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User: dipfan

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  1. I like my Treo on Handspring Treo Now Available · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been using this for a couple of weeks, it's got GPRS (here in the UK). I like it for a couple of reasons: the obvious one is I don't have to drag around a phone and Palm Pilot anymore, and the other is that since it uses the Palm OS loading all my old PP stuff on it was so easy.

    Good points: ironically, the SMS facility is very well organised and makes it much easier to keep tabs on who sent what, and your replies. The keyboard is good too.

    Particularly good point: answering a call in real Star Trek fashion by flipping open the screen shield. Cool.

    Bad points: the sound quality when using the phone through the shield headset rather than the plug-in ear piece, not good. And the battery life is indeed not good, although it does have a good battery life indicator: a light starting at green and slowly fading to bright red.

    Particularly bad point: no cradle, making the recharging/hot synching less convenient.

    Otherwise, it's a good size, and feels robust. And (not that it really matters) it's got a "wow!" factor, but that's just a new gadget syndrome. Um, overall, a bit pricey I'd say: you know that in a year's time there'll be plenty of these at a better price.

  2. Yahoo! is good at dealing with spam on Tracking Spam to the Source · · Score: 1

    I have to say that I've been regularly using a Yahoo account for nearly five years at the same address, and I get very little spam through it (far less than my usual ISPs/work addresses). The spam I do get is usually as a result of something identifiable that I've done with the address. Plus the bulk mail folder system used by Yahoo is very efficient. And Yahoo's abuse team seem to be pretty good the half dozen or so times I've reported Yahoo-based spam to them ... now, my girlfriend's Hotmail account, that's a spam-magnet.

  3. Re:Cynthia's Cyberbar in London on Berlin's Robotic Pub · · Score: 1

    Cynthia's was awful, stainless steel everywhere. The "drink-bot" was always broken. Is it still going? Always full of drunk suits I recall. Actually, I was one of them, once.

    Bah, The Anchor's rubbish, for tourists (although OK in summer sitting outside). Now, the Globe just under the rail tracks in Borough Market, there's a decent pint poured there. That's the pub that Bridget Jones "lived" upstairs from in the movie... and where Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was filmed.

    Sorry for going off-topic...

  4. Re:say what you will, it is characteristic of MS on Win95 Lifecycle Draws to a Close · · Score: 1

    Indeed - and this is also an excellent marketing opportunity for Linux distros like RH and SuSE, to sell the OS to Win95 users who are going to be disenfranchised (if you will) by MS. Marketing along the lines of: "You going to have to upgrade anyway - this is cheaper, and won't go out of date."

    There are a lot of Win95 boxes out there....

  5. There's quarks on Science Fiction into Science Fact? · · Score: 1

    Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist, applied the name "quark" to the fundamental parts of the nucleon in 1963, taking the word from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Now, it's hard to categorize Finnegans Wake as sci-fi - but then it's hard to categorize Finnegans Wake as any branch of literature in particular. On every page there's the name of a river... so who knows?

  6. sounds perfect... on Rugby Ball Meets Web-Cam · · Score: 1

    This ball sounds perfect for what's going to be the next *big* televised sport - the Eton Wall Game, possibly the most violent organised sport ever, and that includes ice hockey, and played only at hyper-posh Eton school in England. Unfortunately because of the nature of the game (one large scrum) there isn't anything for spectators to see because their view of the ball is blocked by a) the wall and b) players - so a video-ball is the techno-breakthrough this sport needs to get to a mass audience. That and Prince Harry, son of Charles and Di, who is on one of the teams.

    More here:
    http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml= %2 Fnews%2F2001%2F11%2F23%2Fnharry23.xml

  7. Re:Always wondered... on Neutrinos, Muons and the Standard Model · · Score: 1

    "All science is based on "educated guesses." It's just that some guesses are much more educated than others, and turn out to fit the facts pretty well. Relativity is one of those very good guesses, along with Newton's laws (and no, Einstein didn't replace Newton, just refined Newtonian physics in a small but significant way), Darwinian evolution, plate tectonics, Boyle's law, etc. ..."

    This is a strange idea of how scientific discovery takes place. I'd suggest that (typically) the "educated guesses" or hypotheses come after observation of some sort.

    And I'd question the "small but significant" refinement that Einstein made to Newton - relativity is far, far bigger than that, and if anything it showed Newtonian physics to be a small sub-set of quantum physics, and yes it did replace Newtonian physics.

