Urhixidur

User talk:Urhixidur/Archive/2004

Hello - I put some comments on the Sun discussion page.

Image:Orbits-OrbitalParameters-001.PNG

Just curious - why did ju add {{GFDL}} to this image? Is it sanctioned by current Wikipedia policies in any way? (Your comments about symbols are OK BTW)0.39 15:13, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Being the image's uploader, you should know. If the image is not public ___domain (or GFDL or some such similar), it will have to be tagged for deletion. If I put the wrong tag on, please do fix it. As for the symbol comments, I really should have put them in the image's Talk page, not in its description.

Urhixidur 16:10, 2005 Feb 5 (UTC)

Elara

Hi, A user added an image to the Elara (moon) page. I reverted because I can't find this image on the NASA website (the supposed source), and it looks excessively spherical for a small satellite. This image also appears on the Dutch and Japanese Wikipedia pages and in Wikipedia Commons. Can you check this out? -- Curps 21:52, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The user has supplied a source http://www.vesmirweb.net/galerie.php?adresar=mesice but I'm still skeptical. There's a supposed image of Lysithea (moon) too, which is also very spherical. -- Curps 22:27, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I asked for information at Wikipedia:Peer_review#Elara_.28moon.29 -- Curps 22:30, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The image of "Lysithea" is really Dione:

There's also a nonsensical image of "Sinope" at http://www.vesmirweb.net/clanek.php?id=44#13

I still don't know what the "Elara" image really shows... any idea? Perhaps Rhea or Oberon? -- Curps 23:43, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Elara has never been visited by spacecraft, so the only pictures we have show a blurry dot.

Urhixidur 23:49, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)

The Elara image looks synthetic, maybe a view of Venus without the clouds? The Sinope one first looked like a bad Moon shot (through clouds), but may be a mangled Mars image?

Urhixidur 00:00, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)

Found it... it's an image of Io.

http://www.xtec.es/recursos/astronom/galileo/io/io9495.jpg

-- Curps 00:45, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Taken by Hubble. Makes sense. Now for the "Sinope" image...

Urhixidur 03:07, 2005 Jan 15 (UTC)

I think it must be the Moon, taken under unusual circumstances (lunar eclipse? non-optical image?). I sent e-mail to the webmaster of vesmirweb.net. We don't really need to care about proving the origin of the Sinope image, it hasn't been uploaded to Wikipedia. -- Curps 04:22, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Found it. See [1], about two-thirds of the way down. If you turn it clockwise 120 degrees and then mirror it right-left, it is uncanny similar --although the original for "Lysithea" probably came from the other end of the eclipse, judging by the light gradient.

Urhixidur 01:48, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Thanks for the note about the lunar eclipse photo. I guess that's the final footnote on that odd episode. Back in January, I sent the original website vesmirweb.net a note about the fake photos and they removed them. -- Curps 08:25, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pluto in astrology

It was recreated by the same anonymous IP.

However, the other planets have astrology sections too. So I'd suggest maybe creating a Planets in astrology page and moving each planet's "X in astrology" section to there, as one big article. And just substitute {{main|Planets in astrology}} in each planet page. -- Curps 23:26, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Although both Robert Happelberg and ShutterBugTrekker state that they don't even believe in astrology (!), they are going to great lengths to add and keep a paragraph on astrology in the main planet articles. For me, this is not worth an edit war, at least if it's a small section. If it ever gets bigger then a separate article can be created like Mars in fiction. It's not ideal but Wikipedia involves compromise and obviously some not so small number of people have some interest in astrology. C'est la vie. -- Curps 21:59, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

regarding wrongtitle

This template is a recent invention, added by people who are not acquainted with how Croatian names are commonly represented in English-language texts. Even if we could use the "ć" in the titles, it wouldn't necessarily be a good idea because in most other English texts they're always dropped. Please follow the de facto consensus (witnessed over the last few years) and leave the names as they are, and drop the pointless template (the first, bolded instance in the text, as well as all others, are written with the acute, so the template has little or no practical value). --Joy [shallot] 01:15, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I see the template as one little thing pushing en.wikipedia to go to full Unicode like the other wikipedias. It is true that it adds nothing to the article itself --but then it doesn't detract much either. Do you feel it bothers you? I hope you're not perceiving it as some kind of slur or attack on "foreign" names --being myself French Canadian, I do see value in using diacritics as much as possible.

