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Comment Re:Shared libraries are a big key (Score 2, Insightful) 328

I think with (b) the poster is talking about the totally idiotic way you move files between applications on iOS.

Say I have a text file created in one Application and I want to open it with another to do some formatting then open in again in the original application. On a sane system I'd have some sort of file browser I can use to locate the file. On iOS you have to send a copy to the other application, modify it, hope it knows about the original application so it can send it back, send back another copy of the file. It's a huge mess. It means you only ever bother to get documents onto iOS devices to view them and never bother trying to edit them there for fear you'll never be able to keep the dozens of eventual copies in order.

Even iOS applications that have native support for WebDAV manage to screw up and make duplicates of things all the time. The iWork apps on iPad are great examples of this. You wan't to work on something on a WebDAV share? Sure, here's a copy. You want to save those changes back to the WebDAV share? Ok, I'll just make another copy....

I hope that at some point Apple figures out that everybody hates their iOS file swapping system and at least gives us a walled of file area that we can access via WebDAV or over USB. Applications should then just pick files from that common area rather than maintaining their own duplicates of everything.

Access to the root filesystem of the device would be even better but I know that's unlikely to happen.

Comment Re:Doesn't dispell the basic fud (Score 1) 590

Notice when there are outbreaks of measles, etc. they never tell you what percentage of those infected were 'vaccinated', do they... I wonder why...

Rubbish.

They most certainly do. Around a third of children infected with measles will have been vaccinated but they have milder infections and are far less likely to die of them. Take a look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14506371, http://www.jstor.org/pss/30106702, and http://www.springerlink.com/content/wv6714265t3l8150/ for some examples.

Your statement is even more absurd when you consider the research that must be done to determine the probability of successful vaccination. In the case of the MMR vaccine it's only around 80%, IIRC. Luckily most children are surrounded by vaccinated people who wont spread it to them.

I don't know if you're trolling or honestly believe a big medical conspiracy is out to kill you but either way, you're wrong.

Comment The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E. (Score 5, Insightful) 118

Oh for goodness sake!

The last thing you want in an e-reader is for it to be light emitting. There's a reason we're putting so much effort into developing better eInk displays.

The only people who don't seem to understand this are the ones who don't read much or haven't read much on an eInk screen. It's a huge improvement over anything that works by shining light directly into your eyes.

Comment Re:It is harder ... (Score 1) 314

I'm fine with both.

I'm not sure what you expected from Apple. It's a technical reference. The content is well organised and concise.

The MSDN content is maybe slightly more confusing. Why, for example, is the first link under "Getting Started with Visual Basic" a list of "what's new" and the "Visual Basic Guided Tour" is in "related sections"? Seems backwards.

I'm sure it would be possible to find examples showing it to be the other way around.

Both are real documentation for professional audiences. If either was written in the style each company uses for end user documentation they'd be unusable. Not that I think you were trying to suggest they should be.

Comment Re:Dinosaurs (Score 1) 326

The only major phone that doesn't work that way? You guessed it: Apple's iPhone.

It's ridiculous, I agree, but it's quite possibly the telephone operators who are to blame.

They've been used to selling services that they know most customers will never actually use for years. A couple of phones come onto the market that actually make use of their internet connections and boom it's network meltdown.

Blaming Apple makes no sense, why would they care about how much data you use?

At least this is the problem here in Australia. On the plus side, the introduction of the iPhone means that mobile internet packages have become much better. Even Telstra, the government created monopoly, give you more than 2MB (not a typo) per month now.

Comment Re:Acupunture points. (Score 1) 68

And if you disable a virus and put a very tiny amount in a vaccine, will that make you sick> No. But will it help train your immune system against it? Yes.
Wow, where to start? First of all the amount isn't tiny. It's larger than what would often be required to infect you with the live virus. Repeatedly diluting this amount would make it less effective not more yet this is how homeopathy is supposed to work. Secondly there's a well understood process involved which doesn't rely on water having a "memory" or any of the other pseudo science homeopathy practitioners like to espouse. And thirdly there's a mountain of evidence for it working that fits or understanding of biology. Where's the evidence of homeopathy working?

