Balthamael

Soviet Union had one too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/2...reunified-korea China is getting pissed off with Pyongyang. Not exactly a huge surprise, but this coming out so soon after the latest episode might get interesting.

Least surprising fact about these leaks is that Sarah Palin does not know the US government doesn't have jurisdiction outside the US borders. Good for her that she found a spot to advertise her book, though.

That was the impression I got, yes. But you are of course correct. I apologise for my previous post.

^Oh, keep trying. I am sure there will be someone, eventually, who will admit how wise and intelligent you are. There must be, 'tis a big world after all.

I seem to remember that years ago some CERN scientist actually estimated a probability for LHC causing the end of the world. It was only about 10^-60 or so. This caused some discussion in the media, and I assume the CERN people learned not to make such estimations in the future. Don't know what(if anything) was the basis of the estimation, and I can't seem to find the article anymore. (You should, of course, bet the existence of the universe on those odds any day long.)

Probably none, as there is no clear path from "we just created a black hole in our particle accelerator" to "OMG, it's going to devour our planet!". Miniature black holes don't exist long enough to contemplate growing bigger.

And...why would that be a problem?

The UK treasury apparently does not believe the offer to be genuine. http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/communication...posal-10020975/ Personally I am inclined to believe that Lord James is suffering from senility and has trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality. Seems the most likely explanation.

I am not sure if the thing you are looking for even has a name. 'Geographic feature' might be the best match, but I think that is far too wide a term for any search to turn up useful results.

While I do believe that some truths are better off buried, I think government's privilege to classify documents is a tremendous power, and one it is bound to misuse. For this reason I applaud the work Wikileaks is doing. I don't think Wikileaks, and other journalistic organisation for that matter, should use other criteria than veracity when deciding whether to publish. With any classified information you could always come up with scenarios where lives might be endangered or other bad situations might occur if it should be revealed. And so, slowly, gradually, you would become a lapdog of those you were meant to guard against. I think it is the government's responsibility to keep documents it doesn't want published from falling in wrong hands, or preferably avoid doing things that need to be classified in the first place. As for atrocities, the moral responsibility falls upon those who commit them.

You are correct, and there are no easy solutions to this problem, I am afraid. If violence is inevitable, you should always be the one to strike the first blow. Get them before they can get you.

I do not know if the universe has an intelligent creator of some sort, or if it came to be by some other means I do not understand. I do *know* that if there is an intelligent creator, then it does not know, nor care, about me. I am beneath the notice of such a being, even more so than a single bacterium is beneath the notice of a biologist looking at a culture on her petri dish. And you know what, I feel good about it.

Chieftain. I am kinda new to the game still.

Due to a lucky streak with scouting ancient ruins, I ended up having a single unit of mechanized infantry in 900 BC. Needless to say, the game didn't last very long after that. Do you people think this should count as a bug?

They measured 36,7C in Joensuu today, which is the highest ever recorded in Finland. Thankfully I am not there, 32C in Oulu is horrible enough.

Loved the movie. If you haven't seen it and opened the thread anyway despite the warning, go see it. It's worth it, I promise. Though you may just as well read ahead if you want to. I don't think being spoiled takes anything away from the experience in this movie. Anyway (I'll make a spoiler break, after that no one needs to bother with spoiler warnings in this thread)... ...not only do I think the ending was dream, everything else that was supposedly reality was as well. Notice how they told early on the way to know you are dreaming. Ask yourself how did you end where you are currently, and if there is no real answer, that is an answer right there. We never need to travel anywhere in dreams. We already are where we need to be. But then, we don't see anyone really travelling anywhere in this movie either. It is always cut in the middle of action, we never see the beginnings. Somebody tells Leo's character he needs to go see a guy in Mombasa and whoosh!, Cobb is in a cafe in Mombasa. And speaking of Mombasa, nothing that happened there really made sense. He is being chased by faceless corporate goons, there is a shootout in the middle of day, trying to fit through an alley that is barely wide enough to allow for grown man to pass (why would an alley like that exist?) that kind of things happen in dreams (and movies for that matter, I think Nolan is going for some parallels between dreams and movies here), not in reality. Then there is the way the heist is executed, during a flight. They needed to engineer a fault in Fischer's private plane to force him to take a public flight. It was never shown how this was achieved, presumably Saito had ways to do that. But then, that kind of stuff just gets done in dreams as well. Then, when it is pointed out that they need to bribe the flight crew so they are left alone with the mark during the flight, Saito saiys that he bought the entire airline because that seemed neater. You bought an entire airline for this heist? Seriously? Even before you knew how we were going to do this? Again stuff that happens in dreams but doesn't really make sense in real life. Further, remember the events leading to Mal's hotel room suicide. She had three psychiatrists declare herself sane, then told her lawyer that Cobb had been threatening her safety, so he will be charged for her murder. I understand that he would seem suspicious on those circumstances, but would he really be convicted without real evidence? At least Mal's parents seemed to believe Cobb, given that they were on speaking terms with him. Further, can you really have yourself declared sane? Wouldn't any psychiatrist look an attempt of that as a sign of some kind of mental imbalance? Seems to me like an event that would happen in a dream, to make the dreamer feel persecuted, rather than something that happens in real life. Not saying that there is only one possible interpretation, but it seems to me that this makes most sense. I am currently thinking that pre-suicide Mal was the only other real person in the movie and everyone else is a projection. It is possible that she also is a projection. I don't think that makes the movie pointless at all. I mean, it was an entertaining movie.

