insane_alien

eh, please write coherently and assume that we do not have the telepathic ability to discern the meaning out of your skull

well 600F is hot enough to heat water. the feasibility will depend on how much water you need to heat(and to what temperature) as well as how much nitride your burning (the power of the flame). If you give us some more info we could definitely do the back of the envelope calculations to determine feasibility

hal, what you seem to be heavily implying although never getting round to actually saying is that yyou think that the language of the native people has some property that should make it the official language of a country. well, i have news for you, in exactly zero countries is there a truely native people or truely native language. languages develop over time, it is inevitable. Look at english, if we brought a 12th century person to the present, we would be able to communicate but not very well even if the 12th century person was very well educated in the english language because the language has changed significantly. and this is only over a few centuries. over a few millenia and then its like comparing english to swahili, completely different. that and since human originated in africa, migrated, invaded and so on, the tribes that held mitochondrial eve and y chromosonal adam were likely displaced so none of our ancestors are where they 'should' be according the naiive view of nativeness. and if you are going to bring up modern immigration, well, what makes ancient and historical immigration any more significant?

didn't we have a conversation about this exact question on IRC a while ago?

there is plenty of gravity in space, the thing about being in orbit at 200km above the surface is that you are actually in free fall, the spacecraft is accelerating towards earth but at the same rate as everything else so it appears as if there is zero gravity but there isn't really. the effect can be seen in aircraft, if a plane were to follow a particular parabolic arc then those inside would experience 'zero' gravity. the moon is an orbit. there's only one type of gravity.

I really doubt that all the characters are necessary for sms communication. they may use a menu system. i don't think so so essentially you'd want to use a smaller number base to construct your larger number base, kind of defeats the purpose. and also you see yourself the complexity this would add to even simple addition and subtraction.

theoretically there is no advantage, thats the point. The only advantage there is is that all our systems are set up to use base 10, we are all used to using base ten and so on. Any change to this must have a SIGNIFICANT advantage, and i'm talking world changing, from big business banking to street stalls. we use ten because we have ten digits, it's also a low number. you can think about ten. base 4000 will have difficulties in memorising the numbers, calculators will need a few thousand extra keys etc. etc. there is a significant disadvantage in moving up to 4000. infact, there would be a significant disadvantage in moving (not a property of the base your moving to, just the act of switching itself). now, I'm thinking of this in terms of industrial equipment(something i'm very familiar with). now, lets say i'm purchasing some stirrers for my process tanks. My plant is in the UK so we've got 50Hz electricity. I'm looking at two suppliers who supply stirrers that are the same in every specification and price except one uses 50Hz and the other uses 60Hz. now, if i had access to both 50 and 60Hz it would matter one iota which one i bought. but all the existing infrastructure means i have an advantage with the 50Hz stirrer as it interfaces with existing infrastructure. If i buy the 60Hz one i'll either have to change the infrastructure of the whole UK (not gonna happen) or I pay extra for a converter device so i can interface with the infrastructure. The converter would add cost, complexity and failure points. the same with base 4000. If a company decided to use some base other than 10 then they would need to convert EVERY number they need to share with the outside world or recieve from the outside world between bases. a modern company(even a small one) will exchange hundreds of thousands of numbers with existing infrastructure. It's just not worth it. Its like saying "lets all speak binary from tomorrow" its not going to happen. until you can prove a world changing advantage to b4000 then there IS NO ADVANTAGE. certainly no more than moving to 11, 12, 5, 42 or even staying at 10. the only thing about 10 is that there is zero cost to move as thats where we are.

I doubt changing base would lead to new theorems. changing the base does not affect the properties of numbers, just the way you write them. I don't even really see the practical application, we don't really have anything that would be made simpler by base 4000. computers use base two because it is easy to distinguish between on-off and easier to create such a signal. hex was used because it was 16-bit which a lot of early processors used for everything. put simply we only use bases other than ten when it provides an advantage(smaller numbers isn't an advantage).

time cures all hangovers. man up and beat that hangover into submission

unless your accelerating the forces on your blood at 60mph are the same as at 0mph. this is all about heat transfer what needs to happen is to reduce the flow of heat from your hands to the outside. you can do this by using thermally resistive gloves(which you say you have done) but you could increase this by forming a boundary layer around the glove (making the gloves thicker would work but then you wouldn't be able to control the bike). Basically, you want to get yourself a pair of furry(on the outside) gloves. the fibers will keep a bubble of relatively stagnant air moving with your hand and reduce the convective heat transfer.

why read anything into you dreams. its just your mind taking a mental dump. sit back and enjoy the ride.

the intensity of light and gravity are not related though. you can have a very bright low gravity source and you can have a very dim high gravity source. I think the extremes would be a (non-feeding, ie without an accretion disk) black hole which will be characterised as having an intense gravity field but zero light field. The other extreme would be a gamma ray burst, average gravity field but incredibly huge light field. failing that it is always possible to block the light field by an obstruction. you can't do this with gravity without some exotic possibly fictitious means.

it was the many empty remains of canisters of helium that got me.

yes, but i was just talking about the equations of gravity. Light storm said the equations of gravity could not cope with a changing radius. This is both a) false and b) irrelevant as its mass that counts.

