Cap'n Refsmmat

That's only six megabytes... the memory limit is supposed to be much higher than that. I'll look into it.

It's not his lawyer that let him free. It's the parole board.

Thank you, xkcd.

Then kindly provide your evidence. We do not like people who make claims without supporting them.

Just download Firefox again from mozilla.com and install it on top of your previous install. Something borked your DLL -- perhaps you ran an update and it crashed halfway through?

Eric, I submit to you Conway's Game of Life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_game_of_life In essence, a grid of blocks bound by very simple rules somehow manage to interact, form patterns, and do all sorts of very interesting things. In fact, the grid becomes a Turing machine capable of performing any calculation, as long as you can figure out how to arrange the blocks initially. Somehow these arrangements of blocks manage to interact to form moving "guns" and "gliders" that fly across the grid -- but one block by itself does nothing. See, something made of very simple parts can exhibit behaviors that the parts alone would not suggest. Computers are made of atoms, and atoms can't calculate; computers can calculate. Crowds are made of people, and crowds can riot and do the Wave and so on; one person isn't a crowd, and one person can't do the wave. So why can't humans be built of atoms that aren't alive? We have never found anything else that humans are made of, so the burden of proof is on you to establish that there is something else.

Biochemistry. One person isn't a crowd. Two people aren't a crowd. Three people aren't a crowd. So how can 3,000 people spontaneously become a crowd? The fact that one atom isn't alive doesn't mean 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 can't be. Just like with crowds.

Who's the press secretary? Robert Gibbs? Okay, imagine this political cartoon for me: An outhouse, door swinging open wide. Hordes of photographers standing in front. Obama sitting inside, startled expression on his face, pants down, shouting "GIBBS!!!" They've just about gone that far.

Try to find the legislation online, or get him to. It should be available somewhere.

You need an excuse?

There are several reasons. Most sounds aren't pure tones sticking to one frequency. If something resonates at 414Hz and you start talking, you might hit 414Hz occasionally (if you have a rather high-pitch voice), but never for more than a split second. Damping. Some things, like wine glasses, have little to slow the vibration and absorb its energy. Other things -- like, say, something sitting on carpeting -- lose energy quickly. The carpet damps the vibrations. But you can have cases of very interesting resonance. My dad once worked on an RV which had numerous internal parts (cabinet doors, a TV mounted on the wall, fixtures, anything) which coincidentally resonated at a frequency very close to the frequency the cylinders of the engine fired at at idle speed. When sitting at idle, nearly everything inside the RV would start vibrating -- cabinet doors would rattle, the TV would shake on its mount, and so on. They had the option of fixing every little component on the RV... but instead they just changed the engine idle speed. There was also the case of mail trucks whose rearview mirrors started vibrating whenever the truck idled... they had to add bracing to the mirror mount so it wouldn't vibrate so much.

Behold my freshman year first semester schedule: Mechanics (the physics kind) Advanced Calculus for Applications II US History up to the Civil War Research Methods Honors Seminar The last two are from the honors program I'm in. Research Methods is a prerequisite to doing undergraduate research and then a thesis, which I will be required to do before graduating.

The speed of light in Earth's atmosphere is less because the light is being absorbed and re-emitted by molecules of the various gases in the atmosphere, not because the light itself is going any slower.

You're mixing your constants. [math]g_{\mbox{earth}} = 9.8 m/s^2[/math] [math]G = 6.67 \times 10^{-11} \frac{m^3}{kg \times s^2}[/math] They have decidedly different meanings. g is the acceleration due to gravity on earth. G is the universal gravitational constant. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

Try stacking two of them together and rotating them relative to each other. Then look through. If you see it getting lighter and darker as you rotate, they're probably just polarized lenses.

Well, let's look at this carefully. I've heard of high-speed camera systems that can take a million frames per second, so let's assume that means one frame is a millionth of a second. Light travels about a foot in a nanosecond, and a millionth of a second is 1000 nanoseconds. So in the time it takes the camera to take one image, the light beam will travel 1000 feet. You'd have to set up the camera somewhere where it could see that distance. High-speed camera systems like that would also require the beam to be very bright to pick up. It might be possible with a fast enough camera, a bright enough laser, and a clever enough setup, but I don't know if it's been done before. (I keep thinking I've seen a picture, but I can't find it. Maybe it was a picture of something else.)

Split, as requested, from this thread.

When vBulletin 4 comes out it is likely that the new style will make it easier to fashion a "lite" version for iPhones and PDAs. Until then, we'll be stuck squinting.

I'm not sure which kinds of plastic are affected, but I thought that certain types of plastic container leach various weird plastic compounds into their contents when they're heated. This link has more info: http://trusted.md/blog/vreni_gurd/2007/03/29/plastic_water_bottles So check what kind of bottle you have first.

According to the PNAS web site, Academy members must secure at least two independent reviewers for their papers. http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/iforc.shtml#submission

Global IQ scores are increasing by something like 3 points per decade. That's not necessarily an increase in "intelligence" per se, but it indicates something. It certainly doesn't indicate a decrease in intelligence.

I'd suggest using a design like this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Air-Powered-Potato-Cannon/ Just read the comments on some of the steps on what materials would be better (and safer) to use -- some of the commenters point out that the PVC used isn't strong enough, and so on. Other than that, you can probably scrounge some good ideas from it. With a good pressure gauge and a protractor for measuring angle you could get very consistent results.

Many oil wells simply pump water down into the ground, forcing the oil out of the cavity and into a pipe to the surface.

What is the advantage of a bucket over a pipe with a pump?

D? http://www.digitalmars.com/d/