User talk:BenRG

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hi, sorry i don't know where else to put this. this is a university ip so maybe other people are vandalizing, but please do not accuse me of vandalism if you don't know about the topic. thank you for all the contributions you have made to wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.126.46.147 (talk) 11:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to list those duplicate pages on Wikipedia:Duplicate articles, so people can see them there as well. Adam Bishop 20:54, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The E=mc² Barnstar
		For an excellent rewrite of observable universe, I award BenRG this much deserved barnstar in recognition of science aptitude. ScienceApologist 23:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OR/Synthesis

Hi BenRG! You asked some excellent questions on the WP:NOR talk page. I would suggest to first read through what some of us see as a clearer version of NOR on this page WP:ATT. ATT was created as a summary of WP:V and WP:NOR. Some of us had hoped it would eventually replace those two pages, but unfortunately the community in it's wisdom decided against. But I believe you can use it to orient yourself. Hope this helps! Dreadstar † 22:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bleep OR straw poll

There is a straw poll being conducted on the Bleep OR issue. Your input is welcome. Dreadstar † 16:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You wonder...

Hi, I notice your revert and your remark "I wonder if this person will ever give up?". Welcome to the club :-)

This is - at least part of - the history. I have launched many administrator intervention requests to blacklist these sites, but no one seems interested in doing this. The IP's are blocked for while, or even indefinitely, and after a few days she's back with a new IP. Do you have admin rights? If so, could you perhaps use the blacklist measure? Cheers. DVdm 08:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to get some closure here.

You're still unhappy with the following, but you haven't made any edits to fix it. I'd like to get this issue off my plate as soon as possible, because the AG article in its current state is a joke. So, let's go over this part by part...

In the first mathematically accurate description of gravity, Newton's law of universal gravitation, gravity was an external force transmitted by unknown means.

Any complaints so far?

Under this model it would seem theoretically possible to counteract or shield objects from this force, blocking them in a fashion similar to the way some materials can be used to shield magnetism.

You complained about this. I am trying to illustrate how the "common man" thought about these topics, and Carvorite is a good example, IMHO, of how people thought about gravity under the Newtonian model.

Specifically, you said "The difference between blocking magnetism and blocking gravity is that there's no magnetic charge". I believe this is certainly true in modern physics, but by no means a common understanding in the 19th century.

However in the early part of the 20th century Newton's model was replaced by the more general and complete description encoded in general relativity (GR). In GR gravity is not a force in the traditional sense of the word, but the result of the geometry of space itself. These geometrical solutions always cause attractive "forces".

Anything wrong here?

Under GR, anti-gravity is highly unlikely, except under contrived circumstances that are regarded as unlikely or impossible.

You complained about this. Do you believe this does not accurately reflect current thinking? Or was your complaint strictly grammatical?

The term "anti-gravity" is also sometimes used to refer to hypothetical reactionless propulsion drives based on certain solutions to GR, although these do not oppose gravity as such.

Any complaints here?

Maury 21:50, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alcubierre drive

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Alcubierre drive, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you endorse deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of the page. Pastordavid 19:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Memory wrap-around

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Memory wrap-around, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of Memory wrap-around. greenrd (talk) 19:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

THANK YOU!!

Thank you thank you thank you!! Your response to my question on the Science Ref Desk is excatly what I needed; the math was too much jargon in my head to properly understand. :) Zidel333 (talk) 22:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, no prob. :-) -- BenRG (talk) 23:17, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nonlocality

I have made some comments/questions/adjustments based on your analysis on this article's talk page, and I would appreciate your input once again. - Fritzpoll (talk) 20:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments on the talk page. I think we were talking at cross purposes about the definition of nonlocality, but I'm certain that the lead sentence covers both defintions, although the rest of the lead might need updating to emphasise that nonlocality is not a uniquely quantum mechanical concept. I was hoping that I could persuade you to clean-up the EPR section - as I comment on the talk page, I think its problem is a lack of clarity and may need expansion. I'm not happy to continue editing it alone, because I think that doesn't make for a good article, whereas multiple input would be valuable. Best wishes - Fritzpoll (talk) 18:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delayed Response to The Quantum Computing Thread

Hi, just want to mention that I have replied to the quantum computing thread. It has been archived to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2008_February_23, so I replied there directly, even though I am not sure if it's suitable or not. Please take a look if you are still interested. - Justin545 (talk) 02:20, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do not feed the trolls

I admire your effort though. :-) --Steve (talk) 18:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

		The Special Barnstar
		Thanks for the excellent help with respect to my quantum mechanical questions on the Reference Desk. I was highly impressed by your humbleness and your vast knowledge of quantum theory. Justin545 (talk) 09:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...Entangle Wave Function

Just back from the 2-day holiday, apologies for no response on the reference desk these two days. Now I believe I understand the the relation between the tensor product and the entangled wave function after I read your reply today. As for the first question (i.e. delta eigenfunction), I still confuse it with the prior discussion. Unfortunately, the current discussion is going to be archived, maybe it's better to open a new thread for it someday. Anyhow, thanks for solving my biggest question in quantum mechanics/information. You definitely deserve the barnstar :-) Justin545 (talk) 09:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quasar

Thanks for adding your nice comoving distance diagram to Talk:Quasar. -- Coneslayer (talk) 12:32, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Planck length

Hello Ben RG. I want to comment on Planck length: What is it the length of? In the following equations, the length (L1) is 2pi(Planck length)(3/2) exponent 1/2. L1/L2 = L2/L3 = L4/L1 = (L4/L2) exponent 1/2 . The other length values are defined as shown.

L2 = 1.213x10 exp-12 meter

L3 = (2pi) squared times (c) times one second

L4 = 2pi (3Gm/c squared), This is the photon sphere circumference or photon orbit circumference for the electron mass.

The equation (L4/L2) exp 1/2 = L1/L2 , is clearly correct. The electron Compton wavelength is 2(L1 x L3) exponent 1/2. I think we will find that the (L1) value is the photon wavelength that has the shortest size and maximum energy allowed. Let me know what you think of this. These equations are listed under "Balanced pattern" in Talk:Black hole electron. DonJStevens (talk) 22:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RTF (Rich Text Format) borrowed syntax from TEX

Hi Ben RG. I was the software developer at Microsoft who wrote the first RTF interpreters that were shipped with Mac Word 3.0. I could provide an affadavit that Charles Simonyi who designed the language syntax told me that he was borrowing the bracket and slash syntax elements from Knuth's TEX implementation. Charles showed me Knuth's TEX book as I began work on the version of RTF interpreters that we finally published.

It's not a super important point that the TEX claim was deleted but I can testify to its truth.

Unfortunately, I don't know of other publications that document this fact. So far, the creation of RTF has not elicited much scholarly interest, so the Wikipedia article actually relies somewhat on personal testimony by the original developers. The Wikipedia Project truly has shown more interest in this topic than scholars of the history of software technology development.

