Gems
Physics & Quantum mechanics
Daniele Procida
Re: Purple update...
1eujdir.avpw16za0hf6N%{$usenet$}@apple-juice.co.uk
Tue, 05 Jun 2001 16:05:26 BST
James Savage wrote: > > Usenet is very space-sensitive, and I think it would be sad to see that > > sensitivity diluted, because it represents an ethic of small courtesies. > > That is a perfect argument for not flaming sigs too :) I don't think anyone *flames* .sigs just for being too long, though if they're malformed they'll get pointed out. > But my point is > > -- > James > CountB > http://www.countb.co.uk/ > http://www.blackcat-software.com/ > File Clerk 2.0 coming soon! > > has less chars than > > -- > James - CountB - http://www.countb.co.uk/ > > http://www.blackcat-software.com/ <-- File Clerk 2.0 coming soon! > > > See? It has fewer characters, but more lines - more work for the reader (alright, an extra tap on the keyboard isn't that much work. But just imagine: suppose everyone on Usenet started using Purple. That's many million people - let's say 50'000'000. And suppose that they each post *on average* one article a day. Now suppose that a six line limit rather than a four line .sig limit requires an extra page-down tap in one case out of 10. That means: 50'000'000/10=5'000'000 - five million extra taps required per day. If you add all those taps up together, it's a *huge* force. What a waste of energy. All because of you. And think of all the entropy that will come of it. You personally will be responsible for hastening the heat-death of the universe. Could you bear to have that on your conscience?) Daniele -- A multipart copy & paste encyclopaedia of popular music for you to keep 25. Truly extraordinary pop-song artefacts; no.1: the third verse of "Some Velvet Morning" (Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra)
Peter Ceresole
Re: Silly question: Can I put this mini-CD rom in my Mac???
B8DA290D96681BC53@cara.demon.co.uk
Wed, 10 Apr 2002 17:38:21 +0100
In article <3CB464BD.B3AFFE0@blueyonder.co.uk>, Sara Kirk wrote: >Its natural to assume that spinning >> the 80mm CD/adapter assembly at 30 or 40 times normal speed >> would lead to it turning pair-shaped :-) > ^^^^^^^^^^^ > >you have to wonder what kind of shape that would be ;-) Probably a relativistic effect in which the extreme centrifugal force coupled with increased mass of the outer segment, moving at near light speed, generates a Hawking split of the constituents of the CD. When it slows down, there should be a cat sitting there. The only remaining question is whether it is alive or dead, or both at once.
zoara
Re: Palm Desktop Time Macine
1fxmgva.7j8a7s15xiprvN%me3@privacy.net
Sat, 5 Jul 2003 18:38:27 +0100
Jeremy Fieldsend wrote:
> For no apparent reason other than a) it's close to lunchtime b)it's
> Friday and c) nerdy curiosity, I began winding back the months in Palm
> Desktop to see how far back it would go.
>
> Curiouser and Curiouser... It goes back as you would expect until Jan
> 1904 (seem to remember something about Mac date calculations starting
> with 1904) but then it leaps forward to April 1947...March 1947..etc
> etc.
>
> Wassall that about then?
It's all to do with Steve Jobs' pocket time machine, which he will
unveil at the 2006 expo ("a thousand epochs in your pocket!") and
demonstrate by going back to 1904 (at this point, a small percentage of
the audience giggle knowingly at the chosen date). Unfortunately due to
software problems he ends up in 1947; on his return he tosses the time
machine to a techy in the front row to get it fixed, following which the
whole of usenet becomes aflame with discussions of how he "threw it in
anger".
Of course, in doing this demonstration, Jobs inadvertently set up a
glitch in the space-time continuum; whilst *historically* 1947 came 43
years after 1904, if you travel *backwards* across the timestream, 1947
also comes immediately *before* 1904; hence you can (or will be able to)
travel backwards as far as you like but never get further back than
1904.
Palm Desktop was/will be updated retrospectively (in September 2007) as
a "bit of a joke" by the last few employees of Palm just before it
becomes officially a subdivision of AppleSonySoft Inc; this becomes one
of the Nine Great Clues that time travel is/will become possible.
As an aside, this means that in one (accidental) stroke, Jobs will solve
the problem of the grandfather paradox (as long as your grandfather was
born before 1904). This will put a number of pop-science writers out of
a job, and will also piss off a number of historians who *really* wanted
to see whether Joan of Arc was good in bed.
-z-
(I'm on a train and I'm bored)
PeterD
Re: Safari next window shortcut
1fxs1bv.hpsvvg5rroozN%pd.news@dsl.pipex.invalid
Tue, 8 Jul 2003 12:03:14 +0100
zoara wrote: > PeterD wrote: > > > Maybe this isn't news to anyone else, but I've just discovered that > > Safari v1.0 uses Cmd-` to switch between open windows, like MSIE. > > > > I swear Safari betas didn't have this shortcut, > > 'Fraid it did. I'm still using it until a) I get around to downloading > v1.0 and b) until PithHelmet is updated. I think you'll find that you were in an almost identical, but not quite parallel universe in which that key shortcut worked in beta Safaris. At some point between then and now, probably because of your dalliances in the curry house airing cupboard, your universe crossed over and now you're trapped in this one. It's to your advantage though - in this one you don't get gored to death by a marauding gnu.
Alan Frame
1fxdt1b.q76ifk1t0x3b4N%alan.frame@acm.org
Mon, 30 Jun 2003 21:43:15 +0100
Richard P. Grant wrote: > In article <MPG.1966284a456f4ab4989759@news.ox.ac.uk>, > James Dore wrote: > > > "Reducing crime, disorder and fear" > > > > Disorder being a lack of order, technically, one cannot reduce something > > that does not exist.... > > Perhaps "Reducing crime, entropy and fear" would have been better? But entropy is God's way of telling you that you need a new universe. rgds, Alan