David Bessey

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Static Page Comments

• October 12, 1999, on MIT Graduation 1998:

  Maybe "peace, peace, peace" was a request made of the world's governments (Clinton in particular?), rather than a statement that peace exists now. Those orange hats are unusual. What do they (with the remainder of the outfit) signify?

• October 12, 1999, on Universities at their best:

  "Differently Abled", HA! I am on Disability because of depression (chronic, severe) (and a few other problems). I am NOT differently abled: That would mean that I gained something equal to what I have lost, and that has not happened! "Disability" means just that: Some ability DISappeared. Forget Political Correctness (I do!); just use correctness. Dave

• October 12, 1999, on Bill Clinton, Humanitarian:

  Suggestive and offensive?  That is just not possible!  And who says knee-pads are "suggestive", anyway?

• November 19, 1999, on IMG Format Comparison:

  The difference between JPEGs and GIFs is that JPEG compresses the image, but GIF compresses only the data. GIFs tend to be larger because they contain more information. The GIF89a specification allows more than the 256 colors allowed by earlier GIF versions; but some programs (Photoshop 4 being one) limit their GIFs to 256 colors. This means that monochrome photographs have the same content after GIFing as they did in their original form, and that color photos COULD look just as good, but probably don't. Light JPEG compression can yield an image which looks (almost) exactly like the original. I say "almost" because if you use a photographic editing program to "enlarge" the JPEG photo, you will find strangely-colored splotches, and squares (8 x 8 pixels), which probably make the enlarged picture essentially useless. So you get the trade-off between picture fidelty and download time which Phil discusses on this page.

• November 23, 1999, on A Future So Bright You'll Need to Wear Sunglasses :

  "How come when you hit "Play" on the CD player, the receiver doesn't turn itself on and switch its input to CD?" Sony's XBR-100 TV (1996) will do that. I am not sure whether it works with CD players (which its remote control WILL operate) but when you press press "play" for "VCR 1" the TV switches to its "VCR 1" input. I do not know whether the TV will turn on (if needed), but it probably would--it has a sensor-operated on/off control which is cool. Of course this TV cost 3200 dollars, and had 3D filtering, and just about every other TV feature one could want.

• November 23, 1999, on We Have Chosen Shame and Will Get War.:

  I started writing HTML about six to nine months ago. A structural language? I think not. I consider HTML to be a formatting system something like a Postscript wannabe but with color and links. I use a "one pixel gif" with HSPACE and VSPACE to provide white space. I use tables (and in some bizarre ways) to format the data so that spacial relations are preserved. I have even created a table which can simulate a dictionary entry (bold words OUTDENTED above the descriptive paragraph(s)). Speaking of nonstandard colors, one site had blue links on one page. The next page showed up in red. I wondered "But how could I have seen these already? I have never been to this site before!". I found that normal links were red on that page. As an example of a no-no, that one was first-rate. Some of my pages use the standard blue/red, but I usually color my text dark blue, and links use blue/black. The new and visited links are compatible with the text, but visited links are still ...