Humor Random Comments Thread

[jedidia]

Does anybody know a capable free software for creating tree diagrams (via UI, not from data). All I can find are mindmapping programs, and while they lend themselves very well to branching out, it seems impossible to branch together again afterwards...

 

[Loru]

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical result, but it's not the reason why we do it.

Happy birthday Richard Feynman

 

[Urwumpe]

I got my 688(i) to work on Win 7 64 after some tinkering. Sound was an issue though.

I think Dangerous Waters is already a more than good replacement... It only lacks one or two German submarines. :lol:

 

[EnjosWife]

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical result, but it's not the reason why we do it.

Happy birthday Richard Feynman

Agreed!

 

[TMac3000]

Happy birthday Richard Feynman

I have to disagree with Feynman on that quote...many couples have sex because they are trying to have children...although they certainly don't have any problem with the pleasure aspect of it

And the practical result of understanding physics is that we are better able to harness and control our environment. But there are plenty of geeks like me, who like understanding physics just for it's own sake.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Saluting a certain Sir Alex Ferguson......

 

[Athena]

2 days for the past 2 days:

1. My allergy from chicken is now sort of gone. :woohoo:
2. My computer's power supply popped and it took me 2 days to fix it. :facepalm:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

http://xkcd.com/1211/

 

[n122vu]

"Look at them, changing direction as if to avoid a predator. Just like a flock of birds."

"Uh...they're...uh....flocking this way...."

 

[Urwumpe]

"Look at them, changing direction as if to avoid a predator. Just like a flock of birds."

"Uh...they're...uh....flocking this way...."

Shouldn't we, considering modern research, change this term into "just like a flock of dinosaurs?"

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Seriously, this is the second time in just over 2 years that I fell in love with a certain airplane..... :embarrassed:

http://www.airbus.com/presscentre/pressreleases/press-release-detail/detail/first-a350-xwb-painting-completed-in-toulouse/

 

[Linguofreak]

Does anybody know a capable free software for creating tree diagrams (via UI, not from data). All I can find are mindmapping programs, and while they lend themselves very well to branching out, it seems impossible to branch together again afterwards...

My own favored tool for such things is yEd. http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html

 

[jedidia]

My own favored tool for such things is yEd. http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html

awesome! exactly what I was looking for.

 

[MattBaker]

Wait, if we would see the supernova of Betelgeuse in tomorrow's sky it actually exploded before Copernicus, Kepler and Newton were even born and while England and France fought the longest series of conflicts in known history?

So we're actually not searching for exoplanets, but for exoplanets that were at this place a few decades or centuries ago.
Given that mankind advanced from hunters and gatherers to guys sitting infront of machines and typing texts about spaceflight and astronomy into these machines while the texts get sent around the globe in less than a second it seems more and more unlikely to me that there will be aliens, who might have been hunters and gatherers a few millennia back, interested into this specific section of space in exactly this century.

I just destroyed any sci-fi stories for me in less than 15 minutes...

 

[Pipcard]

I am always fascinated by alien geometries.

 

[jedidia]

I just destroyed any sci-fi stories for me in less than 15 minutes...

Arthur C. Clarke already formulated these thoughts some time ago in his "angels or apes"-hypothesis (so called because he said that if we'd ever meet aliens, they'd be so far advanced to seem like angels, or so far behind to still be in the "ape-stage" (or whatever their equivalent of a proto-human) of evolution).
It didn't stop him from writing Science fiction stories, though...

It's mostly a problem for space opera of course, but they're finding ways around it. Mass Effect for example turned its solution of the problem right into the main plot. A very conventional approach is also a "seeding race" that created the following races within a close timeframe. That at least gives you a common point to start evolution, and many SF shows (e.g. Star Trek) use it as an excuse to have all bipedal mammalian aliens with rubber foreheads that don't need expensive CGI and extends the range of potential romantic couplings...

 

[Artlav]

If a tree falls on a Moon and no one is standing on the ground to hear it, does it make a sound?

 

[TMac3000]

If a tree falls on a Moon and no one is standing on the ground to hear it, does it make a sound?

Only in Star Wars

 

[Quick_Nick]

Only in Star Wars

But is it really a moon?

 

[TMac3000]

But is it really a moon?

Yes, but it has an incomplete-looking battle station orbiting it