Apparently the little small town papers are doing just as well as they ever have. Nobody ever subscribed to them for anything but local news, and local news is what they cover.
Agreed some of the biggies will die off though. They do have competition.
He has a bit of a point - paper is self adjusting. The luminance of white paper is always going to be the same relative to the luminance of anything else of a given reflectivity, so in general it will always be about the same relative to the surroundings. A computer screen, on the other hand, may be much dimmer or much brighter than the surroundings, if you don't adjust it (or if it's not smart enough to adjust itself). Paper IS easier on the eyes than a badly adjusted screen, due to luminance. It's also easy to fix.
I notice most text on my screen is usually smaller than printed text. When it's blown up to about the same size it's not really a problem to read.
I would set it up so that you use tabs, spaces, whatever so colons line up with a monospaced font. If you want to use a proportional font and you want your colons to line up (which I personally don't find that important), your editor needs to be smart enough to align the colons.
That way the colon-lining-up logic is a nice feature that helps proportional fonts work, not a required function for all text editors.
If you use tabs for alignment you only need your editor to be smart enough to align the colons. XCode will do it for you automatically, although I've never tried it with a non monospaced font.
Just use tabs. If the dork who opens your text file doesn't have his tab stop set for his preferred size then he deserves to see ugly code.
You probably use four spaces, hey? Personally I hate four spaces. Waste of space. Two is the way it was intended to be. But I understand that other people might have different preferences. With tabs we can all be happy.
"If walking alone is the median to start from and placed at 100%, talking on the phone is 50% (as might be expected, as it is a distraction) and walking in pairs is 150% (wich is odd) As the walking in pairs is the odd one out, that is what the students and professors should be focusing on."
Not really. People walking alone without a cell phone had a probability of seeing the clown of Pa = 0.51. Assume that if one person out of a pair sees a clown he or she will mention it to the other half of the pair. Thus, you'd expect the joint probability of seeing the clown to be the probability that either one of them sees it: Pp = Pa + Pa - Pa^2 = 0.51 + 0.51 - 0.51^2 = 0.76. They actually observed 0.71 which, assuming it is not due to experimental error, could mean that walking in pairs can distract you a little and/or that there is a small probability that the person in the pair who sees the clown won't point it out to the other.
As they point out in the video someone linked to, a hydrogen gas gun might be able to achieve escape velocity, theoretically. Air resistance might kill you, and you'd be pushing the gun MUCH harder so you'd get a lot more wear on the barrel. According to the video they're not even really aiming for orbital velocity - they've decided the ideal muzzle velocity is about 6 km/s paired with a rocket to kick you the rest of the way into orbit and circularize the orbit while it's at it.
I don't think you'd ever want to launch anything to geosynchronous orbit with this thing anyway. It has a pretty low maximum payload mass. Geosynchronous satellites that are going to do something useful are usually pretty big.
As the video points out, they're mostly interested in launching propellant to low Earth orbit, to supply rockets that start in orbit and go from there.
I disagree with that one. If you're going to randomly search people, put everyone in the pot. Yeah, searching a guy who's going to be allowed to carry a rifle on board is stupid, but he should go through the same irritating process as everyone else. Ditto with politicians and other policy makers.
The reason for having a GPS in these things is the same as having one in a phone: so all the stuff built for phones that depends on location will work on whatever you connect to the MiFi.
A router that sits in your house has no need for GPS. One that is designed to be out and about with you needs one as much as your phone does.
I've never understood why anyone would judge a lens by the name on it. Leica makes some fantastic lenses, and some absolute crap ones. Canon makes some great lenses, and some absolute crap ones. Nikon ditto. All of them charge appropriately.
While that sounds brilliant, I don't think it's actually possible.
Consider two points, (1) on the Earths' surface and (2) directly above it, in geosynchronous orbit. We need to get our projectile from (1), at the velocity of a stationary object on the surface, up to (2), at the correct velocity for geosynchronous orbit.
The definition of a geosynchronous orbit is that the period is the same as the rotational period of the Earth. Now, consider that the radius, and thus the circumference, of the circle described by (2) is much greater than that described by (1). Since the period is the same, that means that (2) must have considerably greater tangential velocity than (1). Shooting a projectile straight up might get it to geosynchronous height, but wouldn't give it the necessary tangential velocity to stay there.
Drag won't help either. Drag slows you down, so it can't be used to raise the low portion of an orbit, only to lower the high portion. You need thrust. Lift can help a bit, but I don't think it can raise the your orbit out of the atmosphere, so you can't use it (alone) to establish a stable orbit.
Very true, unless your barrel is shooting along the surface. Air resistance also makes it pretty much impossible to actually shoot yourself. But it's funnier than saying you'd shoot some point on the other side of the planet, and it gets the point across.
Okay, let's start the way all good physics explanations do: ignore air resistance. Also, instead of firing from the surface, suppose we put the gun up on a tower.
