100km of water is nothing for SONAR, especially since Europa probably lacks a lot of noise pollution sources that exist in earths oceans. Getting equipment and a power source capable of putting out enough dB would be difficult though. Also, that 20km of Ice would likely act as a mirror and just reflect any transmissions back downward. ELF SONAR as you mentioned might actually get through the ice, but probably with a large loss in signal strength.

Though putting a receiver below the ice and a transmitter deeper in the water, with a cable running up from the receiver may be feasible. You may be able to get away with relatively low dB levels for your transmitter that way. Really depends on the properties of the water body itself and ambient noise level.

We're actually holding out for a base 2 unit system.

I don't think it's necessary for everyone to be able to do statistics, but having enough of an understanding to evaluate testing methodologies, sample sizes, data collection methods and conclusions, at least a rudimentary level is extremely valuable and a college level stats course should be able to do at least that. In regards to intro college level stats courses I've taken my n = 1, so not the greatest data set, but I felt I got the above out of the class.

Anecdotal, but most people I know who've signed up for a stats class as a math based elective (working adults pursuing a college degree in their free time) have no clue what statistics actually is. The last one told me almost verbatim "It's just a bunch of percentages, how hard could that be?".

Maybe they are just trolling?

Any question about programming on /. is bound to start several arguments about which languages do what and blah blah blah.

To the OP, if not trolling, Pick a language, any language and just try making simple 2d games for awhile. Try recreating classic games like pong (very simple) to space invaders and tetris. You don't need to worry about engines or anything so much as the graphics are simple and the games themselves are easy to tweak and experiment with. Then once you have a good feel for that you can always move on to something more complex and maybe consider using a game engine.

Not necessarily. I briefly attended a public school which was a "free school". As the GP mentioned, the school was not required to adhere the state curriculum. The main difference I noticed (this was High School) was that the classes were named differently and the style of the exams were different. As an example, my original high school followed the state's program and labeled their math classes sequentially (math 1, 2, 3 and 4, along with honors versions of each) and students took a statewide examination in those courses. The "free school" offered algebra, geometry, trigonometry and pre-calc, no honors versions and did not participate in the statewide exams. The sequential courses mapped to the free school's equivalents though there were noticeably different standards between the honors versions offered at the non-free school and the versions offered at the free school (the free school's versions were less structured and far less challenging). I can't speak as to how the non honors track compared as I didn't take them.

Granted, this was around 20 years ago so things may be different now, but both schools were public schools.

Can't it be all three?

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I am now tempted to get an Xbone and do this with my cat.

I used to carry a pink, flowery screw driver around for just that reason.

I was going to mention something about kilobytes, but at this point it's probably just as cliché as beating a dead horse.

Technically the volume expands at a rate of 4 pi r^2 with respect to the radius ( d/dr 4/3pi r^3 ). But yeah, should be obvious to people anyway based on 4/3 pi r^3 alone.

Extraterrestrial social experiment?

So in summary, you are saying that it is a scientist's job to refine and develop theories as opposed to just knowing and accepting theories as handed down from uhm... I don't know?

One could argue that your error is not actually an error.

I am a native English speaker, and I know that there are multiple accepted spellings to many words depending on which region you are in, what slang has recently been adopted as common usage, if it's an advertisement or whether or not the writer likes pictures of cats.

So no, in English you cannot always tell how to spell a word by how it is written.