User talk:SteveBaker/archive6

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[edit] Wow.

Long time no speak.... just finished playing the new Stranglehold demo from Xbox Live. In a word, fantastic. Just so cinematic and fun. Did you work on that? If so i'd like to congratulate you on whatever you did... Smiley200 17:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, no - I can't take credit for any of that. The game I'm working on won't be out for more than a year yet - although it shares a lot of software with Stranglehold. The team did an amazing job of capturing the feel of the movie - the collaboration with John Woo really shows clearly. Have you seen 'HardBoiled' (the movie of which the game is the sequel)? SteveBaker 19:04, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I've seen it, and I would agree about capturing the feel of the film. I especially think that about the spin attack where it shows the enemies being hit. Where the doves came from though I have no clue... In fact, I think that the only problem with the game is the crappy cover system... You almost always have something sticking out, which makes the game impossible on "Hard Boiled" difficulty... Smiley200 09:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Water Fuel Cell

Do you think, placing the {{Notaforum}} template on this talk, page and archiving the inactive discussion sections will be useful ? I would like to see the talk page used for its intended purpose - i.e. discussion of the article rather than the theories and conspiracies behind water fuel cell, HHO, the latest perpetual motion machines - but won't do so if editors such as you Rubins, Dmacks and you who help maintain sanity on the page, have any objections. Cheers. Abecedare 17:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think people pay any attention whatever to the piles of templates that accumulate at the top of talk pages. I have no objection to you sticking it up there - I just have zero confidence that it'll have an effect. Archiving inactive topics is a useful thing though - it helps to keep the conversations tracking one thread. That article is a serious problem though. I'd like to simply delete it per the guidelines in Wikipedia:Fringe theories - but that's not going to happen. SteveBaker 18:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I have no expectations that people will stop commenting on the issue because of some template, but I at least hope that being able to point to it will help short-circuit some off-topic discussions.
Frankly, I don't understand why people who really believe in this stuff don't try to publish it in a scientific journal and waltz away with their Nobel prize, or start a company and rake in, say a trillion dollars (roughly speaking). Of course, there are all those oil-companies/US government conspiracies to consider but ... oh well. Abecedare 18:26, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

At last someone has bothered to debunk the Water fuel cell and the latest John Kanzius claim in print. See:

Ball, Philip (September 14, 2007). Burning water and other myths. Nature News. Retrieved on 2007-09-14..

Thought you'd enjoy reading this. Regards. Abecedare 21:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good job

After seen your contributions to the RD and realizing you still don't have a barnstar for them, I've thought you deserved this :). Place it wherever it should be in your User page, I'm too clumsy to make it fit well. --Taraborn 17:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Thank you so much - it's always good to be appreciated! I'll carry it very carefully over to my User: page and place it in a shiney new {{award2|template}}! SteveBaker 17:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RD medical advice

Not to get in a long discussion about this (I'm on a business trip and shouldn't be distracting myself with WP at all), but two points:

  1. Have you read Brad Patrick's (older) statement on the function of the existing medical advice disclaimers, and on whose problem it's likely to be if anyone were ever to act on bad advice and complain?
  2. No one is going to take you seriously on your calls for 24 hour punishments if you keep calling them "bans". The correct term for a short-term block is a block. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Firstly: Yes - I have read Brad Patrick's advice. There are really three issues at stake here:
  1. Wikimedia Foundation's potential for legal liability. OK - Brad says it's no problem and he's a lawyer and I'm not. However, I worry that if we make no effort to enforce these rules then WMF may still get in trouble. Afterall, the original Napster said you weren't allowed to download illegal content - and they still got sued into oblivion. However, IANAL - so we'll let that one slide.
  2. The potential for some well meaning respondant to get into legal liability. This isn't a negligable matter - you can argue that we should all know better - but clearly not everyone does or they wouldn't do it.
  3. The potential to do actual harm to someone who asks for advice on our reference desk. Even if we aren't liable and we do warn them, we STILL don't want someone being hurt or worse because of crappy advice or some kind of joke that gets taken too literally.
I don't know where the legalities fall here - and in the end I guess it doesn't matter. Giving medical advice is stupid - we have a rule that says "don't do that" - but we fail miserably to enforce it. Brad says the rule is there for a solidly legal reason - so it only makes sense to enforce it.
Secondly: Ban/Block - they know what I mean. I'll be sure to use the correct word in future though - thanks for the correction. SteveBaker 18:56, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quantum Immortality imagined

I couldn’t help thinking further about what it might be like to be a victim (beneficiary) of Quantum Immortality, as described by SteveBaker. And then I had a dream:

