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Thread: Today I learned...

  1. #1441
    TIL that if you reverse an air conditioner (the process and mechanics), it becomes a heater.

    Additionally, people in past history, and up until this point, have been unintentionally patenting and trying to scam investors by producing inventions which violate both the first and second laws of thermodynamics (i.e., heat physics) called PPM:

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

  2. #1442
    not over yet Death BOO Z's Avatar
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    I have a book somewhere about perpetual machines through the ages... quite interesting topic.
    from what I remember of the book, you can't patent a Perpetual motion machine as such (they don't allow it), but you can patent a design and write it as something else, even if it doesn't work. according to the book, the IP office doesn't care whether what you're patenting works, they just want to make sure it's unique.

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  3. #1443
    Awesome user with default custom title Uchiha Barles's Avatar
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    Today I learned what crowd-sourcing is, and a very interesting application that demonstrates how powerful the concept is when applied inventively:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_1...-10391704.html

    Basically, in 10 days, puzzle gamers managed to find the most chemically stable protein structure for an HIV protease that 10 years of scientific research and sophisticated computer analysis could not.
    "You are not free whose liberty is won by the rigour of other, more righteous souls. Your are merely protected. Your freedom is parasitic, you suck the honourable man dry and offer nothing in return. You who have enjoyed freedom, who have done nothing to earn it, your time has come. This time you will stand alone and fight for yourselves. Now you will pay for your freedom in the currency of honest toil and human blood."

    - Inquisitor Czevak

  4. #1444
    What's up, doc? Animeniax's Avatar
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    That's pretty awesome, using the brain power so many spend on online games to actually accomplish something more than the quick fix entertainment they were looking for. I know so many people who spend waaaay too much time playing online flash games.


    For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

  5. #1445
    Family Friendly Mascot Buffalobiian's Avatar
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    For users of the latest version of winamp:

    If you have a song in the now-playing list
    Then close winamp
    Delete the song file
    Attempt to re-open winamp

    It will crash. I have not been able to open it any other way other than placing the file back into the directory so that winamp sees the file upon start-up.

    I reproduced the problem two times, and I'm pretty sure that it will happen as long as that song is first to load. It doesn't matter if you turned off winamp when it was half-way through the song, or if you had all tasks stopped before turning off.

    So yeah... guess that's something to look out for.

    If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~

  6. #1446
    Vampiric Minion Kraco's Avatar
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    Maybe if you opened a playlist with Winamp, it would get over it?

  7. #1447
    Family Friendly Mascot Buffalobiian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kraco View Post
    Maybe if you opened a playlist with Winamp, it would get over it?
    Open a playlist?

    Well, I hadn't thought about this, but if you openned a playlist file (eg .m3u) or a double-clicked a new song, it could possibly get over it, yes. It overrides previous lists after all.

    But if you mean open winamp, then click a drop-down for a previous playlist to use, then it would work. The program crashes immediately upon execution. You only get a "do you want to send dump" message

    If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~

  8. #1448
    Vampiric Minion Kraco's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buffalobiian View Post
    Well, I hadn't thought about this, but if you openned a playlist file (eg .m3u) or a double-clicked a new song, it could possibly get over it, yes. It overrides previous lists after all.
    This is what I meant. Open a playlist by file association, so that the program would replace the existing, crash inducing list with the good one.

  9. #1449
    Procacious Polymath Ryllharu's Avatar
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    Or, just maybe...you could use a program that's better than winamp. Of which there are many.

    Ones that are made to scan your library and update themselves accordingly.

  10. #1450
    It wasn't much Archangel's Avatar
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    I use WMP, don't need nothing else >_>

  11. #1451
    Vampiric Minion Kraco's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ryllharu View Post
    Ones that are made to scan your library and update themselves accordingly.
    One reason he's using it is for the possibility of bitstreaming the material untampered by Windows to his DAC. If memory serves, Bill also tried the similar method of bypassing Windows audio in Foobar, but he said it sounded different. Though I could be remembering wrong.

  12. #1452
    What's up, doc? Animeniax's Avatar
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    I get the sense that Buffalobiian is a loyal kind of guy, that includes loyalty to the companies he supports and the software he uses. Winamp has been around almost since the inception of MP3s. It's a good media app, and constantly improving. No reason to ditch it for what is obviously a bug. A google search might even provide a solution for it, or a way to report it to Nullsoft to fix it.


    For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

  13. #1453
    Family Friendly Mascot Buffalobiian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ryllharu View Post
    Or, just maybe...you could use a program that's better than winamp. Of which there are many.

    Ones that are made to scan your library and update themselves accordingly.
    Winamp scans and updates my library automatically. The song in question was outside of the library, which I simply added to the queue by itself.