I've run into the same problem in trying to get fixes made to the Hungarian Notation article. There are statements in that article that I believe are maddeningly incorrect, but since the original Apps notation was part of the development lore in Microsoft's Applications division at the time and was not much documented for the outside world it is difficult to appeal to an existing publication for authority for a change request. DLuebbert (talk) 06:07, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for anyone else, but personally I trust your claim of firsthand knowledge more than I'd trust a second-hand claim in a book, never mind the random web pages that tend to pass for sources in this rag. I put a reworded mention back in—sorry for the trouble. -- BenRG (talk) 18:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

TeX & RTF

I'm the guy who originally put in the reference to Don Knuth. I notice the reference has still not been reinstated. I have a copy of an original TeX manual that Don Knuth autographed for me in 1980, which predates MS Word and RTF.

What, you expect me to scan the manual, and put the images up on a Web site? Sorry to disillusion you, Wikipedia just ain't worth that much trouble.

I have been working in IT since 1965. I am not a Wikipedia fanatic, I just do the odd addition. I have better things to do than get into little controversy wars with uninformed people like yourself. I have seriously lost any interest in contributing to Wikipedia as a result of your meddling. Way to kill Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.38.242 (talk) 14:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Harmonic mean

In re your math reference desk query: It's the harmonic mean. It's not dimensionless; it has the same dimensions as the things you're averaging. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You've got the wrong guy. The question was posted by 76.4.128.40 and the bulleted line above my reply was part of Sentriclecub's reply. -- BenRG (talk) 16:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rollback granted

After reviewing your request for rollback, I have enabled rollback on your account. Keep in mind these things when going to use rollback:

Getting rollback is no more momentous than installing Twinkle.
Rollback can be used to revert vandalism only, and not good faith edits.
Rollback may be removed at any time.

If you no longer want rollback, then contact me and I'll remove it. Also, for some information on how to use rollback, you can view this page. I'm sure you'll do great with rollback, just leave me a message if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of rollback. Happy editing! PeterSymonds (talk) 12:51, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Path integral formulation

Regarding your response to the Path integral formulation article on the ref desk and your request for someone to produce diagrams like in this. I can do some diagrams in Inkscape at the weekend. Which diagrams exactly was it you wanted? Please bear in mind that I do not understand this subject very deeply, simple list of figure numbers would be good! SpinningSpark 08:14, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, you havn't replied but I made some diagrams anyway. Are these what you need? Let me know if anything needs modifying. SpinningSpark 12:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry! I was delighted to get your message and I just didn't know what diagrams to request from you, and I put off the decision until it was too late. Please forgive me. The diagrams you drew are the ones I was thinking of and they look great. But I'm still not sure how I'm going to write the text. Um... I'll get back to you on the details. I just didn't want you to think your work was unappreciated. -- BenRG (talk) 13:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Computer help desk

Can you find the question I asked Friday? I finally saw the message again.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I found your response but I don't actually have any idea how to solve your problem, I'm afraid. (And not because you didn't make a screenshot—I just hoped a screenshot would make it easier for someone else to answer.) -- BenRG (talk) 17:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Large Hadron Collider Purpose section

Hi BenRG, I totally agree that the Purpose and Research sections need to be merged, and also somewhat cleaned up. I started a thread about it on the talk page and I was planning to undertake the job after leaving some time to other contributors to comment (I also had to fight to remove "time travel" from the physics goals of the LHC ;-) But if you want to do the change please go ahead, you appear to be a much more expert WikiEditor than I am. BTW do we know each other? Your nickname sounds familiar to me (and so should mine to you if we do indeed know each other ;-) Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I see you beat me to it. You might recognize my username since I've gone by "benrg" for years in various other places. I don't recognize yours, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything since I'm terrible with names... -- BenRG (talk) 18:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I thought you might be some Ben that I know who worked (among other stuff) on RG equations, but it was a shot in the dark. No big deal. Anyway, I hope you agree with the changes (I had some idle time to fill so I decided not to wait for an answer ;-) Feel free to make any improvement. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 19:23, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, "RG" is just my initials. By the way, thanks for the work you're doing on the LHC article and welcome to Wikipedia. :-) -- BenRG (talk) 20:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

electrons wiki

Who are you to block me? Why do you delete my edits without stating what exactly you are oposed to in a rational scientific arguement? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.89.32.166 (talk) 02:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't block you, I'm not an administrator; I'm just warning you that somebody will block you if you continue doing what you're doing. See Wikipedia:Blocking policy. You can't change a Wikipedia article by edit warring—you have to convince other editors to go along with your edits, or they'll get undone. And you're never going to convince other editors to add a paragraph that goes against overwhelming scientific consensus. As I said before, Wikipedia is not the place to change the world. There are other forums where your ideas will be allowed—for example, you could put up your own web page, or even publish a book—but not here.

As for the scientific aspect, I hardly know where to begin. Nothing in modern physics or chemistry can be explained without electrons. The computer you're using to post here could never have been made without an understanding of electrons. The Tevatron at Fermilab has been producing millions of collision events every second for years now, and each one of those events is a referendum on the reality of electrons. At the Tevatron they look for subtle statistical deviations from the enormous bulk of already understood physics. Electrons not existing at all would be off the charts. Hiding the nonexistence of electrons would require an enormous conspiracy of deliberate falsification by the entire scientific community; it's not a matter of ignoring a few inconvenient data points. I'm glad you're interested in modern physics, and questioning what you learn is a good thing, but you need to get over this idea that anything you don't yet understand must be wrong. -- BenRG (talk) 14:54, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are wrong, the scientific commity totally rejected the electron theory. This is not science. There is no conspircacy, JJ Thomson, the discover said, that there are no electrons. This is not a creation of science, but textbooks, and wikipedia follows the same politcal bias as textbooks, and justifies that textbooks are what science holds to be true. If electrons are a scientific arguement, then I demand it be presented in a scientific fashon. I demand it be prestened with the scientific method, and actually state who holds this to be true and on what basis is it true. You think womans sufferage is more important, where will the women in the world get water, if we believe in ficticious things like electrons that govern the pumps that power our water treatment facilities. Is it not important when you go drink from the tap and you die, because of a stupid dogma. was it not important when your great cousins died when they drink from the tap, and died, and were told not to bathe, on the basis of more dogma? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lostkey (talk • contribs) 03:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. I'll just repeat what I said above: Wikipedia isn't the place for this. -- BenRG (talk) 09:16, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I demand wikipedia if it claims electrons to be scientific, to present electrons theory using the scientific method. Is that too much to ask for? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.89.32.166 (talk) 19:41, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The real SF?

Your doubts are those of a gentleman and I hope the real SF does emerge deus ex machina to save us all from an appalling situation. Please edit this comment for additional information. Lucretius (talk) 22:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Accidental cut-and-paste

I haven't the slightest clue how that happened! P=) ~Kaimbridge~ (talk) 23:42, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am posting this here in an effort to preserve it from vandalism

The idea is not that humans are polychotomous keys and robots are decision tables but rather that robots do not need polychotomous keys, whereas humans do. Instructions, which have not been reduced to minimum form and optimized, are more difficult for humans to follow than robots.
What is this saying?
Neural networks in robots are used to maintain homeostasis as the autonomic nervous system does in humans rather than for cognition. The author defines, in this case, logical human thought or logical cognition as the process of multi-valued logical equation reduction. His example illustrates his definition very well.
What’s weird is your misinterpretation (no offense) of a computer "saying" literally "more information is needed". This statement is more of an interpretation (similar to someone telling another person what they think a modern sculpture is saying) than being a literal comment by a computer. I am sure you will agree that dismissing human powered flight as invalid because the motivation for doing it is unusual, does not invalidate human powered flight. 71.100.1.90 (talk) 20:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC) [reply]
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.5.242 (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.164.192 (talk)

Tipping

Hi Ben. I've taken this offline because it's wandering far from the original question. But it still interests me, and I hope you'll respond.

