Things that make you go "Hmmmm…"

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by wblipp

Wow! The first program on the first stored-program-controlled computer was used to factor prime numbers! I thought "factoring prime numbers" was just a joke.

I think the number itself would be a higher number than 1, and a factor...
For anybody actually wondering what they were doing, they checked the program/computer for errors by having it "factor" prime numbers, and seeing if it returned anything other than 1. Almost like the first torture test, similar to Prime95's torture test in a way.

[cheesehead]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...=spy&topic_set=

[Xyzzy]

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[Xyzzy]

http://www.11speedonly.com/

[Xyzzy]

http://www.wooljersey.com/gallery/v/Walter/1_001/

[cheesehead]

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc...s_8/49_1.shtml

[roger]

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc...s_8/49_1.shtml

I'm confused... What about all the architectural advances that are going on, especially in Dubai? This page is really interesting! They've got some incredible ideas going, including one to triple the construction speed of a skyscraper

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by roger

I'm confused... What about all the architectural advances that are going on, especially in Dubai? This page is really interesting! They've got some incredible ideas going, including one to triple the construction speed of a skyscraper

The article I linked (I'm having trouble accessing it now), on the Physics Today website, is about the sort of science that uses the scientific method to discover truths about the natural world, like physics or biology.

"Science" has other meanings related to systematic knowledge. Indeed, Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines engineering as "2 : the science by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to man in structures, machines and products", but note that it's about making truths of the natural world "useful to man", not discovering what those truths are.

Architecture, like other engineering, uses scientific principles, for instance Hooke's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooke's_law) which is in the realm of the science of physics, but architecture is not concerned with the discovery of truths about the natural world, so is not relevant to the article I linked.

"Basic science" or "pure science" (or another on-the-tip-of-tongue term) is sometimes used to refer to, say, what a new particle accelerator or telescope is used for -- to discover truths about the natural world. (There are also medical uses of particle accelerators, and engineering uses of telescopes, but in such cases the instrument usually needs to be designed with such use in mind and has features different from instruments used in scientific discovery about the natural world.)

As the Physics Today article discussed, all-too-many Muslims have subordinated science to religion (also true of all-too-many fundamentalist Christians, as we've seen in the U.S. in recent years -- although there is now some encouraging backlash among some evangelical groups), abandoning the scientific method as a means of separating truth from non-truth.

[Flatlander]

http://www.periodicvideos.com/

[cheesehead]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_yl...yhoo&type=lgns

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_yl...yhoo&type=lgns

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