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User: tinkerton

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  1. Re:I misread the subject on Adobe Makes Flash Crawlable · · Score: 1

    I had problems with the word "crawlable", as if it was whispering "don't try to say me, you'll regret it!" . But then I tried and it was easy, really. I'm sure there's a wise lesson there somewhere. Just goes to show eh, something.

  2. Re:Will never happen. on Algorithm Names Powell 'Ideal' Vice President Candidate · · Score: 1

    I trust Powell is a committed soldier. That means if it's part of his job to sell lies he'll do it, even if it costs him. He's good at it. His problem was he got rubbish to work with and he'd be blamed. He knew he was selling an excuse for a war, and that it was not the reason for the war, but he was pissed that the excuse was full of holes. "Being lied to" tends to give the wrong impression then.

  3. Dinner's getting cold! on Children Concerned By Parents' Web Habits · · Score: 1

    Hey dad, will you get off that computer for dinner now? We're eating. You're not listening, but we're sure you'll read this.

    Your loving kids.

  4. That can't be right on Studies Confirm That Bad Boys Get More Girls · · Score: 1

    If they're that high, they've run all out of speed before they reach you.

  5. I am perfectly well placed on All Your Coffee Are Belong To Us · · Score: 1

    I understand quite well that other people consider my hifi, my wine and my espresso a waste of money.

  6. The analogy on All Your Coffee Are Belong To Us · · Score: 1

    audiophiles and wine snobs waste money and effort on what other people consider tiny, unimportant or nonexistent differences. Trivial differences are common, improvements that are really just changes are common. Psychological bias is common.

    But if you put the emphasis on placebo effects, then that will cover a lot of things that appear nonexistent to the novice but are obvious to more experienced people. I wouldn't play that card. I can easily distinguish between a collection of cdplayers I'm familiar with, and I've heard the difference between cables connecting hifi sets.

    As with coffee there is the buildup of experience and refinement. The range of what is acceptable changes and what used to appear small improvements become large improvements. There is the question how much extra fuss and mess you want to put up with, and how much money and effort you want to invest.

  7. Starbucks is not a good example on All Your Coffee Are Belong To Us · · Score: 1

    We have a fully automatic espresso machine at work(a Jura at the moment). It makes consistently good coffee. At home I have a good manual one. The choice for manual is hard to defend. In both instances the best beans are ground on the spot, and they're always fairly fresh. To most people I'd recommend an automatic unless they like to play with their food. Starbucks has other problems.

  8. level of radiation on Trio of Super-Earths Discovered · · Score: 2, Informative

    I haven't a clue about what level of radiation is still acceptable, except that I guess it's much higher than accepted.. Factors:

    - Radiation can vary a lot along location, especially UV, and (primary)alpha and beta radiation is easily shielded. As for gamma, how much gamma radiation is there ten feet under water?

    - Planets with tight orbits always have the same side to the sun due to tidal forces. This gives a wide range of temperature and radiation level to choose from.

    - Radiation breaks down dna/rna and any kind of cell material. It possible to have cells with huge redundancy and self-repairing capacity to withstand high levels of radiation? 1000 times more than what we have? a million? We're tuned to low radiation levels.

    I wonder if red dwarfs are much of a challenge then. In fact, I can take on two of them for breakfast.

  9. Newspapers too on The One-Use, Self-Destructing DVD Returns · · Score: 1

    It would be good to have something like this for newspapers, but for a completely different reason. I think that's funny. Ink is made to keep its color, and requires recycling to use aggressive and dirty methods. If ink would be made to degrade quickly, it could make recycling a lot cleaner.

  10. Nonsense on The One-Use, Self-Destructing DVD Returns · · Score: 3, Funny

    The dvd's will come standard as part of a kit: the degrading dvd will be bundled with a writable dvd.

  11. on second thought though... on Swiss Man Flies With Jet Powered Wing · · Score: 1

    25 hours, how many flights is that? How long is a flight, a few minutes till he's out of gas? Short in any case. And there's 4 engines. So he's at least , er, two times safer than er, you think he is.... I think.

  12. math and physics can make you rich? on Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins · · Score: 1

    That's a rather strong claim they're making there. Dear mathematicians, don't quit your day job yet is what I'm thinking. Oh, you're teachers!

  13. Isn't that the same list as.. on Satan, Britney Spears Top Paris Hilton In OSS References · · Score: 2, Funny

    the list of commonly used passwords?

  14. Concurred on Facial Hair and Computer Languages · · Score: 1

    As does his wearing slippers at work.

  15. how can it be squared plus a bit? on Is Mathematics Discovered Or Invented? · · Score: 1

    If you have enery in kg.m2/s2 and you round up the useful variables, that's rest mass, velocity v and lightspeed c.
    Then you already know you can write E as m0.f(v/c).c^2 because otherwise how are you going to get the dimensions right. f can still be any weird thing at that moment, but it's dimensionless. And surely you can set m = m0.f(v/c)/f(0) before starting to find out what the subject is you're looking at. Don't mind me though. streamofconsciousness.

