If you really want to use this method to calculate pi, here's how to actually go about it. What you need is a hundred yards or so of string, four stakes, a stick and something that's a reasonable approximation to a right-angle (perhaps a piece of a cardboard box salvaged from the apocalypse). If you're really stuck for a right angle you can construct one with three stakes and a piece of string by putting two stakes in the ground and using the string to mark a straight line between them, then tying one end of the string to one of the stakes and tying the third stake to the string, so that length of string between them is a bit over half the distance between the stakes in the ground. Mark out a circle using this. Then mark out a second circle with the other stake in the ground as the centre. These two circles will intersect at two places - use the string to mark a straight line between them. The two straight lines you have marked will be at right angles.

Now put two stakes in the ground, about 20 yards apart. Stretch string between them. Put your right-angled thing with one side against the string and the right-angle corner at one of the stakes. Measure another piece of string to be the same length as the piece stretched between the two stakes. Tie it to a third stake and stretch it out so that it runs along the other side of the right-angled thing. You've now marked out two sides of a square with string. Repeat to form the other two sides.

Take your stick and break it down to about a foot long. Use it to mark out on the ground equally-spaced marks along each side of the square. Get two people to hold each end of a fifth piece of string across the square so that you can mark straight lines on the ground, dividing the square into a grid.

Cut your fifth piece of string to be the same length as one side of the square. Tie one end to one of the stakes. Now use the other end to mark out an arc from one corner of the square to the opposite corner.

Count the number of squares that are inside the arc and the total number of squares. Take the ratio of these two numbers and multiply it by 4. Here is your approximation to pi.

This method has many advantages over the one proposed: With the dimensions given above, it gives a considerably better answer, correct to four significant figures (3.141). It is easy to scale for better accuracy - make the square 100 yards and the stick four inches and you get six correct digits (3.141590123). You don't need to correct for uneven shot pattern. And, crucially I'd say in an apocalypse, you don't need a shotgun or ammunition and, if you do happen to have them, you can use them for useful things like fending off the zombies or hunting.

I thought the engineer's answer was, "More than three and probably less than twenty."

Oh, no, wait, that's the answer to "What's 2+2?"

Last time I checked, actually, it is. It's just not in the USA.

All the Koch brothers care about is making themselves richer and paying less in tax. They mostly donate case to conservative campaigns and think tanks, that counts as right wing in my book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Also note this bit:

"Charles also organizes twice yearly meetings[20] with Republican donors.[16]"

I would have linked directly the the references above but they are pay walled.

I could not give a crap about the Gmail example, but the fact is that "libertarianism" in the US is just a front, funded by the likes of the Koch brothers (and others) and designed to facilitate a tax regime friendly to the richest 1% of the population. If that does not count as right wing I do not know what does.

A staggering number of people commenting here appear not to understand English, let alone French or Italian.

Well colour me puzzled. Surely the expression "whatever the French call la dolce vita" demonstrates that, whatever the French do call it, they don't call it la dolce vita? So he knows it's not a French expression, he just doesn't know what the equivalent expression in French is.

Well done for supplying the French equivalent.

Interestingly our Debian servers are completely unaffected by this bug since we use Debian 6 :) Sometimes it pays to be a little behind the times.

Recompiling something from source is often a complete no-no, not because the sysadmin is unable to, but because he his forbidden from doing so by his corporate overlords. It is trusted binaries (via checksum) from the likes of RedHat or nothing.

I think the problem can be more generally stated: Private interests should not be permitted to make conditional donations to public education. The RIAA should not be allowed to pay for copyright enforcement education, Coca Cola should not be allowed to pay to have exclusive vending machine rights, and Microsoft should not be allowed to pay on condition of an MS Office mandate. The mere fact that we can all agree that more women in STEM would be a good thing does not make it right for a private interest to exert influence on the public education system.

If Google believes corporations should give more for public education funding, it should be lobbying for increased corporate taxation, and better regulation of offshore-based tax fraud. If they want to be seen as individually generous, they should make unconditional grants. Allowing them to buy control of public services is a path to ruin.

Yes and no. In the UK the price has roughly quadrupled in that time, but the real increase (ie increase over RPI) is only 33%[1]. Assuming that overall rate continues (very unlikely, but there you go) it takes over 70 years for the price to double.

[1]http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/petrolprices.html

Well, yes, but the vast majority of the difference is in tax, not in production costs; $3/gal supplied to the US Navy is probably something like £9 per litre in Crawley.

300,000 in five hours? God forbid!

These law enforcement officers are experiencing the same thing we have been in the wake of the NSA documents. Being watched all the time is wrong even if you are doing nothing wrong.

Anti-authoritarians think people should not be watched all the time, even though it would mean catching a few extra criminals. Law and order advocates think police should not be watched all the time, even though it would mean catching a few extra officers who abuse their position. If we believe that people intrinsically want to do good, the truth is they are both right.

The premise of the United States experiment is that people can and should be trusted to do good most of the time -- despite the real risk and cost of doing so -- and should only be watched when it is justified. Merely being a police officer does not mean you are suspected of being a dirty cop. Merely being a person with one or another political viewpoint does not mean you are suspected of being a terrorist. Merely being a person from a certain socioeconomic class does not mean you are supected of committing a crime.

In America, we presume innocence. That is not just a standard of the justice process, it means we trust our citizens -- whether acting as individuals, political activists, or police officers -- to do good. We believe in our citizens even when we are on opposite sides of a fence, and we know they believe in our society even when their expression of that belief differs from ours. When we have reasonable suspicion that they have violated that trust, we investigate them -- but not before.

Depends on where in the supply chain that $3/gal is. $3/gal supplied to the US Navy is probably more like $7 or $8 at the pump for putting in your car - not so viable.

Russian investment firms may be looking to steal high-tech intelligence from Boston-area companies to give to their country's military.

Oh, my. That does sound serious. Whatever can we do? Oh, I know, perhaps we should work to harden information security so that companies can maintain the integrity of their research. Futhermore, though I'm sure this goes without saying, we should fire -- and ban from any future participation in any aspect of government, government contracts, lobbying, or information security -- any person who has been involved in the intentional weakening of information security standards.