Dave

Not a problem. Just in case it isn't obvious for anyone, put [imath]\theta = \pi[/imath] into that equation, and Euler's identity will drop out.

I think you're talking about the equation that the Euler identity is grabbed from: [math]e^{i\theta} = \cos\theta + i \sin\theta[/math]

XP is atrocious. I had the computer connected to the LAN for about 20 minutes and got hit by the Slammer (?) RPC exploit. Was rather annoying because I didn't know at the time, so went to update to SP2 and had to re-install everything.

The one thing that I'd say about VB is that it isn't brilliant with sprites and the like. You can be fairly sure that if you're trying anything but simple animation with a few objects, things can get really slow really quickly.

A lot of the simpler physics that I've seen can be expressed using words. You can't hope to explain things like QM using only words and no maths.

Well, I wouldn't say that they're mathematical as such. You can express physical laws in terms of mathematics because it's often useful to do so. The reverse is not necessarily true. [/offtopic]

I'm intending (at some point) to write a piece of code to automate the entire process. It's fairly easy to do and would save a lot of time. There's a lot of issues in general at the moment, and I think it would be a good idea to try and simplify the process.

Nope, it seems I broke it. Will try and fix it.

If you wanted to use C, then a very nice abstraction layer for this type of thing is SDL (http://www.sdl.org); it has quite a few pieces of documentation for sprite-based games and animations.

Thank God for small mercies.

It doesn't have any real application in the home area (yet). The equipment is extremely expensive and usually very specific in nature - this makes it only useful for applications in medicine, armed forces, etc.

I should have been more specific in my phrasing. I wasn't referring to general scams, rather scams of this sort (the entire hotmail/eBay hacking thing). Personally I'd say that the most prolific scams are the illegal meds stores that I seem to get e-mails from every day. I'm pretty sure some people are rather gullible in that respect. ed84c: How did this play out? Is this now sorted, or has he re-hacked everything? My advice would be to get eBay to close the account, this is probably the easiest way of sorting the problem. You should all take solice from this - it's rather amusing.

Perhaps not 15, but a lot of scammers are people who are either bored or aren't particularly well off. They're not involved in organised crime (which is what I suspect you refer to as a "pro"). Fair bet he's telling some porkies to get some money out of someone.

Addresses from homedns.org are served by DynDNS, just for everyone's information.

As far as I can tell, MS should just wait until everything they said in Longhorn will be ready. Stripping out WinFS et al basically means that we're going to get nothing but a glorified XP with a compositor and some long-overdue graphics overhauls. There just seems to be no point upgrading, as Klay said.

In this case I have to agree with Pangloss. I've only ever used the term hiding used in relation to things like public/private/protected methods and variables. The other thing I've heard in this sort of area is implementing an abstract method.

Besides the various security holes and other exploits, the fact is that IE is one of - if not the worst browser out there. The sheer lack of effort on Microsoft's part to adopt recognised standards is just appauling, really. Not to mention that it doesn't even have support for alpha-channel PNGs.

Personally I think e-mailing AOL is rather a waste of time. Chances are that it will be ignored at best, or just deleted straight out. I'd pass on any information to the police and leave it at that - there's very little you can do more than that. Also I advise that you run a thorough virus scan and spyware check. If you're not sure about anything at all I'd advise a reformat - you can be fairly certain that'll solve the problem. I would also say that the chances of finding and catching the guy are minimal at best. I'd also say that he's not a "pro", more likely to be some 15 year old kid who's bored.

Unfortunately the quality of the TI-89 3D graphs isn't particularly brilliant (I find it quite hard to orient them, and the perspective seems a little funny). I would go with the gnuplot idea myself.

Indeed. Most modern computer science courses will teach a variety of methods and common algorithms (quick sort, heaps, linked lists etc) in pseudo-code and then get students to implement these things in a fairly simple language like Java. However, if you're just looking to mess around I would again recommend PHP. Whilst it's primarily a "web language" (if there is such a thing), you can get executable versions which will run from the command line, a la perl.

Can't say I've had any other reports - I'm certainly not getting it this end.

Hey, atm. Sounds like quite a story Glad you got out okay.

I'd guess some sort of plastic explosive. Small, and doesn't require a lot of work to put together. Also, pretty easily obtainable for these guys - remember, it's not just the US and UK making explosives. There's plenty of sources available that we have no control over.

Ahha, Aeternus got the second bit, so now I don't have to bother explaining it. Bonus

That question doesn't make much sense. Define what you mean by "4D calculations" and "thinking space", then I'll get back to you