Posts by Pompous Git

"Read about the Cage/Zappa case here:"

Re: So why is the 32 bit version twice the size

"It is like the surface of the tape in a tape recorder."

Re: So why is the 32 bit version twice the size

"If you made it a file with maximum compression then the length would be a single bit = 0. The playback time could be slowed to whatever you want."

Re: Test

"Speaking of hacking, does this look like a graph to anyone else?"

Re: 10 minutes of silence

"It is occupied by nothing. Same as zero on the number line."

Re: 10 minutes of silence

"One cannot copyright titles, only content. It has no content."

1. If there's no content, then what is it that's occupying disk space?

2. Will the cognoscenti be able to perceive a difference between the 24 bit and 32 bit versions?

3. Will converting the wav files to 320 kb/s MP3 distort the silence to the extent that it becomes annoying?

Re: Morrow, what a clown.

"Don't blame people for not subscribing to something that is not attainable due to their and the liberals incompetence."

Ookla

It's actually slightly faster than usual today.

Re: a quick think gives me 3 reasonable usecases.

"The workl awaits..."

Workl workl

Re: Want/need?

"I suspect there are a lot of much simpler, low tech solutions to switching a light (or other switch) on and off without leaving a chair."

Re: HomePlug?

"in general, routers are not connected directly to the mains electricity"

Re: Want/need?

"Anyone for an internet connected corkscrew?"

"Does it let you switch on your bedroom light at home in Edinburgh while in a hotel in Sydney?"

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"And using this particular marker, your father is not a relative. I'd say that makes this a pretty poor measure of "race"."

Re: Devil's Advocate @Updraft102

"So if you are right about what "right-wing" means, then pretty much everyone else is wrong about it"

Political Compass

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"White people are becoming an underclass? Really? Where?"

Only A Pawn In Their Game

Re: How many downthumbs will this get?

"That brings back a political joke from the Soviet era."

The Party representative approaches the old man. "What's that? Are you deriding our Party? Everybody can see, when you were a child, comrade Stalin was not yet born!"

"That's precisely what I'm grateful to him for!" the Jew said.

Re: Fuck me...

"I am half Danish."

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"mtDNA contains 37 genes. That's three-seven, thirty-seven, of around 19,000 coding genes in the human genome.

Unless those genes differ significantly in function from one haplogroup to another, there's very little in them that you could claim distinguishes one human from another."

But the main haplogroups contain subgroups that are grouped geographically and/or culturally, and are associated with varying ratios of important genes. I referred earlier to the recessive genes possessed by many Ashkenazim that can cause great distress when conveyed from both parents. The genes causing the problem aren't mtDNA, but they are strongly associated with a particular haplotype subgroup.

"Pharmacogenomics is the study of how genes affect a person’s response to drugs. This relatively new field combines pharmacology (the science of drugs) and genomics (the study of genes and their functions) to develop effective, safe medications and doses that will be tailored to a person’s genetic makeup.

Many drugs that are currently available are “one size fits all,” but they don't work the same way for everyone. It can be difficult to predict who will benefit from a medication, who will not respond at all, and who will experience negative side effects (called adverse drug reactions). Adverse drug reactions are a significant cause of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. With the knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project, researchers are learning how inherited differences in genes affect the body’s response to medications. These genetic differences will be used to predict whether a medication will be effective for a particular person and to help prevent adverse drug reactions.

The field of pharmacogenomics is still in its infancy. Its use is currently quite limited, but new approaches are under study in clinical trials. In the future, pharmacogenomics will allow the development of tailored drugs to treat a wide range of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and asthma."

Should we really ignore our biological differences, or accept that they exist and make good use of that knowledge?

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"No - because haplogroups can interbreed with each other. It's as meaningless a distinction as hair colour.."

"And your point about being able to change haplogroup - the same logic applies to any other genetic marker."

Re: Nazi is a slur anyway

"Should we feel happy they did not adopt the circle or say the cross."

Medieval swastika at Coventry Cathedral still as I saw it when ~8 or 9 years old.

Re: Everything I don't like is a Nazi

"If we're being pedantic, it's "Grandmother"."

Re: Everything I don't like is a Nazi

"Upset that I skipped giving a definition for Grampa Nazi?"

Re: Everything I don't like is a Nazi

"Grammar Nazi: A woman over 60 years old who advocates ethnic cleansing."

"True capitalism depends on increasing the business output to satisfy the demand of increasing customers. Unfortunately without infinite resources or customers it will always fail at some point."

There's an old saying that we didn't leave the stone age because of a shortage of rocks.

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"A haplogroup is not a race."

So a haplogroup is not "an interbreeding subgroup of a species whose individuals are chromosomally distinct from other members of the species". Reference please. I do stand to be corrected if wrong. It's my understanding that you can't change from one haplogroup to another without changing who your mother was. A bit more difficult than "stamp collecting".

Re: " ..call a spade a spade..."

"The thing I never got, is that shovels are more spade shaped than spades."

Depends on the shovel...

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"There is only one race here, the human race."

"I attended a lecture by Fuller one time. He was a very interesting man."

"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

Re: Nazi is a slur anyway

"After WWII, we should have renamed toilets "Nazis" and used the symbol of the swastika as the international symbol to indicate a toilet."

swastika: "A primitive symbol or ornament of the form of a cross with equal arms with a limb of the same length projecting at right angles from the end of each arm, all in the same direction and (usually) clockwise; also called gammadion and fylfot.

