Easy explanation: Division asks how many of the second number it takes to equal the first number. How many zeroes does it take to equal 1? or 100? or a googalplex? It doesn't matter how many zeroes you multiply together, you'll never get anything except zero.
Which brings up a technical point that doesn't seem to be accounted for in arithmetic devices. "Zero divided by zero equals zero" is a valid expression; the only valid expression of division by zero.
As a side note, years ago when I was taking my teaching degree, we had to take a basic Math class because some teacher in the city had told a kid that a number divided by zero equals zero. That kid's parents were mathematicians, and had a few choice words for the university that educated that teacher.
Makes sense. Do surface vessels use passive sonar in the form of a towed array? If so, how much signal processing is possible to cut down extraneous noise?
Also, I know American nuclear subs are pretty quiet, but how about subs operated by a likely enemy, like China, North Korea, Iran, etc.?
But considering how sensitive active sonar is, how strong does a ping need to be in order for its reflection to be received by the passive component of the targeting system?
Or passive sonar. Active sonar (pinging) is like standing in a dark field with a huge omnidirectional beacon. You'll probably see someone else standing around by the light reflected off them, but they'll certainly see you first.
Passive sonar is like hiding in a dark corner of the field watching everyone else stumbling around with flashlights. Their lights may not be very bright (i.e., the ships' engines and hulls may be very quiet), but they always make some noise, which your super-sensitive passive sonar will pick up.
A number of years ago, an Autodesk sales rep told me that the company consciously turned a blind eye to 'unofficial' copying of their software by students. Their increasing use of DRM has probably made it more challenging to copy AutoCAD since then, but it seems as if this announcement is merely making an unofficial policy official as a PR move.
The fact that directly-linked news stories don't have to pass through a full-page Flash ad (with a tiny Skip button) that generates the majority of the site's ad revenue.
Watch out for increasingly invasive ad technology, like your cursor turning into a 100x100px Big Mac, or every second word of a news story turning into a link to a Wal-Mart.com product.
Actually, if there's any organization that already has the power to "shut down the Internet," Google comes pretty close. It's not like they could seal off the tubes, but it's an interesting mental exercise to imagine just how much Internet traffic would be curtailed if Google suddenly ceased all of its operations.
Then again, Microsoft could kill a lot of Internet activity if it suddenly activated whatever remote kill switch it might have in every legitimate Windows install. The only country largely unaffected would be China.;)
And if one toilet breaks down, and they're not allowed to use the other? They'd have to pee carefully into the middle of the room, creating a gradually expanding urine ball which would be kept stationary with gentle air jets.
A tenuous state of detente would be created as each side configured the air jets to be able to blow the piss ball to the other side of the station.
Unfortunately, the stability of the piss ball detente would be threatened as each side readied its advanced biological weapons program...
Taking it a step further, if he holds onto the 'evidence' for a while, then decides not to press charges for political reasons, could another prosecutor re-open the case and charge him with possession of child porn?
You young whippersnappers and your Selectrics! When I was your age, my 'laptop' was a 40-pound Remington on which I could only type 45 words per minute without jamming the hammers. My 42 nano-baud 'modem' was an envelope and a stamp which the mailman walked uphill through eight feet of snow to deliver.
But boy oh boy, that keyboard had sound! You always knew when everyone in the office was typing up a storm; you had to shout a conversation, which cut down on unnecessary chit-chat. And you couldn't be a lightweight either. Five days a week on a Remington gave us all forearms like Popeye and a grip that would make a longshoreman wince.
So get yer new-fangled Selectric offa my lawn, kiddies!
According to a recent study that I'm too lazy to google for (and is only a single study, so it's not proof of anything), fish excrement contains a significant amount of calcium carbonate.
If this CaCO3 sinks to the bottom before it dissolves, it would sequester the carbon. If, however, it dissolves before it sinks, it releases the carbon right back into the water. The fate of the fish excrement was beyond the scope of the study.
So a significant amount of carbon may or may not be sequestered by the fish that prey on the plankton that capture the carbon, while a significant amount is caught up in the biomass of the fish.
However, with rampant overfishing, including use of illegal catch-em-all nets in "protected" areas, which is just about impossible to police, all of the carbon that becomes part of fish biomass will end up back in the atmosphere after passing through someone's digestive system.
But, if somehow fishermen around the world can be convinced to use iron fertilization as part of a comprehensive aquaculture system, and actually increase the global fish biomass...
