User talk:Tardis

Talk of the Tardis
Also, thankyou for answering my question on the reference desk. Alphax &tau;&epsilon;&chi; 03:04, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Of course. Tardis 01:21, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Reference desk
You were right; a big part of the OP's question was in fact answered at Lysosome (I should have read more closely). Apologies for sounding short in my initial reply to you. Best, David Iberri (talk) 23:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)


 * No apology required; obviously one of us was simply misreading. I'm still glad for the denaturation commentary you added; it's always important to know the why as well as the how.  --Tardis 21:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

RDs
Thank you Tardis for supporting my linking answer to whoever it was! 8-) --Light current 00:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course. I didn't realize at first that they hadn't just linked it themselves, perhaps pointing out that the page didn't have it.  But then I was looking at the history to chide them properly; if they didn't even do that much, I was glad to, um, nudge in the correct direction.  Thank you for providing all the real help yourself.  --Tardis 00:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

RefDeskBot
Hi - thans forreporting that to me! It's the first I've heard of it happenning so far, and I guess that your hypothesis of it being an edit conflict is correct - the only confusing thing is that my code throws an exception when an edit conflict occurs, so perhaps there was a mediawiki error - if your edit and the bot edit went through at the same time, your text may have been lost. At the moment, from when it fetches the page, the bot has about 10 -15 seconds of holding it before saving it - so that's time that an edit conflict could occur. This is because I load the page, then save the daily archive, then save the main page. I'm going to change that order now to reduce the time, though for about 5 seconds (!) there'll be a bit of missing text on the main desk - nothing major. Hopefully this works - but I'm still confused - if there was an edit conflict, I should have got an error, because the server would still give me the same key. Ah well! Again, thanks M a rtinp23 10:38, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: Optical disc writing request
Hi, and thanks for the challenge – I'll try to improve them if I can, once I familiarize myself with the subject more. There is already a quite thorough article on CD-R, though. Maybe I could add some similar information to the DVD-R article. Thanks anyway! Happy editings and &hearts;, –Mysid ☎ 17:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

:)
Nice username. Are you member of the WikiProject Doctor Who already? I think, based on your username, that you might be interested in that. - Mgm|(talk) 20:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The name is actually something of an accident, long ago, and refers more to time travel itself than to Doctor Who particularly. I surely have nothing to contribute to that project currently, although one day I might know more.  --Tardis 23:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Reachable points
Thanks a ton, Tardis, for your help on my question. I'll try to take it from here, and let you know if I succeed in finding a complete solution. Cheers! deeptrivia (talk) 16:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandal Warning
Hi. Just to comment on this edit of yours, there's no need to warn a vandal more than 2 weeks after their misdoings. Warnings that are issued even a few hours after the vandalism has occurred do not prove any useful and might even confuse recent changes patrollers. Regards, -- Hús  ö  nd  03:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah. I warned because I just repaired the vandalism now (unfortunate that it survived so long!), and thought the warning, being made as soon as was possible as it was, would be better late than never.  Is there more of an established process for warning (and blocking, etc.) than I perceive?  --Tardis 04:19, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

hi

 * : )Doktor Who 14:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Coins problem at RD/S
Hi Tardis. Thanks for calling my attention to your solution. I replied on my own talk page. --mglg(talk) 23:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Now more on my page. --mglg(talk) 01:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help on this question. I just found your response and added further comments. Aepryus 02:53, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Question on my talk page. --mglg(talk) 03:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Modified code on my talk page. --mglg(talk) 20:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks! I had actually figured it out by the time I taught it (frantically the morning of). But yes, you're right, and I put a little more at the RD. moink (talk) 20:16, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Tardis@svwiki...
... is now free for SUL. Micke (talk) 18:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks much! --Tardis (talk) 18:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank You
Hello, Tardis. Thank you for your response on my talk page. I thought that I was forgotten. --Mayfare (talk) 01:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

David Kirsch‎
I actually don't have an official source other than his boyfriend and several of Zoid's chat buddies then again there's very little in the way of official sources on Zoid. Klichka (talk) 16:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Username Tardis on zh-wp
Hello Tardis, the username Tardis on zh-wp is free and you can usurp it now.--Wing (talk) 06:26, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --Tardis (talk) 15:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

