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4 Sep 2024 07:14:01 EDT (-0400)
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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 21 Jun 2010 12:28:12
Message: <4c1f931c$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
> I'm still trying to figure out why the hell she wanted to know, but 
> anyway...

Because a program asked, or someone asked her for the file in one of those 
two formats, etc.

-- 
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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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 03:55:52
Message: <4c206c88$1@news.povray.org>
> 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. ;-)

I'm still trying to think of any software that's capable of producing 
such files. (And, therefore, where the hell this person even found those 
names from...)

>> 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.

There's no possibility of that. I'm personally going there anyway, so...

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

*gasp* You mean some guy who was sent to a school for people with 
learning difficulties due to his total inability to read and write 
actually spelt something wrong? GIVE ME A ****ING BREAK! It's old, OK? I 
can't spell. We get it. Can we please move on now?

> And in this case the right answer is "multiply by ..." to convert the 
> units.

Fortunately, since I'm having this conversation with a scientist who 
comprehends how SI units work, I didn't have much difficulty explaining 
what the problem was. We both quickly concluded that there is no 
universal way to do the conversion, although in the specific instance 
we're looking at there probably is a conversion (but that doesn't help 
because we don't know what it is).

> 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.

As I say, this is the least-silly question I got asked. It's more in the 
relm of "dude, that's really quite random" than "that's a stupid thing 
to ask".


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 07:22:03
Message: <4c209cdb$1@news.povray.org>
On 21/06/2010 1:43 PM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Given what the machine does, it seems plausible that the conversion is
>>> perfectly linear.
>>>
>>> A more important question is whether the conversion factor is *constant*
>>> or not...
>>
>> If it is linear then the conversion factor must be constant.
>
> What give you that idea?
>

Because hat's what linear means.

> It may be that the conversion is perfectly linear, but that the
> conversion factor depends on the chemical composition of what you're
> analysing.

For measuring mho's?

That is what you are measuring in the machine.

> So each time you analyse a set of samples, there is a linear
> conversion, but it's different each time.
>

Only if the cross sectional area or length of the sample is different.

You really need to read up on the physical properties of materials.


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 08:16:07
Message: <4c20a987$1@news.povray.org>
On 6/22/2010 2:55 AM, Invisible wrote:

> *gasp* You mean some guy who was sent to a school for people with
> learning difficulties due to his total inability to read and write
> actually spelt something wrong? GIVE ME A ****ING BREAK! It's old, OK? I
> can't spell. We get it. Can we please move on now?

I think he was just teasing ... hence the smiley. But, yeah, spell 
checkers and all :) <-- See the smiley ... no insult intended.

Actually, you spell better than most people on the net... (in general, 
here is another story, but the people here appear rather intelligent.)

-- 
~Mike


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 08:18:23
Message: <4c20aa0f$1@news.povray.org>
Mike Raiford wrote:

> But, yeah, spell checkers and all.

I have tried on multiple occasions to make the Thunderbird spellchecker 
work. It's not having any of it. I have no idea why...

(I also cannot make Firefox spell-check in English, only American. It 
doesn't seem to matter how many times I install the UK dictionary, it 
will not correctly spell-check.)


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 08:36:39
Message: <4c20ae57$1@news.povray.org>
On 6/22/2010 7:18 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>
>> But, yeah, spell checkers and all.
>
> I have tried on multiple occasions to make the Thunderbird spellchecker
> work. It's not having any of it. I have no idea why...
>
> (I also cannot make Firefox spell-check in English, only American. It
> doesn't seem to matter how many times I install the UK dictionary, it
> will not correctly spell-check.)

T-bird's spellchecking works for me, albeit sometimes the dictionary is 
a bit anemic.

