Dak

well, in side-to-side languages it's incredibly annoying to have to scroll sideways every single sentance, whereas it's only moderately annoying to have to scroll down every few paragraphs. My screen resolution is 832*624, and incompetent web-designers hard-code their websites to span 1024 pixles, which means that i do have to scroll side-to-side every single line and it's incredably annoying. drop your screen res' to mine for a while if you want to experience it.

what about the japanese kamikaze pilots of WWII? i'd suspect that their motivation for giving up their life for their country was mainly social: the perks they got inbetween starting kamikaze trianing and dying, the perks their surviving family members got after their death, and the high reguard that samurai were held in for being willing to die for their side (iirc, kamikazi pilots were considered samurai?)? if that's the case, i'd call it a toss up between social reward and... hero worship?.. as main motivation for being a kamikaze pilot. or possibly patriotism?..

yeah, but some questions are right-biased aswell: maybe that just makes it easyer to tell which way you dress (if you agree with the lefty questions and disagree with the righty ones, then you're a lefty, etc). lol, dude: question number 1 from their faq: interesting you didn't spot the right bias ---- I'm there with ghandi btw:

make it so that plugs have little energy-counters on them, so people can see how much they're paying for electricity. I think that's why people get why a car that does more than one mile to the gallon is good, but don't get why it's every-bit as economically and environmentally important to have electricity-efficient appliances: because the whole electricity-use thing is somewhat abstracted and less visable.

umm... how so? there are two answres, and i know that 'yes' is 'right-wing' and 'no' is 'liberal', but i don't see any bias in the question? 'it's ok for the poor to die or suffer in agony, as long as those who are rich enough to pay for decent medicare can get it' would, imo, be a liberal bias.

Most of the predictions make predictions based on given scenarioes: e.g., if we carry on as we are, x will probably happen; if we half our CO2 emmissions by 2020, y will probably happen. iow, the predictions are not blind to the fact that we could alter our behaviour in responce to the situation. I think what lance is getting at is this: 1/the GW models... 2/...state with x% certainty... 3/...that y will happen if z when you say 'we know the variables and the uncertainty is factored into the predictions', you're only really addressing parts 2 and 3. if we assume that the GW predictions are absolutely correct, then when the GW predictions state that something is x% likely to happen, then it is x% likely to happen; however, you also have to factor in that the GW predictions may be innaccurate, not only in their predictions but also in their assessment of the surity of their predictions. personally, i think it's solid-enough science, and there's enough effort being put into it, the we can accept the predictions with a relitively high confidence that they'll turn out to be pretty accurate.

oh my good god stop being so ****ing politically correct. Did it never occour to either of you that, perhaps, the thing that orientals find much more offensive than being called 'oriental' is having people assume that they're too stupid to actually figure out when someone's using an offensive term or not? It'd be like if you guys forsed people to not call 'people like me' brits, britons, europeans, etc because the 'correct' term is 'english' and i'll be offended at anything else, what with me lacking the inteligence to differnetiate between the sentiment behind calling me 'english', 'british', 'scotish', 'european', 'a limey', and 'a white-ass cracker bastard'. anyway, isn't 'oriental' more china/japan, whereas 'asian' covers the orient + everywhere you'd expect to find black caucasians (india, middle-east, etc)? --- http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A some go from right-to-left. afaik, japanese computers generally display side-to-side, even tho their text usually goes up-and-down in books.

hmm... why me? an alternative would be to choose a load of people who have been here for ages and we trust not to be tits with it and give them the ability to click a button and simultaniously report and soft-delete a post at will (maybe a max of 10 a day or something). looooooooads of people spring to mind who could do that. duno wether that's feasable from an implimentation pov, but either way would deal with, e.g., random tubgirl postings.

OK, i'm tired, hungry, and i'm missing scrubs. can someone tell me wtf this thread is/was about, 'cos i swear it makes no sense to me?

lmfao googling atomikpsycho returns sfn first, hypography next, and got owned third. Maybe if we clued hypography in to do likewize, our powers combined would make it the first result?

