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* Posts by compton

7 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2010

We're raising generations of MUTANT KIDS, says Icelandic study

compton

Random mutation is only one cause of genetic diversity

Shagging is the other one.

I'm no biologist (although I have just read wikipedia). My understanding is that our cells each contain a set of chromosome pairs, except for the sperm and egg cells, which have a set of unpaired chromosomes, ie half the number.

After a good ol' bit of bonking, mum & dad chromosomes all pair up to create a completely new set of chromosome pairs for the offspring. Additionally, the chromosomes themselves can swap bits of DNA with each other.

All rather tawdry, but the upshot is that sex can produce genetic traits that neither parent possess. Sexual species have vastly more genetic diversity than asexual species, and this greater genetic diversity leads to more rapid evolution. This is why all 'advanced' species are sexual.

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.eu is a Euro domain, for Euro people - top legal bod

compton
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Re: should be .gov.us

That's as maybe, however the .gov TLD was created for government bodies by the US. No other governments at that time had any interest in a presence on what was almost entirely a US internet.

It's the same kind of historical reason why the UK is the only country which does not print its country name on postage stamps.

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compton
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Headmaster

Re: the tld .COM is for companies

A common misconception, however .COM long predates the commercialisation of the internet, and does not stand for 'company'.

It stands for 'computer', and indicated that a particular net address belonged to a computer that was directly accessible via the net, as opposed to a router serving as a gateway to a LAN.

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iPhone stroking keeps us satisfied the most, say fanbois

compton
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Re: How did they conduct the survey?

You could be on to something here. I've been wondering lately how come Apple products all look the same and yet each new model generates so much excitement among the fanbase - it's actually ~because~ they all look the same.

It ties in with another surprising factor behind Apple's success. The intelligent people I know who buy Apple (ie not the ones who are doing it to keep up with the Joneses) say they like iPhone because you have less choice than with Android, and choice takes time and time is money.

Perhaps the marketeers at Cupertino deserve some respect for having sussed this so early on.

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Randy dwarf galaxies are making billions of baby stars

compton

Us laypeople really need a bit more help understanding this! The implication seems to be that galaxies produce stars in proportion to their mass, in a repeating cycle of gas clouds condensing to form stars which go supernova creating gas clouds etc

So the dwarf galaxies are producing approx 10 times as many stars per unit of galactic mass than the milky way (according to my shaky calculations at least)

Which is pretty cool, but I suspect my assumptions are probably wrong, unfortunately this article (and NASA's one) doesn't provide enough info to fill in the gaps.

Any knowledgeable astronomers out there??

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Memo to open source moralists: Put a sock in it

compton
Facepalm

Modern Day Robin Hood?

Amazing how many otherwise intelligent people swallow the self-serving hype that comes out of the mouths of modern-day ultra-capitalists. It's no surprise that this small time wannabe has such drooling admiration.

Gates, and his empire built on FUD, can be said to have stolen from rich and poor alike; the fact that he has bought off his guilty conscience by donating a small portion of his ill-gotten gains should fool no-one other than himself.

The world would be a better and fairer place if Microsoft hadn't coerced its way into its current dominant position, however given that it did, things would be even worse if open source hadn't become such a serious competitor to Redmond's insatiable greed.

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Finland mulls legalizing use of unsecured Wi-Fi

compton
Big Brother

Fingering Net Criminals

If you have an open wireless network accessible to any passer by, how can you be held responsible for activity on that network?

Say for instance a recording company monitors your IP and downloads copyrighted material from your IP. What grounds would they have to demand unreasonable amounts of money from you if anyone could have been connected and performing said criminal act using that IP?

I think this has always been the reason for laws like this, rather than protecting bandwidth of unsecured WiFi networks.

Also it is possible to encrypt a WiFi signal but not use authentication, this article appears to confuse the two concepts in places.

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