Les Mis.

Three? Two? more weeks until I go watch. In the first row.

Mmmm, am so looking forward to that...

Math... is scary. I've decided I don't like this Mathematica based system anymore... 'cause like, it lets me be lazy, so I don't always understand what I'm doing. It's purely copy and paste and programmer's hack-edit. So now the second hour exam tomorrow is going to bite off large chunks of my ass. Or kick it from here to... pluto. Or something. Buggers. At time of posting, I've gone through most of the sections, and read and understood. But I'm not sure I'll be able to do. I have one more chapter left... I wish there was a textbook I could follow... 'cause the way Mathematica works, is that there are large holes in the information that you, the end-user, fills in by working and understanding. But when you can't twist your mind around to solve the problem, you tend not to fillin aforementioned large holes. And that's a problem. So then you go ask the teacher, which I can't do at 1 AM of the day of the exam. Yeeeah. Bad Neko.

Oh, um. I called Apple. Tech support guy was like, "Hm, ok, so you're still having the same problems? Lemme put you in touch with a specialist." -3 min wait- "Hi, Benjamin? Yeah, so no extra RAM? Just a stock iBook? And the symptoms are lines across the screen? Ok. But you can boot occationally? Ok. Let me set up another repair request." -stuff is told, and I discover that Urbana's ZIP code is 61801, not 60801, which I had been using for some RANDOM reason-. It's interesting, there's a distinct difference between the tech support and the specialist... there was longer durations of silence with the specialist, as if he was actually thinking... whereas the tech support most definitely has a list of things to check and ask, so they talk much more.

So yeah, iBook's going back in. Stuff has been backed up. And the specialist said I can't request a completely new iBook, or get a refund so I can buy a PowerBook... not yet anyways. If the problem continues, however, it might be an option.

Math question: Diff. Equations

G.3.b.iii) Use the formula to come up with the exact initial value (starter) on y[0] that gives the break between the two families

Stay with the same differential equation:

y'[t] = f[t_,y_] = - t^2 + y;
y[0] = starter

y [t] = 2 - 2 * [ExponentialE]^t + starter * [ExponentialE]^t + 2t + t^2

Use this formula to come up with the exact initial value (starter) on y[0] that gives the break between the two families
----
Yeah, so how do find the exact initial value that'll give the break between a solution that'll graph upwards, and one that'll graph downwards? I'm pretty sure the answer should be 2, but I'm not sure...

Oh, shit no, not this again!

http://videolan.org/patents.html

VideoLAN is seriously threatened by software patents due to the numerous patented techniques it implements and uses. Also threatened are the many libraries and projects which VLC is built upon, like FFmpeg, and the other fellow Free And Open Source software multimedia players, which include MPlayer, xine, Freevo, MythTV, gstreamer.

Yeah. Who are my local EU representatives?