No, it's merely annoying to see another reminder about this on top of the page. It's rather pointless to rub it in this way :) Note that the same technical difficulties apply not only to Wikipedia but elsewhere, so English speakers in a way expect to see the version without the diacritics, they would search without it. It seems reasonable to present them with that version first, and then gracefully introduce the diacritics in the article text without much explication. --Joy [shallot]

Maybe we could substitute a "silent" version of the template that does not change the article but does log the "request to evolve to full Unicode" under some page --a template consisting of a category would do the job nicely. Say, "Category:Unicode title desirable"?

Urhixidur 04:33, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)

That would be less intrusive. Although, it's also extra, given that you can one day have a bot trawl through Category:Croatian people visiting all articles and comparing $title with the first bolded words in them. --Joy [shallot] 11:38, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Polydeuces and S/2004 S6

From the rough translatiuon of the Norwegian page I got online, I'd be rather confident in saying that the source of the Norwegian page doesn't say that S/2004 S6 and Polydeuces are near each other. They weren't mentioned in the same paragraphs. Polydeuces was given the provisional distance and mentions of Tethys and Dione, plus they said that it was about 5 km in diameter. They didn't repeat any of these when talking about S/2004 S6, just mentioning a similar situation to S/2004 S3 and S4, as being possibly clumps of F Ring material. I could be wrong, but if you want, I could post here what the translation I found said. This would be so much easier if someone who asctually spoke Norwegian or Czech could translate for us. :P --Patteroast 20:51, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It'd be better to post it in Talk:Polydeuces (moon). I've left requests for help at [2] (Czech Village Pump) and [3] (Norwegian Village Pump).

Urhixidur 21:54, 2005 Jan 26 (UTC)

I have posted a translation of the Norwegian text. –Peter J. Acklam 23:08, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Including values for zebi- and yobi-: sure, fine.

Sure, that's fine. Good idea. I'm happy as long as it's crystal clear that these are hypothetical continuations of the sequence, and are not terms that are in real use or actually have been approved by a standards organization. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:00, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I thought that was already made abundantly clear by the article. My main objection was having the values (which are not easily computed using width-limited means such as Excel or a calculator) deleted. One could put them back in the table with a header line to emphasize their status, like so:

Symbol	Name	Meaning	Value
Ki	kibi-	binary kilo	2¹⁰	= 1000¹ × 1.024
Mi	mebi-	binary mega	2²⁰	= 1000² × 1.048 576
Gi	gibi-	binary giga	2³⁰	= 1000³ × 1.073 741 824
Ti	tebi-	binary tera	2⁴⁰	= 1000⁴ × 1.099 511 627 776
Pi	pebi-	binary peta	2⁵⁰	= 1000⁵ × 1.125 899 906 842 624
Ei	exbi-	binary exa	2⁶⁰	= 1000⁶ × 1.152 921 504 606 846 976
Unofficial extensions
Zi	zebi-	binary zetta	2⁷⁰	= 1000⁷ × 1.180 591 620 717 411 303 424
Yi	yobi-	binary yotta	2⁸⁰	= 1000⁸ × 1.208 925 819 614 629 174 706 176

What do you think?

Urhixidur 12:33, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)

Astronomical unit

Hi, can you cite the sources you used in ascribing mean distances from the Sun to different astronomical objects (article: astronomical unit)? Thanks. Eleassar777 19:54, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The wiki orbital data entries for the planets come from the JPL pages; those for the asteroids (e.g. 90377 Sedna) are from the Lowell Observatory Asteroid Data Services.

