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Everything posted by Cap'n Refsmmat
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I don't think "safety" means "how unlikely it is that you will die from it." There are many other factors to consider. Wikipedia suggests it's impossible to overdose on nicotine through smoking alone, but that doesn't make it good for you. Water, on the other hand, tends to cause problems if you don't have it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity As for the other question, I suggest "water." I hear it's popular to drink.
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Go to your Firefox preferences, to the Privacy tab, and see if "Always clear private data when I close Firefox" is checked. If it is, the session cookie is being deleted.
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Aha, I just recalled another cheap cat trick we've used before. Mousetraps work well. Not set right-side-up with bait, mind you, since that would just be mean; take the traps and very carefully set them upside down in locations in your garden. Maybe conceal them a bit. The cat will step on the trap, it'll go off (but not hurt the cat, since it's upside down), and the cat will run for cover. Make your garden scary enough and you'll keep the cat away.
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The Wiki syntax takes a bit of getting used to. There's a guide here. Anything in the <math> tags should be ordinary LaTeX, AFAIK.
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waitforufo: you said you have a fence. How is the cat getting in? If there's a way to just block it off, you could try that and save yourself a lot of trouble.
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I'd like to be there when it goes off, honestly. That cat will go flying.
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I've seen places in Texas here that sell a kit for a motion-detector activated sprinkler. Put one of those suckers in your yard and the cat will never come back. http://www.amazon.com/Contech-Electronics-CRO101-Scarecrow-Motion-Activated/dp/B000071NUS It may be a bit expensive, but if you're gardening you can consider it an investment in keeping rabbits, deer and other animals out as well. And it'll keep the plants watered a bit.
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The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene? http://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/0393058581/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240273610&sr=8-2
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what's a good programming language to learn?
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to ecoli's topic in Computer Science
No insult intended. I suppose your point is that while you have learned all these other languages, you find that the traditional stuff works best and there's no need for Haskell or any of the other "new" languages brought up by bascule? What is really called for here is a direct comparison: get some programmers expert in C/C++, some expert in Haskell or Erlang or some other similar language, and give them a task. Time how long it takes both for development and program execution and see what the tradeoffs are. (For added realism, then give them a new task that involves updating the old program to new requirements, and see how easily the code can be updated.) My suspicion is that the "new" languages make programming faster (to an extent) but program speed slower, unless you're sufficiently clever. But I'd have to try it. From what I recall, bascule works for an Internet company. But I'll let bascule speak for himself in that department. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Honestly I don't think you can pick a "wrong" language to learn. All will be useful to you in some way, and learning one language will make it infinitely easier to learn the next -- my knowledge of the workings of Java comes from the object model in PHP, for example. There are so many similar concepts across languages that learning one will help prepare you for learning more. So take a look through the languages mentioned here, look up some code in those languages, and try reading a tutorial or two from each. (Don't let the look of the code scare you. I know Lisp scared me when I first saw it, but it's actually pretty cool.) If you go into anything computational you'll end up learning several languages anyway, so it doesn't really matter which one you start with. -
What's the next language you want to learn?
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to bascule's topic in Computer Science
I'd like to learn something functional to switch to a different mindset -- I tried Lisp for a little while last summer but not seriously, and so I didn't really pick up the Lisp mindset. Erlang could be interesting. -
You'd have to model it with calculus, I'd think. I'll try to work out the math when I have some time.
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what's a good programming language to learn?
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to ecoli's topic in Computer Science
I think the issue between D H and bascule here is merely a difference of willingness to use what already works to its full potential vs. willingness to learn new concepts and techniques to leverage them to their potential. The former requires less initial effort on the part of the programmer (less learning curve), but may mean uglier code and other disadvantages in the long run. The latter requires more learning but can make programming and debugging faster at the expense of some execution time. Tradeoffs. What are you willing to lose? -
The water will give up some of its energy to the ice cube, since the ice cube is colder than the water. Heat always flows from hot to cold.
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how do I work this out? gravity / energy question
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to ryan g's topic in Homework Help
Not quite. It's not 2.5 seconds, for one thing -- you meant 7 / 9.8, not 7 / 2.8. Once you get the correct time, you can't just multiply by 7 m/s -- it's going to be slowing down as it flies through the air because of gravity. If you're familiar with it, you need to use this equation: [math]x = x_0 + v_0t + \frac{1}{2}at^2[/math] where a = the acceleration due to gravity (-9.8), x is the final height, x0 is the initial height, v0 is the initial velocity, and t is time. -
I find the safe strategy is to simply be good friends with a person for a while first. Gives you plenty of time to judge. Of course, in my case, it gives other people plenty of time to think you're in a relationship you're not really in, but that's high school gossip for you.
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how do I work this out? gravity / energy question
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to ryan g's topic in Homework Help
Have you learned the equations for potential and kinetic energy yet or are you just doing kinematics? If you use the above equations to find out how high the ball will go, you can use the same ones to find out how fast it will be going when it hits the ground when falling from that height. -
How about a function like [math]f(x) = \frac{x^2 - 4}{x+2}[/math] Find f(-2). The function doesn't exist at all at x = -2, but with a limit you can find what that function would be at x = -2.
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how do I work this out? gravity / energy question
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to ryan g's topic in Homework Help
Although I learned that one as [math]v_f^2 = v_i^2 + 2a(x_f - x_i)[/math], and we ignored the vectors. Weird how different people present the equations. And yeah, I forgot that'd work. Whoops. -
What exactly do you mean? Are you asking why one would define a limit instead of just trying to solve the problem without a limit?
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how do I work this out? gravity / energy question
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to ryan g's topic in Homework Help
It'll come in two parts. First you need to calculate how long it will take for the ball to decelerate to 0 m/s, because 0m/s will occur only when the ball is at the top and it stops going up and starts going down. After that, you take that time and use it in your good ol' [math]x = x_0 + v_0t + \frac{1}{2} at^2[/math] equation (or whatever version of it you've been taught). That can give you the maximum height. -
Is it wrong to end life because (a) life is good (b) it would suffer if we kill it © it doesn't want to die? If (a) is your choice then pro-life would be the obvious viewpoint but you'd also have to be vegetarian. The other two options seem hardly applicable to a fetus before it develops a nervous system and any sort of sentience. Is there another option I'm missing here?
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A water mister and a bright light source in a decent location? Sounds like it could work.
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We can stop menstruation medically. Is it morally wrong not to?
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Auto-linking issue
Cap'n Refsmmat replied to Baby Astronaut's topic in Suggestions, Comments and Support
You'd have to file a bug with the vBulletin people. The trouble is that there'll also be people putting links in parentheses and having them put inside the URL if you do it the other way. If you want to avoid the problem, you can write in the URL tags yourself. Unfortunately BBCode parsing is rather limited.