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From: Brian M. Scott on 3 Mar 2010 00:16 On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 21:50:45 -0000, Mike Lyle <mike_lyle_uk(a)REMOVETHISyahoo.co.uk> wrote in <news:hmk17n$at7$1(a)news.eternal-september.org> in sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.lang,alt.usage.english: > J. Clarke wrote: >> On 3/2/2010 2:23 PM, Nick wrote: >>> "J. Clarke"<jclarke.usenet(a)cox.net> writes: >>>> On 3/2/2010 4:38 AM, Lewis wrote: >>> [nothing I wasn't going to snip] >>> Look everybody - it's Lewis and Clark(e)! >>> (sorry guys) >> <groan> > You must admit he did react expeditiously, though. In the very Nick of time, in fact. Brian
From: Nick on 3 Mar 2010 02:47 Glenn Knickerbocker <NotR(a)bestweb.net> writes: > Nick wrote: >> >> You're the persistent Google groups user IIRC. Â Look it up, or don't >> ^ >> Look! There's another one. Whenever you quote me there's a little >> underscore-like character appears where the second of my double spaces >> was. > > Google is translating your second space into a nonbreaking space (0xA0) > so that it will be displayed in a Web page. Which is a perfectly sensible thing to do when displaying it - turn strings of spaces into alternating string and . I do it myself. But why on earth is it then sending it out. Among other things, for the structure of my post it's /wrong/. It's the /first/ space of a doublet that should be non-breaking (so it remains at the end of the previous line). Otherwise Google is telling people to break my sentences with a space at the start. Like this. I'm very grateful they run a Usenet archive (even if it seems to be impossible to search it sensibly at the moment, perhaps they can fix it). I'm getting FTB with them -hide quoted text- -show quoted text- spewing gunge all over Usenet. I>t's properly displayed as > just a space, but Emacs must be showing it to you as something else to > alert you that it's not a "normal" space. Google does change the data, > but it's your tool, not Peter's, that's changing its graphical image. > > Then, when you post it, Gnus encodes it in UTF-8. My ancient Netscape > (which I may finally replace with Thunderbird now that a few more of the > missing basic functions have been added in version 3) then displays it > without decoding it, so I wind up quoting it as an A-circumflex followed > by a space (0x4120). > > I still think it would be nice if mail and news tools left 8-bit data > unencoded when it didn't use any of the code points that differ between > the ISO 8859 and Windows code pages, unless some other code page was > specified. When I wrote it, of course, it didn't. So Google is making a post that I write that you can easily read and transforming it, when quoted, into something that's messy and that you can't easily quote. See above. -- Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
From: Nick on 3 Mar 2010 02:52 "Skitt" <skitt99(a)comcast.net> writes: > Evan Kirshenbaum wrote: >> Nick writes: >>> "Peter T. Daniels" writes: > >>>> Right, writing "somewhere in England" you wouldn't know what >>>> "English major" means. I don't know the British nominalization for >>>> someone who "reads English" "in university." >>> >>> If I'd done that and completed the course, I'd be an English >>> Graduate. Otherwise I don't think we have a noun term for what you >>> are when an undergraduate on a particular course of study >>> ("reading", btw, is in fairly limited use these days, most of us >>> (and it's 25 years since I was an undergraduate) would have said >>> that we were "studying English" (or whatever)). >>> >>> I always assumed that "major" meant that you were studying two >>> courses, but one was the most important. Is that the case? >> >> No. Your "major" is the subject that you're intending to get a degree >> in. It's short, I believe, for "major concentration", referring to >> the fact that a certain number of courses[1] (and certain specified >> courses or choices of courses) need to be taken from a set that have >> been pre-selected by the department to count toward the degree and >> which will suffice to warrant granting it. (Not all of these courses >> need be taught by that department.) Other courses might be taken to >> satisfy general university requirements or as "electives". >> >> When I was at Stanford, to get a bachelor's degree required 180 >> "units", where each quarter-long course (three quarters per year) was >> worth, typically, 3-5 units[2]. Roughly four or five classes a >> quarter for four years, so about 50 courses in all. My linguistics >> major had a requirement of at least 45 units courses designated as >> contributing to the the major, but I think that that was on the low >> end. Looking at an old _Courses and Degrees_, it looks as though a >> math major was about 80 units, English about 55 units, physics about >> 95, various engineering disciplines about 105. (Of course, when the >> number was small, most people took courses in their departments over >> and above the minimum. Those in more structured departments just had >> less free choice; it was more "at least one from each of these groups >> of two or three".) >> >> If you actually have a second concentrationm, that will be a "double >> major" if you actually satisfy the requirements for both majors (which >> often involves counting some courses, e.g., beginning calculus or >> physics, toward both). Otherwise if one department certifies that >> you've done a fair amount in their field but not enough for a degree, >> you're considered to have a "minor" in that subject. I don't know of >> any universities that will give you a degree based on just minors. >> You have to actually fulfil the