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Showing posts from July, 2010

Religious Tolerance

I recently began rereading all the notes that I took during college, to keep the mind fresh while I'm waiting for SunGard to decide when the best time is for them to call me and offer me that job as a financial analyst... ... and I got up to Theology 1050 with Dr. Enright and a paper I wrote on the subject of abortion. I received a C for this paper which was then crossed out and replaced with an A. Luckily this paper was eventually graded based on content and not political position. Without further ado, here an important quote from Diana Alstad & Joel Kramer which I'd like to keep in my repertoire: Religious tolerance has meant respecting all religions, with an implicit taboo against criticizing them. Now this is handicapping us unfairly. A more appropriate definition that is not inherently disadvantageous to the more tolerant side is: everyone is free to believe what they want, and people are also free to criticize others' beliefs, especially if they can be shown

Don't steal my Mac

Mac OS X 10.6 comes with CoreLocatation. Which is implemented as a command line program here: http://code.google.com/p/corelocationcli/ So... just "wget --spider "phor.net/ping/fdbook?$(/Users/fulld/Applications/CoreLocationCLI -once)" 2> /dev/null" in your crontab And put one of these on your server: <?php   # URL like: http://phor.net/savelocation/fdbook?info   $file = preg_replace('/[^a-z]/', '', $_SERVER['PATH_INFO']);   $info = preg_replace('/#<>/', '', urldecode($_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']));   file_put_contents("cache/ping_$file", $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."\n$info\n");   touch("cache/ping_$string"); ?> PINGED RESULT: Computer phones home every few minutes to report it's physical location.

Why does e^(pi*i) = -1?

This cannot be stressed enough: The thing you always have to consider when extending previously-developed concepts to complex numbers is what definition of the existing concept you're using, because you can't just assume that all of the definitions will give the same extension. (In fact, you get all sorts of weird stuff like different branch cuts if you're not careful. But e^z turns out to be well-behaved.) One good definition of e^x is that de^x/dx=e^x and e^0=1. That is, it's the function whose derivative is itself and whose value at 0 is 1. From the chain rule, we can see that de^ix/dx=ie^ix. That is, e^ix is the function such whose derivative is i times the function, and e^i0=e^0=1. For any complex value, iz is that value rotated 90 degrees around the origin. So what we've got so far is that e^ix starts at 1, and its derivative at any point is at right angles to the line from the origin, and the magnitude of its derivative is equal to its distance from the or

Gun control

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Even though I have never heard a legitimate argument FOR gun control, I beat the dead horse with one more example against it. On Jul 14, 2010, at 7:32 AM, MARK NICHOLS wrote: I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here to London, United Kingdom for a short vacation.unfortunately,we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash and credit card were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us. We've been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves in few hours from now but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills. Well I really need your financially assistance..Please, let me know if you can help us out? Am freaked out at the moment!! Mark...... Actual family member, correct email address, no address forgery, and that person was on vacation with the itinerary matching

TI copyright

From the BA II Plus calculator manual: When you choose the chain ( Chn ) calculation method, the calculator solves problems in the order that you enter them. (Most financial calculators use Chn .)  Using AOS (TM) (algebraic operating system), the calculator solves problems according to the standard rules of algebraic hierarchy, computing multiplication and division operations before addition and subtraction operations. (Most scientific calculators use AOS .) In other words, TI is trying to trademark PEMDAS.

Are you fit enough to be an FBI special agent?

Test one: number of sit-ups in one minute These are administered with a partner holding down feet and legs at 90° angle. Score Female Range Male Range 1 35-36 38 2 37-40 39-42 3 41-42 43-44 4 43-46 45-47 5 47-48 48-49 6 49-50 50-51 7 51-52 52-53 8 53-54 54-55 9 55-56 56-57 10 57 and over 58 and over Test two: 300 meter sprint That is 1/2 way around a 1/4 mile track Score Female Range Male Range 1 64.9-62.5 52.4-51.1 2 62.4-60.0 51.0-49.5 3 59.9-57.5 49.4-48.0 4 57.4-56.0 47.9-46.1 5 55.9-54.0 46.0-45.0 6 53.9-53.0 44.9-44.0 7 52.9-52.0 43.9-43.0 8 51.9-51.0 42.9-42.0 9 50.9-50.0 41.9-41.0 10 49.9 and below 40.9 and below Test three: Pushups (untimed) Score Female Range Male Range 1 14-18 30-32 4 27-29 44-49 5 30-32 50-53 6 33-35 54-56 7 36-38 57-60 8 39-41 61-64 9 42-44 65-70 10 45 and over 71 and over Test four: 1.5 Mile Run (in minutes:seconds) Score Female Range Male Range 1 13:59-13:35 12:24-12:15 2 13:34-13:00 12:14-11:35 3 12:59-

Revenues down?

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One of the top grossing iPhone apps is free. Hmmm

The ultimate voicemail system ("the Voicemail Remote")

In the past when you called my voicemail, it would say: Hi this is Will, sorry I can't take your message. Press 1 to leave a message or press 2 to hear more information... Will is currently in a meeting titled "fix car" until 5pm. His cell phone is on. He has 20 unread emails, please stop sending mail. I did this using a Skype account to upload the outgoing message on my normal AT&T voicemail account. The OGM updated every couple minutes with live information in the above format. Eventually I took it down because Skype audio quality is terrible. Now you can do this too if you want. The code is public at https://code.google.com/p/voicemailremote/