Urhixidur 03:33, 2005 Feb 4 (UTC)

New named asteroids

Where do you get the list of newly-named asteroids? I'm updating the "Meaning of asteroid names" pages, right now by going through your "User contributions" page and seeing what changes you made to the "List of asteroids" pages. I know I've seen the list on the web before, but I foolishly didn't bookmark, and I have so far failed to determine the right set of Google search terms to bring it up. Is there an easy link you can share with me, or do you just have a subscription to the Minor Planet Circular? Alfvaen 02:50, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I run a small Java program on the astorb.dat which I download now and then from the Lowell Observatory Asteroid Data Services (see link in discussion above); it compares the newly downloaded astorb.dat name fields with the previous version and reports changes. This method is a tad slower than watching the MPCs (I wish I had a subscription!), but it does update decently quickly. I simultaneously watch Astronomisches Rechen-Institut for the diacriticals in the said names, using a Word macro that filters them out of the mass (hence the Diacriticals.txt file used by my AstOrb browser).

Urhixidur 14:34, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)

Asteroid pronunciation guides

Sure, I can make a new list. Back in August I started putting the pronunciations in the individual articles, but most of them were targeted for Speedy Deletion because all they were were the name.

I didn't realize the lists were interlingual.

kwami

There is certainly no problem in adding the pronunciation to existing asteroid articles, such as 1 Ceres. You mean you had created asteroid articles with just the pronunciation in the text (which should not be deleted), or that you had created separate articles about just the asteroid name pronunciation (which I can understand being deleted)? Grouping the "orphans" in a list seems a good approach, in my mind.

And, no, the lists aren't interlingual as such, it's just that they're very close to being so, and it would be nice to keep them that way...Copying them over to fr.wikipedia (for example) seems almost a waste of disk space. I'll have to ask over on commons if they can't figure a way to store data tables without the headers.

Urhixidur 13:38, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

Yes, I had created stubs that contained nothing but the pronunciations, and they were deleted. Now I've created a series of pages on asteroid pronunciation linked to the main article. Since you keep a spread sheet of the asteroid lists, it might be easier for you to reload the 1-1000 list rather than me deleting the pronunciations one by one. I'll just add a note saying the info has been moved.

There have been a few additions since I started the list, so someone else is contributing. By the way, how do you pronounce 'Urhixidur' in English? kwami

Being a French speaker first, I wouldn't know. :-) Let me try a translitteration: "Your hicks seed oor" is how I would pronounce it in English conversation. Maybe "Yur hicks seed ur" would be closer. French is easier, since there is only rarely any possible ambiguity; it is pronounced as it is spelled. What we really need to know is: How do the Germans pronounce it?

Urhixidur 02:03, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Mars

I have nominated the Mars article for Featured article status, however there are a lack of references in the article, which is part of the opposition to it being promoted. I saw your name in the history and was wondering what reference books could be added into the article, or at least webpages and the date of retrival. See the objections at: WP:FAC. -- AllyUnion (talk) 20:04, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lars Olsen

Can you help investigate this possible hoax: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Lars Olsen. Thanks. -- Curps 22:16, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Star names: changing from traditional to Bayer?

I've been looking at:

I think too many stars have an article under their traditional name, which is not the most common name. For instance the article on δ Sco is at Dschubba, which is not a name that's familiar to most people. When Sky and Telescope did an article about its flareup, they called it Delta Scorpii.

Looking at list of brightest stars, I'd say only the stars on that list brighter than Castor should have articles with their traditional name as page title, but maybe omitting Adhara, Hadar, Becrux which are probably better known under their Bayer names. For anything fainter, there would be a small set of exceptions: Polaris, Mira, Algol, Mizar, maybe Bellatrix, maybe Albireo, maybe Denebola, but the rest would be titled by their Bayer names.

For many of the other traditional names, not only are they relatively obscure, but there are many variant spellings and names, as can be seen from List of traditional star names. Really, a traditional name should only be used as a page title when popular science literature uses it almost exclusively and unhesitatingly (Sky and Telescope would never write a headline about Alpha Canis Majoris, for instance).

All of this would be in keeping with Wikipedia's policy on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names).

What do you think?

-- Curps 19:11, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. It doesn't affect content much, thanks to the redirects...

