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Pentium100

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Blog Comments posted by Pentium100

  1. "Tip for Hollywood: tv and movies are usually more interesting when consequences are realistic."

    Not necessarily, it really depends on the movie IMO. It's like when the hero has a gun with a bottomless magazine. Sometimes it does not make sense, but sometimes it's fun to watch him mow down all the bad guys using full-auto fire.

    Let's say the creators want the bad guy or whoever to survive "impossible odds" - there's a fight near some cliff, the hero punches the villain in the face an he falls to the water below. There's no body found and later we ind out that the villain actually survived (but maybe was crippled by his injuries) and now there's another confrontation.

    In "realistic mode" the fight would take place somewhere else, something else would happen to the bad guy to make it look like he was dead when he wasn't. But, you know, fights in high places with steep cliffs are cool to watch.

    • Brohoof 1
  2. Fashion trends were made for exactly this reason - panned obsolescence. If they made clothes that would wear out quickly, people would stop buying from that company, but if they managed to convince the people to just "update" to "keep up", all is good, since now people want to do it themselves. 

    This applies not only to clothes, but other things as well - cars, cell phones etc. That's the reason why the new thing has to look different from the old thing - so that everyone would easily see who's "outdated".

    • Brohoof 2
  3. 6 hours ago, Spooky Brony 42 said:

    But the reality is time is money. If they take 6 more months to make a game, how much more money is that, and how much does that add to the cost? Is a $60 game now $60.50 or $70? There are busness people and investors that care abou the money. Money is very important.

    Of course they care about money an want to exploit the workers as much as possible. I have read somewhere (I do not have the link) that before the Civil War in the US employees in the North were treated as badly or even worse than the slaves in the South. The reason being that a slave is like factory equipment - if one dies you have to spend a lot of money to buy another one, while if an employee dies, you can just hire another one. Not that I would support slavery, just an example of how bad things can be. 

    However, this is where the government has to come in and have worker protection, for example, an upper limit on overtime. For example, in my country, all employees get at least 20 working days of paid vacation (employer can give more, but not less), unlimited "sick days" (how are you supposed to limit how many days you are sick?). There are limits to working time and minimum times between shifts. 

    And yes, with the worker protection, a game company would make less money, but maybe we, as a society, should care about the health and well-being of the people more than making sure that a company can extract every last cent of profit from its employees.

    • Brohoof 1
  4. 6 hours ago, Spooky Brony 42 said:

    The reason game development needs deadlines is simply because all businesses need deadlines.

    The deadlines have to be realistic though, no forced overtime for weeks because the deadline was unrealistic - again. However, this, IMO, is mainly the failure of the government to provide adequate worker protection.

    I can understand some sort of an emergency (server got hacked or has crashed, we need to fix the bug and restore everything) requiring people to work overtime etc, but this should not be "usual" or "expected".

    6 hours ago, Spooky Brony 42 said:

    But what's harder: working at a computer, or doing construction 84 hours a week?

    Both are hard in different ways.

    • Brohoof 2
  5. 2 hours ago, Justin_Case001 said:

    Now, if those things aren't a concern, and it's just me and Jim's best friend who asks me point blank, and I know that that friend isn't a bigoted jerk, then it's kind of a tougher call.

    Maybe the person who asked you is a bit bigoted, but will not beat Jim up, instead just laugh at him or tell everyone that Jim is gay, which may result in the information reaching his parents, boss etc - people that Jim was most worried about finding out. He still may not be beaten up, but it may damage his relationships with those people and he would be very upset that you betrayed his confidence.

    2 hours ago, Justin_Case001 said:

    Surely there's some combination of words that would do the trick.

    You are either lying or you betray his confidence. Maybe his reason for not wanting everyone to know is stupid, but it is still his reason and his decision, not yours. I do not think anybody is going to ask you "Do you think X is gay?" about every one of your friends. The question itself means that whoever is asking has suspicions about "Jim" being gay and if you definitely know that his is gay, saying anything else ("no", "I don't know for sure, but I don't think so" etc) is a lie, because you do know.

