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From: Wes Groleau on 5 May 2010 00:07 On 05-04-2010 19:03, Lewis wrote: >>>>> You base this on what? we know gravity can warp space. In fact, >>>>> that's what gravity IS. Please don't assume the map is the territory or the model is the reality. -- Wes Groleau Learning to see the forest instead of the trees. http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=75
From: Wes Groleau on 5 May 2010 00:10 On 05-04-2010 23:19, Charles Richmond wrote: > Pessimist: Looks at the glass as half empty. > > Optimist: Looks at the glass as half full. Engineer: "They made that glass too big." > Optometrist: Says "Does the glass look better this way, or this way... > this way, or this way..." -- Wes Groleau He that is good for making excuses, is seldom good for anything else. -- Benjamin Franklin
From: Wes Groleau on 5 May 2010 00:21 On 05-04-2010 08:44, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: >> Nope. What remains of the work produced by DEC is all over the place; >> it's simply not recognized. > > And their misdeeds too, for example, that stupid backwards memory model for > storing data that was the exact opposite of everyone else's. Actually, the byte-ordering on VAX is neither that of Intel nor of Motorola. If a 32-bit integer's bytes are stored (ascending addresses) DEADBEEF on Intel and EFBEADDE on 68000, the VAX would store them ADDEEFBE or EFBEADBE. I forget which of those two it was, but I well remember the trouble it caused me in trying to accomplish certain tasks on the VAX in 1986-1988. And similar hassles dealing with VAX floating-point formats. -- Wes Groleau Free speech has its limits http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=99
From: Mensanator on 5 May 2010 01:14 On May 4, 8:41 pm, "Jennifer Usher" <jennisu...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > "Peter Flass" <Peter_Fl...(a)Yahoo.com> wrote in message > > news:hrovgt$ggh$3(a)news.eternal-september.org... > > > Someone of Newton's generation would have been quite happy with atomic > > physics. Put your lead into a reactor instead of some retort and out > > comes gold. Obvious. > > That reminds me of the story about the guy who travels back in time to take > Newton a calculator, thinking it would advance science. He is in the > process of demonstrating some things when the answer happens to be, "666." > Newton does not take that one well at all. What was the problem? Summing the integers from 1 to 36? > > -- > Jennifer Usher
From: Mensanator on 5 May 2010 01:17
On May 4, 9:06 pm, Patrick Scheible <k...(a)zipcon.net> wrote: > Michelle Steiner <miche...(a)michelle.org> writes: > > In article <w9zaasfiabj....(a)zipcon.net>, Patrick Scheible <k...(a)zipcon.net> > > wrote: > > > > > > > And even Lord Kelvin said that heavier-than-air machines can *not* > > > > > > fly. > > > > > > Which is a bizarre belief to hold, as birds are demonstrably heavier > > > > > than air. > > > > > But they're not machines. > > > > So why would Lord Kelvin think it was fundamentally impossible to make a > > > machine to do what a bird does? > > > Because a bird has less mass per volume than a machine? Because a bird > > essentially carries only itself, whereas a machine (of the type he was > > talking about) would carry people and/or cargo that would add significantly > > to its weight? Because he lacked the vision to see future developments? > > I've spent a while chasing Kelvin's quote, and not found the context > it was in. I did, however, find this link: > > http://www.chardmuseum.co.uk/Powered_Flight/ > > which describes Stringfellow's demonstration of an unmanned, Stringfellow? Is he the guy mentioned in the film "Flight of the Phoenix"? > steam-powered airplane in 1848. Kelvin's statement was in 1895. > > So you can add "he lacked knowledge of what had been done" to "lacked > the vision to see future developments". Definitely not Kelvin's > finest moment. > > -- Patrick |