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User: virve

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Comments · 57

  1. Re:Warning on Science a Mystery to U.S. Citizens · · Score: 1

    The theory of evolution is just that, a *theory*. Theories are, by definition, neither true nor false. They can be supported by evidence or disproved by evidence, but they cannot be declared true or false.

    This shows your ignorance. Theories are either true or false. The theory might not have been falsified but in order to be a theory it must in principle be possible to falsify.

    People how still doubt evolution should equally doubt whether Earth orbits Sun. The body of evidence is so overwhelming in favour of evolution that those who seriously believe creation as a sensible theory must have been smoking pot.

  2. Re:Open Source Zealot of the year on Mozilla Branches For 1.0 RC1 · · Score: 1
    'Civilised' is spelt perfectly correctly. It's only you 'uncivilized' Americans who spell it wrong.


    Not according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The 's'-forms comes from French words.
    In fact, the 'British' ispell dictionary is useless precisely because of these 's' vs. 'z' errors.

  3. Re:Isn't it the magnetic south pole? on North Pole is Leaving Canada · · Score: 1

    Finally! You are absolutely right. I constantly find this error be it on maps and even decent reference books. The magnetic south pole is somewhere north of Canada.

  4. Re:User-written software on New Nokia Phones - with Java · · Score: 1

    I for one cannot wait for an application that makes Nokia phones auto-lock the keypad after a certain period of inactivity.

    Ditto. I have been longing for that feature ever since the first time the battery was discharged while try to call various people at random. This feature should be impossible to patent, right?

  5. Outrageous? on The DNA Bomb · · Score: 1
    Reading about nuclear weapons in 1940 would have seemed outrageous too.

    Am I the only one how still think nuclear weapon are outageous?

  6. Re:oops. on Professor Describes Unbreakable Cryptosystem? · · Score: 1

    You are completely wrong here. They - mathematicians - do exactly know what real numbers are and no new magical _real_ numbers will be found. Remember that (real numbers/whatever) was invented by themselves. :-) When mathematicians makes statements to the effect that something cannot be done then it _is_ impossible.
    In this case there are and cannot be any real number x such that x^2 < 0. Sometimes it is possible to make constructions that circumvent the rules but that does not invalidate proofs of impossibility. Such proofs are always carefully stated as to which assumptions they are build upon. (That's why the word _real_ is important in the statement about x^2.)

    In the case of Rabin et al.'s results what they have actually shown is - as I understand it - in a sense much weaker since they only claim that their breaking their algorithm is as hard as solving a well known computationally hard problem. Perhaps somebody can expand on this.

  7. Re:provably unbreakable? on Professor Describes Unbreakable Cryptosystem? · · Score: 1

    It is possible to prove the impossibility of something. An easy example is the impossibility of writing sqrt(2) as a rational number.
    Mathematics is full of proofs of things being impossible. Don't mention Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem because that is way out of reach for the layman, whereas square root 2 is not rational is dead easy...