Linux-Advocacy Digest #486, Volume #32 Mon, 26 Feb 01 01:13:02 EST
Contents:
Re: Something Seemingly Simple. (Aaron Kulkis)
Re: Are todays computers 1000 times better than the original PCs? (Bloody Viking)
Re: Maximum Linux Magazine Is Going Out Of Business Ha Ha Ha (Bloody Viking)
Re: Something Seemingly Simple. (Aaron Kulkis)
Re: Something Seemingly Simple. (Aaron Kulkis)
Re: .NET is plain .NUTS (Aaron Kulkis)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Something Seemingly Simple.
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 01:00:22 -0500
Bloody Viking wrote:
>
> Lawrence Kirby ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>
> : It is also very useful in many other areas of mathematics. Your observation
> : is not entirely unrelated to the fact that in calculus the differential of
> : sin(x) is cos(x), and the differential of cos(x) is -sin(x) when x is
> : measured in radians. Basically if you are a mathematician doing anything
> : nontrivial in this area you would be crazy to work with anything other
> : than radians.
>
> Removing conversion constants is always a good thing. Like the radians,
> scientists prefer metric measurements over the "standard" of feet, inches,
> pounds, etc. Oddly, in high school with a physics class, I came into it always
> having done my calculations with the crappy English measurements and would
> convert from metric to normal, do the math, and convert back. Yuck! If I tried
> to just stay with metric, I'd get lost simply becuse as a Yank, metric is not
> intuitive. So, I can safely say one reason Yanks suck at physics in general is
> from our crappy measurement system.
>
> About the only metric measures Yanks use are:
>
> milligramme
> gramme
> kilogramme always pronounced as "key-low".
>
> This came from prescription drugs (milligramme) and the illegal drug industry.
> For physics and measure, America is a sad state of affairs. All 3 of the
> metric measures Yanks use come from _drugs_.
Not I.
I use volts, amperes and coulombs, all of which are metric.
When I was in college, my thermodynamics class was about 50% English
units, and 50% metric units.
Also, the US military has mostly converted to metric.
Talk to any soldier...even reserve-component types, and they all use
metric for length dimensions (millimeters, meters, and kilometers ("klicks").
>
> The postal service, to be compliant with foreign postal systems, use kilos for
> such mail, and we postal workers always call a kilogramme a kilo, just like
> the illegal drug industry.
I will refrain from making any comment here :-)
>
> Speedometers often come with both mph and KMph, and barring a hotrodder
> degaussing the mechanism part way to make the KMph scale show mph, it is
> completely ignored.
>
> Similarly, trig in America is always taught with degrees, not radians. Happily
At the high-school level, yes, because that's the most useful for
those who will never go beyond that.
Degrees were invented for the purpose of architecture, and construction
engineering (both civil and military engineering).
However, artillery gun crews and fire-control-sections use Mils
(64000 mils = 1 circle), while artillery observers use degrees
(with the additional complication of doing the magnetic->true azimuth
conversion, taking into effect the local deviation of magnetic north
from true north).
> for DIY programmers, converting degrees to radians is pretty easy, resulting
> in software compatible with normal people. Someone could in theory code
> physics software for the masses using the crappy normal measures.
you convert to metric...do the calculation, and convert back to english.
>
> : As far as programming languages go thre are a couple of points
>
> : 2. If the language works in radians then the program it may have to provide
> : conversions to othe scales on input and output. If the language works
> : in something else the program may have to apply correction factors
> : throughout its calculations. This is potentially much more significant
> : than 1.
>
> Maybe, maybe not. It'll depend on the exact problem. When I did the physics
> class, I did my math in 3 steps:
>
> Convert metric to normal.
> Do the needed math.
> Convert normal to metric.
>
> In a trig proggie, it will work similarly, with a conversion to radians, the
> needed math is done, and the output reconverted. Given the conversion
> constant, this is trivial to add in. Trig in general is rather trivial, but
> nice and useful.
>
> Messing with vectors uses trig, so it is also trivial. For example, you have a
> projectile that is aimed at a 45 degree angle and leaves the launcher at
> 100mph. Its vertical speed is 70.7mph and its horizontal speed is also
> 70.7mph. Knowing the vertical speed, it gets easy to calculate its flight
> time, being twice that of the fall of an object with a terminal speed of
> 70.7mph. It will fly for 6.44 seconds, and knowing that, you can determine the
> distance of the flight which is 668 feet. Quite a jump for a car!
