> The fewest pitches you can through and still pitch a complete game is 25
More on this at the rec.puzzles archive. IIRC, it takes one pitch per inning: first guy up triples. Then the pitcher throws a pitch, but the guy tries to steal and the batter steps in the way. It's ruled no pitch and he's out on interference. Do this three times per inning and you've finished the game with 9 pitches.
> What I wonder about is the notion of a "heavy" shot, that players distinguish from simple velocity. It's not clear to me whether it's simply an illusion, like ground balls "picking up speed off the turf"
No, in fact a baseball DOES pick up speed after hitting the turf, at least if it was hit (or thrown) with top spin. The reason: conservation of angular momentum. The ball is spinning about its center as well as flying thru the air; contact with the ground causes the spin (angular momentum) to act around the contact point, and the net speed of the ball increases. Here's a simpler way to see this: hold a wheel with the axis horizontal and get it spinning. Drop it straight down; when it hits the ground it'll roll forward.
Well, it's not direct, but under OS X you can set up things like RadioRecorder
I haven't looked closely so I don't know if it specifically works on WMA streams, but there are an awful lot of stream recorders out there, and then there's EasyWMA to convert to mp3.
I submitted this story last week (rejected). So now someone else gets the credit? Go ahead, mod me down for the first time in my life. I wouldn't be peeved but there's not even an "also submitted by" list.
>>A turbofan engine is... subject to flame-out, a greater liklihood than a piston engine that has continuous ignition
>Eh!?! How so? I'd always considered jets to have continuous ignition & piston engines to have intermittant ignition.
I think what parent meant was: piston engines supply a new spark (ignitor) every cycle. Jet/turbofan engines get ignited at startup and then depend on keeping the flame going by itself, sort of like a gas water heater:-) . If the flame goes out, you need an ignitor. If a piston engine misfires, assuming the plug isn't fouled,you get another spark in one cycle.
It's free on the radio, why shouldn't it be free on the net. On the off chance you're serious: it's because the radio is a crummy compressed analog feed. The net is a clean digital copy, as good as whatever crud is in the source. Now a note from a fan of string quartets and symphony orchestras: yeah, there's tons of free music out there. 99% of it is 3 kids and a mixer in their Dad's basement hoping to make it big. There are a few sites, such as Magnatunes, which carry some decent classical performers, but even they provide mp3-level stuff. You don't need to spend a whole lot of money on a stereo to hear the difference between mp3 and aiff. (I leave the aiff vs vinyl to the ultra-obsessives:-) ). Anyway, my point is: even musicians have to eat. They want to get paid, the more the better, for their performances. You want to listen to high quality stuff, you pay for it. Fair deal.
To add to this -- contrary to popular belief, this patent has nothing to do with operations performed by a stylus or mouse. It is carefully restricted to focus on HARDWARE-based buttons of a PDA. To which I say PFFFFFT! First of all, what happened to the "non-obvious" part of patent law? Next, consider,e.g., a pinball machine: more than one model has a "choose your mission/bonus" feature, which asks you to push a flipperbutton to select one of a sequence of features as they scroll across a video display. Why is timing when a button is released any different from timing when it is depressed? And in any case I'm sure you could find some instance of a game in which you do hold the button down and release when the event of interest comes into view.
The COIL is a huge laser system. However, jump around the net for info on the ATF (advanced tactical fighter) and you'll find people's wet dreams for a slab laser mounted in the fighter. Not for missile defense, more for nearby self defense or precision targeting of ground items.
Though I'm glad WMP only works on Windows - other platforms don't endure the horror. Huh? Then what's this app called WindowsMediaPlayer9 doing on my OSX system?
>>If filenames get much longer than that, they take too long to type >Longer filenames are very useful for things like MP3's. 14 characters is enough for most users? Kinda like 640K of RAM is enough, 540M on the orig IDE spec, 2G file sizes, etc? I don't think so. Shorter names are much easier to work with, and to remember. For example, how many books have titles with more than 64 characters? You go naming mp3 files with 200-char names and you'll never remember what they are. For that matter, remember folders (aka directories)? If you organize your files you won't need Xtra-long file names.
Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on/. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is Hey, I've been reading r.h.f since its inception, you insensitive clod!
It sounds like there's no device that is capable of transmitting one and only one photon with 100% reliability. TheApril 2004 issue of Photonics Spectra (www.photonics.com) mentions a letter in Applied Physics Letters Feb 23 issue, in which InGaAs quantum dots were observed to produce single photons. No detail on the percent of doublephotons, but it does say that this work could lead to reliable sources of single photons. (Richard Mirin, at NIST)
I should be allowed to protect myself w/o having to pay someone else. Well, to follow Godwin's them of matching Internet law to the laws in the physical world, I'd like to point out that you pay someone else to run your house security/alarm system, you pay someone else to guard the streets (albeit a government agency, i.e. the police), and so on. Not to say you couldn't (maybe) do these things yourself, but that would take significant effort and skill.... not unlike creating your own domain&webhost with your very own set of anonymity tools.