0.88 is right
Concerning this edit: I've just checked the math carefully. 0.88 is right if rounded to the nearest hundredth. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * My apologies! I completely failed to notice the second example, and edited that sentence to match the first example (where it really is ½).  Perhaps it would be best to factor that sentence out and have it address both examples?  --Tardis (talk) 15:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've changed it from a bulleted list to a list separated by subsection headings, to avoid any similar confusions in the future. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:06, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Regdiff
Thanks a million for taking the time! I'm trying it out now. The input files are huge (~ 80Mb), and its been running for about an hour, but stopped producing output quite a while ago. Are you sure the termination criterion is correct? In spite of my username, I don't program in Python, so it's difficult for me to determine. I'll be experimenting more during the week, and will be back with more information, and maybe a question or two. :-) Thanks again. --NorwegianBluetalk 19:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It produces output when it finds differences, so it's quite possible for it to produce nothing during almost all of its run if the changes are minor and/or localized. I don't immediately see a way for it not to terminate; you can certainly check manually for the last change in the files and see if it has already generated it.  It should also finish in good time, since (with the sorted input) it can be linear in that input.  If it doesn't ever exit, or you find other bugs, please do let me know.  --Tardis (talk) 21:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I've updated it to detect more kinds of errors (some of which would have produced damaging output were they to occur) and to verify that it's never stuck. You can also now disable deletions or request progress reports via (really) trivial changes to the code.  --Tardis (talk) 23:06, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid there's still problems.

"b.current_user.reg" and "a.current_user.reg" are dumps of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive immediately before and immediately after the installation of a large software package.

Relevant part of "b.current_user.reg":

Relevant part of "a.current_user.reg":

Identical, as far as I can see. Is there a problem related to alphabetic order and capitalization? --NorwegianBluetalk 23:40, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * (First, a belated "you're welcome".) Now I'm glad(der) I added those error checks!  Please realize that I have no Windows machine to test this on; I've been testing with .REG files I found online.  First, any output the original version generated should be discarded, as it would happily generate incorrect output in (some) cases like this.  Second, the "error" it reported depends only on the contents of each file separately, so that they're identical here is irrelevant.
 * You're quite right (I hope) that the issue is that the registry (like Microsoft's file systems) is case-insensitive, so that "Ab" comes before "AC". I've modified the program to follow that rule (as well as to recognize that "A\B", being a subkey of "A", comes before "AD"); if it still doesn't work, it will likely require sorting the input (which will greatly increase its runtime and memory use, unfortunately).  --Tardis (talk) 05:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to say, I didn't get it working. I tried some modifications, still various error messages. So I followed the path of least resistance - installed the regdiff program by Gerson Kurz on a non-critical PC (one of my children's heavily malware infested laptops), and moved the .reg files back and forth using a memory stick. It turned out that Gerson Kurz's program did the job. However, I was amazed to realize how massive changes to the registry the installation of just about any windows program made. Therefore, I was unable to achieve what had I intended (easy deployment and uninstalling of a suite of programs). I've kept the registry dumps before and after each installation for later reference, in case I feel like tackling this problem at a later time. It looks like it would need a much larger programming effort than I had envisaged to sort out the important changes from the noise. Then making the tool would take a lot more time than doing the job manually a dozen or so times, to it'll have to wait until I have a lot of time on my hands. Thanks again for your time and willingness to help. --NorwegianBluetalk 13:13, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Ref desk FSA help
Yup, this is still me - thanks a lot for the answer, it makes a lot of sense. I'll let you know if/when I get it to work (it's an open ended problem from a vacation scholarship project I was working on over the summer - I'm in the fourth year of my UG degree now, and only just doing a course on automata for the first time, which rekindled my interest). Thanks again! 81.102.34.92 (talk) 20:27, 24 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey, me again (hoping my IP address hasn't changed!) - and I finally got around to trying out what you suggested. I see why your method would work, but I can't seem to get it to. I tried a simple example, where I wanted an automaton that would recognise the language of words on a, b and c, which do not contain ' abc ' as a subword. I constructed an automaton that would recognise the language of all words containing ' abc ' (with the intention of turning it into a DFA, then complementing it), in the following way: the initial state has paths to itself for each of a, b and c, and a path to state 2 for a. State 2 had a path to state 3 for b, and state 3 had a path to state 4 for c. State 4, the only terminal state, had loops to itself for each of a, b and c.