>
> A fun side note in computer history is that ballistics was why the ENIAC was
> invented, to print up tables for artillery shells. The above ignores air
> friction, but happily for large dense projectiles, air friction can be
> ignored, at least for such projectiles at slow speeds. I also assumed both
> ramps are equal height and ignored the car's attitude upon landing. Don't try
> it! (: (certainly not without launching unmanned cars on that flight plan)
>
> : I suspect that most spy satellites are in low orbit. You can see things
> : in much more detail from a couple of hundred miles up than you can
> : from 22000 miles.
>
> That is exactly the case. A Russian spy satellite was recovered during the
> 1980s as its orbit decayed. The orbit decayed not according to plan, and the
> sat came into our hands instead. Blame it on that pesky air friction. (: It
> would be theoretically possible for an ordinary car to fly as a "lifting body"
> if at the right attitude with sufficient speed. For an actual long range jump,
> aerodynamics of a car would have to be taken into account, complicating the
> math for the flight plan greatly. (and no, I don't work at The Skunk Works)
>
> --
> FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
> The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
> The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
--
Aaron R. Kulkis
Unix Systems Engineer
DNRC Minister of all I survey
ICQ # 3056642
L: "meow" is yet another anonymous coward who does nothing
but write stupid nonsense about his intellectual superiors.
K: Truth in advertising:
Left Wing Extremists Charles Schumer and Donna Shelala,
Black Seperatist Anti-Semite Louis Farrakan,
Special Interest Sierra Club,
Anarchist Members of the ACLU
Left Wing Corporate Extremist Ted Turner
The Drunken Woman Killer Ted Kennedy
Grass Roots Pro-Gun movement,
J: Other knee_jerk reactionaries: billh, david casey, redc1c4,
The retarded sisters: Raunchy (rauni) and Anencephielle (Enielle),
also known as old hags who've hit the wall....
I: Loren Petrich's 2-week stubborn refusal to respond to the
challenge to describe even one philosophical difference
between himself and the communists demonstrates that, in fact,
Loren Petrich is a COMMUNIST ***hole
H: "Having found not one single carbon monoxide leak on the entire
premises, it is my belief, and Willard concurs, that the reason
you folks feel listless and disoriented is simply because
you are lazy, stupid people"
G: Knackos...you're a retard.
F: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues against
adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
E: Jet is not worthy of the time to compose a response until
her behavior improves.
D: Jet Silverman now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
...despite (C) above.
C: Jet Silverman claims to have killfiled me.
B: Jet Silverman plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a
method of sidetracking discussions which are headed in a
direction that she doesn't like.
A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bloody Viking)
Subject: Re: Are todays computers 1000 times better than the original PCs?
Date: 26 Feb 2001 06:06:37 GMT
Edward Rosten ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: I'll agree. Computers in another 16 years will be frightening. 30 GHZ
: processors are in the works, but either they use a very, very unreliable
: fabrication technique or they use an unreliable fabrication technique and
: need supercooling.
A supercomputer on every desk. (: But we will have these 30GHZ 128-bit CPUs
with terabytes of hard drive space and gigs of RAM, and Microsoft apps will
STILL be slow! Meanwhile, some Linux fan will build a cluster and crack PGP...
--
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bloody Viking)
Subject: Re: Maximum Linux Magazine Is Going Out Of Business Ha Ha Ha
Date: 26 Feb 2001 06:02:04 GMT
Matthew Gardiner ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: it (Slackware) will survive, however, It wont be one of the big 4, not
: only because of its marketing, but because of its ammaturish
: installation, configuration, etc. When compared to other Linux distro's,
: and even commercial UNIX's, it lacks the ease of use that many Linux
: users have become accustomed to. I use Solaris 8 x86, however, from the
: standpoint of functionality, hardware support etc, Linux wins hands down.
Slackware will probably be the distro with a cult following, with its fans
liking it for some reason over the big 4. I make a good example. I have my pet
LILO problem, and was unable to install Red Hat becuse it forces to you try to
install LILO but Slackware does not. On machines where LILO does work (the
majority by now) Slack will be harder to install becuse you have to manually
install LILO. A second reason I like Slack is the packaging of the packages in
the .tgz format, not the bullshit proprietary formats like Red Hat or Debian.
Anyone can download a package for Slackware, and untar it. With Red Hat
packages, you can't. Seems every damn company has to invent their own file
format instead of just using .tar.gz format.
