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User: Alan+Partridge

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  1. Re:mmmmm sci-fi on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 1

    No, no - you've got Sci-Fi COMPLETELY wrong. Sci-Fi does not predict the future, it INVENTS it. Don't forget, the essential premise of Sci-Fi is "what if?". Fantasists don't understand this, they seem to believe Sci-Fi is Star Wars and Star Trek, conventional plots based in space. Sadly, some of the best "what if?" ers have been AWFUL writers - look at Clarke - writes like a 15 year old; is, in fact, the man who invented the communications satellite. Look at Asimov and Herbert - the breadth and depth of their extrapolated FUTURES are quite extraordinary. Look at Dick, his insights into the perversity of reality and the human psyche are very much grounded in the harsh realities of everyday living. Don't write off the genre so easily, and NEVER make the mistake of thinking Science Fiction and Fantasy are anything other than tangentally related.

  2. PKD on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 1

    no, the reason why serious sci-fi writers and thinkers like Dick find a limited audience is that publishers stick spaceships on the covers and bookstores stick the books in a "sci-fi AND fantasy" section where Dick has to compete for attention against the likes of William Shatner's excerable Tekwar and Star Wars "source" books. It's a crying shame.

  3. Bloody Huxley on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    you should try his apalling "Philiosphical" essays. Complete nonsense. Dick could out think Huxley in every way. And for vision, look at wyndham's "The Kraken Wakes" and "The Trouble with Lichen" for a nice preview of global warming and the burgeoning market in anti-ageing crap, and the ir gene and clone based future.

  4. Re:Writers Who Will Pass Through the Singularity.. on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 1

    why exclude Asimov from your pretentious list, manmuppet?

  5. Re:Douglas Adams on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 1

    never heard of Philip K Dick? America didn't deserve that guy - he was a genius and you treated him like shit.

  6. What a top five! on Writers Who Will Stand the Test of Time? · · Score: 1

    apart from the fact that Wyndham isn't in the list but Clarke is :-[ HOW THE FUCK does Tolkein outrank Dick? Dick had more Sci-Fi ideas in one lazy afternoon than Tolkein had in his entire fucking life. And H G Wells? Drivel. Top three? Asimov, Dick, Herbert - and Wyndham in the top ten. And Andy McNabb, of course. You know bravo Two Zero actually IMPROVES with every read?

  7. Re:Did Apple send out email warnings? on iTunes 2.0 Installer Deletes Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    totally optional information

  8. Re:The power Mac on iTunes 2.0 Installer Deletes Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    Of course, the "Classic" MacOS was so thoughtfully laid out that you didn't actually NEED installers at all. Us MacOS users feel like we've turned around and are now rushing back down the road we've been travelling along these years - straight into the path of the oncoming Microsoft juggernaut. iTunes X 2.01 is a marginal improvement, now crossfades tracks rather than clumsily cutting and has a few UI tweaks on top.

  9. Metric System? on Jet Lag: 2 Reviews Of "The One" · · Score: 1

    .9mm? That's a mighty small calibre. When are you idiotic Americans going to accept that Metric is just more useful and logical? At that time, you might also consider abandoning your ridiculous paper sizes too.

  10. Tripping on Do Digital Photos Endanger History? · · Score: 0, Troll

    this woman is insane. I used to work as a PJ and, despite carrying BOXES of film in my car boot (each box had 50 rolls of 36exp HP5), I would still get into trouble sometimes. A digital camera with a built in HDD can hold tons of pics, and AFAIK, PJs working today download via Firewire to their laptops when they get a chance. This woman's dissertation is clearly complete shit.

  11. Re:iMacs have no fan, Mac+ also silent, and Apple on General Fan Performance Guide · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I'm a big Mac fan (no pun intended), but this guy is dead on. Current generation PowerMac G4s have an on-chip fan - all MPC7450 CPUs have had this function from clockspeeds of 667Mhz to the current (shipping) max of 867Mhz. I have a G4 with 2xMPC7400 CPUs at 500MHz - no on-chip fan but an ENORMOUS heatsink means that they rub at 37-43 degrees C under load.