It has been over 30 million years since I became the oldest man of my species. I grieved over my friends who had died before me. Then, it seemed but a few days passed and I was the last one of my species, and now, I now longer know what I am. Here, in a dark drain I must appear as a stunted albino toad encased in a translucent gelatine, no more than 6 inches long. Those darker buds you see appearing like moles in the gelatine are the embryos of my next brood, for I give breed parthogenetically. They are genetically programmed to serve me, workers tending the fat grub of their queen - to gather food for me, to maintain my shelter, and to defend me, little white worms with corkscrew teeth. For in my immortality, I have become an evolutionary genus of my own. I can no longer see or hear, but my teeming progeny crawl over my jelly like skin, and I feel the sensations of their movements. In this way they tell me a little about their foraging and the night sky. You can see within the gelatine of my flesh, past the appendices of my eyes, a slightly darker area, like a shadow, wrapped in a caul of veins. This is my brain, what remains of it, with the vestiges of those organs necessary to maintain it. Then in what I imagine is a croak, like the softest purr – just a tremulous vibration really – I give forth with the song of what has constituted my consciousness for immeasurable epochs: “I breathe…I breathe…I breathe….”

Well, perhaps the notion of evolutionary change in a single entity like this is unsound, but then again, perhaps it is not… Myles325a 00:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow! A nice piece of writing. But indeed - there are imaginable horrors and unimaginable ones. When you consider the insane coincidences it would require to keep you alive through loss of body parts - through the worst of wars and horrors humanity could offer - then to live through the final death of the sun - and yet still, every single moment of every single day, you're on the brink of death when one after another, crazy random things force you to survive. You can't end it all - because every effort at suicide fails for the same crazy reasons that you survive every other death. Truly this is the worst imaginable fate. A hell far worse than religion has imagined. SteveBaker 00:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dawkins' TED talk

The reason I asked about this is that his suggestion of a game built on relativity or quantum mechanics to help improve understanding is something that I would certainly have interest in at least designing a prototype for. I'm having trouble of thinking up any game mechanics that would be particularly fun though. Any ideas? :) Capuchin 07:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, thinking about the relativistic game: Certainly a two-player game would be impossible because you can't get time dilation to work in the real world. So as one player starts moving fast, you can't simulate the relative time dilations of the two players because they exist in the real world and we can't slow the perceptions of one player relative to the other. The worst part (if it's going to be realistic) is that people have to travel VAST distances if they are moving close to 'c'. If we're moving around at speeds where time dilation actually has an effect (let's say AT LEAST 0.1c) then one second of motion will move you 19,000 miles. So the gaming 'world' has to be at least millions of miles across and the player and AI characters will be crossing it so fast you'll never see them. Graphics showing what's going on are going to be boring in the extreme - just a blank screen most of the time! But I guess one could cheat and make the speed of light (say) 100mph. At walking speeds, relativity would be hardly noticable - but when you got into a car or something, you'd easily get up to relativistic speeds. One would need to add red-shift effects and allow for the delay in light transmission times and the effects of distance dilation - which would certainly be challenging - but not necessarily impossible. As for making it 'fun', it's generally possible to do that just by giving players a gun each and telling them to go kill each other - providing there is some other thing to make the game interesting...which in this case would obviously be the relativity thing. If the player is moving REALLY fast compared to the game world, then the AI players will be aging very rapidly - this would mean that they could get an awful lot done while you are zipping away from them at 99.99mph. That might pose some software contraints on a realistic game. If it has to simulate 1000 years of AI 'life' in one second of elapsed 'real world' time - then we have to have AI characters who don't do a whole lot with their lives! If you decided to drive off at 99.99mph turn around and shoot at them - then ten generations of your enemy have lived and died in the meantime, which means that they'd almost certainly have figured out how to make a nice powerful death ray from scratch and shot you in the back long before you could slow down enough to turn around! Perhaps then it would be wiser to think in terms of a puzzle game in a world full of inanimate objects. Perhaps you could design puzzles that have a timing element to them that can only be solved by moving the pieces of the puzzle at relativistic speeds...using effects like the ladder paradox.
A quantum mechanical game would be a lot tougher...and again, I wonder whether it's even possible.
SteveBaker 14:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh yes, I love the ladder paradox, that's certainly something that would make an interesting mechanic. I'm not sure how original puzzles would be thought up. Maybe Richard has thought about this a little and it might be worth contacting him. I'll be sure to broach the subject with a few of my professors when I get back to uni. I know a few who would see the value in such a game. I'll let you know, it's certainly something to ponder about if there's a lull in the day. A few videos of simulations with lightspeed at 100mph or so are very interesting, an interactive version would be the first logical step, I think. Capuchin 14:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I think that if I were to work on this, the first step would be to create a virtual world in which the speed of light was adjustable and all of the more obvious effects worked correctly - and where you could just slide blocks around by dragging them with the mouse or something. We would need to use that software to train ourselves to think relativistically - in precisely the way that Dawkins says we need to, (ie To get our middle-world brains thinking in game-world physics). Once we got the software working to the point that we could place objects - move them at various speeds and generally play with that virtual world, it might be a lot easier to start thinking up puzzles. I'm thinking that we have a lot of separate little puzzles that you'd have to solve consecutively - ranking them in some kind of order of difficulty and perhaps arranging them so that each one relies on a different relativistic weirdness (eg Some depend on time dilation - others on distance change, others on red/blue shifted light, others on mass variations...that kind of thing). This would allow the player to become comfortable with the effects somewhat separately. It would also be nice to be able to replay each puzzle from a different frame of reference. So when you've learned that you can get the ladder though the barn by moving it fast enough, you could replay the puzzle from the point of view of the ladder and watch the barn getting bigger and the time between the doors opening and shutting changing. So in terms of an implementation plan:
  • A library of classes for representing positions, speeds, rest-masses, etc for a bunch of simple objects (cuboids would be a good start) - plus the player's frame of reference.
  • A simple rigid body physics package that could handle collisions, objects bouncing off of each other, etc.
  • A graphical renderer that could cope with redshift, length distortions, time-of-travel for light from objects, etc.
  • A user interface that would let you impart velocities to objects (probably using some kind of logarithmic speed control so you could accurately choose between 99.99% of c and 99.999% - yet which doesn't put you through the grief of accurately specifiying 0.01% of c or 0.001%) - also some means to switch your personal frame of reference at will. We'd probably need some means to artificially disable redshift effects in order that we could see what's going on. SteveBaker 15:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Some kind of a scripting language for setting up the initial conditions of each puzzle, describing it to the user and measuring when it has been successfully completed.
  • A means to record/replay puzzles so you can watch them in different frames of reference.
  • All of the usual scoring, timing, high score table junk.
Some of these things might be insanely difficult - one major problem is that if objects can rotate they no longer have straight edges (I believe) because one end of the object could be moving a substantial fraction of 'c' and thus be distorted to hell compared to the part of the object that's at the center of the rotation - and that would make all aspects of the game very tough to implement. We might want to start off with a world in which objects can translate - but not rotate!
SteveBaker 15:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MPG

