vordhosbn

If I was a cat, I would much prefer a real, live tree.

There are No Girls on the Internet

http://tinyurl.com/37atege

To state what's bothering me more clearly - if the vessel is filled with inert dielectric fluid, rather than air with 1 atm pressure, the electronic components inside will be experiencing essentially the same hydrostatic pressure, as the vessel itself. This will no doubt at least interfere with their normal characteristics, if not damage them permanently. I don't understand if you don't agree with the above statement regarding the inoperability of the electronic components under high hydrostatic pressure, or rather with the premise that the vessel needs electronic components?

But the thing is that the Strong Man™ is so supa powerful, that he beats the shit out of the Weak Man™ even on a diet. Perhaps you will state (again) that this kind of argument is not scientific? If this is the case, could you elaborate a bit on the "inverting the values of the process"?

This is a really interesting idea, but I have a question: Why there are so many stars that die (observed end of star life) - supernovae, white/brown dwarf, red/blue giants, neutron stars, black holes?

Well, "Remote controlled submersible" implies both control and communication module. At least some small electronic circuitry is required, imo.

(facepalm) Excuse my poor English. I meant diary.

I am not sure that electronic components in the submarine's circuitry will be able to function properly under such pressure. In most el. component specification, standard atmospheric pressure is assumed, and that's the pressure it's tested on.

I am a vegetarian for four years now, and although vegetarian =/= healthy, I believe that it is an important step to healthy lifestyle. I believe there is plenty of statistical and experimental evidence on healthy food habits, but I would like to just throw my personal perspective here. Since I gave up eating meat, I have much lower occurrence of stomach discomfort, I feel much more energetic after a big meal (totally unlike the blissful apathy that followed after 6 pork stakes ), and last but not least - my monthly food budget decreased substantially (vegetables and poultry are much cheaper than meat). Some people don't feel good when turning to no-meat diet, but then again some people don't feel good when they quit smoking. And essentially by removing meat (but not milk and eggs - this is what vegetarian means) you are not loosing anything beneficial. I don't really like this obsession with calories, carbs and protein levels, that is promoted in articles on healthy lifestyle. The thing is, if I do that, I am essentially in a constant process of food analysis, which may be fun for somebody, but not for me. Just eat what you like (but in moderation), and do physical exercise (also in moderation). When a particular food does not go with your stomach, just try something else.

Is it possible (and probable), that from DNA, that did not originate from retro-viruses, a sequence can be extracted, that can function as one? Way back, thinking about DNA, I always made analogy with source code... but now I am beginning to think that may not be good comparison... Most modern computer languages are very context-specific and non-heuristic oriented.

Why are you separating the two bytes of the address? It is just a number. Imagine the computer memory as a very large street. It has houses only on one side, and those houses are numbered 1, 2, 3... and so on. 0xDEAD is just a hex number. Hex numbers are just presented in other counting system. You can say "Humans have 0x20 teeth in general, but I lost one, so now I have only 0x1F." So address 0xDEAD is just the 57005th consecutive byte in the memory (assuming they start at 0x0000 which is not always the case). To understand whether the previous or the next even address is the "corresponding one", you must learn a bit about memory organization. It can be big-endian or little-endian. For example, little-endian is the memory organization in PC processors. On little endian organized memory, the 32-bit integer 0x12345678 with address 0x1004 will be presented as: Memory address: 0x1000 0x1001 0x1002 0x1003 0x1004 0x1005 0x1006 0x1007 0x1008 Value: 0x78 0x56 0x34 0x12 On a big endian organized memory it will be: Memory address: 0x1000 0x1001 0x1002 0x1003 0x1004 0x1005 0x1006 0x1007 0x1008 Value: 0x12 0x34 0x56 0x78 I am not 100% sure what is meant by "corresponding", and I first assumed, the one that gives the word that contains the byte. If so, then in both endiannessess, the corresponding word address to the byte address 0x1005 is 0x1004, because the 32-bit number with address 0x1004 contains the four bytes ahead. Hope I is not very confusing. Maybe I explained a bit extra, but I believe partial understanding is not understanding. edit: Why the forum software is trimming the extra spaces? This is really anoying...

Hey, I saw this contest, and I immediately thought that someone from this forum might like it - tinkering with embedded systems. Basically, you describe your idea, then if they like it, they send you a starting kit board with Renesas micro, which you can use to develop your application. This is the board and it's functional diagram: If you are approved, be sure to drop a comment here to exchange ideas.

