Mystery hardware from the days of yore...
I mean, according to this, my IQ should be negative by now. And I'm still... ok, bad example.
Reminds me of Sluggy Freelance.
Someday I'll have better things to do with my time than read comics and watch simpsons all day, and make random connections.
Aw, who am I kidding....
I'm another Freecell addict. I like to sit and stare at a new game for about 20 minutes, solve it in a flurry of action the next minute.
Descent 3 is always good. My rank seems to be going down despite the fact that I seem to be doing better. Go figure.
Finally, my Nethack addiction seems to be tapering off, since I fought my way right to the tower of the Wizard of Yendor, and found myself terribly short of resources. I haven't had the heart to go and play that charactor to the bitter end.
How about Metallic, Interesting, Thermal Harm Resistant Intermediate Layer
I managed to drop a cordless phone on my compaq laptop, and broke off the 'g' key. Why they make laptop keys out of so many little plastic pieces, I don't know, but I managed to break all but the little scissorlike things that hold the key up. Compaq support told me I'd need to take it to a service center to get it fixed, for something like $40. A cheap tube of superglue got the key back on instead, but it still types unreliably.