Monthly Archive for August, 2005

Hell: The complete story

Published
by
Anton
on August 30, 2005
in Humor
. 0 Comments


The following is an actual question given on a
University of Washington chemistry mid-term.    The
answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it
with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have
the pleasure of enjoying it as well.  B Bonus Question: Is Hell
exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law
(gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some
variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we
need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate
at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a
soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering
Hell, let’s look at the different Religions that exist in the world
today.
Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their
religion, you will go to Hell.  Since there is more than one of these
religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we
can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as
they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase
exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s
Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to
stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls
are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase
until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in
Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes
over.
So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year
that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take
into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number
2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has
already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it
follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore,
extinct, leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine
being which explains  why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my
God."

Mr Honda

Published
by
Anton
on August 30, 2005
in Humor
. 0 Comments

Mr Honda of the Honda
Motorcycle Corporation died and went to
heaven for judgment.

At the gates, St. Peter told him, "since you’ve been such a good
man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is, you can
hang out with anyone you want in Heaven."

Mr Honda thought about it for a minute and then said, "I want to
hang out with God. I have a question for Him."

St. Peter took Mr Honda to the Throne Room and introduced him to God.

Mr. Honda then asked God, "Aren’t you the inventor of women?"


God Said, "Ah, yes. Indeed I am".

"Well," said Mr Honda, "Professional to professional, you have
some
major design flaws in your design;

1- There’s too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusion.

2- It chatters constantly at high speeds.

3- Most of the rear ends are too soft and have excessive wobble.

4- The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust.

5- Plus the monthly down time and aggravation are outrageous,
and I don’t even wanna start talking about the maintenance costs.

"Hmmmm, you do raise some good points" replied God, "Lets have a

wee look."

God went to his Celestial super computer, typed in a few things and
waited for the results.

After a moment God said, "Well, it may be true that my invention
seems to be flawed, but according to these numbers, more men are riding
my invention than yours."

Use an open wifi network = criminal offence

Published
by
Anton
on August 1, 2005
in Blogging and News
. 0 Comments

The bbc has a story on the first criminal prosecution in the UK for using an unsecured wifi network.

This is quite scary, as I have used wifi networks i found to browse the net when bored. This is now an offence, and as windows automatically connects to wifi networks i may have even used them accidentally!

Of course you should always secure your wireless network, but now you cannot use one you find. What about free wifi networks? If I set up a wifi network in a public area, I would think about setting up open access with a restricted bandwidth so that anyone with a wifi pda or similar can use it. It costs me nothing, so why not allow others to get the internet on the move, but how do you tell if an open network is deliberate or not.

Backing up and Syncing Files

Published
by
Anton
on August 1, 2005
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

I keep all my documents in a folder together, and back them up occasionally using rsync to a remote server. I do the same with my digital photos, so that if my hard drive ever crashes (won’t be the first time) then I won’t lose all my data and photos.

 This works fine with one machine and a remote server. But what if you have two machines you work from, eg a laptop and desktop or home and work/uni. Rsync cannot tell if a file has been deleted or is new, so you cannot use it to sync files across two machines where files could change on either.

Unison solves this problem. Available free under the GPL for both linux and windows in both command line and gui versions.

With unison on both machines, it tracks which files are in your directories, so when you delete one, it knows that it should probably be deleted from the other one. It seems to handle conflicts quite well (prompting the user to make the decision).

 So now I have my documents across 2 machines, and backed up to a server. I do not have to worry about copying them anywhere, so long as i run Unison occasionally. Any new document I write can easily be copied to my other computer by simply updating on each computer. I can even add this to a script that runs every week or every day, and then the files will only be out by a day if I do nothing more!