1882 E. C. Robertson in Proc. Berw. Nat. Club IX. No. 3. 516 In Japan‥the cross-like symbol of the sun, the Swastica, is put on coffins.    1895 Reliquary Oct. 252 The use of the Swastica cross in mediaeval times.    1904 Times 27 Aug. 10/3 [In Tibet] a few white, straitened hovels in tiers.‥ On the door of each is a kicking swastika in white, and over it a rude daub of ball and crescent." [From the OED]

In Sanskrit swastika means "well-being". The symbol has been used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains for millennia and is widely believed to have originated in India. Early European travellers to Asia such as Marco Polo were inspired by its positive and ancient associations and started using it back home.

There are more cultures on this planet than the one dominated by the USA. Shitting on them would hardly be likely to improve international relations.

Re: Something people are missing.

"You sound accusatory. Have I come across as condoning this kind of behavio(u)r?"

"how's the ol' History War coming along? Visited Risdon Cove and/or Oyster Cove recently?"

Re: @The Tick Godwin not applicable here

"The government voices its opinion on issues all the time without sacrificing anyone's free speech rights."

Censorship dressed up is denial of free speech

"If the warning bells are not ringing by now, they should be. Clearly, the Racial Discrimination Act is open to rubbery interpretation on just what an offensive or insulting tone is. If I go into my classroom and in the course of my lesson I use a tone that is apparently offensive or insulting to any racially identifiable group, then I am breaking the law. This background is worth keeping in mind in the light of the intention of Attorney-General Nicola Roxon to make changes that are in the exposure draft of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012. Under the mooted changes, there is a broadening of the definition of what constitutes offence or insult.

The draft goes further, stating that offending and insulting will come under the umbrella of "unfavourable treatment".

To quote King Lear: "That way madness lies."

The unspecified "unfavourable treatment" is a worrying catch-all phrase. The Roxon proposal intends to expand the reach of current anti-discrimination law to all those in "any area of public life", which is defined as work, education, membership of clubs and sport participation.

This means that if I go into my classroom and dismiss a particular indigenous, Chinese, American, Australian or any nationality text as bad writing, should anyone take offence or be insulted by my remarks, then I am in effect, under the Roxon view, breaking the law. Then there is the question of tone.

After the Bolt case, Marcia Langton, professor of Australian indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne, in a piece of untrammelled invective published in The Sunday Age, directed to "Bolt and his kind", said: "What Bolt refuses to acknowledge, or is deliberately misleading about is the fact that identifying as Aboriginal is almost certainly likely to lead to being run out of school by racists." This is wrong.

Her remarks were, and still are, to me as a whitefella, "offensive" and "insulting" and were made in a "tone" that is sneering and sarcastic. They imply that my school, which nurtures Aboriginal children and has staff give up their time to teach in remote communities, is one where Aboriginal children are likely to be excluded by racists on staff. This is not a "fact" and it discredits Langton as a serious academic.

Still, if an aggrieved student made a complaint against me because of what I said or the tone in which it was said, my employer would have to undertake, as would be the case for any educational institution, an exhaustive and time-consuming inquiry on the supposition that an insult was intended or offensive remarks made.

The Roxon laws would therefore make the flow of free speech untenable."

Re: Yeah, no.

"The Ashkenazim, also known as Ashkenazi Jews, derive their name from Ashkenaz not from Nazism."

I think you can guess how I know that. My name's Jonathan, not Ignatius.

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"There is no scientific definition of a race."

Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 1777. ISBN 0-12-200400-0.

Race: an interbreeding subgroup of a species whose individuals are geographically, physiologically, or chromosomally distinct from other members of the species".

"Look up the whole Linnnaean (or other) taxonomic system. There are zero mentions of "race"."

Re: Something people are missing.

"For example, eugenics is included in various curricula today. As in "those who forget history ..."."

"But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little-known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the pseudoscience aimed at "improving" the human race. In its extreme, racist form, this meant wiping away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in 27 states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries."

Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection

Re: Something people are missing.

"Excuse me? THE FUCKING NAZIS NEVER HAD THIS COUNTRY! How can the blithering idiots "take back" something they never had?"

"In 1906 J.H. Kellogg provided funding to help found the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. The Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded in Cold Spring Harbor, New York in 1911 by the renowned biologist Charles B. Davenport, using money from both the Harriman railroad fortune and the Carnegie Institution. As late as the 1920s, the ERO was one of the leading organizations in the American eugenics movement.

....

By 1928, there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum."

Hitler didn't gain power in Germany until 1933.

Re: The thin line between right and wrong

"Just to clarify that a bit more, I subscribe to Buckminster Fuller's view that a "racist" is "someone who believes in race." There is only one race, here, and we're all part of it. For that reason, I also reject the idea of forming organisations to advocate for one's race. It's a misguided concept."

Incorrect word usage inevitably leads to talking at cross purposes. Species != race.

* Offspring inherit their mtDNA from their mother. Membership of a haplogroup is determined by which of the available mtDNA types you have. It's possible that Africa has more than three haplogroups; more may remain to be discovered.

Re: The future...

"I appreciate that you are reiching for that pun"

"Why do white supremacists always seem to be obese, scruffy, poorly educated and plastered in tatts?"

I've actually contemplated getting one discrete tattoo on my forearm. A heart with an arrow through it and the words: "Born to raise tomatoes" underneath.

Re: Optional

"it seems a bit odd to me that you'd demand Google 'clarify' its code of conduct to people who *aren't bound by it*"

NB I deliberately chose an extreme example, not a real-world one.

Re: Suggestion

"The handy thing about the symphony orchestra case is that you really only need someone in a symphony orchestra to be good at one thing: playing the music."

* To be able to follow the direction of the current conductor

* To turn up to work. I am minded of when the brass section of the LSO decided to spend the afternoon in the pub when Frank Zappa hired the orchestra

* To get along with their fellow musicians. A tympanist who tells the first violinist she's a cunt who couldn't play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star if she tried might not be a welcome addition...