--
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
------------------------------
From: Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Something Seemingly Simple.
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 01:02:00 -0500
Bloody Viking wrote:
>
> Ian Woods ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>
> : I think anyone willing to do that should be a nominee for a Darwin award.
>
> Only if they kill themselves in the process. Evel Knievel came close to
> getting one with the Snake River Canyon stunt. The intended flight plan was
> ballistic up until around apogee and then a parachute would deploy and the
> craft lands nose-down. As it happened, the chute deployed during launch,
> almost putting him into the drink. Had it deployed a small fraction of a
> second later, he would have ended up in the drink, and drowned. He would have
> gotten his Darwin Award in that case.
>
> As far as the theoretical car stunt, first one must code up a ballistics
> programme to solve for distance. Next, the stuntman must calculate the pitch
> nose-down to then mess with ramp angles to get it right. THEN he muse solve it
> all with air friction added in with fins to hold the attitude in accord with
> the mathematical flight plan. The second step is that of knowing the car's
> centre of gravity and wheelbase. As the car leaves the ramp the front tyres
> leave first and go into free fall while the back tyres are still supported by
> the ramp. As speed increases the difference gets smaller that causes the
> pitch, so it should be solvable.
>
> Once you do the math to get a flight plan where the car lands on all fours on
> the other ramp, it's then time to take into account the pesky air friction.
>
> The fourth step is to launch an unmanned car (with weight to simulate a
> driver) on the flight plan to ensure it works. Then, and only then, can he try
> to avoid a Darwin Award while doing the stunt. It might be best to use the
> guidance system as you man the car for the historic flight.
Make sure you account for the weight shift as he ****s his pants.
:-)
>
> --
> FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
> The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
> The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
--
Aaron R. Kulkis
Unix Systems Engineer
DNRC Minister of all I survey
ICQ # 3056642
L: "meow" is yet another anonymous coward who does nothing
but write stupid nonsense about his intellectual superiors.
K: Truth in advertising:
Left Wing Extremists Charles Schumer and Donna Shelala,
Black Seperatist Anti-Semite Louis Farrakan,
Special Interest Sierra Club,
Anarchist Members of the ACLU
Left Wing Corporate Extremist Ted Turner
The Drunken Woman Killer Ted Kennedy
Grass Roots Pro-Gun movement,
J: Other knee_jerk reactionaries: billh, david casey, redc1c4,
The retarded sisters: Raunchy (rauni) and Anencephielle (Enielle),
also known as old hags who've hit the wall....
I: Loren Petrich's 2-week stubborn refusal to respond to the
challenge to describe even one philosophical difference
between himself and the communists demonstrates that, in fact,
Loren Petrich is a COMMUNIST ***hole
H: "Having found not one single carbon monoxide leak on the entire
premises, it is my belief, and Willard concurs, that the reason
you folks feel listless and disoriented is simply because
you are lazy, stupid people"
G: Knackos...you're a retard.
F: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues against
adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
E: Jet is not worthy of the time to compose a response until
her behavior improves.
D: Jet Silverman now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
...despite (C) above.
C: Jet Silverman claims to have killfiled me.
B: Jet Silverman plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a
method of sidetracking discussions which are headed in a
direction that she doesn't like.
A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
------------------------------
From: Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Something Seemingly Simple.
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 01:02:43 -0500
Ben Pfaff wrote:
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bloody Viking) writes:
>
> > Removing conversion constants is always a good thing. Like the radians,
> > scientists prefer metric measurements over the "standard" of feet, inches,
> > pounds, etc. Oddly, in high school with a physics class, I came into it always
> > having done my calculations with the crappy English measurements and would
> > convert from metric to normal, do the math, and convert back. Yuck! If I tried
> > to just stay with metric, I'd get lost simply becuse as a Yank, metric is not
> > intuitive. So, I can safely say one reason Yanks suck at physics in general is
> > from our crappy measurement system.
>
> If you have trouble with unit conversions, then do yourself a
> favor and buy an HP 48G-series calculator. You can attach a unit
> to any number and the calculator will automatically maintain
> these units throughout a series of calculations. You can mix
> English and metric units at will; the calculator understands
> them. When you're done, you just tell it what units you want the
> answer in, and hey presto! it converts it.
Best calculators ever made.
The only ones I know of that have an embedded OS.
>
> > About the only metric measures Yanks use are:
> >
> > milligramme
> > gramme
> > kilogramme always pronounced as "key-low".
