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User: Mark_MF-WN

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  1. Evolution on Macaque Monkey Goes Totally Bipedal · · Score: 1
    Evolution is accepted by the great majority of PEOPLE -- including most religious people. Creationists are just a tiny fringe group, despite the amount of noise they create.

    Darwinism doesn't need to score points anymore. It's not just a theory. The evolution of new species can be observed in petri dishes and in some of the world's more polluted bodies of water, to name just a few. Besides, once you accept that species can change over time, Darwinism becomes an unavoidable consequence. The agricultural industry has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that organisms change over time, so Darwinism is at least as solid as ANY other piece of science out there.

  2. Good to know on Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS · · Score: 1

    That's good to know. So if Microsoft and Intel succeed in turning the x86 line into useless, locked-down, glorified-X-Boxes, I can always migrate to a Mac or something. Sun's MAJC processor line sounds cool, and I've heard that wonderful non-x86 things might be coming out of Transmeta's labs in the near future. So I guess personal computing has a bright future in spite of what the TCPA has planned.

  3. x86 Bios problem? on Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS · · Score: 1

    Is this a problem outside of the x86 world? Could a PowerPC 970 based system, for instance, be more easily equipped with an open bios? What about a modern iMac?

  4. Ridiculous on Alan Kay Decries the State of Computing · · Score: 1

    Medicine and steel aren't tools. Also, computers are substantially more useful than the wheel. The wheel only does a very few things (roll being the principal one), whereas the usefullness of computers is limited only by the halting problem. The same goes for the level and the arch. You have on one hand, a tool with limitless potential, and on the other, a tool with highly limited potential. Which would you say is more useful?

  5. Hear Hear on Diebold Sued (Again) Over Shoddy Voting Machines · · Score: 1

    Hear hear. And might I add, we should all be grateful for those people who give up their valuable time to man the voting stations. I don't know about the US, but here in Canada they work largely on a volunteer basis, to ensure that democracy functions as it should. My sincerest thanks goes out to them.

  6. The humour... on Green Energy From Manhattan's East River · · Score: 1

    The humour comes from the fact that there's nothing alive in the east river. It's too heavily polluted for anything other than microbes to live in.

  7. So much... on Green Energy From Manhattan's East River · · Score: 1

    So much for privatization of essential services. :rolls eyes: .

  8. Power Caching on Green Energy From Manhattan's East River · · Score: 1
    There are lots of ways to "cache" power for later. Batteries, supercapacitors, and flywheels are all viable options. Wind power is having a small surge in popularity recently, thanks to advances in ways of buffering the power so that it doesn't wreck the grid.

    That said, I totally agree with you about nuclear power. Modern reactors are much safer and produce much less waste than reactors of the past. Some reactors can use weapons-grade plutonium, which provides an easy solution to the problem of decomissioned nuclear weapons (a problem that both the US and Russia have been having to face recently). I believe "pebble-bed" reactors can use junk Uranium, the kind that usually gets thrown away (correct me if I'm wrong about that one though, as I'm not entirely sure).

    With the hydrogen economy on the way, we're going to be seeing a demand for TONS of electricity to get hydrogen out of water. Nuclear power's time is now.

  9. Isn't the east coast... on Green Energy From Manhattan's East River · · Score: 1
    Isn't the East Coast mostly on coal and oil power? I'd be doing ANYTHING possible to get off of coal power, even if it's just a tiny little 10mw dent.

    I'm thankful all the time that I live in British Columbia, with our abundant hydroelectric power.

  10. Six Years? on VAX Users See the Writing on the Wall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Six years of uptime is pretty impressive for a computer. But it's even more impressive for the facility. Seriously -- what kind of UPS and equipment redundancy would you need to get that kind of uptime?

  11. Impressive on SpaceshipOne's Control Problem Fixed · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The fact that there are TWO teams within striking distance of the prize is pretty impressive. These are interesting times we're living in.

    Between the private space-flight, a entire space station (built internationally no less), and the possibility of a space elevator, humankind really is heading for the stars!

  12. Theatre on Besieged Movie Industry Suffers Record Takings · · Score: 1

    No, the only movies that would stop being made are the craptastic star-vehicles. I'll happily pirate a few films if it means no more lame Star Wars prequels, and no more Jennifer Lopez abominations. Real movies will still get made. The independent films that are shown at many off-track theatres are testimony to that.

