Of course, it's still a pretty useless way of describing the temperature. Describing it as "50 times room temp" makes it almost seem friendly. Think about distances: If something is 50 times as far, then maybe you can't walk, but you can drive. Or you can't drive, but you can take a plane.
But a room temperature 50 times normal? An increase of 10 Kelvin --- "1.03 times room temperature" --- is uncomfortably hot. "1.25 times room temperature" is the boiling point of water. 50 times room temp is accurate, but not very helpful..
You can also see my page of fractals, which has a few more.
For those of you who don't know, postscript is a stack-based language, like (apparently) Forth, or like HP RPM calculators. This makes it quite fun to program in:-)
It is good for drawing fractals (especially ones like the Sierpinski gasket which involve doing the same thing on smaller scales in different places) because of the types of drawing commands it has:
The basic command is to move the "current point" to some coordinate (x0,y0), and then draw a line (or curve) to another coordinate (x1, y1). But the interesting thing is that you can change the coordinate system: you can move the origin, or stretch the axes (not necessarily by the same amount in each direction), or rotate them.
So, for instance, you can do Sierpinski by writing a funciton to draw a triangle of one unit side length, then change the scale, move the axes to the appropriate places, and make three recursive calls. Easy...
Hmm... Number of non-religious in NZ was 26% in the 2001 census (with a further 5% who didn't give an answer).
The census results (available online from stats.govt.nz) also give 64,000 (1.5%) listed as "Response outside scope" --- this could include the Jedi vote, I guess. "Jedi" isn't in the official results.
Two other interesting things... Firstly, there were over 100,000 more responses than there were people in the country (apparently). And secondly, at the bottom of the spreadsheet of results is this comment: "All cells in this table have been randomly rounded to base 3." ??? Can someone explain that?
Age of Magic is a free MoM clone in development. The development is looking slightly stalled at the moment (last news was August last year), but I haven't given up hope yet.
Err, because if every domain was a.com, we may as well drop the.com suffix and go to arbitrary names. Which would defeat the purpose of the domain name system altogether --- we would lose easy distribution of the workload, and just put more pressure on a few servers.
Heirarchies are a Good Thing, as any geek should know.
[and, besides, often you want to distinguish yourself as belonging to a specific region...]
If I cut out some of the synonyms from the clause (which seems like it should be OK, as I'm only making it say less, not more), I get:
You agree to [...] indemnify [...] American Airlines [...] from and against any and all [...] taxes [...] resulting from your use of the Site,
It still seems to me that the earlier poster's interpretation is consistent with the clause: If I use the site (to buy a ticket), and taxes arise from this use of the site (as they would) then I agree to indemnify (compensate) American Airlines for those taxes.
If that's not what it means, then it is not very clear...
They didn't say "Star Wars themes", they said "Star Wars style effects".
You know how computers in movies and on TV always make whizzy bleeping noises whenever they do anything? Well, Microsoft have recognised that computers in use tend to be quiet, and so are taking steps to rectify that.
Presumably, their next step will be to change text output, so that text is displayed at a rate of a few characters per second, again accompanied by suitable sound-effects. Oh, and make it so that passwords can be guessed by a bright kid after a few tries...
(oh, wait --- that last feature is already in place in many offices)
Whats the frigging point of having impeccably fair races, drugs testing, etc., when countries can do this sort of thing, giving athletes an unfair advantage over poorer nations' competitors?
What's the point of races in the first place?
In most sports, at the elite level, your genes are your most important ally. You need to train hell hard to win, but if you don't have the right body type, you can train all you like and not succeed...
Already, technology is giving people better shoes, or wetsuits, or gold clubs... This is just the next step.
On the horizon, you can see the distant spectre of genetically engineered athletes --- designed for super endurance, speed, height, whatever is appropriate. Then they'll take them and train them using technology like this... And claim new records as the fastest human in the world.
And you start to wonder why they don't just remove the human altogether --- since it's obviously the weakest link...
Incidentally, is anyone else amused by the way the article described the new tech as a way to try and create a Lance Armstrong --- Armstrong being one of the top competitors in professional cycling, a 'sport' which is reknowned for rampant drug use...
Slashdot Mirror
So, about 50 times room temp.
Of course, it's still a pretty useless way of describing the temperature. Describing it as "50 times room temp" makes it almost seem friendly. Think about distances: If something is 50 times as far, then maybe you can't walk, but you can drive. Or you can't drive, but you can take a plane.
But a room temperature 50 times normal? An increase of 10 Kelvin --- "1.03 times room temperature" --- is uncomfortably hot. "1.25 times room temperature" is the boiling point of water. 50 times room temp is accurate, but not very helpful..
The PDF linked from the article is also dated Jan 2000, and also doesn't mention the GPL ...
<shrug>
Maybe we need casemods.slashdot.org ...
... they just fail to respawn.
You can also see my page of fractals, which has a few more.
For those of you who don't know, postscript is a stack-based language, like (apparently) Forth, or like HP RPM calculators. This makes it quite fun to program in :-)
It is good for drawing fractals (especially ones like the Sierpinski gasket which involve doing the same thing on smaller scales in different places) because of the types of drawing commands it has:
The basic command is to move the "current point" to some coordinate (x0,y0), and then draw a line (or curve) to another coordinate (x1, y1). But the interesting thing is that you can change the coordinate system: you can move the origin, or stretch the axes (not necessarily by the same amount in each direction), or rotate them.