If it is so diluted that it no longer contains the original material, then I agree that is likely crap. However a low dilution may work.
And the evidence of a low dilution working would be? Do you believe homeopathy's claim that repeated dilution makes a solution more potent? Where is the evidence of homeopathy working?

Look it up. They don't know how dogs can detect seizures before they occur, and they dont fully understand how they can smell on the order of one part per million.

I did some googling and can't find anything that suggests there's any mystery to dogs' sense of smell that doesn't apply to all animals. Their chemoreceptors are apparently like most mammals just denser and their olfactory bulb is forty times larger than in humans. The information I can find makes smelling things in such low concentrations perfectly plausible and not subject to some as yet undetected process. What's the great mystery you're talking about? Smell is understood and has a physical basis and it really doesn't matter if we don't know how they predict seizures because there are physiological causes for them that dogs can plausibly detect. It can't be pretended that it's some kind of spooky effect that runs counter to established science. What was the physical basis for thinking homeopathy might work? Where is the evidence of homeopathy working?

Comment Re:Acupunture points. (Score 1) 68

Dogs can detect molecules on the order of a couple parts per million, far below our level of detection. They can also smell cancer, and can tell the difference between different kinds of internal cancer just by smelling the skin.

And your point would be? If I dilute alcohol to the limits very of detection will it still get me drunk? And what of the homoeopathic solutions which have been diluted to the point that they don't contain a single molecule of the original active ingredient?

The burden of proof is on you. There's no body of evidence to suggest homeoeopathy has any effectiveness beyond the placebo effect. NOW is when you provide the evidence and claim your Nobel prize for discrediting a fairly important scientific principle (i.e. that you need a cause for a chemical effect).

They have also been shown to be able to predict seizures, and hypoglycemic attacks.

And this matters because? There are physical precursors to seizures so it's entirely possible that a dog might be able to detect them. That's neat but how is it relevant to homoeopathy where any active ingredient has been made absent?

Most of what dogs can do we dont know how they do it because we cant detect what they can.

Er, what? We know how dogs detect those things. The chemical receptors in their noses aren't that difficult to study. There's no need to make it out as some kind of spooky trick they have.

Just because we cannot detect low levels, doesn't mean they are not there nor have any effect.

We've got lots of evidence for lowering levels reducing effects and none for lowering levels increasing effects. The burden of proof is on you. Step up and actually show it and you'll be in every chemistry textbook printed in the next thousand years.

Perhaps it's my turn to be a dick: [citation needed].

Comment Re:Acupunture points. (Score 2, Informative) 68

Are you implying homeopathic medicine has no effect on people? i.e. same as a placebo?

Yes of course.

Are you suggesting that a solution diluted until there are no measurable levels of any active ingredient has any effect beyond that of plain water?

If so you'd better be writing this up because you'll get Nobel Prizes for chemistry, physics and medicine. Not to mention $1,000,000 from the James Randi Education Foundation.

This is the point in the discussion where someone will either mention their great aunt's best friend who was "cured of cancer" or start warning us of a vast medical conspiracy to keep homoeopathy a secret. Bonus points go to anyone who tells us all the repeatable controlled studies into the matter are flawed for some vague reason.

Comment Re:Acupunture points. (Score 1) 68

Some of the tattoos are near acupuncture areas. Not only were our ancestors playing bone flutes 35,000 years ago, but were also doing primitive medicine 5300 years ago. (Note homeopathic)

His body was "littered" with tattoos and some are near acupuncture points?

Colour me surprised!

Oh, and sticking needles into people can have an actual measurable effect. Therefore it's not homeopathic. Even the WHO agrees apparently.

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