  16. Re:Only in USA on Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity · · Score: 1

    I'm not wholly being sarcastic. If two thirds of the population are holding the right point of view then the reasons are suspect. Many people's interpretation of (neo-)darwinism is pretty shaky and it could be subverted if they got exposed to alternative views, say a litterate Intelligent-Designer. But they didn't get exposed.

    So Europe scores better than average America, with good margin, but don't overestimate that safety margin.

    Apart from that, there might well be big differences in statistics between red and blue states in the US. It makes more sense to compare Spain with a coast state.

  17. Re:Only in USA on Ben Stein's 'Expelled' - Evolution, Academia and Conformity · · Score: 1

    Don't laugh too hard. You're sure the reason europeans score better in the statistics is not just that the local religious leaders aren't pushing creationist viewpoints? alright, so Europe is less religious. Parts of Europe. Maybe most europeans never heard of creationism.

    I mean, think about it. You want to belong to the same club as two thirds of the population? That can't be right.

  18. Hardly on Flowers' Smell Not Traveling As Far · · Score: 1

    Fruit and flowers have long been selected for shape and size, often at the expense of smell and taste. As a rule, old varieties of roses don't look as nice but they have more smell. Organic growers often go for older varieties. Old varieties grown non-organically are just the same though.

    Organic growers don't force-grow their turnips and tomatoes that much either , which makes for a more concentrated taste.

  19. Re:Wrong about the Sun and petawatts on The Texas Petawatt Laser · · Score: 1

    I don't mind the comparison "emitting as much light as the whole sun but only during a very short period", even if it is off by a huge factor. And your earlier remark about touching the power of the universe is nice there. What does bother me(but not terribly so-I have a life) is when light intensity, the amount of energy going through a surface in an amount of time, of blackbody radiation is compared to that of a laser. Any plain pulsed laser is already brighter than the sun (in a very tiny spot during a very tiny period ) but this is obfuscated, it becomes harder to believe, when one states that this superlaser is brighter than the sun. It be

    The light at the surface of the sun can heat things up to nearly 6000K. Not more, not with lenses, mirrors whatever. Lasers do millions of degrees.

  20. Re:Wrong about the Sun and petawatts on The Texas Petawatt Laser · · Score: 1

    It's worse than not meaning much, it's very misleading because it places the parts of the comparison in the same ballpark. Dinosaurs roamed the earth even before we had book printing too.

  21. Re:Thought it had already been explained on Meteorites May Have Delivered Seeds of Life On Earth · · Score: 1

    If that's a consolation, you can also call our amino acids right handed if you change some conventions for mapping the molecules to your hands.

    Note, however. The article talks about meteorites with excess left handed amino acids yielding a 'big enough perturbation'. We should be careful about the implicit assumption there that we need such external perturbation. Maybe inherent fluctuations are enough.

    Parent post talks about a slight nudge to left handedness due to the electroweak force. This is the same electroweak force that indirectly cause the excess of left handed amino acids in the meteorites so hey, maybe the electroweak force in many ways conspires for world dominance of left handedness.

    A missing part is how the squeezing out of right handedness happens. I'm sure there must be some models about it now. But without a model, a perturbation may be just that, a perturbation that is drowned out and leads to nothing.

  22. Average user on New Botnet Dwarfs Storm · · Score: 1

    Has one ball and one tit? Couldn't say the same about the average linux user tho.

  23. Re:Not just sci-fi, but nerdy stuff on Charlton Heston's Impact On Sci-Fi · · Score: 1

    And in the Thunderbirds. As the dad.

  24. Re:Thought it had already been explained on Meteorites May Have Delivered Seeds of Life On Earth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I at least can recall the following. We have plenty of stereospecific molecules to the extent that sometimes the lefthanded molecule of something is good for us while the righthanded variant is poisonous. It doesn't mean that for every molecule in nature only one handedness will occur. Amino acids are nearly always lefthanded. Google for "homochirality".

    If we create a mirror case for the current biological condition where all lefthanded molecules are replaced by righthanded and vice versa, this condition would be equally plausible.

    The idea of symmetry breaking is that each of the conditions is equally plausible but mutually exclusive, and that a small perturbation early on would magnify to result in complete dominance of one variant. The origin of this perturbation is trivial, a butterfly flapping its wings if you wish, the important thing is the magnifying effect.

    Parent post refers to a modification of that idea, where the two conditions are not exactly similar but there is actually a slight preference for one of the conditions. In the first case on half of the planets with life will have lefthanded life, the other half will have righthanded life. In the second case, all life is lefthanded.

  25. Re:God vs. ...that. on Meteorites May Have Delivered Seeds of Life On Earth · · Score: 1

    Looks like that site is made by the same people who run The Onion. One never can tell.