I'm not certain why it upsets you so much that I drive the speed limit - so much that you relate my retelling of my experience to some sort of radical religion. I am not a terrorist. I am not holding people hostage or threatening to blow up buildings because others drive over the speed limit. I simply stated my experience. You stated yours. I don't see why your opinion is to be taken as the absolute truth while anyone who disagrees is some sort of religious wacko. Perhaps you edit the way you drive - hot-headed and lead-footed. -- Kainaw(what?) 13:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Not at all - you simply claimed something that cannot possibly be true (ie that driving at the speed limit with gentle accelleration/braking) gets you there just as fast as "leadfooted driving". That's not true. It's obviously not true - and the smug way you say it is evidence of pure wishful thinking. So I replied with a correction...that's what scientists do on the science desk where wishful thinking is not encouraged and clear, logical thought is what is required. Now I'm not saying you should drive lead-footedly - or that it isn't good to stick to the speed limit and drive gently - I'm merely saying that you can't possibly be correct in claiming that driving that way gets you there just as fast. I said nothing about terrorism or hostages. SteveBaker 16:38, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] string_symmetry.c

Partly because I spend a lot of time programming a nearly-stackless 8051 microcontroller, I tend not to use recursion very much.

So what do you think of this:

Atlant 16:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

In my job interview, I wrote (in C++ as it happens - hence the overloaded function) something like:
   bool isSymmetrical ( const char *s, int len )  /* WARNING! Recursive! */
   {
     return ( len < 2 ) ? true : (s[0] == s[len-1] && isSymmetrical(s+1, len-2)) ;  
   }

