Posts by ArmanX

Ah, now, see, that's a common mistake.

See, that's actually for your lawn mower - it's an adjustable-length spinning mower blade replacement. With the right attachment, you can turn a knob to make the cutting area wider. See? Dial-up. And everyone knows you gotta modem lawns. Dial-up modem.

What do you mean, you want a refund?

I disagree

Japan is post-apocalyptic and has seen the *minimal* [read: less than everyone seems to think] effects of radiation on life, people, children, etc. - *so why are they over-reacting*?

Easier != effortless

Yes, Opera has its share of "let's guess what the standards actually mean", and as such any browser will look a little bit different. But if I code a fairly simple standards-compliant web page, I expect it to work; it usually does in Opera, with minor tweaking. Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, too, at least in recent versions. But IE? Never. Get it to work for IE 8, and you'll still have to beat IE 7 into compliance. And heaven help us if the website gets on the magical "compliance" blacklist!

My comment was simply stating that I find writing a website specifically for Opera to work, for the most part, as expected. With IE, your guess is as good as mine as to how it will look - even if it works in one version of IE, the next and previous versions will look wildly different.

@LaeMing, Handle this!, and Cpt Blue Bear

@Handle this! and LaeMing - the fruit flies I mentioned (and the e. coli - cool article, by the way, my wife worked with e. coli for a while) easily show micro-evolution, but no macro-evolution. I know, muddying the waters, but the point is that while micro-evolution - changes within a species - has been observed, measured, and repeated, macro-evolution - a new species being formed - has not been observed, repeated, and measured. We don't know how many mutations need to occur until a new species is formed, for instance. Currently, not enough is known about the world around us to fully understand the origin of life; it is, thus, "supernatural," by my definition. I'm not saying evolution is wrong, just that it has yet to be explained.

@Cpt Blue Bear - If you say so; but I see you've crafted your own in return! How nice! I hear that's a fairly common tactic amongst the cleverer believers in something irrational, but I wouldn't worry.

I keep thinking "I need to read these books."

This is always followed with, "Hey, I could check it out at the library! Sweet!"

And then, "Oh, right, our library is utterly useless, and couldn't mail-order a book to save their lives."

I grew up with an awesome library, so having the only library in town be a complete waste of time is saddening... and also has put a severe dent in my reading. I'm now limited by budget, rather than check-out limit.

Wait...

Didn't Hitler want to be a painter, or some such, but was turned down for artist's school? Maybe we should let her go on making songs, just in case, eh?

Perhaps a compressor, instead?

Effectively a pump that would pull Helium out of the balloon(s), stowing it in a rigid container as very high pressure; the pressurized tank and compressor shouldn't be terribly heavy, and as the balloon(s) scale up, the size of the compressor and tank would scale much more slowly, making it more worthwhile the bigger it gets...

"A real life, true, honest-to-God example", eh...

Ah, for the days when I, too, could live in my own little world... Rent is too expensive there, now, though.

@Alex Rose

What crashIO wrote was an attack on the article, and thus a defense of Dean Hachamovitch's statements. In my reply, I pointed out that the consequences of defending Hachamovitch's statements was, in fact, defending the statement that the Internet should only work correctly in Windows.

"Native HTML" implies that the HTML is written in a native language, that is, specifically for a single platform. Hachamovitch said, "The only native experience of the Web and HTML5 today is on Windows 7 with IE9," which pretty much backs that up. This is obviously false; FireFox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari all have HTML 5 support. No one from those camps are saying that their browser is the only one that runs HTML 5 "natively."

Oddly enough, I never said that using IE 9 was a bad idea, nor have ever called anyone a "Microtard." In fact, I even refrained from assuming that the person I was replying to had no grasp of logical debate. Then again, some people seem to miss subtleties; can't win 'em all, right?

Inside, but not part of.

If we use the definition of landscape as "an expanse of scenery that can be seen in a single view," then the shed is undoubtedly no longer part of it, as it cannot be seen. Granted, it's *inside* the landscape...

Wait, that's a bright side?

Torchwood had a few good moments, but the most recent series was indescribably bad. I've tried to describe how bad it was, but was reduced to feebly waving my arms and gaping like a drowning fish.

Man, I sure hope the terrorists get the memo...

Let's see here... that would mean:

No armed aircraft, submarines, or ships.

No long-range weapons (including tanks, mortars, missiles, railguns, lasers, etc.).

No mines, grenades, or other explosives.

No anti-vehicle weapons (land, sea, or air).

No automated defenses.

In other words, anyone complying with that rule would be completely screwed. There would be no way to protect against someone attacking you with a missile, and no way to retaliate without crossing their (presumably heavily mined) borders, or parachuting inside (while dodging anti-aircraft fire, of course). Meanwhile, since they have ignored the Geneva Convention, they get to bombard you with missiles, drop bombs from above with impunity, and mine, shell, or otherwise damage from afar until they are the only ones left.

Brilliant!

