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Topics - ILikePie

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Life Advice / High-school physics problem

« on: November 03, 2011, 12:02:06 pm »

I have a physics exam tomorrow and I'm not really sure how tension with acceleration works.
Say I have a figure like so:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If m1's mass is 5kg, and m2's mass is 10kg, the table and roller are frictionless, and the string's mass is 0 (Aren't high-school physics just wonderful?), how do I calculate the tension on the string?
I'm guessing it'd be something like this:

Code: [Select]

g = 10n                   (Yeah, high-school)
m2*g = 100n               (force of gravity on m2)
a = 100n/5kg = 20m/s^2    (m1's acceleration, (m2*g)/m1)
T = 100 - 20 = 80         (m2*g - a)

I'm pretty sure I'm wrong somewhere, help?

Life Advice / I need help finding the name of a short story

« on: September 26, 2011, 01:19:04 pm »

I've recently read a short story, I don't know its name, nor am I sure what language it was written in originally. I'd say it's either in English or in Spanish. It's about God and Michael having a talk. God tells Michael he's disappointed in mankind, and destroys all living things. He then gives Michael the power to recreate the world and disappears saying that there's hope when man is gone. It's also mentioned that God takes the shape of a kangaroo when he reveals himself to Michael.

Does this ring any bells? I've tried Googling a shitload of phrases in the past hour and got nothing

Life Advice / Windows XP and Partitioned USB Devices

« on: August 27, 2011, 10:33:43 am »

I recently purchased an 8GB SanDisk USB drive. I split the drive into two partitions, the first, a 2GB vfat partition, and the second, a 5.5GB btrfs partition (apparently it was only 8,000,000,000 bytes). At first I could clearly see the vfat partition under Windows, but I couldn't see btrfs one (Windows tends to show only the first partition on your disk, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't support btrfs anyway.).
After about week of constant use I tried mounting the drive under Windows again and I can't see either of the two partitions (I get the old "format device" screen). Is there a way to fix this, or maybe a way to force Windows to mount the partition?

(I'm using Windows XP Home Edition by the way)

Life Advice / Some Good Comedy Films

« on: July 12, 2011, 05:45:06 pm »

It's summer vacation and we tend to find ourselves in someone's apartment watching a movie every now and then.
So I ask you bay12, are there any good movies you've seen lately that you'd recommend to a bunch of bored little chaps? Anything mildly comedic is great, sex and/or nudity are fine, but sometimes frowned upon (depends on the crowd).

Life Advice / Give up or try again?

« on: April 27, 2011, 07:39:07 am »

Here we go again... and this time Ronnie needs some help.

I asked this girl out a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine suggested I'd try, otherwise I wouldn't have thought of it (Not because I don't like her, but because I've never asked anyone out before.). Anyway, I asked her out to see a movie, and she cancelled a day before, saying "it wouldn't work" and that "it wasn't a good time" for her.
Anyway, some time has passed, and I'm thinking of asking her out again. The same friend says I shouldn't bother, she just isn't "into" me.
So my question is, should I give up, or should I give it another try? Is this usually how things work or something?

Life Advice / Recovering a hard drive.

« on: February 10, 2011, 02:33:01 pm »

A friend asked me to take a look at his computer today, and after some messing around with it, I noticed the hard drive was broken (physically). He said he'll get a new one, and that he doesn't really care, but it left me wondering, can you recover a hard drive in such a condition?
I saw the drive and it's partitions under /dev, but I couldn't mount it, nor does "fdisk -l /dev/sda" output anything. His Windows CD said there was no drive connected when we tried to run the recovery console, and the BIOS didn't recognize it either.
So, out of curiosity, is it possible that it's physically broken? And if it is, can it be recovered?

Life Advice / Math Help

« on: October 23, 2010, 06:10:45 pm »

I'm sure I'm not the only struggling with math from time to time, and I know there are tons of brilliant chaps out here, so I thought, why not start a math thread? If you there's something you have trouble understanding, ask it here. I'll try to contribute (as much as I can, I'm just a highschool student after all), and hopefully others will too.

Anyway I'll start it off some simple highschool math, we've been doing equations with variables I believe are called 'parameters' in English. The idea is that you have a variable that is to be treated like a normal number (so you get "x = 7 - a" as an answer, 'x' being the variable you need to solve, and 'a' being the parameter).
Anyway, I'm having trouble simplifying these equations. I have something like this "a(2x + 1) = 5(1 - x)", which I needs be simplified into something like "(a - something)x = something + a". Can someone please give a brief explanation on how to do this?

