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Comment Re:Evidence (Score 1) 394

"He gives proof". As the whole problem with the belief in god or gods is the lack of any proof, I think we'd all be grateful if you could point us at this proof. It would certainly save a lot of debate!

Your sig. "Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby." In the words of Doctor Leonard McCoy "I think that's my line". Seriously: Isn't this one for the non-believers? It's a great summary of the way I feel about the term "atheist", which means a non-believer in the whole god thing. I don't believe there is any sort of creator or god, however I fail to see why that should define me as a person. I don't, for example believe refrigerators can be used to transform lead into gold, but I don't go around saying I'm an a-refrigoalchemist either. In fact there's a whole bunch of nonsense I don't believe. I'm a normal guy. It's the people who believe in the whacky stuff with no evidence that need the labels (if only so I can see em coming :P)

Cheers,

Scoot.

Comment Re:Evidence (Score 1) 394

I'm not sure if you mentioned "God" there in jest, or if you are a real believer. If you are, I'd like to know how you reconcile your sig. "Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, But he who hates correction is stupid." with a blind belief in a doctrine (the whole divine creator thing) that has been "corrected" many times as we've discovered more about the universe. Faith abhors correction - you must believe - despite any evidence to the contrary, in whatever it tells you surely.

If you were joking, and your sig is aimed at pointing this out to the faith guys - please accept my apologies for being a bit slow on the uptake. I don't have the answers around how the bees do this, but that doesn't mean the answer is automatically "There's a god, and he/she/it did it".

Cheers,

Scoot.

Games

Avataritis — On the Abundance of Customizable Game Characters 78

Martyn Zachary writes "The Slowdown has posted a new critique, 'Avataritis,' that attempts to portray the utilization of character customization as a pandemic, emotional response on behalf of publishers and developers to finding the easiest, most efficient solution to the very unique dilemma presented by the enlarging, widening player base of video games. 'No mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.' The article discusses the emergence and role of gender criticism and research in relation to the recent proliferation of the customizable avatar. The story also dissects the very act of character creation, subsequently aiming to clarify several semantic distortions related to the terminology utilized in character creation, and in turn breaking apart the concepts of relatability and understandability, wholly differentiating the two. The overarching analysis is finally related to examples from the gaming marketplace, where many continue to corroborate apparent falsehoods and misunderstandings in relation to the utilization of the avatar. Ultimately, the writer hopes to dissuade readers, developers and players from believing that written narratives are going away as customization and emergent content are entering video games with full force."
Data Storage

Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia 252

PetManimal writes "Computerworld has a story about a new technology developed by Keio University researchers that creates artificial bacterial DNA that can carry more than 100 bits of data within the genome sequence. The researchers claimed that they encoded "e= mc2 1905!" on the common soil bacteria, Bacillius subtilis. The bacteria-based data storage method has backup and long-term archival functionality." The researchers say "While the technology would most likely first be used to track medication, it could also be used to store text and images for many millennia, thwarting the longevity issues associated with today's disk and tape storage systems ... The artificial DNA that carries the data to be preserved makes multiple copies of the DNA and inserts the original as well as identical copies into the bacterial genome sequence. The multiple copies work as backup files to counteract natural degradation of the preserved data, according to the newswire. Bacteria have particularly compact DNA, which is passed down from generation to generation. The information stored in that DNA can also be passed on for long-term preservation of large data files."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Are distros worth the headaches? 6

One of my (oft repeated) complaints about standard distributions such as Gentoo, Debian or Fedora Core, is that I slaughter their package managers very quickly. I don't know if it's the combination of packages, the number of packages, the phase of the moon, or what, but I have yet to get even three months without having to do some serious manual remodelling of the package database to keep things going. By "keep things going", I literally mean just that. I have routinely pushed Gentoo (by doing n

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