Urhixidur 00:01, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

Asteroid names

Hello Urhixidur! Great work with the Meanings of asteroid names. But as you're adding the later ones (30,000 on) I'm just wondering whether there's any point in dividing each list into sections any more. There are so few named asteroids after 30,000 that it might be simpler to present each 1,000 asteroid block as a single list without breaking each one down further into sections. What do you think? It might save you some time. The Singing Badger 03:12, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

He's got a point. In the future, most asteroids will never get names, due to the restrictions that were put into place on how many names are allowed per discoverer in any given time period (no more than two names every two months). [4] -- Curps 04:47, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just in case, I think the best approach for now would be to comment out the empty sections.

Urhixidur 00:50, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

Smart plan. The Singing Badger 01:26, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

List of acronyms and initialisms

Why are you splitting this page up? -- Netoholic @ 20:17, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

Because it is over 180 Kib in size, way over the suggested 32 Kib limit. Any alternatives to suggest?

Urhixidur 04:51, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Diacriticals

Hi, I saw you moved some articles, such as Harlau (Hârlău) to Hârlau. I think that until the diacritical problem would be fixed, it would be better to let them without any diacriticals, than put only some of the diacriticals. Bogdan | Talk 21:19, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As meta:Help:Special_characters#ISO-8859-1 Characters shows, any ISO-8859-1 character is safe for use within a Wikipedia title. Later, when en.wikipedia catches up to Unicode like the rest of the wikipedias, we'll only need to follow the links into the titlelacksdiacritics template (and a few others like it) to find and fix 'em. For now, we put in all the safe characters.

Urhixidur 21:26, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

Hi, I am unhappy that you whacked the article Erdös-Borwein constant. It works perfectly fine with the diacriticals in the title, and whatever bug may been in the wikimedia software seems to have been fixed a long time ago. So I don't understand the problem. If this is a windows-98 browser problem, then that's foolish; something like 1/4 of the world uses win98 and it will be more than a decade before win98 disappears. I don't think its right for wikipedia to wait for the users of win98 to die of old age before starting to use diacriticals. (Anyway, the math articles have far far more serious problems than a few diacriticals here or there.)linas 15:44, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nice try, but you're going down the wrong track. The (minor) problem with the title is that substituting an o-umlaut for an o-double-acute is an error, plain and simple. When en.wikipedia goes Unicode, we'll be able to put the o-double-acute in properly, but in the meantime the Wikipedia policy is to drop to the unadorned ISO 8859-1 character within titles. Since all references from within articles read [[Erdos-Borwein constant|Erdős-Borwein constant]] anyway, the only thing affected is the title itself. I hope this clears up the issue.

Urhixidur 17:09, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

Meḋḃ

I see you (half-) changed my WrongTitle for article Medb to remove the [math] notation. I guessed you meant also to change the template to TitleLacksDiacritics. Using either template, the text fails to render. Whereas TitleLacksDiacritics correctly renders some of the Irish dotted consonants (such as c-dot, ċ), it can't handle the four digit ones like ḋ. So please leave the article as it is (accepting that it is a bodge) until you can correct TitleLacksDiacritics to be more generic. Or better still, make a new template TitleNeedsUnicode? -Red King 00:11, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The problem is user-local; it is a matter of which Unicode fonts one has installed. My systems render the characters without any problem. A quick check reveals the following fonts have the required Latin Extended Additional Unicode support: Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, Microsoft Sans Serif, Palatino Linotype, Tahoma.

By the way, I did not create the Template:Titlelacksdiacritics. In my mind, "lacks diacritics" and "needs Unicode" is the same thing.

Urhixidur 15:25, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

I've changed Template:Titlelacksdiacritics so it internally invokes the Template:Unicode. Does this fix the problem you had?