"Word" is usually the definitive characteristic of a given computer architecture. For example, modern processors in PCs are 64-bit, which means they have 64-bit accumulators, in short - their word is 64 bit, they handle their calculation in 64 bit format. In contrast older computers had 32 bit words and even 16 bit words. However, handling data larger than bytes, requires it to be placed at special locations, which is called memory alignment. That means for example, that 4 byte (32 bit data) should be placed only on addresses divisible by 4. I hope, you have now enough information to answer these questions yourself.

I've seen a spider eating A wasp. But a whole nest... it will have some trouble. However, I am betting, that the spider will like the "free meal" dropped on his web from time to time, and just lurk in the dark with full stomach, occasionally jumping on its new pray to paralyse it and trap it with his sticky shackles.

Each microcontroller manufacturer generally provides HW devices called "programmers" that are used for that purpose. However, some microcontrollers can be flashed with simple do-it-yourself tools (like LPT port to JTAG interface programmer/debugger circuit). AVR microcontrollers are a good option: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=2018 It really depends on what you are interested in... If you just want to design neat and sweet algorithms and concentrate on learning and education, then a simple LEGO robot will be sufficient, though you will be severy limited on what can you do and with what efficiancy. However, if you have serious interest about robots and embedded programming, I suggest, that you research the whole development process and perhaps set aside a small amount of money to buy a programmer and an evaluation board (a simple circuit with some microcontroller and integrated peripherals - displays, signal inputs/outputs, motors, speakers, cameras etc.). This is not, by far, an expensive solution, but undoubtly it's a hard one to pursue. You will likely be faced with many practical problems, especially if you don't have much proficiency in electronics and in embedded SW development.

I had big problem understanding why switching is beneficial, and though I read the wikipedia article, along with its discussion page + the very informative posts from forum members here, from the reasoning behind the solution, what I had biggest issue was this particular statement (in red): My mind resisted to assert this so furiously that I had to write a short computer simulation in C to prove myself wrong... Here's the code if anyone is interested and is still disbelieving the "switching is beneficial" solution: // This program demonstrates the Monty Hall paradox: // // Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given // the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; // behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, // and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, // opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. // He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" // Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <time.h> // Defined constants #define cNbValidArg 2 #define cArgDoorsPos 1 #define cArgCyclesPos 2 // Function prototypes void PrintHelp(void); void Simulate(void); // Local data static unsigned int u32NbDoors, u32NbCycles; // Function takes 2 arguments // #1 - number of "doors" // #2 - number of cycles int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { if(argc != cNbValidArg + 1) { PrintHelp(); return(1); } else { //Read Input parameters sscanf(argv[cArgDoorsPos],"%d", &u32NbDoors); sscanf(argv[cArgCyclesPos], "%d", &u32NbCycles); Simulate(); return(0); } } // This function prints help message void PrintHelp(void) { printf("This program illustrates the Monty Hall problem.\n"); printf("It takes %d arguments:\n", cNbValidArg); printf(" #%d - number of doors\n", cArgDoorsPos); printf(" #%d - number of cycles to repeat the simulation\n", cArgCyclesPos); } // Performs actual simulation void Simulate(void) { unsigned int u32Index; unsigned int u32Choice, u32Car, u32UnrevealedDoor; unsigned int u32SwitchingWins, u32TotalWins; double dfWinPct; // Seeds random number generator with system time srand((unsigned int)time(NULL)); u32TotalWins = 0; printf("|Car behind:|Chosen: |Left closed:|Switching wins:\n"); printf("--------------------------------------------------\n"); for(u32Index = 0; u32Index <= u32NbCycles; u32Index++) { // Random door number with car behind it u32Car = rand() % u32NbDoors; // Random door number that player has chosen u32Choice = rand() % u32NbDoors; // Here is the "magic" part // If the player has chosen the door with the car (low probability), // the host can open any door he wants and the player does not benefit from switching if(u32Choice == u32Car) { // Random door number(except chosen one) that remains closed u32UnrevealedDoor = u32Choice; while((u32UnrevealedDoor == u32Choice)) { u32UnrevealedDoor = rand() % u32NbDoors; } } //but if the player has chosen an empty door (much higher probability), // The only choice of the host is to open all doors except the one with the car!!! else { u32UnrevealedDoor = u32Car; } // If switching your choice wins - update variable if(u32UnrevealedDoor == u32Car) { u32SwitchingWins = 1; u32TotalWins++; } else { u32SwitchingWins = 0; } printf("|%10d |%7d |%11d |%14d |\n", u32Car+1, u32Choice+1, u32UnrevealedDoor+1, u32SwitchingWins); } dfWinPct = (double)u32TotalWins / (double)u32NbCycles; printf("--------------------------------------------------\n"); printf("Total win percent when switching: %3.2f%%\n", dfWinPct * 100); } montyh.zip

lol it IS hilarious, but you should have known better, than to post such things on FB. The "other" people do not understand...

