Comandante

Great, thanks to all who hinted! Well, there abouts I'd say, I'm majoring in chemistry and biomedical (biology) science, though I will have minor in physics as well, so a wide scope of research I might be interested in, hence me asking what would be the best language (one that could aid me in PhD too hopefully Thanks! I went from there as well, asked around some physicists/demonstrators and it appears that C++ has got the most points, closely followed by something called MATLAB, I only heard of it once before but apparently its heavily used in 3rd/4th year. Fortran came next I think in a series of suggestions and then there was a few suggestions that Java is good too, though I forgot why exactly... Also, it's not very likely that I'll be working as part of a large team, but possible, more likely is that I'll be working in smaller groups as I intend to work as lecturer/researcher, hence, as far as I'm informed, lecturers work in smaller groups or pairs depending on interest, which is what I find attractive. This reminds me of something funny, as I walked into one lecturer's office few months ago he seemed like having some kind of party in there by himself 'cause he just received an email saying that he received new funding for his research Anyway, I'm now trying to gather few more things before I get some C++ books.. namely, what's the difference between C# and C++? Also, is C++ same as Visual C++? Sorry if that sounds noobish I'm not familiar with Microsoft's packages fully. I work in Windows and I have no idea what the future will do with that OS, I just hope I don't have to re-learn everything from scratch should Microsoft go bankrupt or something! I've tried Linux and it tasted good. Felt powerful too. Since its open source I might be considering switching to that, but I really like OSX too, so I hope C++ works in them too..? Many of you mentioned Java too. I have seen Java code embedded into html when I was learning web design a while back, but it looked weak to me, I don't know what kind of potential it has in science.. maybe I just saw half of story Let me put it this way too; I'm happy to tackle a hard language as long as it's worth it, and a language that will allow easy switch to other languages should need arise; and I think, judging from the responses, that C++ pretty much fits the description.

I have an important question and if anyone can give answers or hints it would be great. I'm moderately familiar with vb and I can write a lot of things, and when I can't I go and get some free sources to get me going.. but so far I've had this feeling that vb doesn't have a lot of potential for science-like apps. I will be investing some time into learning a new language in the next 6 months and I want to know what would be the best possible choice to go with considering that I'm intending the skill to be used for science/research. That means working with data, modelling and being able to write apps that would be used to communicate with external instruments and such. I would also be happy that this language doesn't get 'old' after a while so that I have to learn a new one again... I know it's a tough question, but hints would be great

Thanks for responses. I didn't find that value called "EstimatedSize" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Mozilla Thunderbird (1.5.0.12) Another thing; I have a drive (F:) that I wanted to use as boot only, it's 10gb NTFS. I have winxp installed on it and that's the one I'm running from now. Almost all programs I install on another partition, 60gb one so the F: one is pretty clean, however, something has taken up almost all 10gb of space and I can't even determine what it is. Documents and Settings shows around 1.4gb, windows folder 1.7gb, program files 800mb and that's it, the only 3 folders I have, no hidden files, and that adds up to say around 4gb max, and yet.. my free space on that drive is 570mb... I can't even find what's taken the size?? Any ideas on that? (total size reported as 9.31gb)

Why is windows reporting my thunderbird to be of 21GB size? Is this some kind of glitch or could there really be that many emails in it?? (Perhaps something else in the same folder or??) I recently reinstalled it on new formatted partition.

Indeed!

ok, I know it's not such a great way to solve problems but I was planning to do this for a while now. Since I have 2 hdd I didn't have to make any special partitioning, just one small boot partition on the large drive and then installed fresh windows on that. Changed boot priority to that and running from that now. Reinstalled all chipset drivers fresh too and I have no problems with sound anymore, so it was driver or some other software conflict. Perhaps it will show up again after I install my programs one by one. Anyhow, thanks for suggestions.

It just looks like an ordinary drill exercise. Don't know exactly whose idea that could be, either your uni or fire brigade, whoever thought a little exercise would be beneficial made the decision; other than that I think they all knew very well what was spilled, where and how dangerous it was.

