Posts by IDoNotThinkSo 158 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jul 2011
Surely to draw the middle of the pack you should be using some sort of non-parametric estimation for the density of the points and then calculating a 50% contour...?
You could then draw the axes through the centroid of this and turn it into the crosshairs of doom.
Of course, however you present it, it is still nonsense (tm).
All art is 'borrowed' to some extent.
I think Williams acknowledged Korngold, and he can hardly do otherwise of Steiner (an early film composer) and ultimately Wagner for the leitmotif idea. The rest (Prokofiev, Walton, Holst, Dvorak, etc) aren't around to complain...
Brahms was told that he'd ripped off Beethoven in his 1st Symphony and his only response was "Any ass can see that". That doesn't mean it isn't worth listening to.
Almost all of John Williams scores are derived from classical or earlier works.
That isn't unusual for composers though, and as long as you do it well, nobody really cares. I'm getting downvoted below for suggesting he "steals", which of course he does, but in a good way.
For instance, listen to the "Cloud City" theme in Empire Strikes Back, then the opening violin solo in the Sibelius Violin Concerto. You'll find Holst, Stravinsky and Walton in the original film, too.
:-)
Fair point, but...
A sharp bend after an 80km+ straight? Especially just after exiting a tunnel. A bit odd, don't you think?
The carriages clearly did separate. There have been a number of other derailments of high speed trains where the carriages stayed coupled and entire, and there was little or no loss of life. This was obviously in a dangerous environment (concrete cutting) but they look (from pictures, not tabloid reports) to have come apart very easily. Looks like the resuts you would get running a commuter train at HST speeds.
And quite obviously there was no working automatic protection...
Have you tried flying a quad in a 30 knot wind whilst your boat is going up and down in an 8m swell? Good luck with that. I also suspect you'd get motion sickness in about 5 seconds.
Of course, you might have been joking.
This is the kind of thing you need, but it might take a few goes...
http://www.rockrun.com/products/Beta-Clip-Stick-Extra-Long-18ft.html
Really? Define "waste of money".
I have a cheapo £100 weather station and it is accurate enough for me. There is no way I can put it in a suitable grass field with no trees or buildings around it, so what's the point in using a £20k one? I'm not doing it for research (and indeed, some of the expensive climate stations aren't exactly located properly, either).
The rainfall figures are pretty accurate, and it shows pressure changes during interesting events even if it isn't calibrated to the nth degree.
This looks interesting for the pollutant measurements - but not really for 'weather' as such.
I don't think it is the Home Secretary that is ever in charge, that is the problem.
Civil servants come to whoever is the current incumbent with all sort of scary stuff which frightens them into making these decisions.
The previous government were just as bad (if not worse) on the snooping, but I expected this one to tell them to sod off rather more. Sadly I was wrong. Hopefully some of the more libertarian members of the Tory party will decide to vote against.
Yes, you are right. I'm sure I saw it as colder when I checked a week or two ago. Maybe I got confused with April, which was definitely below average, but still led to a red dot on the map:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-mntp/201204.gif
My personal weather station was below average for May, though.
The 6310i was discontinued in 2005, you know? It still works perfectly as a phone, and is far better made than today's offerings (of pure phones). Probably because it was made in Germany, not China.
The N900 may not have been a proper commercial offering but its the closest thing to an open source phone you'll get. Its a shame Meego/Harmattan was binned.
I can't offer any opinion on Symbian.
Well argued response there.
Which part is incorrect?
The BBC is the largest broadcast media organisation in the UK?
It was the most active media lobbyist?
"12.53pm: Blair says the strongest lobbying from a media group during his 10-year premiership was from the BBC over the licence fee"
It lobbied against the deal?
"Cable also received lobbying from groups including the BBC, the TUC, media firm Enders, the Guardian, BT and Capital Research Management."
The BBC constantly tells people how good its output is, and how the licence fee is worth every penny? Some people don't agree yet are forced to pay for it if they want a TV?
People pay for Sky TV?
Hunt is toast, and no doubt rightly, but there is a 1000lb gorilla sitting in the corner cheering from the sidelines.
Who is the biggest media organisation in the UK? Who, according to reports of a previous PM, is the biggest and most active lobbyist? Who lobbied for the deal to be stopped and is now reporting on it in a supposedly 'neutral' capacity?
Big Brother BBC, who else.
"We must have the licence fee, because everybody loves the BBC so much that the government should force them to pay for us. Everybody hates Sky so much that they voluntarily pay ££/month to watch their totally dreadful output."
Best place for a TV is in the bin, anyway. That's where mine is.
I had a VW that cut out completely due to an overheating relay. (Relay 109 if you must know). It provided power to the computer, so when it cut out the engine cut out completely, regardless of where you were (Motorway, wherever). There were no fault codes shown because the computer was switched off before it could raise one.
Of course, once then ignition was off for a minute, it would start again and the car would behave as if nothing had happened.
Fortunately there were plenty of others who had experienced this, and posted the solution online, so I replaced it with a new one (which, funnily enough, was much better built).
Maybe cars should have redundant systems - be interesting to know what the extra expense might be.
That's an interesting point.
Loss of sea ice = no sea level rise.
Loss of land ice - we've always been told there would be sea level rise. But...if the land rises as a result, and the sea floor drops - is that really the case? As Greenland is almost entirely ice covered, and surrounded by sea, the ice will raise the sea level by displacing the sea bed upwards, by a volume close to its weight. Once in the sea, it does the same.
So if the whole of Greenland melted out, would there be any sea level rise in the long run?
This obviously wouldn't work for continents not completely (or almost completely) covered in ice, as it might be that some surrounding land sinks instead.
The desertification of the Sahel has mostly been caused by deforestation and overgrazing, not climate change. There have been periodic droughts in that region for a long time.
Similarly in China, it is deforestation that this the major problem.
Poor land use is a much bigger problem than a couple of degrees of warming.
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