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Removal of Skunk Odor/Discouraging Skunks

This chapter describes how to keep skunks out of homes or other areas.

Basic precautions
As a skunk's odor is generally considered to be offensive, people living in areas known to be inhabited by skunks are advised to take certain precautions to prevent skunks from taking up residence where they are not wanted. As skunks commonly make their dens in wood or junk piles, it is recommended that these be kept to a minimum. Skunks are scavengers and frequently go after garbage. Garbage should be stored in tightly sealed cans.

Skunks are reported to feed on insects found in the ground, and are less found if there is no such food to be found. Use a general purpose pesticide on the grounds to reduce the occurrence of the insects will act on skunks feed. This method has its weak points though. By aiming at skunks indirectly the impact on the above mentioned grounds and their insect population is huge. It only works before the damage has started. It has long term effect on the insect population and ground specs, like pollution of water, polenisation, etc. Also, insecticids should be use with care, as most insecticides are heavily toxic.

Skunk infestations
A fence extending one or two feet into the ground is sufficient to prevent skunks from making a den underneath a house or other structure. If a skunk should take up residence under the building, bags filled with mothballs or washcloths drenched with ammonia can be used to encourage skunks to leave. Securing a rope to the bag or cloth will make removal easy later on. Flour or other non-toxic white powder can be sprinkled around the den entrance to track foot prints. One should check for fresh foot prints from the skunk leading out, but not going back in. It is better to check in the morning as the skunks will be more likely to be active at night.

After all the skunks have left, one should then block up any entrances that the skunk may have used along with the entrance to the skunk's den. If it is suspected that there are more skunks living in the den, a door should be constructed at the den's entrance that is hinged at the top, and extends approximately six inches (15 cm) beyond the entrance. It should be placed at a right angle to the direction of travel and should not be air tight. This can be an effective technique as it allows the skunks to exit their den, but makes it difficult for them to get back in.


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User:Dani

User:Dani, administrator and bureaucrat in Hungarian Wikipedia.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Dani


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text:
Trainz/Tutorial For Blender

About this page

 * The intention of this page is to enable people to export their Blender creations to Trainz using the Blender Exporter for Trainz. Here is no place to answer all your questions related to Blender or Content Creation, only things directly touching the exporter behavior will be described here. If you are stuck in Blender or have a question about Content Creation itself, then you will find a lot of explanations and experienced people under the following links:

 * Blender Documentation

 * Blender Community

 * TRS2006 Content Creation Guide

 * Trainz Classics Content Creation Guide

 * Trainz Discussion Forums

Getting started

 * What you need to create content for Trainz with Blender is obviously Blender itself and the Blender Exporter for Trainz. The script was developed for Blender 2.45, but any later version should work also. To use the Blender Exporter for Trainz, you must unzip the archive and copy the included file trainz_exporter.py into the script directory of Blender. This is normally the folder scripts located in the subdirectory .blender, so if you install Blender on a Windows system using the default path, you have to copy the file trainz_exporter.py from the archive into the folder C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts.

Your Blender installation has a script directory. There are normally two locations to look one is as described above the other is under "application data" which is a hidden folder under "Documents and Settings" so go to documents and settings, tools, folder options, view, "show hidden fires and folders."

As an example on my machine this would be C:\Documents and Settings\Trainz\Application Data\Blender Foundation\Blender\.blender\scripts where trainz is the account name. You should see something like 100 .py files in there.

Every time Blender starts it scans this directory and include any found script into its menu structure. So if you start or restart Blender after copying the exporter script then you call it over the Blender menu File > Export > Trainz Export. After selecting what you want to create and if no problems occur you find yourself in Blenders file save dialog. Choose the desired location and filename and press Save to finally create the resource file. You should always check the Blender console for infos or warnings, as the exporter only stops by fatal faults.

Blender settings

 * We still have to figure out what are the best Blender settings to not be surprised if finally take a look at your creation in Trainz. Instead just only some basic hints:

 * In Blender you can't scale units like in GMAX(where you have to set in preferences that a system unit should be one meter), simply assume that one BU(Blender Unit) is one meter, that's it. If you want to use imperial units, then you might take a look at the at Blender Mesh Attribute Editor

 * If you want to move an object to an absolute position, then change to Object Mode (Hotkey TAB) and press N. In the now visible Transform Properties window you can enter the values you need. But beware, LocX, LocY and LocZ are local values, only if an object doesn't have a parent these are world coordinates. If you have already assigned a parent, then you will see and must enter the location relative to that parent.

 * Not all material properties visualized in Blender will have effect in Trainz, and some effects in Trainz are unable to visualize in Blender. So don't trust what you see in Blender and take a look at your creation in Trainz.

 * As textures only diffuse, opacity, reflection and normal maps have effect in Trainz. You can also export meshes without any texture.

 * The RIGHT side view shows you the LEFT side of your mesh unlike Gmax.

Meshes

 * Meshes are the Blender objects you will see in Trainz. You can build your objects by manipulate Blender primitives or even place vertices and create faces. Just keep in mind the following things:

 * center your creation around the point of origin, as Trainz place this point at cursor position when you insert the asset

 * Faces can be double or single sided, in Blender this is a mesh and not a material option. You will recognize the difference only in Trainz, as Blender render faces always double sided.

 * every mesh need a material; you can use one material for different meshes

 * keep an eye on vertex and face count

 * The Exporter only recognize meshes which are visible during export. Make sure all objects you want to export are visible and you have selected all needed layers too! There are two reasons for this behaviour: First, nothing will be exported what you not see(maybe a long forgotten test mesh). The second cause is that you can hold big or animated objects in one Blender file and export only the needed parts by changing visibility(here the layers comes into play).

Bones

 * As soon as you want to animate your asset, there is no way around using bones. You can create bones by placing a Lattice(Add > Lattice) and rename it to something like b.r.something as it is described for the bone naming conventions in CCG. If you use bones you need to build up a complete hierarchy, that mean starting from a root bone all other bones or meshes need to be child of this root bone or any subordinated bone. The Exporter denies work if you have loose meshes or bones, because unbound meshes will not shown in Trainz.

 * The root bone should be located at the point of origin and should not be rotated. Best practice might be to place it in top view (Hotkey NumPad 7) and leave it untouched. The root bone also must not be animated; it serves as parent for any not animated mesh within this asset and for any bone which is not driven by/depending on an animated parent.

 * To export bones they must be visible; so watch your Outliner and your Layers.

Attachment Points

 * Attachment points are used in Trainz to attach effects, tracks or even other meshes. To create an AP you have to add an Empty first(Add > Empty). Afterwards place and rotate it like you need and give it a name following the CCG-Rules for APs(a.whatsoever, do you remember? ;)). APs don't need a parent, as this information will get lost during export. To although made animation possible, Trainz use an extended naming schema. Assume you have a bone b.r.john and an AP a.doe. To tell Trainz that a.doe should be animated like b.r.john, you must rename the AP to a.r.john/a.doe. In your config.txt this AP is still to refer as a.doe.

 * What is valid for meshes and bones, is also valid for attachment points: If they are not visible, they will not be exported.

Colors

 * You can manipulate diffuse and specular color in Blender to give the material in Trainz the appearance you want. Both you find at the material panel, Col for diffuse and Spe for specular color:

 * There are two other colors supported by Trainz: ambient and emissive.

 * The ambient color in Blender work different from Trainz and as in most cases ambient and diffuse color will be equal, ambient color is copied from diffuse color during export. The emissive color is used for self illumination in Trainz and not provided in Blender. As things normally have the same color even if lighted or light, the Exporter here also copies the value of diffuse color.

 * If you plan to use textures you should set the diffuse color to pure white, else your textures will appear darker in Trainz than expected.

Opacity

 * Also on the material panel you find the slider for Opacity, in Blender called Alpha(slider A down at the right side). A value of 1 means the material is completely visible, a value of 0 render your material completely invisible. If you use texture maps which also affect the opacity, then better leave the Alpha-slider at its right position as the over all opacity will not be higher then the material opacity.

Specularity

 * Specularity can be adjusted using the shader panel. The interesting sliders are specularity Spec and hardness Hard in the middle of the panel.

 * Slider specularity maintain the intensity of specular color from 0(no specular highlight) up to 2(full specular highlight), while slider hardness define how concentrate the reflected light should be. A high hardness gives a hard specularity(imagine glass or an polished surface), while a low hardness gives a dull shine(like asphalt or rough/dirty metal). The hardness range(1..511) will be scaled down from the Exporter to 0..100, so if you want to copy GMax/Max Glossiness-values you have to multiply them roughly by 5.

Self Illumination

 * The brightness without to be lighted. You find the slider Emit in the lower right corner of shader panel. The more emissive you order, the more your material glow in diffuse color.

General
At first some common things to textures:

 * NEVER use packed picture formats, as they often distort colors, wasting resources while loading(to extract they need additional memory and CPU-time) and at last they have the same footprint in memory as an uncompressed picture format. A good format is Targa(*.tga), as it is uncompressed(don't use the RLE-option!) and has the ability to store also an alpha channel if needed.

 * Made your textures as small as possible. What ever should work is the creation of your texture twice as big as finally used and afterwards scale them down with enabled antialiasing. You get nearly the same detail grade as in the original map and need only 1/4 of its memory.

 * Ever us "power of 2" - values as map dimensions(i.e. 64x64, 128x128, 128x512). Such textures could processed very fast,because "power of 2" - numbers are the native language of your hardware. You don't have to stay by square maps, but also avoid an aspect ratio behind 1:8.