If you fire the projectile slowly it will just fly out and crash into the planet at some distance from you. The faster it comes out of the gun, the further away it will hit the ground. These are all suborbital paths. But, if you fire hard enough, the projectile will go all the way around the planet. If you ducked, it would just keep going - it would be in orbit.
So you're right, depending on how fast you fired the projectile it could land anywhere on that circle around the planet but those would all be suborbital trajectories. Since we're talking about putting something into orbit, assume there's at least enough velocity for an orbital trajectory.
So what happens if you just fire it even faster? Won't it go into a higher orbit? Well, yes, but it will also be a more elliptical orbit. So the faster you fire the higher will be the high point of the orbit, but the low point will always be at the level of your gun, at the position of your gun. Since it's tough to make a giant gun duck, you're in trouble.
With actual air, the projectile will be slowed down at least a bit on some portion of it's orbit, meaning it will fall short and it's unlikely you'd actually shoot yourself. You could probably get uncomfortably close though.
The idea is to get something into orbit, not shoot it away from the planet. To go into orbit around Earth you have to fire the projectile with LESS than escape velocity.
If you just fire a projectile, with no rocket, into a non-escape orbit, the only possible orbits are those that intersect the firing point. That is, the projectile will go all the way around the planet and hit you from behind. You've just shot yourself in the back in the most dramatic way possible.
I think you dropped a zero or two somewhere in your calculation. Escape velocity from the Earth's surface (neglecting air resistance) is 7 mi/s. 7 mi/s * 60 * 60 = 25000 mph. Escape velocity is about twice the speed they're aiming for, plus you're going to burn a decent amount of that speed off in the atmosphere. Emphasis on "burn." Which makes perfect sense since they're talking about delivering payloads to Earth orbit, not to some solar orbit, which wouldn't be very useful.
Slashdot Mirror
"Every small town has a newspaper."
Apparently the little small town papers are doing just as well as they ever have. Nobody ever subscribed to them for anything but local news, and local news is what they cover.
Agreed some of the biggies will die off though. They do have competition.
"What else you could use a heart monitor for is beyond me."
Animals.
Veterinary equipment, drugs, whatever, is often a fraction of the price for human rated equipment.
He has a bit of a point - paper is self adjusting. The luminance of white paper is always going to be the same relative to the luminance of anything else of a given reflectivity, so in general it will always be about the same relative to the surroundings. A computer screen, on the other hand, may be much dimmer or much brighter than the surroundings, if you don't adjust it (or if it's not smart enough to adjust itself). Paper IS easier on the eyes than a badly adjusted screen, due to luminance. It's also easy to fix.
I notice most text on my screen is usually smaller than printed text. When it's blown up to about the same size it's not really a problem to read.
I would set it up so that you use tabs, spaces, whatever so colons line up with a monospaced font. If you want to use a proportional font and you want your colons to line up (which I personally don't find that important), your editor needs to be smart enough to align the colons.
That way the colon-lining-up logic is a nice feature that helps proportional fonts work, not a required function for all text editors.
When you're the fastest gun in the west, everyone comes to challenge you.
It was the same with WWI and WWII aces. Once you got to be top ace everyone on the other side would be gunning for you.
If you use tabs for alignment you only need your editor to be smart enough to align the colons. XCode will do it for you automatically, although I've never tried it with a non monospaced font.
Just use tabs. If the dork who opens your text file doesn't have his tab stop set for his preferred size then he deserves to see ugly code.
You probably use four spaces, hey? Personally I hate four spaces. Waste of space. Two is the way it was intended to be. But I understand that other people might have different preferences. With tabs we can all be happy.
But then they'd all have to use tabs!
Ah, the one true tabbed way will soon rise to ascendancy.
Dim your display? It saves battery power on a notebook too.
"If walking alone is the median to start from and placed at 100%, talking on the phone is 50% (as might be expected, as it is a distraction) and walking in pairs is 150% (wich is odd)
As the walking in pairs is the odd one out, that is what the students and professors should be focusing on."
Not really. People walking alone without a cell phone had a probability of seeing the clown of Pa = 0.51. Assume that if one person out of a pair sees a clown he or she will mention it to the other half of the pair. Thus, you'd expect the joint probability of seeing the clown to be the probability that either one of them sees it: Pp = Pa + Pa - Pa^2 = 0.51 + 0.51 - 0.51^2 = 0.76. They actually observed 0.71 which, assuming it is not due to experimental error, could mean that walking in pairs can distract you a little and/or that there is a small probability that the person in the pair who sees the clown won't point it out to the other.
Well, I can see a problem already. The school allows sweater vests on Friday. That's not acceptable.
Okay, back on topic. Perhaps he was making an inappropriate public display of affection with his Gatorade bottle?
I also like how they're worried someone using a cell phone before or after school might take away from the safety and attractiveness of campus.
