Post Difficult Questions Here

Lumos · Jan 23, 2015

Question. During the Christmas holidays, I saw "Legend of the Guardians" for the second time, the first time being around the time it came out. I like this animated film, even though you can find some hilarious parallels with "300" with all the slo-mo fight scenes and whatnot.
At any rate, I vaguely remembered the film being based on a book; and a bit of googling after it ended, I found out it's actually based not on one, but on the first three books in a series with at least 16(!!!) entries by an author named Kathryn Lasky (whom I'd personally never heard of before). A bit more research appears to show that these first three books are around 200 pages each.
So that got me thinking.

If one has - hypothetically speaking - written a book that's 600 or so pages long and is actually loosely divisible into three "acts", should one try publishing the book as a nice 600-page volume, as originally intended, or should one try to publish it as three separate volumes, each around 200 pages. Will that maximise profits, and is it fair that others are doing it?
(Of course, we assume that there's a publisher ready to accept the aforementioned 600-page book in any shape or form its author decides fit.)

IA · Jan 23, 2015

As long as each section can stand on its own you can get away with that. Added bonus in addition to what you already said is the ability to make an omnibus edition afterwards. I think shooting for around 300 pages would be better though.

Lumos · Feb 19, 2015

On that same book-publishing note, just yesterday I found out that 600 pages in Word equate to about 930 real ones... and that makes everything sweeter, as the intended 200-page "parts" would be about 300 pages each. Fantastic!

Now, let's get this whole thing out of the "hypothetical" universe and into the real one.

Mad Vader · Feb 26, 2015

There may be a lack of quantity vs. quality discussion in this convo, dear Lomus. Why not post a difficult question like "is this 3000 word paragraph worth publishing?".

Cyborg Eastern European · Feb 26, 2015

Given his posts here, of which I remember none, it's better than Twilight/50 Shades of The Same Word so I doubt that matters.

Lumos · Feb 26, 2015

Perhaps I could, but most 3000-word paragraphs I've got lying around are in Bulgarian... and I doubt even my greatest devotees would be prone to learning Bulgarian in order to read my completely and undoubtedly brilliant works of art. :lol:

Mad Vader · Feb 26, 2015

He is a multiple winner of various literary TW awards, so his boasts are not to be taken lightly, even if he may be confused by Lenin's claim that quantity breeds a quality of its own.

Duh · Mar 4, 2015

I am looking to get my dad a drone for freedom and birthdays.

Thing is, i have no experience with this stuff and while i looked a bit online, i wanted to check here, if anybody is in the know and can tell me better. My price range is 100-200 euros, i am looking for something that is beginner-friendly and that is able to do fpv and capture decent video/pics. So far i have come across the following:

The Hubsan H107D is supposedly the best per buck (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-drones,review-2412.html) and i have found a retailer that sells it for about 120€ (with a coupon)
http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-Hubsan-H107d-Fpv-X4-Rc-Quadcopter-Rtf-With-5_8g-Fpv-6ch-Transmitter-p-68571.html?p=2S2600080932201209GD , but banggood is situated in the states and seems to have long shipping times domestically already. I also feel that the video capture is sort of meh and while i do enjoy the design, the size would be a turn-off to my dad (i think).

While looking for deals on the Hubsan, i found the WL v666 and it seemed like pretty much the thing i wanted - decent look, decent size, decent capture, ok to fly for noobs. I then came across this review http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2291665 and sadly it seems that the brush motors it uses are suboptimal - even with good care they average only 30-40 flights (vs the normal 50 flights). Motors can be bought for 2-5 euros, so its not horrible, but not great either. On RCmaster i would get the copter and 4 spare motors for about 128,77€.

As an alternative to the WL v666, the WL v686 came up - it doesn't have the motor problem, but has a worse design in my eyes. Capture and size seem okay. http://www.rcmaster.net/de-wltoys-v686g-headless-mode-one-key-return-5-8ghz-fpv-rc-quadcopter-mit-2mp-kamera-rtf-p238368.htm has it for 117 €.

I would really appreciate, if anyone knowledgable could give me some feedback on the stuff i have found so far and any potential alternatives (for what im going for).

Cheers!

FrisianDude · Mar 4, 2015

Set up a beehive, all the drones you want \

/

Swissky · Mar 4, 2015

I have this Soviet gas mask bag, on the inside of the flap is some writing.
Can anyone translate?

Phonemelter · Mar 4, 2015

"100% Cotton. Tumble dry low."

Swissky · Mar 4, 2015

Maybe one of the Ukrainian guys can help me.

Edit : I tried doing some by myself, ended up like this.