It would make up for the fact that i can't actually spell grama

I suspect klaynos is reffering to 'copy' a la 'copywriter' [sic]. advertising copy, etc. someone who has rights of ownership to the copy, i.e. the body of text. copyright != right to copy. even if not, as has allready been mentioned it's an ectymological falicy. what the word may or may not have originally meant is irrelivent. [completely off topic]DoG: shouldn't that first 'whomever' have been 'whoever', as it was in the subjective?[/completely off topic]

is anyone else reminded of dragonball Z? y'know, with the high quantaties of random, drawn-out yells coupled with 'now you must face the new, improved ultimate power in the universe, 37.3 times as powerful as the last ultimate power that you just defeated', and the general booring repetitiveness?

indeed. "don't be a dick; if you are a problem, you will be made to go away, end of story" should suffice.

so? no one is claiming that people who are overly-insensitive are neccesarily rationally wrong. all that's being said is that people who are overly-insensitive are dicks who are unpleasant to talk with. and as a practical point, wherever you're speaking, if you're untactful about any sensitive subject the conversation is likely to degenerate pretty quickly. hence, IF p&r were to come back, people would have to be more tactful and respectful than they were, and -- the flipside of the coin -- people would have to be more tolerent of valid critisism, even if it's unpleasant. people who are allready making an effort to swallow an unpalatable truth about something that may be central to their life should not also be further burdened with having to swallow rudeness along with it. it's common courtacy.

we need to tip-toe out of deferrence to the fact that people feel strongly about religion, so you're effectively treading on their feelings. This is a comment in general, not specific to this site, but if you want to make the claim that religion is the product of stupidity (which you more or less did), then you have to recognise that you'll be offending many people (i.e., religious people). by all means say it, but say it as tactfully as possible and make sure you're right before saying it (e.g., provide evidence). substitue 'religion' with 'woman' or 'black people' if you can't see it: if you really think they're less inteligent, then go ahead and say it, but make damn sure you're right and word it as tactfully and accurately as possible 'cos it's pretty obvious you'll be offending people. IF p&r were to come back to SFN, people would have to treat it in the above manner. a large problem before we got rid of p&r was that people didn't only want to discuss, comment and critisize, but also bitch about religions; also, people confused 'honest bluntness' with 'abrasive rudeness' and tempers got lost. SFN is a science site that also handles discussions about politics. all non-scientific non-political discussions are liable to be 'censored'. this includes religion. well, yes. by most definitions of 'god', there can be no empiprical evidence to his existance independant of the truthfulness of his existance, putting it outside the realm of science (unlike most stuff in nature).

yes, they do seem daft at first glance. however, on closer inspection (see below) they actually make sence (tho i'm not sure wether 'assault via post/telephone' hasn't been replaced with something else now). Kinda like the stupider instances of copyright law -- they seem daft, but people would, no doubt, break the spirit of the law without breaking the letter if these things weren't technically illegal. i can't see anyone actually being charged with ©-infringement for simply accidentally catching a ©'d painting in a photo, any more than i could see me being charged with assault if i sent you an arsey PM (intentionally taking/selling photos with ©'d pictures in them, or a sustained PM storm, otoh...) I'll IM my sister and ask. she's studying law, and i read them from one of her books, where they were given as test-case examples of 'odd' assault, tho it looks as if the law may have changed since these cases. IIRC: In the postal case, it was established that phisical presence was not required: it was enough that someone 'solicit an undesireable psycologically-induced phisical responce' or something; essentially, someone was sending cut-and-paste harassing letters which scared someone, hence assault. in the telephone case, it was established that you need not even say anything -- the person kept phoning someone up and 'breathing at them', again scaring them and thus committing assault: House of Lords discussion about it (the case is 'R(egina) v. Ireland') here btw, i was looking for 'R v Ireland' 'cos i thought it was the case wherein someone was charged with assault for failing to do something (vis: move his car, which he had accidentally parked on a policeman's foot ).

