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User: bencollier

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Comments · 51

  1. Resale Value on If You Don't Want Your Car Stolen, Make It Pink · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, the crazy colour will also affect resale value, so the money you save in insurance you lose in depreciation.

  2. Re:Drake on Kepler Investigator Says 'Galaxy Is Rich In Earth-Like Planets' · · Score: 1

    Hehe, yeah, actually, come to think if it, by those criteria, the asteroid belt is full of earth sized planets. Yikes.

  3. Re:Drake on Kepler Investigator Says 'Galaxy Is Rich In Earth-Like Planets' · · Score: 1

    The graph in the TED talk says " 2 Re" - so, under twice the radius of Earth?

  4. Experience with hardware is different on Preserving Virtual Worlds · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Preserving the software is one thing, but the experience of running one of these programs on the original hardware is considerably different.

    With Star Raiders, for instance, the joystick is necessary to enjoy the same experience as an original user. Arguably the boot up sequence too and the CRT monitor.

    Another example: "Daredevil Dennis" on the BBC Micro. The internal speaker on the system produces the sounds. Good luck reproducing that efficiently. And just the reality of sitting in front of the machine itself, loading the program from 5.25" disk and using the original keyboard to play the game completely alters the whole thing.

    - not to mention the fact that an emulation of the hardware is going to be imperfect.

  5. Re:This will all be irrelevant soon on DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court · · Score: 1

    I'm not aware of any, although there are judicial rulings in various countries that have taken a similar view, for example this. See also the UK Competition Act, specifically disallowing certain vertical restraints.

  6. Re:This will all be irrelevant soon on DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court · · Score: 1

    For the same reason that the person who manufactured your TV shouldn't be allowed to dictate which channels you're able to watch. This sort of behaviour creates vast monopolies and stifles competition.

  7. Re:Re don't have the band with of that and do want on DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court · · Score: 1
  8. This will all be irrelevant soon on DS Flash Carts Deemed Legal By French Court · · Score: 1

    Pretty much all future consoles will only be able to download content from the hardware manufacturer's website, making this a moot point. We ought to be asking the EU to force Apple, Nintendo and MS to open up the market for downloadable apps. I guess someone is doing this at the mo?

  9. Greenwich Observatory on Geek Travel To London From the US — Tips? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    G.O. is really stunning and worth visiting. Go in the afternoon, then take one of the fast boats up the Thames from there to Central London as the sun is setting. Really very excellent, but make sure you know the boat times in advance. Visit LMNT in Hackney (http://www.lmnt.co.uk/) - It's a crazy restaurant and you'll see a different part of London. You could have gone to White Mischief (http://www.whitemischief.info/) for some Steampunk goodness, but it looks like it's not on while you're there so how about The Horse Hospital (http://www.thehorsehospital.com/). Plenty of interest to see there. Don't bother with a laptop, there's too much else to be spending your time on.

  10. Re:The right to broadband. on Spain Codifies the "Right To Broadband" · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Also, did you realise that TIME is CUBIC in NATURE?

  11. Re:Feynman on String Theory on Initial Tests Fail To Find Gravitational Waves · · Score: 1

    Of course, the bit that seems to have been disproved here is the "Cosmic String", which Wikipedia tells me is unrelated to String Theory in any large way.

  12. Feynman on String Theory on Initial Tests Fail To Find Gravitational Waves · · Score: 1

    Along similar lines, from Richard Feynman: "I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with a n experiment, they cook up an explanation - a fix-up to say, "Well, it might be true." For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that's all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there's no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn't eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right."

  13. Real World vs. MMO on The Challenges of Class Balance In MMOGs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seeing as we haven't managed this in the real world, I'm not holding my breath. It should be easier in a game, but the more complex the world, the harder it's going to be, and I'm guessing they're getting more complex.

  14. Re:Motivation on Fatty Foods Affect Memory and Exercise Performance · · Score: 1

    Hehe! The rats were shown the maze beforehand and were getting sweetened condensed milk, something like 10% fat, but 50% sugar/carbs so to be honest I don't know how it would affect their appetite. I just read TFA, not the full study - they could have mentioned this but it seems a fairly major factor left to be left unexplored.

  15. Motivation on Fatty Foods Affect Memory and Exercise Performance · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No-one seems to have spotted the fact that the rats who were being fed fatty food may have had less motivation for completing the maze, given that the reward was more food. Am I missing something or is this entire study invalid?

  16. Massive Sample Size on Facial Expressions Are "Not Global" · · Score: 1

    This extraordinary conclusion reached with two groups of 13 people, one East Asian, the other Western. Well, that's that settled then.

  17. Re:No programming language... on Old-School Coding Techniques You May Not Miss · · Score: 1

    But learning a new language can often alter the way you clarify your thoughts. I'm learning Haskell at the moment and it's a bit of a sidestep mentally.

  18. Re:The Daily Mail on Do We Need Running Shoes To Run? · · Score: 1

    Indeed. To put this in further context, the Daily Mail ran an article titled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in the 1930s.

  19. Homosexuality on Ridley Scott's Forever War In 3D · · Score: 1

    I'm still confused over how he's going to excise the homosexuality from the script. The book is terrific, but a great deal of the plot covers alterations in social mores, sexuality in particular. I suppose that angle could be covered in other ways, but it's certainly going to be nothing like the book. On the other hand, I can't imagine whichever studio is behind this allowing him to leave it all in, intact. Wouldn't appeal to their target market.

  20. Luminiferous Aether on Quantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The way that people parrot Quantum Theory at the moment (in an attempt to explain anything vaguely unexplained) has parallels with the Victorian reliance on the Luminiferous Aether.

  21. Re:So in other words... on Amazon To Block Phorm Scans · · Score: 1

    This thing is hard-wired and scoops everything, and the vast majority of people who are targeted won't even realise it's happening. I think it's considerably worse than what google gets up to.

  22. Re:The issue explained on Should Google Be Forced To Pay For News? · · Score: 2

    There's not a great difference between that and the way that papers will alter their headlines based on stories that are popular with other papers. And the papers are probably using google's various tools to do similar things. At the end of the day, it's public information. News broadcasters do the same thing when deciding which stories to run with.

  23. The Real Story on UK Child Abuse Investigators Resent Being Charged For ISP Data · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The real story here is how the agency obviously thinks it can frighten ISPs into giving them a free ride, by invoking the dreaded paedo-bashing tabloids. Pretty shabby behaviour.

  24. Re:... And then a horrid memory came back on The History of the Ghostbusters Game · · Score: 1

    That game was absolute class, I won't hear a word said against it. I got it out and played it on the emulator a month or two ago. It's still excellent.

  25. Re:I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot on Collateral Damage as UK Censors Internet Archive · · Score: 1

    You are neglecting to mention my very favourite sea-bird: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Shag