   bool isSymmetrical ( const char *s )
   {
     return isSymmetrical ( s, strlen ( s ) ) ;
   }
...which certainly devours stack at a rate of (at worst) one stack frame per two characters in the string.
Your approach is certainly the way I'd really do it in production code. It's clearly faster, more compact, less runtime storage, much, much more understandable! I only did it the recursive way in the interview because I wanted to talk about interesting graphics programming matters and not spend the next 10 minutes of the interview worrying about whether I'd gotten some kind of stoopid off-by-one error. The recursive approach makes it very clear that you've thought carefully about the termination condition. It didn't work though - I still ended up discussing the code for 10 minutes.
I'd have written your version a little more compactly:
   bool isSymmetrical ( const char *s )
   {
     for ( const char *i = s, *j = &s[strlen(s)-1] ; i < j ; i++, j-- )
       if ( *i != *j ) return false ;
     return true ;
   }
...it saves a variable (although the compiler would probably have optimised that out) - but mainly it saves doing indexing operations inside the loop.
But it's dangerous to get into dueling code fragments. There are always issues of memory usage versus speed versus understandability - you might be smart enough to write it - but how smart will the next programmer who looks at the code be?

SteveBaker 18:05, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I generally figure that modern compilers (with register coloring and all the other cool tricks that they play) will manage to produce good machine code regardless of whether I use (say) one variable or three. And occasionally (especially with my highly-powerful, cough, choke, 11 MHz 8051), I look at the produced machine code and check ;-).
Atlant 19:09, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
It's amazing how long the 8051 has survived - I'm trying to think back to when I first used one - jeez it must have been 20 years ago! But it's a great little work-horse machine, I used about a half dozen of them in the 'Commander' project I worked on back then. We used 8051's to drive safety systems, door mechanism, audio subsystems, hydraulic motion control, coin and banknote readers, our simple serial-port based multiplayer networking...you name it! (The game itself ran on a 386 PC and used four ARM chips for doing the graphics on a card I designed and programmed). It's curious though how the great cycle of complexity turns. These days I spend a lot of time programming the GPU's on nVidia graphics cards, the Xbox and the Playstation - and we're back to having a microscopic processor with hardly any code or data space and having to carefully consider every instruction. The compilers are amazingly efficient though - that at least is a huge improvement. What sorts of applications are you using them for? SteveBaker 19:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Here at Teradyne, our high-end chip testers use a highly-distributed network of these little buggers to control and monitor the power and cooling systems of the testers. Together with a '586-class central node, they handle power sequencing, voltage, current, temperature, and humidy monitoring, and handle the automatic shutdown of the tester if any of hundreds of parameters goes "out of limits". Our central node is programmed in C++ running on VxWorks, but all the identical distributed nodes each contain an 8051 programmed in C and assembler running directly "on the iron" (well, it's an 8051 so maybe "on the tin foil"). The nodes intercommunicate using an odd implementation of LonWorks.
Atlant 11:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your recent edits

Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button Image:Wikisigbutton.png located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 00:33, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wow, Again

I was away from Wikipedia for a number of hours, so I missed the huge lecture on my tongue-in-cheek "Yes" answer to the "this or this" question on a band tour. The Ref Desk's habitués frequently take one another to task for facetiousness, and quite rightly. I don't think I have ever seen so many words or such anger over one word, however, especially when I wasn't there to further fuel the debate, which is the usual reason it goes on and on. The initial answer was a lapse in judgement on my part, and for that I apologise and will also apologise in the applicable place on the Ref Desk. It was not, however, a crime of such enormity that it deserved the pile-on venom that it received. I have always enjoyed your answers and have appreciated your expertise and your concern about helping the OPs. Perhaps, if I goof another time, a short note on my User page, extending the same courtesies and requesting a re-think, would not only save you a lot of time, but also get a quicker correction, if that was the intent. Bielle —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bielle (talk • contribs) 17:08, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

