User talk:Aaron Rotenberg

Hi, I have added notes to the discussion page on Shell Sort You mention several gap sequences and then quote a total count of comparisons & exchanges. The strange thing is that the total counts for comparisons & exchanges are identical for each gap sequence. That cannot be right. Stephen Howe 22:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

CopyNight Orlando
Hi ! I see you're from Florida. If you're in the Orlando area, please check out this brief survey. I'm looking to start a meet-up of CopyNight, a monthly social discussion of copyright and related issues (like Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and open source). If that sounds neat, please these brief questions to help with scheduling the event. Thanks! --Gavin Baker 10:17, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I'm quite a ways away from the Orlando area. Sincerely, . --Aaron Rotenberg 01:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

trigonometric substitution
Hello. Can you explain your reasons for this edit? I'm somewhat uncomfortable with this way of using arrows. Mathematicians use arrows of that sort to mean "if...then..."; i.e.
 * $$A \Rightarrow B\,$$
 * $$A \Rightarrow B\,$$

means "if A then B". But I see students promiscuously throwing arrows around using it in effect as a way to try to communicate by pointing and grunting when they don't know the language. Without any explicit and specific statement about what the arrows are supposed to mean in the particular case, I'd rather avoid them unless they mean "if...then..", and even then I'd usually rather write the words. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that&mdash;as I said in the edit summary, I am going to make a more proper cleanup of the whole article in a little while. I'll fix it now. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 00:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Your Request for Rollback
Aaron, per your request on WP:RFR, I have enabled your account with the rollback feature. Please read documentation on the tool, and remember that it is to be used for the removal of vandalism only—it must not be used to aid edit warring.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me at my talk page. AGK § 11:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Problems with SP and FS page
Hi. I'm quite interested in fixing problems with the software patents and free software article. I'm wondering if you could give some information on Talk:Software patents and free software to explain the tags. What should it be expanded to cover? What garbage in the article needs to be cleaned up?

Thanks. --Gronky (talk) 14:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Gedit?
Hi, and welcome (if You're new here, otherwise just hi and bless!). Do you have any specific points about improving gedit? I'm going to improve it a little, but think it doesn't exactly look like an advertisement, but much more like a sketchy stub. If the stub sounds good it's probably because the editor is fairly OK by my experience, but it's lacking some features here and there, such as multiple window split.  Said: Rursus   ☻   14:48, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not new here, I just don't edit a lot. I don't really know very much about gedit's features - I only use it every once in a while - so I'm hesitant to change a lot on the page. Nevertheless, it seems to me like whoever wrote the article was paraphrasing another web page in a few places, particularly in statements like:
 * "It is designed to have a clean, simple interface according to the philosophy of the GNOME project."
 * "Some advanced features of gedit include multilanguage spellchecking and a flexible plugin system allowing to dynamically add new features..."
 * The article isn't as bad as most of the pages I've used advert on. Mostly, I think the problem is that it lists features without any practical explanation of their importance or relevance which makes it sound like it is just quoting buzzwords. Don't worry about it too much, though - I think that it will look fine if it gets expanded. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 17:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Found a page the article paraphrases - maybe we could use it as a reference instead? « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 18:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I see your point, and it's a good point: listed features should preferably be related to a certain general usage, in order to make some sense to the reader and mayhap future user. That could be said of every program, but I've not realized it fully, because I'm thinking code, usually, as regards to programs. Good point! Thanks!  Said: Rursus   ☻   19:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Mersenne Twister Pseudocode
This might seem slightly bizarre, but here goes: I'm trying to implement the mersenne twister algorithm from the pseudocode which you were the last person to do any work on (because as a physcist, the formal description is way over my head). I think I've got it all sorted except for line 32:

int y := 32nd bit of(MT[i]) + last 31 bits of(MT[(i+1) mod 624])

I don't work at the bit-level normally, so I'm not sure what this means. Do I just extract the 32nd (most significant?) bit? (which, because it's a bit on it's own will either be 0 or 1), and add that to the last 31 bits of the other thing (which, because they've been extracted from a complete set of 32 bits will be shifted over by 1 bit as well), or an I supposed to 'remember' the positions of each set of bits and somehow combine them?

e.g.: MT[i] is

00000000 00000000 11011110 00001010 = 56842

^bit 32___________________________^bit 0

MT[(i+1 mod 624)] is:

00000000 00000001 01011110 00010111 = 89623

So we extract the 32nd bit of MT[i]:

0 = 0

and the last 31 bits of MT[(i+1 mod 624)]:

0000000 00000000 10101111 00001011 = 44811

and just add them together as integers:

44811+0 = 44811

(ok, I've contrived my example badly)

imagine MI[i] is:

10000000 00000000 11011110 00001010 = 2147540490

Now, the 32nd bit is

1

but is that

10000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 or

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 ?

and is the last 31 bits of MT[(i+1 mod 624)]

00000000 00000001 01011110 00010110 or

00000000 00000000 10101111 00001011 ?

Have I numbered the bits correctly? Have I picked the right block of 31 as the 'last' block? Are the extracted bits supposed to be kept 'in position'?

Thanks - I know Wikipedia isn't exactly supposed to be a question-and-answer session.

Gurkha (talk) 17:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I wrote a working Java implementation of the algorithm shortly after refactoring the pseudocode on the page, but I seem to have lost it, and it's been a while so I can't really remember much about the algorithm (I never understand why these things work anyway ;). My advice is to write the code and test it with different seeds against the reference implementations in the "External Links" section of the page.


 * In the future, please consider asking questions like this on the reference desk, as you will probably get more helpful and accurate answers. It's basically Wikipedia's "question-and-answer session". « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 18:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Meetup
Meetup/Tampa -- You're invited! Hires an editor (talk) 02:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Main Page redesign
The Main Page Redesign proposal is currently conducting a straw poll to select five new designs, before an RFC in which one will be proposed to replace the Main Page. The poll closes on October 31st. Your input would be hugely appreciated! Many thanks, P retzels Talk! 15:01, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Planetary systems
Hey Aaron,

28 April 2011 19:58 you edited List of planetary systems, where you stated "known planetary systems (i.e. stars with at least two confirmed planets)". Why is a star with one confirmed planet not a planetary system, which in that article is defined as "various non-stellar objects orbiting a star such as planets, dwarf planets (and their moons), asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and cosmic dust."? Although the word "various" implies there has to be at least one object other than the confirmed planet, there appears to be no rule this has to be another planet. Is there a scientific standard for this? If you like you can answer here to me or leave a reply at Talk:List of planetary systems. Greetings, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:00, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello?
Hey, did you notice that I posted a reply to your response to the Reference Desk question that I titled 'Chicken-and-Egg Problem?' BCG999 (talk) 17:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I did, but I didn't get to answer it because I was busy yesterday. I'll post a reply there now. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 17:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Ditto this time; you busy again? RandomDSdevel (talk) 20:26, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm a full-time software engineer. I'm busy every weekday until I get home. And I got home really late today. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 02:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, then; I'm sorry, I won't ask again.


 * RandomDSdevel (talk) 18:55, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

template on coilgun article
Hello! I removed the template you added 7 years ago on the coilgun article. The number of references have more than sextupled since you added the template, so I've deemed it appropriate to remove the notice. If you believe the article still hasn't improved enough to earn the template's removal, feel free to undo my edit, but if you do, please leave a reason so the article can truly earn its removal. Thanks! Googol30 (talk) 20:08, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The references seem much more thorough now. Thanks! « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 12:34, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)