    What is worse is that Jim may know about your dislike of secrets and not tell you, but then later you find out the truth by yourself (or from someone else) and now have to keep a secret without a prior agreement.

    2 hours ago, Justin_Case001 said:

    I couldn't really be friends with anyone keeping harming secrets anyway.  I just can't have those sorts of people in my life, so destroying the friendship is a moot point.  The weight on my conscious would be worse.

    1) how would you know?
    2) what would be your opinion about "Jim" if he lied to you and said that he was not gay? Maybe he did it because he knew about your dislike of secrets. Let's assume Jim would not be beaten up if people knew, just that he does not want people to know. Maybe he thinks he'll be ridiculed for it (nobody knows if it would happen or not, but he is afraid of it) etc.

    What about company or state secrets? Just like with the example above, it is sometimes possible to figure out the truth based on "can neither confirm nor deny" and similar answers, because normally people do not say that.

    I think the Babylon 5 episode "Rumors, bargains and lies" (S04E13) is kind-of fitting this topic. 

  6. Quote

    Knowing that a given person will never lie to you, nor you to them, is deeply profound, and is absolutely vital for a truly connected, healthy relationship.

    Except that you can never know that. If someone says "I swear to all that is holy to never ever lie to you", how do you know you can believe them?

    Pure honesty may work in some very limited situations between like-minded people, but you can be taken advantage of very easily. 

    Quote

    Here's an example: let's say I have a gay friend who's still in the closet, and they come out to me, but they ask me not to tell anyone else because they're not ready nor comfortable.  No problem.

    If I ask you directly if that person is gay, it means I already suspect him of being gay  If you say "no" or "I don't know, we never talked about this", I might believe you, if you say "none of your business" or "I cannot confirm or deny" it's as good as confirming it. So, your options are to either lie and protect the privacy of your friend or avoid outright lying and betray your friend.

    This is the problem of trying speak like a politician to not technically lie.

    Quote

    You wanna tell me that you're cheating on your partner, or you've gambled away your life savings and are hiding it from your partner?  No, I can't and won't keep that secret. 

    And if you tell the partner this, they both will hate you for it, because they will see you as the trigger that destroyed their relationship. Better keep silent and let their relationship fall part on its own (or maybe it won't), because in that case you will not destroy your friendship with them.

    Quote

    Lying to spare someone's feelings can be tempting, and it may seem compassionate, but it only establishes that the person can never truly be trusted to give an honest opinion.  Lies, even the most well-intended, create needless complications and potential hurt feelings.

    And yet, saying the honest truth may upset the person too much and may cause them to do something stupid. Especially if the person does not share your belief about honesty and may think that what you say is you trying to make it better (so, the "truth" must be even worse).

    • Brohoof 1
  7. 1 hour ago, Justin_Case001 said:

      I realize that bad news gets more clicks and more attention

    Yes. There are no news in "plane takes off and goes to the destination with no problems" and "school xyz did not have anything bad happen in 10 years".

    TV and especially the internet shrinks the world. Even 150 years ago, new traveled slow and 10000 years ago it was even slower. You basically only found out about something if it happened in your town or village or if it was something really significant. Our brains are evolved to handle this, not TV. However, now I can easily find out about events that happened 10000km away from me in a place that I'll probably never visit. Logically, I understand that, say, a school shooting in the US has zero relevance to my life and to the lives and safety of the people around me. However, it still feels like it happened "someplace near", maybe a school near me.

    1 hour ago, Justin_Case001 said:

    The encouraging statistics don't capture and hold our attention the way images of grieving parents of dead school children does.

    Because it is much more important to remember that one member of your tribe got eaten by a bear in this forest than the fact that you and your tribe went to this forest thousands of times without meeting a bear or that more people were eaten in the past and actually the forest is getting safer. It does not matter - it is still dangerous.

  8. It's an annoying premise, but at least in some cases it makes sense. The character may be shy or nobody would believe him anyway. For example, Twilight in EG probably did not want to attract too much attention to herself, since she did not have proper documents or anything. Celestia may not have believed that the crown belonged to her etc.