So, for instance, you can do Sierpinski by writing a funciton to draw a triangle of one unit side length, then change the scale, move the axes to the appropriate places, and make three recursive calls. Easy...
Huh? Cinemas here generally do assigned seating, and have done for years. We still get the big movies..
Hmm... Number of non-religious in NZ was 26% in the 2001 census (with a further 5% who didn't give an answer).
The census results (available online from stats.govt.nz) also give 64,000 (1.5%) listed as "Response outside scope" --- this could include the Jedi vote, I guess. "Jedi" isn't in the official results.
Two other interesting things... Firstly, there were over 100,000 more responses than there were people in the country (apparently). And secondly, at the bottom of the spreadsheet of results is this comment: "All cells in this table have been randomly rounded to base 3." ??? Can someone explain that?
[offtopic]
For those of you who haven't seen this, check out The Usenet Oracle's response when he was asked about the imperial system vs the metric system ...
I somehow doubt netphone relies on air vibrations, unless someone somewhere is using IP-over-sound waves...
</pedant>
Age of Magic is a free MoM clone in development. The development is looking slightly stalled at the moment (last news was August last year), but I haven't given up hope yet.
Maybe you could volunteer to give them a hand :-)
I liked this quote from the abstract of the start menu patent:
On a related note, am I the only one who thinks that someone from Tennessee should be called a Tennessaur?
Err, because if every domain was a .com, we may as well drop the .com suffix and go to arbitrary names. Which would defeat the purpose of the domain name system altogether --- we would lose easy distribution of the workload, and just put more pressure on a few servers.
Heirarchies are a Good Thing, as any geek should know.
[and, besides, often you want to distinguish yourself as belonging to a specific region...]
...that there's all these duplicate comments complaining about how the story is a duplicate story...
You mean CostaRicans aren't westerners???
Well, when you consider that we're ``westerners'', despite the fact that we're ~174 degrees east of the Greenwich meridianMost of these type devices, that I have seen, involve a magnetic ring of some type. My only concern is what happens, when you take it off.
I guess the obvious solution is to tape your magic ring to the gun.
That seems to be the normal human response to inconvienient security measures: make it so they are automatically bypassed...
1) The guy sounds like a sub-atomic particle. Muon, Voron...
...Moron?
And if there is a collision, you can always resolve it with random backoff...
If I cut out some of the synonyms from the clause (which seems like it should be OK, as I'm only making it say less, not more), I get:
You agree to [...] indemnify [...] American Airlines [...] from and against any and all [...] taxes [...] resulting from your use of the Site,
It still seems to me that the earlier poster's interpretation is consistent with the clause: If I use the site (to buy a ticket), and taxes arise from this use of the site (as they would) then I agree to indemnify (compensate) American Airlines for those taxes.
If that's not what it means, then it is not very clear ...
"how useless it is" ?
It's getting people to drive legally without issuing tickets.
Doesn't sound useless to me...
They didn't say "Star Wars themes", they said "Star Wars style effects".
You know how computers in movies and on TV always make whizzy bleeping noises whenever they do anything? Well, Microsoft have recognised that computers in use tend to be quiet, and so are taking steps to rectify that.
Presumably, their next step will be to change text output, so that text is displayed at a rate of a few characters per second, again accompanied by suitable sound-effects. Oh, and make it so that passwords can be guessed by a bright kid after a few tries...
(oh, wait --- that last feature is already in place in many offices)
# A big plus for me is that arrow keys function correctly. You may laugh, but the version of HPUX vi I used at my old job didn't do this
Use the arrow keys? But then your fingers have to leave the main bit of the keyboard...
Tip: If you are having trouble getting used to hjkl navigation, play Nethack for a while with the Roguelike keyboard bindings. :-)
They could always wait until after you get gibbed to show you the add...
You could look at it as an extra incentive to do well...
Whats the frigging point of having impeccably fair races, drugs testing, etc., when countries can do this sort of thing, giving athletes an unfair advantage over poorer nations' competitors?
What's the point of races in the first place?
In most sports, at the elite level, your genes are your most important ally. You need to train hell hard to win, but if you don't have the right body type, you can train all you like and not succeed...
Already, technology is giving people better shoes, or wetsuits, or gold clubs... This is just the next step.
On the horizon, you can see the distant spectre of genetically engineered athletes --- designed for super endurance, speed, height, whatever is appropriate. Then they'll take them and train them using technology like this... And claim new records as the fastest human in the world.
And you start to wonder why they don't just remove the human altogether --- since it's obviously the weakest link...
Incidentally, is anyone else amused by the way the article described the new tech as a way to try and create a Lance Armstrong --- Armstrong being one of the top competitors in professional cycling, a 'sport' which is reknowned for rampant drug use...
Off topic, but ...:
When did "to Google" become a verb?
If you think back to the Old Days, you would never have done that with other search engines. I mean, just try it:
But now that there is previsely one useful search engine, "to search" and "to google" are synonomous..
Keep your eye on the OED, I guess :-)