StringJunky

People start with 10 rep points. The trick is that some members have a rep power greater than 10, meaning they can remove all ten in one shot.

Perhaps that power needs curtailing to a smaller maximum...surely one 'smack' should just be worth the loss of one rep point regardless of a person's rep power, providing ,of course, they have the power to do so?

Why should a person who has been on the forum 5 times longer hit five times harder just because they've been there longer...at the moment with the present system, a person with a rep power of 10, just because they joined 10 years ago, can still be a dickhead...and have all that power!

This unequal distribution of power is why the Neg Rep didn't work, as you yourself have illustrated when asked where most of the neg repping came from:

"Nope. Those were most common from people with a good bit of rep themselves."

Reputation should be a function of a person's proven williness to help (no. of thanks).

Why not do away with the POWER part of Rep Power and just call it Reputation? and give all normal members a power to give /take 1?

Ask yourself this, why should someone with high rep have their expression of thank's/disapproval be worth more than mine (mine is one)? Their rep should be higher than mine because they will have given much more service to this forum than I but it does not seem sensible or democratic that they should give /take more...one man one vote and all that. Power should be distributed in units of one/person...... that is democracy.

"...... plus the shame of having it displayed on each post, which just causes people to leave, essentially banning themselves."- Phi

If new people had started from a higher rep base, say 5, and had 1 knocked off they would more likely see it as just a wake up call and have an opportunity to change...to go from 1 to a big fat zero when you might have just joined is a bit final....... WTF I've lost it all anyway

Long time posters here and people accustomed to the scientific method may not be aware that, or have forgotten, it can be quite unsettling for incoming laymen to adjust to this level of debating discipline demanded in a science forum and they are quite likely to be somewhat belligerent, when challenged on a point, at first, simply because they are not used to it.

A higher rep base would have given errant new posters some breathing space to adjust without losing everything...the margin for error on their part was too small.

What about the idea of just letting Mods and Admin issue neg' rep as a disciplinary measure? They can give it, why can't they take it away?

On the Hewlett Packard (HP) forum each poster has a 'kudos' button that a reader can hit if they like a post and they have a leader board for the most kudo'd people on the home page..this strikes me as a 'nice' system that encourages helpfulness...the 'atmosphere' on that forum is particularly welcoming and helpful.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/ (look to the right: Top Kudo'd Authors)

I read that book not long after it came out, so my memory of it is a bit vague, but I remember being very engrossed with it. It touches on many philosophical themes and one I remember being struck by was his pursuit in defining the concept of Quality.

The title of the book is a bit of a misnomer! It's a solid bit of popularly presented philosophy in my opinion.

"If mathematics is the best (i.e. universal) language for contact with aliens, how's an extraterrestrial going to unravel what the letters represent in our equations? Hypothetically speaking "- Baby Astronaut

I thought it was common knowledge that aliens carried Babelfish...they hold one to their ear and the living fish translates anything for them.

s. If you do some reading, you'll find that many people have problems with Ubuntu's updates. Many users don't even attempt to update before doing a full reinstall.

 

!"

I use Linux Mint 7 which is based on Ubuntu, Mint's update program, MintUpdate, gives all the listed updates (including Ubuntu ones) a risk rating from 1 to 5...1 - 3 is low risk and recommended, 4 and 5 are experimental/ high risk if you don't know what you are doing. It works well and I have never had a problem as I leave it to only install updates with risk factor 1-3. Apparently, Ubuntu doesn't grade it's updates like Mint does.

Linux Mint is basically a perfected Ubuntu, but not so bleeding edge.

Hi Coberst. Bascule is not heckling you...Your posting style (across many forums) and lack of responses to replies was leading us to the conclusion that 'coberst' was a spambot...can you see it from this POV?

If you start a thread, it would be nice for you to respond to at least some of the replies or it just looks like soapboxing...this is against the rules here apparently.

Nice to know you are real anyway!

You are assuming that the Big Bang (BB) is all there is, and there could be no other BBs, before or after ours. We know nothing about before OUR BB. The Big Bang could just be another temporary condition of localized space-time. At one time the Earth was the entire universe, then the galaxy, now the observable universe is supposed to be "all there is".

Even if there were BB's prior to our BB, time (as we know it) would still start with ours...there is no absolute external reference (constant time), we can use, to measure ALL the BB's together by....it's practically pointless to set the 'clock' before the last one. As we know presently , time started with the BB...everything else is just speculation at the moment.

I don't discount the idea of previous BB's because there must have been preconditions that started this one (and that is one scenario) but, I think, there will not be any physical evidence for a previous universe ( or time) because it will have been destroyed in the transition to the present one.

The BB was the beginning of the expansion of EVERYTHING...it didn't occur in a localized area of spacetime. Spacetime grew with it.....that's if I understand the BB model correctly.

Even if the Universe is more expansive than we think it is, it is still The Universe, we don't need to pluralize it by 'creating' more than one in our minds.

I will say, at this moment in time, I'm just trying to understand the Standard Model and this is where I am at in my understanding.

You might be right that he's a spammer. He posted the exact same post on about 85 (!!) other places.