GOST 13389-67
TYPE
DNTD 890

Lumos · Mar 5, 2015

Gestricius said:
I have this Soviet gas mask bag, on the inside of the flap is some writing.
Can anyone translate?

Gestricius said:
GOST 13389-67
TYPE
DNTD 890

Sorry, but... whaaat?
I see something else entirely:

ОСГ 13389-67
ТИП Е
ДАТА 1890

=>

Fuel supply division* 13389-67
Type E
Date 1890**

* "ОСГ" is likely to stand for "Отдел Снабжения Горючим", which means "fuel supply division".
** I have no idea what this means, but that appears to be what it says.

Swissky · Mar 5, 2015

Oh.

Silly me. :lol:

I guess this bag was used for personnel who would drive fuel trucks to the frontlines?
And thank you very much.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James · Mar 7, 2015

2 questions that occured to me while cycling through farms.

1. Predators are intelligent, herbivores (or things thay have small/weak/stationary prey) are stupid. But how do scavengers like hyenas and vultures weigh in? Can you teach a hyena to do dog tricks? Are carrion birds more attentive than ostriches and other flightless birds?

2. Do any environmental factors encourage domestic dogs to poop more often? There are definitely times of the year where I see way, way more dog crap beside lampposts than others. I haven't kept any notes on these findings, however.

Vraelomon · Mar 7, 2015

jacobhinds said:
I haven't kept any notes on these findings, however.

Of all the things to take notes on, the amount of canine feces you find should obviously be clearly documented and backed up on several floppy disks. It's important to know these things, ya know.

crodio · Mar 7, 2015

How do i solve f(x)=x^3-10x+24 for the roots of the function?
or x^3-10x+24=0
The root is -4, but i want to know how to solve eet

CaptainAndrew · Mar 7, 2015

Lumos said:
Gestricius said:

I have this Soviet gas mask bag, on the inside of the flap is some writing.
Can anyone translate?

Click to expand...

Gestricius said:

GOST 13389-67
TYPE
DNTD 890

Click to expand...

Sorry, but... whaaat?
I see something else entirely:
...

100% sure it's ГОСТ, which would stand for Государственный стандарт.

The second line says ТИП Е which would translate to TYPE E

Not sure of ДАТА 1890 and how it's supposed to be read and understood. After some more staring it's starting to look like so: ДАТА 1.8.90 (DATE 1.8.90), which would now make far more sense.

A quick google search seems to confirm this
(there's quite a bit of very detailed info there about that bag, that you won't get anyone to go through, so you'll probably have to use google translate)

It was for civillian use btw.

Krik · Mar 7, 2015

jacobhinds said:
2 questions that occured to me while cycling through farms.

1. Predators are intelligent, herbivores (or things thay have small/weak/stationary prey) are stupid. But how do scavengers like hyenas and vultures weigh in? Can you teach a hyena to do dog tricks? Are carrion birds more attentive than ostriches and other flightless birds?

I would say that scavengers are intelligent, but many scavengers are also predators. Hyenas are a good example and are pretty intelligent, although I don't know about teaching it tricks. And then there's things like foxes and raccoons which are also pretty intelligent scavengers. As for birds google said carrion birds require a much longer memory span so I'd imagine they're more intelligent than an emu, though maybe not by a ton.

MadocComadrin · Mar 7, 2015

crodio said:
How do i solve f(x)=x^3-10x+24 for the roots of the function?
or x^3-10x+24=0
The root is -4, but i want to know how to solve eet

Since all the coefficients are integers, start with the Rational Zeros test to find possible roots.
Then, test those roots using synthetic division. If you get a remainder of zero, then that possible root is a root.

The Rational Zeros test states that possible rational roots* take the form of a factor of the constant / a factor of the highest coefficient. In our case, that is any factor of 24 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24) / any factor of 1 (1). That gives us the following possible roots: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24 and their negatives. Since you said one of the roots is -4 or (x+4), I'm going to start with that.

Synthetic division essentially divides one polynomial by the other. In our case, we want to divide (1x^3 + 0x^2 - 10x + 24) by the root, (x+4). You can look up better explanations of synthetic division than I can give, but I will give an example.

Code:

-4|  1  0  -10  24
   ---------------
       -4   16 -24
     1 -4    6   0

That means our quotient is 1x^2 - 4x + 6 R0. (You can also write the R0 as 0/(x+4) ). Since the remainder is 0 (R0), -4 is a root. You have some choices to find the rest of the roots, if there are any more rational ones. (IIRC) The quotient contains all the roots from the original except -4, which means you can test for the rest of the roots from the quotient.

Alternatively, you can cross off -4 from your list and check another from the original equation.

*Note that despite the number of possible rational roots found, none are guaranteed to be actually roots.

Anything more complex is best solved with Calculus techniques, iirc.

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