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User: jrq

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Comments · 99

  1. Re:Here we go again... on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Thanks for your generosity, I did indeed mean that the mutation process is random. Your "river flowing route" analogy is perfect.

    Love the Genetically Modified Food dilemma.

  2. Re:Here we go again... on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Exactly! The difference between Darwin's Natural Selection (NS) and Intelligent Design (ID), is specifically that NS is random and the selection process is dictated by advantage. ID removes this random factor, and theorizes that "God" chooses these mutations and changes, according to whatever plan "God" is following.

  3. Re:Just Because... on Eerie Sounds from Saturn · · Score: 1

    .....and still they come.

  4. Re:2 x A4 = A3 on The Logic Behind Metric Paper Sizes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought not being on the metric system had already cost many millions of dollars, in destroyed Mars probes.

  5. Potential Applications on Bicycle Riding on Square Wheels · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of a short story, by JG Ballard, called "The Subliminal Man" (I think), set in the future. Where the roads are layed down with a specific pattern of ridges and bumps. Your tyres would need to 'match' these, otherwise the vibrations would become unbearable. The only catch is that they replaced the road surface regularly, requiring you to replace your tyres, before your car shook to pieces.

  6. Re:Mixed response on Rumors of iPod mini, 100 Million Songs, Xserve G5 All True · · Score: 1

    it's not solid state, it has a hard disk

  7. Re:Not needed for desktop on Major Step Forward For SVG in the Desktop · · Score: 4, Informative
    Except, the raster parts of the image will exhibit the same scaling artifacts that are present when scaling PNG images.

    It would still be an improvement though.

  8. WORN Drives on April 1, 1972: Write Only Memory · · Score: 1

    Back in the day of WORM drives, optical nonsense (Write Once Read Multiple). I did own a WORN drive (Write Once Read Never) from IBM.

  9. Already out there on Advertisers Escalate Banner Ad War · · Score: 1

    The IMDB has long been blocking serving it's content to any proxy address (ala Naviscope). This sounds more sophisticated, but, once again, appears to be a group of people attacking the wrong end of the problem.

  10. Don't get me wrong but..... on The Mac, Metadata, and the World · · Score: 1

    In principle I dislike extensions as much as the next man, but Operating Systems everywhere manage to do a repeatedly bad job of managing the resource side of things, yes I'm talking about Window's associations and Mac resource forks (I became quite popular, at an office, some years ago, providing utilities which would strip the first 128 bits out of Mac generated Photoshop and Illustrator files).

    The author of this piece even identifies the horror of allowing OSs to hide the extensions (one of the many things that gets fixed when working on a Windows machine) how could the possibility of allowing two files, in the same folder, to have the same name be acceptable, EVER!.

    If there was a standard, say header, section required by all files this would be fine, but this is obviously OS dependant, remember most of that other metadata, creation date, etc etc is all stored in the FAT on most OSs. A world without extensions means that all file access would need to be pre-processed so that the correct application could subsequently be applied. Opening a file is, last time I checked, more of an overhead than examining an extension. And then what? the application police move in, preventing access to files that haven't been created in the right application?

    I want more metadata about files, I want to get useful, searchable information, perhaps the real place to put it is in the file itself, like so many applications already do. Taking the responsibility away from the filename and putting it in the hands of the operating system, for encoding and decoding this metadata is fine as long as the OS doesn't break, lose the key, and remembers to enforce gatekeeping functions so that when file goes off to play in the big wide world it doesn't drag along any of that OS specific data with it.

  11. Rule #3 on The Rise Of The 15-Year-Olds · · Score: 1

    Rule number 3 states: There are no experts

  12. Scary on UK Government Locks Out Non-MS Browsers · · Score: 1

    scarier than Blair, scarier than Hague, scarier than BSE, scarier than F&M! Arrrggghh!

  13. A Hoopy Frood, who really knew where is towel was. on So Long, Hitchhiker: Douglas Adams Dead At 49 · · Score: 1

    Thanks Douglas, for everything, especially the story about the planet of green retractables.

  14. Innovation that even Microsoft would be proud of. on Massive Storage Advances · · Score: 1

    What bollocks! Oooh look, they invented run length encoding.

  15. That having been done on Superconducting DNA · · Score: 1

    This all seems a little tenuous, I mean 1K for god's sake. Is there really any true distance gained by this?

  16. Sony CD-R playing on Is Sony Turning Its Back On CD-Rs? · · Score: 1

    Of all the manufacturers, I've come across Sony CD players are the fussiest about CD-Rs. Curiously the most compatible player I have is a 10 year old Panasonic Portable SL-NP1A, which has travelled around the world, and, for the last 6 years of it's life has been living in my bathroom!

  17. Re:AlleyCat on The Top 15 PC Games Of All Time · · Score: 1

    God I hated that GoldFish bowl!

  18. How many words? on Read To Your Children, Go To Jail (Not Really) · · Score: 1

    This amazing piece of IP licensing, really does beg the question: How many consecutive words constitutes an infraction?

  19. When is a subwoofer not a subwoofer? on Wired Homes of the Rich · · Score: 1

    When it's Ellison's 3,000 sq. foot one. This really should be called something else

  20. Stocking Stuffer on IBM Ships First 22" 200dpi Displays · · Score: 1

    I want one, now!

  21. Re:(slightly off topic) Steve Balmer... on Microsoft Quickies · · Score: 1
  22. Damages are not as high as you say on UK's Demon Settles Usenet Libel Case · · Score: 1

    The damages were only 15,000 pounds which is about $24,000, the rest of the sum was for legal costs, amounting to about 230,000 pounds, so you can see who got the result in this case!

  23. Re:Not a tribute to Kubrick on Spielberg To Direct New Kubrick Movie · · Score: 2

    Apparently Kubrik stopped work on AI some time ago, because he realised that the state of digital special effects wasn't good enough to bring his film to life. He saw an advanced screening of Jurassic Park and was so impressed with the ILM digital effects, that he resumed production. I think Spielberg will do a very good job, it really is his forte, this kind of film: robot kid doesn't know it's a robot, growing up etc etc, perfect Spielberg fodder.

  24. Re:("Spielberg" != "science fiction") on Spielberg To Direct New Kubrick Movie · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I can't think of any Spielberg Sci-Fi films either! HA HA HA Close Encounters was not really science or fiction, coz those aliens really do exist. Same goes for E.T. Jurassic Park was all about Dinosaurs, which of course did exist. and Poltergeist was a ghost flic Not to mention his production work on: Gremlins/Back to the future/innerspace/batteries not included/seaquestDSV/Earth2/Twister/Men in Black/Deep Impact. Thanks for making me laugh my ass off this morning