You could view Davros as a really extreme disability rights campaigner. He was the classic wheelchair-bound mad scientist, a Dr Strangelove figure, whose ultimate weapon involved re-engineering the Kaled species so that they'd all be in wheelchairs for life. Armoured wheelchairs. With death rays.
As a result of which, much of the universe ended up overrun with heavily armed genocidal maniacs inside Mk. III Travel Machines, and all the architecture across a million worlds was conveniently wheelchair-accessible. Lots of ramps. Gentle slopes and inclines, and broad avenues, and lifts. You've got to hand it to the old man, he did more for the cause of disability accessibility than anyone else in the cosmos.
OK, so he ended up stealing planets and trying to disintegrate every possible universe all at once, but nobody's perfect...
Portals on objects in relative motion lead to serious business.
Consider: we attach a blue portal to a wall aboard the starship Aurora, and an orange portal to a wall aboard the starship Borealis. Aurora stays home, while Borealis takes off on a high-velocity cruise to Alpha Centauri. On its return, thanks to relativity, the Borealis ship's clock shows an elapsed time of one month, while the Aurora ship's clock shows an elapsed time of eight years. At the blue end of the portal, many years have passed, while at the orange end only a few weeks.
Are my two portals now a time machine? Can I enter the portal at the Borealis end and emerge on the Aurora seven years and eleven months ago?
This is probably why portals can only exist in an inertial frame of reference, and disappear when subjected to any acceleration.
Taken pedantically and literally, that's a 2D plane surface of 8 square inches, since the first two 2's are dimensionless. Assuming from that they represent inches, then that's a 4D hypercube of 16 inches^4 because the last 2 is square.
On the internet, any post with such supercilious pedantry must of necessity contain an error itself; normally it manifests in spelling flames, but it seems to hold for geometry too. I got far too taken with the lovely powers-of-two progression. The four-dimensional interpretation gives eight hypercubic inches, because the last 2 is square inches, but it's still a 2 and not a 4...
The biggest problem is that they're selling it for US$300+ in Japan, but the University wants to sell it for $1500+
It's worse than you think. That second price wasn't in dollars. It was pounds. You're looking at $3000 for one of these from the University of Dundee. Better to get on a plane to Tokyo and ask around Akihabara , even with the round trip ticket you'll come out ahead and you'll be able to stop off in a maid cafe while you're there.
That's ambiguous in so many ways. Taken pedantically and literally, that's a 2D plane surface of 8 square inches, since the first two 2's are dimensionless. Assuming from that they represent inches, then that's a 4D hypercube of 16 inches^4 because the last 2 is square.
Looking at the picture, I think what they actually mean is that each edge is 2 inches long, for a footprint of 4 square inches and a volume of 8 cubic inches. But seriously, can we get at least some care in how we handle units? This is primary-school stuff. And why is a British writeup of a Japanese device measuring in inches in the first place? Wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's actually 5cm on a side...
It is enormously expensive to launch things into orbit. Making a smaller and lighter computer saves on launch costs, and the weight allowance can be used for other things. Then again, presumably you still have to launch a mouse and keyboard and VDU for this thing, so it's not quite as great a saving as it sounds...
a tiny cube chassis measuring just two inches square
A cube is measured in square units. Brillant.
So how large is it really? Two inches on a side, for eight cubic inches? Or each face is two square inches, for 2*sqrt(2) cubic inches? Or the cube as a whole has two cubic inches in volume?
I'm willing to go as far as to say it was one of these objects that was responsible for the destruction of a now ghost planet between Mars and Jupiter.
Last I heard, it's more likely that the planet there was never able to form, because of the gravitational effect of Jupiter. It led to the protoplanets there becoming too energetic, and so when they came to collide they smashed each other to bits rather than accumulating together to form a planet.
I've only voted in one general election (here in the UK) and we used the old "cross in the box then put the paper in the slot" technique. The result was still in by the next day, so what problem are these machines supposed to be solving?
Americans vote on a whole lot more things than we do. Instead of a single ballot paper with a list of four or five candidates, they'll often be presented with some mile-long form inviting them to vote on everything from who should be President to who should be the local sheriff to who should be in charge of the binmen to whether their state should let gays marry. Filling these monsters in can be a bother; counting them manually - well, ugh.
Automating this process is a Good Idea. Letting the job be done in proprietary black-box closed source software is a Bad Idea. Letting the job be done in Microsoft Access is a Comical Idea. Letting the job be done by a firm whose CEO once promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush is a Horrible Idea.
