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User: maxwell+demon

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Comments · 12,279

  1. Re:String Theory is a joke on Evidence of 6 Dimensions or More? · · Score: 1
    the problem is thinking in 11-26 dimensions is surprisingly hard.

    Given that is is already quite hard to think in just four dimensions, I consider it not at all surprising that thinking in 11 or more dimensions is even harder.
  2. Re:The idea of extra dimensions is... on Evidence of 6 Dimensions or More? · · Score: 1

    Of course the sum should be exactly 42. She probably summed up the numbers in incorrect order.

  3. Re:Digital Download? on Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time · · Score: 1

    Well, actually, you can get something similar, although it's the ISP which does the digital to analog conversion, and it's not speech, but rather funny sounds. Also, you don't have to convert back to digital yourself, but have a small box to do that automatically. The whole thing is called modem access to the internet.

  4. Re:It could be worse. on Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time · · Score: 1

    Simple: Write a script-fu for The GIMP which produces that image, then read that on the phone.

  5. Re:Another article with the same logic on Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess those people locking their door are all bad guys as well. After all, the fact that they lock the door shows clearly that they are thiefs, and just want to protect those things they've stolen. So the result of more people locking their doors will be an increase of stealing from those good citizens who leave their door open.

  6. Re:Noone noticed this? on The Massachusetts Office Party · · Score: 1

    Butt if the spelt chequer fined know miss takes, chow cold their bee any?

  7. Re:Always explaining on The Massachusetts Office Party · · Score: 1

    Well, isn't it obvious? It's the language your VCR programming OSD menu is set to.

  8. Re:Funny, but.... on The Massachusetts Office Party · · Score: 1

    Why rename it? A good unzipper should be able to unzip it independent from the name of the thing. You just have to open it directly with the unzipping program (if you don't have OOo, you also could tell your OS to give .swx to your unzipper when trying to open it).

  9. Re:"Your fly is open" formats. on The Massachusetts Office Party · · Score: 1
    Yeah, but the key difference is since it's open source if Sun stopped paying people to work on it, others could fork it and keep improving it.

    But again, those others don't need to be volunteers, but can es well be professionals payed by another company to do so.

    The fact that it is open source and therefore not strictly bound to one entity is completely othogonal to the question if it is volunteer efford. Volunteers can create closed source software (e.g. Freeware [not to confuse with Free Software] or shareware), and companies can produce open source software. Indeed, the same project can move back and forth between volunteer and company (though for cloed source projects it's quite unlikely to move from company to volunteer), and independently, a project can move from closed source to open source (but it can go back only in a very limited way, since generally the open source licenses cannot be revoked).
  10. Re:hi-resolution photos of moon landing? on Walk on the Moon in IMAX 3D · · Score: 1

    According to this (German language) article, next year the VLT will get a resolution high enough to theoretically observe a man on the moon.

  11. Re:Same test results via Japanese and Babelfish on New Algorithm for Learning Languages · · Score: 1, Funny
    Same through Lost in Translation:

    I know that it is to something exact, due to half I a time the friends
    the Spanish language in an argument in betrog. I they has said to that
    Hypnose and copy/pasted Spanish ends in the right of the general in
    some Spanish of instructd of the way inside inside. The argument is
    stopped continued during the 15 Spaniards of minuteren completely,
    before this one that you said that that I used the place of the Web
    its trousers has the orinato.

    And if you include Chinese, Japanese and Korean, you get:

    The mine INSIDE converged my Spanish friend, preg-reprehending, is
    certain that the material, knew, that it is considerable demands.
    Academic the Spanish flame too much INSIDE with in buttock due to
    copy/pasted also in the circumstance and the Spanish basic types of
    the Hypnose is the complete company. That the Spanish ways if the
    preoccupation of the 15 opposites some continues in me with the
    buttock emit very famous like this, the place of the Web the situation
    sufficient, ordered excess to be used because. They had given return
    to his trousers.

  12. Re:just thought.. on New Algorithm for Learning Languages · · Score: 1

    Indeed, it would help the problem that you can only get one of them, instead of directly getting a massive, incomplete dictionary with errors :-)

    massive: clear, I think.
    incomplete: because it will only cover the words on pages you have visited. So it won't contain a lot of words (given the type of pages you usually surf, I guess the missing words would be those which are used primarily in literature).
    with errors: Wel, their haas bean enuff discusion off thhe probblem een othre ansers two yoor poust. :-)

    Ok, there's one pair which it won't reconcile: Even with that technology you won't get a dictionary whichg is both small and massiva :-)

  13. Re:Good, but... on New IrDA Spec Shoots for 100Mbit/s Data Rate · · Score: 1

    It can be snooped only in line of sight.