No, I'm not a Johnny-come-lately. I've been aware of the U.S. system for a long time, but it continues to amaze me that that's the way it is. Not so much for the fact of it - every country has its customs and traditions that seem odd to visitors, who simply have no choice but to get used to them - but for the attitude to it.
"... it implies it's an optional extra and really it isn't". That's the sticking point. To me, it really is optional at the end of the day. There's no power on Earth, not even in the USA, that can force a customer to pay a tip if they don't want to. There might be social ramifications, but not legal ones.
"... for heaven's sake give these poor people their money". That's another sticking point. It's not "their money", unless the customer chooses to donate it to them. There's no legal entitlement to it. This gets back to the whole perspective on the way it's done there. Customers seem to have become convinced it's their moral responsibility to supplement the waiters' wages. The owners are laughing all the way to the bank because their overheads are lower than they would otherwise be. It has in effect become like a sales tax, Value added tax, or GST. I'm not saying it's a bad thing for waiters to have a good incentive to get well tipped, and we all like great service. It's the way the system is structured that doesn't sit well with me. I'm used to a regime where the total price of a good or a service, including all taxes and charges, is advertised up front. We have a GST here and it's illegal for a vendor to advertise the pre-GST price. They must advertise the price with the GST already added in, and only that price, and the authorities come down hard on offenders. That's what I call a transparent system. The GST (2000) replaced a whole swag of sales taxes and similar charges that had been around forever, and the same system always applied. Customers have always known exactly how much they can expect to pay for a service. If they want to add a tip on top, that's entirely a matter for them.
You yourself don't defend the system, and say you'd be better off without it. Then why just continue to acquiesce to a system that's less than optimal? Not all traditions should go on forever just because they've become traditional. Change does sometimes happen in the world.
My "hopefully" comment, which you'll see if you read my later comment in that thread, was a too-subtle way of saying "please don't tell us all who you hope will win the US presidential election". It wasn't about nitpicking the word "hopefully" per se.
Yes, maybe I was a bit over the top with my outrage. Sorry. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:49, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. The system does suck—I dislike it as a customer and I think waiters hate it—and I misread your level of familiarity with it and probably other things as well. I'm going to continue paying 15% when in the US (I live in the UK) and hope somebody else works to abolish the system, but otherwise I think we're in violent agreement. Truce? :-) -- BenRG (talk) 11:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Truce. Actually, I blithely assumed you were American, so I'm guilty of misreading too. Cheers. -- JackofOz (talk) 23:34, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you!

Thanks for your answer to my wifi problem here. I didn't reply immeidately because at first it appeared not to work, and so then of course I no longer had connection, but in the end it worked out fine. And the second unasked-for tip is handy too (not quite sure what else I might use it for, but as I get to grips with this machine, perhaps I'll find a use. Anyway, learning something new is always a good thing). Thanks! BrainyBabe (talk) 12:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. :-) -- BenRG (talk) 11:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is no electron or mass/energy conservation

you cant discuss it, you said this has been discussed to death, you never discussed it just ran away like a scared little schoolgirl.

Replying to you would take time that I don't feel like spending. Can't you find someone else interested in arguing with you, and leave me alone? -- BenRG (talk) 07:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kim Jong ill, and communist dictators, teach physics without using words like electrons, they just teach the real thing. And now they can turn rice cookers, into antigravity free energy machines, that can be sent to detonate anywhere. glad to know all the evil people in the world are learning the real thing, and the good people are learning a false science. By the way, when it turned out when saddam, didnt have any nukes, did you check his kitchen for rice cookers? you know it could be turned into a thermonuclear weapon? now that all the good people who want to promote humanity are nice and stupid, you still havent done anything abuot the evil people. What are you going to do arrest everyone in korea who has a rice cooker like you did in vietnam? and make up bullshit things like conservation like electrons, to say all these fake problems we have in the world, so people who have good intent can be wasted. why cant you discuss that? Why cant you discuss, that scientist in north korea, can turn a rice cooker into a antigravity thermonuclear weapon, but scientist at MIT cant even work a toaster, because their so dumb, counting the number of electrons in a toaster. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.89.32.166 (talk) 04:42, 6 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The electronic planet - Thanks

		The E=mc² Barnstar
		For giving me far more than I could have imagined on the subject. Dmcq (talk) 22:48, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Main Page redesign

The Main Page Redesign proposal is currently conducting a straw poll to select five new designs, before an RFC in which one will be proposed to replace the Main Page. The poll closes on October 31st. Your input would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks, Pretzels^Talk! 14:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cones plot

You commented "(The L cone is not in any sense red. Recolored to roughly match its peak sensitivity (which is not the same as the color of the pigment, but less misleading than red))". I disagree. I think associating a color like yellow, arbitrarily based on peak wavelength, is MORE misleading, not less. The association of red, green, and blue with long, medium, and short wavelengths is conventional, and doesn't pretend to represent any actual color corresponding to a spectrum. Associating a color spectrum to a sensitivity curve is what is misleading. Dicklyon (talk) 03:50, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the world is full of people who think that the cones really detect red, green, and blue. It's a very common misconception. (Ever see the 1953 War of the Worlds?) I'd go as far as to say that most readers of Wikipedia articles about color vision will come in knowing just one thing: that the human eye has three cone types that detect red, green, and blue. So the first thing we ought to do is disabuse them of that notion. A red-green-blue colored picture of the cone response curves makes that difficult. People pay a lot more attention to pictures than to the article text, and most readers are not going to check the wavelengths; they're going to see the colors and become more sure than ever of their red-green-blue model of color vision. I don't like yellow-green-blue, but at least it would make people realize, at a glance, that the picture they're looking at doesn't match their preconceptions. It's wrong, but it's not wrong in the one specific way that resonates with a preexisting misconception.