    However, in some cases it does not make sense and it is annoying, just like other plot holes or stupid actions (villain has the hero thrown in some death trap instead of shooting him in the head etc). 

    • Brohoof 1
  9. 52 minutes ago, Splashee said:

    There is a horse fence not to far from where I live where someone has put a clip-on led light to blink when the high voltage spike happens. No one really says how such devices work, as there is no current going through, when the clip on doesn't put itself in series with the horse fence!

    There are two ways this works.

    1. Any time you see two conductors separated by an insulator - it's a capacitor. Some of them are very low value, but it is there. For example - any cable is also a capacitor. Most of the time the value is irrelevant, but sometimes it is actually important - for example, let's say there is a radio tuner or whatever that has a line level output, which has 100K output impedance. You connect it to an amplifier which has 1M input impedance and everything should be good, right? Well, at worst the level will be a bit lower. And it turns out that you get sound that lacks high frequencies, the reason being that the cable used has 200pF capacitance which forms a low pass filter with the output impedance of the source. So, a LED (or a neon bulb) connected at one end to a high voltage source can have enough current passing through it just because the other end forms a 0.1pF or whatever capacitor to ground.

    2. Kind-of related to the first one, but sometimes you can just have very strong electromagnetic fields that would induce enough current in a LED or a fluorescent light to turn it on. You can see this happen under high voltage power lines or near a tesla coil.

    This is also how a neon bulb based live tester works (the one that looks like a screwdriver). It has a neon bulb and a large value resistor in it, you stick it in an outlet and sometimes need to touch a piece of metal on the other end. Your body forms a capacitor with ground and there's just enough current (some microamps) to make the neon bulb glow. If the bulb glows you know it's live.

     

    52 minutes ago, Splashee said:

    My confusion comes from people repairing CRTs, and removing that cup using a screwdriver.

    Net time look carefully and you should see the screwdriver connected by a wire to a ground wire on the outside of the CRT. This way, if there is high voltage present on the wire, it will be shorted to ground.

    A CRT is a capacitor. Someone figured out that if you coat the outside of a CRT with some graphite coating (called aquadag, probably a brand name) and inside with conductive paint, you get a capacitor with the glass of the CRT acting as the insulator. This capacitor is used to smooth out the EHT and you don't need a separate high voltage capacitor for that. This means that even if the TV is off, there could be a charge there and there is some weird effect where if you discharge it and leave it unconnected, it can "charge itself" - probably because the glass was under high voltage for so long, some of the charge migrated inside it and takes a while to migrate back to the surface. Which is why if you disconnect the anode cap, leave the CRT shorted. A lot of the time you don't need to disconnect the anode cap though.

    There is usually a wire (or multiple) attached to the outside of a CRT, usually with springs, this is the second connection of the capacitor. 

    I remember one shango066 (good channel, he diagnoses and repairs various old TVs and radios and explains how the circuit should work etc instead of just recapping the TV or whatever) had some weird problem with a TV and it turned out that somebody painted the outside of the CRT with regular paint, instead of the conductive coating, meaning there was no capacitor and he had to connect a separate one.

    52 minutes ago, Splashee said:

    find a ground to connect it to, and always uses Safety Ground (the green-yellow wire) in their closest found electric socket, which is like.... Hmmm?

    That's a bit wrong. Connecting one end of a CRT to the ground in in a power outlet doesn't do anything at best and makes it more dangerous at worst. Let's say I connect the anode pin to Safety Ground and the CRT develops a charge - well, now the entire outside of it is at some kilovolts with respect to ground - much easier to get zapped.

    52 minutes ago, Splashee said:

    If I had a light bulb, and put one end of its socket to the live wire of any non-paid-for outdoor cable, and then just put the other end of its socket directly into the soil (ground), would I get free electricity (as well as being electrocuted of course), or would that blew a fuse to protect me because that is trying to drive something though "Safety Ground" (or joined PE, you know, 4 cord distribution line where Ground and Neutral share the 4th wire)?