  14. Re:The Study was Examing *Medical* Science on Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong · · Score: 1

    Of course, even in physics, experimentalists are not completely safe from bad statistics.

  15. Re: Peer review on Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong · · Score: 1

    You only cover theoretical papers. Now, the article didn't look at theoretical papers at all (this alone makes their statement an overgeneralization).

    For experimental papers, I can see the following possibilities:

    1. Paper describes an experiment X which shows an effect Y predicted by theory Z. Indeed, Z predicts Y, and the experiment X shows Y.
    2. Paper describes an experiment X which shows an effect Y predicted by theory Z. Indeed, Z predicts Y, but the experiment X did not really show Y.
    3. Paper describes an experiment X which shows an effect Y predicted by theory Z. Indeed, the experiment X shows the effect Y, but theory Z doesn't predict that effect.
    4. Paper describes an experiment X which shows an effect Y predicted by theory Z. However, this is only true if you also assume theory W holds, but theory W has not yet been confirmed.
    5. Paper describes an experiment X which shows an effect Y predicted by theory Z. However, this is only true if you also assume theory W holds, but theory W has already been disproven.
    6. Paper describes an experiment X which shows an effect Y predicted by theory Z. However, experiment X has never been done and the "results" were invented by the author.

  16. Re:Utterly useless rhetoric on Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Then you'd better do an improved job of elucidating that argument. So far the only argument you've given that evolution as a belief is "self-defeating" is, in your words: "on the supposition that evolution is responsible for our reasoning ability, we have no confidence that the deliverances of reason (i.e. the theory of evolution) correspond to reality".

    Yet in point #1 and #2 above you've admitted yourself that creation mythology cannot give us any greater confidence that our perceptions and reason reflect reality.


    Indeed, he showed that ID is worse than evolution, in that for evolution you can at least conclude that the mind works in a way that helps us to survive in the wild. ID cannot even conclude that (because the designer could have made brains which deliberately work bad for that purpose).
  17. Re:Studies, Papers, Research on Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong · · Score: 1

    I hereby claim that 100% of all claims are wrong!

  18. Re:Don't fear the RFID on The End of the Bar Code · · Score: 1

    Well, fridges are usually made of metal, therefore it should be at least possible to distinguish things in your fridge from things outside your fridge (which includes things in the guy's fridge on the floor lelow you). For things inside the fridge, the empty box problem likely won't appear as well, because you don't usually put empty things back into the fridge.

    I also guess by having several readers, one could do a sort of triangulation to find out the exact location of any thing inside your flat (or find out that it isn't inside, after all).

  19. Re:Commercial on The End of the Bar Code · · Score: 1

    I guess the idea is that when you weight it, the weight as well as the ID from the tag you get is stored in an internal database. Then at the cash desk, the RFID tag is read out, and the database is queried for the weight.

  20. Re:The end of ... on The End of the Bar Code · · Score: 2

    We cannot go to paperless office anyway until we find out how to use those three sea shells ...

  21. Re:And another one.... on The Boot Loader Showdown · · Score: 1

    Grub boots just fine from floppy. AFAIK it can't boot a CD.

    However, I didn't know that Lilo can boot from CD. How is this done? Because I just got the idea to have Grub configured to have an option to chainload a Lilo which itself does nothing than directly boot from CD.

    BTW, are you sure you can boot from CD with Lilo on that particular computer? Because I guess booting from CD will not work without BIOS support (after all, for El Torito you need to have an emulated floppy drive, the code for which I doubt will be in the bootloader).

  22. Re:Google, meet Motorola on Google Seeks to Develop Parallel Internet? · · Score: 2, Funny
    it was originally supposed to have as many satellites as there are protons/electrons in an atom of Iridium, with the constellation resembling the orbits of those electrons.

    Given that some of the Iridium electrons are s-electrons with zero angular momentum and a certain probability to be at the nucleus, does that mean they actually planned for a few satellites to fall straightly back to earth?
    BTW, I guess the reason they failed is that they didn't manage to properly delocalize the satellites ...
  23. Re:Only if... on Google Seeks to Develop Parallel Internet? · · Score: 2, Funny

    What do you think Google needs all those dark fibers for? To lit them with red light, of course! :-)

  24. Re:PIN Number on Graphics Programs Uncover Secret PINs · · Score: 1

    Except that LCD really stands for Liquid Crystal Display.
    What exacty should a "Liquid Crystal Digit" be? That term doesn't make any sense to me.

  25. Re:two sheets of mylar on Graphics Programs Uncover Secret PINs · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't worry. The fact that you still worry shows that mind control still doesn't work. It's when you stop worrying, then you should worry.