It is very, very difficult to get software right, unless you paid a lot of money for it (and even then you might not get it right)
Relevant (and timely) XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/
All entries tagged explainlikeimfive.
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Aug 2018
May 2018
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Which comic/issue is this?
Nov 2017
May 2017
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Reply to a comment by EthanOrtane on 'ELI5: Stock prices constantly changing' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
All good answers in other comments, but this is the best so far. Do you have any complicated knowledge regarding: “For any stock, there is a current market value, which is (simplified) the price of the stock for the last transaction it was sold.”
Well TBH, that’s pretty much it. The difference is just in semantics. The last price of the stock for any transaction isn’t the market value per se. The market value is “what people are willing to pay for the stock”. Usually financial analysts will have some general idea of the “expected value” of the stock, based on things like the company’s profits, historical performance, how quickly it’s growing, market sentiment, recent events, etc. Different analysts will use different formulas so there is no one true expected value, but typically they will fall in a small range. It’s part math/economics and part crowd psychology.
If I were to sell 1 of my stocks (worth $100) for $1 then clearly the market price would not go from 100 to 1. Is there an actual equation? Is the price changed by a certain X factor or weight applied to the number of stocks sold at that price?
For this example, if other people valued the stock at $100 but you sold at $1, some very lucky person would likely buy your shares at $1 each, then immediately turn around and sell them at a bit less than $100 for a pretty good profit. Stock trades happen quickly, so most people wouldn’t even notice (although it would register as the “low” for that stock on that day)
To give you a better idea, here’s a screenshot of the details for a stock from an online broker I use for trading. (I only trade as a side hobby, in small amounts). This is on our local stock exchange (I’m not an American), but most stock exchanges should behave around the same way.
On the upper right on the screenshot, you can see the value for “Previous”, this is how much the stock sold during the most recent transaction. “Last” is how much the stock sold for the tran
Jan 2014
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It increases the cost if there are different versions to be supported for new downloaders and people who are patching.
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Everyone would have to redownload the entire game
Dec 2013
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Could reddit just have unearthed the formula for world peace?!?
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Us Catholics have a Pope; the protestants don’t. I’m not sure if the protestant religions even consider us proper Christians (edit: Of course we all believe in Jesus; what I meant by the last sentence was that I’ve been to places where if you say “Christian church”, it refers to a place of worship that is protestant, but not Catholic).
Catholics were around first, until the 1500s when some guy named Martin Luther started a movement that created protestantism. The protestant movement started because some people didn’t like the way the Catholic Church handled things and I guess they wanted to get more back to basics (that is, focus more on the Bible rather than all the Catholic traditions) - that last part may be my personal opinion.
The protestants have a common set of 3 fundamental beliefs: that scripture (the Bible) alone is the source of all authority (unlike Catholics that have a Pope and a Church that can decide some stuff), that faith in and of itself is enough for salvation, and the universal priesthood of believers (which means that any Christian can read and interpret and spread the word of God, unlike Catholics which have a dedicated priesthood).
Among protestants they have different denominations - Baptists, Presbyterians, etc. They all observe the same fundamental beliefs mentioned above, but they vary in their practices and on what stuff they focus on.
Sep 2013
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Yes, they are linear, as long as they take place in the same continuity. For example, DC currently has 52 ongoing series that all take place in the same continuity, all of these stories are canon. (Although some of them may take place in different universes, like Earth-2; but those stories are still canon since Earth-2 interacts with other universes so continuity exists between them too)
Often a publisher will have a number of books that are “out of continuity”, these stories are unrelated to their main continuity and will mostly be stand alone. Current examples for DC are “Batman 66” (it’s the Adam West Batman!), “Smallville Season Nine” (which follows the continuity of the TV series)
Because it’s possible for different universes to interact (i.e. characters crossing over), even those with separate continuity may interact with the main ones.
Aug 2013
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Reply to 'ELI5: The difference between procedural generation and random generation' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
Procedural generation is a form of random generation; except that when you say procedural generation, you expect that there are more rules than just randomly putting any set of results together.
An example of procedural generation would be map generation in games like Civilization. If it were completely random, you would often see ice areas near the equator or next to desert areas or other such tile placements that make no sense. Instead it’s procedural, there’s certain rules followed like for each type of terrain, there’s a given probability that it will be beside this other type of terrain, and there are other rules and algorithms to ensure things like continents or achipelagos form well.
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Reply to 'Why do redditors care so much about karma? What's the real value?' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
It’s more or less the same reason gamers care about achievements/trophies
Jul 2013
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There is nothing quite as powerful as an idea whose time has come
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This is about those minions isn’t it.
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I like to think that the US government uses reddit to double-check it’s ideas. “Hey, is there anything we can do if some country gives him asylum?” “I dunno, let’s go ask reddit.”
Jun 2013
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Self-control isn’t easy for everybody.