Oh, and one more thing - no RC airplanes. The hobbyists will hate you.

Hmm... I have accomplished the same with a hard drive

I was error-checking an old hard drive when it "violently failed" - stuck part of the platter in the wall.

Meanwhile, that would be an interesting bunch of myths to test - how fast you can overclock a CPU (complete with burning CPUs), overspin a CD, DVD, BluRay, or hard drive, or otherwise generally overtask. How long a computer would last in an oven would also be interesting (or submerged in oil, or...)

You forgot somethign in your calculations

What qualifies as an accident? Obviously, Three Mile Island, Chrenobyl, and the Fukushima plant are accidents. How about other plant accidents - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents#List_of_accidents_at_nuclear_power_plants

Of those 19 accidents listed, only four have associated deaths; many of them are simply plant shutdowns due to malfunctions - no radiation release, no deaths, etc.

Now, if an "accident", as used in your calculations, includes accidents with no deaths and/or no radiation released into the atmosphere, and if the number of accidents that do release radiation roughly follow history, then we could expect a rough average of 3 or 4 deaths per accident. If said accidents occur once every 14 years, then there will be less than one death every four years due to nuclear energy accidents.

Nuclear accidents are just like airplane accidents - one problem gets a huge story, but overall, the effects are far smaller than the competition - driving kills far more people per year than flying, just as coal - and even wind and solar - kill more people per year than nuclear. Your calculations should root you even more firmly on the pro-nuclear side...

And, for more death-comparing fun, Google for "deaths per terawatt-hour".

I believe they also did the semaphore version

Which, meanwhile, was brilliant - the only version I've managed to enjoy. Wish the entire movie were available as such...

...that's what she said?

Sorry, sorry... I couldn't resist.

I think you guys missed my point...

As I noted, current game companies probably won't sell games any cheaper than before. You can spend less money by being able to rent the game on the first day, obviously; but systems like this allow smaller game publishers to release their games more easily. Without the cost of packaging and shipping, a smaller company only has to invest programming time - similar to games for a mobile device, like the iPhone.

I agree with you - bigger game titles will not see a price drop, probably. But is smaller companies can get out there and start making some money, they might be able to muscle the bigger companies out of the way.

This isn't jumping the gun...

As I see it, this article is just trying to stand at the opposite end of the lever.

Every time radiation is released into the atmosphere, the news is all over it, trumpeting it to the world. Not to play it down... but if that radiation that leaked has a half-life of a few seconds, it's not exactly the end of the world. Yes, we don't want another Chernobyl. Yes, what's going on is dangerous.

But is it really worth the current media frenzy of "It's China Syndrome all over again!" ?

Also note...

The half-life on the contamination is measured in hours, or even minutes. This isn't a long-term contamination.

Or is it?

Maybe it's a conspiracy by those who want to believe, but are afraid the data will prove them wrong? Or... maybe not...

"Climate Change is wrong" group:

"All right, men, let's blow this thing up! We don't want THEM finding anything to support their cause!"

"Climate Change is right" group:

"All right, men, let's blow this thing up! We don't want THEM finding anything to disprove our cause!"

NASA boffin:

"Wait... was that feet or meters? Eh, whatever..."

I've lost data all over the place...

Storage is storage - maybe more reliable or less, but nothing is 100% reliable. My first lost files were on a 5 1/4 inch floppy, but I've lost information from just about every technology out there: floppy disks, zip disks, USB drives, CDs, DVDs, SCSI drives, PATA/SATA drives, RAID arrays (1, 0+1, 5), network shares - even hard copies. I've lost data from "The Cloud", and I've lost data locally. I've lost data because it was corrupted, because it was was physically lost, and because the drive it was stored on was damaged.

But you know what? Apart from one disk, I've had backups of all the data I wanted to keep - even the cloud stuff. If something is important to you, no matter what it is, you should have a complete backup of it. All my really, really important files aren't kept on Google's servers; they're stored in my bank, in a lock-box, on both a hard drive and DVDs.

I don't care what "They" expect; I back up my data, regardless of where it is.

I wouldn't say that...

I mean, the holes we'd find if Linux ran on 90% of desktops might be "very few"... he's not saying there will be the same number of problems, just that with a larger user base, more problems would come to light than with a small user base. And if you believe that a larger user base would show no more problems than a small one, then *your* lack of knowledge is showing.

I dunno...

I'd figure the sheep would take care of that, too.

"Yep, them's mah sheep, eatin' them-there ex-plo-seeves."

[BOOM!]

"...An' sometimes steppin' on 'em. You like yer mutton well done?"

@ROTC

I can honestly say that I would not want to know what that icon would look like.

Though I suspect Paris would...

But... but...

There's an icon for it an' everything! Oh, sure, it's easy to use the joke icon, or the beer icon, or the coat icon (and everyone enjoys using Paris), but when do you ever get to use the "IT?" icon?

Oh, hey, I can use the troll icon! [marks it off the list]