 

Funny thing is that there seems to be no commercial incentive... or, at least, there are no links to books we must buy or something.

Like you said, given that there aren't any links, it is hard to discern his/her motive. This coversation concerning Coberst is being replicated all over the internet on a diverse range of forums. It looks like some weird form of attention-seeking to me where he/she is some sort of enigmatic character that everyone is talking about...the mystery is the end in itself to that person.

The easiest solution would be to ban him and see if there is a response.

 

Also if you argue that space is infinite, you would have to argue that time is infinite. If time was infinite, then there would be an infinite amount of time before and after the Universe was created. If there was an infinite amount of time before the Universe was created, then the time of creation would never be reached because it would take an infinite amount of time to get to that point.

You could also say if an infinite amount of time has passed, everyrthing that was going to interact would have happened and the universe would now be in a state of energetic equilibrium. All matter would have long since dissipated into energy. We are still here, so it seems to me. an infinite amount of time has not passed.

 

Also if you argue that space is infinite, you would have to argue that time is infinite. If time was infinite, then there would be an infinite amount of time before and after the Universe was created. If there was an infinite amount of time before the Universe was created, then the time of creation would never be reached because it would take an infinite amount of time to get to that point.

You could also say if an infinite amount of time has passed, everything that was going to interact would have happened and the universe would now be in a state of energetic equilibrium. All matter would have long since dissipated into energy. We are still here, so it seems to me. an infinite amount of time has not passed.

Will this JP be reprimanded at an official level do you think...Do you have a Commission for Racial Equality that can bring a case, like here in the UK?

A side question: Whch governmental (national) body decides what the official national policy/attitude is towards things like racial matters/sexual orientation in US society....or is it just decided at state level without any alignment between them, as determined by a higher national government body?

Anticaking agents are used in table salt. Its probably one of those that's causing the red and orange residues. I've extracted this from Wikipedia:

" Since the 1950s it has been common to add a trace of sodium ferrocyanide to the brine in the United Kingdom; this acts as an anticaking agent by promoting irregular crystals.[21] The safety of Sodium ferrocyanide as a food additive was confirmed in the United Kingdom in 1993. [22] Other anticaking agents (and potassium iodide, for iodised salt) are generally added after crystallization.[citation needed] These agents are hygroscopic chemicals which absorb humidity, keeping the salt crystals from sticking together. Some anti-caking agents used are tricalcium phosphate, calcium or magnesium carbonates, fatty acid salts (acid salts), magnesium oxide, silicon dioxide, calcium silicate, sodium aluminosilicate, and calcium aluminosilicate. Concerns have been raised regarding the possible toxic effects of aluminium in the latter two compounds[citation needed]; however, both the European Union and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permit their use.[23] The refined salt is then ready for packing and distribution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt

Neveos: I think people's patience has reached 'critcal mass'......... you are talking out of your backside. Shut up.

I don't think there is any substance left in this thread.

99% of the time I'm looking at 'New Post's' or 'Today's Posts' so I more often than not assume the threads are current without date checking...Caleb's obviously trawled through past posts looking for something and not realized the date.

It's interesting that. that subject has arisen twice, to my knowledge, so far.......vj4him in another recent thread thought it was plastic after using non-plastic containers with clear results.

That'll teach me to be more observant.

Put some of the previously unfrozen bottled water into a non plastic container and freeze it. Pour the thawed out water into a clear glass and look for the 'floaties'. If it has got 'floaties' in it then it is precipitated mineral solids, as Insane Alien suggests, but if it is clear then it's fragmented plastic from the bottle caused by the freezing process.

Post back your findings won't you?

The reason distant objects appear smaller is a property of the lenses of our eyes and the apparent reflectance of the object being viewed. If the angle subtending an object through the lens on to the retina is large then the object will appear large. If the angle is small then it appears small. . Also, darker objects 'appear' smaller and more distant than lighter ones of similar dimensions...this property of tone (reflectance) is exploited all the time by artists and photographers to infer depth, magnitude. or both

At the end of the day. much of how we perceive distance and dimension in our visual environment is part physics (of the lens) and part mental construct by the brain (using visual cues, like reflectance and binocularity) working together to express the maximum amount of spatial/dimensional information about our immediate environment to aid our safety,...... which gives us a suvival advantage.

"Does no one see that obviously every instance of observation entails a condition whereby we have a relationship between distance, and the amount of time light takes to impress your eye from the object?"- Neveos

Neveos: I'm not quite sure what you are on about but the relative difference in the time it fakes for light to travel from a nearby object and an object further away, to our eyes, is fantastically negligible given that they have a capture rate of only 10 to 15 'frames' a second...it is subjectively 'instant'. Time is not a factor in our visual perception of things at earthbound distances....the speed of light is too fast. our brains are too slow and the distances are too short for your hypothesis to mean anything.

Apparent object size and distance is a function of the eye's lens and the way the brain interprets that information.

Maybe what we call the universe is only a regional peculiarity. There could be larger scale structures, universes that exist within a "multiverse". There could be individual big bangs separated by unimaginably long distances, such as Trillions or Quadrillions of light years between them.

 

I also don't believe there would be an "outside" to such a multiverse.