  13. Grow up. on Besieged Movie Industry Suffers Record Takings · · Score: 1

    Grow up. If you can't see the difference between theft -- in which the victim has LESS than had before, and copyright violation -- in which the victim has to work very hard to even discover that it's taken place -- then you are a moron. Piracy exists because most people can see the difference quite clearly. People like yourself, the "it really is theft!" crowd, are the minority because you're preaching from an inherently dubious position.

  14. Congratulations! on Best Buy Says Customers Not Always Right · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Congratulations! You're a Shutupicrat.

    Seriously though -- discriminating against customers is inherently wrong. It goes against the principles of the free market. This type of thing is no different than charging wealthy customers more, just because you can. Or turning low-income people away from stores, since they usually don't spend much.

  15. Yes on Fedora, SuSE And Mandrake Compared · · Score: 2, Insightful
    They ALL can do this. Linux has been able to resize partitions since... well, a long time ago. Newer incarnations even resize NTFS, although I don't know if I trust it. But VFAT partitions are no problem.

    Geez, some of the partition foolery that I've gotten up lately to would frighten the pants off of the old Windows-using me of the past. QParted and GParted are my new favourite software tools.

  16. Crime on Big Brother Awards for Privacy Invaders · · Score: 1

    If the police were really interested in stopping crime, they would put cameras in every corporate board room in the country instead.

  17. Phht. on Reduce C/C++ Compile Time With distcc · · Score: 1
    Phht. Just wait until Microsoft releases Gentoo/Windows.

    Seriously though -- Microsoft is the one company that can guarantee that their source code sizes will continually outstrip computational power. I wonder what kind of clustering solution they use to get their Windows builds to compile in a reasonable timeframe?

  18. Extensions on Java 1.5.0 Now Officially Java 5.0 · · Score: 1

    There are extensions of Boolean arithmetic to the entire domain of natural numbers. They are more common in philosophy than in math or CS I think.

  19. Mistake... on Java 1.5.0 Now Officially Java 5.0 · · Score: 1

    You're thinking of binary arithmetic, not Boolean arithmetic. In Boolean arithmetic, AND is synonymous with multiplication -- hence 3 AND 2 = 6 because 3 x 2 = 6. See?

  20. What world do YOU live in? on Java 1.5.0 Now Officially Java 5.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What world do YOU live in? It sounds like a pretty nice place. Where I live, marketing is intended to confuse and bewilder the customer so that they pay for things that they neither want nor need.

  21. Good to know... on Java 1.5.0 Now Officially Java 5.0 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Good to know that Sun is hard at work, coming up with strange new ways to confuse the end-user.

    Seriously though -- I love Java, but Sun needs to pull its head out of its ass before C#, PHP, and Python relegate Java to the scrap heap.

  22. Missed the Point on EFF Begins Digital Television Liberation Project · · Score: 1

    You're apparently unfamiliar with the concept of fair-use rights. I mean, who cares that it's part of the US Constitution? Rights? Who needs 'em.

  23. True on The Trillion-Barrel Tar Pit · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The problem comes if China and the Third World follow in the footsteps of our oil-wasteful economy. The planet's atmosphere is not going to like that. Although there's a lot of concern about the Three Gorges Dam in China, I would rather see them submerge some local Chinese history than throw tons of hydrocarbons into the world's atmosphere.
    True. It sometimes seems like environmentalists wont be happy until we all live in caves. I care about the environment, but I also recognize that something has to give somewhere. Hydroelectric dams provide bountiful, clean electricity, at a fairly reasonable environmental cost. If China is embracing hyrdoelectric, I say more power to them.
  24. So you've noticed... on Beastie Boys Respond to DRM Claims · · Score: 1

    So you've noticed the sickly odour of bullshit emanating from this little press release?

  25. What the hell? on Beastie Boys Respond to DRM Claims · · Score: 1

    Okay, so what is the player playing -- the "RED book audio", or some "WMA compressed files"? The article is a bit inconsistent. No, scratch that -- it flat out contradicts itself. I call bullshit on that!