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Reply to a comment by [deleted] on 'ELI5: How the Marvel Multiverse "works"?' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
Most Marvel universes have the Fantastic Four and the Avengers (and the X-Men and Spider-Man etc) living together in the same world, yes.
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There is one main comics universe (it’s often referred to as universe #616), all of the Marvel guys are there, including both Avengers and X-Men and a whole bunch of other people.
There are other universes, each with their own sets or versions of the Marvel characters. Sometimes events happen where the universes intersect or characters cross over from one universe into another.
One of the more prominent alternate universes is the ultimate universe (designated as universe 1610). All the current Marvel series with titles beginning with “Ultimate” such as Ultimate Comics Spider-Man or The Ultimates take place in this universe.
An example of differences between universes: In the Ultimate universe, Peter Parker died some time ago and there is a new kid who has become a new Spider-man.
If you’re familiar with the Marvel series of films (Iron Man, Avengers, etc), those films take place in yet another universe called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I’m not sure if it has a numeric designation.)
Note that there are Marvel character movies produced by studios other than Marvel/Disney; examples are Amazing Spider-man, Fantastic Four and the X-Men series of movies. These do not take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That doesn’t mean these characters don’t exist in the MCU, it just means the MCU versions of those characters haven’t appeared in the movies yet.
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Because you’re making it sound like the current through any particular wire is constant.
Forgive me if I gave that impression, but it’s not (as my last post mentioned “if you measured the current in the wire at that time). The current passing through a wire or being drawn by a device can change, the same way voltages can change or through switching.
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When I say “this wire has 2 amperes”, I just mean that if you measured the current in the wire at that time, it would be 2 amperes.
I’m not sure if wires are rated that way. (They probably are for safety purposes)
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Ohms are a unit of resistance, which tells limits the amount of current that can be generated by a given voltage in a circuit. This means that given the same amount of voltage, a higher resistance will result in a smaller current.
Let’s say you have two devices. You know that device A has twice as much resistance (twice as many ohms) as device B.
If you hook up device A to a five-volt battery, a certain amount of current will flow through (that is, charge will flow through the device at a certain speed).
If you hook up the same battery to device B, since device B has half the resistance of device A, there will be twice as much current flowing through device B compared to device A. (Electrical charge will be moving twice as fast)
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Hm, ok let’s try another tack. Amperes, joules and watts aren’t things that you can see or things that move, they’re units of measurement, like a foot or a meter or a mile. When we say “rate” it measures the speed of something like feet per second or miles per hour.
Amperes are something like the speed. When you talk about a car’s speed, it’s in something like miles per hour right? Amperes are like the speed of electricity (to be specific, electric charge). When you say “this wire has 2 amperes”, it means electricity moves through that wire twice as fast as one that only has 1 ampere. Since it’s speed, amperes aren’t something that’s created, it’s just a measurement of speed.
Joules are a unit of work or energy. This means joules measure when force is used to move something over some distance. Like if 2 people are carrying some objects over the same distance; if person A is carrying an object that is twice as heavy as the object carried by person B then we can say person A did twice as many joules of work as person B (heavier objects need more force to be carried)
Watts are a unit of measurement for power; power is the speed of work, or how much work is done in a given time. Let’s say two people carried the same weight of objects over the same distance, then they both did the same amount of work. But if person A did this work in half the time as person B, then we can say person A used up twice as much power (or twice as many watts) as person B
When referring to electricity, joules and watts typically refer to the amount of work or power that was used to generate that electricity. The work/energy is created by machines instead of people.
When you have two devices, say device A is rated at 100 watts and device B is rated at 200 watts. This means device B uses up twice as much electrical energy as device A over the same amount of time. It means the machines generating electricity have to work twice as hard over the same amount of time to power that device.
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These are units for different things.
Amps (amperes) are a unit of current which is the rate at which charge flows.
Joules are a unit of work or energy.
Watts are a unit of power which is the rate at which energy is generated or consumed.
May 2013
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Who knows? The exact terms of the contract/license are known only to the parties involved, and I assume it’s couched in a lot of legalese that makes things complicated.
You might be interested in the wikipedia article discussing the Spider-man film rights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_in_film
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The characters are all owned by Marvel. Marvel is owned by Disney.
Sony doesnt “own” the Spider-man franchise. Sony has an exclusive license from Marvel to use Spider-man in movies; that means only they can produce Spider-man movies. The license is from before Marvel had their own movie studio.
Fox also has a similar license for the X-Men/Fantastic Four.
For any characters where Marvel hasn’t given anyone else an exclusive movie license, they can use those characters in their own movies.
Mar 2013
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You are almost completely correct. The only minor note I’d like to make is that sometimes cards can change value even when there are no new sets being released. This can happen when someone discovers a particularly strong deck or combination midseason and the demand rises and the card prices change accordingly.
Sep 2012
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For the record as part of the free world, I do not consider the USA as my leader
Jul 2012
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Posted on r/explainlikeimfive: ELI5: What is the Higgs-Boson?