Nah, you'll never get enough people cooperating to make that happen.
...saying that a single experiment proves anything is at least as unscientific as using models and statistics to do research.
+1
But I'd say it's significantly more unscientific, because models and statistics do have their place in research.
Every time I hear someone say "study after study has proven what I'm telling you," I take it to mean "I read something in the paper the other day that gave a layman's (mis)interpretation of a cursory theoretical analysis of a process that has a tenuous relationship to the subject I'm talking about."
However, this doesn't alter the fact that when someone says "believe" about a scientific fact, they actually mean they understand its truth.
There's another loaded word. My issue is that science is usually taught with the philosophy that "scientists much smarter than you say this is true, so you have to accept it." This leads to blind acceptance of scientific theories as absolute truth in much the same way that religious dogma is accepted by believers.
A big part of the problem is that people generally don't like grey areas or uncertainty; they like absolutes, and they like truth. So if you say "Recent research sheds doubt on old, well-established Theory A and suggests new and sketchy Theory B," the likely response is "Until you can prove Theory B, I'll continue to believe in Theory A," even if the doubt cast by the new research is pretty clear.
It's as if theories are ships. If Ship A is almost certainly sinking, and Ship B is far away and difficult to see, people will choose to ride Ship A all the way to the bottom--even though bobbing around in the theory-less sea for a while poses no danger of drowning.
I always used tiny pellets, and pointed out the difference in reactivity in terms of how fast the pellets would dance around on top of the water in the beaker. Works for sodium, potassium, and lithium.
Don't want to forget how it feels without lithium!
In April 2002 the US committed a coup against Hugo Chavez and installed a dictator that immediately disbanded the constitution and the supreme court. 2 days later the population overwhelmingly protested, and reinstalled Chavez into power.
I see two possible conclusions:
The CIA (or whoever) officials who masterminded the coup were extraordinarily stupid.
The CIA intentionally strengthened Chavez's political position.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy explanation: Division asks how many of the second number it takes to equal the first number. How many zeroes does it take to equal 1? or 100? or a googalplex? It doesn't matter how many zeroes you multiply together, you'll never get anything except zero.
Which brings up a technical point that doesn't seem to be accounted for in arithmetic devices. "Zero divided by zero equals zero" is a valid expression; the only valid expression of division by zero.
As a side note, years ago when I was taking my teaching degree, we had to take a basic Math class because some teacher in the city had told a kid that a number divided by zero equals zero. That kid's parents were mathematicians, and had a few choice words for the university that educated that teacher.
When your only choice is Kang or Kodos, it's hard to pick an alternative.
It would be the only submarine sneak attack to be covered by the news media as it cruised down Highway 16...
Well, I know you'll never hear a Canadian sub coming... what with them being permanently enclosed in the West Edmonton Mall. :D
Makes sense. Do surface vessels use passive sonar in the form of a towed array? If so, how much signal processing is possible to cut down extraneous noise?
Also, I know American nuclear subs are pretty quiet, but how about subs operated by a likely enemy, like China, North Korea, Iran, etc.?
But considering how sensitive active sonar is, how strong does a ping need to be in order for its reflection to be received by the passive component of the targeting system?
Or passive sonar. Active sonar (pinging) is like standing in a dark field with a huge omnidirectional beacon. You'll probably see someone else standing around by the light reflected off them, but they'll certainly see you first.
Passive sonar is like hiding in a dark corner of the field watching everyone else stumbling around with flashlights. Their lights may not be very bright (i.e., the ships' engines and hulls may be very quiet), but they always make some noise, which your super-sensitive passive sonar will pick up.
A number of years ago, an Autodesk sales rep told me that the company consciously turned a blind eye to 'unofficial' copying of their software by students. Their increasing use of DRM has probably made it more challenging to copy AutoCAD since then, but it seems as if this announcement is merely making an unofficial policy official as a PR move.
I didn't bother reading the rest of your comment, but that should be modded either +1 Insightful or -1 Obvious. ;)
The fact that directly-linked news stories don't have to pass through a full-page Flash ad (with a tiny Skip button) that generates the majority of the site's ad revenue.
Watch out for increasingly invasive ad technology, like your cursor turning into a 100x100px Big Mac, or every second word of a news story turning into a link to a Wal-Mart.com product.
What, like he's President Google or something?
