User talk:DavidCary

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I'm starting to feel this page is getting a bit cluttered. But I've also heard that some people feel that deleting messages from talk pages is a bit rude. Is there a better alternative to /archive pages? --DavidCary 06:39, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] welcome

Hello David, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to join the community. Drop us a note at Wikipedia:New user log so we can meet you and help you get started. If you need editing help, visit Wikipedia:How to edit a page. For format questions, visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. And of course, feel free to talk with me or ask questions on my talk page. Enjoy! --Alex S 23:16, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Space elevator

Thanks for your intervention. Paul Beardsell 20:52, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Space elevator economics

You're welcome :) Fredrik 10:11, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Finally, another Okie! :Dave Walker 21:45, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] About Talk:Diagonal

Please note that this is about regular polygons. For n-gons where n > 6, are your figures for regular or non-regular polygons?? 66.245.107.8 14:02, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

All those figures are for non-regular polygons. I hope my edits clarified things -- DavidCary 15:51, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Switch

Hi David, I reverted your change to Talk:Switch because it's generally "not done" on Wikipedia to delete other people's comments on Talk pages, even when the comments become obsolete. Please don't be offended. -- Heron 19:48, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks transistor

Howdy Omegatron. Thanks for helping with WikiBooks:Electronics. You mention on page WikiBooks:Electronics:Transistors that CMOS and TTL "are not transistors". Very true, but do you think it would be better to mention them on the "transistors" page (as examples of what one *does* with transistors), or should we move all mention of them to some other page ? -- DavidCary 20:11, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Of course we can mention them, but we can't call them transistors. :-) We'll just explain the basics in the transistor section and provide links to the digital logic section. - Omegatron 20:19, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Rubies

Hi; I know it's incredibly late, but I've replied to your queries at Talk:Ruby (gemstone). I plan to revamp it and articles like it in the coming days, so I appreciate your interest in the subject matter. Cheers, -- Hadal 06:10, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Language talk pages?

Hi, I'm mystified by the rearrangement at Talk:Programming language etc, and you don't seem to have explained your purpose anywhere. What's going on? Stan 17:05, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK. I generally tend not to favor editing talk pages after the fact - too easy for the sneaky to rewrite history, and there's bunch of people that do exactly that sort of thing in a dispute. But your reasoning is sensible, perhaps next time you could add a little more explanation to the forwarding link, so that jumpy admins don't load the server down with history and version queries. :-) Stan 19:02, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I meant 4GL as in fourth generation programming language ;) Dysprosia 06:26, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Linux and schedule creep

You asked (in a comment) what articles about project deadlines. What about Creep (project management) and Deadline or Project management. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:54, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the links. My comments on Linux asked:

However, some observers claim that the intervals between Linux distribution releases are no worse, and often better, than the "schedule slipping" that occurs with other operating systems and with software systems in general.

< ! - - Is there a wikipedia page that discusses this general Software Engineering phenomena ? - - >

Those links certainly *sound* like they are relevant to "schedule slipping". Unfortunately, at the moment, the text of those articles don't seem relevant:

Creep (project management) covers a few reasons why schedules slip, but not (what I think is) the biggest one: sheer lack of knowledge about how long something will take when it has never been done before.
Deadline is a stub.
Project management seems to be more about project management in general, rather than the specific problems of software project management.

Maybe someone will add the appropriate text to make them more relevant.

--DavidCary 22:33, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Not a problem :-)

Thanks for your kind words! Out of interest, ever hear of the exploding whale? :P I'm trying to get it to main page. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:28, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] good photo

Congratulations, people think your photos are good enough to copy: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektrolytische_condensator

--DavidCary 08:37, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I broke that camera trying to plug it into a DC power supply of the wrong voltage. :-) Oh well... Electrons give and they take away... - Omegatron 13:16, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Code 128

Goeiemorgen! I must say I was in doubt, I agree that it might be a useful program, but I don't think there is a difference in advertising GPL'ed software of commercial software. It is still advertising and also the site is quite amateurish as you mentioned and is in my opinion not good enough to link to. If you strongly feel different, we can keep the link, it's ok. Regards, [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 07:07, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] RFA

Would you be interested in voting on my request for adminship? --[[User:Eequor|η υωρ]] 08:07, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mechanical equilibrium

Here's an answer to your question on mechanical equilibrium. The article is correct. You appear to be confusing marginal stability with metastability. When a system is metastable, it is at a local minimum (stable), but not a global minimum. I do not believe the term is originally from mechanics. Perhaps it is orginially from chemistry. In chemistry, if a molecule is metastable, we can expect random thermal effects to eventually disturb it enough so that it will leave the local minimum and settle to the global minimum, or at least a lower energy metastable state.