requirements of some major. >> >> [1] Where "course", in the American sense, might be "class" >> elsewhere. It's (typically) a quarter's or semester's worth of >> class sessions meeting a certain number of times per week on a >> specific topic, taught by (usually) a faculty member. So the Math >> department might offer courses in linear algebra or differential >> equations. >> >> [2] Typically less a measure of how much work it was than how many >> courses that department thought you should be taking at one time. > > At the time when I was in college, the courses required for an > engineering degree almost met the requirements for a mathematics > minor. All I would have had to take were two additional math courses, > one of which was History of Mathematics. I don't remember the name of > the other one, but it was similar in subject matter. > > I also don't remember what a "minor in math" was good for. When I did Genetics at Liverpool you spent the first two years collecting units, but the final year was full time and fully taught by the "school" you were going to get your degree from. Although you had registered for a degree in a specific subject, if you had the right set of modules and the school would take you, you could end up getting a degree in something else. I was qualified to do microbiology and - very nearly - biochemistry as well. All the biological sciences worked together in that way: you couldn't mix this up with say English or history. I don't know if it's like that now. I'm pretty sure you could also take three years of the modular courses (it was 4 per "semester" (one-and-a-bit terms) making 8 a year) and end up with an "ordinary" rather than an "honours" degree. -- Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
From: Peter T. Daniels on 3 Mar 2010 07:11 On Mar 3, 2:47 am, Nick <3-nos...(a)temporary-address.org.uk> wrote: > Glenn Knickerbocker <N...(a)bestweb.net> writes: > > Nick wrote: > >> >> You're the persistent Google groups user IIRC. Â Look it up, or don't > >> ^ > >> Look! There's another one. Whenever you quote me there's a little > >> underscore-like character appears where the second of my double spaces > >> was. > > > Google is translating your second space into a nonbreaking space (0xA0) > > so that it will be displayed in a Web page. > > Which is a perfectly sensible thing to do when displaying it - turn > strings of spaces into alternating string and . I do it myself. > > But why on earth is it then sending it out. Among other things, for the > structure of my post it's /wrong/. It's the /first/ space of a doublet > that should be non-breaking (so it remains at the end of the previous > line). Otherwise Google is telling people to break my sentences with a > space at the start. > Like this. > > I'm very grateful they run a Usenet archive (even if it seems to be > impossible to search it sensibly at the moment, perhaps they can fix > it). I'm getting FTB with them -hide quoted text- -show quoted text- > spewing gunge all over Usenet. > > I>t's properly displayed as > > > just a space, but Emacs must be showing it to you as something else to > > alert you that it's not a "normal" space. Google does change the data, > > but it's your tool, not Peter's, that's changing its graphical image. > > > Then, when you post it, Gnus encodes it in UTF-8. My ancient Netscape > > (which I may finally replace with Thunderbird now that a few more of the > > missing basic functions have been added in version 3) then displays it > > without decoding it, so I wind up quoting it as an A-circumflex followed > > by a space (0x4120). > > > I still think it would be nice if mail and news tools left 8-bit data > > unencoded when it didn't use any of the code points that differ between > > the ISO 8859 and Windows code pages, unless some other code page was > > specified. > > When I wrote it, of course, it didn't. So Google is making a post that > I write that you can easily read and transforming it, when quoted, into > something that's messy and that you can't easily quote. > > See above. No one but you sees "something that's messy and that you can't easily quote."
From: James Silverton on 3 Mar 2010 08:32
PaulJK wrote on Wed, 3 Mar 2010 16:58:29 +1300: > James Silverton wrote: >> PaulJK wrote on Tue, 2 Mar 2010 21:01:20 +1300: >> >>> Algol 60, i.e. thirty years before Fortan90, allowed general >>> expressions in array declarations, e.g. >> >>> real array A(i*2 : fcall(p,3)); >> >>> It wasn't particularly difficult to compile, since all code >>> to compile general arithmetical expressions was already >>> there. The expression (i*2) and the function call >>> (fcall(p,3)) had to be evaluated at run time but that wasn't >>> difficult either. The whole array declaration was evaluated >>> at run time as if it were a function call which resulted in >>> an area of memory being reserved on the top of the stack by >>> pointing the top of the stack pointer beyond it. >> >> Actually, the first compiled language that I used was Algol >> in 1960. > Not that it matters much but do you remember was it Algol60 > or Algol58? > The year 1960 sounds to me a bit too early for an actual > commercial implemetation of Algol60. >> The >> resulting programs on the Burrouughs 220 were so pathetically >> unoptimized and slow that I ended up using machine language >> and a primitive assembler. >> >> I never brought myself to use Algol again. It probably was the 58 version but I am not very familiar with the history of Algol. I do seem to remember that the paper tape with the compiler was gotten by a somewhat informal arrangement with the Burroughs company. -- James Silverton Potomac, Maryland Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not |