POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Stupid question time : Re: Stupid question time Server Time
4 Sep 2024 07:16:23 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Stupid question time  
From: Darren New
Date: 21 Jun 2010 12:26:09
Message: <4c1f92a1$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
> What's the difference between tab-delimited and pipe-delimited? Well, 
> let me see now... one of them is a file who's fields are delimited by 
> tab characters, and the other uses pipe characters instead. What, you 
> couldn't figure that out all by yourself?

If one doesn't know that "pipe" is a character or that the file has fields 
or whatever, then no. Plus, of course, the question isn't "what's the 
difference" but "which should I use?"  If you haven't figured out that 
mapping of "what I asked" to "what information I'm looking for", then *you* 
are the one that's silly. ;-)

> Should you leave the card for me to sign? Actually no; just hand it over 
> blank. It'll be fine, right?

Better than if it arrives too late perhaps.

> The final question is less stupid. Although trying to convert milivolts 
> to microseimens would be like trying to convert miles per hour into 
> pounds per square inch. (But in SI units at least...)

You're not even spelling it consistently, so who are you to argue? ;-)

And in this case the right answer is "multiply by ..." to convert the units. 
Again, you're thinking the question asked is silly, while what's actually 
likely to be happening is you are answering the question asked rather than 
providing the information requested. I used to be really bad and did this 
all the time, until I figured out that every time someone asked a "silly" 
question, what they wanted was for me to figure out first what confusion 
would cause them to ask that question, *then* answer the question they 
*should* have asked.

The right answer to *this* question is likely "what are you trying to do 
that you would need to convert those units, because I can't think of any 
measurement that would involve both sets of units."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.


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