I think copyrights should expire earlyer than they do, possibly with extentions if it can be proven that the company/person has not reclaimed their expenses yet, if it's part of an ongoing series that the author is continuously contributing to, or if it gets really popular towards the end of it's copyright lifetime (bit unfair otherwize). people owning copyrights to works they never even created for decades upon decades isn't a good situation. the intent was to guarantee authors financial reward for their work -- and thus to stimulate the creation of new work -- which then ends up in the public domain. it was never to stimulate new work which then ends up feeding the coffers of some company decades after the author has died. severian: both a handshake and a hug could count as assault and battery. people have, in the uk, been charged with assault via post and via telephone, with at least one case of assault via telephone when the assaulter didn't actually say anything. [/ot]

how would you measure 'morally best'? i would assume that each ethical school would descide that it's own answre is morally the best. from a practicle pov, the video link would just be recruiting ammo for the terrorists. and it would be recruiting ammo because, imo, it would be an example of the US doing something barbaric and morally wrong. not to mention that your allies would have pressure on them to withdraw support. and, anyway, even if it works you'll just get threatened again later, and this time you won't have their kid. better to just let them bomb you now and shrug it off, show them that you won't be cowed, then move on.

Is that true? I'd hav thought that the 'hypothesys' would predict that both the existance and non-existance of god would result in no evidence; hence, empirically, a lack of evidence can not be thought of as empirically supporting the rejection of the hypothesys? iow: empiricism/science cannot, strictly speaking, comment on god (of the 'i shalt not revealeth mine presence' variety). hence the stance that science may be best thought of as agnostic, tho i'm not entirely sure that's the correct term for a disipline that completely and utterly ignores the possibility that god exists due to it's incapability to descide and it's lack of need to make a descision? what militant atheists? even ydoaps has calmed down... nice to see you back btw, hope you stay -- afaict, the maths and chemistry sections are completely free of religious discussion. ----- and i still think we need the p&r forum back to sandbox these kind of discussions. they're starting to pop up more frequently about the place.

couldn't you put the hdd in a newer laptop with a cdrom, install a light-weight distro, then swap back? just partition a small area of the hdd, plonk the contents of the floppy(s) on there, and set it as the first bootable, maybe?

hmm... if (say) lungs are in short supply, and there'd not be enough to go around even if everyone took care of their lungs, and yet people use up what few spare lungs that we have by ruining theirs with known risky behaviour like smoking, then tbh i don't see the problem with, not denying smokers new lungs, but prioritising non-smokers. same with livers and alcoholics, etc.

if you want to combine chance and rewarding donours without resorting to buying organs, then maybe you could let the donours cue-jump? I mean, i'm a donour (as in, carry the card that says people can salvage my body when i'm dead), i don't see why, if all else is equal, someone who isn't willing to contribute to the system should get an organ before me. If donours can cue-jump, and non-donours thus have a higher chance of dying if they ever need an organ, i assume more people would donate?

it depends what you mean by 'random stuff'. if it's random stuff that isn't accessed that often, then your best bet is to do something along the lines of this: defrag the random stuff drive so theres a 1G continuous block free turn off pagefiling reboot (deletes pagefile) set a 1G min/1G max pagefile on the 'random stuff' drive reboot (so that the pagefile is made) that way, you'll have one nonfragmented pagefile on the hdd that is accessed least often. setting both the min/max to 1G ensures that it won't grow in size, so you don't need to put it in it's own partition (assuming avoiding fragmentation is the only reason for putting it in it's own partition? i'm not sure wether FAT and NTFS are both equals as far as pagefiling goes). having said all that, i'm not sure how windows handles two pagefiles? i.e., wether it chooses the one on the disk that is least used, or swaps onto one hdd whilst accessing the other?

you could combine the ideas: offer people a smaller cash insentive to become once-i'm-dead donours. maybe even something simple like $20 off of your medical insurance if you sign a donor agreement (would no doubt be cheaper in the long run for the insurance companies to promote organ donation). all of the down-sides of buying organs dissapear if you're willing to wait untill they're dead. lol, or maybe a quid-pro-quo arrangement? if someone recieves a lung transplant, yoink a kidney in payment whilst you have them open?