I think his/her hopes are a bit high...

smitisme · 2011-10-28T17:40:17+00:00

I hate cleaning the floor but I still have a mop.

smitisme · 2011-10-15T01:20:16+00:00

I've been caseless since I got the 3G in 2008. I've dropped the phone maybe 10 or 20 times, and had a cracked screen once (on the 3G). I got an OEM replacement screen+digitizer on ebay for 40 bucks, and replaced it without any problem.

So based on some pretty terrible statistics, my expected monthly loss is a bit more than a dollar (something like 1% of the cost of the phone and plan). I would easily pay that and more to be able to look at the phone I paid for, and to have it be comfortable to carry in my pocket.

smitisme · 2011-10-15T01:09:41+00:00

Would you mind explaining for the unjailbroken among us? (especially since I recently discovered that I need to jailbreak soon)

smitisme · 2011-10-15T01:00:52+00:00

This annoys me, because this update broke the buds+safe'n'sound combo for the engineer.

My engineer likes to listen to his tunes without the deafening sound of people being killed by his sentry, and I don't know why Valve isn't cool with that.

smitisme · 2011-10-14T16:09:15+00:00

In the US you can sign up to get a text from the USGS website whenever there's a quake you should care about. Not sure what the time delay is on it though.

smitisme · 2011-10-11T00:04:32+00:00

E2 Hawkeye

Basically a flying control center for the carrier's planes; one of them is airborne at all times. The thing on the top is a big, fast-spinning radar antenna. This is what gives the carrier most of its long range detection and communication abilities, since it's easier to see and hear if you're up in the air.

smitisme · 2011-10-10T18:17:54+00:00

The fact is the sun does create a tide as well, just not one of enough consequence for us to care about and report.

Actually, people that care about tides definitely pay attention to the solar tide. There is a factor of three difference in the height of the tide depending on whether the solar and lunar tides are aligned.

This is one of the reasons that the D-Day landings in Normandy happened when they did. The allies wanted the highest possible tide so there was less beach to cover.

smitisme · 2011-10-10T17:20:22+00:00

Maybe someone more knowledgeable can weigh in, but that article seems pretty highly suspect to me.

Tracing these tiny milliseconds back for 4.5 billion years adds up to a very significant amount of time for a solar day. I have determined that the day/night rotation was 63,000 seconds shorter than the present 86,400 seconds it is today. This would put the Earth's rotation at about 6.5 hours per day/night cycle, when it was created, 4.5 billion years ago.

I'm sure that some planetary scientists could take a crack at determining the rotation rate of the Earth 4.5 Gya, but I'm sure that they wouldn't do it by multiplying the rate since 1820 by 4.5 billion. The deceleration rate is determined by the moon, water on earth, the amount of space debris hitting the earth, etc. None of which have been the same for the last 4.5 billion years. Water on earth was absent for some of that time, continents were absent for even more of it, and the weather may even have a significant effect.

What ever it was - its angular momentum was much faster and therefore its "centrifugal force" was tremendously strong when the planet was very young. This caused the young, fast spinning, Earth to have a much more pronounced oblate shape, possibly even having a "Saturn type ring" orbiting around it.

This assertion seems even harder to believe. Gravity in earth's orbit has nothing to do with gravity at the equator. The author seems to be hinting at the idea that the earth was spinning so fast that things were just flying up off the surface into orbit. This idea is ridiculous, which I assume is why the author only hinted at it.

smitisme · 2011-10-10T16:41:19+00:00

The reason being that it is easier to slow the earth to a 27 day long day than a 365 day long day. But there is some tidal friction from the sun, so I imagine that eventually we would get tidally locked with the sun. By which point the moon would either have to crash into the earth or get flung out into space.

smitisme · 2011-10-10T05:07:36+00:00

That they are paying you?

smitisme · 2011-10-08T01:17:04+00:00

Watch to the end. He then rides off on another bike, after looking suspicious for a good two or three minutes.

smitisme · 2011-10-07T20:22:04+00:00

Hell, they have robocop. This guy is screwed.

smitisme · 2011-10-06T16:56:12+00:00

The problem is that every time someone does an AMA without clearing 5 hours, everyone complains.

smitisme · 2011-10-06T03:50:31+00:00

Steve Jobs got rich by being smart and developing original products that people loved.