I think the number of people with such a conception is dwarfed by the number who have no concept at all of cones. And it's not such a wrong concept, actually, since the three color matching functions corresponding to the cone spectral sensitivity functions are just one point in an infinite set of possible color matching functions, which are most often referred to as red, green, and blue, even though the curves never resemble the spectra of those colors; in most cases, they're not even real spectra, since they have negative regions. Most people aren't going to appreciate these subtleties, and really just need to know that all colors are representable by a point in a 3D space of detected intensities. And since the association with red, green, and blue is pretty dominant in the literature (e.g. in many of these), we shouldn't have any good reason to object to it here. Dicklyon (talk) 03:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But I'd rather avoid the whole issue by coloring the wavelengths instead of the cone types. Maybe the curves all in white against a dark visible-spectrum background? (I'm sure I've seen an image like that before.) Or in black against a pastelized spectrum? Or a white background and the spectrum inside the curves themselves? I could try to produce an image along those lines, unless you object strongly to the idea. -- BenRG (talk) 00:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Dicklyon (talk) 03:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear BenRG. I really like your figure and agree with you in the above debate. I was wondering if you would be willing to make another version of the figure showing the spectral-sensitivity curves after adaptation to red.Robert P. O'Shea (talk) 02:15, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Photographs on Mars

Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for linking that page on the math of "true color" images. Somehow I had the same impression as you, that NASA simply took three roughly correct filters (including IR for red) and used them straight as RGB values. This page makes me feel more confident in them.

Odd that we both had the same wrong idea. Perhaps images from older spacecraft were prepared that way. APL (talk) 17:42, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's Expert Peer Review process (or lack of such)for Science related articles

Hi - I posted the section with the same name on my talk page. Could you take part in discussion ?

User: Shotwell suggested (on my talk page) "I would endorse a WP:EXPERTADVICE page that outlined the wikipedia policies and goals for researchers in a way that enticed them to edit here in an appropriate fashion. Perhaps a well-maintained list of expert editors with institutional affiliation would facilitate this sort of highly informal review process. I don't think anyone would object to a well-maintained list of highly-qualified researchers with institutional affiliation (but then again, everyone seems to object to something)."

We could start with that if you would agree ... - could you help to push his idea through Wikipedia bureaucracy ? Cheers, Apovolot (talk) 18:10, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

dark energy density of same order as matter density

Thanks for pointing out that section. I didn't realize until now that you had answered the question. Delaszk (talk) 19:43, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

great answer about spacetime

[1] Just wanted to say I especially admire the clarity of the second half of your edit here. --Allen (talk) 18:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quaternions and recent research.

Sorry to see that you have deleted what little remains of Tatarov's contributions. These were in the last section of the article on quaternions

I always thought that this guy has something to contribute, but that maybe he needed to be educated on what belonged on wikipedia and what did not.

The section you deleted was an interesting one, but I always viewed it as being worded far to technically, and always hoped that it would have been improved on rather than completely deleted.

Would you please consider re-writing that section rather than completely getting rid of it?

Homebum (talk) 22:34, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you still thinking about quaternions as the quotients of two vectors?

There is a link in the last segment of the discussion to a fairly easy discussion of how Hamilton arrived at the Brougham bridge law, from the quotient of two vectors. I guess one more thing would have to be that the quotient of two parallel vectors is a scalar, that is the ratio of their lengths.

Hardy at least demonstrates that a system starting from the definition that a quaternion is the ratio of two vectors that uses the Brougham bride law is logically consistent. This is really what Hamilton demonstrated. I don't think the formal proof that quaternions were one of the few division algebras, came till after Hamilton's death and was done by Frobenius_theorem_(real_division_algebras). Hamilton demonstrates his ideas by reduction to absurdity, by demonstrating that anything else would be absurd, and his arguments are very elegant, and now days even called dangerous.

I guess another something else, was that Hamilton posited that any reasonable geometric algebra should have addition, subtraction, multiplication and division that worked in a logically consistent way.

You were asking:

Which rotation is the right one? Whichever one you pick, (v / w) (w / x) won't equal (v / x) in general. It will be a rotation that takes x to v, but it won't be the right one.

Actually I believe this is a correct statement, in Hamilton's calculus (v / w) (w / x) = (v / x)!

At least this is would I would expect, based on the left to right cancellation rules. It is a little hard for me to visualize. The way I see it is more just turning the quaternion algebra crank.

You were asking which rotations, like I said, the are the ones in the planes defined by w/v, w/x and v/x. But you have to constantly keep in mind, that a single quaternion only rotates a vector in its plane. If you multiply a quaternion with a vector that is not in its plane, like I said before, the answer is not a vector at all but another quaternion.

A good way to see this is to remember that the product of two vectors is in general a quaternion. It is the cross product of the two vectors minus the dot product. If the two vectors are at right angles, then the dot product, also called the scalar product, which is the negative of the scalar part of the product is zero. Hence when you multiply a quaternion by a vector that is perpendicular to its axis you get a right quaternion, or a quaternion with no scalar part, or in other words just a vector. Say x a vector at right angles to the axis of q.

qx = s(q)x + v(q)x

So in other words, both of these terms on the left are vectors.

Have a look at one of those great old books, and they all explain it much better than I could do it, typing from memory, but it really helps when you start thinking. Well off to thermodynamics class. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homebum (talk • contribs) 21:56, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Viruses

Hello, I just read your response to my question on the computing RefDesk, and although I'm a bit relieved to hear that Spyware Doctor tends to exaggerate their results, I think I have good reason to believe it wasn't a false positive this time. I looked up the viruses, and my computer is mimicking their behavior. Plus I checked the registry, and the entries match the exact strings of the virus. Not meaning to sound POVish, but I believe Internet Explorer is responsible for letting all those viruses in. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 22:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quaternions and spatial rotation

(I moved this to Talk:Quaternions and spatial rotation#Vectors and components, since it's really about the article and other people might want to participate. -- BenRG (talk) 14:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC))[reply]

1931 CIE diagram reversion

Hi - I reverted the image in CIE 1931 color space. I am sorry to see my original image being replaced by successively degraded versions, but I guess I should have immediately copied over the detailed explanation given in the .png file to the .svg file. I have done that now. I hope you see that this was a carefully constructed image, and the "artifacts" are not the result of negligence, but are rather the result of a high degree of accuracy of representation of color, with an unavoidable problem with intensity.

I noticed that you have used the other image in a number of places, but I don't want to go replacing them too without a discussion. Also, I think the way you fixed the fonts is a definite improvement to the .svg file, and I would like to know how to do that. PAR (talk) 00:00, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did read your detailed explanation before making this image, but if you flip between File:CIExy1931.svg and File:CIExy1931_fixed.svg you will see that the latter is not, in fact, any darker or duller looking aside from the absence of the bright Y. Normalizing everything to maximum brightness is normalizing to the ∞-norm (which leaves a Y artifact); normalizing to constant R+G+B is normalizing to the 1-norm (which is rather dark); but there are intermediate norms which are still bright but avoid the artifact. I used the 3-norm for this image. My image doesn't have a bright white dot at the D65 white point, and that's good, because D65 is not that special. If this image were intended to illustrate the sRGB cube then it would be a different story, but it's not, it's intended to illustrate the whole chromaticity space. For accurate rendering in typical browsers it has to use 24-bit sRGB, but that choice ought to be as invisible as possible. You can't do anything about the desaturation, but the rest of the artifacts are avoidable.

Aside from using a different norm, I moved out-of-gamut values into gamut by adding white (in linear sRGB space) instead of clipping negative coordinates to zero as your image did. The clipping changes the hue, and you end up with a large solid region of sRGB green at the top of the image and smaller solid regions of sRGB red and blue at the sides. The sRGB primaries are not that prominent in reality.