Good news: it's fixed in Office XP (Excel 2002 SP2). Selecting Sort highlights all the content in your table by default. Only if there aren't any "gaps." Woe betide the if a couple columns have blanks cells near the top (or something like that). This points out one of the big Excel baddies: hidden rows or columns. You don't see them but if you click-drag,you've selected cells in them. Worse - I've seen any number of macros that crash very ugly if a hidden row is unhidden or vice versa.
One time when I was working at the computer lab help desk in college, I had a guy who was writing a paper in Excel, one word per cell! He'd just type a word, hit Tab, type the next one, and so on. The question he had was "How do I doublespace my paper?" I was dumbstruck.
I use Excel constantly to do layouts for invoices, estimates, cards, presentation, etc. because of the precise sizing control. It looks professional, not cheesy at all, some of the stuff looks like it came from a printer. Another example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Use FileMakerPro or other relational database tool for this. It's easier than Excel to set up the layout, and it's much easier to integrate the database (say of employee names and office phone numbers) that lies behind the page.
Well, you could always buy the Student/Teacher version at $149.00. I think you more or less qualify for it if you have anyone in your family that is in school. I'm thinking about buying it if the price is still the same when the 2004 version comes out, and it fixes the file name limitations in Office for OS X 2003. If you buy the 2003 vsn and download the upgrade coupon, you get 2004, on CD, for free when it comes out. Original purchase between 6 jan and 1 June 04 required. Google for "OfficeXCoupon.pdf" -- I think I found a copy at microsoft.com itself.
The patent office uses a lot of other prior art sources than just the published patent and application database.
They use IEEE journals, derwent database, the EPO and JPO databases, the internet, various private databases, usenet, trade journals, a good sized libary or old manuals just to name a few. They have a whole staff dedicated to non patent literature searches and resources. Unfortunately this doesn't stop them from issuing patents for anything and everything. I once sat in on a patent-planning-meeting at work. I suggested that several proposed patents were clearly well-known techniques in different collections or settings. The patent lawyer said flat out that it looked that way logically, but that there was little doubt the new patents would get issued. So the patent office is dumb and wimpy, and corporations patent everything that moves. Dumb system.
>>Standards are always a good thing for consumers. They can, however, give businesses trouble >Consumers vote. Businesses don't.
Businesses don't have to. They have things called lobbyists. And after all, businesses are run by people called CEOs (or the like). And they are the ones who give politicians million-dollar fundraising dinners. Plain vanilla voters don't stand a chance.
About 4 years ago I had a charge on there that I didn't make. I called VISA and said, hey guys, I didn't make this charge. They said, ok, took the charge off the bill and didn't pay the company. So if the company lets my card information get out that's their problem. TINSTAAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The bad guy got some product for free, so the company lost money, so they jack up prices to cover, and we all pay for it. Ditto for credit card companies losing money.
Windows XP is much, much faster with the hibernation stuff. In my experience, at least three times as fast. My datum: Dell 5150, 256MegRAM. Either no peripherals or just a USB mouse (Targus). It goes into hibernation pretty quickly but coming out takes quite a while. I get to the login screen fast, but after selecting a user (even one currently logged in) it takes a couple minutes to get the desktop loaded.
Anyone besides me see a correlation between the notion that the country is going to hell in a handbasket *and* voting doesn't make a difference?
Wise up. If more people got off their asses and voted, we might not be *in* this mess. Boo hoo, you're disenfranchised... because you choose to be. You need to go back and read some of the articles on gerrymandering in the 21st century. Computerized demographics make it easy for the party in power to design districts which meet court-ordered equality of population while still packing opposition groups into a few districts. This lets a few opposition members to be elected in landslide votes while a huge majority of districts are won by a small but predictable margin. The net result:massive control of the government by the party in power (which created the districts).
Hey that's a great question. And how does linking to an offsite image constitute a copyright violation? It's not actually being "reproduced" without permission. Well in reality ANY image you see on your computer is a reproduced image. So far as I know all browsers cache everything on the page that you see, and even if they didn't, the image sure is in your RAM or VRAM while you're looking at it. So at the very least copyright presumably only applies to non-ephemeral copies.
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> The fewest pitches you can through and still pitch a complete game is 25
More on this at the rec.puzzles archive. IIRC, it takes one pitch per inning: first guy up triples.
Then the pitcher throws a pitch, but the guy tries to steal and the batter steps in the way. It's ruled no pitch and he's out on interference. Do this three times per inning and you've finished the game with 9 pitches.