    You would get free electricity and then a fine when someone sees you do that. Ground fault relays (they ave various names) are used in buildings. They work by measuring the current of both the phase and neutral (or all three phases and neutral), under normal circumstances, the currents should balance out. If they don't, it means the current is going somewhere else, for example though someone and into a water pipe. They work if you touch a live wire and something grounded, but if you grab live and neutral, then the relay will see it as "normal". Power lines do not have ground fault relays, at least I don't think so, it would mean lots of false positives that disconnect power for the entire neighborhood.

    • Brohoof 1
  10. 6 hours ago, Splashee said:

    So the beam width is staying the same no matter the resolution on real CRT monitors?

    Yes, the beam width is dependent on the tube itself and how well the focus is adjusted. I made some photos with a microscope

    This is how it looks at 192x1200 (the only important number here is the second one):

    http://www.pentium100.com/scr/1200.jpg

    This is how it looks at 1280x800:

    http://www.pentium100.com/scr/800.jpg

    As you can see there are tiny gaps between the lines

    And this is how it looks at 640x480:

    http://www.pentium100.com/scr/480.jpg

    Here gaps are larger and actually visible. Also, in this resolution, it looks like the convergence is a bit out (red, green and blue do not line up), but in practice it is impossible to see that, the difference is probably 0.05mm - 0.1mm and not possible to see without the microscope or a 10x magnifying glass.

     

    7 hours ago, Splashee said:

    I am quite good at working with 230VAC (by not working on it live)

    Adjustments (sometimes diagnosing too) have to be done with the device on and usually warmed up. I have a big isolation transformer in case I need to, say, measure the hot side of a power supply with an oscilloscope etc.

     

    11 hours ago, Splashee said:

    I am missing the actual understatement of "ground" and "grounded"

    Electric current can only flow in a circuit - it cannot go from point A to point B with no return path (unlike, say, a bullet). So, to get zapped by electricity, you have to touch two wires to form a circuit. 

    Voltage is the potential difference, for example a 12V battery will have 12V difference between its positive and negative terminals. However, out of convenience, one of the points in the circuit is chosen as reference (which, by definition is at 0V potential) and all the voltages of the other points are referenced to it. 

    Ground (the dirt outside) is conductive. It is sometimes used as the return path and you only need one wire for the power. Ground (dirt) is not as good conductor as a wire though, its resistance depends on the composition, how wet or dry it is etc, so for higher power lines actual neutral wires are used.

    In theory, you can have a power line that is completely isolated from the ground. In practice it's not a good idea because the wires and dirt form a capacitor that can get charged to very high voltages (due to lightning strikes etc). To avoid this, the neutral wire is grounded at the substation. Yeah, there is a metal bar driven into the ground and neutral wire is connected to it.

    So, basically, ground means the reference point or return path. 

    How does it apply to safety. A battery is not connected to the ground and its voltage is only between its terminals. On the other hand, mains voltage is connected to the ground, so there is voltage between the live wire and anything else grounded (the ground outside, metal water pipes etc), so while you need to touch both terminals of the battery to maybe get zapped (if the voltage is high enough), you only need to touch the live wire, because you may be already touching something else grounded.

    I mentioned an isolation transformer to work on power supplies - what it does is disconnect the device from ground, so now there is no voltage between any point of the device and ground, so it is 1) safer to touch with one hand and 2) safe to be measured with a grounded oscilloscope (otherwise I would just short out the supply trying to measure something or would need an expensive differential probe).

    A good example is the electric fence - when you touch it, you form a circuit between the wire and dirt, so you get zapped. If you wear good rubber boots or stand on a plastic bucket, you won't get zapped.

    As you can see, the people standing on insulators do not get zapped until the last one completes the circuit between the wire and ground.

    This is for lower voltage (230V). For high voltage, say, the 20kV anode voltage in a TV (or spark plug wires), there is an additional challenge - at that voltage, not everything that appears to be an insulator actually is one. Such voltage can jump though a few mm of air and it can most definitely go through multiple layers of electrical tape, so you have to be even more careful because you may get zapped even if you touch the wire insulation instead of the bare wire. For example, a screwdriver with plastic handle is usually only rated for 1kV, so good enough for mains voltage, not good enough for 22kV.