>
> You're forgetting about the liter (2-liter bottles of pop) and
> the second, and perhaps some others that don't come to mind about
> the moment.
>
> > Similarly, trig in America is always taught with degrees, not radians.
>
> Not where I was taught. Then again I took trigonometry here at
> Michigan State University, not at a normal high school.
>
--
Aaron R. Kulkis
Unix Systems Engineer
DNRC Minister of all I survey
ICQ # 3056642
L: "meow" is yet another anonymous coward who does nothing
but write stupid nonsense about his intellectual superiors.
K: Truth in advertising:
Left Wing Extremists Charles Schumer and Donna Shelala,
Black Seperatist Anti-Semite Louis Farrakan,
Special Interest Sierra Club,
Anarchist Members of the ACLU
Left Wing Corporate Extremist Ted Turner
The Drunken Woman Killer Ted Kennedy
Grass Roots Pro-Gun movement,
J: Other knee_jerk reactionaries: billh, david casey, redc1c4,
The retarded sisters: Raunchy (rauni) and Anencephielle (Enielle),
also known as old hags who've hit the wall....
I: Loren Petrich's 2-week stubborn refusal to respond to the
challenge to describe even one philosophical difference
between himself and the communists demonstrates that, in fact,
Loren Petrich is a COMMUNIST ***hole
H: "Having found not one single carbon monoxide leak on the entire
premises, it is my belief, and Willard concurs, that the reason
you folks feel listless and disoriented is simply because
you are lazy, stupid people"
G: Knackos...you're a retard.
F: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues against
adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
E: Jet is not worthy of the time to compose a response until
her behavior improves.
D: Jet Silverman now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
...despite (C) above.
C: Jet Silverman claims to have killfiled me.
B: Jet Silverman plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a
method of sidetracking discussions which are headed in a
direction that she doesn't like.
A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
------------------------------
From: Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: .NET is plain .NUTS
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 01:03:43 -0500
Bloody Viking wrote:
>
> Aaron Kulkis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>
> : And this is the *ONLY* way that M$ can be cost effective.
>
> Only by use of warez.
>
> : Once a corporation actually has to pay the even reduced license fees
> : for EVERY installation of M$ shitware, they will stampede to Linux.
>
> : Hell, if Linux weren't here, that might be enough motivation to stampede
> : to Solaris for x86. But since Linux *IS* here, it will definitely be
> : a stamped to Linux.
>
> And the stampede will be silent, like a squadron of subs on a "stampede". You
> won't hear a rumble like the Spain "run with the bulls" stampede thing.
> Instead, it will be the noise of Linux albums being dropped into CD drives
> everywhere. Just a little "bagoonk" in every workplace. (: Silent but deadly
> to Microshit. You won't even hear much of a "kaching" at computer store cash
> registers becuse you can copy an album all you want!
>
> As it stands _becuse you can copy it freely_ it's impossible to ever know the
> actual number of Linux boxes in use.
Which is good.
--
Aaron R. Kulkis
Unix Systems Engineer
DNRC Minister of all I survey
ICQ # 3056642
L: "meow" is yet another anonymous coward who does nothing
but write stupid nonsense about his intellectual superiors.
K: Truth in advertising:
Left Wing Extremists Charles Schumer and Donna Shelala,
Black Seperatist Anti-Semite Louis Farrakan,
Special Interest Sierra Club,
Anarchist Members of the ACLU
Left Wing Corporate Extremist Ted Turner
The Drunken Woman Killer Ted Kennedy
Grass Roots Pro-Gun movement,
J: Other knee_jerk reactionaries: billh, david casey, redc1c4,
The retarded sisters: Raunchy (rauni) and Anencephielle (Enielle),
also known as old hags who've hit the wall....
I: Loren Petrich's 2-week stubborn refusal to respond to the
challenge to describe even one philosophical difference
between himself and the communists demonstrates that, in fact,
Loren Petrich is a COMMUNIST ***hole
H: "Having found not one single carbon monoxide leak on the entire
premises, it is my belief, and Willard concurs, that the reason
you folks feel listless and disoriented is simply because
you are lazy, stupid people"
G: Knackos...you're a retard.
F: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues against
adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
E: Jet is not worthy of the time to compose a response until
her behavior improves.
D: Jet Silverman now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
...despite (C) above.
C: Jet Silverman claims to have killfiled me.
B: Jet Silverman plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a
method of sidetracking discussions which are headed in a
direction that she doesn't like.
A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
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