 * In Blender you assign textures using the texture panel you find in the Material buttons window (Hotkey F5).

 * After creating a TE-object you have to tell Blender where the mapping information should came from(Map Input) and which material property should be influenced(Map To).

 * The default map input choosen by Blender is Orco. That's a mapping not used by Trainz. For reflection maps you can choose Refl, for all the other used maps the Exporter only accept UV mapping. As mapping target you can choose one or more of the following options:

 * Col, used for diffuse maps
 * Alpha, used for opacity maps
 * Ref, used for reflection maps
 * Nor, used for normal(bump) maps

 * You can assign other mapping targets and these textures will be exported, but you will not notice the slightest effect in Trainz.

 * What's now left to do is of course loading the texture itself. In Blender you define the content of a texture using the Texture buttons window(Hotkey F6). The only texture type you can export to Trainz is Image, so you can ignore all other possibilities you have in Blender.

 * Now select the appropriate image by pressing Load on the Image panel.

 * There is only one option left, the option "no texture". The Blender Exporter for Trainz allows you to export models without any texture. This can speed up asset creation due to "quick checks" of the pure mesh directly in Trainz. To export without any texture you simply have to delete eventually assigned texture objects.

Diffuse Textures

 * Diffuse textures are the most used textures, they basically define the surface of objects. To use them you have to select button UV as input and button Col as output. The texture amount you can adjust with slider Col, located at the right middle of the Map To panel.

Opacity Textures

 * Alpha textures are used to simulate transparent materials or to make parts of your object invisible. You can create dirty windows or let a simple plane look like a bogey part. An alpha map normally comes together with a diffuse map, so the needed UV mapping should already be done. As target select Alpha. The texture amount is controlled by slider Var at the right side of Map To panel.

 * You can combine diffuse and opacity texture if you use an image with alpha layer. You need to select the option UseAlpha at the Map Image panel and must select Col and Alpha as targets at the Map To panel.

 * One little problem can occur if you work with opacity: Due to a bug in Trainz not completely opaque or transparent areas may overlap each other. You can take a look at the problem and one possible work around by downloading the two related examples from SourceForge.

Reflection Textures

 * These textures are a bit different in usage as the others, because Trainz map them automatically using spherical mapping. How this works you can imagine best if you create a smooth sphere and assign a reflection map. Which map part is shown depend on the direction in which the imaginary ray from the camera to the objects surface would be reflected. That's why you see the whole map on the surface of a smooth sphere.

 * To use reflection maps you only need to press button Refl in Map Input panel and button Ref in the Map To panel of the designated texture. You will notice that no colors appear neither in material preview nor in render window. That's because Blender use reflective textures to modify the strength and not the color of reflection. But no fear, in Trainz you get your colors back ;).

Hardness Textures

 * You can assign hardness textures but you will be disappointed. They don't affect hardness, instead they will be typed as reflective texture during export. This behavior is copied from the original exporter, as any attempt to influence the "shinestrength" so far ends in a complete white unlighted object.

Normal Textures

 * A normal texture is used to fake highs and lows on an plain surface. To use it you need an UV Map Input and a Nor Map To. Please take care to use an normal map and not a bump map. Both are used for the same purpose, but they contain different data.

Texture Combinations

 * How a texture influence the object appearance in Trainz is controlled by so called "material name decorations". With one exception the Blender Exporter for Trainz select the appropriate decoration depending your assigned textures. This exception is m.billboard, as this material decoration is used for objects always face the camera. Because the Exporter has no chance to detect if you want this behavior, you have to decorate the material name for yourself with the ending m.billboard. General the Exporter don't overwrite a known material decoration, so if you want to ensure your material will be exported as m.gloss, then simply append m.gloss for yourself to the material name.

 * a list of all currently supported texture combinations
 * single textures:
 * diffuse texture
 * reflection texture
 * hardness texture(will appear as reflection texture)
 * double textures:
 * diffuse & alpha texture
 * diffuse & reflection texture
 * diffuse & hardness texture(the same as diffuse & reflection)
 * diffuse & normal texture
 * triple textures:
 * diffuse, reflection & alpha texture(in this case the alpha texture affects the reflection texture and not the diffuse texture)
 * diffuse, alpha & normal texture(no reflection or hardness texture allowed)
 * diffuse, reflection & normal texture(no alpha texture allowed)

Events

 * In case of animation export the original exporters ask you for an event file to bind events to specific frames. To use events with the Blender Exporter for Trainz is similar. Switching a Blender window to Text Editor window and create a new TX object via File > New (Hotkey Alt N). Enter for every event a line with frame number, event type and event name. If you finally rename this TX object to events, then the Exporter will parse this text and create the desired entries in your animation file.

Examples

 * Examples you find as additional files at the download section by SourceForge

title: Trainz/Tutorial For Blender


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/window function

Syntax
WindowInformation = WINDOW(expr)

Revision: February, 2002 (Release 6)

Description
This function returns information related to a window (usually the current output window). The value you specify in  determines what kind of information is returned, as described in the following paragraphs.

ID's of Active Window, Active Document Window, Active Palette Window and Output Window  returns the window ID number of the currently active window, or zero if no window is active.

returns the window ID number of the currently active document window or zero if no document window is active. In searching for the active document, this function bypasses all palettes in search of a window with the type attribute set to include.

returns the window ID number of the frontmost palette. In order for there to be a palette, one or more document windows must be open with the type attribute set to include. At that point, all non- windows become palettes and float over the document windows.

returns the window ID number of the current output window, or zero if output is currently directed to somewhere besides a FutureBasic-created screen window (e.g., to the printer).

 Window Size  returns the width (in pixels) of the content region of the current output window.

returns the height (in pixels) of the content region of the current output window. (Note: The content region does not include the window's frame.)

 Window Position (Appearance manager)  returns the distance from the top of the screen to the top of the structure region of the window.

returns the distance from the left of the screen to the left of the structure region of the window.

returns the width of the window's structure region.

returns the height of the window's structure region.

returns the distance from the top of the screen to the top of the content region of the window.

returns the distance from the left of the screen to the left of the content region of the window.

returns the width of the window's content region. This is normally the same as.

returns the height of the window's content region. This is normally the same as.

 Pen Position  returns the horizontal position (in pixels) of the pen in the current output window.

returns the vertical position (in pixels) of the pen in the current output window.

 Window Record Pointer  OR  returns a pointer to the Window Record of the current output window. For information about the contents of the Window Record, see the  statement, and the "Window Manager" chapter of Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials, as well as the descriptions of grafPort and CGrafPort data structures in Inside Macintosh: Imaging with QuickDraw.

return the current grafport being used for output.

 Clipboard Contents
 returns a nonzero value if there is information of type "TEXT" on the clipboard; returns zero otherwise.

returns a nonzero value if there is information of type "PICT" on the clipboard; returns zero otherwise.

 Window Class (Standard BASIC only)
 returns the "class number" assigned to the current output window.

returns the "class number" assigned to the currently active window.

returns the "class number" assigned to the current output window for the Appearance Manager runtime.

returns the "class number" assigned to the currently active window for the Appearance Manager runtime. (See the  statement for more information about class numbers).

 Other Window Info (Appearance Manager)
 returns the toolbox window class. Return values might include things like  or    returns toolbox attributes about a window. Values might include  or    returns the handle to a FBwindowDescription record which is stored in the window's refcon. While this information is subject to change, it currently contains the following data:

 returns a non-zero value if this attribute bit is set.

returns the window pointer of the frontmost floating window.

 Screen Borders in Local Coordinates
 returns the horizontal pixel position of the screen's left edge, expressed in the local coordinate system of the current output window (note this will be negative if the window lies entirely on the screen).

returns the vertical pixel position of the top of the screen, expressed in the local coordinate system of the current output window (note this will be negative if the window lies entirely on the screen).

returns the horizontal pixel position of the screen's right edge, expressed in the local coordinate system of the current output window.

returns the vertical pixel position of the bottom of the screen, expressed in the local coordinate system of the current output window.

 (Note that these numbers are meaningless if output is currently directed to some place other than a screen window.)

Checking Whether a Window Exists If you specify a negative value in,   returns a nonzero value if there exists a window whose ID number is  ; it returns zero otherwise. The returned value does not depend on whether the window is currently visible or not; it only depends on whether the window has been created (using the  statement) and not yet closed (using the   statement).

Edit Field and Picture Field Information
 returns the ID number of the currently active edit field or picture field; or zero if there is no currently active edit field or picture field.

returns the character position of the beginning of the selected text or insertion point in the currently active edit field (if any).

returns the character position of the end of the selected text or insertion point in the currently active edit field (if any).

returns a handle to the TextEdit record of the currently active edit field (if any); this is the same as the value returned by.

returns the ID number of the previously active edit field (or zero, if no other edit field was previously active).

returns the number of characters in the currently active edit field (if any).

returns a handle to the Edit Field Descriptor for the currently active edit field or picture field (if any).

returns the  parameter assigned to the currently active edit field (if any); or the negative of the   parameter assigned to the currently active picture field (if any).

Note
If output is currently directed to a graphics port other than a screen window (e.g. to the printer, or to an offscreen GWorld), then references to the "current output window" apply to the current port, unless otherwise specified.


text:
Cookbook:Chow Mein

| Chinese Cuisine | Noodles

Chow mein is a generic Chinese term for a dish of stir-fried noodles, of which there are many varieties. Authentic chow mein is generally made of soft noodles, whereas chow mein in Westernized Chinese Cuisine may also be made from thin crispy noodles.