> What I wonder about is the notion of a "heavy" shot, that players distinguish from simple velocity. It's not clear to me whether it's simply an illusion, like ground balls "picking up speed off the turf"
No, in fact a baseball DOES pick up speed after hitting the turf, at least if it was hit (or thrown) with top spin. The reason: conservation of angular momentum. The ball is spinning about its center as well as flying thru the air; contact with the ground causes the spin (angular momentum) to act around the contact point, and the net speed of the ball increases.
Here's a simpler way to see this: hold a wheel with the axis horizontal and get it spinning. Drop it straight down; when it hits the ground it'll roll forward.
Well, it's not direct, but under OS X you can set up things like RadioRecorder
I haven't looked closely so I don't know if it specifically works on WMA streams, but there are an awful lot of stream recorders out there, and then there's EasyWMA to convert to mp3.
I submitted this story last week (rejected). So now someone else gets the credit? Go ahead, mod me down for the first time in my life. I wouldn't be peeved but there's not even an "also submitted by" list.
>>A turbofan engine is ... subject to flame-out, a greater liklihood than a piston engine that has continuous ignition
:-) . If the flame goes out, you need an ignitor. If a piston engine misfires, assuming the plug isn't fouled,you get another spark in one cycle.
>Eh!?! How so? I'd always considered jets to have continuous ignition & piston engines to have intermittant ignition.
I think what parent meant was: piston engines supply a new spark (ignitor) every cycle. Jet/turbofan engines get ignited at startup and then depend on keeping the flame going by itself, sort of like a gas water heater
It's free on the radio, why shouldn't it be free on the net. :-) ).
On the off chance you're serious: it's because the radio is a crummy compressed analog feed. The net is a clean digital copy, as good as whatever crud is in the source.
Now a note from a fan of string quartets and symphony orchestras: yeah, there's tons of free music out there. 99% of it is 3 kids and a mixer in their Dad's basement hoping to make it big. There are a few sites, such as Magnatunes, which carry some decent classical performers, but even they provide mp3-level stuff. You don't need to spend a whole lot of money on a stereo to hear the difference between mp3 and aiff. (I leave the aiff vs vinyl to the ultra-obsessives
Anyway, my point is: even musicians have to eat. They want to get paid, the more the better, for their performances. You want to listen to high quality stuff, you pay for it. Fair deal.
Then flame the )(@#&%^ out of me, but don't forget what I said.
... I can't translate that word you wrote!
Just when I thought I could read l337
To add to this -- contrary to popular belief, this patent has nothing to do with operations performed by a stylus or mouse. It is carefully restricted to focus on HARDWARE-based buttons of a PDA.
To which I say PFFFFFT! First of all, what happened to the "non-obvious" part of patent law?
Next, consider,e.g., a pinball machine: more than one model has a "choose your mission/bonus" feature, which asks you to push a flipperbutton to select one of a sequence of features as they scroll across a video display. Why is timing when a button is released any different from timing when it is depressed? And in any case I'm sure you could find some instance of a game in which you do hold the button down and release when the event of interest comes into view.
The COIL is a huge laser system. However, jump around the net for info on the ATF (advanced tactical fighter) and you'll find people's wet dreams for a slab laser mounted in the fighter. Not for missile defense, more for nearby self defense or precision targeting of ground items.
Though I'm glad WMP only works on Windows - other platforms don't endure the horror.
Huh? Then what's this app called WindowsMediaPlayer9 doing on my OSX system?
>>If filenames get much longer than that, they take too long to type
>Longer filenames are very useful for things like MP3's. 14 characters is enough for most users? Kinda like 640K of RAM is enough, 540M on the orig IDE spec, 2G file sizes, etc?
I don't think so. Shorter names are much easier to work with, and to remember. For example, how many books have titles with more than 64 characters? You go naming mp3 files with 200-char names and you'll never remember what they are.
For that matter, remember folders (aka directories)? If you organize your files you won't need Xtra-long file names.
Also for all the lip service paid to EFF on /. it's pretty telling that this story was up for an hour, your posting was +5, and nobody here had a clue as to who Brad is
Hey, I've been reading r.h.f since its inception, you insensitive clod!
It sounds like there's no device that is capable of transmitting one and only one photon with 100% reliability.
TheApril 2004 issue of Photonics Spectra (www.photonics.com) mentions a letter in Applied Physics Letters Feb 23 issue, in which InGaAs quantum dots were observed to produce single photons. No detail on the percent of doublephotons, but it does say that this work could lead to reliable sources of single photons. (Richard Mirin, at NIST)
I should be allowed to protect myself w/o having to pay someone else.