  12. Re:If I have an HDTV...Can I....?...ANSWER! on HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    you're missing the point. HD might start at 1920x1080, but is severely low-passed during the compression process. i THINK that the best case still image maximum is actually 1440 pixels, and typical program material is significantly lower. so, unless you plan on doing uncompressed post-production with your monitor/TV, you needn't worry about your screens addressable resolution too much. Find a set with good colour and geometry and you're four fifths of the way there.

  13. Re:Explain your definition of HDTV on HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    you clearly know nothing about this subject. If you make a 1920x1080 file in Photoshop it can be considered HD. SGI gear (as well as Macs and PCs) have been used to work on "2K" material since the EIGHTIES, standards started to become defined in the mid NINETIES only, with CCIR 601/656 and 24P now being the STANDARD standards.

  14. Re:SGI on HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    sorry, I actually like Apple gear a lot. It works really nicely, is fast, is built well and the OS is a paragon of rapid usability. QuickTime is BLOODY MARVELOUS, if Microsoft had just licensed the thing we'd all be five years down the road by now.

  15. Re:If I have an HDTV...Can I....?...ANSWER! on HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    total oxymoron alert! The REASON it's downsampled is to SAVE BANDWIDTH you fool! Why don't you do the bandwidth maths on 1920x1080x30, they multiply by 24 bits per pixel to see what an uncompressed stream would be like. Now, try and stuff all that down 20Mbps - pretty impressive compresion eh? frequency space filtering is just on little part of the story.

  16. Re:Hard Disk Space on HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    525 D1 standard is 720x480 you mutt. Not square pixel - go to video school.

  17. Re:SGI on HDTV On Your PC And Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    SGI still have a large share of the High-End TV post-production market. This means Discreet Flame, Fire and inferno for the most part, but also a good deal of work done in Maya and Softimage. Lower down the scale, Mac and PC workstations battle for editing supremacy, there are some superb turn-key proprietry devices like Quantel's kit, and most off-line rendering gear is x86-based running Linux or NT/2000. Apple are making a bit of a push back into TV at the moment, having sewn up the low-end nicely. From an OS perpective, TV is very open and diverse, we buy the gear that gets the job done best, not the gear with the lowest ticket. the truth of it that SGI have been very much overtaken by PowerPC and x86 hardware in ourtight CPU performance, but SGI has other architectural advatages that are yet to be matched.

  18. Re:Hear hear on WWW Inventor On Microsoft's Browser Tricks · · Score: 1

    you are somewhat naive, no? if I want to use Opera, iCab or (best of all) Omniweb on a day to day basis, I am virtually forced into identifying it to your site as something else, usually Netscape or MSIE 4. So your client stats end up being nonsense anyway - how many Konqueror users do the same?

  19. Re:What does XP stand for? on Windows XP Has Arrived · · Score: 1

    Xaotic Programming?

  20. Re:What does XP stand for? on Windows XP Has Arrived · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "It was also a direct nod (or rip-off) of OS-X, and a tendency by Microsoft to put X in the names of practically any consumer technology because the letter has a certain mystery and cachet in marketing circles (it is also the principle sound of SeX, and there is no doubt some subliminaly attempts here to make XP "sexy")." Did you hear that Steve Jobs always intended SCSI be pronounced "sexy". Master of marketing though he is, that was ONE step beyond...

  21. Re:DIE FAGS DIE on Windows XP Has Arrived · · Score: 1

    I'm kind of a homo-sceptic

  22. Re:Naturally on Microsoft Calls Viruses "Industrial Terrorism" · · Score: 1

    of course they can be. It's just that we normally call it "consumer rights". :-]

  23. Re:LOSE, goddammit, LOSE! on Quarter-sized CD's? · · Score: 1

    you missed out the rednecks' favourite "definately". AAAARRRGGGGHH!

  24. Re:sell licenses on Quarter-sized CD's? · · Score: 1

    Aiwa is a wholly owned Sony subsidiary, and Pioneer is controlled by Sony. Doesn't look that diverse now, eh?

  25. Re:Gotta love the picture caption on Quarter-sized CD's? · · Score: 1

    "mother is the necessity of invention"? are you some kind of idiot?