Urhixidur 15:39, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)

Excellent! Yes, that hits the spot! Thank you. (btw, this proves it wasn't "user local", but I suspect you worked that out. But in general, only Windows 2000 or later and (I think) MaxOS-X or later support Unicode properly.) --Red King 22:24, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Flag of Monaco

My source was [5], which reads: "Use: on land, national and civil flag, at sea, national and civil ensign". User:Rdsmith4/Sig 16:10, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Shape of Earth

It is a good thing that you want to fix the shape calculation, but the numbers still aren't correct. See Talk:Earth#Shape. Dragons flight 03:51, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Maximum deviation from geoid 10.911 km, average radius 6,371.01 km. Ratio is 584. How else would you compute the tolerance?

Urhixidur 15:07, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

I didn't notice that you were refering to deviations from the geoid (as opposed to deviations from a sphere, which is what previous versions had). For my part, I would think that what people would be looking for in a discussion of the Earth's shape would be the difference between it and a sphere, in which case the dominant term would be the ~40 kms of bulge. Also, if one is talking about the maximum deviation from geoid wouldn't you only go in one direction (in this case down). I'm not sure it makes a great deal of sense to look at the deviation from local sea level of two different points on the Earth, add them together, and use that to describe some notion of the tolerance.

I further misread your comment in the article, since you mention both Everest and Mariana in the article, I had assumed you had combined both, rather than just taking the larger (the article itself doesn't make that clear). Assumming it is not just my brain being flaky, the text of the article at least needs to be clarified about what you mean by "tolerance". Dragons flight 20:01, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Your calculation is straightforward, from easily computed from available information, but I would also think the average (or RMS) deviation from geoid would potentially be more interesting. Not sure where to get the relevant data for that though. Dragons flight 19:44, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not the one who originally put the "smoothness" bit in; I'm just fixing the figures (the original text was using the diametre instead of the radius).

Urhixidur 20:10, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

The tolerance (engineering) article defines the tolerance as the largest departure from the nominal value which is still "acceptable". Inverting the definition gives the calculation above --if you define your ellipsoid to a stricter tolerance than 1:584, then Earth doesn't fit it.

Urhixidur 20:16, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

Diacritics

Why are you changing the {{wrongtitle}} template to {{titlelacksdiacritics}}? The new template is not only fuzzy, but it's also less accurate. The most accurate to say that would be that "the title is incorrect because it lacks diacritics". Halibu tt 08:49, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Funny, I thought it was *more* accurate! It distinguishes those titles which lack diacritics because en.wikipedia is not Unicode yet (and thus would be fine under another language wikipedia) from those that are "wrong" because of HTTP limitations (embedded plus signs, for example) or because of wikipedia's automatic case changes (lower case initial letter) --those titles would remain incorrect under another language wikipedia. You can certainly word-smith the template if you feel it is misleading.

Urhixidur 15:03, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

Tomas Bata University in Zlín

I think Tomas Bata University in Zlín is the official international name. See university web page, google search (fight), and [6]:

page 2, Název pro mezinárodní styk: Tomas Bata University in Zlín (Name for international contact)
page 18, Insignie, rectorial (chancello's) sceptre (mace,truncheon), has notice: ERUDIRE ET CREARE, UNIVERZITA TOMÁSE BATI VE ZLÍNĚ, TOMAS BATA UNIVERSITY IN ZLIN see photograph

Please revert your changes. For other Czech universities correct names see List of universities in the Czech Republic. I verify names with universities status documents. --Michal Jurosz 12:04, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for setting me straight. I notice the document quoted uses both "Univerzita Tomáse Bati ve Zlíně" and "Univerzity Tomáse Bati ve Zlíně" --is that a typo or what?

Urhixidur 13:08, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)

Thanks for your work. No typo, but Czech grammar. See Czech_language#Declension. --Michal Jurosz 20:11, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image:Andorra flag large.png

What was the source of that image? In the image description it says that the flag was fixed with info from the World Flag Database. However, you do not say where you got it from. David Newton 21:16, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If memory serves, it would have been whatever the pre-existing image was. It is odd that there is no previous history showing now. I can't be absolutely sure after all these months, but I thought there was an image before I uploaded that one. The ultimate source is the CIA World Factbook, as a quick comparison makes obvious. I distinctly remember spending some time fixing that image up (the coat of arms details), starting with the hues.