This version of chow mein is made with seitan instead of the more traditional use of chicken, pork or shrimp, making this dish fit for vegans. Also, instead of using oyster sauce in the marinade, shiitake mushrooms are used to achieve a similar depth of flavour.

Ingredients

 * 1 pound mung bean sprouts
 * 15 ounces seitan
 * ½ pound dry wonton noodles
 * 2 medium stalks celery
 * 1 pound bok choy or broccoli
 * ½ pound fresh mushrooms
 * 1 red bell pepper
 * ½ red onion
 * 1 green onion
 * Vegetable oil for frying, as needed
 * ¼ cup toasted sesame seeds

Marinade

 * ¼ cup finely-chopped shiitake mushrooms
 * 2 teaspoons sesame oil
 * 1 teaspoon soy sauce
 * Salt to taste
 * Pepper, to taste
 * ½ teaspoon cornstarch

Sauce

 * ¼ cup water or low-sodium vegetable broth
 * 1 tablespoon soy sauce
 * Salt to taste
 * Pepper, to taste
 * 1 tablespoon cornstarch
 * 4 tablespoons water

Procedure

 * 1) 1–2 hours before cooking, rinse the mung bean sprouts so that they have time to drain thoroughly.
 * 2) Cut the seitan into thin strips. Add the marinade ingredients, adding the cornstarch last. Marinate the seitan for 20 to 25 minutes.
 * 3) The following 3 steps can be completed while the seitan is marinating:
 * 4) * To prepare the sauce, in a small bowl dissolve the 1 tablespoon cornstarch with the 4 tablespoons water. Whisk the water or vegetable broth with the oyster sauce, soy sauce, salt, pepper and cornstarch and water mixture and set aside.
 * 5) * Soften the noodles by placing them in boiling salted water. Plunge into cold water to stop the cooking process and drain thoroughly.
 * 6) * Wash all the vegetables as needed. Cut the celery and the bok choy into ½-inch pieces on the diagonal. If substituting broccoli for bok choy, peel the stalks until no more strings come out, and slice thinly on the diagonal. Wipe the mushrooms clean with a damp cloth and slice. Cut the red bell pepper in half, remove the seeds and cut into chunks. Peel and chop the onion. Dice the green onion.
 * 7) Heat a wok or frying pan over medium-high to high heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, add the noodles. Fry in batches until golden. Remove the noodles from the pan.
 * 8) Heat 2 tablespoons oil. Add the onion and the seitan, keeping remaining marinade aside for later use. Let the seitan brown briefly, then stir-fry until the redness is gone and the seitan is nearly cooked through. Remove the cooked seitan and onion from the pan.
 * 9) Cook the rest of the vegetables separately, except for the green onion, seasoning each with a bit of salt while stir-frying if desired. When cooking the bok choy or broccoli, add ¼ cup of water and cover while cooking. Remove each of the vegetables from the pan when finished stir-frying. Add more oil as needed.
 * 10) Give the sauce a quick re-stir. Add all the ingredients back into the wok, making a "well" in the middle of the wok for the sauce. Add the sauce and any remaining marinade, stirring quickly to thicken. Mix everything together. Stir in the green onions. Pour the cooked vegetable and sauce mixture on top of the noodles. Garnish the chow mein with the toasted sesame seeds. Serve hot.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * For crispy chow mein noodles, add more oil than the recipe calls for and cook the noodles longer to dry them out.

title: Cookbook:Chow Mein


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/window statement

Syntax
WINDOW [#]idExpr[,[title$][,[rect][,[type][,class]]]]

Description
Use this statement to do any of the following:  Create a new screen window;

Activate (highlight and bring to the front) an existing window;

Make an existing window visible or invisible;

Alter the title or rectangle of an existing window.

 The parameters should be specified as follows. They are interpreted slightly differently depending on whether you are creating a new window or altering an existing one.  - a positive or negative integer whose absolute value is in the range 1 through 255.

- a string expression.

- a rectangle in global screen coordinates. You can express it in either of two forms:

Two diagonally opposite corner points. Long integer expression or  variable which points to an 8-byte struct such as a   type.

- a positive or negative integer which specifies the general appearance of the window, and specifies whether it should be "modal" or not (a modal window is always active while it's open; it inhibits the user from selecting another window or a menubar item until the window is closed).

- an integer in the range 0 through 255.

 To Create a New Screen Window  Specify an  value such that   is different from the ID number of any existing window. A new window is created and is assigned an ID number of. You can use the window's ID number later to identify the window in other FB statements and functions. If  is negative, the window is created invisibly; it's sometimes useful to create a window invisibly if it will contain controls, edit fields and graphics that may take a long time to build. You can use the  statement again to make an invisible window visible (see below). When you create a new window, it becomes the current output window. If you create it visibly (and you don't specify the  attribute), it also becomes the current active window.

assigns a string to the window's title bar (if the window has a title bar). If you omit this parameter, the window will be created without a title.

specifies the initial size and location of the window's content rectangle. Note that rect does not include the window's frame. This parameter is interpreted in a special way if you specify an upper-left coordinate of (0,0) in ; in this case, the window is centered in the screen, and its width and height are determined by the right and bottom coordinates of. Note that this special interpretation applies only when you're creating a new window. If you omit this parameter, a window of a "default" size and location is created.

specifies the appearance, modality and special attributes of the window (see more below). If you omit this parameter, a non-modal window of type  is created, with no special attributes.

specifies an optional "class number" for the window. If your application creates several windows, it's useful to assign the same class number to each window that performs a given kind of function. Later, you can use the  function to determine the class number of the currently active window and the current output window; this can help your application determine what the window is used for and how to process it. If you omit this parameter, the new window is assigned a class number of zero.

To Activate an Existing Window

Specify the (positive) ID number of an existing window in. You do not need to specify any of the other parameters, unless you also wish to change some of the window's characteristics. The window also becomes the current output window. If the window was invisible, it becomes visible. Note: You can't activate the window if you specified the  attribute when the window was created, and there are other visible windows open.

To Make an Existing Window Visible or Invisible

To make a window visible, specify the (positive) ID number of an existing window in. The window also becomes the current active window (unless its  attribute is set), and it becomes the current output window.

To make a window invisible, specify the negative of an existing window's ID number in. The window becomes the current output window. If it was the active window, it becomes inactive (possibly forcing another window to become active). You do not need to specify any of the other parameters, unless you also want to change some of the window's characteristics.

To Alter the Characteristics of an Existing Window

Specify the ID number of an existing window (or its negative) in, and specify a new   and/or   parameter (you can't change the window's  nor   after it's been created). If you omit any parameter, the corresponding characteristic won't change. Note that the parameter is interpreted slightly differently when you're altering an existing window, as opposed to creating a new window; in particular, specifying an upper-left coordinate of (0,0) will not cause an existing window to be centered on the screen. If you want to change an existing window's rectangle so that it's centered on the screen, use a parameter that's calculated as follows:

Note: If you specify the window's (positive) ID number when you alter a window's characteristics, the window also becomes the current active window (unless its  attribute is set). If you specify the negative of the window's ID number, the window becomes invisible.

Side Effects of Activating the Window

The  statement always makes the window active, unless you specify a negative , or you specified the   attribute when you created the window. When you activate a window using the  statement, the following things also happen:

 The window also becomes the current output window. (See the  statement to learn how to specify an output window that's different from the active window.)

A DIALOG event of type  is generated. (There are also other kinds of actions which generate  events; see the   function for more information.)

Any previously-active window becomes inactive (this also generates a separate  DIALOG event).

Side Effects of Making a Window Visible

If  is the (positive) ID of a window that currently exists but is invisible, the   statement makes the window visible, and also generates a   event of type. A  event is also generated when you create a new window visibly. (Note: There are also other kinds of actions which generate events; see the   function for more information.)

Side Effects of Making a Window Invisible

If  is negative, the window becomes invisible, and it becomes the current output window. If the window was previously active, it becomes inactive; if your program has other visible windows, one of them becomes the active window.

More about the type Parameter

The parameter is a positive or negative integer. The absolute value of determines the general appearance of the window and determines some special attributes of it. The sign of  determines whether the window will be modal or non-modal. If  is negative, the window will be modal, which means the user won't be able to switch to a different window until the modal window is closed; if the user clicks in an inactive window while a modal window is active, a beep is generated, but a  event is notgenerated. can be expressed as follows:

can be any of the following: (1)

Document window with room for scrollbars.

<image was here

Framed dialog window.

<image was here

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(9)

Plain dialog window.

Shadowed dialog window.

Document window with no grow box.

Movable dialog window.

Document window with zoom box and room for scrollbars.

<image was here

(17)

Rounded-corner window. Add 1 through 7 to this variant to increase the roundness of the corners.

<image was here

(129)

Palette window with close box. You can add the constant  (8) to this variant to give the window a zoom <image was here (131) Sideways palette. You can add the constant  (8) to this variant to give the window a zoom box. 176 through 191 These values are mapped to Appearance Manager window types 1984 through 1999. 192 through 255 These values are mapped to Appearance Manager window types 1024 through 1087.

