And yet a simple null-experiment will show that both will agree on the color if given a chance:
Give each of the men a card with gradations of reds and greens, with different values, chromas, and hues. Given standard lighting, any full-sighted person would be able to pick out regions of strong reds and greens on the card, except near the dividing line (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system#Chroma). What's more, both men, upon holding the card up to the tree, will be able to pick out the region on the card where the difference between the tree's color and that on the card is the least. By definition (remember that normally-sighted people will all agree on whether a given point on the card is a red or a green, except for border cases, and very rarely will a singly-colorblind person argue that a color could fall in a few regions), the tree can have only one color, and even moderately-sighted people can figure out what color it is using such a null technique. It's very powerful.
KDE aims for a Windows-ish philosophy of "everything should be configurable". There are options for just about everything, so you can tweak your desktop to be just the way you want it. I realize that you needed a good Windows/OS X dichotomy with which to compare KDE and Gnome, but you call Windows configurable?!? I've worked extensively on KDE, XFCE, and Enlightenment, and some with Gnome, and you're right: KDE is exremely configurable, far moreso than Gnome. But Gnome is on par with, if not considerably MORE configurable than Windows. Windows is essentially locked as it is, even with those "power users'" tools.
I'm highly looking forward to being able to use KDE as a WM for Windows systems, without the added cruft of a Cygwin environment.
I know its charged ions are the constituents of a plasma, but does the solar wind have anything like the density necessary to constitute a "medium" in which waves can form? I would think it'd be orders of magnitude too thin for anything to propagate at all. If the constituent molecules (or ions, whatever) can influence each other at _all_, then it's dense enough to carry waves. Maybe not fast ones (compared to c in air near the earth), and maybe not easily detectable, but they're there. Heck, clustering of galactic "molecules" are wave phenomena, over tremendously long time scales, and with tremendously low spatial density (a galaxy every thousand light-years?).
The craziest thing is that with the average Joe the most common concern I've heard about nanotech is fear of the "grey goo" scenario Speaking of which... If you noticed the slashdot tags, there appears to be two types of nanobots. A British and an American;) One of those is Earl Grey Goo, the afternoon goo.
But in reality, fad dieting advice is all over the map and has been since it was part of pop culture, which goes back a *long* way. Spoonful of mercury, anyone? Well, that's complete and utter -- Ooh! Shiny!
Yes, this is pedantic, but by practically any definition (even leaving aside unbounded electromagnetic radiation or mass), Sol is FAR larger than the comet. The very fact that the comet HAS a tail of sorts speaks to the influence of the solar wind.
I'd guess that the diameter that most people talk about when they're discussing the sun is that determined by the mean-free scatting path length of photons produced within the sun. Once the photons' probability for escaping the sun is higher than that for being scattered back into the interior, that's what we usually call the "diameter", and it accounts for the relatively sharp "edge" to the sun.
I could release a bunch of helium atoms on Earth's surface, and eventually they'd diffuse enough to be effectively larger than the sun's "diameter" as defined in the articles. It still doesn't mean a whole lot.
Leonardo invented some of his own mathematical symbols and terms. Many scientists of his time did this because number notation was not standardized until after the invention of the printing press. This made it difficult for scientists and mathematicians to communicate their ideas to each other. I'd be willing to bet that most creative, curious people do this in one form or another. Feynman did (and then mostly abandoned these schemes for the established ones, except for the revolutionary Feynman diagrams); I did (various "easier" symbols for polynomial terms, and oft-used functions; also a phonetic language, with some musical-like notation---I realized in high school that I'd just reinvented Fourier analysis applied to various phonemes); many of my friends did similar things.
We (my friends and I, at least) gradually abandoned our schemes when we learned that there were already established symbols already used, or that our schemes were efficient but not necessarily good at communicating with others, because one has to explain the efficiencies in terms of the established schematas, and it's often just easier to fall back on the usual notation.
Perhaps Leonardo simply stuck with his notations because they really WERE better, or because there weren't enough people around to take advantage of other, established notational forms (or, indeed, what became established wasn't so "standard" then and there).
Unless you think having a male reproductive organ slapped on your forehead dirty.
Not when it's my own.
Re:The problem is that SETI is broken.
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 1
Any serious SETI effort that hopes to find someone that doesn't know we're here already and wants to talk to us will cost many many billions of dollars.
Facebook nickname: drrtyEarthGrrl
Interests: tentacled aliens (no purple ones); webchat; relationships
Our lives are full of circumstances that provoke us or challenge our assumptions and expectations. If you let things continue to do that, you will have anger. Or you will study science.
I suppose it has something to do with the "openness" of the fonts, or something like that, but haven't complete (or nearly so) scientific font sets been around for a long time? Other posters have mentioned the TeX collections, and there's also Mathematica's fonts: http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/latestfonts.html.
