What does "peredelok" mean?
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 12:34 AM on February 11, 2008 (7 comments)

Sample identification filter: What is the background loop on DJ Babu's "Sound Music" (MP3 preview from EMusic here)? I'm a hundred percent sure that I've heard it used before on some hip-hop track I used to love, but an hour of five second stretches from my most likely suspects didn't yield a hit. Any ideas, hive-mind?
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 2:35 AM on July 2, 2007 (5 comments)

There's this rather unspecific Feynman story that I keep encountering. Its formulation as found on the Internets goes "One of the most impressive discoveries was the origin of the energy of the stars, that makes them continue to burn. One of the men who discovered this was out with his girl friend the night after he realized that nuclear reactions must be going on in the stars in order to make them shine. She said "Look at how pretty the stars shine!" He said, "Yes, and right now I am the only man in the world who knows why they shine." She merely laughed at him. She was not impressed with being out with the only man who, at that moment, knew why stars shine. Well, it is sad to be alone, but that is the way it is in this world." Does anyone know who he is talking about (Eddington? Perrin? Bethe?) and if there's any truth to the story?
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 4:48 AM on January 6, 2007 (7 comments)

I recently had the brilliant idea of giving my girlfriend a domain name plus hosting for her birthday. While it was well received, I haven't yet found a way to help her write a web site. While I know web technology really well, teaching my girlfriend HTML, CSS and JavaScript is not an option. We tried Frontpage (which is simply crap) and Dreamweaver (which is too closely coupled to the code for her) so far and didn't get anywhere. Is there any really simple page creation software, possibly web-based, that would allow her to create her own site without too much hassle? I'm thinking about something with the difficulty level of Google Page Creator, but maybe with a bit more power. Linux servers running pretty much anything are available.
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 8:48 AM on November 10, 2006 (22 comments)

A while back I was implementing a distributed transaction coordinator, and in the process also learned some of the pertaining theory. The only thing I can remember semi-vividly was a proof showing that you can't synchronize an action between two parties over an unreliable link, but I can't seem to find it any longer. The final step of the proof was something like "thus, if this was possible, you could shorten every conceivable protocol by one step, which reduces all protocols to the zero-step protocol, which is impossible". I'm pretty sure that it's a standard result of computer science, but I'm unable to find the right keywords to locate it. Help?
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 2:09 AM on August 18, 2006 (5 comments)

A while ago, there was a web site called Yoga without tree hugging, which offered flash online classes and a bunch of information about Yoga in a framework that was rather accessible to a scientific minded person. It has since been closed down due to the mysterious explanation that is at the site. Is there anything similar out there? I kinda liked the site, but I'm highly allergic to Prana, Chakras and mystical bullshit.
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 3:37 AM on August 6, 2006 (6 comments)

Chinese Internet Cafes - is there a chance to plug in my laptop?
posted to Ask Metafilter by themel at 1:12 AM on February 1, 2006 (6 comments)