imatfaal

Personally, I think the chance to witness long term changes in society and culture would be worth almost any cost (excepting permanent physical torture or mental incapacitance). We cannot imagine what it would be like to witness change 300 years into our future, but we can start to envisage how an individual would have perceived the last 300 years of our past. The perspective gained from watching from the beginnings of the enlightenment to the nuclear age, hearing both Mozart and the Stones performing live, watching from a distance as your family grows to the size of a small state etc

Nice simple but explanatory post Spyman - I think something along these lines might be a good idea to make as a sticky; there is so much confusion (caused in part by the naming) in the realms of dark matter / dark energy and anti-matter and loads of posts are premised on simple misunderstandings

The latest meme doing the rounds is that the raid on Usama Bin Ladin's compound in Pakistan leading to his death was brought forward because of the leak of a document by Wikileaks that 'might' have been enough to spook UBL to change location. Seems a bit far-fetched - but I suppose someone who had till a few days ago remained at large with a 27mill bounty on his head does not take chances. Here is a link to the released document https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/87933-interrogation-file-of-abu-faraj-al-libi.html#document/p5/a17091 I wouldnt have wanted to be Assange's shoes if UBL had done a runner last week!

DocRock - of course you're correct. As a corollary; has there been any further talk of Romanov's claim of solution to 3-SAT. I saw quite a lot about it at the beginning of this year in the popular science press, but very quickly it disappeared from view. I realise that it had to be very rigorously checked, do you happen to know if this process is still on going or that it was found to be lacking very quickly and died quietly? The mathematicians I read on the subject at the time were pretty certain it would be found to be incomplete and that the paper was poorly presented/on tenuous logical ground - but still felt that it merited proper research. I wonder if the academic maths press (which I do not read/ could not understand) have published any news.

A French correspondent might be able to clarify, but I believe that to be recognized as a rural town/village (and thus get certain benefits of determination and rule) within parts of France that you must have a public camp site with minimum level of facilities. Whilst these do get booked up - with a little foresight or off-season you can have a very cheap holiday as they cost a four or five euro per night. Du vin, du pain etc It is quite difficult to limit/waive liability for personal injury caused by negligence in general - but I am sure there is settled law on this matter, I just don't know what it is.

Teggle - that's cool. To expand on what I meant on layout, (BTW I quite agree it can be a pain to type a nicely aligned piece of work for the browser/printer to reformat it) I will just give you an idea on your last answer dv/dt= pi^2/16*0.3-cos (pi/4*t) 1. the minus sign needs to move - whilst in context you can see what's happening, anyone coming to that equation will read it as having two parts pi^2/16*0.3 LESS cos (pi/4*t) 2. in pi^2/16*0.3 - is the .3 multiplying the 16 or the whole thing. similarly is the t multiplying the 4 or the pi/4 3. personally I would try and either use decimals or fractions but not both You could use latex on line which is very neat [math]-\frac{3}{160} \pi^2 cos\frac{\pi t}{4}[/math] Or at least rearrange and use brackets to make it clear. The multiplication thing in point 2 might well go away when written by hand - but the minus sign is just bad!

Jimmy - apart from healthy scientific scepticism why do you see the need to re-evaluate the current state of knowledge? Is there any major gap that a new theory is needed to fill, or a glaring error that present thinking cannot explain? I am not doggedly defending dogma - just curious why the creation of oil is being re-problematized.

Generally. Critical thinking. Appreciation of literature rather than analysis. Earlier engagement with foreign languages. Compulsory core sciences, humanities, and mathematics. Politics - in a functional sense how does my country run? From personal perspective/education. Far to much specialisation early on - by 12-y-o I had given up all history and geography - and others had given up all sciences. I think this has changed - well at least I hope it has.

If you don't know what a torrent client is do not search on the term and find/use one with out beefing up all your security measures. If you want to download specific music by chosen artists then there probably isn't a legal way to do this; whilst some artists put their work on the net for free most require some form of remuneration for their efforts. If you are really strapped for cash - yet want to listen to varied music then can I suggest internet radio and where it is broadcast analogue or DAB radio. For a specific artist you can try their myspace page/website if they have one - that will often have a few track that will stream. There is also spotify - but I am not sure if that still works.

That's one hell of a one-way-system you have there - 4 times longer to return from C2->C1 than the outbound journey C1->C2. The travelling salesman problem does not canonically have different distances for outbound and inbound to a city (ie it forms a symmetric graph) , and also cities are only visited once; but I presume that these are new parts of the version you are looking at. the very point TSP is discussed is that it is prototypically np - that means that the solution time does not scale polynomially with the number of variables. I don't believe that removing the symmetry or the proviso tha cities are only visited once will stop the problem being NP-hard. The canonical version does have algorithms that can help - search on Nikos Christofides - his algorithm algorithm will get you within 50% of the actual best distance. The permutation method that you are looking at scales in the order of n! 30 cities would require over 10^34 operations. For your guidance a solution that solves TSP in polynomial time would get you, at least, a million bucks in prize money

Teggle Your differentiation of s = .3 Cos(u) to find ds/du is incorrect. Your layout isn't best in world either - I was always told to use one line for each equation unless there was a good reason to put two on one line - and try and group your ideas more logically, it really helps in the maths to have an easily followed piece of work. Try looking here for the correct way to differentiate Cos(x)