If it had just been you - I might have done just that - but when Clarityfiend joined in in bashing that poor user, something stronger was required. If I hadn't stepped in, I guarantee that someone else would have heaped more oh-so-clever fuel onto the fire. The OP had just one word misplaced ("or") and somehow that allows people to hand down bullshit answers and smartassed insults. I'm not upset at 'the use of humor' because within bounds, that's OK. I'm upset because the questioner asked a perfectly reasonable (and actually quite comprehensible) question and was mislead and insulted. I'm upset because nobody is paying attention to several clearly specified guidelines. You DO NOT insult the OP for using poor grammar - not ever. You ONLY use humor in the context of a proper answer. You broke the rules in the worst possible way...by misleading the questioner. Yes - I'm angry - alright? It's not 100% your fault - but you need to reread those guidelines. SteveBaker 18:23, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
First, I apologise for not signing the first post I made here. It was an oversight, not deliberate rudeness. I wasn't objecting to the anger, but to its degree, nor was I suggesting that my answer was anything but flip and thus inappropriate. Using fury, especially directed at a specific user (and we are all still users and entitled to courtesy) to try to intimidate us into good behaviour is not what I would have expected from someone with your sense and sensibility. If I had seen the posts above yours, I would have apologised right away. I didn't see it soon enough, for which I suspect another apology is due. The OP's confusion was not over my answer, though that is still no excuse for it, but over the barrage of accusations about it. What others do is no excuse for my bad behaviour, but a sense of proportion is sometimes required. Given what happens generally on the Ref Desks, and being directly in line for your blast on this one, it feels like an elephant gun for a sparrow. If I start giving legal or medical advice, then get out the cannons. I'll re-read the guidelines; it certainly never hurts to review policy, including WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL. Bielle 18:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Steve, I originally posted this on the thread, but then reconsidered that this would be a better place for it. When I first scan read the question, I missed the or thereby reading Is it true Genesis might not be visiting Texas for their tour, since that is a phrasing one might expect to read in such a question. If Bielle or anyone else had made the same mistake as I, then "yes" would be a perfectly appropriate answer (albeit one based on a misreading of the question). This left me wondering what all the fuss was about until I went back and read it more carefully. Did it not occur to you that could have been the reasoning for the answer? Perhaps simply asking the individual if they had made a error and inviting them to correct it, rather than publically lambasting them for it would have generated more light and less heat, and still achieved the same result. As it happens Bielle did read the question correctly and did offer a flip answer, but that was an assumption when you stated that "Bielle thought it amusing to give a literalist answer". Speculating on the motivations of editors is never a good idea, WP:AGF is there for a reason. Rockpocket 20:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


SteveBaker, with all due respect (and I do respect your contribution here) I’ve seen a number of your posts where you publicly criticize other editors, in my opinion, quite excessively; many times when people have simply made an honest mistake. If it is, in your opinion, necessary to use such strong words, please consider doing so on the editor in question’s talk page in the future. Just as some uses of humor are inappropriate on the desks, strong criticism of other editors is also very disruptive. Please Don't be a dick. Thanks, --S.dedalus 21:56, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar

The Barnstar of Good Humor
Have a barnstar for your work (and funny comments!) on the reference desk Pheonix15 22:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Random article

Ok, like a goof I haven't once hit 'Random article' since I've been on this site since 3 years ago. You mentioned it in the Science Desk, and after clicking it, that's my new homepage: 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random' I love it. It's like that annoying thing that happens to me when I go to a hard copy of a dictionary, open to the area I'm about to look-up and I see another word that just stands out, or a little pic. or diagram, and I think, 'Hmm...what's this little nugget?' and I'm side tracked, and I'm like, 'Stay Focused!!!' So now I'm doublely annoyed in that good way, more side tracks. This one should have been more self-evident being that it's on the main navi guide. Go Texas!!! --i am the kwisatz haderach 22:12, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I make a habit of clicking random page and reading WHATEVER comes up three times before I go to bed every evening. You find some exceedingly boring articles - some that need spelling/grammar/layout fixing (which I do) and some that just blow my mind away...so on balance, Wikipedia and I exchange value in a pretty fair way...and with close to 2 million articles - you'll never see the same one twice! SteveBaker 22:47, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Daaaaaang

A Barnstar Slice
You get this slice of a Barnstar of Good Humor, as part of the group in the RD/M Daaaaaang thread. This is only a symbolic part of the barnstar, the rest of it lies with the other members. lucid 23:32, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, thank you! I hope you'll forgive me for putting it at the back of the display cabinet though!

[edit] Noticed you appear to be active so

I wondered if you could look at this [1] and tell me why the refs formatting at the bottom has gone all weird (refs 26 onwards are all merged together). BTW on the Building Societies question I didn't say house prices had no impact I said they had no direct impact as it seemed to me that the person posing the question assumed that dropping house prices automatically cause Building Societies to lose money. What you said is of course all true. Kelpin 18:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Forget my first question someone else has fixed it. Kelpin 18:55, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How about..

WP:NPA?

Besides, the question was just begging that delicious pun. Come on, after reading "What kind of units are the ... in?" I couldn't resist!

Don't get too worked up about it. I don't plan to make it a recurring behavior, and you deserved it for your dry commentary :3 Or should I adopt light current's symbolism since I seem to be heading down that road to bandom 8( --frotht 20:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Just don't edit other people's comments OK? It's REALLY uncool and a lot of people get extremely outraged about it. It was no big deal this time - I'm telling you only for your own good in the future. SteveBaker 20:22, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cannibalistic Polyphenism

Hi Steve, just making sure you aren't still looking, I found the forgotten biology term. Sifaka talk 19:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Euuuwww! Nature is nasty! Thanks! SteveBaker 19:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adoption program

Oops - thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'd been adding the {{adoptoffer}} template, but not deleting the one requesting adoption (my thinking was that this would allow a new user to receive multiple offers and to select the one that was the best fit). I'll conform to the proper procedure in any future offers I make. Cheers, Sarcasticidealist 07:09, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inactivity...