Did you make sure the language selected is English - UK? Sometimes I 
wish the English - US dictionary accepted both spellings of words, such 
as realize vs realise, since I'm constantly tripped up by the "z" 
spellings of such words, I prefer the "s" spelling. Though for things 
like color vs colour, I prefer dropping the unnecessary "u" ;)

-- 
~Mike


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 08:50:46
Message: <4c20b1a6$1@news.povray.org>
>> I have tried on multiple occasions to make the Thunderbird spellchecker
>> work. It's not having any of it. I have no idea why...
>>
>> (I also cannot make Firefox spell-check in English, only American. It
>> doesn't seem to matter how many times I install the UK dictionary, it
>> will not correctly spell-check.)
> 
> T-bird's spellchecking works for me, albeit sometimes the dictionary is 
> a bit anemic.

Nope. Every time I spell-check something, it tells me that *every* word 
is mis-split. (I.e., the dictionary is empty.) No matter how many times 
I install a dictionary, I can't make this work. I've given up trying.

> Did you make sure the language selected is English - UK?

 From what I remember, sometimes there's an error and the dictionary 
doesn't even install, and sometimes it does install but then there's no 
option to select it or any evidence that it was ever installed.

> Sometimes I 
> wish the English - US dictionary accepted both spellings of words, such 
> as realize vs realise, since I'm constantly tripped up by the "z" 
> spellings of such words, I prefer the "s" spelling. Though for things 
> like color vs colour, I prefer dropping the unnecessary "u" ;)

Sometimes I think we should just nuke the whole English language and 
design something that actually ****ing works.

Unfortunately, this is impossible.


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 10:46:36
Message: <4c20cccc$1@news.povray.org>
Invisible wrote:
> I'm still trying to think of any software that's capable of producing 
> such files. (And, therefore, where the hell this person even found those 
> names from...)

Excel? Pretty much every program that exports tabular data can do it with 
tabs, and most UNIXy programs wind up putting pipes in when necessary. 
(Basically, systems that generated tabular data intended to go over the 
internet as email before the abomination of using XML for that became common 
has an option to use pipes.)

> There's no possibility of that. I'm personally going there anyway, so...

So she was asking if she should bring it so you can sign it there, or 
whether you're going home first. Seems easy.

>> You're not even spelling it consistently, so who are you to argue? ;-)
> 
> *gasp* You mean some guy who was sent to a school for people with 
> learning difficulties due to his total inability to read and write 
> actually spelt something wrong? GIVE ME A ****ING BREAK! It's old, OK? I 
> can't spell. We get it. Can we please move on now?

It just makes it hard to look up what the question is when you don't spell 
the critical word right, is all. :-)  If he was actually asking how to 
convert volts to seimands, yes, it would be silly. :-)

> As I say, this is the least-silly question I got asked. It's more in the 
> relm of "dude, that's really quite random" than "that's a stupid thing 
> to ask".

And my point is that there's almost no question that's a stupid thing to 
ask. There's only literal interpretation of questions that someone is asking 
without enough information to know what question they should be asking. If 
you think a question is stupid, it's because you already know the answer. So 
give it to them. :-)

-- 
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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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 10:48:29
Message: <4c20cd3d$1@news.povray.org>
On 6/22/2010 7:50 AM, Invisible wrote:

> Sometimes I think we should just nuke the whole English language and
> design something that actually ****ing works.
>
> Unfortunately, this is impossible.

Didn't they try that with Esperanto?

Oh, yeah ... you did say impossible. Improbable is probably more 
accurate. ;)
-- 
~Mike


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Stupid question time
Date: 22 Jun 2010 13:15:34
Message: <4c20efb6@news.povray.org>
>> I'm still trying to think of any software that's capable of producing 
>> such files. (And, therefore, where the hell this person even found 
>> those names from...)
> 
> Excel?

Excel can *import* text files with all sorts of strange delimiters. 
However, it seems to be unable to *create* anything except CSV or 
tab-delimited; there's no option for pipe-delimited.

>> There's no possibility of that. I'm personally going there anyway, so...
> 
> So she was asking if she should bring it so you can sign it there, or 
> whether you're going home first. Seems easy.

Given that she already knows that I'm coming home, the answer seems 
pretty self-evident.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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