Actually, if there's any organization that already has the power to "shut down the Internet," Google comes pretty close. It's not like they could seal off the tubes, but it's an interesting mental exercise to imagine just how much Internet traffic would be curtailed if Google suddenly ceased all of its operations.
Then again, Microsoft could kill a lot of Internet activity if it suddenly activated whatever remote kill switch it might have in every legitimate Windows install. The only country largely unaffected would be China. ;)
Try German. Just about anything that requires a sentence in English can be said with one 14-syllable German word. :D
You have to go through a pretty big haystack to find that needle.
Remember, when they showed up, they were locked in a room with deadly gas.
And if one toilet breaks down, and they're not allowed to use the other? They'd have to pee carefully into the middle of the room, creating a gradually expanding urine ball which would be kept stationary with gentle air jets.
A tenuous state of detente would be created as each side configured the air jets to be able to blow the piss ball to the other side of the station.
Unfortunately, the stability of the piss ball detente would be threatened as each side readied its advanced biological weapons program...
Taking it a step further, if he holds onto the 'evidence' for a while, then decides not to press charges for political reasons, could another prosecutor re-open the case and charge him with possession of child porn?
You young whippersnappers and your Selectrics! When I was your age, my 'laptop' was a 40-pound Remington on which I could only type 45 words per minute without jamming the hammers. My 42 nano-baud 'modem' was an envelope and a stamp which the mailman walked uphill through eight feet of snow to deliver.
But boy oh boy, that keyboard had sound! You always knew when everyone in the office was typing up a storm; you had to shout a conversation, which cut down on unnecessary chit-chat. And you couldn't be a lightweight either. Five days a week on a Remington gave us all forearms like Popeye and a grip that would make a longshoreman wince.
So get yer new-fangled Selectric offa my lawn, kiddies!
I wonder how many Slashdotters are actually bots, and how you would find us out...
Oops, I mean--ack--
+++out of cheese error+++
+++please reinstall universe+++
+++redo from start+++
According to a recent study that I'm too lazy to google for (and is only a single study, so it's not proof of anything), fish excrement contains a significant amount of calcium carbonate.
If this CaCO3 sinks to the bottom before it dissolves, it would sequester the carbon. If, however, it dissolves before it sinks, it releases the carbon right back into the water. The fate of the fish excrement was beyond the scope of the study.
So a significant amount of carbon may or may not be sequestered by the fish that prey on the plankton that capture the carbon, while a significant amount is caught up in the biomass of the fish.
However, with rampant overfishing, including use of illegal catch-em-all nets in "protected" areas, which is just about impossible to police, all of the carbon that becomes part of fish biomass will end up back in the atmosphere after passing through someone's digestive system.
But, if somehow fishermen around the world can be convinced to use iron fertilization as part of a comprehensive aquaculture system, and actually increase the global fish biomass...
Nah, you'll never get enough people cooperating to make that happen.
+1
But I'd say it's significantly more unscientific, because models and statistics do have their place in research.
Every time I hear someone say "study after study has proven what I'm telling you," I take it to mean "I read something in the paper the other day that gave a layman's (mis)interpretation of a cursory theoretical analysis of a process that has a tenuous relationship to the subject I'm talking about."
There's another loaded word. My issue is that science is usually taught with the philosophy that "scientists much smarter than you say this is true, so you have to accept it." This leads to blind acceptance of scientific theories as absolute truth in much the same way that religious dogma is accepted by believers.
A big part of the problem is that people generally don't like grey areas or uncertainty; they like absolutes, and they like truth. So if you say "Recent research sheds doubt on old, well-established Theory A and suggests new and sketchy Theory B," the likely response is "Until you can prove Theory B, I'll continue to believe in Theory A," even if the doubt cast by the new research is pretty clear.
It's as if theories are ships. If Ship A is almost certainly sinking, and Ship B is far away and difficult to see, people will choose to ride Ship A all the way to the bottom--even though bobbing around in the theory-less sea for a while poses no danger of drowning.
I always used tiny pellets, and pointed out the difference in reactivity in terms of how fast the pellets would dance around on top of the water in the beaker. Works for sodium, potassium, and lithium.
Don't want to forget how it feels without lithium!
That's interesting. Tell me more.
Why do you say they have pseudo-humor?
Ha. Ha.
I see two possible conclusions:
I think it's a toss-up, really.
So you're saying that it has survived because it's the fittest... and you're anti-Darwin?