    On the other hand, the 22kV in a TV is only in the fat wire going from the flyback to the CRT. There is also the focus voltage (about 2kV) going to the neck board, but it is also somewhat contained. Everywhere else is 500V or lower. Don't touch those parts when the TV is on.

    • Brohoof 1
  11. 8 hours ago, Splashee said:

    Basically, scanlines are visible if the aspect ratio of the screen mode needs too much spacing between scanlines.

    It's not because of the aspect ratio, but resolution.

    The beam width has to be as narrow as possible to get clear image at maximum resolution the monitor supports (bad focus = blurry image), if I need to adjust the focus on one of my monitors I use a strong magnifying glass to get it as possible. However, let's say you have a monitor that has screen size of 40cm x 30cm (50cm diagonal or 19.7") and supports maximum 1600x1200 resolution.

    At the maximum resolution, you get 1200 lines in 30cm or 40 lines/cm). If you switch it to 640x480 (still 4:3 aspect ratio), you get 480 lines in 30cm or 16lines/cm. The lines have to be narrow enough so that 40 of them fit in 1cm, so when you have 16lines/cm, you have gaps between them.

    8 hours ago, Splashee said:

    My Sony Trinitron TV is very blurry

    You should try adjusting the focus, but you have to be very careful doing it, since you can get zapped. Put some image with very narrow lines on the screen and adjust the focus potentiometer to get the most narrow lines. There may be other faults, but I would try focus first. 

    But yeah, only displaying one field will result in gaps between scan lines.

    • Brohoof 1
  12. A lot of people only see the positive side and not the negative side for anything. I would not want to move to Equestria (either G4 or G5) too, no way. Even if I was able to take all of mu stuff with me, it would still suck. A lot. 

    Imagine moving to another country IRL, either with or without your stuff and being unable to ever return to your home country. That's what moving to Equestria would be. 

    By the way, ponies in both G4 and G5 are quire racist, would they accept a human? OK, let's say you get turned into a pony (which is another issue entirely, for example, I am rather fond of having hands), you would still be an alien to them. 

    To be fair, pretty much any fictional universe would be a bad place to live for one reason - any movie or TV show (barring a few pure slice-of-life shows like Lucky Star) would be boring without villains, threat to existence and so on. Would you want to live in a place where some villain tries to take over the world every so often? Just see what the ponies had to endure in the G4 show.

  13. The scanlines as such only show up for monitors (or TVs) where the focus is very good (the beam is narrow) operating at lower resolutions. For example - using a monitor, capable of 1280x1024 at 640x480. Unlike a LCD (or Plasma), a CRT monitor can display different resolutions without scaling, but for it to be able to display high resolution, the beam with has to be small. If such monitor is used to display low resolution images, the "pixels" become bigger than the beam and you get this weird "scanline" look.

    I can't see the scanlines on my monitor operating at 1920x1200. I can see them on a small TV, but only from up close (then again, the TV may need a focus adjustment).

    • Brohoof 1
  14. So, am I allowed to buy plastic-based magnetic tape and plastic reels? Paper and acetate tapes suck, that's why they have not been made for a long time. Metal reels are cool, but expensive.

    Anyway, it's interesting how things come around. When my country broke away from the USSR, people were still poor and did things like wash and reuse the thin clear plastic bags to save money (and others were laughing at them) - now this would be considered "eco-friendly". Similar with reusing gift bags, especially on Christmas. While I do not remember seeing confetti used at a party (yeah, why would you create more mess to have to clean later?), I remember using confetti as a "firework" when I was too young to be allowed real fireworks.

    Still, some items are single-use - nobody is going to wash and reuse the bag they used to collect after their dog. The problem with the plastic in the ocean is not single-use items, but the fact that in some places and to some people it is apparently perfectly acceptable to thrash trash in a river. If I throw away a plastic item in a garbage can, it should not end up in the ocean.

    • Brohoof 1
  15. He should pay (or work) to repair Sunny's house. Maybe something like prison is not needed for him, but he still has to own up to the damage he caused. 

    However, his question "was I a good Sheriff?" may show that he is not sorry for his actions. He may be sorry that he "got caught" and that almost killed his mother, but I am not completely convinced he is sorry for what he did.