The poles are at angles, by definition not 90 degree right angles by definition of the Earth axis tilt. What was that you said?
I know that perfectly well, but I had assessed your knowledge of astronomy at a very low level and didn't want to bring in too much all at once. I decided to spare you a discussion of the significance of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles for the points at right angles to the Sun, and of the Tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn for the points face on to the Sun. But the point remains: the tropical regions are face on towards the Sun, and the polar regions are at a right angle. Temperate zones are at an intermediate angle. The exact degree of inclination varies throughout the year, which is why we have seasons. This is high school science material at best, and it would not be unusual to meet a bright primary school student who understood it.
There is a massive temperature difference between the Equator and the Poles, and longitude degrees in between.
Certainly there's a great temperature difference. But it has nothing to do with distance from the Sun; the Equator is at most 6,378km nearer to the Sun than either pole, but as I pointed out, we are five million kilometres nearer the Sun in January than we are in July. It's about the angle: we're nearer face on to the Sun in summer, and tilted back in winter, and that effect completely overwhelms the distance change. As a side note, please look up 'longitude' and 'latitude' and remember which is which.
I personally believe the most overlooked variable is the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field as it is in process of flipping polarity.
People believe all sorts of things. Why not try thinking things instead?
That's exactly what I'm "implying". Are you implying distance from the Sun has no effect on temperature?
On the scale of the radius of the Earth? No, not much at all. Here comes an astronomy lesson. Consider: the Earth's orbit is slightly eccentric. We're five million kilometres closer to the Sun in January than we are in July, and yet the northern hemisphere experiences a climate phenomenon called 'winter' in January and 'summer' in July.
The temperature difference between the equator and the poles is due to the fact that the Equator is face on to the Sun, while the poles are at a right angle. Each square metre of land at the Equator receives far more sunlight than does a square metre at either pole. That the poles are covered with ice, which is white and hence reflects most of the light falling upon it, compounds this effect.
As I said: if you are ignorant of such basic phenomena as the Earth's orbit and the reasons for the seasons and why temperatures vary from north to south, please stay out of future climate discussions until you have at least a high school understanding of the science involved; otherwise you're unlikely to contribute meaningfully.
What pray tell would be the average temperature effect of the earth orbiting the sun 0.1% closer, especially given given the temperature extreme doifference between the equator and the poles, as a relative percentage difference between the "orbital" distance to the sun?
All these words are English, allowing for some creative spelling, and yet when put together... they don't seem to mean anything.
I mean, seriously: 'a relative percentage difference between the "orbital" distance to the sun'? Doesn't a difference need to be between one thing and another thing? You can't have a difference between only one thing. It simply doesn't make sense.
And I'm not sure, but are you implying that the equator is warmer than the poles because it's closer to the Sun? If so, please don't bother contributing to any more discussions on climatology.
But, since it doesn't predict a year over year increase, it can't possibly be true, since it is based on the Earth dissipating less heat into space because of increased CO2 levels.
That would only be true if, under normal circumstances, every year was exactly the same temperature. As you're well aware, that has never been the case. The gradual temperature rise due to the greenhouse effect is far smaller than the temperature variation due to the different weather patterns from year to year. This year it seems we've had a relatively cool one, so as the headline says, it's been the coldest of the, er... seven years so far this century. But of course '2008 the coldest year since 2000' doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
Suppose you roll 100d6 and write down the result. Then the next day, you roll 101d6, write that down. Then the day after that, 102d6, write that down. Would you expect to get a higher outcome every single day? No. Would you expect an overall upward trend? Yes. That's the sort of thing we're looking at here. A lot of random short-term variance, but a definite ongoing trend.
Not at all, I'm perfectly serious. I commit fantasy genocide for fun: there's nothing quite as satisfying as loading up needlejets with nerve gas and sending them to target densely populated bases. At my command millions perish and entire continents are sterilised for later resettlement by the Human Hive. Muhahahahaha!
And if you think fantasy paedophilia should be forbidden, I assume you intend to lock up everyone involved in the popular 'School Disco' club nights. Or is the 'dirty schoolgirl' scenario not 'fantasy paedophilia'? I think someone here's struggling with the distinction between 'fantasy' and 'reality'.
Our enemy has become, not the Muslim fundamentalists, but the federal government of the United States.
