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User: Sockatume

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Comments · 5,843

  1. Re:That's not a bug, it's a feature on Study Hints That Wi-Fi Near Testes Could Decrease Male Fertility · · Score: 4, Informative

    The abstract specifically states that the control group was a set of identical samples, under the same incubation regime, without the laptop. So no, they didn't control for the idea that the laptop alone could've caused the effect

  2. Re:That's not a bug, it's a feature on Study Hints That Wi-Fi Near Testes Could Decrease Male Fertility · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Non-thermal electromagnetic radiation" means that electromagnetic radiation caused the effect through a nonthermal mechanism. It's a common idea in EM fear circles (because the output from EM devices is too low to cause damage by a thermal mechanism). It doesn't say anything about heat, one way or another. You can have thermal damage from EM radiation without any application of heat. That's what your microwave oven does.

  3. Facebook and Twitter? on Europe's Largest IT Company To Ban Internal Email · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Sir, people are using our communication tool for unproductive social activities."

    "Quickly, build an internal system which is modelled after even less productive, more overtly social software."

  4. Re:Wow! Cheating in advertising! Something new? on Dell's Misleading Graphics Card Buying Advice · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure if that would fall under the ASA's remit, they only cover marketing communications. As it's part of the sales process it's more analogous to a sign posted in a computer store, which would make it a trading standards issue, and I'm not sure how that works online. (Normally trading standards are handled by a plethora of independent offices in each part of the country, and it's up to an affected customer to contact their local one.)

  5. Re:Missed the juicy part of the article on Afghanistan Biometric Data Given To US · · Score: 1

    The poor fingerprints are part of the system too.. There's no point building a great heuristic for a shitty database.

  6. Re:"Aimed at small businesses" on DARPA Requests Replacement To Antibiotics · · Score: 1

    You're suggesting I couldn't get a small business loan to set up an anti-biowarfare laboratory?

  7. Re:Been looking forward to this on High Resolution Global Topographic Map of Moon · · Score: 2

    That's fascinating, I have a hard time grasping how much relief the moon has compared to the Earth (not that I have a very strong grasp of that either...) and putting water on it makes it more directly comparable. What sort of depth are you using for the oceans?

  8. Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth on High Resolution Global Topographic Map of Moon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Moon comes out, conspiracy jokes come in. Never a miscommunication.

  9. Fake on High Resolution Global Topographic Map of Moon · · Score: 1

    Everyone knows that the moon was a false flag operation by the Soviets, performed on a sound stage in Texas in 1902 using a script by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  10. Re:Great on Minecraft Is Finished · · Score: 1

    Yes, that's what "offline" is. It wouldn't be a very good "play offline" button if it required you to be online.

  11. Re:Great on Minecraft Is Finished · · Score: 1

    You have to log in once to download the client. After that, if it can't get online, it shows a big "Play Offline" button.

  12. Re:Voxel based? No on Minecraft Is Finished · · Score: 2

    It depends on what you mean by "voxel" and that's pretty shaky. While voxel means "volumetric pixel" which implies that it's a rendering element, it's not really analogous to a pixel (there's a layer of transformations between voxel and screen) and even in technical papers it's often used to refer to the component parts of a volumetric representation of a some property that varies through space, rather than the technique used to visualise that property.

  13. Re:Not finished on Minecraft Is Finished · · Score: 1

    What do you mean by "arbitrary" here, because it's not a usage that I recognise.

  14. Re:Great on Minecraft Is Finished · · Score: 1

    Why don't you just click "play offline" when authentication fails?

  15. Not finished on Minecraft Is Finished · · Score: 5, Informative

    They've explicitly and repeatedly stated that while the 1.0 release is a major milestone, it's essentially arbitrary, and their development work on the game won't change quantitatively or qualitatively once it passes.

  16. Re:Light Pollution on Bad Astronomer Phil Plait Responds · · Score: 1

    Yeah, we've got no smog problem whatsoever where I live but the sky's skill freaking orange from sodium lights on all but the coldest, clearest nights.

  17. Re:Singularities in Black Holes on Bad Astronomer Phil Plait Responds · · Score: 2

    It's a mathematical singularity in the relativistic field equations IIRC. In fact it fell out of the mathematics long before anyone had any idea that such an object could form (or how). So in our best physical model, it is a singularity. Maybe there's some better law of physics where it's not a singularity after all, or it might just be that the universe is weird enough to allow things like singularities to exist.

  18. Laziness on What's Keeping You On Windows? · · Score: 1

    As title.

  19. Re:Bad Design Decisions All Around on LEGO Universe To Shut Down · · Score: 2

    True, but until Minecraft came along it wasn't quite so jaw-droppingly obvious how a game like that might work. I won't grudge them for not making the conceptual leap that the player character, rather than some omniscient Builder, should be doing the block-moving.

  20. Re:Maybe Apple should make a smaller one? on Kindle Fire Will Be Hotter Than iPad This Holiday · · Score: 1

    Apple simply can't. iPad apps are written on the assumption that the UI elements have a given physical size. (There's no dynamic scaling and rearranging of UI elements as on Android.) If Apple make a smaller display, then all of the developers have to redesign their apps to accomodate it.

  21. Re:Bad Design Decisions All Around on LEGO Universe To Shut Down · · Score: 1

    The MMO was finishing development at just about the time Minecraft was making a name for itself. It was too late for them to make an MC-like game.

  22. Re:Resolution! on ARM Claims PS3-Like Graphics On Upcoming Mobile GPU · · Score: 1

    PenTile performs sub-pixel rendering by necessity, but that's just approximating the image that would be created by an RGB display. It's not going to do anything for aliasing artifacts.

  23. Re:From the article... on Programming Cells, With CellOS · · Score: 1

    So your idea of a good Friday night is eating grains while belching repeatedly until you pass out from intoxication?

  24. Re:I'm not sure if this is really an overreaction. on The Political Assault On Los Alamos National Laboratory · · Score: 1

    Work on them at home? Not every security breach is a deliberate attack by whatever foreign power is closest to the perpetrator's ethnicity. Ignorance, arrogance and laziness are far more powerful and widespread forces of destruction.

  25. Re:Danger on Programming Cells, With CellOS · · Score: 1

    If you could protect DNA sequences with copyright, someone would've already done so. They're trivial to represent in text.