What I have observed, tranq bolts and shock traps inevitably aggro the target for a second before knocking them out. I believe this counts against the requirements for One With the Shadows.

Indeed? But if that is indeed what I did (I didn't, but let's pretend that I did) then the probability my calculation returned should have been considerably smaller than the correct number, which you are still insisting is 1 in 100 trillion, correct? Because the odds of specific person winning must be considerably smaller than the odds for anyone winning. Right? So, are there any other criticism of the methodology? (Let's leave your assumption that I calculated incorrectly for later. That's easy to deal with.)

The only doubt I had about my derivation is whether you have to divide by the amount she spent once or several times. After thinking about is some more, I'm now confident it's only once, since she'd have to spend that money to even be in the pool which could likely win the lottery the second time. As far as your calculation, you'd have to show me the exact calculation you used since I can't tell what you're doing. You seem to have forgotten to include the factorial in the binomial theorem. Honestly, I have no idea what it is that you are trying to do, and why you are doing it, but it is of no consequence. Since you are at least pretending to know about binomial probability theorem, it makes things easier. Maybe. Would you agree that binomial theorem is the correct way to determine the probability of hitting the jackpot a certain number of times over a certain number of trials? As opposed to whatever you did that led you to that 1 in a 100 trillion figure?

You insist bringing this number up despite it having been shown to be nothing better than a guess. You said you were trying to estimate the order of magnitude, but nothing in your methodology fills me with confidence that you have anywhere close to the correct probability, or even order of magnitude. Earlier in this thread I demonstrated the correct method for solving this kind of problem, which you declared to be "completely wrong for reasons you are too lazy to explain". I must know insist that you explain what exactly was wrong in my math, other than that it disagreed with your made-up number. To make a decent estimate for the probability of this event, you need to have estimates for a single ticket winning, and for the amount of tickets the lady has purchased over her life.

Oh dear, it begins. Counterintuitive as it may seem, no, it is not 50/50. You picked a door when you had 1/3 odds to be correct. By showing you the empty door, Monty Hall changed nothing. You still have the same odds. Thus, you should switch, there is 2/3 chance that the car is behind the remaining door. The thing may be easier to visualise if you imagine being offered this option hundred times. So you make your initial choices, statistics suggest that you will have chosen 33 correct doors, and 67 empty ones. Now, when Monty Hall opens hundred empty doors, surely that doesn't change the amount of cars you have picked. You still have 33. 17 sports cars didn't just materialize out of emptiness, right? So, you should switch all your choices. There are 67 cars behind the 100 remaining closed doors, and 33 cars behind the doors you have chosen. Edit. Ahh, beaten by Amentep.

But you can't just go and factor probabilities like that. That just tells you the odds for two particular tickets both winning, like for example winning in consecutive weeks. Here we have a situation where someone has won several times over a long period of time. That requires a somewhat more complex calculation. Not to mention that you are forgetting completely that we would be having exactly this same discussion if she had won five times, or six or seven. You have to account for those events as well.

I think you are going to have to present your math before we are done here. How exactly did you arrive to the figure one in 100 trillion?

Do you think the amount of lottery tickets this lady has bought over her life is at all relevant to her chances of winning? If not, why not? If yes, how does your calculation account for that?