Muslim fundamentalists have never been an enemy worthy of the name. They're a bunch of hopeless dreamers; we're told they want to establish some terrible Caliphate over the whole world, but so what? While we're wishing, I'd like a Ferrari, and the Amish prefer to be called 'sons of the soil', but it's not going to happen.
The chief threats to the US global hegemony are the Chinese government, the Russian gas firms, the European Central Bank, and peak oil. A bunch of fuckwits in suicide vests shouldn't even be on the radar.
But that wasn't your original argument. It was the ability to separate fantasy from reality.
Precisely. The problem with CP or zoo is that they generally depict something that has happened in reality: that real children or animals have been abused in the making. If they're as fictional as a Hollywood movie or a fantasy in IRC somewhere, what's the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
As a result of which, much of the universe ended up overrun with heavily armed genocidal maniacs inside Mk. III Travel Machines, and all the architecture across a million worlds was conveniently wheelchair-accessible. Lots of ramps. Gentle slopes and inclines, and broad avenues, and lifts. You've got to hand it to the old man, he did more for the cause of disability accessibility than anyone else in the cosmos.
OK, so he ended up stealing planets and trying to disintegrate every possible universe all at once, but nobody's perfect...
Consider: we attach a blue portal to a wall aboard the starship Aurora, and an orange portal to a wall aboard the starship Borealis. Aurora stays home, while Borealis takes off on a high-velocity cruise to Alpha Centauri. On its return, thanks to relativity, the Borealis ship's clock shows an elapsed time of one month, while the Aurora ship's clock shows an elapsed time of eight years. At the blue end of the portal, many years have passed, while at the orange end only a few weeks.
Are my two portals now a time machine? Can I enter the portal at the Borealis end and emerge on the Aurora seven years and eleven months ago?
This is probably why portals can only exist in an inertial frame of reference, and disappear when subjected to any acceleration.
On the internet, any post with such supercilious pedantry must of necessity contain an error itself; normally it manifests in spelling flames, but it seems to hold for geometry too. I got far too taken with the lovely powers-of-two progression. The four-dimensional interpretation gives eight hypercubic inches, because the last 2 is square inches, but it's still a 2 and not a 4...
It's worse than you think. That second price wasn't in dollars. It was pounds. You're looking at $3000 for one of these from the University of Dundee. Better to get on a plane to Tokyo and ask around Akihabara , even with the round trip ticket you'll come out ahead and you'll be able to stop off in a maid cafe while you're there.
That's ambiguous in so many ways. Taken pedantically and literally, that's a 2D plane surface of 8 square inches, since the first two 2's are dimensionless. Assuming from that they represent inches, then that's a 4D hypercube of 16 inches^4 because the last 2 is square.
Looking at the picture, I think what they actually mean is that each edge is 2 inches long, for a footprint of 4 square inches and a volume of 8 cubic inches. But seriously, can we get at least some care in how we handle units? This is primary-school stuff. And why is a British writeup of a Japanese device measuring in inches in the first place? Wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's actually 5cm on a side...
It is enormously expensive to launch things into orbit. Making a smaller and lighter computer saves on launch costs, and the weight allowance can be used for other things. Then again, presumably you still have to launch a mouse and keyboard and VDU for this thing, so it's not quite as great a saving as it sounds...
A cube is measured in square units. Brillant.
So how large is it really? Two inches on a side, for eight cubic inches? Or each face is two square inches, for 2*sqrt(2) cubic inches? Or the cube as a whole has two cubic inches in volume?
Last I heard, it's more likely that the planet there was never able to form, because of the gravitational effect of Jupiter. It led to the protoplanets there becoming too energetic, and so when they came to collide they smashed each other to bits rather than accumulating together to form a planet.
Isn't whitehouse.com a porn site? The residence of the chimpanzee in chief is whitehouse.gov.
Done! Now in exchange I demand you bring me a shrubbery!
Ask me that again in 2038.
Just how thoroughly did we sterilise Huygens, I wonder?
Americans vote on a whole lot more things than we do. Instead of a single ballot paper with a list of four or five candidates, they'll often be presented with some mile-long form inviting them to vote on everything from who should be President to who should be the local sheriff to who should be in charge of the binmen to whether their state should let gays marry. Filling these monsters in can be a bother; counting them manually - well, ugh.
Automating this process is a Good Idea. Letting the job be done in proprietary black-box closed source software is a Bad Idea. Letting the job be done in Microsoft Access is a Comical Idea. Letting the job be done by a firm whose CEO once promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush is a Horrible Idea.