As they point out in the video someone linked to, a hydrogen gas gun might be able to achieve escape velocity, theoretically. Air resistance might kill you, and you'd be pushing the gun MUCH harder so you'd get a lot more wear on the barrel. According to the video they're not even really aiming for orbital velocity - they've decided the ideal muzzle velocity is about 6 km/s paired with a rocket to kick you the rest of the way into orbit and circularize the orbit while it's at it.
I don't think you'd ever want to launch anything to geosynchronous orbit with this thing anyway. It has a pretty low maximum payload mass. Geosynchronous satellites that are going to do something useful are usually pretty big.
As the video points out, they're mostly interested in launching propellant to low Earth orbit, to supply rockets that start in orbit and go from there.
The bottle was clear. It's hard to get any more transparent.
I disagree with that one. If you're going to randomly search people, put everyone in the pot. Yeah, searching a guy who's going to be allowed to carry a rifle on board is stupid, but he should go through the same irritating process as everyone else. Ditto with politicians and other policy makers.
That's a classic science fair project. Still, I guess if you're in a war, there are casualties.
Now, the next question is why the US is always at war. Sometimes even with actual opponents.
I like how they put the school in lockdown. Hey, there might be a bomb in the school! Quick, lock all the doors!
I wonder what the policy is. No bringing stuff with wires to school? No bringing stuff that might be a bomb to school?
A computer would violate the first one. Apparently a water bottle would violate the second.
The reason for having a GPS in these things is the same as having one in a phone: so all the stuff built for phones that depends on location will work on whatever you connect to the MiFi.
A router that sits in your house has no need for GPS. One that is designed to be out and about with you needs one as much as your phone does.
"by a unabashed pro-global warming person"
He (she) lives somewhere cold too, hey?
I've never understood why anyone would judge a lens by the name on it. Leica makes some fantastic lenses, and some absolute crap ones. Canon makes some great lenses, and some absolute crap ones. Nikon ditto. All of them charge appropriately.
While that sounds brilliant, I don't think it's actually possible.
Consider two points, (1) on the Earths' surface and (2) directly above it, in geosynchronous orbit. We need to get our projectile from (1), at the velocity of a stationary object on the surface, up to (2), at the correct velocity for geosynchronous orbit.
The definition of a geosynchronous orbit is that the period is the same as the rotational period of the Earth. Now, consider that the radius, and thus the circumference, of the circle described by (2) is much greater than that described by (1). Since the period is the same, that means that (2) must have considerably greater tangential velocity than (1). Shooting a projectile straight up might get it to geosynchronous height, but wouldn't give it the necessary tangential velocity to stay there.
Drag won't help either. Drag slows you down, so it can't be used to raise the low portion of an orbit, only to lower the high portion. You need thrust. Lift can help a bit, but I don't think it can raise the your orbit out of the atmosphere, so you can't use it (alone) to establish a stable orbit.
Very true, unless your barrel is shooting along the surface. Air resistance also makes it pretty much impossible to actually shoot yourself. But it's funnier than saying you'd shoot some point on the other side of the planet, and it gets the point across.
Okay, let's start the way all good physics explanations do: ignore air resistance. Also, instead of firing from the surface, suppose we put the gun up on a tower.
If you fire the projectile slowly it will just fly out and crash into the planet at some distance from you. The faster it comes out of the gun, the further away it will hit the ground. These are all suborbital paths. But, if you fire hard enough, the projectile will go all the way around the planet. If you ducked, it would just keep going - it would be in orbit.
So you're right, depending on how fast you fired the projectile it could land anywhere on that circle around the planet but those would all be suborbital trajectories. Since we're talking about putting something into orbit, assume there's at least enough velocity for an orbital trajectory.
So what happens if you just fire it even faster? Won't it go into a higher orbit? Well, yes, but it will also be a more elliptical orbit. So the faster you fire the higher will be the high point of the orbit, but the low point will always be at the level of your gun, at the position of your gun. Since it's tough to make a giant gun duck, you're in trouble.
With actual air, the projectile will be slowed down at least a bit on some portion of it's orbit, meaning it will fall short and it's unlikely you'd actually shoot yourself. You could probably get uncomfortably close though.
You must be new here.
The idea is to get something into orbit, not shoot it away from the planet. To go into orbit around Earth you have to fire the projectile with LESS than escape velocity.
If you just fire a projectile, with no rocket, into a non-escape orbit, the only possible orbits are those that intersect the firing point. That is, the projectile will go all the way around the planet and hit you from behind. You've just shot yourself in the back in the most dramatic way possible.
I think you dropped a zero or two somewhere in your calculation. Escape velocity from the Earth's surface (neglecting air resistance) is 7 mi/s. 7 mi/s * 60 * 60 = 25000 mph. Escape velocity is about twice the speed they're aiming for, plus you're going to burn a decent amount of that speed off in the atmosphere. Emphasis on "burn." Which makes perfect sense since they're talking about delivering payloads to Earth orbit, not to some solar orbit, which wouldn't be very useful.