 * My thinking was that in the initial state you could run through every possible word on a, b and c, but you'd be forced to have abc as a subword before getting to the terminal state, where you could then run through all the possible suffixes for the word. (I couldn't see what you meant in your description of constructing the automaton for this, I couldn't see how you'd get words, in this case, starting with a b or a c - I'm assuming I just misunderstood). I easily converted it to a DFA, and then converted it to the 'complement' automaton...which, in theory, shouldn't accept words containing 'abc', but I get it to accept, say, ababc. I think I see what I've done wrong - while the word ababc is accepted by the initial automaton (and so rejected by the complement), there are routes to spell out ababc that do not end in the terminal state (such as just looping in the initial state), so it does appear in the complemented automaton. Do I need to convert it to a complete automaton before complementing? The prospect of doing so is daunting - I think the construction I have involves prefix sets as the nodes, and all the 'examples' I've seen have 'patterns' in these sets so there are a finite number of such sets...whereas in this case I'd think there would be an infinite number.


 * Sorry to dump all this on you! Thanks for any help you can give. 81.102.34.92 (talk) 20:04, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Your NFA is fine &mdash; in fact, I realize that the loop in the initial state for all characters obviates the need for any other arcs back to it (duh), so it's cleaner than the one I would have made. If I do the powerset construction on this, I get
 * {| class="wikitable"

! From !! a !! b !! c
 * {1} || {1,2} || {1} || {1}
 * {1,2} || {1,2} || {1,3} || {1}
 * {1,3} || {1,2} || {1} || 4
 * 4 || 4 || 4 || 4
 * }
 * where I have magically identified all DFA set-states that contain the accepting NFA state 4, as my original post mentioned. Inverting the DFA just means making the first three states accepting instead of the fourth; then it is a trap state, so we can drop it entirely and write the DFA as
 * {| class="wikitable"
 * 4 || 4 || 4 || 4
 * }
 * where I have magically identified all DFA set-states that contain the accepting NFA state 4, as my original post mentioned. Inverting the DFA just means making the first three states accepting instead of the fourth; then it is a trap state, so we can drop it entirely and write the DFA as
 * {| class="wikitable"

