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[Flying Dice]

He said after my post.

Shh. 

[nenjin]

I'm kind of ashamed I missed the DSL reference. Then again, that part of the movie I never really watched as a kid.

[Evilsx]

Right now, i fell like i am dieing (Sore back, migraine and other pain in different areas)

[Pnx]

So I was going through this whole problem set and trying to solve everything I could without a calculator as a sort of self-imposed challenge. It was tough but somehow I'd managed it with all 32 problems... except the last one.

Let me quote it to you:
"A screwdriver is dropped from the top of an elevator shaft, exactly 5 seconds later the sound of the screwdriver hitting bottom of the shaft is heard. How deep is the shaft?
Hint: The distance that a dropped object falls in t seconds is represented by the formula d=16t². The speed of sound is 1100ft/sec.

The final answer, spoilered for those of you that actually want to try solving this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So the number of seconds elapsed is 5, this is equal to the time it took for it to hit the bottom plus the time it took for the sound to reach us.
Since the time it takes for the sound to go from the bottom of the shaft back to us is the distance d divided by 1100 we can write this all in terms of t, the time it took for it to reach the bottom of the shaft, giving us:
t+(16t²/1100)=5
Giving us our formula for the amount of time. Then we set it equal to zero...
t+(16t²/1100)-5=0
Rewrite it a little bit for clarity...
(16/1100)t²+t-5=0
The we use the quadratic formula to find our zeros:
(-1(+-)sqrt(1-4(16/1100)(-5)))/(2(5/1100))
I apologise for it being so messy, but this forum doesn't handle fractions very well, and I can't be bother to shove it into an image or something.
We're uninterested in a negative solution, so we can drop that negative sign and clear things up a little while we're at it.
(-1+sqrt(23115/1100))/(10/1100)
But of course this is just the time it took to reach the bottom of the shaft, we want the distance, which is expressed by the formula 16t², so we plug that in and get:
16((-1+sqrt(24115/1100))/(10/1100))²
Needless to say, there was really no way I was going to work this out by hand. Especially since it wanted a decimal point rather than a fraction.

[misko27]

Well, RedKing, if that is, your real name, I would have gotten it, but I wasn't here to catch it.

[MaximumZero]

I didn't get it, and that makes me feel stupid. Not a lot of rage going on, though.

[Pnx]

It's the old, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is a war room!"

Also, the war room depicted in the picture was actually one of my favourite parts of the movie, it's very purposefully game themed. Notice how the big round table bears a resemblance to a roullette wheel? And they made the big "screens" look like pinball or slot machines with all their flashing lights and such.

[SalmonGod]

It's the old, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is a war room!"

Also, the war room depicted in the picture was actually one of my favourite parts of the movie, it's very purposefully game themed. Notice how the big round table bears a resemblance to a roullette wheel? And they made the big "screens" look like pinball or slot machines with all their flashing lights and such.

The director also rather famously insisted that the table be furnished with a single large piece of green felt fabric, like a poker table.  And it absolutely had to be green, even though the movie's in black & white.

[penguinofhonor]

I fucking love that movie. Nobody ever wants to watch it though, I guess at this point it's a little artsy.

[Pnx]

But it's really quite funny! Though I suppose the humour might seem a little dry without a laugh track or anything.

[SalmonGod]

It's one of those movies I have never seen, but know I really need to.

[MaximumZero]

It's one of those movies I have never seen, but know I really need to.

Now that I've looked up the quote, hear hear.

[RedKing]

It's one of those movies I have never seen, but know I really need to.

Oh God yes....Peter Sellers is absolutely brilliant. And if nothing else, the scene of Slim Pickens riding that nuke all the way down is just such a pop culture touchstone.




Rage for the Day: Found a problem on a system yesterday afternoon. The sysadmin made a hasty fix to correct it, and implemented it with no testing. Fix broke things far worse. Guess who gets to clean up the mess? Guess who gets paid way more than I do, and who pretty regularly commits this kind of fuck-up? ARGLEBARGLERAEG

[ChairmanPoo]

Someone said something vaguely annoying while she was vaguely annoyed by something else, and now I'm raging at that woman (this is strictly work-related, mind you). On plus side my relationship with my immediate superior improves.

[nenjin]

The whole bombing and riding da bomb scenes was what i spent the most time watching as a kid. I'd always be half way through DSL, fastforwarding on my VHS tapes to get to the movies I wanted to watch. But I'd always hit the bomber scene and then stop and watch the rest of the movie to its awesome conclusion.