The  can be any of the following (you can specify as many of these as apply):


text: User:Wikidsoup/Userbox

title: User:Wikidsoup/Userbox


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/width

Syntax
WIDTH [LPRINT][=]{_noTextWrap|_textWrap|numChars}

Description
This statement affects how (and whether) text printed by subsequent  or  statements will "wrap."If you specify the   keyword, the   statement applies only to statements sent to the printer. If you omit the  keyword, the   statement applies only to subsequent   statementsdestined for the screen. (without ) applies to all existing and subsequently-created windows.

title: Futurebasic/Language/Reference/width


text:
Metabolomics/Hormones/Ghrelin

Back to Previous Chapter: Metabolites Next chapter: Analytical Methods Go to first page: Insulin Go back to: Adiponectin

Introduction
Ghrelin was recently discovered in 1999 by Masayasu Kojima and his colleagues as a hormone that stimulates appetite. It is known as the counterpart of the hormone leptin, which is made in fat tissue.2 Both these hormones, when at low levels, provide the sensation of being full, scientifically known as satiation. Conversely, when these hormones are at high levels, hunger ensues. Therefore, ghrelin production is increased before a meal and then slowed afterwards.

Due to the effects of ghrelin on metabolism and hunger, it is a prominent target for development of anti-obesity treatments. It has been reported that immunization of rats against ghrelin resulted in decreased weight gain and adiposity relative to control rats; even though both groups consumed an equivalent amount of food. This and other experiments could someday lead to the possibility of a vaccine against obesity.1

 * The link to the right shows a graph of ghrelin levels in the blood before and after a meal. The graph is based on assays of plasma ghrelin in 10 humans during the course of one day.1

Ghrelin is primarily produced by PD/1 cells in the fundus of the stomach and epsilon cells of the pancreas.2 Smaller amounts are also produced in the kidney, placenta, hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. This hormone exists in two forms; an endocrinological inactive (pure peptide) form, as well as an active (octanoylated) form. Without proper control of ghrelin production, disease states such as anorexia nervosa and Prader-Willi syndrome result. To prevent these disease states, regulatory mechanisms are required to maintain equilibrium. These mechanisms control ghrelin production and use the hormone for a number of vital needs.

The main function of ghrelin is to let the brain know the current energy-state of the body. In doing this, ghrelin helps balance the energy in our system. It is able to do this by promoting the secretion of growth hormone by activation of the growth hormone secretagoue receptor, and antonymously suppressing fat utilization in adipose tissue. Ghrelin is also known to stimulate gastric emptying. The hormone furthermore contributes to neurotrophy, particularly in the hippocampus; and it is essential for cognitive adaptation to changing environments and the process of learning. Most recently, ghrelin has been shown to activate the endothelial isoform of nitric oxide synthase in a pathway that depends on various kinases including Akt.2 Ghrelin can also have positive effects on the cardiovascular system, although scientists are not sure if, for example, cardiac output is increased due to ghrelin or the indirect effect of its stimulation of growth hormone secretion.1

Ghrelin functions as a growth hormone-releasing peptide; and was therefore aptly named ghrelin based on the Proto-Indo-European root ghre, which means to grow.

= Discovery =

Ghrelin was recently discovered in 1999 by Masayasu Kojima and his colleagues as a hormone that stimulates appetite.

More recently, Scripps research scientists developed an anti-obesity vaccine. The vaccine uses the immune system's antibodies to bind to selected targets, directing the body's own immune response against them. This method prevents ghrelin from reaching the central nervous system, thus resulting in reduction of weight gain.2

= Physiology =

Ghrelin is primarily produced by PD/1 cells as a preprohormone, then proteolytically processed to yield a 28-amino acid peptide in the fundus of the stomach and epsilon cells of the pancreas.2 Smaller amounts are also produced in the kidney, placenta, hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. Ghrelin is also produced by a small number of neurons in the arcuate nucleus.

Receptors for ghrelin were discovered before the actual hormone. They are found on neurons in the arcuate nucleus and the ventromedial hypothalamus as well as the pituitary gland, heart and adipose tissue. These receptors are G protein-coupled receptors, also known as GHS receptors (growth hormone secretagogue receptors); and when activated by ghrelin, secrete growth hormone and have also been found to suppress fat utilization in adipose tissue.

This hormone increases food intake and fat mass by action in the hypothalamus. Here in the hypothalmus, ghrelin activates the arcuate nucleus cells. The ghrelin-response of these cells is affected by both leptin and insulin (other hormones related to metabolism).2

Ghrelin also activates the mesolimbic cholinergic-dopaminergic reward link, a circuit that communicates the pleasurable and reinforcing aspects of natural rewards; for example, food, as well as addictive drugs, such as ethanol.2

Ghrelin exists in two forms; an endocrinological inactive (pure peptide) form, as well as an active (octanoylated) form.

Function/Purpose
The main function of ghrelin is to let the brain know the current energy-state of the body. In doing this, ghrelin helps balance the energy in our system.

It does this in a number of ways:

 * Promotion of secretion of growth hormone by activation of the growth hormone secretagoue receptor.

 * Suppression of fat utilization in adipose tissue.

 * Stimulation of gastric emptying.

 * Contribution to neurotrophy (within hippocampus)

 * Essential for cognitive adaptation to changing environments.

 * Essential to the process of learning.

 * Activation of the endothelial isoform of nitric oxide synthase in a pathway that depends on various kinases including Akt.2

 * Ghrelin may also have positive effects on the cardiovascular system, although scientists are not positive this is directly related to ghrelin.

Energy Homeostasis
Afferent signals that arise from peripheral tissues are known to play a significant role in the CNS/periphery interactions that are involved in energy homeostasis regulation. Ghrelin is among the list of exemplifiers for this signaling and regulation. Ghrelin has been discovered to be primarily synthesized in the stomach and has become a focus of obesity research. This is because it is the only known systemic signal that specifically promotes food intake, positive energy balance, and the facilitation of adiposity development via attenuation of fatty oxidation. Researchers have proven that the action of ghrelin increases food intake, and independently regulates adipocyte metabolism. Ghrelin channels nutrient partitioning toward fat storage via favoring the uptake of glucose and triglycerides. This is made possible by increasing lipogenesis via lipid oxidation inhibition within white adipocytes. Central ghrelin administration also results in lower body core temperatures.

It has been determined that maximum ghrelin potency as a fat storage-promoting factor requires that it affects nutrient intake and metabolic nutrient partitioning. This is because the most significant ghrelin-induced body fat gain occurs with ample substrate availability, strong orexigenic drive and high efficiency lipid storage.

Ghrelin action elicits within the brain, which suggests that stomach-derived ghrelin may act at the level of brain structures to affect peripheral adipocytes metabolism, if secreted in substantial amounts. As a result, researchers have suggested that ghrelin may “prime” adipose tissue to store energy as fat after altering the expression of adipocyte enzymes.

Ghrelin gene deficiency has, in the past, been proven to decrease the respiratory quotient (RQ), which results in decreased fat deposition. A possible explanation for this may be decreased expression of lipogenic enzymes in white adipose tissue (WAT). Researchers propose that during a normal diet, limited lipogenic pathway activity of ghrelin knockout (KO) mice is sufficient for physiological phenotype maintenance. By contrast, it is also proposed that conditions of abundant dietary fat result in impaired adipocyte metabolism, which decreases the susceptibility for diet-induced obesity.

It is presumed that ghrelin may inhibit a food-induced insulin response, since ghrelin has an inhibitory effect on insulin secretion.

Researchers have concluded that a neuroendocrine network in the CNS that involves ghrelin, its hypothalamic target neurons, and the sympathetic nervous system are direct regulators of adipocyte energy metabolism. Researchers have hypothesized that the enzymatic deficiency of ghrelin deficient mice provides enough lipid storage capacity to manage low amounts of nutritional lipids that have been ingested while on a normal diet. It is determined that ghrelin-deficiency exhibits defective regulation of lipid-metabolizing enzymes, which impairs nutrient partitioning and efficient lipid deposition. However, it is assumed that protection against diet-induced obesity may partly result from the enzymatic capacity of ghrelin acting as a limiting factor for fat storage from circulating lipids.

Link to article:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16767221

Mechanisms
Ghrelin is a peptide that promotes appetite by affecting the hypothalamic arcuate and paraventricular (PVN) nuclei which work in regulating the appetite.4 The orexigenic neuropeptide Y/agouti-related protein neurons are stimulated while the anorexigenic pro-opiomelanocortin/cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript neurons are inhibited by ghrelin.4

Inhibited by leptin and α-melanocyte stimulating hormone and activated by ghrelin and cannabinoids, hypothalamic AMPK mediates many appetite-regulating hormones.4 The CB1 receptor in the hypothalamus is a route found to increase food intake when accessed by cannabinoids.4

A signaling cascade has been suggested such that ghrelin→endocannabinoid→CB1→AMPK→appetite.4

An increased release of endocannabinoids, acting through CB1, is needed for ghrelin to stimulate AMPK and appetite.4 The presence of CB1 is also needed for the hypothalamic neurophysiological effects of ghrelin.4 The orexigenic and central AMPK-stimulatory effects of ghrelin are mediated through the necessary endogenous cannabinoid system.4

Disorders Related to Ghrelin
Levels of circulating ghrelin are inversely correlated with positive energy balance, body mass index, body fat mass, adipocyte size, and leptin levels.3

Anorexia nervosa patients exhibit high levels of ghrelin opposed to obese patients who have low levels of plasma ghrelin.3 It is thought that the fluctuations of circulating ghrelin levels may mirror physiological adaptation to changes in energy balance. Treating obesity with a ghrelin antagonist seems like the right move because of the orexigenic and adipogenic attributes of ghrelin. Even though this seems logical it is not clear whether quenching ghrelin would have any positive effect on the already depressed ghrelin levels in obese patients. Also, like in many body systems there would be counter mechanisms that would be activated in order to satisfy nutritional needs. Ghrelin also has a strong stimulatory effect on Growth Horomone (GH) secretion and an antagonist could drop off GH levels below functioning levels.3