Urhixidur 21:28, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

Meanings of asteroid names (3001-3500)

OK, I will now, thanks for telling me. The nearby names though were not augmented with such references hence I had no idea that this is the intended style. Maybe, some text encouraging such references should be placed near the same explanation that talks about the "*" marking meaning? Also, when there is a wiki-link to an article on the subject (as with Nadya Rusheva, for example), do you still think the reference should better be placed on the "Meanings ..." page, rather than on the subject article? BACbKA 20:26, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My problem is distinguishing the "Schmadel-certified" meanings from guesses (marked with an asterisk) and from those independently established (through MPEC citations, usually). As for placing the reference, I would repeat it: once in the Meanings, once in the article. Thanks for your understanding.

Urhixidur 23:53, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

Probably, it's a good idea to make the intro (with the * and the thing) a template, rather than have to maintain the same text on tens of pages? BACbKA 23:57, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was coming to the same conclusion. Note, however, that the pages up to 1500-2000 will need a different template disclaimer because they can take advantage of Herget's book too.

Urhixidur 00:01, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC)

Nuclear fusion exceptions?

I am thinking of two things. One is that the curve of binding energy is not smooth. ⁴He is more tightly bound than some heavier elements, so you can't fuse it into ⁸Be, for example. The other thing is that if you fuse two nuclei of the same isotope, you get a nuclei that is twice as heavy, not just a tad heavier. If you try to fuse two isotopes a touch lighter than iron, you will land so far on the other side of the hill that you will not release any energy. The same thing happens if you try to fission an isotope a little heavier than iron. Do we need to explain that in the article? Art Carlson 20:35, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I understand now. There are indeed combos that will "overshoot" across the iron trough. I'll see what I can wordsmith about this.

Urhixidur 23:49, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

fr:Observation du ciel

Alors, vous recommendez que l'on traduise fr:observation du ciel? Cela me donnerait un bon boulot. En addition, ca m'emmerde quand les francophones ont une article tellement meilleur que nous :-). Un jour je vais écrire plus pour wikipédia france, je promets. Repondez-vous ici si vous voulez. --Wonderfool t (c)e) 22:55, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate Articles

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Please see my note under the heading ==Duplicate Articles== at Talk:Robert Burnham, Jr. --DannyZ 05:19, 7 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

"Be aggressive", policy says. Merge is done, deletion done, redirects fixed. Even 3467 Bernheim is now properly categorised and linked into the asteroid navigation bar.

Urhixidur 14:49, 2005 May 7 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of the merge. --DannyZ 01:15, 9 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

ICRS fixup

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Thanks for fixing the name from "frame" to "system" - I think I had jumped from a relativity page and messed up the acronym relationship. Of course, it might more properly be called a reference frame since who cares if you use polar coordinates (and these in degrees or radians?) or unit vectors or quaternions - but gotts follow IAU. Pdn 11:15, 8 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

gerund (body's)

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Thanks for fixing up "Two body"->two body. I had just copied from the relevant page. But the other change was wrong. For example, one says or writes: "In spite of his being late, we got done in time." not "In spite of him being late, we got done in time.", and "Mark Twain's caricaturing of racial prejudice left its mark on society." not "Mark Twain caricaturing of racial prejudice left its mark on society." Pdn 03:23, 17 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

The ref is Kepler's laws of planetary motion#Applicability.

You prefer: « Then Kepler's laws apply to that system without the restriction of one body's being "light". » The problem with that sentence is the possessive. One body's what? Mass? If the « quality of being light », then the possessive is pointless, which is why I removed it earlier. Please explain.

Urhixidur 12:17, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

Reversion of Robert Burnham, Jr. article

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please see my note under the heading ==Category Astronomy== at Talk:Robert Burnham, Jr.. Thanks --DannyZ 00:06, 19 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Renaming of Bureau international des poids et mesures

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Why are you making this erroneous name change? Will you please address the comments which already existed on Talk:Bureau international des poids et mesures before your move, and the ones I have added now? Gene Nygaard 03:32, 27 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Erroneous is debatable. In any case, the article (and others of its ilk) has now been moved to conform to the Wikipedia style guide, on the assumption that the English name of the Bureau does have legal existence (a fact that has not been established yet as I write this).

