MickE

I remember my lecturers telling me that under no circumstances we may ever write sqrt(some negative) it does not exist, it is impossible. it is true that i?=-1 but that's something differentyou can think of this as a plane, the x axis is the real axis (a+i*b -> a is the real part) and the y-axis is the imaginary axis (b is the imaginary part) so if you have i as a number, you end up on the imaginary axis. this can be seen as a rotation of the unity point ( 1+i*0 or 1) this is a rotation over 90?, if you do this again (i*i) you rotate again over 90?, so you end up at -1 (+i*0) so you can write i?=-1, but the square root of a negative number... that does not exist! but this is rather advanced

these are really nice tips!! I will keep this in mind the next time I have to prepare for some kind of speech, but there are some things I have comment on.1. You say, ... establish eye contact ... but that's not always a good thing, some people (like me) get more nervous when they're looking straight into people's eyes. a better way (but don't do this when you have to talk to less then 15 people) is to look at the noses of the people, they will feel like you're looking at them, and you won't have to answer their staring eyes. some people also suggest to look over the people's heads, but you have to be careful with this approach. I for one, don't like it when I notice someone is staring at the wall while speaking, it gets on my nerves. when I notice this, I always want to jump up and shout "hey we're down here, don't look over our heads!!" But obviously I don't do that :)another way to deal with this (but this is only for large crowds of about 150 or more people) is to devide them into sub groups, for example four, and switch your view from one center of a sub group to another. This way everyone will feel like you're talking directly to them, and you can feel like there's almost no-one there :(2. watching the clock is a very good tip, nothing is more annoying then expecting a 20 minute speech, and getting an hour of chatter. what's also very good is to give an overall view now and then, so people know what they can expect next. this should be done especially near the end of your speaking: "for five minutes I will be summarising what I said, and then there will be time for questions" or something like that. this way people know you'll only spend a few more minutes talking, they know you're about to give a short version of what you said and they know they can leave in a few minutes. 3. when preparing long periods of talking you should keep in mind that people can only really foces for about 45 minutes, after that the amount of material they absorb decreases rapidly. so don't make long speeches of an hour and a half, though people might keep quiet to be polite, they won't remember much of the last half hourthat's all I can addyou gave some great information bishoujo!!

I know we can't request tutorials here, but is there a place where we can request them?

I understand what your problem is, I don't know if it's that severe with me, but my gf sometimes complains about it too, I know there are "sleeping clinics" where I live where you can get help with these kind of problems (insomnia too) but I don't know how well it works, or if they have it where you live too...

I do download movies sometimes. I think the prices they charge at a cinema these days are too high. I know you could rent it, but I don't know, I don't have much problems with it, I have more problems with downloading music...but I download series more then I download movies (same for watching it obviously ) which should be allowed cause you can watch them for free on your tv too... so there are no issues about downloading those at all imo!

I sure am, not in the way that I would die if I couldn't come online over a month, but if I have to possibility of coming online, I will do so, there are some great online communities (like this one, as far as I can tell )

I have tried Ubuntu myself but I never ended up keeping it installed on my computer. I would never think of only using a unix based OS on my computer, only in dual boot (with some Windows OS) because, basically, Windows is soo popular, and besides all the comments on it for being not secure, not stable, ... if you install it and don't play around with it, don't test its limits, they're good OSs. They have a very intuitive interface, very easy to use. Unlike the unix-based OSs I've seen. I already had problems installing the drivers of my graphics card, last time I tried I spent at least an hour searching forums reading comments, instructions, copying commands... none worked! so I went back to XP for now. I'm sure I will try Ubuntu again later on (or another distro, if someone can recommend me a nice one) another option I considered is installing Mac OS X on my pc (yes I know it sound like "incompatible" but I can install it, I know that ) it has some very nice graphical effects that I like, BUT I've read it isn't half as safe as it claims to be. the only reason it's safe is because only a very small part of the computer using people use it. it was something like when you opened "explorer" seven other programs where partially opened which could be used to get into your computer, and I don't like the sound of that the security for Unix-based OSs is the same imo. they don't get attacked because the gain for the people that make the virusses is too small. atm it's the same for Vista, there are hardly Vista - only virusses because the amount of people using it is too small. I read somewhere there will be a Vista-virus boom in about half a year, because then the market share of it will be big enough...the price of popularity?good thing about the complexity of Unix-OSs is that it will take a LONG time before they get popular enough to get virus programming attention!

I agree with you when you're saying you admire hackers, bthaxor not for the things they do, but for the skills they have. I would lov to be so tallented, and have the knowledge about IT they have. I think it's a kind of gift, but you have to use it for the greater good, like you at your school. it's really annoying you have computers but you can't do anything with them. As long as you don't do anything shady or dangerous (like excessive downloading, or surfing for porn) you should have rather free access on the web. I do understand why your school is blocking so much content, but they've made it kind of useless to have internet if you can't even do a decent research on it... so in this special case (and when you don't do anything bad to them) I think I would allow you to hack their accounts. and remove some restrictions. But I wouldn't recommend doing it, because if they catch you, the cost could be huge! what is the use of a computer if you can't even use your explorer... I'm glad uni isn't that tough :wink:

I do download music (most of the time full cds) myself, but most of the time it's to check if I like the album, I don't want to spend 15 euros (or more) on an album I don't really like. And sometimes it's too hard to find the album in a store (like the Evans Blue albums) which is really sad! I wouldn't mind paying for the album cause I like to support people who do good things (making good music in this case)I like the idea hippiman gave, really cheap music is good! (and maybe even give the option of giving more money if you really appreciate what the artist is doing) kind of like what radiohead did with their latest album.but it might be hard to set up such a service. Once you can hear music on your computer, you can rip it and copy it as much times as you want, there's no hard thing about that, piracy will continue to exist, even if you have to pay 1ct for a full album, some people will refuse to pay for it, I know that for a fact!just my 2 cents