Dave

I came away from the book with exactly the same questions, and persued it with my maths teacher. A modular form is effectively four dimensional, made from both real and imaginary x and y axes. As you already know, they're very interesting because you can do quite a lot to them and they'll exhibit infinite symmetry. Other than this, I know they're very much related to elliptic equations and the functions sn(u, k) and cs(u, k) (which are also elliptic functions). I'll try and find some more out about these, but for you to have a look at in the meantime: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/JacobiEllipticFunctions.html Have fun

You can integrate things twice if you want to. Not much point most of the time unless you're doing second order differential equations, but those are mostly solved from specific guidelines already laid out.

raid storage/fireproof safe with tape backups etc

Like YT said, if they're going to be gits in class, they won't learn anything and most probably can't be bothered learning anything. Not seen that system myself, I'll have a look and get back to you.

record companies have been keeping their cd prices high for years now. el reg has an article on this somewhere on the front page because Universal Music has just decided to lower their cd prices. To be quite honest, the true reason that the companies' profits are dropping is the fact that they churn out a lot of crap. Most of what's in the top 100 is completely rubbish. And they expect people to buy these records/albums at ridiculously inflated prices - which, to be honest, a lot of people can't be bothered doing. They've had it good for twenty years or so, but refuse to change their business model and refuse to exploit the business potential of internet music sharing. Instead they try to subdue it with subpoenas. I think the phrase 'adapt or die' springs to mind.

pah, everyone must know there's a chatroom by now

Didn't we have this discussion before in the politics forum? (drugs, btw)

After having done GCSE English Literature, I avoid poetry like the plague.

All I'm gonna say is rugby's better

I don't think you all quite meet the boring standard of my nick

A quite enjoyable book I read recently was 'The Book of Nothing' by John Barrow. It's quite interesting.

Yes, the purple ambassador to the planet of Nibiru.

Doin some kind of aeronautical degree?

Interesting, but I don't know what it has to do with maths

I think the main problem is that a lot of basic algorithms and ideas are being patented, and it's leading to a lot of people not being able to write software. I wouldn't mind if it was complex algorithms designed for a specific purpose (some things in Photoshop spring to mind).

I don't know whether to be disturbed or what after reading that

Range matters when you're measuring radiation. Gamma rays follow an inverse square law, alpha particles can't travel more than a few cm before being stopped by the air, and I'm not too sure about beta particles but they follow the same kind of pattern. The only think I can think of is that maybe the plasma ball is causing some of the air around it to be ionized, and because Geiger counters work because the radiation ionizes the particles inside the tube, it's causing it to go haywire. I have no idea whether I'm right or not though.

Sounds like that to me as well. I was maybe thinking of doing that, but Professor Dave just doesn't have the ring that Dr. Dave does.

In fact, I'd probably say it had almost deteriorated to the point of spam. oh well

Yeah, it will. I have a friend who's doing the same sort of thing, but she's going to do some voluntary work for poor people somewhere in the UK with some Christian people or something.

Nothing's wrong with paintball. It's just I don't particularly enjoy playing it. The idea of randomly shooting people/getting shot with paintballs is not appealing to me

I think its about time I actually posted an answer to this thread, being that it's been open for absolutely ages Okay, so you have those two integrals above, namely: :int: (x/sqrt(x^2+1) + 1/(x*sqrt(x^2+1))dx First one, as I said, is trivial by using the substitution u^2 = x^2 + 1. That comes out as sqrt(5) - sqrt(2). The other one is a little harder, but with some thought, it's not too hard. The first thing that struck me was trig substitutions. The x^2+1 sticks out like a sore thumb and it's just crying out for a trig substitution. The correct one in this case is x = tan(t). Notice that (tan(t))^2 + 1 = (sec(t))^2. The bounds of integration are x=1 and x=2, so therefore the new bounds with this substitution are t=arctan(2) and t=pi/4. Now when you use this substitution, it will all cancel down (quite nicely) to: :int: cosec(t) dt Which, of course, is a standard integral. If you want to do it by hand, you need to use the subsitution u = tan(t/2). It should cancel down to the integral of cosec(t). I'll post the numeric answer a bit later, but I'm a bit busy atm.

Hmm, I have to say I've not read about that. Possibly some way of disgarding mutated cells from radiation easily? No idea at all.

And indeed Terminator 3.

tip: read any thread/post by zarkov or adam