The third change I made, and the only one I'm not sure was an improvement, was to blur the background image. The point of this was to hide the lines at the boundary of the sRGB triangle, which are less obvious than the Y in the original image but definitely there. This does mean that the revised image is less accurate on a pixel-for-pixel basis. I don't consider that to be a problem, given the purpose of this image. If you like I can upload a version with a higher resolution PNG for comparison.

I don't know what was causing the font rendering problem, but I noticed that the previous version in the upload history didn't seem to have the same problem in the thumbnail, so I used that as the basis for my revision in the hope that it would magically fix the problem, and it did. -- BenRG (talk) 01:09, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re your comment at Talk:CIE 1931 color space, I will add a description of how the image was made and the C++ source code I used to make it. I was thinking about modifying other images and the details were still in flux. -- BenRG (talk) 01:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that explanation. If I sounded aggravated its because I'm so tired of dealing with numbskulls who want an article to reflect their stubbornly held misconceptions rather than learn anything. If the 3-norm gives the same color as the other norms (and I assume it does) and is explicitly defined, then the result in your diagram is a definite improvement. I don't understand the "third change", but I am against any blurring of the color: I am in favor of the color inside the sRGB triangle being (nominally) the same as the color specified by those xy coordinates. Outside the gamut, the best answer would be for each point to be the same color as the "closest" in-gamut point, where "closest" would be in terms of the usual color metric, as in Lab space, perhaps. If your method is closer to this optimum than mine, then it is an improvement. Also, could you define those n-norms - I don't know those other than the two you gave. PAR (talk) 23:25, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

RfC for Uruk2008

Hello, in Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Uruk2008#Questions we need to cite some bad sources added by Uruk2008. I added a few but maybe you know of better examples. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:20, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Talkback

Hello, BenRG. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#Power_cycling_to_drain_the_capacitors.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum mechanics

Thank you for your attention to the Basic concepts of quantum mechanics, which article is intended to provide information for the average non-expert reader and to entice him or her to explore the subject further. I would suggest, though, that you be a little politer in your comments and restrict them to the scientific field, in which I suppose you are proficient, and allow more humanistic editors to present this subject in a mode much less complicated than the present articles Introduction to quantum mechanics and Quantum mechanics. We non-scientific editors welcome your remarks on any scientific mistakes, but I am sure you will agree that presentation is a matter of opinion and not of science. (We are all ignorant, only about different things.) Yours very sincerely, your friend GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in favor of lay introductions written at various levels, but they need to be grounded in the facts. Otherwise they drift farther and farther from reality. That's what happens in the sphere of popular books about physics. The authors copy from each other and add their own interpretations, and the result is an increasingly bizarre pop theory that's hardly recognizable as the physics that originally motivated it. If you write another introduction based on your reading of those introductions, you're just perpetuating the cycle. Take the image File:Christmas.lights.jpg, which you captioned "An artist's vision of the speed of light". This is a photograph of Christmas lights. On the Flickr page, the caption is "Christmas Speed Of Lights". Does that make this "an artist's vision of the speed of light"? Does it matter whether the artist envisioned it as the speed of light when the artist is just a photographer with no knowledge of physics? There's no communication of information from professional scientists to the public going on here. It's someone's spur-of-the-moment wordplay on "speed of light" turned by you into "an artist's vision", probably turned by the next person to copy it into "an artist's conception", then into "a diagram", and so on. It was never even science in the first place, and every generation of the telephone game makes it worse. Or take File:Trojan wavepacket.gif, which you captioned "Conception of a wave packet, an electron circling the nucleus of an atom, illustrating the uncertainty principle." I don't think you got that description from anywhere; you saw the picture in Commons and thought that it looked like it might represent that, so now the article says that it does, so now people reading the article will think that it does, because this is an encyclopedia. I'm trying to not be upset about this, but it just epitomizes everything that's wrong with pop science reporting. -- BenRG (talk) 20:05, 19 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quantum Cryptography

(Moved to Talk:Quantum cryptography#FPB attack)

Take a look

Please have a look at Talk:Basic_concepts_of_quantum_mechanics#Merger_proposal

Mr. Louis wants to maintain that he responds to criticisms (rather than reverting all changes). It's been two weeks since he moved your critique to the above page, and no answer was given. Now there is a merger proposal....

Thanks. P0M (talk) 22:19, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0502071v2 for details on the trojan wave-packets. There are 3 different kinds, and all seem to be states that are maintained for some time by external manipulations. P0M (talk) 04:29, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just started Trojan wave packet so if you have anything to add, please do so. I thought it might be helpful to get some clear formulation of all the basic stuff in order to counterbalance anything irresponsible that may appear elsewhere. P0M (talk) 01:27, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the article should exist. The subject isn't notable enough. The fact that one editor (who wrote his dissertation on it) uploaded a picture and another editor (who doesn't know any quantum mechanics) thought the picture looked pretty isn't enough to justify an article. -- BenRG (talk) 08:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

C/C++: optimal use of fread() and fwrite()

Thanks a lot for your response to my question. Just to be absolutely sure that I understand what you mean, and don't complicate my code unnecessarily: when you say use a small (64k) buffer, you mean:

  // pseudocode with the for-loop unwinded
  fread(buf, 1, 64k, infile);
  fwrite(buf, 1, 64k, outfile);
  fread(buf, 1, 64k, infile);
  fwrite(buf, 1, 64k, outfile);
  fread(buf, 1, 64k, infile);
  fwrite(buf, 1, 64k, outfile);
  // etc

and not

  fread(buf, 1, 64k, infile); buf += 64k;
  fread(buf, 1, 64k, infile); buf += 64k;
  fread(buf, 1, 64k, infile); buf += 64k;
  // etc, followed by
  buf = buf0;
  fwrite(buf, 1, 64k, outfile); buf += 64k;
  fwrite(buf, 1, 64k, outfile); buf += 64k;
  fwrite(buf, 1, 64k, outfile); buf += 64k;
  // etc

I suppose the latter would be equivalent to using a large buffer, right? If I've understood you correctly, your point is to keep the hardware of both drives occupied at the same time, and that using a large buffer would allow the output device to enter an idle state while the input device was filling the buffer, and vice versa. Grateful for confirmation. --NorwegianBlue^talk 15:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Followup

Thanks a lot for taking the time to give me advice, and to carefully explain the rationale for using a small buffer size. I was totally convinced, and therefore greatly surprised at the results. I have posted the results of the benchmarking, and updated them today by also testing a 1GB buffer, and only then did performance drop. As I've written in the thread, I think there are two reasons for the discrepancy between expectations and observations. One is the special properties of flash memory. Using a small buffer implies that the same block has to be rewritten many times. The other is that I think you have underestimated the amount of memory that the OS may allocate for a process. To me, the data suggest that no swapping to disk occurs when a 512MB buffer is used on a PC with 1GB of RAM, given that no other memory-hungry application is running. After all, many people run XP with 4GB and no swapfile. Your advice was very helpful, because it forced me to do the benchmarking that I should have done before asking, and to really think things through. It is much appreciated. --NorwegianBlue^talk 19:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In re Bilski and other recent edits