Roll To Dodge / A Nameless Adventure

« on: August 14, 2010, 11:56:00 am »

I just noticed there was a whole forum hiding right under my nose, full of people I've never even seen before. Y'all must imagine how shocking this discovery is. Anyway, here's a simple adventure, as I've never done one before. I'll try to keep this entertaining (That's not so easy with a sense of humor like my own) and try not to forget about it. Here goes:

You find yourself strapped to a chair in a door-less room, there's a table with a marshmallow in the middle, and a big mirror on the wall. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling and you see no switch.

What do you do?

Other Games / Mysterious Domains that are Ancient

« on: July 28, 2010, 04:22:27 pm »

That's right, ADOM. I was browsing the roguelikes section of portage (That Gentoo's package manager), and I stumbled across this old game. I've never been any good at ADOM, but I recalled it being very fun so I went ahead and downloaded it. Aside from some TF2 All I've been doing for the past week is ADOM.

So what is it?
ADOM is a roguelike, like nethack, or crawl, but it's different in many aspects. It's as deep as nethack, or maybe even deeper in some aspects. What makes it different from your traditional roguelike is its story and closed source. That's right, it has a story. I've yet to see the actual story, or how it develops, as I haven't gotten past the first cave, but the fact that's there is nice. You can choose between 10 races and 20 classes, each specializing in something, and each race/class combination has a set of skills to go with it. The game mechanics are heavily influenced by d&d, with all dice and whatnot.

Links
The ADOM website - get the game here
The wiki - not much, but it's still a wiki
And the guidebook - this is considered the main source for spoilers

So we've got a Nethack thread, a Crawl thread, lets have an ADOM thread as well.

General Discussion / iPhone jailbreaking is now legal

« on: July 26, 2010, 03:14:11 pm »

Finally people realize that the "It's mine so I get to do whatever I want with it" statement actually works.

iPhones have the potential to be nice, pocket computers, but for some dumb reason Apple locks them up. You are forced to buy silly applications to do tasks you would normally do on a computer for free, and many of the phone's features are hidden behind that pretty ui they call a "SpringBoard." Fortunately, there is a way to fix all this though, and it's called Jailbreaking. The iPhone's firmware is modified to accept 3rd party apps Apple won't usually let you get from the app store. These include downloading and flash plugins for your browser, the gcc compiler tools (at least some them, that is), and even a terminal emulator. You can even write and run your own apps without paying a $100 developer subscription.

Up until now this was all semi legal. Yes, you payed for this piece of junk, so you do whatever you like with it, but you lose your warranty. If your device breaks, or you end 'bricking' it, nobody's going to repair it for you. Now some nice guys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation thought, "hey, that ain't fair, I thought this my device" and after a conversation with the US government, it's all suddenly legal.

Here are some articles:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/201892/us_government_iphone_jailbreaking_is_fair_use.html?tk=hp_new
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/26/library-of-congress-adds-dmca-exception-for-jailbreaking-or-root/

I'm guessing this means custom firmware in general is also legal (I don't know much about this, was it legal beforehand?).

Any thoughts on this great, world-changing event?

DF General Discussion / Running df in Linux

« on: July 17, 2010, 09:52:24 am »

I'm trying to run df natively under a new gentoo machine, and I think I'm missing something. Double clicking the file tells me it's an executable text file (a bash script), asking me if I want to view its contents, run it, or run it in a terminal. I run it in terminal, of course, but I get this error:

Code: [Select]

jdoe@Tux ~/downloads/df_linux $ ./df
./libs/Dwarf_Fortress: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL_image-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Do I need sdl in the libs directory or something? And if I do, where do i get it?

'emerge libsdl' (Downloading sdl through the package manager) does nothing.

General Discussion / From Windows to Linux, a little help please?

« on: July 11, 2010, 05:36:49 pm »

Hey forumites, it me again. It seems I too have decided to start using Linux, but I'm a little lost, and I was hoping to get some guidance from you guys. So here we go:

Choosing a distro:

I've considered using a few different distributions, each for several reasons (Note: these notes are all based on stuff I've read, this may all be false, I don't as I have never used Linux before).