They don't mention the radius of the earth at all. They reference the mass of the earth and it is simple to substitute in a function for the mass term and integrate.

It's only naiively optimistic if you think i'm talking about all terrorists everywhere packing up shop and deciding to become peaceful members of society overnight. I do not expect this. especially from the extremists. What I would expect is that the more moderate people who back terrorism will begin to think twice about their opinion of 'westerners' as infidel scum who want to destroy them. If the terrorist factions lose general support amongst the population then they will have lower recruitment rates so less resources for conducting a large scale campaign. sure there will still be attacks, there would still be a surge after Osama was hypothetically captured and tried but its a step in the right direction. We're (US, UK EU etc. etc.) meant to be the good guys, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than everyone else. Sure, we will still make mistakes and so on but we should acknowledge those mistakes are infact mistakes and as soon as possible. We should be acting better than we are, We need to be acting better than we are. I think the best thing Obama could do right now is to commission a report to be publically released detailing the particulars of what happened in Abbottabad. And I don't mean the usual heavily redacted trash, be open, publish more than you normally would (granted some info should remain confidential to prevent peoples lives being put at risk). Have a detailed breakdown of what decisions were made and why they were made.

hasn't it been said a few times by your president (I think one by bush and one by obama) that the war was over? or is it currently in a state of retraction again? no. yes. yes it is acceptable. taking out foot soldiers (although still a bad thing causing greif and demoralisation) isn't such an issue, in a war individuals at that level are not so very important.(please note that I do not think the life of a soldier on either side is insignificant in itself, I am talking about appearances to commanders and those driving the war). figure heads that are prominent and well known such as Osama or say a president are very high profile. people are going to be affected much more by what happens there than with corporal anonymous. Now, yes, you can just bump off high ups on the hush hush and this is potentially a good strategy for a war as in world war II but the war with 'terror' is very different. At its heart its a war of hearts and minds than soldiers and guns. We cannot hunt down and eliminate terrorism in general it only takes one guy with an internet connection and motivation to make a bomb and be a terrorist. What we have to do is show the terrorists that we are more reasonable than they think we are. By say taking someone it is widely known that we despise (say Osama) capture him alive and give him a trial. The results of the trial would likely be excecution but its the alive and trial bits that are important. Its symbolic. Its breaking out of the cycle of violence that we are perpetuating in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not a war that can be won with guns.

just to be clear, although myself and many other have issues about how this was handled and what happened, this does not mean we are osama sympathisers. We just feel that as this is such a high profile and sensitive case that it should have been done by the book at whatever costs so as not to give the otherside more fuel for their hate.

Your government itself has declared the war is over(despite ongoing hostilities). This was a round them up and bring them to justice mission, or should have been. There is a difference between being glad someone is dead and whats been happening outside the white house. its not been said exdplicitly but its just the general feeling thats coming off a variety of news agencies (CNN, Fox and i'm sad to say BBC) my comments are on what played out in a compound in abbottabad. The previous actions leading up to this by osama are widely known and i really didn't think we'd have to discuss that in talking about how he was killed. I know what he did, you know what he did and we are in agreement on that. Yes, I know he was a bad guy and I would want him to suffer the death penalty for what he did BUT I'd want it done by the book so that the opposing side CANNOT have any evidence to say we killed him unjustly or were unfairly biased etc. etc. (although i think elimination of bias in judgement about this is impossible). My commentary was directed at the US because the US were the ones who messed up here at this moment in time. Doesn't mean I think Osama is a good guy. Just means I think the operation could have came out a bit better. It's not the nice shining example of a mission gone well and so forth.

assassination applies to any prominent figure, not just world leaders. I'd say that (judging by the media) Osama Bin Laden was a prominent figure. if he wasn't, then why is everyone making such a big deal of this?

well, you can take the millionth integral of position if you really want, but it won't mean much.

the valve will give way before the canister does. maybe build a casing just for safety. 100 psi is probably more than you need anyway

yeah, just about every bad guy refuses surrender. from what i've seen he was severely out numbered, chuck a can of tear gas in and wait for him to run out. also to the terrorist mecca, i'm pretty sure they could and would do that without the body if they really wanted to.

yes, it does sound fishy. I'm uncomfortable with this for a number of reasons: 1/ this smacks of assassination rather than an attempt to bring him to justice(jumping straight to execution is not justice) 2/ the way (some) americans are reacting (chants of USA, etc, etc,) seems a bit, well, insane. seriously, its just like the saber rattling in the middle east when they kill an american soldier that you guys were so disgusted by (i'm betting its the same people who were disgusted that are aber rattling today). 3/ its being passed on as if every terrorist is now dead and sunshine and kittens are raining from the sky and death and evil have been eliminated from the world. it hasn't this is still reality and you killed one guy. fairly prominent figure head but not much more these days. if anything this is merely going to cause a breif upsurge in levels of terrorism before it settles back down into the norm again.

it was a joke (i hope, because it was funny)