! From !! a !! b !! c
 * 1 || 2 || 1 || 1
 * 2 || 2 || 3 || 1
 * 3 || 2 || 1 ||
 * }
 * This DFA crashes if ever exposed to abc, because a goes to state 2 from any state, and then b and c transition to 3 and then crash. Otherwise, it accepts: there's no way to crash except from #3 on c, and no way to #3 except from #2 on b, and no way to #2 except an a &mdash; and every (explicit) state is accepting!  I'm not sure what you mean by a "complete automaton", but remember the trick with NFAs: they accept iff any path through the states that is consistent with the input ends in an accepting state.  This means that the powerset DFA accepts in any state that contains an accepting state in the NFA, because that accepting state could be reached by whatever input reaches that DFA state.  The alternative routes that do not accept end up being other junk in with the accepting state that gets ignored (if the input terminates there) when we label all such sets "accepting".  (Here, because the whole point of the NFA is to recognize a substring regardless of where it occurs, we make the accepting state a sink as well, and so we don't have to distinguish between, say, {1,4} and {1,2,4}.)  --Tardis (talk) 16:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah-hah! Thanks a lot, that's completely sorted it out - I think I'd just got muddled when converting to the DFA. Onward! (and yeah, 'complete' doesn't seem to be standard, but my lecturer brought it up to describe an automaton that is deterministic and has an edge coming out of each state, for each letter of the alphabet, like this one) 81.102.34.92 (talk) 17:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Thanks in turn for showing me a neat problem to attack with NFAs; I hadn't seen many good examples before.  That definition of "complete" means nothing to the DFA itself: every DFA, technically speaking, must have exactly one transition from every state for every input letter.  We commonly abbreviate the machines (as I did) by combining and omitting any states from which it is impossible to reach an accepting state, claiming that the machine "crashes" when it attempts to take the (omitted) transitions to the trap state.  But that's just a conventional shorthand; the standard theory says that a "crashed" machine simply sits in its trap state(s) until the end of the input, and then (obviously) rejects.  I would say that a DFA with every edge drawn might be "explicitly specified", but the machine itself is in no way incomplete even lacking such prolixity.  --Tardis (talk) 19:09, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This DFA crashes if ever exposed to abc, because a goes to state 2 from any state, and then b and c transition to 3 and then crash. Otherwise, it accepts: there's no way to crash except from #3 on c, and no way to #3 except from #2 on b, and no way to #2 except an a &mdash; and every (explicit) state is accepting!  I'm not sure what you mean by a "complete automaton", but remember the trick with NFAs: they accept iff any path through the states that is consistent with the input ends in an accepting state.  This means that the powerset DFA accepts in any state that contains an accepting state in the NFA, because that accepting state could be reached by whatever input reaches that DFA state.  The alternative routes that do not accept end up being other junk in with the accepting state that gets ignored (if the input terminates there) when we label all such sets "accepting".  (Here, because the whole point of the NFA is to recognize a substring regardless of where it occurs, we make the accepting state a sink as well, and so we don't have to distinguish between, say, {1,4} and {1,2,4}.)  --Tardis (talk) 16:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah-hah! Thanks a lot, that's completely sorted it out - I think I'd just got muddled when converting to the DFA. Onward! (and yeah, 'complete' doesn't seem to be standard, but my lecturer brought it up to describe an automaton that is deterministic and has an edge coming out of each state, for each letter of the alphabet, like this one) 81.102.34.92 (talk) 17:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Thanks in turn for showing me a neat problem to attack with NFAs; I hadn't seen many good examples before.  That definition of "complete" means nothing to the DFA itself: every DFA, technically speaking, must have exactly one transition from every state for every input letter.  We commonly abbreviate the machines (as I did) by combining and omitting any states from which it is impossible to reach an accepting state, claiming that the machine "crashes" when it attempts to take the (omitted) transitions to the trap state.  But that's just a conventional shorthand; the standard theory says that a "crashed" machine simply sits in its trap state(s) until the end of the input, and then (obviously) rejects.  I would say that a DFA with every edge drawn might be "explicitly specified", but the machine itself is in no way incomplete even lacking such prolixity.  --Tardis (talk) 19:09, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

new WP:RDREG userbox
The box to the right is the newly created userbox for all RefDesk regulars. Since you are an RD regular, you are receiving this notice to remind you to put this box on your userpage! (but when you do, don't include the |no. Just say   ) This adds you to Category:RD regulars, which is a must. So please, add it. Don't worry, no more spam after this - just check WP:RDREG for updates, news, etc. flaminglawyerc 07:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu's volume control file
Hi, I replied on my talk page, Cheers -- SF007 (talk) 20:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Username
Please check the following:

ko:위키백과:계정 이름 변경 요청 --JeongAhn (talk) 00:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! (I would put a thanks there, but I imagine that text in the green box says "this has been resolved; please do not edit it".)  --Tardis (talk) 18:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

My Edits
My edits are each done manually. I was not aware that there was a "GLOBAL" search and replace.

For the most part I correct misspelled words - recieve, concieve, Febuary, words starting with "dissap", alot (should be two words).

Seperate is my main bugaboo.

There may be others that I check from time to time.

EoGuy (talk) 22:17, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Other, times,
Other, times, I, remove, superfluous, commas.

