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From: Joe Pfeiffer on 5 May 2010 01:26 Charles Richmond <frizzle(a)tx.rr.com> writes: > > Pessimist: Looks at the glass as half empty. > > Optimist: Looks at the glass as half full. > > Optometrist: Says "Does the glass look better this way, or this > way... this way, or this way..." Engineer: you know, that glass is twice as big as it needs to be.... -- As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)
From: Mensanator on 5 May 2010 01:33 On May 5, 12:16 am, Lewis <g.kr...(a)gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote: > In message <7b6d8ba5-ffab-4d20-b345-7085cf663...(a)b18g2000yqb.googlegroups..com> > Mensanator <mensana...(a)aol.com> wrote: > > > 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? > > Something like 57 276 / 86, IIRC Boring. My answer is much spookier. Umberto Ecco in one of his novels had a plot twist involving The Templars having secret meetings, after they were crushed, that met every year, every two years, every 3 years, etc. And the next in the story was the interval 36 years which happened to be the 666th anniversary. He explained that the '666' came from the '36' meaning 'three sixes'. What a maroon. > > -- > I leave symbols to the symbol-minded - George Carlin
From: Ahem A Rivet's Shot on 5 May 2010 01:14 On Tue, 04 May 2010 11:08:30 -0600 Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer(a)cs.nmsu.edu> wrote: > Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo(a)eircom.net> writes: > > > On Tue, 04 May 2010 08:15:20 -0600 > > Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer(a)cs.nmsu.edu> wrote: > >> > > >> > 1) Warping space > >> > 2) Wormholes > >> > 3) Inertialess drives > >> > >> None of the three is remotely plausible. > > > > At least two of them are the subjects of papers in very > > respectably physics journals. > > Not in any context that is relevant to FTL travel. Applying space Yes in a context relevant to FTL travel - check the references listed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive for warp bubbles applied to FTL travel. > warping or wormholes to FTL is borrowing a word and leaving virtually For wormholes see Phys. Rev. Lett. 61, 1446–1449 (1988) "Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy Condition" - abstract at http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v61/i13/p1446_1. > everything related to the actual theory behind. Yes I know there are energy and other problems with both Alcubierre warp bubbles and Thorne wormholes - but they are subjects of papers in respectable physics journals which do talk about FTL travel and there are arguments that the difficulties may be overcome. -- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
From: Bernd Felsche on 5 May 2010 03:05 Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: >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." Perhaps for an Aerospace Engineer. A Civil Engineer might be concerned about it becoming over-filled once every couple of months. >> Optometrist: Says "Does the glass look better this way, or this way... >> this way, or this way..." -- /"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia \ / ASCII ribbon campaign | If builders built buildings the way programmers X against HTML mail | wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that / \ and postings | came along would destroy civilization.
From: JF Mezei on 5 May 2010 03:20
Wes Groleau wrote: > 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. VAX is little endian just like the intel 32 bit X86. First byte contains lowest order byte. You may be refering to different format of hexadecimal memory dump between different operating systems. > And similar hassles dealing with VAX floating-point formats. The VAX has its own floating point format which was developped before IEEE became popular. Alpha CPUs could handle both IEEE and VAX floating point formats. Intel's IA64 thing handles only IEEE. |