Please stop reverting to use of plural pronouns with singular nouns and other ungrammatical usage. If you are unsure, please consult a reference work before changing texts. You are no doubt well informed on science, but your English style is deplorable. That IP user who is trying to correct your usage is just trying to keep Wikipedia looking good. Let him (or her) do it, please. PraeceptorIP (talk) 02:29, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I undid a lot of similar edits by that anonymous user. I didn't write any of the text that I reverted to. Almost all of the changes were prescriptivist silliness like replacing singular "they" with "he" and removing sentence-final prepositions. Changing "Preagreed upon" to "agreed-upon" may have been an exception. I erred on the side of reverting in legal articles because I don't know enough about legal language to tell if the edits affected the meaning and I don't think the anonymous editor did either. If in your educated opinion they were an improvement then by all means put them back. (But note that Wikipedia has a policy against gender-neutral "he"—see WP:GNL#Pronouns.) -- BenRG (talk) 03:00, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chromaticity diagrams

Good job on the improved xy diagrams, and thanks for specifying clearly what you did; all sounds good. But pray tell, how do you do about making an SVG with a computed image in it? Matlab, or something else? Dicklyon (talk) 03:06, 25 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It was made by a mess of Perl and C++ code. I've now uploaded it all to commons:User:BenRG/Source code. -- BenRG (talk) 17:26, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Kantor dispute

Please see my comments here regarding the "Kantor dispute". Cheers, --4wajzkd02 (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Luxon Theory concerning tardyons

Thank you. The info that you removed, was the source of me needing more info. With it gone, the article makes more sense. I guess that is the downside of articles that are patched together by multiple persons. Active Galactic Nuclei (talk) 18:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ZNovember

Thanks for the note. Rich Farmbrough 16:24 13 November 2009 (UTC).

Thanks

Thanks for having fixed my speling ;-) - DVdm (talk) 22:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aharonov-Bohm effect

Please see [2], if you haven't already. There was nothing factually incorrect about the text (except perhaps the last sentencem which we can leave off, if you wish), and it was sourced from Feynman. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are now a Reviewer

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, is currently undergoing a two-month trial scheduled to end 15 August 2010.

Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under pending changes. Pending changes is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial. The list of articles with pending changes awaiting review is located at Special:OldReviewedPages.

When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.

If you do not want this userright, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. Courcelles (talk) 05:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kindly Advise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#I_have_a_point-and-shoot_digital_camera

Bunkum is back

Hi, Ben - 'Scott Funk' has reappeared at the Large Numbers article - see Talk Page there. I dealt with him previously under my old username Lucretius but I'm not sure I handled it very well at that time. Possibly you were right and the real Funk would not engage in this nonsense. Would you please keep an eye on this? I no longer have anything to do with that article. Amphitryoniades (talk) 05:53, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Schwartzchild Radius curiosity

I read your repeal and curiosity of relationship between Schwarzchild radius and radius of visible universe... Consider that a flat universe of sufficient size yields equivalent of an outer boundary of infinite number of Schwartzchild radii at approximately the same distance in any direction from any relative viewpoint. Essentially this would appear as a spherical red-shifted horizon, in our case around 50Gly. Shatro11 (talk) 21:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

God Bless Anguilla

Wonderful!! But where did you get it from? Thanks, ╟─Treasury Tag►belonger─╢ 09:34, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you like it. I responded in the Ref Desk thread. -- BenRG (talk) 19:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

stability of Calcium 40

Sorry for the confusion I sowed by not realizing Ca40 is theoretically unstable, though practically stable. I agree that the distinction should be maintained in the chart of nuclides.CharlesHBennett (talk) 05:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

silent dispatcher

Thank you for helping me with the question on the Computing Reference Desk about the mysterious silent dispatcher. I've been aware of hidden windows before but this is the first time someone's ever told me up front about what they are. Would you happen to know of a database or something I can root through of hidden windows so I can continue to satisfy my curiousity? tyvm --Thebackofmymind (talk) 05:38, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

KAL801

Hi! I didn't realize that there was a previous inquiry that was successfully answered (I had posted other inquiries where the answer was "I can't see how you can do that").

Thank you for showing me how to salvage the old Korean text. I will post it on the talk page of the Korean Air 801 article

WhisperToMe (talk) 01:53, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, about Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2010_September_8#How_to_view_Korean_NTSB_page_from_late_1990s I found that my version of Notepad can't encode in Latin-1 (Based on the encodings it supports, it has ANSI, Unicode, UTF-8, and UTF-8 Big Endian) - What is a good text editor I can use to take Unicode and save it as Latin1? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, someone pointed me to a web utility, and I was able to convert the text and post it to Talk:Korean Air Flight 801/NTSB files in Korean

However, I still would like to have pointers on standalone applications that could do what the web program does with the text

Thank you,

WhisperToMe (talk) 03:53, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I added a Python script to the original thread. I hope it helps. -- BenRG (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! I will repost the script to the KAL801 page WhisperToMe (talk) 05:34, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ben Rudiak-Gould avisynth author?

hi, are you ben rudiak-gould ? trying to contact him and cant find any email... --Compn (talk) 19:53, 24 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Widdle Wiki-kitty says don't be hatin'

(see wasn't that customized? :-)

TCO (talk) 03:08, 2 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Some baklava for you!

Thanks for bringing me enlightenment L33th4x0r (talk) 13:28, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

centrifuge follow-up

Wow! That is fascinating. I never thought of it before! So fundamentally it is the change in the geometry of spacetime caused by a given scenario that determines whether the given scenario will result in time dilation or not. I would like to learn more. Is there any book that I can read that can teach me how to do calculations to allow me to figure out whether there would be time dilation, and by how much, there is in any given scenario, be they black wholes, traveling twins, centrifuges or other scenarios involving forces/relative motion/other scenarios of GR/SR/Q. Thanks for teaching me. I feel enlightened. L33th4x0r (talk) 13:28, 18 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Optimization of division following related modulo operation

Thank you for investigating the optimization mentioned at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2011 December 31#C won't compile. That is how I would have approached it in assembler, but I was surprised that all three compilers you tested took advantage of it. -- ToE 01:59, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question

Are you associated with UC San Diego, by any chance? --Itinerant1 (talk) 09:33, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind. I think I know who you are now. I mistook you for someone else. --Itinerant1 (talk) 01:54, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Plank mass black hole

I remember in this discussion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2012_January_14#Plank_mass_black_hole_dangerous.3F), you said that there was no evidence that plank mass is the minimum mass for a black hole. However plank mass being the min mass for a black hole is also mentioned here, Micro black hole. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole#Minimum_mass_of_a_black_hole ScienceApe (talk) 06:10, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nullspeeds in General Relativity

Hi Ben, I wonder if you could find time to look at an article submitted to Articles for Creation, Nullspeeds in General Relativity? It has been rejected four times now. Quite rightly at first, because the initial submission was pretty unintelligble. However, I almost accepted it on the last attempt - it is almost making sense now. However, I am far from an expert in this area and would appreciate your comments. If you think this article really does have some future, please feel free to improve it. Spinning Spark 10:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard the term "nullspeeds". At a bare minimum it would need to appear in at least one paper published in a respectable physics journal in order to be appropriate for Wikipedia. -- BenRG (talk) 02:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, google scholar didn't turn up anything, although I found this on Arxiv which used the term in passing without really defining it. Two book sources were used in the submitted article [3][4]. There is only snippet access to the first one but it does not appear to use the term unless null D'Alembertian is the same thing. The second one, I'm not sure whether it is using the term with the meaning claimed - "The above covering law predicts that the isoshift is not generally null for null speeds..."