    "This is the principle of falsifiability, and it is the one thing which sets science apart from religion, philosophy, law, and other areas of human intellectual endeavor which seek to make statements about our world."

    Ah.... ever come across logic as a branch of philosophy? That's what it's all about.

  8. It may not be the obvious writers that last on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If the couple of centuries before the 20th were anything to go by, the most successful writers (and by that I mean sales and critical acclaim, whatever the genre) are not necessarily the ones still read 50 or 100 years after their death. Take the 19th century - one of the biggest selling novels in the 19th was East Lynn by Mrs Henry Woods (great name), sold millions of copies, and is now hardly in print (it's still worth reading - combination murder mystery/love story). Or one of the most prolific novelists of the 19thC, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, wrote 80 novels, almost all bestsellers, including a couple of huge sellers - Lady Audley's Secret being one. You'd be hard-pressed to find it in a bookshop these days. Some bestsellers do hang around, like Charles Dickens, but his contemporary Wilkie Collins was just as popular in his day, and doesn't have nearly as high profile as Dickens still has - the Woman in White and The Moonstone notwithstanding (both excellent).

    Going further back (stop me if you're bored), The Mysteries of Udolpho (Mrs Radcliffe) was HUGE at the turn of the 19th century - so much so that Jane Austen wrote a parody of it (Northanger Abby). The parody's still in print, the original is very hard to find (and having read it, you don't want to find it, believe me).

    And it's not just literature where this happens. GE Moore was one of the leading philosophers of the early 20th century, a colleague of Russell and Wittgenstein - and now barely rates a mention. Yet you can have someone like Nietzsche who was ignored during his lifetime, and yet is today probably more influential and widely-read than ever in academic circles.

    The obvious point is that we just don't know who will be big in 50 to 100 years time (tho its fun to speculate), although it's almost worth betting that it *won't* be someone we've all heard of today. Other times look for other things from their art, and we can't guess what they'll be. As it says in The Go-Between: "The past is another country, they do things differently there." So's the future.

    That aside I can't see too many writers around today (living) who'll still be big (and I mean Dickens/Joyce/Proust big) in 50-100 years. Peter Carey, the Australian who's just won another big prize, might do it: you sci-fi fiends out there should try his novel Illywacker, it's crazy. JK Rowling's Harry Potter books probably will. Toni Morrison, maybe. So long as Martin Amis is forgotten as quickly as possible.

    Gotta go, it's Clemens v Schilling... Clemens will probably still be pitching in 50 years time.

  9. Re:Marketing part of the problem on HP Calculator Department Closing · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's not just engineers that use the heavy duty HP calcs - the HP19 is popular in the professional economics and hedge fund/financial analyst world... very handy for working out a bond yield or price-earnings ratio on the run. Ironic then (in a small way), if this closure is a result of the HP-Compaq merger and subsequent demands for "synergy" and efficiency by Wall Street.

  10. Walls come tumblin' down on Civilization III Is Out, And It Rocks · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "And no more of that horribly unrealistic plan of sending the spy in to destroy city walls before the invasion. (I mean, come on... destroy city walls?)"

    Why not? It's not like spies need to literally knock the entire city wall down (although they might ruin it with a well-placed bomb). The spy's activities could include (in ancient eras) stealth move like opening a gate, finding out passwords ("Halt! Who goes there?") or bribing/subverting guards. In more modern eras it could be getting the defence's blueprints... all things that render a city's defences weaker. Think like the Trojan horse. A city wall or defence doesn't need to be destroyed to be compromised: one weak spot is enough. Half a city wall ain't half as good, it's next to no good.

  11. Sorry, not an April Fool on Following April Fool's Day Around The World? · · Score: 1

    The UK Guardian article about Superman being redrawn a communist etc was not an April Fool, seeing as it was published on March 20:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273 ,4 154912,00.html

    That and the fact that the Guardian doesn't publish on Sundays (as April 1 was this year).

  12. Urine prank on Canadians Hang Bug Off Golden Gate · · Score: 1

    There's an annual tradition of similar jolly pranks at universities in New Zealand during Capping Week (graduation)... the best I can recall was posting official-looking notices to every home in one town claiming that the government needed a urine sample from every resident for scientific purposes. Residents were told to deliver their urine to local post offices... which they did.