Obesity has been linked to the ghrelin gene having genetic variations.3 Baseline levels of ghrelin were more alike in pairs of monozygotic twins than in heterozygous pairs. Also, the decrease in ghrelin concentration after periods of overfeeding showed the same trend.3 Clinical uses for ghrelin can be fabricated once a better understanding of its stimuli and regulatory pathways for synthesis and release are known.3

= Resources: =

 WEB:

= 1. = http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/gi/ghrelin.html

Ghrelin Overview

== This page covers the structure of ghrelin and its receptors, the control and physiological effects of ghrelin, and disease states that are a result of high or low levels of ghrelin. It is a page made at Colorado State University that delves into information regarding growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHS-R), Prader-Willi syndrome, anorexia nervosa, as well as many functions of the hormone. The production of an anti-obesity vaccine is also discussed. The page contains a good graph to show how ghrelin concentrations change throughout the day. Although the page is short, it contains a generous amount of good information regarding ghrelin and its properties. ==

New words encountered are: (all definitions from dictionary.com)

preprohormone - A preprohormone is the precursor protein to one or more prohormones, which are in turn precursors to peptide hormones. The protein generally consists of the amino acid chain that is created by the hormone secreting cell, before any changes have been made to it.

proteolysis - Proteolysis is the directed degradation (digestion) of proteins by cellular enzymes called proteases or by intramolecular digestion.

n-octanoic acid - also known as caprylic acid, CH3 (CH2)6 COOH

fundus - Latin for "bottom", fundus is a generic anatomical term referring to the portion of an organ opposite from its opening.

secretagogue - A secretagogue is a substance which causes another substance to be secreted.

somatostatin - Somatostatin (also known as growth hormone inhibiting hormone (GHIH) or 	   somatotropin release-inhibiting factor (SRIF)) is a peptide hormone that regulates the endocrine system and affects neurotransmission and cell proliferation via interaction with G-protein-coupled somatostatin receptors and inhibition of the release of numerous secondary hormones.

adiposity - Excessive accumulation of lipids in a site or organ. (Obesity)

anorexia nervosa - an eating disorder characterized by an extreme reduction in food intake leading to potentially life-threatening weight loss. This syndrome is marked by an intense, irrational fear of weight gain or excess body fat, accompanied by a distorted perception of body weight and shape.

Prader-Willi syndrome - Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a genetic condition caused by the absence of chromosomal material from chromosome 15. Characteristics of the syndrome include developmental delays, poor muscle tone, short stature, small hands and feet, incomplete sexual development, and unique facial features. Insatiable appetite is a classic feature of PWS. This uncontrollable appetite can lead to morbid obesity and behavior disturbances.

Voracious - exceedingly eager or avid

== This website relates to our class by covering topics such as hormones, hormone receptors, the control and regulation of hormones, as well as the effects of uncontrolled regulation. ==

= 2. = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghrelin

Ghrelin Overview

-- This page contains a general overview of ghrelin, the history of ghrelin, its mechanism of action and role in disease, the different forms of ghrelin, its relation to obestatin (similar hormone), and information regarding an anti-obesity vaccine. It is a wikipedia page, so the information comes from a number of sources. Ghrelin's actions in the arcuate nucleus and the ventromedial hypothalamus are discussed, as well as its role in the hippocampus. This page also covers ghrelin related diseases such as anorexia nervosa, obesity, and Prader-Willi syndrome. The page also discusses a recently produced vaccine for obesity. This page contains a lot of good information on ghrelin. Since it is a wikipedia page there is information compiled from a number of resources. --

New words encountered are: (all definitions from dictionary.com)

leptin - a hormone that is thought to suppress appetite and speed up metabolism.

bariatric - a branch of medicine that deals with the control and treatment of obesity and allied diseases.

neurotrophy - the influence of the nerves on the nutrition and maintenance of body tissue.

octanoylated - the active form of ghrelin.

mimetics - characterized by, exhibiting, or of the nature of imitation or mimicry. (mimic or make-believe.)

hedonic - of, characterizing, or pertaining to pleasure.

cachexia - general ill health with emaciation, usually occurring in association with cancer or a chronic infectious disease.

arcuate nucleus - Any of various specialized groups of nerve cells in the medulla oblongata, thalamus, or hypothalamus of the brain.

kinases - Any of various enzymes that catalyze the transfer of a phosphate group from a donor, such as ADP or ATP, to an acceptor.

endothelial - The endothelium is the thin layer of cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels, forming an interface between circulating blood in the lumen and the rest of the vessel wall.

== This website relates to our class by covering topics such as hormones, hormone receptors, active and inactive complexes, mechanisms of the control and regulation of hormones, and the effects of uncontrolled regulation (diseases). ==

 Journal Articles:

= 3. =http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1356251

Ghrelin Overview

==This article discusses the activation of ghrelin via the vagus nerve. Its effects are seen in obesity, eating disorders, neoplasia, and cachexia. Ghrelin acts as a ligand for the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHSR) and has also been seen as an independent pathway in regulating GH release. Physiologic homeostasis is maintained through ghrelin's brain-gut peptide role which emphasizes the afferent vagal fibers being the major brain pathway. The article also suggests the importance of ghrelin's role in enhancing immune responses and down-regulating anti-inflammatory molecules. Ghrelin's functions must be pinpointed in order to use ghrelin in diagnosis and treatment of different diseases related to over-nutrition and catabolism as a result of surgical trauma.

New words encountered are: (all definitions from dictionary.com)

oxyntic - Forming or secreting acid, as the parietal cells of gastric glands.

somatotroph - A cell of the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland that produces somatotropin.

gonadotrophin - A substance formed in the anterior pituitary gland that affect the activity                           of         the ovary or testis.

anxiogenic - Causing anxiety.

orexigenic - Having a stimulating effect on the appetite.

hyperleptinemia -Increased serum leptin level.

etiology - The cause or origin of a disease.

apoptosis -Disintegration of cells into membrane-bound particles that are then eliminated by phagocytosis or by shedding.

adenoma - A benign tumor originating in a secretory gland.

isoform - Any of two or more functionally similar proteins that have a similar but not identical amino acid sequence and are either encoded by different genes or by RNA transcripts from the same gene which have had different exons removed.

==This article relates to class because of its examples of regulation. Although ghrelin's regulation is still highly unknown, ghrelin has large regulatory effects.

= 4. =http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2258435

Ghrelin Overview

This article discusses the mechanism of the ghrelin-cannabinoid interaction. Both ghrelin and cannabinoids enhance the appetite by activating the hypothalamic AMP-activated protein kinase. The study in this paper involved adult male WT mice and CB1-KO mice. The study showed that the CB1 receptor is needed for ghrelin's appetite stimulating response. The cannabinoid content of the hypothalamus is increased by gherelin and this effect also involves CB1. Input into the PVN is inhibited by ghrelin. Although, a CB1 antagonist as well as inhibiting cannabinoid synthesis can be used to prevent this effect. Ghrelin's appetite-inducing effects are dependent on the interactions between ghrelin and the cannabinoid systems.

New words encountered are: (all definitions from dictionary.com)

endogenous - Growing or developing from within; originating within.

cannabinoid - Any of various organic substances, such as THC, found in cannabis.

putative - Commonly regarded as such; reputed; supposed

electrophysiology - The branch of physiology dealing with the electric phenomena associated with the body and its functions.

retrograde signaling - A phenomenon in which a signal travels from a postsynaptic neuron to a presynaptic one.

parvocellular - Characterized by relatively small cell bodies.

glucocorticoid - Any of a group of steroid hormones, such as cortisone, that are produced by the adrenal cortex, are involved in carbohydrate, protein, and fat metabolism, and have anti-inflammatory properties.

melanocortin - A group of pituitary peptide hormones that include adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) and the alpha, beta and gamma melanocyte-stimulating hormones (MSH) that derive from the prohormone proopiomelanocortin.

intraperitoneal - Situated within or administered by entering the peritoneum.

stereotactic - Movement of an organism in response to contact with a solid.

==This article relates to class because it shows the effect and importance of signaling cascades where a product in one reaction is necessary for subsequent reactions.

=Articles and Web Pages for Review and Inclusion=

title: Metabolomics/Hormones/Ghrelin


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/varptr

Syntax
address& = VARPTR({var|FN userFunction}) address& = @var

Description
returns the memory address where the first byte of the variable  is located. You can use this value as a "pointer" to. If  is a local variable inside a local function, the value returned by   may be different each time you execute the function, and is not valid after the function exits. The syntax  is just a shorthand version of.

is identical to the  function.

Example
You cannot use  with variables that use register storage, because such variables do not have addresses. See the  statement and the  statements to learn how to prevent a variable from using register storage.

Because the " " symbol has a special meaning when it appears after the  or   keyword, you cannot use the  syntax as the first item in a list of print items.

PRINT @myVar#'This does not work ("@" is misinterpreted) PRINT (@myVar#)'This works. PRINT VARPTR(myVar#)'This works too.

title: Futurebasic/Language/Reference/varptr


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/validrect

Syntax
ignored = FN VALIDRECT(rect)

Revised
February, 2002 (Release 6)

Description
Before Carbon became a part of the Mac toolbox, we were able to use a toolbox procedure called VALIDRECT to mark a portion of the current window as an area that did not need to be refreshed during the next update. This call will not work in OS X (or in the Carbon version of OS 9). Our substitute,, will work in versions 7 through X without additional coding required on your part.