EoGuy (talk) 22:28, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you
I just wanted to say 'thank you' for all your help on the computer reference desk. -- CGPGrey  (talk)  10:02, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! --Tardis (talk) 14:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

U.S. population list
Hi, this is just to let you know why I regretfully reverted your hard work in calculating the July 1, 2009, estimated population per Congressional seat and Electoral vote. Those are apportioned on the 2000 Census population, not on the estimates, a point discussed several times at Talk:List of U.S. states and territories by population. I did add a column for the total 2000 Census population to clarify things a bit. It's a fine point, and I wish that computer screens were wide enough to accommodate the per-district populations for both 2000 and 2009; for one thing, it would give an idea of what next year's Congressional reapportionment might look like and why. So please feel perfectly free to state or posit a different point of view at the Talk page. Perhaps because of space restraints, we could replace the per-Elector population column with your 2009 estimates per Cong'l District. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:03, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm. I noticed (and removed) the   tags labeling them as the 2000 numbers, because it didn't make sense: the table has been updated for 2007 in all columns, and at least some of those numbers persist in the current revision.  (In particular, note that both Arkansas and Kansas show exactly the same number for "population per elector" (462,666).  That's what made me think it needed a consistency update, since those numbers were equal and the populations weren't, and clearly someone had been updating since 2000.)
 * It may just need to be redone altogether: Arkansas shows 2,673,400 as its 2000 population, and the corresponding 445,567 per elector isn't in either of the versions astride the diff I linked (rather, before that diff the "per elector" values are precisely the "population" divided by the electors and rounded). Kansas says 2,688,418, so its 448,070 is missing too, and the 462,666 number is completely mysterious.
 * Moreover, the percentages are wrong in that they differed in almost every case from the value I derived by dividing each row's population value by the total of those values (which is right unless we know of a better total (that corresponds to those estimates!) than the total of the estimates). For the record, I rounded my numbers per representative/elector down, but rounded the percentages to the nearest 0.01%.  If you'll kindly check that I'm not crazy about the inconsistencies, I'll head to the talk page and ask how to provide some sort of reasonably coherent table.  (Finally, don't worry so much about the "hard work" &mdash; Emacs did the work, not me.)  --Tardis (talk) 21:25, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right; I just divided both the 2000 and 2009 numbers by CD's and Electors in Microsoft Excel and got completely different numbers. So someone must have just run some intermediate estimate. As I'm sure you know, one of the most common U.S. Census tables for estimated population by state gives the estimates for each of the preceding years since the most recent decennial census, so it wouldn't be technically difficult to find out where those Wikipedia ratios came from. Whether there's much point to such an exercise is another question: the two significant pairs of ratios are 2000 Census/seat and latest estimate/seat [at present, 1 July 2009/Representative and 1 July 2009/Elector], i.e. the figures you posted. But we can hash this out at the article talk page. Happy Guy Fawkes Night! —— Shakescene (talk) 01:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Entropy Production question
Hi, thanks for your help on the refdesk. You mentioned that dS=0 as the states on both sides of the wall is constant but I'm confused by the fact that the wall itself does produce entropy. Could you explain this? Thanks. Clover345 (talk) 19:45, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I replied further there. (I generally watch the RD threads to which I post, so you needn't duplicate your followups here.)  --Tardis (talk) 19:38, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. Clover345 (talk) 21:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

static main
Thanks.Do you meant to say that using only static main we could create other objects of other classes.Also does main method really create objects at the first time the complier invokes main function or does it create objects of other classes only after the user explicitly creates an instance(s) of other classes.Do you really mean to say that everything(creation of objects) in java program is done by main except the invocation of main program which is done by the compiler?JUSTIN JOHNS (talk) 09:20, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * By sentence:
 * Any code (including main) can create objects of (nearly) any class, whether it's static or not.
 * The main method does whatever it's (explicitly) written to do (not "really create objects at the first time the complier invokes main function" &mdash; the compiler doesn't invoke anything anyway; that's the JVM/JRE).
 * It's not quite true that "everything ... is done by main", but only because of special things like class initialization and background operations like the garbage collector.
 * (Normally, since this question is even still visible at the Reference Desk, one would reply there.) --Tardis (talk)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:00, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Broken link on your user page
The link  on your user page does not work anymore because the talk page

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Programming languages

was moved to

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style

2A01:C23:61F4:9800:AE1A:26:6B21:3273 (talk) 13:47, 7 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Ok,  seems to be deprecated, see WikiProject Computer science/Manual of style and mw:Extension:SyntaxHighlight. 2A01:C23:61F4:9800:AE1A:26:6B21:3273 (talk) 13:58, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I updated it; thanks for the link. Tardis (talk) 20:15, 8 December 2022 (UTC)