     

    28 minutes ago, Merry Brony 42 said:

    It's kind of weird how dictators get punished, when most of a society enabled that behavior.

    Large groups of people are rather stupid (even if individuals are smart) and a competent dictator can take advantage of it. At some point, once the dictator solidifies his power it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to do anything about it - for example, quite a lot of people hated Stalin, but nobody could really do anything about it. 

    • Brohoof 2
  16. It has to be science in the fictional world. Obviously the laws of physics work differently in that universe and allow for what we call "magic", but to the characters it is just another branch of science.

    Someone had to create each spell and teach them to others (or write them down). Some spells may have been created by accident (just like some inventions in the real world were created almost by accident), but the more complicate spells had to be created on purpose as a result of research. 

    If you can write it down and teach it to others, then it means the spell is consistent in its results. If the spell results are completely arbitrary depending on the ingredients used (A, B, C, D, E, F,G gives you what you want, but replacing E with H results in something completely different), then nobody would really be able to figure out anything other than the simplest spells. So, IMO, it means that the spells are not completely arbitrary and you can "refine" them to get the desired results. Sounds like science to me.

    On 2021-12-02 at 2:49 AM, Merry Brony 42 said:

    People pick easy things like fireballs. But what about time travel, or duplication, or raise dead?

    The laws of physics work differently in the fictional universe. Also, raising the dead could probably be achieved as part of reducing entropy (rebuilding their cell etc). Science fiction shows also have time travel or raising the dead and those are usually "explained" by some kind of technobabble.

    On 2021-12-02 at 2:49 AM, Merry Brony 42 said:

    Are you saying making dishes dirty decreases entropy?

    Washing dishes increases overall entropy (because of the second law), id discord can "undo" the process, he would reduce entropy. If he just puts new dirt on the dishes, then no.

    • Brohoof 2
  17. 21 minutes ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    So if we were in a car and you said, "Stop at the next rest stop." Then I drive past it, and you say, "Why didn't you stop?" I say, "Because that was this stop. The next one is the next stop."

    And yet, with days it's different. Maybe it's because you can go to the previous stop, but you cannot go to the previous day, which means that "this Sunday" is the one closest to us (in the future). Unless the context shows that the person is talking about the past "I went fishing this Tuesday". 

    21 minutes ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    If something is flashing and making noise then it sure sounds on to me!

    "Breaking news! Terrorists have placed a bomb in an airport and it went on, killing 20 people".
    "In other news, a guy was attempting to clean his gun, but neglected to unload it, the gun went on, thankfully, nobody was killed".

    Apparently, the dictionary disagrees with you. 

     

    The problem is that you are trying to analyze a language as if it was a computer code or something. This does not work. Human languages evolved over many years, nobody set out to create "the English language" or "the Lithuanian language", then spent some time creating all the words, grammar, syntax. After that, went on teaching people how to speak. Languages evolved slowly and organically. That's why there are lots of exceptions to every rule and why some combination of words means something different than the words mean separately. 

    "After a power failure, my alarm turned on and then went off in the middle of the night." 

    Though I guess you could always learn Lojban and only communicate using it, though you won't find many Lojban-speakers.

  18. 2 hours ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    For example, today is Friday. If I say "next Saturday" then that means tomorrow. But for some reason people think that it means 8 days from now.

    "Next Saturday" (at least how it works in my native language) is the one a week later. Tomorrow is "this Saturday", basically the Saturday in the future that is closes is "this" and the one after that is "next". 

    I can program too. The difference is that the computer is stupid and can only follow instructions exactly (it does what I say, not what I want). People can infer meaning from context. By the way, as far as I know, Japanese language uses a lot of context, for example pronouns are infrequently used if they can be inferred from context.

     

    2 hours ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    Or the fact that people say an alarm went "off" when it is clearly on.

    To "go off" means "explode" or "make a loud sound",or "go bad" (applies to food). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/go off

    The alarm can go off, so can a bomb or a gun.

    OTOH, learning these (English is not my native language) in school was not very fun. 