Well, to follow Godwin's them of matching Internet law to the laws in the physical world, I'd like to point out that you pay someone else to run your house security/alarm system, you pay someone else to guard the streets (albeit a government agency, i.e. the police), and so on.
Not to say you couldn't (maybe) do these things yourself, but that would take significant effort and skill.... not unlike creating your own domain&webhost with your very own set of anonymity tools.
Like those poor offspring of Mr. Foreman. Ya know, the ex-heavyweight who now sells mini-grills. At least in public all of his kids are named George.
Good news: it's fixed in Office XP (Excel 2002 SP2). Selecting Sort highlights all the content in your table by default.
Only if there aren't any "gaps." Woe betide the if a couple columns have blanks cells near the top (or something like that).
This points out one of the big Excel baddies: hidden rows or columns. You don't see them but if you click-drag,you've selected cells in them.
Worse - I've seen any number of macros that crash very ugly if a hidden row is unhidden or vice versa.
One time when I was working at the computer lab help desk in college, I had a guy who was writing a paper in Excel, one word per cell! He'd just type a word, hit Tab, type the next one, and so on. The question he had was "How do I doublespace my paper?" I was dumbstruck.
:-) .
Easy: just write a little macro
I use Excel constantly to do layouts for invoices, estimates, cards, presentation, etc. because of the precise sizing control. It looks professional, not cheesy at all, some of the stuff looks like it came from a printer.
Another example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Use FileMakerPro or other relational database tool for this. It's easier than Excel to set up the layout, and it's much easier to integrate the database (say of employee names and office phone numbers) that lies behind the page.
Well, you could always buy the Student/Teacher version at $149.00. I think you more or less qualify for it if you have anyone in your family that is in school. I'm thinking about buying it if the price is still the same when the 2004 version comes out, and it fixes the file name limitations in Office for OS X 2003.
If you buy the 2003 vsn and download the upgrade coupon, you get 2004, on CD, for free when it comes out. Original purchase between 6 jan and 1 June 04 required. Google for "OfficeXCoupon.pdf" -- I think I found a copy at microsoft.com itself.
The patent office uses a lot of other prior art sources than just the published patent and application database.
They use IEEE journals, derwent database, the EPO and JPO databases, the internet, various private databases, usenet, trade journals, a good sized libary or old manuals just to name a few. They have a whole staff dedicated to non patent literature searches and resources.
Unfortunately this doesn't stop them from issuing patents for anything and everything. I once sat in on a patent-planning-meeting at work. I suggested that several proposed patents were clearly well-known techniques in different collections or settings. The patent lawyer said flat out that it looked that way logically, but that there was little doubt the new patents would get issued. So the patent office is dumb and wimpy, and corporations patent everything that moves. Dumb system.
>>Standards are always a good thing for consumers. They can, however, give businesses trouble
>Consumers vote.
Businesses don't.
Businesses don't have to. They have things called lobbyists. And after all, businesses are run by people called CEOs (or the like). And they are the ones who give politicians million-dollar fundraising dinners.
Plain vanilla voters don't stand a chance.
About 4 years ago I had a charge on there that I didn't make. I called VISA and said, hey guys, I didn't make this charge. They said, ok, took the charge off the bill and didn't pay the company. So if the company lets my card information get out that's their problem.
TINSTAAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The bad guy got some product for free, so the company lost money, so they jack up prices to cover, and we all pay for it. Ditto for credit card companies losing money.
Windows XP is much, much faster with the hibernation stuff. In my experience, at least three times as fast.
My datum: Dell 5150, 256MegRAM. Either no peripherals or just a USB mouse (Targus). It goes into hibernation pretty quickly but coming out takes quite a while. I get to the login screen fast, but after selecting a user (even one currently logged in) it takes a couple minutes to get the desktop loaded.
Anyone besides me see a correlation between the notion that the country is going to hell in a handbasket *and* voting doesn't make a difference?
Wise up. If more people got off their asses and voted, we might not be *in* this mess. Boo hoo, you're disenfranchised... because you choose to be.
You need to go back and read some of the articles on gerrymandering in the 21st century. Computerized demographics make it easy for the party in power to design districts which meet court-ordered equality of population while still packing opposition groups into a few districts. This lets a few opposition members to be elected in landslide votes while a huge majority of districts are won by a small but predictable margin. The net result:massive control of the government by the party in power (which created the districts).
Hey that's a great question. And how does linking to an offsite image constitute a copyright violation? It's not actually being "reproduced" without permission.
Well in reality ANY image you see on your computer is a reproduced image. So far as I know all browsers cache everything on the page that you see, and even if they didn't, the image sure is in your RAM or VRAM while you're looking at it. So at the very least copyright presumably only applies to non-ephemeral copies.