It's worth reading the writers dot net thread - most amusing. Oh, and to those named as chinese Bad Man above; two aussie girls seem to be forming a club of chinese bad men - and clubs with two aussie girls in tend to be fun

[puerile_smut] To satisfy Lemur's quest for a pareidoliac geographical representation of male genitalia - the entire Baltic Sea looks like a man kneeling down with an enourmous... [/puerile_smut]

Bright sunshine - not a problem. PDFs - if you just copy the pdf to the kindle it remains in the pdf format and whilst all the formatting and any pictures remain pristine it can be quite hard to read without zooming in; and once zoomed in you realise that the original pdf line breaks still apply and you can end up shuttling back and forth. However, and its a doozy of a however, if you email the pdf to your own kindle email address madeupname@kindle.com with subject line convert , they download it to your kindle in a new format where the texts flows to fit (although some formatting might be lost - equations get screwed). If you have a 3G enabled kindle make sure to use your free kindle address (madeupname.free@kindle.com) otherwise they will download it over 3g network and charge you for the privilege. Most of the articles I read are from legal journals and the conversion is great (I still load up a copy of the unconverted to follow references which can get confusing) - the times I have converted scientific papers have been less successful Has the 3rd gen got a confirmed release date yet?

Games and a browser! - try to remember that there is e-book functionality. i deliberately did not investigate the games on my kindle after your post above, and now I have to deliberately avoid the browser as well if I want to get any work done. BTW Dunno if you have used the online/email pdf converter - superb for text based pdfs, less good for equation rich. In the few months I have used my kindle I have read a few books on it but have read over a hundred articles downloaded as pdfs from journals, emailed to amazon and returned to the kindle as floating text files. Must have saved a couple of reams of paper so far

Shadow - thanks for taking the time to explain. Hopefully OP is still around to get benefit as well! Appreciated and plusrepped. Matthew

Shadow / Xitten Could you explain what calc you are running as I am totally lost. Surely this is just nested roots or power tower. Cube root of a half is about ..79, fourth root of .79ish is .94ish ; it's gonna converge on one Shadow Just read your link on tetration - digesting and will revert . To aid could you elucidate on the calc you did so that I can follow it. Thanks Last edit - So in the question the power of 1/4 is acting on the 1/3 not on the whole below it. I think I get it (ie what you are saying the question is). Thanks I would still love to see the bones of your calc - cos I still think the original question reads as one half, raised to the power of a third, the answer of which is in turn raised to the power of one fourth, etc. And as you multiply exponents like this I would just multiply out to say that exponent is 1/(3*4*5...n) ie 2/n!

Isn't it simply 1/2^(1/n!) edit there is a power of 1/2 in the exponent that I dont want in the above answer so it would be 1/2^(2/n!)

Where does all the methane come from before it is buried deep in the earth?

IS the cylinder a good example for your thought experiment - is it really curved in the intrinsic/extrinsic curvature sense. Surely a triangle on a cylinder is the same as a triangle on a flat plane and Euclidian geometry applies. I am struggling to remember this from half understood lectures. I second Spymans suggestion that you get the thread moved to GR/SR in Physics edit From further recollection jolted by a recent post by ajb that I cannot locate now - you need to consider a vector moving on a closed path around the surface which only changes direction with the path - on a curved surface on completion of the path it is at an angle to its starting position, on a flat surface it goes back to the same angle. further edit http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/gr/parallel.transport.html found the post - think I have this right and not a-about-f http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/56707-trying-to-make-sense-of-gravity/page__view__findpost__p__603451

Re popup videos And he still got me - even though it was clearly coming I am rational - I will not jump, I will not start, I will not react ...I jumped, I started, i reacted

Whilst the London Dungeon might have an ulterior motive for posting an unexplained video I do still think the video Michel posted merits close attention. I must admit Mooey that I was less than impressed with Capt Disillusion's debunking - whilst I give absolutely no credence to these videos showing a supernatural phenomenon, just blankly saying they don't show anything weird and giving explanations that just as unsubstantiated (although much more believable) does nothing to convince. As an example - a five second clip of a controlled demo of bug on a cctv camera showing up as a blue (coloured) blur would have totally demolished the argument that it was a ghost; however, all he did was offer a bald assertion and take the mickey out of those within the news report. I passionately believe in debunking and demystifying - and the evidence from your website is that you do too - and I think this is best done without expressions of amazement at how stupid the member of the public are that have fallen for the bunkem-sellers and crystal-healers.

Steevey - there's a good explanation of why you might as well use water here post #7 . The "medium that carries the heat"? - if you mean the substance that surrounds the rods "ie carries away the heat" - then no this would lead to them getting hotter; the water that the rods are in will conduct more heat away than air. If you mean the substance that produces the heat - well yeah, but if we could do this then there would never have been a problem. By its nature this material is highly radioactive and the systems that would normally allow it to be moved safely and remotely etc are mal-functioning/non-functioning - the only way is to let it slow down naturally and it will eventually cool. BTW supercool is a term usually referring to a specific form of cooling in physics where the liquid or gas does not solidify

Hey you're in good company - acc the OP neither did Einstein

Isn't brass often used instead of iron for the manufacture of tools when it is imperative that no sparks are generated? ie when working with kerosene or explosives on an airforce base a lack of sparks might be a very good idea