I know that perfectly well, but I had assessed your knowledge of astronomy at a very low level and didn't want to bring in too much all at once. I decided to spare you a discussion of the significance of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles for the points at right angles to the Sun, and of the Tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn for the points face on to the Sun. But the point remains: the tropical regions are face on towards the Sun, and the polar regions are at a right angle. Temperate zones are at an intermediate angle. The exact degree of inclination varies throughout the year, which is why we have seasons. This is high school science material at best, and it would not be unusual to meet a bright primary school student who understood it.
There is a massive temperature difference between the Equator and the Poles, and longitude degrees in between.
Certainly there's a great temperature difference. But it has nothing to do with distance from the Sun; the Equator is at most 6,378km nearer to the Sun than either pole, but as I pointed out, we are five million kilometres nearer the Sun in January than we are in July. It's about the angle: we're nearer face on to the Sun in summer, and tilted back in winter, and that effect completely overwhelms the distance change. As a side note, please look up 'longitude' and 'latitude' and remember which is which.
I personally believe the most overlooked variable is the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field as it is in process of flipping polarity.
People believe all sorts of things. Why not try thinking things instead?
On the scale of the radius of the Earth? No, not much at all. Here comes an astronomy lesson. Consider: the Earth's orbit is slightly eccentric. We're five million kilometres closer to the Sun in January than we are in July, and yet the northern hemisphere experiences a climate phenomenon called 'winter' in January and 'summer' in July.
The temperature difference between the equator and the poles is due to the fact that the Equator is face on to the Sun, while the poles are at a right angle. Each square metre of land at the Equator receives far more sunlight than does a square metre at either pole. That the poles are covered with ice, which is white and hence reflects most of the light falling upon it, compounds this effect.
As I said: if you are ignorant of such basic phenomena as the Earth's orbit and the reasons for the seasons and why temperatures vary from north to south, please stay out of future climate discussions until you have at least a high school understanding of the science involved; otherwise you're unlikely to contribute meaningfully.
All these words are English, allowing for some creative spelling, and yet when put together... they don't seem to mean anything.
I mean, seriously: 'a relative percentage difference between the "orbital" distance to the sun'? Doesn't a difference need to be between one thing and another thing? You can't have a difference between only one thing. It simply doesn't make sense.
And I'm not sure, but are you implying that the equator is warmer than the poles because it's closer to the Sun? If so, please don't bother contributing to any more discussions on climatology.
In 1908? More like 1800 :-)
That would only be true if, under normal circumstances, every year was exactly the same temperature. As you're well aware, that has never been the case. The gradual temperature rise due to the greenhouse effect is far smaller than the temperature variation due to the different weather patterns from year to year. This year it seems we've had a relatively cool one, so as the headline says, it's been the coldest of the, er... seven years so far this century. But of course '2008 the coldest year since 2000' doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
Suppose you roll 100d6 and write down the result. Then the next day, you roll 101d6, write that down. Then the day after that, 102d6, write that down. Would you expect to get a higher outcome every single day? No. Would you expect an overall upward trend? Yes. That's the sort of thing we're looking at here. A lot of random short-term variance, but a definite ongoing trend.
And if you think fantasy paedophilia should be forbidden, I assume you intend to lock up everyone involved in the popular 'School Disco' club nights. Or is the 'dirty schoolgirl' scenario not 'fantasy paedophilia'? I think someone here's struggling with the distinction between 'fantasy' and 'reality'.
Can't get away with misquoting the Simpsons at all around here, can I? :-)
Speaking as someone who regularly commits fantasy genocide for fun: yes.
I hate to be the one to break the news, but C++ isn't the only thing that's been revised recently...
'No, no... it's Osama Ben Laden. Completely different guy. Let him through!'
Muslim fundamentalists have never been an enemy worthy of the name. They're a bunch of hopeless dreamers; we're told they want to establish some terrible Caliphate over the whole world, but so what? While we're wishing, I'd like a Ferrari, and the Amish prefer to be called 'sons of the soil', but it's not going to happen.
The chief threats to the US global hegemony are the Chinese government, the Russian gas firms, the European Central Bank, and peak oil. A bunch of fuckwits in suicide vests shouldn't even be on the radar.
Precisely. The problem with CP or zoo is that they generally depict something that has happened in reality: that real children or animals have been abused in the making. If they're as fictional as a Hollywood movie or a fantasy in IRC somewhere, what's the problem?