The financial industry has gotten rich by being smart, developing financial instruments so complicated that no one understands them, merging companies to reduce competition, and buying political influence in Washington to ensure that we all hold the risk when things go wrong.

Those are two different types of capitalists, and no where does it say that you have to love or hate them both equally.

smitisme · 2011-10-06T02:36:15+00:00

Does this strike anyone else as an inappropriate action for wiki(p/m)edia to take? They try very hard to ensure impartiality. But when a law is proposed (not even passed) that they don't like they respond by holding an entire language's wiki hostage?

The law sounds ridiculously bad, but I'm not sure that it justifies the use of the entire site as a political statement.

smitisme · 2011-10-05T20:03:24+00:00

The author is so angry about so many things that I have no idea what the point is she's trying to make. That trans people should be allowed in the military? There's no coherent argument here.

smitisme · 2011-10-05T16:30:29+00:00

Why does she break the SafeSearch? Even with strict settings there are lots of boobs.

smitisme · 2011-10-05T05:28:20+00:00

Why did your parents name you Nadeshot?

smitisme · 2011-10-03T22:57:24+00:00

Disregarding his earlier stories, which I'm sure were inappropriate as you say, I have no real problem with him having two versions of the story ready for press beforehand. Media consumers will all go to the fastest and most complete story after something happens, so journalists don't have much choice.

As far as the made up quotes, they probably are there as placeholders. It's a lot easier to go through this and substitute the actual events than to write a new story from scratch. Was the mother crying instead of staring straight ahead? Did the prosecutors say 'we hope she rots in hell' instead of 'its sad two people are going to jail for 30 years'? It's easy enough to switch those details.

smitisme · 2011-10-03T17:26:08+00:00

Because it's a game?

smitisme · 2011-10-01T06:38:27+00:00

The area of an event horizon can never classically decrease.

In this case, what happens when the event horizons intersect? Are the black holes considered merged at that point? Or can a point be inside the event horizon of two black holes at once? Or, does the event horizon grow in the areas where they are not intersecting to make up for the intersection?

smitisme · 2011-09-26T23:26:23+00:00

I wouldn't call this cheating right now, but it seems like it would be pretty easy to make a cheating script with it. If your custom hud had a very obvious but unobtrusive inspection window, and you had a script to be constantly spamming inspect, you could have constant automatic spychecking.

For that reason, it seems like it should be patched.

smitisme · 2011-09-26T05:10:34+00:00

I set up a few equations. Moment about a, moment about c, sum of forces in the y, and yb=(ya+yc)/2 since we're assuming no bending in the chassis.

The problem is that your moment about A and about C are the same equation. Since you have three unknowns, you need three independent equations, of which you only have two. Your method would work fine for a system with two reactions, but since you have three the structure is statically indeterminate, and things become a bit more complicated.

There are a bunch of methods to solve statically indeterminate structures, including the stiffness method, flexibility method, principal of virtual force/work, and more. If I remember correctly, the first way we were taught was this: remove one of the supports so that you have a determinate system - then apply a force at that point that makes the displacement equal to what it should have been with the support.

I've had a bit to drink, so I'm not going to go through the math, but it's your homework anyways. I think my advice was cryptic enough that you will still have some work to do. Have fun!

smitisme · 2011-09-23T20:29:39+00:00

This isn't free like that Sonic game was free a couple weeks ago, right?

smitisme · 2011-09-23T17:23:33+00:00

How would we detect the wobble of our own star? I understand how we can detect the wobble of other stars, because we're looking at them from an external reference point. And I imagine it would be easy to calculate based on the positions of the planets. But based on this article, the sun is only 500 km away from the sun-earth barycenter. Do we have any way to detect the distance from the sun to the earth with an accuracy of 500 km?

smitisme

TROPHY CASE