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/val amp

Syntax
integerValue& = VAL&(string$)

Description
This function is similar to the  function, but it can only evaluate a string which represents an integer. The advantage of using  is that it executes more quickly than.

can represent an integer in decimal, hex, octal or binary format. The absolute value of the represented integer must not exceed 4,294,967,295.

ignores leading spaces in, and it stops evaluating the string when it encounters a character that is not part of standard integer notation. Note that this means  will stop evaluating the string when it encounters a decimal point or an " " exponent indicator. That means that certain strings which represent integers will be evaluated differently by  than by. For example, the string " " will be evaluated as 2461 by, but as 24 by.

title: Futurebasic/Language/Reference/val amp


text:
Futurebasic/Language/Reference/val

Syntax
numericValue = VAL(string$)

Description
If  contains the characters of a number in any of the standard FB formats (decimal, hex, octal or binary),   returns the number's value.

ignores leading spaces in. When it finds a non-space character, it evaluates the remaining characters in  until it encounters a character which is not part of the number. Thus, for example, the string " " would be evaluated as 3245.6, but the string " " would be evaluated as 32. If the first non-space character in  can't be recognized as part of a number,   returns zero. performs the opposite of functions such as,  ,  ,   and.

Example
DATA "-3.2", "1.4E2", "&4C1", "9+7" FOR i = 1 TO 4 READ s$  PRINT s$, VAL(s$) NEXT

program output: represents an integer, consider using the  function, which is faster.

title: Futurebasic/Language/Reference/val


text:
CCNA Certification/Appendix E - Material removed from course

As of this writing (May 2, 2008), it appears that in Cisco's most recent revision to the CCNA exam coverage, they have removed the requirement for the candidate to have extensive knowledge of ISDN.


text:
Hebrew/Exercises/Aleph-Bet 4

Welcome to the exercises related to Aleph-Bet Lesson 4 of learning Hebrew.

Click "▼" to check your answers.

Letters & Niqqud
Assign each letter to the sound it stands for.

Assign each sound to the letter the makes it.

Vocabulary
How is each word pronounced?

Translate the following words from Hebrew to English:

Reading Without Vowels
How is each word pronounced?

Next Steps
Review lesson: Aleph-Bet 4 Next lesson: Aleph-Bet 5 >>>

title: Hebrew/Exercises/Aleph-Bet 4


text:
Hebrew/Exercises

This page is a list of links to the exercises in this Wikibook.

Aleph-Bet

 * Lesson 2
 * Lesson 3
 * Lesson 4
 * Lesson 5
 * Lesson 6
 * Lesson 7
 * Lesson 8
 * Lesson 9
 * Lesson 10

Basic

 * Lesson 1
 * Lesson 2
 * Lesson 3
 * Lesson 4
 * Lesson 5

title: Hebrew/Exercises


text:
Ido/Comparatives and superlatives

Comparison of adjectives

 * granda, plu granda, maxim granda big, bigger, biggest
 * bela, plu bela, maxim bela beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful

As you can see from the above examples, in English there are two different systems for comparing adjectives. Ido has only one method of comparison which is equivalent to the English in the second example above. This means that instead of 'bigger' Ido says 'more big' (plu granda), instead of 'prettiest', 'most pretty' (maxim beleta) and so on.

 * Chinia es la maxim populoza naciono de la mondo. - China is the most populated nation of the world.

Comparatives
In Ido adjectives are compared by:
 * plu . . . kam - more . . . than
 * min . . . kam - less . . . than
 * tam . . . kam - as . . . as
 * ne tam . . . kam - not so . . . as
 * maxim . . . de - most . . . of
 * minim . . . de - least . . . of
 * tre - very

Examples

 * El es PLU gracila KAM Elena. - She is more graceful than Elena.
 * Me esas TAM richa KAM il. - I am as rich as he.
 * Ol esas la MAXIM bela de omni. - It is the finest of all.
 * Il esas TRE brava. - He is very brave.
 * Me preferas ico KAM ito. - I prefer this to that.

title: Ido/Comparatives and superlatives


text:
User talk:Wikiuoquis

Welcome!
Welcome, Wikiuoquis!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Wikiuoquis


text:
Hebrew/Exercises/Aleph-Bet 6

Welcome to the exercises related to Aleph-Bet Lesson 6 of learning Hebrew.

Click "▼" to check your answers.

Letters & Niqqud
Assign each letter to the sound it stands for:

1.

2.

Assign each sound to the letter that makes it:

1. }}

2.

Vocabulary
How is each word pronounced?

Translate the following words from Hebrew to English:

Reading Without Vowels
How is each word pronounced?

Next Steps
Review lesson: Aleph-Bet 6 Next lesson: Aleph-Bet 7 >>>

title: Hebrew/Exercises/Aleph-Bet 6


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...c5/2. Nf3/2...d6/3. d4/3...cxd4/4. Nxd4/4...Nf6/5. Nc3/5...a6/6. Bg5/6...e6/7. f4/7...Qb6/8. Qd2/8...Qxb2

= Sicilian Defence, Poisoned Pawn Variation = The famous Poisoned Pawn Variation. Black accepts the pawn. This line after good results from Black, initially Fischer but later Kasparov has seen a decline in popularity of 6.Bg5.

The line was popularized by Bobby Fischer, who in playing this line said that he could grab a pawn, give his opponent three or four moves in development, and still win! Today the line is just as messy as it was in its heyday in the 1970s, but is now considered to be equal with best play. Today there have been lines analyzed up to twenty or thirty moves in depth, such as this one, the main one.

Theory table
.

'''1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 8.Qd2 Qxb2'''


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...c6/2. d4/2...d5/3. Nc3/3...dxe4/4. Nxe4

= Caro-Kann Defence:Classical Variation = 4. Nxe4 is an obvious recapture. Black has 3 main alternatives. The Classical Variation, 4...Bf5, usually sees the bishop controlling the light diagonal from g6. The Smyslov/Karpov variation delays the development of the light bishop, with Nd7, while Nf6 risks doubled pawns for an open file. None of the other alternatives have seen significant usage.


text:
Chess Opening Theory/1. e4/1...c6/2. d4/2...d5/3. Nc3/3...dxe4/4. Nxe4/4...Bf5

= Caro-Kann Defence:Classical Variation =

White can, and almost always does, stick to the main line, with Ng3, forcing the bishop back, but the ambitious Nc5, and the aggressive Burris Gambit have given white surprising success.


text:
Talk:Data Structures/List Structures

Poor Code
The pseudo code here is difficult to understand and needs improving. Visame (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Unrolled Linked Lists
As an implementation technique unrolled linked lists need to be mentioned. They are memory efficient, reduce cache misses, and, when using bounded node size, have constant time insertion/deletion. JamesCrook (talk) 11:29, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

title: Talk:Data Structures/List Structures


text:
User talk:Aschmidt~enwikibooks

Welcome!
Welcome, Aschmidt!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Aschmidt. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Aschmidt~enwikibooks that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 22:59, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 04:35, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Aschmidt~enwikibooks


text:
User talk:Bconstan

Welcome!
Welcome, Bconstan!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Bconstan


text:
User talk:Hmiller24

Welcome!
Welcome, Hmiller24!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Hmiller24


text:
User talk:Chartman

Welcome!
Welcome, Chartman!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Chartman


text:
User talk:KeithDog

Welcome!
Welcome, KeithDog!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:KeithDog


text:
User talk:Jyutzy1

Welcome!
Welcome, Jyutzy1!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jyutzy1


text:
User talk:Kim rice

Welcome!
Welcome, Kim rice!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Kim rice


text:
User talk:M.Leininger

Welcome!
Welcome, M.Leininger!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:M.Leininger


text:
User talk:Ethanolivia

Welcome!
Welcome, Ethanolivia!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ethanolivia


text:
User talk:Jjbitner

Welcome!
Welcome, Jjbitner!

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jjbitner


text:
User:Example

Account created by Willscrlt for use as an example user, such as references within templates, tutorials, and FAQs.

Note to new users: This is not a testing space. Please experiment at Sandbox. You can create your own user page here.

Note to admins: Any use of this account, other than editing this page or its talk page, is unauthorized use and very likely vandalism. Feel free to revert it immediately. Thanks!

title: User:Example


text:
User talk:Example

This is an example user's talk page.

If you leave a remark here, your questions and comments will not be answered. If you need help, please visit the Help section. If you want to discuss matters related to this specific account, please leave your comments on it's creator's talk page. Thank you.

Note to new users: This is not a testing space. Please experiment at Sandbox.

title: User talk:Example


text:
User talk:Antonio Lopez

=talkpage=

title: User talk:Antonio Lopez


text:
AP Computer Science/Testing Java

Software Tools
To write and test Java, you will need to the appropriate tools. The two main tools you will need are the Java Software Development Kit (Java SDK or JDK) and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The JDK includes all the tools your computer will need to build and run Java programs. While a simple text editor could be good enough for writing Java code, the text editor cannot compile the code, or put the code together so that it can execute, or run on a computer. An IDE uses the SDK to compile Java code and turn it into an executable program. A popular and widely-used IDE with many features is Eclipse.

First Java Program
When you first learn any computer programming language, one of the first things you may learn to do is write a Hello World program, a program that simply prints the phrase "Hello, world!" on your computer screen. Create a new file titled "HelloWorld.java" using an IDE and type the following code in the file:

public class HelloWorld { public void main(String args[]) { System.out.println("Hello, world!"); } }

Now save this file and compile it using your IDE, then execute the program. This program should print the following message on your screen:

Hello, world!