 

We don't have ANY evidence for any "nothing". Something seems to permeate all visible space. There are about one hydrogen atom per cubic meter of "empty space" even in the middle of the great voids between superclusters.

 

NOWHERE is there nothing. There are also virtual particles popping in and out of existance everywhere.

When I said ' nothing ', that's what I meant...not even empty space which you seem to think I'm suggesting...like I said, it's a difficult idea to grasp.

Why don't you have a gander again through the "What was there?" thread and see if you can absorb it better second time round.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=42499&page=2

What is the need for a Multiverse or Paralell Universe...What's wrong with one? What can't the present standard model explain that these two ideas can?

The idea of our Universe being in a bigger one (Multiverse) is symptomatic of the difficulty of grasping the idea of nothing beyond the limits of the Universe. We try to fill this deficiency of comprehension with things like Russian Doll Universes...like yours...I've done it myself 'til recently.

On the subject of whether I agree with Sysiphus, my answer is 'yes' because a) I don't know any better and b) he (and Swansont, Klaynos, Martin, Moo, Severian etc) is delivering the standard view which is what I'm interested in...I won't argue against something until I fully understand the subject first. When they tell us something, it's not 'their' personal opinion (unless they say it is) it's the current consensus of mainstream science that they are telling us about....surely that's what laypeople should come to this forum for?

Sayonara: to take your description, could it be there is only one Universe but possibly made up of many 'mini-verses' (a system or group of many galaxies that act independently of other groups extremelly far apart : in our case the Observable Universe is one of them?

Also realize this, due to the curvature of space if you had some means of doing it and left the universe, you would arrive at YOU GUESSED IT the other side of the universe.

It is not possible to leave something that is in itself everything? The term 'Universe' represents everything that exists, therefore, you can't leave it. The Universe doesn't have an outside....don't try and imagine anything beyond it because there is nothing ....does that make sense?....the idea of nothing is difficult to grasp but you'll have to accept it because that's what the physicists here will tell you.

Nothing, is the absence of anything.

Any computer-aided 3D model you see of the Universe is a representation of it in its entirety...it is not in space. it is space...all of it.

Leaving the Universe does not make sense now does it?

Tom, Thanks for the formula.

How did you come to the two tonne figure? The total tension for a 25.5in scale steel string guitar with 'mediums' on is about 176ibs! I found a calculator that gives an idea of the range using different variables.:

http://www.mcdonaldstrings.com/stringxxiii.html

Happy to help.

I agree with you DrP, it's pretty much a fact that different metals sound different, bronze is brighter than phosphor bronze....My question is related to tension and how difficult or easy it is to depress the string on each type.

Someone on another forum was saying the two top strings (B and E) were different between manufacturers even though they were the same diameter and I had doubts.

There is undoubtedly a difference in the wound strings between makers because the core wire diameter to winding wire diameter varies even though the total diameter is the same between them ,hence, one will be harder to press than another.

Also you might be interested to know hex core strings are stiffer than round core because the winding wire grips tighter on the hex. Round wire cores last longer though because the winding wire adjacent contact surfaces remain so for longer than hex cores....once the adjacent contact surfaces of the winding wire part sufficiently, through playing, the string loses its 'chime'. Round wire strings chime more because the core wire has more movement within the winding..

'

I've played with a lot of different strings that's why one of my guitar-playing friends calls me a 'string junky'!

The way you've put it ,DrP, makes sense and I'm inclined to agree with you..there will be a marginal difference.

John's also right as well because the density of the material and hence the total mass of the string will determine the tension required to bring the string to pitch.

Thanks to you both for putting a clearer picture in my head.

Mr Skeptic: Using those three parameters and adding frequency as another. If we kept the frequency constant and wanted to change the linear density (string material), the tension would change also, yes?

Do you have a formula?

Thanks

In the above scenario with the two types of metal string under tension, I apply the same amount of force (perpendicular to the direction of the wire} in the middle of each wire, would they deviate from a straight line by the same amount or not?

"Also, are there any animal models for empathetic behaviour?" - JimmyDaSaint

I found this article by Frans De Waal who is a Professor of Primate Behaviour amongst other things. Here's a relevant extract to answer your question:

"For a demonstration of primate empathy consider a zoo bonobo named Kuni. When she saw a starling hit the glass of her enclosure, she picked up the stunned bird and climbed to the top of the tallest tree. She carefully unfolded its wings and spread them wide, holding one wing between the fingers of each hand, before sending the bird like a little toy airplane out towards the barrier of her enclosure. But the bird fell short of freedom and landed on the bank of the moat. Kuni climbed down and stood watch over the starling for a long time. By the end of the day, the recovered bird had flown off safely.

The way Kuni handled this bird was different to anything she would have done to aid another ape. Instead of following some hard-wired helping scheme, she tailored her assistance to the specific situation of an animal totally different from herself. This kind of empathy rests on the ability to imagine the circumstances of another. Adam Smith, the father of economics, must have had actions like Kuni's in mind (though not performed by an ape) when he offered us the most enduring definition of empathy as "changing places in fancy with the sufferer".

http://www.annular.org/~sdbrown/the-empathic-ape.html