Originally posted by PLA
Silly. It is just something we all love and it was not posted to create flames. Some people think that everything is wrong. Not amusing.

Since when did cricket become a loved sport in China?

Or is it that you really are a Pakistani posting under a Chinese nick? How sad!

My attempt

RE: alternative browsers

mixtec:

For newsgroups I usually use outlook express or xnews. But then I don’t download large binaries. Agent is good, but it cost approx $ 30 to register in order to fully utilise its features. I’ve found xnews to be a very good newsreader. It is free, and downloadable from xnews.newsguy.com – if you like it, you should make a donation thru paypal – I think its worth it. This newsreader seamlessly handles the new “yenc” coding everyone seems to use nowadays in usenet. Multipart binaries are also handled seamlessly. OE cannot handle “yenc”, yet!

Of course it is not as intuitive as outlook express, but I figured that if I have to learn a new program I may as get the free one and learn that instead of paying $29 for Agent. It does everything agent does for free.

Eric:

Netscape 7.x uses the mozilla engine, and it has the same features as mozilla. However the advantage with mozilla is that it does not put AOL all over the place. In my installations of mozilla I have also chosen not to install the email and news programs, as outlook express is a very good client for email, and I use xnews for newsgroups. Mozilla and Netscape newsreaders cannot handle multipart binaries yet. Agent/OE/xnews can, and given that xnews is free and can handle “yenc”, I use it most of the time.

cheers.

RE: alternative browsers

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 29-01-03 AT 06:55 AM (GMT)]I use Mozilla with Windows and Linux – its free, pretty good and downlaodable from http://www.mozilla.org. Most common plug-ins work, and it has the handy “tabbed browsing” option. That means if I click on links I can choose for those links to open in a new tab rather than a new browser window. A neat way to keep a track of all windows. Other options let me disallow pop-ups, and I have found that de-selecting pop-ups usually means about 90-95% of pop-ups/pop-unders don’t even appear. I really like that.

When browsing discussion boards while using linux, I prefer to use “links”. Its a very good text browser with more capabilities than lynx. It allows me to use the mouse to select hyperlinks and images are automatically opened in an image browser only if I choose to see them. Browsing is really fast and page downloads are quick, as I don’t have to wait for images to load.

RE: speed of dark II….continues

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-12-02 AT 09:35 PM (GMT)]”dark” is a negative. It implies the absence of light. ie “dark” CANNOT exist without the absence of light. It is a conceptual description. One can measure a conceptual negative only by describing its presence or absence, therefore ‘speed of dark’ is a non-logical question.

However if you want your question answered: The speed of dark is the speed of the absence of its positive, which in this case is light (particles and momentum and wave propagation and all), ergo the ‘speed of dark’ is the speed of light – in what ever medium.

RE: Windows XP

>Hey, I have next to me a Win2000 Sp2 Server with an uptime
>of 22 days. It’s running fine and I’m proud of it. 🙂

I bet you’re wondering how much longer before you have to reboot. 22 days without rebooting for W2K is very very good. OTOH 220+ days without rebooting for a *nix server is considered average. 😀

cheers.

RE: metric systems shortfall

>Using Kg as weight is scientifically wrong, …

I know; mass = density x volume strictly speaking = kg; strictly speaking!

>you are suggesting mass is NOT constant when you go to various
>places on earth

No sir, mass will remain constant no matter where one is – i’m sorry I was unclear in my earlier post. Force acting on the mass varies, depending on gravitational acceleration. Therefore one “weighs” less on the moon than on the earth, and one is “weightless” when one orbits the earth. Here “weight” is used instead of force

>There are many other examples and all it takes is to convert between them, so what’s the big deal.

I agree. So long as one is abel to get a “feel” of what someone is talkign about it should be fine

RE: metric systems shortfall

>>>The fact is, all the measures convert evenly althouth not to exact multibles of 10 like the metric system.

Not really – for instance ft to yard. feet to fathom, and feet to mile = 3′; 6′ and 5280′. Then when I convert back from yd to ft; fathom to ft and mile to ft i get = 1/3; 1/6 and 1/5280! not very handy that; inspite of what you may think.

OTOH for mm to m and mm to km = 1000 mm and 1,000,000 mm, when I convert back again, I just have to move the decimal point to the left by the required amount to arrive at any reverse conversion very simply and very easily ie 1/1000 and 1/1,000,000. Being multiples of ten is the advantage of the metric system, one only requires to move decimal points to arrive at quicker conversions

>>>You guys keep making a big deal about the Imperial System originating from body parts. Who cares where the standard originated, whether its a platinum rod in a french vault or the kings elbow.

Never said that vortex used it as a support for feel. I could care less about the body parts either.

>>Yes Im proposing that a few metric equivelants of the Imperial system be added to the metric system, I listed 5 additions to the metric system and 5 alternatives of nomanclature for those used to the names in the Imperial system.

So when you say
metric foot= 1/3 meter

do you want the metric system to change to accomodate the metric foot or do you want the imperial foot to change to accomodate the metric system. Because what you advocate would for sure mean that one of the systems would have to change to accomodate the other, or are you proposing a new set of measurements to be used in place of the current imperial system?!!?

>>>As Puffadder pointed out feet are commonly used in european aviation and boating because metric measures just arent practical.

Feet is commonly used in aviation and sailing because of convention not because of ease of use. I find it hard to believe calculations conversions in ft/lb are easier than in SI. Maybe if he can explain more clearly, I would understand better. For instance I know 1 m/s = 0.001 km / s x 60 = 0.06 km / min x 60 = 3.6 kph – its that simple!!! CAN YOU tell me how many miles an hour is 1 ft/s WITHOUT USING YOUR CALCULATOR.

>>>You guys keep mentioning “feel”, which I assume means being accustomed to visualizing/estimating measures in the real world. Im not saying the Imperial system has better feel than metric, if I used mach numbers to measure the speed Im driving, Im sure I could estimate my speed as well as any other system, its just the numbers itself would be cumbersome to work with (ie mach .012745 on highway signs).

Again feel was mentioned by Vortex I think.

Hence in SI we have kph and not mach numbers to measure speed. one has to use a practical scale to measure what one wants. Certainly one would not use mm or inches to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon. It can be done but one always uses a practical unit.

Let me illustrate with an example to you. The mean orbit of the moon around the earth is 192,201.5 km which if I want to convert to mm will only mean that I have to add six zeros to the above figure arriving at 1,922,015,00,000 mm. Its that simple and right off the top of my head. OTOH I’d bet there are a very few people who could tell me the mean orbit of the moon around the earth in inches WITHOUT USING A CALCULATOR even if I give the number = 103,780.51 as nautical miles. Please do try and give that to me in inches without using a calculator!!!

>>>The fact that the Imperial system is man made and not multibles of one single scientific measurement means it the size of the measurement handles specifac ranges better without resorting to fractional numbers.

On the contrary!!! since there is no equivalent of ml/mm or cl/cm in the imperial system, i could just as easily count 1/4 litres/metres as 25 cl/cm or even as 250 ml/mm which is more accurate with NO FRACTIONS. Or 1 ft = 304.8 mm or 304,800,000 micrometres (microns). In the above examples clearly SI has the better scope of accurately depicting measures without fractions. If required we could drill deeper and get into the micrometre and nanometre ranges = 1/1,000,000 and 1/1,000,000,000 AND STILL WORK WITH WHOLE NUMBERS as desired by you. I also think working with decimals is far easier than working with fractions. I dont have to remember least common denominators and highest common multiples to multiply and divide fractions. One can simply multiply and divide the numbers with each other – therefore easier to do in ones head.