Congratulations! You've just written your first Java program. Later sections of this book will explain what these words mean, how to write longer and more complex programs, and how to understand code that is already written.

title: AP Computer Science/Testing Java


text:
Talk:Bartending/Cocktails/Glossary/Transwiki

Transwiki history
Cocktail information that was merged into the cocktails glossary from another source, such as the English Wikipedia, can logged here to satisfy the GNU license, by providing a record of contributors to the original page. Simply add the information to this list in alphabetical order. When the list grows too large, it can be divided into sub-pages.

* (cur) (last) 00:33, May 3, 2008 Finalnight (Talk | contribs) (657 bytes) (rv bad cat) (undo) * (cur) (last) 22:20, March 30, 2008 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (698 bytes) (Date the maintenance tags or general fixes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 19:46, March 30, 2008 Longhair (Talk | contribs) (682 bytes) (unreferenced) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (665 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (669 bytes) (→Recipe Ingredients) (undo) * (cur) (last) 11:01, December 20, 2007 Cheesy mike (Talk | contribs) (651 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 09:27, December 20, 2007 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (599 bytes) (Standard headings &/or gen fixes. using AWB) (undo) * (cur) (last) 10:10, February 7, 2007 Willscrlt (Talk | contribs) m (Project tagged (mixed drinks)) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:58, January 31, 2007 Chris the speller (Talk | contribs) m (sp) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:30, January 31, 2007 Devious Viper (Talk | contribs) (+ categories; wikilink; drink stub templ) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:21, January 31, 2007 JFBurton (Talk | contribs) (Starting Blaster Bates(Drink) Article)

* (cur) (last) 00:33, May 3, 2008 Finalnight (Talk | contribs) (657 bytes) (rv bad cat) (undo) * (cur) (last) 22:20, March 30, 2008 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (698 bytes) (Date the maintenance tags or general fixes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 19:46, March 30, 2008 Longhair (Talk | contribs) (682 bytes) (unreferenced) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (665 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (669 bytes) (→Recipe Ingredients) (undo) * (cur) (last) 11:01, December 20, 2007 Cheesy mike (Talk | contribs) (651 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 09:27, December 20, 2007 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (599 bytes) (Standard headings &/or gen fixes. using AWB) (undo) * (cur) (last) 10:10, February 7, 2007 Willscrlt (Talk | contribs) m (Project tagged (mixed drinks)) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:58, January 31, 2007 Chris the speller (Talk | contribs) m (sp) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:30, January 31, 2007 Devious Viper (Talk | contribs) (+ categories; wikilink; drink stub templ) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:21, January 31, 2007 JFBurton (Talk | contribs) (Starting Blaster Bates(Drink) Article)

Edit history of Blaster Bates (drink)
Information on was transwikied from | {{#if:{{{date|}}|on 08:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC) }} by Willscrlt (talk). Here is a copy of the page history before it was transwikied:

* (cur) (last) 00:33, May 3, 2008 Finalnight (Talk | contribs) (657 bytes) (rv bad cat) (undo) * (cur) (last) 22:20, March 30, 2008 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (698 bytes) (Date the maintenance tags or general fixes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 19:46, March 30, 2008 Longhair (Talk | contribs) (682 bytes) (unreferenced) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (665 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (669 bytes) (→Recipe Ingredients) (undo) * (cur) (last) 11:01, December 20, 2007 Cheesy mike (Talk | contribs) (651 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 09:27, December 20, 2007 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (599 bytes) (Standard headings &/or gen fixes. using AWB) (undo) * (cur) (last) 10:10, February 7, 2007 Willscrlt (Talk | contribs) m (Project tagged (mixed drinks)) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:58, January 31, 2007 Chris the speller (Talk | contribs) m (sp) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:30, January 31, 2007 Devious Viper (Talk | contribs) (+ categories; wikilink; drink stub templ) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:21, January 31, 2007 JFBurton (Talk | contribs) (Starting Blaster Bates(Drink) Article)

Edit history of Bartending/Cocktails/Glossary
Information on was transwikied from | {{#if:{{{date|}}|on 20080504140425 }} by  Here is a copy of the page history before it was transwikied: * (cur) (last) 00:33, May 3, 2008 Finalnight (Talk | contribs) (657 bytes) (rv bad cat) (undo) * (cur) (last) 22:20, March 30, 2008 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (698 bytes) (Date the maintenance tags or general fixes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 19:46, March 30, 2008 Longhair (Talk | contribs) (682 bytes) (unreferenced) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (665 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 15:45, March 25, 2008 86.139.199.63 (Talk) (669 bytes) (→Recipe Ingredients) (undo) * (cur) (last) 11:01, December 20, 2007 Cheesy mike (Talk | contribs) (651 bytes) (undo) * (cur) (last) 09:27, December 20, 2007 SmackBot (Talk | contribs) m (599 bytes) (Standard headings &/or gen fixes. using AWB) (undo) * (cur) (last) 10:10, February 7, 2007 Willscrlt (Talk | contribs) m (Project tagged (mixed drinks)) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:58, January 31, 2007 Chris the speller (Talk | contribs) m (sp) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:30, January 31, 2007 Devious Viper (Talk | contribs) (+ categories; wikilink; drink stub templ) (undo) * (cur) (last) 16:21, January 31, 2007 JFBurton (Talk | contribs) (Starting Blaster Bates(Drink) Article)


text:
Talk:OpenGL Programming/Advanced/Optimization

== Please show the actual information for the users. SOme examples from OpenGL Programming.


text:
Hebrew/Exercises/Aleph-Bet 7

Welcome to the exercises related to Aleph-Bet Lesson 7 of learning Hebrew.

Click "▼" to check your answers.

Letters & Niqqud
Assign each letter to the sound it stands for:

1.

2.

Assign each sound to the letter that makes it:

1.

2.

Vocabulary
How is each word pronounced?

Translate the following words from Hebrew to English:

Reading Without Vowels
How is each word pronounced?

Next Steps
Review lesson: Aleph-Bet 7 Next lesson: Aleph-Bet 8 >>>

title: Hebrew/Exercises/Aleph-Bet 7


text:
User talk:Tm777716~enwikibooks

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Tm777716. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Tm777716~enwikibooks that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:36, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tm777716~enwikibooks


text:
Computers & Society/Setting the scene

Setting the scene is necessary before a film shoot. It is also what one does in the theater for a play, a drama. Even in the writing of the film script or of the play one has to set the scene.

Here, in this place, we are setting the scene for the Wikibook you are reading. We imagine that you, the reader, exist. We imagine (and hope) that there will be many of you. We will never meet, except through this Wikibook.

Reader
The book is intended for all who are interested in the ways in which the society develops in a world of computers. To see where we are today, we need to know where we come from.

The book is in English. It would be nice if other language versions of it were to appear.

There are 3 levels of intended reader:

 * the 12 to 16 age group (junior and senior high school)
 * the 17 to 21 age group (college)
 * the 22+ age group (all the rest of us)

What does this mean? Well! There are exercises/questions in the book which might prove very challenging for the college group, for example. And the exercises/questions are not targeted at any specific group. Nor is level of difficulty given. Real life is like that. Here is a simple example of an exercise which some questions:

 * Why did eBay buy PayPal?
 * Why did eBay then buy Skype?
 * What do you think eBay ought to buy next?

Where are the answers? Good question. Perhaps they ought to go into a separate Wikibook? To find answers one must search. One must ask one's own questions.

iStuff
Let us be hip in late 2008? We have iBook, iPhone, iPod... There is no reason for us to limit ourselves to particular commercial branding terms.

In the Internet society we expect to see all sorts of iStuff! We can think of the „i-“ in iStuff to stand for „Individual“, „Internet“, „Interactive“, „Interesting“,...

There was no Wikipedia article on iStuff at the time of writing. The topic seems to be of significant widespread use to deserve a module of its own in this (wik)iBook.
 * google iStuff gives 169,000 hits; "i-Stuff" gives 271,000 hits.

iStuff

 * iStuff

title: Computers & Society/Setting the scene


text:
Cookbook:Cookies and Milk

| North American Cuisines | Canadian Cuisine | Cuisine of Ontario | Desserts

Cookies and milk is a common snack in Canada, especially Ontario. Many versions are made, varying from the most basic, simply dipping a cookie in milk, to this recipe for one of the more complicated and messy versions.

Ingredients

 * Cookies (preferably chocolate chip, but others can be used)
 * Milk

Equipment

 * A glass (diameter must be equal to or larger than that of the cookie)

Procedure

 * 1) Drop the cookies into the glass, filling it up to roughly ¾ of the glass. You can fill it more if you desire, but usually about 4–6 cookies is good.
 * 2) Fill the cookie-filled glass with milk until the milk covers the top cookie.
 * 3) Wait a couple of minutes for the cookies to absorb the milk and become soft. You can decide how soft you want them
 * 4) Drink milk and cookies from glass.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * Use chocolate milk for a more chocolatey taste.
 * For those who suffer from a lactose intolerance or other milk allergy, soy milk can be used as an alternative, less strong option.

title: Cookbook:Cookies and Milk


text:
Computers & Society/Setting the scene/Learning how to ask questions

We take many things for granted. It is natural and normal. But sometimes we need to examine some of the things we take for granted. In this book on Computers & Society we will work together to try to make sense of the Internet world in which we live. We do it together precisely because in this Internet world everything is obviously connected. Physically, you the reader may be located on the other side of the planet (and maybe even you are on some orbital space platform above). But if you are connected you will probably have friends also connected and maybe also physically very far away. This awareness of the other, physically distant but present, brings her or him to mind and (s)he becomes again an intimate part of your society.