This is getting weirder. I tried an original audio disk that I found in an old box, and, the sound was clear. However I tried an mp3 immediately after that and it was clear again, while before I tried the audio disk it was noisy. :/ This looks like a driver issue or some kind of conflict with other device.. I can't isolate what the problem is yet, but it looks like it's repairable.

ermmm aight I'll burn one tomorrow and see what happens

hmmm I don't have any spare sound cards but I could come up with some. Though I can live with this some time more, sometimes after I restart pc it works ok for a while. This is by the way brand new motherboard, bought it few weeks ago. I have a feeling it's the driver, but I can't find a newer one. I tried older one and same again. I don't have any audio cds . It's all mp3 here. And the same thing happens in games, sometimes after a restart it works perfectly for a while, then, presumably after I do something (I don't know what), when I try again, noise shows up again. I played CoD just 5mins ago with no problems, but yesterday it zapped like crazy. So it comes down to buying new part again...arggghhh

I see. Well, I'll take your word for it, but I think I'll let the spider in the garden instead as my interiors are not very friendly, even to spiders Thanks for the info.

Yes, I'm using onboard card. And I do get noise sometimes when nothing is happening but its hard to notice as there's no sound. But if I just play winamp for instance, a song, it just keeps zapping more often than not... As for interference, well, I have 6 channel surround sound, 3 speakers front, left and right, sub under the desk and two more rear left and right (however, the noise happens when using headphones too), and as for interference around those, well, there is router, modem, mobile phones, this is by the way CRT monitor I'm using.. and... that's about it as far as interference is concerned. I have AC97 thing, very common, and VIA chipset if that helps at all to solve the issue? (my driver is dated 8/11/2006, version; 6.14.1.4170)

hints; 1) ions are still atoms, but something happend to them, you find out what 2) look up "trends in the periodic table" 3) look up vector and scalar quantities (i think that's what it wants, also; it could be that they want you to look at graph of speed vs time or something alike.. your questions are too general, there could be many correct answers) 4) which group is contained within the other there? 5) look up "trends in periodic table" 6) you count them, eg, molecule [math]CH_3COOH[/math] has 8 atoms 7) what kind of rate? average rate? depends what you have, if you have a function of acceleration given then you need to differentiate it, that'll tell you the rate at any point you wish. if you have graph of acceleration, pick a point, draw tangent to it and find gradient of tangent, that'll be your instantaneous rate at that point.. that's just some general info as you didn't specify for what level of study this is 8) pH scale is split into half, one half is acidic, the other is basic, middle is neutral.

I thought that 2 gasses in container would exert exactly the same pressure on the inside of the container. Say you have gas x and gas y, if total inside pressure is 50kPa, then both x and y exert 50kPa. Initially I thought otherwise (25 and 25), but then I got it marked wrong in the test, this was chemical kinetics question, where x and y gasses were products of decomposition reaction (this was actually decomposition of [math]N_2O_2[/math]) in the same vessel, and the total pressure of each individual gas was the same as the other. I still don't know why this is the case. Perhaps this example of yours YT can help illustrate.

Ever since I installed this new motherboard I've been having these small 'zaps' in sound when playing mp3s etc, very annoying noise. Sometimes it's not there, sometimes it is. I tried 2 different drivers and it didn't change much. Anyone got any ideas? ... It also appears to occur when cpu is in use, however cpu is dual core 3.2ghz, it shouldn't affect sound should it?

Interesting. So, if I let this one in my house, what is it going to do? Move from one room to another on ceilings only or? What if it comes down from the ceiling and I accidentally kill it or wound it? Will it attempt to randomly bite people? Will it come onto my face while I sleep at night?