    Kraco remembered correctly. The other day I used ASIO output on Foobar vs Winamp to listen for any differences they may have. To my surprise, I discerned that they indeed sounded different, with Foobar having a more solid, heavier sound while winamp's had an airier, more open quality. I know both players use different mp3-codecs for playback, but I'm not sure if the same applies for WAV files (I'm assuming FLAC rips into .wav before it gets played?). It could also be the ASIO plugins that differ. Foobar allows me to control the volume digitally while winamp doesn't, which suggests that Foobar in ASIO output could be capable of bit-perfect playback, but is not guaranteed.

    Or it could all be placebo.

    If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~

  14. #1454
    Family Friendly Mascot Buffalobiian's Avatar
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    I had to go to the grocery store today to buy some fruit, and decided to feel a little classy as I walked past the cheese section. After a few minutes of looking at words I don't recognise, I ended up picking a block of camembert to take home.

    It smelled moderately strong, and oddly familiar. It didn't take too long to figure it out though - it smelled like corpses.

    More specifically, anatomy specimens that I use at university. I don't know if it's the mould (we have to spray the specimens with anti-fungals to prevent mould growth) or something else, but the aroma is identical, as far as I'm able to differentiate.

    And if you have such images on your mind while you taste the cheese and have the flavour flood your senses with +1000% intensity as you mouth the soft with your tongue.. it can actually make you a little sick.

    So for anyone who wants to know what dissections are like, open up some images and grab some camembert.

    (I'm still keen on cheese, but I don't think I can finish this block. Damn inanimate object.. I underestimated you.)


    ------------------



    edit: Ah.. so back then I was on to something after all.

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffalobiian View Post
    Today in anatomy wet lab we were discussing the GIT. As the tutor talked about the small intestines I felt really hungry.

    Later I went home and took out a slice of cheese. As I ate that piece of cheese I had images of cadavers pop into my head.
    Last edited by Buffalobiian; Thu, 10-11-2012 at 09:47 PM.

    If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~

  15. #1455
    What's up, doc? Animeniax's Avatar
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    Some of the more pungent cheeses turn me off as well, and I don't need to know the chemical or biological methods for creating them to make me sick when eating them. I'd say stick to a nice smoked gouda. I stopped buying and eating blocks of gourmet cheese because of their high fat content and price, though I enjoyed them a lot when I did eat them.

    Along the lines of recall while eating, whenever I eat hot dogs I can't get the image from the Simpsons out of my mind about the composition of a hot dog. It was the "Lisa the Vegetarian" episode. I'll leave you to look it up if you want so as to not ruin hot dogs for you.


    For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

  16. #1456
    What's up, doc? Animeniax's Avatar
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    Today I learned that some schools no longer teach cursive/script handwriting. Consider my mind blown. Why would they stop teaching that??


    For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

  17. #1457
    Pit Lord shinta|hikari's Avatar
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    Why not? It's not even useful anymore.

    I don't mind it being an optional lesson, but giving it should not be mandatory.
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  18. #1458
    What's up, doc? Animeniax's Avatar
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    You mean it's not useful since people type everything anyway? Your signature is still in cursive isn't it? The kids who told me about this also mentioned folks they knew who couldn't sign their signature in the requisite cursive, so they had relatives write it for them and they just copied it. That seems really weird to me.

    It's a big problem in Japan too, the youth aren't learning to write kanji characters as much since their electronic devices generate them, so within 100 years it will be a lost art. I see cursive as the same.


    For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

  19. #1459
    Pit Lord shinta|hikari's Avatar
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    Why not just teach them how to write signatures?

    If that is all it is going to be used for, I don't see the point in forcing people to learn it. People can write in print, after all.

    The kanji issue (if true) is a different problem altogether. Cursive is all about style and is usually even harder to understand than normal written text (especially if the person has poor penmanship). Kanji differentiates homonyms, allows the meaning to be derived from the kanji elements, allows for Chinese and Japanese readings of a word, is used in names and makes Japanese text readable without spaces.

    What I find to be annoying is how people are starting to suck at spelling just because software automatically corrects spelling errors. If anything, that function should help them in learning the correct spelling for those words.
    Last edited by shinta|hikari; Wed, 12-05-2012 at 10:32 PM.
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  20. #1460
    What's up, doc? Animeniax's Avatar
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    Cursive writing is also a lot faster than block text which is a major consideration of writing. If it is so easily replaced, then kanji can be substituted for a simpler system as well. Japan could just move to a romaji system and remove the confusion between Chinese and Japanese meanings. Kanji is as plagued by poor penmanship as cursive. And similarly, they could just write everything using hiragana/katakana. I don't think this should happen, but I think it's about as tragic as the loss of cursive writing.

    As for spelling errors, I think it's a lot like the issue of research with wiki/google. Have a question? Find the answer in 10 seconds with wiki or google. The problem is, you tend to forget the answer just as quickly. In the days before the internet, if you had to look something up from multiple sources or ask others directly to get an answer, you'd remember that answer.


    For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come... those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?

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