When you are reading a novel do you not forget yourself for a moment and become part of the story? Does it not seem that the characters you meet appear to take on real personality, a sort of life of their own? And do you not become involved? Do you not lose yourself, begin to care about the other, the one who is speaking, acting, living in the book? Let us imagine that you are a fan of Harry Potter? Do you remember how you felt as the story progressed?

We may transfer this experience of the novel to the other modes of contemporary life, the society in which we move, even if at a distance. Do you not become involved in the movie you watch? In the music your hear? In the theater where the play, the ballet, the performance entrances you? Are not all these doorways or gateways into another world, another society, even if only for a short period of time? Afterwards, maybe much later, do you not remember the experience of going through that doorway? Do you not remember, being there? Is it not a part of you now?

Everything has a beginning. And sometimes we remember that the same everything has an ending. Perhaps we cannot yet imagine what the ending of the Internet world will look like? Will we see the end of the Oil world first? We are going to look at our world, our society through the eyes of the Internet world. We are going to put ourselves at the center of the Digital Society with its own Digital Culture and we are going to ask ourselves how did we get here and where are we going?

In our Internet galaxy we are always finding new ideas, new phrases, new words, turning all the time. That is the nature of our world. If we say that we are in the Digital Society then we can always check to see if the phrase captures the idea world-wide. It is certainly the case that there is the widespread idea of the Digital Divide, highlighted by Manuel Castells in his 9th Chapter "The Digital Divide in a Global Perspective", p. 247-274 of The Internet Galaxy, published in 2001.

But, let us take time to imagine, to be creative, to explore, to invent. Let us play? Let us grab the word "Divide". How can we use it, play with it? What ideas come to mind? Surely you will remember jokes where "dividing up" is the key idea? There are sports, such as football in the UK, where football teams are placed into divisions. And isn't the same idea used in war? If we have "Divide" then we might ask ourselves what is its opposite? Is it "Join" or "Unite" or "Get together"? Doesn't this give us another idea of the "Digital Join"? Could we use it to describe the interconnecting of networks that had never been connected before? How can we check to see if this little language game is interesting? Well, that is where the Internet Society fits in. We are online, connected. Go search!

In the rest of this chapter "Learning how to ask questions" we are going to look at some very famous questions that are always asked. We are going to ask ourselves if the question could be re-phrased. Maybe we will be challenged to ask ourselves when was the first time we heard the question. Or even, we will try to remember where we were or how old we were when we heard the question for the first time? If we go down that route we may find that we were taught the question in elementary school or in Sunday school, or at home. Then we might suppose that the question is framed in the way it is, precisely in order to get the "right answer". The first major question we look at here may seem to be trivial. It is a "Who" question like „Who is your father?“ or „Who is your mother?“ or „Who is the President of the United States?“ Let's take a look at this little question and answer game?

Q. Who made the world?
Did you think of an answer? Write it down somewhere. On a piece of paper maybe. Now let us ask a question about this sort of question? The first word in the question is the "Who" word. So! We say that this sort of question is a Who-question. And we say that the answer expected is a Who-answer. The usual answer is the name of a person. Many people, when asked this question, will automatically respond with the answer "God".

Q. How did the world come into being?
There are exactly 6 sorts of questions that we might want to begin with. Each has a different question word. We have already met the Who-word. The other question words are "What", "Where", "When", "How", and "Why". Instead of asking the Who-question: Who made the world?, we can try the How-question: How did the world come into being? Have you got an answer? Write it down. Many people, when asked the question in this form, will answer immediately "The Big Bang". To learn more about this answer, one can click on the link to view the article in Wikipedia.

Let us take "the world" as the focus for all our questions. And let us ask questions about its beginning, where we use each of the question words in turn:

 * Who? Who made the world?
 * What? What is the world made of?
 * Where? Where exactly is the world?
 * When? When did the world come into existence?
 * How? How did the world come into existence?
 * Why? Why did the world come into existence?

Q. How did the World Wide Web come into being?
Instead of asking questions about the world, let us focus on questions about "Computers & Society"? One of the most important aspects of our world today is the existence of the Internet. So! Questions about the Internet are important. We need to be able to ask the right sorts of question. We might try a Who-question:

 * Who made the Internet?

The answer to this seems to be very difficult. Why? Because there were many people and organizations involved. It might take a long long time to get the answer. A similar sort of question is:

 * How did the World Wide Web come into being?

What might a simple answer to this question look like? We know what an encyclopedic answer looks like. Click on the links to see.

Q. Where do the names of the days of the week come from?
To gain experience in learning how to ask questions, it is usually a good idea to start with those everyday things that one already knows well. Why not start with the days of the week? There are 7 of them. Let us put them in their natural order:

 * Sunday
 * Monday
 * Tuesday
 * Wednesday
 * Thursday
 * Friday
 * Saturday

You may ask why is this order called natural? That is a very good question. And the obvious answer is that Sunday is named after the Sun. It is really Sun-day. You probably can guess that Monday is named after the Moon. It is really Moon-day. Let us skip over Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. These seem to have very particular sources, quite different from Sun and Moon. Saturday is Saturn-day. But if you have clicked on the links above you will already know the answers.

 * Let us try something a little bit more challenging? There are 7 days of the week. Not 6! Not 8! So, it is worth asking why there are 7 days? Try this now for yourself. Do not search the Internet. Do you not look up the answer in a book. Do not ask a friend. See if you can imagine can it came into being from the very beginning. Write you best guess down. Then go and check to see if you are right?

Challenge—Months of the Year
From "Days of the week" to "Months of the year" is an obvious next step. Here are the months of the year, listed in the usual order. Again, like the days of the week we work backwards. We start with the largest common suffix and split it off to see what we get. In this simple game we use pattern matching. What is the same and what is different? In matching, we either begin at the front and try to find the largest pattern in common. Such a pattern is called a prefix. Alternatively, we can start at the end and proceed in the same way. The largest common pattern found in this way is called a suffix. For convenience the suffix is marked in the table shown. Such matching lies at the very center of Computing.

What other sort of question and answer game would you like to play? In other words what interesting questions can you ask? To play this game, you might choose a friend, someone with whom you are connected. This is a lesson in self-discovery. When you have finished playing you may want to take a look at some possible questions and answers in the back of this book?

Challenge—Seasons of the Year
In this language game we will take two lists for the seasons: and Perhaps you can make up three types of questions about the seasons. The first type will be "easy". The second type will be "difficult". And the third type will be "surprising"? Have a go!
 * Spring
 * Summer
 * Fall
 * Winter
 * Spring
 * Summer
 * Autumn
 * Winter

Challenge—Question Words
Did you ever stop to think that of the 6 usual question words in English, who, what, where, when, how, why, there is an "odd man out" question word. Which one is it?

And now that we have used „Which“ to ask a question why don't we include in our list to make 7? And if we do, where in the list will we put it?

Maybe there is yet another question word we have missed?

Q. What has Copernicus and Galileo contributed to Computers and Society?
In our world of computers, the technology is constantly changing and surprising us. And with the changing technology there is an ever-expanding, surprising, flourishing of applications. The combination of Copernicus and Galileo with Computers and Society is an obvious anachronism. The juxtaposition is deliberate. Therefore we may infer that there is an important message to be decoded.

Briefly, Copernicus had an idea (which was not original really) that the Earth moved. Specifically, the Earth moved around the Sun. The idea is crazy, of course, or so it would appear. Anyone today can tell you that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Our language (and not only English) embodies and (en)codifies this reality. We speak of sunrise and sunset.

Copernicus idea was just a theory. How could it be verified in practice? Practice means application and application requires machinery or technology. Galileo provided the technology. What exactly did he do, this Galileo person? What sort of technology did he use? And to what purpose? And why was he absolutely right?

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Once upon a time, there was a man, whose name was Thomas S. Kuhn. Perhaps he is most renowned for the book entitled „The Structure of Scientific Revolutions“?

Of course, the title owes much to the Copernican Revolution (about which he wrote in 1957).

"Consider the compound sentence, “In the Ptolemaic system planets revolve about the earth; in the Copernican they revolve about the sun.” Strictly construed, that sentence is incoherent. The first occurrence of ‘planet’ is Ptolemaic, the second Copernican, and the two attach to nature differently."

What are Scientific Revolutions? The Road since Structure. Thomas S. Kuhn, p.15. The University of Chicago Press, 2000.

What is the point? Well, if people can (still) be fooled by what they see and take for granted. And if the language itself encodes the deception then how can we know and understand and speak about the revolution we are undergoing right now?

What revolution you ask? Why... the revolution that goes by the name of... That thing which is happening to us all and which we want to talk about under the title of „Computers & Society“.

So! The real question we need to ask is this? How can we use technology (just like Galileo did) to show that there is indeed a real earth-shattering revolution happening now?

= Notes =

= Reading links=  There is also the hard back version ISBN 978-0199241538. This is a particularly important text for many reasons. One of the most significant reasons is that it appeared in same year as and before 9/11.

 * "How To Ask Questions the Smart Way" by Eric S. Raymond and Rick Moen

= e-Links =


text:
Talk:Computers & Society/Setting the scene/Learning how to ask questions

at last I am figuring out how all this works :)