I guess I have been off a while... I haven't really had any time to work on an encyclopaedia as I have been busy with working. I'd like to work on something, but i'm not going to be available for the next 3 days (english time) but if you have something to suggest then i'll be up for some work.... Thanks! Smiley200 17:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol. You've got pwn3d while working on the reference desk... What is that for anyway? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smiley200 (talk • contribs) 17:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to complain that you weren't working hard enough - I just wondered if you needed any help! But the reference desk is fun - it's like doing a crossword puzzle every day. Every day, new questions - it exercises your mind. It's very stimulating! SteveBaker 17:38, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Big agree right here. :) Capuchin 09:57, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. I'll try it. Smiley200 18:00, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Death to medical questions

I'm responding directly to you since posting to guideline talk pages is the first step to a downward spiral of pedantic arguments. In reference to the breast binding question on the Misc. ref desk, I think the slash and burn guideline is misguided in this instance. The question that was asked was only partially medically related. Breast binding has been practised for quite a long time in theater, fetish culture, etc. as I'm sure you're aware. So a simple "We can't respond to the medical nature of the question but as to the rest of the question which does not involved medical advice..." would have both left the question for others to read, ushered responses away from the medical avenue, and given the OP some information that they hadn't had before. Dismas|(talk) 01:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] aircraft

Thanks for shouting about the misconceptions involving wing cross section shape and lift - this has been driving me nuts for years but every seems to repeat parrot fashion what they have heard without checking - It's just reassuring to know I'm not the only one.87.102.87.157 15:08, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - it's really annoying and you see it in almost every textbook and online resource. The story always goes that the distance the air travels over the top surface is longer than the bottom - by Bournoulli, that reduces the pressure - resulting in a net upward force. That's true - and it does add a little to lift - but describing it as "What Makes Planes Fly" is utterly bogus - as evidenced by the fact that planes can fly upside down - or with symmetrical wing cross-sections - or with flat 'plate' wings. The same arguments apply to fan blades, old-fashioned windmills and all manner of other wing-like objects which generate an airflow. I did slightly flub my argument though - it's true that Bournoulli's equation can be used to calculate the flow over these other shapes of wing too. What's needed is a word to describe why the difference in the curvature top-versus-bottom doesn't contribute much of the lift...I can't think of a way to describe that. SteveBaker 15:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] new adoptee