I hope this helps. [[User:CyborgTosser|CyborgTosser (Only half the battle)]] 11:05, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Buckminster Fuller

Hi David,

I spotted your edits to Buckminster Fuller. I suspect you are making an interesting point, but it would probably be better expanded on the talk page rather than using inline comments. I'd move it myself, but I don't think I can articulate it quite right. I take it that you are saying the section needs to be more precise about which polygons can and can't be 'tiled'. -- Solipsist 08:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I moved my question to the talk page. --DavidCary 20:23, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Christian Anarchism

Ahoy, Look a little further into the page. The Christmas Conspiracy advocates a limited nation government based on the "Founder's vision of a strictly limited government". While they have some anarchist stances in terms of markets and localized governments, they still accept the overarching view of a national constitutional government. Hope this clears this up. Thanks for the note, by the way, but this conversation usually is taken up in the talk page. --The Grza 18:06, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SPM and Octave

Hi David,

Thanks loads for your input on the SPM wikibook. In answer to your question: no, I'm afraid SPM doesn't work with GNU Octave or SciLab. You're welcome to try to port it though!

Thanks, Dan AKA Jack 11:48am 5-2-2005 GMT

[edit] Talk:Branch predictor

I've answered your queries there. -- Paddu 07:43, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] printing: why ?

(delete when read) In the "printing" article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Printing&diff=0&oldid=15357797 it seems that you made a tiny change that doesn't actually change the normal view of the article. Why ? --DavidCary 20:47, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi Dave! The asterisk after the pipe in a category alphabetizes the article's name to the top of the list of articles on the category page. So, now on at Category:Printing, the article "Printing" is at the beginning of the article list. --sparkit (talk) 22:01, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

Nice. What is the appropriate talk page to discuss this "asterisk technique" ? Some category pages manually mention the main page above the list. Should I convert such "manual" pages ( Category:Electronics, Category:Mathematics, etc. ) to "asterisk" pages ? I see Category:Embedded systems is trying to go both ways. And I still don't understand -- what does it mean when several items are alphabetized under asterisk ? (such as Category:Calculators). --[[User:|DavidCary]] 15:37, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization#Category_sorting discusses the technique.

(Tip: I've found that in order for a category alphabetization change to take effect, that first, on the article page, delete the category tag (i.e.: [[Category:Example]]), save the page. Then re-add the tag with the desired alphabetization characters (i.e.: [[Category:Example|*Example]]), and save the page again. It's a bug, I think. Also, sometimes it takes a few minutes for these changes to show up on the category page.)

Whether Electronics and Mathematics articles should be changed... I think it makes it easier to locate the main article about the topic.

Regarding Category:Calculators, often contributors want more than one article pushed to the top of a category alphabetization. However, in this example Reverse Polish Notation, to me, seems misplaced.

The link at the top of a category page is put in place by adding the tag, {{catmore}} to the category page, or by typing a paragraph like is done at Category:Embedded systems. Personally I like using both the asterisk and catmore techniques.

--sparkit (talk) 16:04, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Text encodings

Er, regarding your recent cat'ing of some articles into said cat: I'm not sure as to whether I see the need for that cat as we've had Category:Character sets for half a year longer anyway. Do you know how this duplication happened? (or have I completely misunderstood this?) --Wernher 09:33, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User categorization

Greetings! Your user page hasn't been vandalized :-) --it was updated to use the new User Categorization scheme. I have categorized your User Page as a Wikipedian in Oklahoma (Category:Wikipedians in Oklahoma) since your name was listed on the Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Oklahoma page. The Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Oklahoma page is scheduled for deletion. Thanks! Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 00:48, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

David! Thanks for the redirect to WikiTravel. That is a very cool site. Will the intention be to list each and every major city in the United States? My hometown, Louisville, Kentucky, is only 16th largest, so it doesn't make too many lists ;-). Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 01:47, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I got lost in Wikitravel (go figure). :-) I may just have to start helping over there with regard to my hometown of Louisville ;-). Thanks again for pointing it out....I just found Louisville on the site today--I mistakenly only followed the guide on the front page and North America didn't seem to flow downwards from the United States of America to any of the states....so I stopped :-(! Better now :-) thanks!! -Roby Wayne ^{Talk • Hist} 15:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] (π)

latin symbols for editing (responding to Talk:SI electromagnetism units) Remember how to write π ? When I forget, I check Wikipedia:How to edit a page#Character_formatting ( π is in the "Greek characters" section). --DavidCary 05:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Perfect and bookmarked! Thanks Dave. Scott 12:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Scottfisher"