Urhixidur 14:30, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

Geosynchronous orbits and "moving gravity"

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

The sentence referring to "moving gravity" was added by User:hackwrench over a month ago, as part of a burst of similarly questionable edits. I've tracked down most of the ones that weren't already reverted, and restored the paragraph you commented out to something closer to its original form (brief description of how to calculate geosynchronous orbit radius). --Christopher Thomas 07:47, 31 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

On second thought, I'm just deleting the paragraph and adding details of the derivation to the appropriate section in geostationary orbit. It seems out of place in geosynchronous orbit. --Christopher Thomas 07:54, 31 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

815 Coppelia

An A for effort, but an F for fact-checking. Do not insert diacritics in minor planet names unless you can document them. The official, sometimes accented, names can be found on the IPA and Schmadel web pages, whereas the MPC uses the ASCII transcriptions. There are a few discrepancies between these first two sources, which I intend to document on some talk page shortly. Urhixidur 01:53, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

My mistake, I forgot I was fixing the name of the asteroid instead of the name of the ballet, else I would've checked. Thanks for catching it though! -- Rmrfstar 02:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites

Fine - I had not spotted that note in the next column. I moved the Sun up because I thought the order of "discovering" them in prehistory would be something like Earth (standing on it), Sun (much the brightest thing in the sky during the day), Moon (much the brightest thing at night), and then the other planets. But no matter: I'll leave it as it is. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:54, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And the amended note makes your reasoning much clearer. Thanks. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:13, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not Robert, but Sherburne Wesley

Thanks for making the correction to the Robert Burnham disambiguation page. I had originally picked up the erroneous information from the Herbig-Haro object article. I've now made the correction there also. I had an uneasy feeling about it at the time and meant to research it further, but it fell between the cracks. --DannyZ 01:22, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Category:Earth-crosser asteroids

Rather than putting Category:Apollo asteroids beside Category:Earth-crosser asteroids under the common Category:Near-Earth asteroids, since the Apollo asteroid article states they are Earth-crossers, wouldn't it be easier to just recategorise Category:Apollo asteroids under Category:Earth-crosser asteroids? It would avoid having to recat a bunch of asteroid articles... — Urhixidur 23:50, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

I'm sure you're correct, and I wouldn't have an issue with that. But really you should probably discuss this with the person who created the category. I was just responding to an underpopulated category tag. Thanks. :) — RJH 16:36, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since you had started doing the recat, I thought you were the decider. Sorry! Urhixidur 22:10, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)

Billions

This discussion should probably go on the PlayStation 3 talk page, but I'll post this much here. I do indeed realize that the term "billion" is ambiguous for non-English speakers, but I must point out that is indeed English Wikipedia, and in every English-speaking country I'm aware of, the term "billion" refers to the SI 10^9. -- uberpenguin 18:09, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

I quote (emphasis mine):

« in Britain, until the latter part of the 20th century, it was almost exclusively used to mean one million million (1,000,000,000,000), with one thousand million sometimes described as a "milliard", the definition adopted by most other European languages. However, the "American English" version has since been adopted for all published writing, and the word "milliard" is obsolete in English [...]

Nevertheless, [...] a significant proportion of international readers will interpret "billion" as 10¹², even if they are young enough to have been taught otherwise at school. For this reason, defining the word may be advisable when writing for the general public. However, all major British publications and broadcasters, including the BBC, which long used "thousand million" to avoid ambiguity, now use "billion" to mean thousand million. »

My point was that, even within the confines of English, usage of billion should be avoided because it may be misconstrued by a large fraction of non-American English speakers. My original question remains: How do you suggest any chance of misinterpretation be removed from the article? Maybe the billion article and the Wikipedia:Manual of Style be changed so 10E9 is the default meaning...

Urhixidur 18:20, 2005 July 12 (UTC)