Hi Steve - thanks for your offer to adopt me within Wikipedia. I gladly accept your offer to help me out on this very strong and informative product. It is my wish to make valuable contributions to Wikipedia as it is in my view one of the strongest online products out there. One of the first entries i tried to make was for Expatica, for which an entry was (actually still) is missing. I understand Escape Orbit's feedback regarding the amendments i made to the entry but am confused on what to do next. Shall i draft something again, work in an old version or put in a request so another Wikipedia user will make the entry? Thanks for your help in this! Further, what steps do i take next in the adoption programme?
--Salion 20:29, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no formal thing for adoption - you need help - I agree to help you - that's about it. For the sake of other adopters, we put a tag in your user page indicating that you found some help (I've done that). If you feel you've gotten all you can take of me - or when I feel you are doing just great on your own - we stick a shiney 'graduated' tag on your page and we're done!
The Expatica thing is messy - and my advice would definitely be to pick some other topic to help out on while you gain experience with the convoluted ways of Wikipedia. For what it's worth, here is my best understanding of what happened:
  1. Over a year ago, someone wrote an article about Expatica that wasn't really up to Wikipedia standards.
  2. The article was nominated for deletion on the grounds that it was too commercial and that the company was not sufficiently notable to warrant an article at all.
  3. The matter was discussed and the decision was to keep the article around in the hope that it would be improved - mainly because it was realised that the company is really rather important and does need an article about it.
  4. More recently, someone (was it you?) added a company logo to the article but that was a breach of copyright - which is not generally allowed unless it can be justified under the 'fair use' provisions of the copyright laws. That meant that the logo had to be deleted...and it was.
  5. That in turn caused a Wikipedia administrator to take another look at the article. He decided (rightly or wrongly) that the article read too much like an advert for the company (which is not allowed) - and decided to delete it without another debate. Personally, I think that was wrong of him because the article had actually been debated a year ago and the decision was to keep it. He should (at the very least) have opened up another debate rather than deleting it without discussion.
So - what is to be done about this? Well, since the article was deleted by virtue of it's poor content - but was acceptable (in principle) by virtue of being about an important topic - the right approach would be to rewrite it properly - according to Wikipedia guidelines - and recreate it. We could argue about this with the administrator and (possibly) pursuade him to re-instate the article so we can at least see what it used to say - but in my opinion, if it was so terrible that it needed to be deleted without debate then it's probably best that we start again.
If you'd like to do that, I'll be happy to help you out by proof-reading whatever you write and advising you on keeping it within acceptable limits. Sadly, I know nothing about Expatica - so I'm not going to be much use for digging up facts. The important thing is that the article remain 'NPOV' - which is Wiki-speak for "Neutral Point Of View" - meaning that you cannot simply write an advertisement for the company - you have to show the bad as well as the good. You also have to pay particular attention to citing your sources. Every significant statement the article makes about the company needs to be backed up by some kind of reference source. It's not enough that you know something to be true (that would fall under another piece of Wiki-speak: 'NOR - "No Original Research") - you have to be able to prove that it's true. You could do that by referring to a newspaper or magazine article about the company - or if it's mentioned in a book, then we need to name the book. The idea being that people can (at least in principle) verify the facts in the article by checking them against your sources. This is a pain in the neck - and it's generally accepted that you can't do this perfectly (there are quite a few unsourced facts in my two featured articles Mini and Mini Moke - but most things are backed up by books and magazines). You can also (with great care) refer to things the company says about itself in press releases, web sites and financial reports - but these sources are not 'NPOV' - and have to be treated carefully because we can't rely on the company to be truthful about itself. We can get into more details about that if and when you actually start writing.
An example of a really good article about a commercial organisation would be Bank of China (Hong Kong). This is the standard one should aim for. This article is one of the best articles ever written for Wikipedia (it's a "Featured article" and there are less than 2,000 of those out of the 2,000,000 articles we have).
Use of the Expatica company logo on the page is a tricky matter related to fair use policy.
Because Wikipedia is a 'free' encyclopedia we have to be extremely careful about not violating copyright terms for things like this. The law generally says that we CAN use such images for the purposes of adding information to our articles - but there are a lot of caveats. Because there are a bazillion photos on Wikipedia, and it's impossible to police them all individually, we require that everyone who submits a photo tell us the copyright status. If it's copyrighted (such as the company logo is) then we have to add a 'justification for fair use - which in this case isn't difficult. However, in the absence of that justification, the Wikipedia software will delete your image within just a few days. If you'd like, I can help you with that too - but first we have to write the article THEN add the image because without the article there can be no justification for uploading the image!
I hope this helps to reduce your confusion some - but let's keep in touch over this - add any more questions you have to this thread and I'll get back to you promptly.
SteveBaker 13:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RefDesk Bible comment

Magnificent! Very well said. DuncanHill 15:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't regret reading the bible - it took no longer than a thick novel and it was quite hilarious. I highly recommend it to all atheists. It's especially cool when you get into arguments with Christians and you can point things out to them that they don't know - because hardly any of them have actually sat down and read the damned thing. It's tempting to pick up some of the other great religious works and see how they stack up as books rather than abstract icons...but...life is short and SciFi is more thought-provoking. SteveBaker 15:50, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Soda from concentrate in the USA

Herewith a link [2]. DuncanHill 13:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

And here is where you can buy it in Austin!

Boater's World, Arboretum Crossing, 9333 Research Blvd, Building E, Suite 400, Austin, TX 78759, tel 512.231.1559 DuncanHill 13:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks! In the UK, you can buy this stuff in most supermarkets - and it's a lot cheaper than that. The SodaClub price works out at 60cents/liter - plus their postage charges and the postage to to return your empty cylinders and the occasional cost of buying replacement bottles once in a while when they wear out - I'll check out 'Boaters world' in Austin - without the postage, and if it still works out at 60c/liter - then the capital cost of a $100 machine will pay for itself after about 100 liters of soda...it's a good deal. SteveBaker 14:19, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Signature

Of course I want to be cognizant of how various people's browsers render my signature, and of people's aesthetic idiosyncrasies. Feel free to let me know if this is better. Personally, at this size I think it's unreadable (probably worse on Microsoft browsers), and I may simply switch back to a different font. - Nunh-huh 15:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, never mind, I'll just switch back. - Nunh-huh 15:41, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! SteveBaker 15:45, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Penny battery

Thanks for the thanks! I have read a lot of the original writings of Faraday and Henry, and had built Voltaic piles with zinc and copper, so trying the experiment was second nature. Edison 04:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your recent edits

Hi, there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button Image:Wikisigbutton.png located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 19:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adoption

I don't know how this works, but I found out that I can be adopted. I would enjoy learning some stuff about wikipedia. If you're available, it would be great for me.