- Arch: I like the idea of customization, and that the user puts the system together on his own. From I've heard, after installing Arch your system looks exactly like you want it to, you won't find anything you didn't install. The package manager, Packman, looks kind of limited to me, though, that my be because I'm comparing it the APT and Aptitude I've got on my iPhone.

- Gentoo: Looking to use this for the same reasons as Arch, customization is one of the main reasons I want to use Linux. Gentoo is more mature than Arch is, and the package manager sounds like it's better than Packman in many aspects. They say it's harder to install than Arch, but it sounds to me that (and the lack of APT

) is its only downside.

- Debian/Ubuntu: Mainly for APT, from what I read this monster has the largest amount of packages, and is very popular. Ubuntu looks like Debian with tonnes of crap installed, it's also what I have installed at the moment. Ubuntu is seems locked up, the developers put a lot of thought into making this an idiot safe distro, and I can't really do anything without getting a message saying I can harm my system. Debian doesn't look very customizable, but its APT is a huge plus.

That about it, three and half distros (Ubuntu being the half), I'd like to get some assistance in picking one, as I have yet to make up my mind. Once again, these notes are only based on assumptions, random articles and hearsay. Aside from five minutes with Ubuntu, I've never used Linux in my life.

Next up, using and installing.

Actually moving over to Linux:

After I've chosen my distro, comes the installing part. I know this part is pretty straightforward, and there are many tutorials on how to install x, but I've found myself in what looks to me like a painful predicament. The hard drive I'm trying to install on used to have Windows on it, and I had no way of formatting it, I had this Ubuntu CD lying around, so I figured, why not install Ubuntu and format from there? Ubuntu wiped the drive clean, but it brought right back to where I started, it installed itself (of course) and, due to its locked nature, I can't do anything with it. I can't split the disk into two partitions, format, or whatever. So my question is, how do I format this dammed thing, and keep it formatted?

Now that's all done and over with, I'd like to know if there is anything one has to know before moving to Linux. Believe it or not, but this pie ain't as computer illiterate as it seems. I consider myself an "above average" Windows user, I don't know the system inside out, but I'm not completely lost when it comes to navigating away from the desktop. I'm an avid user of the Windows command prompt, and I've had the chance to use bash before as well, though that was on a darwin based OS (Apple's iOS to precise). I vaguely know what the file system looks like, because it is also present on the iPhone. Is there anything else I should learn/read before moving to Linux?

Wow, that's probably the longest post I've ever written anywhere. I would really like to get some help on this topic, mainly on the part about choosing a distro (They all sound so perfect). Hopefully this makes enough sense for people to be able to provide some help.

DF Adventure Mode Discussion / This guy really wants the competion gone

« on: June 18, 2010, 08:12:00 am »

So I fall asleep in some town hall, and when I wake up I notice the whole town inside. I look around and notice there's a demon sitting by a table, chatting to some guy. So ok, cool, this town is governed by a demon and all. I ask him for quest and he tell to kill some dragon. I start recruiting some chaps, and I see warlord too. I ask him for a quest, and he tells me to kill the demon.

I have a feeling the elections are coming up, and that the poor warlord really wants to win this time.

General Discussion / Comics

« on: June 05, 2010, 06:04:55 am »

I just learned that my iPod Touch makes a great comic reader, and decided to start reading these (digital) magazines more avidly. I'm currently reading through Moore's Watchmen series, and oh god is it great. Combination of incredible art and great writing go together very very well.

What do you guys think about comics, which do/did you read, what did you think about them, and what do recommend? (Manga included)

General Discussion / iPod Touch, 2G or 3G?

« on: May 07, 2010, 04:10:43 pm »

My father is in the US this week and I figured I'd have him get me an iPod while he's at it. They sell for half the price in the US compare to what they sell for here in 'the land of milk and honey.' So here's the dilemma, which of the two generations should I get? The 2G has a 16gig version, which is what I'm looking for, and the 3G has only 32 or 8gigs. The 32 is a bit too expensive, and eight gigs are too little. I also plan on Jailbreaking the device (Not for any illegal/pirate purposes of course, only to enjoy the wonders of 3rd party apps and whatever), and I hear the 3G has a sort of 'tethered' OS thing to it, so if it shuts off, I can't reboot it without my computer.

So my question is, what does the 32gig 3rd generation iPod have that the 2nd 16gig one doesn't, and are those features worth an extra hundred dollars?