The main source of the submitter seems to be [5] which has come from http://laps.noaa.gov/ which is a very strange place to find a paper on relativity. Spinning Spark 11:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing factually wrong with the article prior to its last paragraph, except that I disagree that it's useful to call dr/dt and r dΩ/dt "nullspeeds", and in any case they aren't called that by any professional physicist. The last paragraph is pretty cranky. It starts talking about vacuum polarization (a quantum phenomenon that doesn't exist in general relativity) for some reason. It claims to be following in Albert Einstein's footsteps, etc. I can't see how this article in any form could ever be appropriate for Wikipedia.

The article says at the end "Thanks to Steven Albers for assembling reference citations", and the article's primary reference (from which it liberally paraphrases) is by Norman Albers. It seems likely that Norman Albers wrote this article to promote his own work on Wikipedia.

ArXiv:1101.4827 is unpublished. The paper/essay in the second book seems to be a crank work (its premise is that special relativity doesn't work in a medium because light doesn't propagate at c there, which is totally wrong). In any case I think it's using "null speeds" to mean a speed of zero, or maybe light speed. Either way it doesn't agree with Norman Albers' coinage. -- BenRG (talk) 21:02, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that Ben, I've linked to this conversation for the benefit of future reviewers in case he tries to offer it again. Spinning Spark 00:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

new comment on an archived question

Take a look: Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2012_May_19#Is_indexing_a_safety_risk.3F — Preceding unsigned comment added by OsmanRF34 (talk • contribs) 20:41, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gravitational Blueshift Equation

Just notifying you of my reply to the Gravitational Blueshift Equation Thread. I would be grateful if you could help me with this.

Reply:

Thank you for the quick responses. Well, Ben. My current work requires the following. First, an equation that calculates the redshift of light emitted from a point at a specific distance from the center of a spherical object with mass, and observed at a point directly above the point of emission (which of course is also at a specific distance from the center).

Second, I need an equation that calculates the inverse. I need to be able to calculate the blueshift of light emitted from a point at a specific distance from the center of a spherical object with mass, and observed at a point directly below it. Which, I think Icek provided for me.

For both of these, a line that passes through both the point of emission and the point of observation should also pass directly though the center of the spherical object with mass.

Doctor Condensate (talk) 18:07, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much.

Doctor Condensate (talk) 02:03, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You have a reply...

I've replied at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#replacing references temporarily. The Transhumanist 11:48, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hyper-cross

Thanks a lot for your reply. I would be very grateful if you could explain all of the gadgets involved and, moreover, give the worked example from the previous section. I look forward to seeing you reply. — Fly by Night (talk) 23:58, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hyperdimensional Three-Jet Events

Hello. I think your input would be very useful in this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2012_July_26&pe=1&#Hyperdimensional_Three-Jet_Events

Doctor Condensate (talk) 04:13, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

More on Large Extra Dimensions

I have encountered them before. But haven't looked into them very much do to hearing of their apparent constraints. Just letting you know that you have a reply waiting for you at this article again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Science/2012_July_26&pe=1&#Hyperdimensional_Three-Jet_Events

Thank you. Doctor Condensate (talk) 04:10, 2 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question attempting to glean understanding of metric expansion of space

I tried to ask this at physics.stackechange without much luck: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/57748/universe-expansion-and-two-tennis-balls?noredirect=1#comment117111_57748

Any illumination you can provide would be much appreciated.

Clear the universe of all matter except for two tennis balls. Place the two tennis balls in the same inertial frame 1 Mpc apart. (Assume the tennis balls are massless)

Are the tennis balls getting further apart? Will the tennis balls remain in the same inertial frame?

Aepryus (talk)

Actually, never mind. I think I have figured out the answers. (Yes and Yes) Aepryus (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:37, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks the replies on computing reference desk

Hi BenRG, long time no see! I noticed you replied in my questions [6] [7]. I missed them as I though there would be no one to reply them anymore. Thanks for the replies, anyway. They are helpful. -- Justin545 (talk) 18:35, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New signature?

Ben, I noticed you've got a new signature, but it is not currently linked to either your userpage or your user talk page. Wikipedia does require that all signatures link to one or the other (or both). I'm sure this is just an oversight. --Jayron32 03:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how that happened, actually—I never tried to change it. I also didn't know I was violating policy by not fixing it. Anyway, it's fixed now. Thanks. -- BenRG (talk) 23:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for answers re head(1) and tail(1)

Thanks much for your detailed answers at RD/C. (I've replied there, too.) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:24, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For cromulence in exemplifying, Sir Claude and I award you the *Order of the Waxed Moustache*. -- Hoary (talk) 06:56, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

File:Isotopes_and_half-life.svg

I presume you are the author of this file. I notice that there is no distinction between "unstable" and "no data", most visible as the diagonal cutoff to the left at the top right of the diagram. Do you think it might make sense to visibly distinguish these cases? —Quondum 17:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Quondum: I dug up my old code and it looks like I used the palest shade of blue for all half lives less than 10⁻⁸ s, and transparent actually means "no data". Maybe the label should be changed. -- BenRG (talk) 21:25, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. So only the word "unstable" needs to be changed to "no data". I wish I knew how to work with images on WP. (BTW: the ping didn't work: you need to replace your signature with new tildes in the same edit as adding the {{ping}} template for it to work according to the documentation.) —Quondum 21:44, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Quondum: I uploaded a new version of the image. The sharp diagonal edges are gone, but I don't know why—either it was a change in the database or there was a bug in my parser before (or there is one now, I suppose).

A remaining problem with this image is that I usually ignore the uncertainties even when they're "GT" or "LT". Very long lifetimes with GT are now plotted as stable, but I'm not sure how to deal with things like "50 MS GT". -- BenRG (talk) 01:19, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You've sorted out what was concerning me: the interpretation of the diagram, and some immediate questions it triggers for the nonexpert. I can only guess at the apparent database change (this is not my field so cross-checking known isotope lifetimes would challenge me), though the data does look less like it has artefacts now, since the diagonal lines have vanished. Issues such as detail colour binning, database notations or handling of uncertainties is also not something I can help with. For the purposes of WP articles, IMO the diagram is now excellent – thank you. —Quondum 03:42, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Planck times

Thanks for the work. "The article is wrong" is a very good answer for "why does the article say this" :-) Nyttend (talk) 04:24, 17 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Smallified"?

WIF? The term is disembiggened. μηδείς (talk) 23:47, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, my ungood. -- BenRG (talk) 00:00, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Anime

Hi Ben, I liked your suggestions on the recent Anime thread, will check out the ones I haven't seen. For some reason I suspect you might also like Haré+Guu, check it out if you haven't seen it :) SemanticMantis (talk) 14:24, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen it, and I would've recommended it too if I'd thought of it. I'm still wondering what else I forgot. -- BenRG (talk) 17:10, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why HD audio have higher sample rate?