Best Regards

Bruno

Bagoncalves 23:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adoption

Thanks for the offer of adoption. I will gladly take up the help. Take it easy.

Tim

Timda 9:22, 4 October 2007 (BST)

[edit] Your hostility

Steve - I perceive an increasing level of hostility in your responses to my comments in the Loretta Claiborne RD thread. Describing my arguments as "cute and touchy-feely" comes across as dismissive, and adding an edit comment of "Bah - nonsense" to your latest response was downright rude. I do not know what I have done to trigger such hostility from you. I suggest that you try to treat other people with more consideration and respect, even when their beliefs and opinions differ from your own. Gandalf61 09:12, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adopt-a-user

Sorry for the delay in replying, but I have had a few net problems and suchlike! I would like to take you up on your kind offer, and become your adoptee! :-) Random Jack 14:55, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Content review processes

Steve, I thought you might be interested in Wikipedia:Content review/workshop, as you had many interesting and thoughtful things to say about the relation between GA/FA and the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme earlier this year. Geometry guy 18:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

Hi. I just read your thoughts on trivia and I was wondering if you would be interested in this.

Here is a wikiproject proposal for trivia and a fresh look at trivia policy by the admins. Support the wikiproject proposal. Add your name to the list here: wiki project proposal for wikitrivia

Please send this link to other users that you feel would be interested. Thanks Ozmaweezer —Preceding comment was added at 18:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I sympathise with your goal - but that proposal is simply awful and I certainly won't add my name to it. Sorry. My full comments are provided at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Trivia_and_In_popular_culture. SteveBaker 19:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] re: signature

--ffroth 17:24, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Just making sure --ffroth 21:05, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] please look at Reference Desk, Computing

Steve, a few more doubts on a question you answered. Can you please look there again? Woeisme 17:12, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A defense of economics

Regarding your post: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2007_October_23#Computer_Security_Cost.2FBenefit

I'm not as down on economists as you are (I'm not an economist myself, BTW). There can be many useful things which can be determined and conveyed with graphs even if they don't contain any numbers (qualitative data versus quantitative). One concerns the perpetual mantra of Republicans in the US that "lower taxes will cause the economy to grow" (and often "...to a point where more taxes will actually be taken in despite the lower tax rate"). There should actually be a certain "ideal tax rate" where only as much money is taken out in taxes as is actually needed to provide basic services; like roads, telephones, airports, police and fire departments, education, and (some would argue) health care.

A tax rate of 0% would mean none of these things would exist, or at least they would only exist as a patchwork (roads paid for by businesses in towns, but no roads in rural areas, for example). It's not clear whether we are above or below the ideal tax rate, but many European countries thrive with higher tax rates, while South American and African economies stagnate with lower tax rates, due to a lack of education, health care, and infrastructure, which might be a good indication that the US tax rate is bordering the low side of "ideal".

On the other hand, if you give government too much money they start to waste it, such as by tearing down perfectly good sports stadiums and building new ones, at taxpayer expense. StuRat 17:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

But these things are always a statement of the bloody obvious. Without some numbers on the graph, they are utterly useless pieces of advice. You get yet another X-shaped graph - nearly all economist graphs could be the exact same diagram but with different labels on them. It has a crossover point in the middle. One curve will represnt the tax rate and the other curve the net income for the government. There is a point where these two curves intersect and that would clearly be the best place to set taxes. OK so far - blindingly obvious - but OK. The trouble is that without numbers on the axes you have no clue which side of the critical intersection point we are. If we're on one side then the prudent thing is to cut tax rates - if we are on the other side, then we should increase them. Great. But without numbers, this is just a trite statement of the obvious with ZERO practical use. If the graph had numbers - or if the curves were defined by proper formulae - then governments would be able to actually make use of this information. Instead it just provides a good excuse for republicans to cut the taxes of their rich buddies in the face of steeply increasing government debt. When science does this kind of thing you get an actual conclusion that you can apply in the real world AND IT WORKS. Without numbers it's a philosophy - not a science. SteveBaker 20:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fx auto update on linux

Does Mozilla Firefox autoupdate on GNU/Linux based computers? I always thought it does not. Am I missing something? --Kushalt 01:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - there's an option in Edit/Preferences in the Advanced/Update tab:
When updates to Firefox are found:
o Ask me what I want to do
* Automatically download and install the update
Perhaps it's not turned on by default (I forget). SteveBaker 03:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)