You can check out most of these books that you were recommended on Google Books page, as they have them scanned, to see whether the level of maths suits you, and then go pick em up from the library. OR, you could download some books too as they have about 10,000-book collection of math books for free as well; http://books.google.com/books?q=mathematics&as_brr=1 I haven't looked through it much but I'm sure you can find something of interest, otherwise local library will do just fine

Well, that's just my idea of what I understand about infinity, and so far, I have not had any problems based on that understanding and if you could make me think otherwise I'd be thankful for you would be pointing out something I did not previously know (which is very likely since I only have 1 semester worth of maths). Otherwise it fits into my reasoning well. When I think about infinity I take a point 0 on 1 dimensional axis, and the evermoving movement in the negative direciton, say left, can be represented as [math]-\infty[/math]. Likewise, I think of positive infinity as the evermoving movement (excuse the expression) in the positive direction. If you apply this to some problem in physics or math then it would depend on what kind of problem it is, wouldn't it? An example of my own would be movement in 1 dimension (having 2 directions, forward and backward) such as time. Time running forward forever (we don't know that of course, but say if it was running forward forever) could be represented as positive infinity, likewise, if it was running backwards forever it could be represented as negative infinity. (but bear in mind that point of reference t= big bang can be used if we make an assumption that time existed before the big bang, that is, that time did not start with big bang (otherwise negative infinity with time would not exist), now how true that is I don't know and at this point I don't care, and is also not to be used as a counterattack on my example, feel free to come up with a better example if you don't like concept of time) As you say the tree (couldn't you have thought of a better name? jks), you could think of it as imaginary, of course, but if you write it down on paper "infinity" the word itself is not imaginary. However, if you think of it objectively, you could say it's imaginery as of course, you can never reach infinity by definition. (this is really our difference in understanding of the word "imaginary") cosine; That's what I meant (above), infinity exists as a concept, you can look it up in the dictionary can't you? But infinity by definition doesn't exist, simply because you can't see the end. To our highschool friend, wouldn't it be the simplest to explain it that way too? Take a line with center zero, the unlimited movement in the negative direction (define negative as to the left of point 0) would be negative infinity, and to the right, positive. [math]-\infty[/math]..................... 0 .....................[math]+\infty[/math] Don't let the dotted lines trick you, they continue forever in both directions. And point of reference 0 can be started at any point in time. For example, if you started point 0 (reference point) in 1944, you could write 1944 instead of zero, but then again 1944 is human-defined point in time (1944 Anno Domini). Example when working with that explanation: can you predict what's going to happen to the following function as x approaches into +infinity (becomes unstoppably large in positive direction): [math]f(x) = \frac{1}{x} [/math] ? How about negative infinity? Disagree with that? As a sidenote, I don't understand this bit about limits... If infinity is infinite how can it have a limit? There is noone that can prove that, it's against the definition isn't it? I remember finding limits at infinity in my math unit, but they referred to limits of the function and not to the limits of infinity.. right?

hmm if we take the concept of infinity as a whole, then it exists of course, otherwise we wouldn't know about it would we, it's not imaginery? infinity in itself maybe doesn't exist, but the concept of it does, and that is one of the ways how we can express that concept, isn't it?

Hey, something just occured to me.. what book is this?

of course there can be negative infinity, same way there is positive; for positive: start with zero and start adding +1 forever for negative: start with zero and start adding -1 forever what's wrong with that explanation?

It's not for an exam, I passed my 'bit' on electrochem this semester. But it was decently basic. It's not for research though either, just for me. Even if it was for research, why would I underestimate power of SFN But yeah, I just realized they have couple of new and unused of that 1994 edition so I might consider that. I wanted to buy electrochem book to have it so to say, but I don't feel like buying used one .. so , I'll check this one out in library first and if I like it I'll get back to Amazon. Thanks.

Thanks. Though, isn't there a newer edition?

Aight. As an update, lab staff said they don't have anything to work with boro glass (equipment on other campus ), Bunsen flame is too weak they say, so I have to come up with a blowtorch... Where do you think I can find one suitable... cooking supplies? I'll hunt around.. I also recently realised that I can't use flat bottom flask for distillation (lol), so.. as I haven't got any round bottom ones, I thought this seller has some good stuff; http://stores.ebay.com.au/UNITED-GLASS-TECHNOLOGIES_FLASKS_Round-Bottom-Flasks_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ9395357QQftidZ2QQtZkm however these are fairly expensive.. what's their value in retail shops?

can anyone recommend some good books on electrochemistry... but I mean really good books.. and preferably not too old. and .. I'm not interested in websites unless they're just too good to miss.