[edit] Dominance

Hi David -

Thanks for your edits to the Dominance (game theory) article, your suggestion really helps to make it more readable. If you're interested in game theory, you might think about joing our project. We could sure use some more folks! --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 22:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Digital image editing

Hi David, Thank you for your kind remarks about the subject page. Coming from you, I am especially pleased. Your comments have value. I am just a beginner and appreciate all guidance. Please cary on. Phil ^talk 13:23, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] fancy math formatting

Thanks mate, I was a bit new then but if I need to write done some math in the future, I'll know where to go, cheers.--Commander Keane 16:33, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ADC

Hi there. In the Analog-to-digital converter talk page, you argued about the ${1\over\sqrt{12}}$ thing. It's related to the uniform distribution. I think I clarified it... Do you think we can remove that discussion section? Thanks, bye!... -- NIC1138 18:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I see my math error now. Feel free to delete it if you want. --DavidCary 02:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] transparent society

On Wikipedia:Reference_desk_archive/Science/November_2005#Big_Brother_World, someone claiming to be StuRat mentioned

...we shouldn't give out the addresses of witnesses to Mafia hits, along with the times they will be alone and the house will be unguarded. I think most info should be shared freely, but some should be kept secret.

I agree. However, reading the book The Transparent Society has almost convinced me the the continued loss of privacy is inevitable, no matter how much I wish otherwise. I'm fascinated by the counter-intuitive idea that, when some unscrupulous person exploits some piece of data, sometimes the problem can be solved by making more information public. For example, perhaps I wouldn't mind these unpleasant people knowing when I will be home alone, if I can be assured that the police and other friendly, well-armed individuals also know exactly when those unpleasant people will be dropping by to visit me.

p.s.: good work on trying to make technical articles readable by mere mortals. --DavidCary 23:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)==

You're welcome. I don't quite buy the argument that we are safer if the authorities know where we are at all times. For one thing, the "authorities" frequently ARE the perpetrators. A certain portion of those who like to carry guns and force others to do as they say are very bad people.

Also, a counter-example can be found for anything, such as arguing that we should never wear seat belts because one unbelted person once was ejected from a car before it went over a cliff. StuRat 00:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that we should not unconditionally trust people in authority. They also are human.

I'm not arguing that life will be better if these things happen. I'm arguing that these things are inevitable, so we might as well try to prepare for them (rather than wish they would go away).

I'm not arguing that life will be better if your hard drive fails. I'm arguing that all hard drives inevitably fail, so we might as well try to figure out ways to reduce the damage.

--DavidCary 02:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't

Hi David. I have a tiny style remark. When writing in articles, one should use "does not" rather than "doesn't". That's in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style somewhere. As I said, it's tiny. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

OK. I feel pretty good if that's my worst mistake. --DavidCary 02:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Wiki doesn't like contractions ? What, is Lt. Commander Data in charge ? LOL. StuRat 02:47, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bezier curves

I never stopped by to thank you for the insight on the sine approximation questions. Good stuff there man! Thanks ^^ ☢ Ҡieff⌇↯ 01:14, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Second law and simple entropy

Sorry. I was interrupted in the middle of an edit. I didn't realize I had saved the page, and didn't intend to do so yet. I'm slowly working my way through various articles on physics, chemistry, biology and math, picking up TeX and Wiki protocols as I go along. (I can't understand why the quality of the chemistry articles is so poor, with factual and mathematical errors.) I do have a much simpler way of explaining entropy and the second law and intend to post them on Wikipedia. They are certainly accurate; I used them for years while teaching. It's amazing that no reference I've seen includes the fact that all systems (e.g., a gas) are permeated by black body radiation at equilibrium with the molecules. Right now I'm working on Entropy of mixing and already did Flory-Huggins solution theory, Random coil and Nylon (among others), and made revisions to Ludwig Boltzmann. Today I added comments (and illustrations) to Death and examples to Legendre transformation. It's slow going when so many links I check out while writing other articles need work themselves. If you want to contact me again, please do so.