Basically: what's new about the Stix font set?
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V09NO2PDF/V09N2BRU.pdf contains an analysis of the analysis (yes, you read that right) of an experiment on tritium, which experiment was apparently inspired by Shnoll's. Interestingly, the analysis was published in a journal (Apeiron) which is known for being of a more -- ahem -- speculative journal than many mainstream scientists are comfortable with.
The analysis (as spare of details as it is, I admit) is not favorably impressed with the original analysis. I postulate that the mistakes made may also have been made in the original Shnoll paper(s).
But yeah, I would expect a BA in Maths to be about as useful as a BSc in art - while a fascinating idea, I wouldn't get such a person to design me something:) Good. We wouldn't want to design it for Mr. Old MeaniePants anyway!
( I kid. I have a BA in math, and was just as well prepared for my more advanced studies as anyone else. Well, except for some Chinese classmates who already had Ph.D.s)
Slashdot Mirror
And yet a simple null-experiment will show that both will agree on the color if given a chance:
Give each of the men a card with gradations of reds and greens, with different values, chromas, and hues. Given standard lighting, any full-sighted person would be able to pick out regions of strong reds and greens on the card, except near the dividing line (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell_color_system#Chroma). What's more, both men, upon holding the card up to the tree, will be able to pick out the region on the card where the difference between the tree's color and that on the card is the least.
By definition (remember that normally-sighted people will all agree on whether a given point on the card is a red or a green, except for border cases, and very rarely will a singly-colorblind person argue that a color could fall in a few regions), the tree can have only one color, and even moderately-sighted people can figure out what color it is using such a null technique. It's very powerful.
It's because there's no fighting in the War Room!
I'm highly looking forward to being able to use KDE as a WM for Windows systems, without the added cruft of a Cygwin environment.
I love lamp!
(Giggigty giggity, of course)
Pfft. The Boston Marathon is *obviously* superior to the Tour de France, and the Iditarod beats them bo--... Oh, wait.
Yes, this is pedantic, but by practically any definition (even leaving aside unbounded electromagnetic radiation or mass), Sol is FAR larger than the comet. The very fact that the comet HAS a tail of sorts speaks to the influence of the solar wind.
I'd guess that the diameter that most people talk about when they're discussing the sun is that determined by the mean-free scatting path length of photons produced within the sun. Once the photons' probability for escaping the sun is higher than that for being scattered back into the interior, that's what we usually call the "diameter", and it accounts for the relatively sharp "edge" to the sun.
I could release a bunch of helium atoms on Earth's surface, and eventually they'd diffuse enough to be effectively larger than the sun's "diameter" as defined in the articles. It still doesn't mean a whole lot.
Hell, I miss his ex-wife.
We (my friends and I, at least) gradually abandoned our schemes when we learned that there were already established symbols already used, or that our schemes were efficient but not necessarily good at communicating with others, because one has to explain the efficiencies in terms of the established schematas, and it's often just easier to fall back on the usual notation.
Perhaps Leonardo simply stuck with his notations because they really WERE better, or because there weren't enough people around to take advantage of other, established notational forms (or, indeed, what became established wasn't so "standard" then and there).
Unless you think having a male reproductive organ slapped on your forehead dirty.
Not when it's my own.
Facebook nickname: drrtyEarthGrrl
Interests: tentacled aliens (no purple ones); webchat; relationships
Seems easy enough to me.
If five limbed grey monsters with swappable appendages start attacking... I'll be hiding in my basement. OMG! Ponies!!!
This will be difficult to change because geeks, nearly by definition, can see beauty beneath an ugly fascia.
:)
Fascia = connective tissue (usually) or an architectural term. I prefer (in this context) the "belt" definition
Façade = face.
I suppose it has something to do with the "openness" of the fonts, or something like that, but haven't complete (or nearly so) scientific font sets been around for a long time? Other posters have mentioned the TeX collections, and there's also Mathematica's fonts: http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/windows/general/latestfonts.html.
Basically: what's new about the Stix font set?
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V09NO2PDF/V09N2BRU.pdf contains an analysis of the analysis (yes, you read that right) of an experiment on tritium, which experiment was apparently inspired by Shnoll's. Interestingly, the analysis was published in a journal (Apeiron) which is known for being of a more -- ahem -- speculative journal than many mainstream scientists are comfortable with.
The analysis (as spare of details as it is, I admit) is not favorably impressed with the original analysis. I postulate that the mistakes made may also have been made in the original Shnoll paper(s).
Spoken like a true vi user.
The parent poster is feeling a bit depressed that it's not common knowledge.
Bzzt. So, so wrong.
( I kid. I have a BA in math, and was just as well prepared for my more advanced studies as anyone else. Well, except for some Chinese classmates who already had Ph.D.s)