Thanks, Alex!



  • I can complete my OMGWTF entry in however much time I like now! because negative infinity is the same as infinity.* How kind of Alex to grant us an extension!

     No panic, plenty of time...

    *At least, as far as some naive definitions of division by zero are concerned. Consider:
    1) 1/∞ = 0
    2) 1/-∞ = -0
    3) 0 = -0
    4) 1/∞ = 1/-∞
    5) ∞ = -∞

    Now, if you're using IEEE 754 arithmetic, with distinct signed zeroes in all their glory, it takes on a whole new complexion...



  • We had this conversation before when Dr. Anderson came up with "nullity". 1/∞ ≠ 0, and therefore the identity ∞ = -∞ doesn't hold in the standard field.

    The Real WTF is this text editor that makes it hard to use HTML escape codes.



  • ∞ = 0 = -∞ anyway, by the same sort of flawed mathematics.

    ∞X = ∞ for any real-number X

    0Y = 0 for any real-number Y

    Thus if X = 0 or Y = ∞, 0∞ = 0 and 0∞ = ∞, ipso ∞ = 0.  (This is a classic example of misuse of logic from a flawed basic postulate to a logical but flawed end result.)

    1/∞ <FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>≠ 0, unless 0 is redefined as an infinitely small number instead of as a lack of any quantity.  That's the same problem with the "nullity" math done by that idiot who misunderstood what zero means and mis-educated a whole class of kids.  If you have zero apples, you don't have an infinitely small number of apples, you simple do not have any at all.  The whole thing is just Zeno's Paradox (the dichotomy) reborn, without the classical Greek understanding that it's a flawed premise and use as an example of how logic can fail when it's misapplied (as in my example above).</FONT>

    On the other hand, laughing at Alex for having a negatively infinite deadline on his page is definitely amusing.  (And why does this forum change my font in the middle of my message?)



  • Because it retains the font of the text from wherever you copy n pasted those special characters from.



  • @Pap said:

    Because it retains the font of the text from wherever you copy n pasted those special characters from.
    Then why didn't it change the first time I copied the infinity symbol?  More relevantly (is that a word?), why does it allow font options, but not have a "font" option on the toolbar?  It has bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, indent, exdent, bullets, numbered lists, links, images, cut, copy, paste, even "Paste from Word", edit HTML and spellcheck, but not a list of fonts.

    Sure, I could have gone into the HTML and messed around with that.  I'm not a web page designer, but I can remove a tag from some text.  But why is that necessary?  It should either paste without context-sensitive code (plain-text or ASCII paste in most programs), or should have a font control on the toolbar.



  • The whole countdown script is just one huge WTF. Its gotten worse since I pointed it out here, the "now = new Date(now.valueOf() + 850);" bit kinda seems odd to me and I think something strange got put in around the due-hour to account for time differences.


Log in to reply