About Tigers and Polar Bears

I know it is slashdot, but I couldn't find other sources, so take this with a grain of salt:

Tigers have practically no natural instincts when it comes to being predators. Tigers in the wild have to be trained by their mothers how to do things like hunt, climb trees, eat properly, etc. These are things that a human cannot teach. Therefore, any tiger born in captivity cannot be released into the wild and survive. It simply does not have the skills necessary.

22262422

Not to be a pedant but Polar Bears in their natural habitat will actively hunt humans.

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If anyone knows for sure, let me know :D

Cheers,
Steve

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SHA Digests under Leopard

A Steve Special this one. Tiger came with sha* digests binaries, but not Leopard. So here is how you can get them back. Insert into your .bashrc:

alias 'sha'='openssl dgst -sha'
alias 'sha1'='openssl dgst -sha1'

# the following lines only applies if you have openssl installed via darwin ports
alias 'sha2'='openssl dgst -sha256'
alias 'sha5'='openssl dgst -sha512'

Usage is simple, for example:

sha1 $file

Cheers,
Steve

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The Sagnac effect

The Sagnac effect is the relative phase shift between two beams of light that have traveled an identical path in opposite direction in a rotating frame. Modern fiber-optic gyroscopes (Sagnac interferometers) used for navigation are based on this effect. They allow highly accurate measurements of rotation rates down to about per hour.

Cheers,
Steve

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Using spaces and backslashes in /etc/fstab

Ever wondered how you use spaces and backslashes (exotic mount points or smb shares)? Well wonder no more!

Using '\040' replace blank space character, and '\134' replaces
backslash character.

Cheers,
Steve

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macam

macam allows most generic usb webcam to work under OS X effortlessly.

Cheers,
Steve

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Diameter at Breast Height

A common measure of the size of a tree is the "diameter at breast height" DBH. "Breast height" is defined as 4 ½ feet above the uphill side of the tree. Since a tree trunk is not a perfect circle, "diameter" is defined as the circumference divided by pi.

Cheers,
Steve

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Planck Temperature

Planck temperature is the highest possible temperature in quantum mechanics. It is 1.41679(11)E32 Kelvins.

Cheers,
Steve

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