You answered my question and Thanks. Can you explain more or give links where can find more details?

Your answer:

2 × 20 kHz is enough only if the waveform is infinitely long and you interpolate with a sinc filter, which would take forever (literally). With the more practical filtering of actual audio hardware, you need a somewhat higher sampling rate (like 44.1 kHz).

I don't understand why you say that the waveform should be infinitely long.

Hunsu (talk) 11:49, 10 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

File:Isotopes and half-life.svg

Dear BenRG,

how have you created your isotopes plot?--Kopiersperre (talk) 14:22, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Extraction

Hi, Ben. Could you also help me to extract this image in full resolution? We have only cropped version. Dezoomify doesn't recognize the url again and browser's file info doesn't help, while I'm lame in Python stitching. Thanks in advance. Brandmeister^talk 18:48, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done. -- BenRG (talk) 22:08, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Feist v. Rural

Thanks for the help! I think I'll throw something into the article using that source. Much better to say "there was no concurring opinion from the concurring judge" than not to mention the situation. Nyttend (talk) 04:13, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Thanks for your ref desk answer re black holes

I appreciate the effort you put into your reply, it was very useful and has given me a lot of pointers on what I need to read up on. Your link to relativity of simultaneity is fascinating, and most of it simple enough for someone like me with very little education in physics or maths to understand :-)

Cheers, Mike 95.146.213.181 (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ProcessHacker

Hi Ben,

Re. this, the thread has been deleted but is not in the archives so I'm responding here.

I'm playing a game, but when it timed out I wondered if this might be a problem for other processes that I may want to pause without stopping them. The process doesn't restart. Rather, it continues to change while it's paused: If I restart within 20 seconds, it's just as I left it, but if I wait longer than that it's not. The game can be paused in Playstation but not on a PC, and I expected ProcessHacker to emulate the pause you get with Playstation. Since it doesn't (after 20 seconds the game seems to realize something is wrong and shuts down a timed challenge, something it doesn't figure out on PS), maybe it's not a reliable way to pause other processes?

The game is The Witness. I've gotten within a couple seconds and a single slip of the touchpad from solving a timed area, so I know I can do it, I just don't think it's worth the days it would take to get just the right combination of random puzzles again -- it doesn't help that my touchpad isn't very responsive and I sometimes have to tap it 4 or 5 times for it to register a mouse click. Once the game registers the timed area as solved, I can use the total to try to figure out what I missed in the game, but that's hard to do without knowing how many (if any) I may have missed.

But the more serious issue is that the pause in ProcessHacker doesn't seem to completely pause the process.

Thanks — kwami (talk) 23:05, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The game probably uses GetTickCount or QueryPerformanceCounter or another systemwide counter for timing. It might even use the wall-clock time. When you pause and later resume a process, from the process's perspective it's as though the time suddenly jumped forward.

Cheat Engine is the best way to cheat in PC games that don't have built-in cheats. It has a "speed hack" feature that slows down games (by faking the current time/tick count, I think). Someone has requested a cheat that turns off the timer, but I think none exists yet. -- BenRG (talk) 23:55, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Be warned that anti-cheating systems for online games may trigger on the presence of Cheat Engine even if it's not attached to the games they're protecting. I have no experience with this because I only game offline. -- BenRG (talk) 00:06, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. Thanks! I'm offline too, so hopefully that's not a problem. — kwami (talk) 01:14, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

for your knowledgeable answers about neutrons and neutrinos at the science reference desk! -Rich Peterson144.35.45.74 (talk) 19:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image extraction

Hi again. What script did you use to extract File:Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk.jpg? After I reconfigured Dezoomify.py, it keeps saying either ERROR: Zoomify base directory not found (when trying zoomable object) or ERROR: Could not open ImageProperties.xml <HTTP Error 404: Not Found> (when trying base URL). I plan to extract more full-sized scrolls from that Digital Scrolling Paintings Project. Brandmeister^talk 18:01, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to answer at refdesk

Hi I've replied to your answer at the science refdesk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncle dan is home (talk • contribs) 06:49, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Uncle dan is home: If you want to be sure I see a ref desk post, put {{ping|BenRG}} at the beginning, like I just did with you. -- BenRG (talk) 17:54, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rijndael S-box implementation

Hi, according to the history of the article you have added an implementation of the Rijndael S-box generation. It seems really clever, but I can't quite figure out how it works. Would you care to provide more information? More importantly: Have you programmed this yourself and if no, where is it from, if yes, where is the idea from? Thanks! --2003:71:F0F:F500:B5B3:8A9F:653C:6094 (talk) 00:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The code is original, and I didn't find the algorithm anywhere in particular, but I think it's not original.

The basic idea is that by repeatedly multiplying and dividing p and q by a, you get p = 1, a, a², ... and q = 1, a⁻¹, a⁻², ..., and at each point q = p⁻¹, which is what you need for the S-Box. If, in addition, a is an element of full order (255) in the field, then you get all pairs of inverses, and can fill in the whole table (except 0).

Unfortunately, a=x doesn't work (it has order 51), but a=x+1 does work. The usual bit-twiddling method of multiplying by x modulo poly (of degree 8) is p ← (p << 1) xor (poly if p & 0x80 else 0). Multiplying by x+1 is that plus (xor) p.

The hard part is dividing by x+1. What you want to do is invert the above: xor with the field polynomial, then do the reverse of p ← p xor (p << 1). The reverse of p ← p xor (p << 1), for 8-bit p, is {p ← p xor (p << 1); p ← p xor (p << 2); p ← p xor (p << 4)} (in any order). When multiplying by x, the low bit of the result is set iff you added the polynomial, so when inverting that you just check the low bit to decide whether to add the polynomial. When multiplying by x+1, the parity is odd iff you added the polynomial. Fortunately, {p ← p xor (p << 1); p ← p xor (p << 2); p ← p xor (p << 4)} leaves the parity of the original value in the high bit. Because everything is linear, you can do that part first, then add (x⁴+x³+x+1)/(x+1) = x³+1 = 0x09. I hope that was clear enough. -- BenRG (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Missing

Hi. You are now listed as missing. Should you ever return or choose not to be listed, you are welcome to remove your name. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:46, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I still exist, just haven't edited in a while. You can contact me on this page for anything important (I get email notifications). -- BenRG (talk) 16:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Milne Model, Really?

I just was looking over the Milne Model page, where I found that you edited it in 2008. When I saw these edits at the time, I thought this was just another troll who hasn't read the book. But it turned out that it was Ben Rudiak Gould. I was curious why you lied about Milne's model, claiming it was homogeneous. I was under the impression at the time that it was just someone that didn't know it wasn't homogeneous. But it was you Ben. You know perfectly well that Milne's model is homogeneous in rapidity space, but not homogeneous in regular space. Why in the world would you remove the text pointing out that it wasn't homogeneous in regular space? JDoolin (talk) 13:46, 17 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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