    2 hours ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    Does "not" apply to "drink" only, or "drive" as well? How do I know?

    Well, let's try:

    1. I do not (drink and drive).

    Means the person does not drive while drinking or does not drive after drinking.

    2. I do (not drink) and drive.

    Means the person does not drink while driving.

    So, both version mean the same

     

    By the way, in math and computer programming, parentheses show what should be evaluated first. In normal text, they pretty much show the opposite - part of text which is non-essential and can be skipped. For example - taken from Wikipedia article about vacuum tubes: 

    Quote

    Many early radio sets had a third battery called the "C battery" (unrelated to the present-day C cell, for which the letter denotes its size and shape). The C battery's positive terminal was connected to the cathode of the tubes (or "ground" in most circuits) and whose negative terminal supplied this bias voltage to the grids of the tubes.

    The parts in parentheses are explanations, but the sentences make sense without them. 

    Quote

    Many early radio sets had a third battery called the "C battery". The C battery's positive terminal was connected to the cathode of the tubes and whose negative terminal supplied this bias voltage to the grids of the tubes.

    Still makes sense, but the author decided to include an explanation that the "C battery" is not related to the C battery size and that the C battery may be connected to the "ground", not just directly to the cathode or that in most circuits the cathodes are connected to ground anyway.

    2 hours ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    I like to put parentheses in my sentences and treat them like the distributive property.

    So, how do you pronounce them when talking?

    2 hours ago, Thankful Brony 42 said:

    So they could correctly say, "I drink and drive" because they mean: "I drink. I drive. But not at the same time."

    Yes, and that is the basis of some jokes etc. I can also say "I drink and drive", meaning I drink something non-alcoholic and drive. However, "everybody knows" what the common meaning of the phrase "drink and drive" is - driving while drunk.

    The main difference between normal language and computer programming is that you have to be absolutely exact with a computer. Every semicolon has to be in its place or the computer won't understand the code. However, when talking with people, if the other person did not understand something, he can just ask you to clarify. This basically works like error correction in data transfers, with the added bonus of compression. 

    "I don't drink and drive" could be expanded to "I do not drive while under the influence of alcohol" or "I do not drive while my blood alcohol concentration is above the legal limit", but the first one is much easier to say and people understand you just as well. Similar can be said about "I don't drink" - technically it's "I do not drink alcohol", but since drinking (not alcohol) is essential for living, everybody understands the first version just fine. I guess an alien who does not need to drink any liquid would have to be explicit and say "I do not drink anything" or "I do not drink any liquid - alcoholic or not", but since you are far more likely to encounter humans (who need to drink liquids), the short version can be used and not lead to confusion.

    • Brohoof 1
  19. Magic does not exist in the real world, so it's used to mean the opposite of science/technology, hence the "I'm not going to explain" part.

     

    However, in fictional worlds, like MLP, magic and science or technology are pretty much the same thing, or rather, magic is just one of the forces/laws of nature. You can analyze it, try to figure out how to make a spell stronger and such, so it is really no different than how we treat technology in the real world. Someone had to figure out that combining the eye of newt with a pegasus feather and boiling them in liquid rainbow while chanting something achieves the desired effect. Presumably they tried different things and gradually refined the recipe. After all, some recipes are specific enough that it's very unlikely that whoever invented them did so by accident. Same applies to spells, while spells in MLP usually do not require ingredients, they have some sort of structure, or it would be impossible to write them down, requiring every unicorn to "invent" them from scratch.

     

    • Brohoof 4
  20. 2 minutes ago, Justin_Case001 said:

    :laugh:  You knew he was gonna say yes!  You knew it!  Boy, did you walk into that one!  ROFL!  :ButtercupLaugh:

    At least he (MLP Forums user whose username was "Thankful Brony 42" on 2021 11 16) admitted to having the desire that humans (and other sentient beings capable of communication - henceforth known as "sentient entities") should communicate using methods that only have one meaning to others (with the possible exception to sentient entities diagnosed with mental defects).

     

    Nah, I'd rather use normal speech and explain if there's confusion.

    • Brohoof 1
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