Recent content by Alkatran

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    Who Are You People? Intelligent & Advanced Answers

    The forum has a lot of smart people who like physics, which attracts... other people who like physics. They just happen to be good at it. :rofl:
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    Physics major doesn't believe in empiricism

    If I know that, most of the time, a coin will fall down when I drop it then I know something about the universe. You don't need certainty to have information. If you do go into math, I suggest you stay away from statistics.
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    Exploring AI: Understanding its Components and Capabilities

    I wasn't talking about tractability, I was talking about computability. It doesn't matter, philosophically, if you can actually do the simulation. All that matters is if it is, in theory, possible. Consciousness slowed down by a factor of 10^10^100 is still consciousness.
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    Exploring AI: Understanding its Components and Capabilities

    No, A.I. is not just a bunch of if-then statements, at least, no more than any normal program is. Look up neural nets, genetic algorithms, computer chess, etc. As for consciousness depending on quantum mechanical properties... can't we model those on a computer?
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    AUGH Quiz shows should make sense

    AUGH! Quiz shows should make sense! I was watching "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" (alternatively: watch Jeff Foxworthy be a good host) and they had a question with... with... You know what? Just read the question: "How many watts in a kilowatt-hour?" The answer? 1000.
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    Stargate SG1 Questions - Get Answers Here!

    As soon as I heard their crazy explanations, I just threw that out and assumed every stargate was arbitrarily assigned an address (like a phone number) which happened to be based on location. The whole "point of origin" thing is to stop people from using it (think about it: each gate only has...
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    35W bridge in minneapolis collapses

    The coverage makes me believe everyone should be forced to play armadillo run, or a similar game, in school at some point. It's amazing how small the difference between all-ok and near total collapse is.
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    I need to prove that astrology has no predictive power whatsoever

    You probably can't convince them by talking. They might as well try to convince you it's true. The way to test astrology claims is NOT to see if predictions come true. That has a ton of problems with confirmation bias, etc. You need to get multiple predictions, of which only one is for them...
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    Angular acceleration and velocity in 3D

    I'm trying to write a small rigid-body physics program. I already have the linear forces part done, using Euler's method. This makes it easy to take the current forces and compute the next position. The issue I'm having is that I don't know how to get the next angular position/velocity from the...
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    Do you unfriend people on Facebook/Myspace?

    Aren't "friends" lists really just "people I know" lists? I don't use those websites, but I'm the type of person who would keep the list small to avoid having to spend time scanning it.
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    Simulating inter-connected springs/beams

    I've been writing a simple program to simulate what is essentially a bunch of springs connected together at nodes. However, I'm having trouble. Currently I just calculate instantaneous force for every spring/node, step ahead a fixed amount, and repeat. The problem is this tends to...
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    Is it possible to see the stars in the sky?

    Angel_42, you're not making much sense. By definition, "seeing" something is sensing light coming ~directly from it. Therefore when you look at the sun you're seeing the sun. You can argue that really you're only seeing photons representing the sun in the past, and this is of course true, but...
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    Play "The Wikipedia Game" - From Elvis to Queen Elizabeth II!

    It would be better to try to find two articles that were as far apart as possible.
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    Java Method for Replacing String in a Text

    Somehow I get the feeling he won't get very many marks for that solution.
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