Ironically or not, Steve Irwin did stepped aside...

For those of you, who are not familiar, about one month ago, the French government took the decision to demolish a number of illegal gypsy camps, and deport their inhabitants back to their home countries. This has brought much controversy among the EU politicians, with the EU Justice Commissioner Reding urging the European Commission to take legal action against France, calling the France position a "disgrace" and comparing it with the Hitler's regime in WW2. This has all grown into astonishing lump of rhetorics between various countries and political parties. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11338112 I must say I am puzzled with the behavior and attitude of the high ranking EU officials. Resorting to calling the French actions racist and discriminative is, I think, huge misunderstanding of the problem. It's either ignorance, or a deliberate misrepresentation. As a citizen of Bulgaria, where gypsies are relatively large percent of the population, I view them as a very interesting, although problematic ethnicity. First of all, most of them are poor by choice, however absurd that may sound. They are either working lowest paid jobs, being on social welfare, or just resort to crime. Despite their low income, it's not a rare sight to see some of them having very expensive mobile phones, cars, and even satellite dishes on their ghetto balconies: Notice how most of them throw their garbage right out of the window, although they have the same garbage disposal conditions as the rest of Bulgarian citizens. Every individual has the right to spend his money the way he wants, but it says something about their world-view. Buying quality food or clothes is definitely not a big priority for gypsies, as I have seen numerous times parents forcing their children to beg on the street, only to drink those money in the local tavern. The Bulgarian society hardly tolerates them, and the prevailing opinion is that the world will be a better place without them... and this does not help at all for their integration. They are mostly not considered by the common person to be "Bulgarian". It's easy to imagine how hard is it for a gypsy to escape this vicious circle. Bulgarian policeman displaying a prime example of police brutality. For the record, I am not advocating racism in any way. I do not believe, that their genotype has anything to do with their social problems as an ethnic minority. All of their problems are rooted in their culture, which has been nomadic one - largely incompatible with the modern world. Gypsies (or as they prefer to be called - Roma people) have been rejected by societies for centuries, and have build intrinsic ignorance about the outside world. Hard to imagine, that Bulgaria is part of the EU, with these kind of sceneries.* What are your thoughts of this recent controversy over their deportation from France, and in general about their culture? Do you have any direct experience with them? Are there gypsies in your country? * All of the photos are from Bulgaria.

Hey, what happened with it?

I would invest in agriculture, sustainable energy infrastructure and recycling technologies. Lobbying for environmentally friendly policies will be also smart, i think... Also I would like to build myself a castle. I would like to have many servants, and to surprise them by making THEM breakfast sometimes and cleaning the toilets occasionally. Some of the money, I will spend on completely pointless personal eccentricities. Like a rainfall with LSD... combined with thousands of biodegradable balloons and music playing dirigibles released over random cities. And an escadrille of bombers, which will bombard people with flowers instead of bombs.

This time, the AI got much diversified - the computer enemies have six difficulty settings - Very easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very hard and Insane. As an experienced, although not particularly good Starcraft player, I quickly got the hand of Medium and manged to beat most of the time the Hard AI script. However, once I tried the Very Hard difficulty, I was very surprised to find that there is some serious gap between Hard and Very Hard. In ZvT games, for example, while I had not finished my first 10 Roaches, the Terran comes with half a dozen Maruders, one dozen Marines and several Firebats. And you have to note that all but one difficulty levels are on equal grounds with the player, regarding resource income. The Insane level is the only one that "cheats". And I am really afraid to try it. It's probably for Koreans only anyways... I think this aggressive AI options are good, because on SC1, you had to put multiple computers just to have a challenge, while now, you can very easily get your ass destroyed by a single enemy. What disappoints me a bit is that the AI's strategy is still somewhat linear and predictable. No sudden surprises and unexpected moves from the computer opponent - it always uses similar (but effective) tactics.

Blizzard usually put very much effort to the details of their games, have very strict policies on cheating and generally strive for continuously balancing and improving their games with patches, providing new content to gamers with expansion packs (and thus providing themselves with income ). This sort of attention is, unsurprisingly, appealing to gamers. I like Starcraft 2 a lot, for now I play it pirated, but since purchasing it is the only way to play with other people, I plan to do so in near future. The campaign is not so involving and the plot is a step above shallow, imo, but... <with deep protoss voice> "This is not Warcraft in space!" It's all about multiplayer competitive gameplay.