By the way — I wonder why so few people are using the nice "blockquote" formatting. David Shear 00:20, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:errata

Have you seen the Wikibooks:errata project? --DavidCary 07:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Tres cool. Hope it takes off, not sure I'll have much time to give to it. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:42, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Newspapers used instead of blogs

I would like your feedback on the use of newspapers as a source instead of blogs. In the case of the Robert Clark Young article, I have found newspaper sources that cover much of the same material as the blogs that have been used in the article. When I replaced the blog sources with the newspaper sources, Alabamaboy reverted every single one of my edits. Also, very strangely, he accused me on the discussion page of being Mr. Young himself!

This is the Wikipedia Guideline I am trying to follow with my edits:

"Publications with teams of fact-checkers, reporters, editors, lawyers, and managers — like the New York Times or The Times of London — are likely to be reliable, and are regarded as reputable sources for the purposes of Wikipedia. At the other end of the reliability scale lie personal websites, weblogs (blogs), bulletin boards, and Usenet posts, which are not acceptable as sources."

Thus, I have replaced the blog sources with newspaper sources. Again, let me stress that this has not led to much change in the text of the article itself--what I'm trying to do here is change the nature of the sources so that they themselves comply with Wikipedia Guidelines.

Could Alabamaboy and I get some feedback on this? I wonder if you could go over to the Robert Clark Young history and compare both versions of the sourcing--the one using newspapers, and the one using blogs. Thank you. Berenise 01:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

You should be aware that there are three reasons the article was reverted: 1) Berenise made the changes despite a lack of consensus and my objections on the Talk:Robert Clark Young. In short, the online references are refered to in the newspaper and print articles, making the online sources primary sources. The article also has many print sources which complement and add to the online sources. 2) The edits made the article less NPOV b/c they removed opposing viewpoints. While these references may be online, they are from credible named sources who are considered experts in their respected areas. 3) There is a strong possibility that Berenise is Robert Clark Young. Young previously edited the article about himself and most of Berenise's edits since coming to Wikipedia have been to the Young article. I'm trying to clear this up with Berenise; once she proves she is not Young I'd love to get opinions from other editors about this situation. For full details, see Talk:Robert Clark Young.--Alabamaboy 01:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] electricity

Are we done in Talk:Electricity#Voltage doesn't exist (or does it ?) yet? --ssd 05:47, 11 January 2006 (UTC) :)

[edit] calvarychapel

Please do not add commercial links — or links to your own private websites — to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. See the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. Perfecto 01:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Does WP:V apply? I've been told that wikipedia policy mandates that some articles "should" link to some web sites. Do you know a better reference for this "webservant" terminology? --DavidCary 06:39, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Password

Sorry, but nope. I don't have access to the database... in fact, I don't even know what that would mean. Sorry! --Αλεξ [[User talk:Alex S|Σ]] 02:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to find someone else who can access the database. --User:DavidCary --70.189.73.224 16:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I asked Angela User_talk:Angela/Archive18#User:DavidCary, but Angela doesn't have access either. --70.189.73.224 01:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] R. Buckminster Fuller

David, FYI, I have made another request to rename this page, and it is going to a vote. We need your support, and that of others. Djg2006 04:17, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ISO 8601

You've been around much longer than I have -- any idea how we can get the default date format in our sigs to be, well, standard? Thanks, Cultural Freedom talk 2006-07-02 09:17 (UTC)

[edit] Shorthand

Hello,

I am currently trying to decipher a shorthand diary entry for research of a wikipedia article and noticed you had some input on the wikipedia entry for "shorthand." Are you able to read Gregg shorthand? I'm hoping someone in the wiki community might be able to help with this.

Many thanks. Goatboy95 21:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dining Cryptographers Problem

Hey David, thanks for the comment you left on my user talk. You are correct about the difference between my edit and the one following me. The edit prior to mine had each dinner's number shared with both neighbours, and so I changed that to say under that formulation, you need five dinners (which is correct). I hadn't read the original paper, I just read what was already written and knew it was wrong. But apparently that formulation of the protocol was wrong, and really you only share your number with one neighbour (which is how David had it in his orginal paper).

But anyways, I digress. With this method, it is correct that it works with only three neighbours. With three people, you know your number and your left neighbour's left number. You can see the number you right neighbour claims to be the difference between his number and your left neighbour's number (which you know). So you can calculate what his number should be. And then you can calculate the difference between what that number should be and what your left neighbour's number actually is, and see if it matches what your left neighbour claims is the difference. However if its not the same, you don't know if your right neighbour supplied a wrong number or if the left neighbour supplied the wrong difference. It could be either and so have perfect anonymity.

It helps to draw it out. :) Pulpspy 02:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

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