Dak

I think we can all agree. however, in most those cases, the predictions by people who actually knew what they were talking about were accurate enough. a few from your list: prediction: as 1vedo pointed out accuracy of prediction: pretty accurate, as it came to pass public oppinion: ZOMG, TEH END OF TEH WORLDZ IS COMINGZ!!!!1 accuracy of public opinon: inacurate prediction: if the bugs aren't fixed, then the year 2000 might cause lots of odd behaviour in computers. accuracy of prediction: n/a: bug fixed before 2000. valid prediction all the same, as i think it's undisputed that lots of odd behaviour would actually have happened if the bug weren't fixed. public oppinion: ZOMGZORS! planes will fall out of skies, hospitals will explode, our nuclear defence mechanisms will shut down, and all the other things that an integer-overflow usually cause will come to pass accuracy of public opinon: stupid. (using the latest flu scare as an example) prediction: we've found strains of flu that are similar enough to 1918 flu that they could possibly mutate into something as highly pathogenic. based on 1918 flu, if we have one similar it could kill up to 15,000,000 (iirc) in the uk. accuracy of prediction: didn't come to pass, but note the 'could possibly' bit. based on sound evience/science/logic etc. public oppinion: zomg, teh plague is coming and we're all going to die etc. accuracy of public opinon: crap. all you're really pointing out is that the media overblow things to sell papers, and that people are generally stupid enough to buy it. so then "I suspect global warming, which is real, will be the same. It will happen, but will not be the major disaster predicted" should be: I suspect global warming, which is real, will be the same. It will happen, but will not be the major disaster predicted by uninformed members of the public and/or the media. which is true enough, but still leaves the possibility that it could be the Very Bad Thing that the people who know what they're talking about say it could be.

the school/library/whatever would be ferrying you're internet traffic to and fro your computer and whatever computer you're contacting remotely, so they'll still know you're looking at porn that's if it'd work...

i think you're right as far as 'i don't give a dam' goes, but as far as 'god damn' etc is conserned, it roots from 'damnation' (condemn to hell, or otherwize condemn). 'god damn', then, is technically a beseachment to god to send something to hell, and so is blasphemous. why damn on it's own is rude i don't know (it's not at all over here in the uk). probably still blasphemous, or something.

because rape requires a lack of concent and a taking-advantage-of. we still haven't seen wether these people were incapable of making their own descisions, nor that they were exploited. I wonder which groups did/didn't actually see the film so far, or even look into it at all?

"Mr Portmann, an associate professor with QUT's Creative Industries Faculty, is supervising the thesis" assuming 'Creative Industries Faculty' = media studies, no, not psychological; a 'soft' science by the looks of it. I don't know how good the ethical safeguards are in the soft sciences? 'laughing at the disabled' may not be nice, but neither is rape, aids, cancer, racism, etc; all of these have been scientifically investigated, tho, in order to understand the phenomenas better. anyway, 'mentally disabled' doesn't neccesarily mean 'incapable of giving informed consent'; people with torrets, schizophrenia, spastic, etc, can all probably pass as 'mentally disabled', but still understand what's going on and give concent to be laughed at. I think condeming the uni as bad is a bit pre-emptive, given the little info we have.

oh well, next question she gets that requires knowing how science starts she might do better on.

an (old) claud bulter rock mountainbike. not really sure what to say about it, other than it's great? deals with crappy roads perfectly, v-breaks with alloy wheels (working breaks = vital), and front-suspention for a bit of extra grip, confort, and 'whoops i misjudged that curb at high speed oh well my wheels probably not buckled' action

that still seems like a lot of superfolouse maths just to eliminate even numbers... out of interest, can't you do the equivelent of YT's STEP 2 in erlang? or something simple like: oddIntegers=[3] #a list while oddIntegers[-1] <= n: #till the last list entry has passed n oddIntegers += oddIntegers+2 #append the next odd number is there some advantage to not using steps or something like the above, or is it because the above 'isn't functional programing' (not that i really understand what that is) so isn't part of erlang?

for sieve(N) -> sieve(lists:seq(2, N), []), assuming that '[]' is the incriment/step, and [] defaults to 1, wouldn't sieve(N) -> sieve(lists:seq(3, N), [2]) be faster by skipping all the even (and thus non-prime) numbers? then just whack '2' at the begining of the generated list.

just to check: you're not actually typing the '$' in are you? that seems to make bash ignore the first command (eg, sudo/gksudo). that'd be consistant with the 'read-only' messages (as you'd not be opening the file as root if the sudo bit's being ignored, so you wouldn't have write permission). try sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list and it should ask you for your password before opening gedit.

I prefer the feel of xubuntu over those two (tho admittedly i haven't used DSL that much) and, tbh, the processor is just about coping ok.

Ive only got 256MB ram, the usage is almost always < 50% (running xubuntu). my 900MHz processor, otoh, tends to get maxed out quite often

iirc, thin-layer chromatography with an indicator is usually used first, 'cos it's cheaper and faster, with HPLC used to confirm (tho, i think theres a new cheaper/faster confirmation test used now, elisa maybe?).

the slippery slope fallicy/paradox is wierd. i'm not sure that the 'patriot act shouldn't have passed or next thing we'll know, we'll end up in a martial state' claim is neccesarily as falicious as it seems. consider this: imagine you have a progression, from A to Z. A is ok, but Z is bad; however, moving towards Z is advantageous, as long as you don't actually end up at Z. every single step (e.g., A->B, L->M, P->Q etc) is identicle, and thus none of them represent a logical stopping-point. logically, if you're going to take the step A->B, then you may as well take the identicle steps B->C, and C->D, all the way up to Y->Z. thus, by taking the step A->B, you'll end up getting to Z, step-by-step. the 'logic' works like this: if you argue to stop at M, then you can counter that by saying that theres no difference between L->M and M->N, so, if you were prepared to take the step L->M, you should also be prepared to take the step M->N (and, once there, you should be prepared to take the step N->O). iow, theres a paradox: A->Z is bad, but A->B->C->D...->Y->Z is ok. the reason that it's fallicious to claim that if we go from A->B we'll unavoidably end up at Z is because it completely ignores the fact that humans are capable of dealing with this paradox by picking a semi-arbritrary cutoff point somewhere along the progression. eg, lets stop at M. why M? well, there are two answres. one is 'no reason'. N would have made as good a choice. the important thing to note is that, if you actually say to someone 'well, lets go to N then', they must answre 'no'. avoiding the slippery slope fallicy actually happening requires that you ignore the fact that theres nothing about the step M->N that actually means that you shouldn't take it. if you don't ignore this fact, then you'll take that step. and then the N->O step, etc, untill you're at Z. the other answre to the question 'why M as a cutoff point', then, is that we need a cutoff point or the slippery slope fallicy will actually come true and we'll end up at Z. theres no specific reason for the cutoff point to be M, but, having picked that as your semi-arbritrary cutoff point, there is a neccesity to stick to it, even in the face of rationals such as 'N isn't that much different'. because it's semi-arbritrary, you'll find that lots of people have different cutoff points; K,L,M,N,O, etc. being semi-arbritrary, none is a superiour choice to the others, but, having picked, say, K, you cannot allow yourself to be persuaded to push it back to L based on the fact that L isn't significantly different from K and/or L->K isn't significanly different from the J->K step that you've allready taken, as this is the rational that will lead to the slippery slope actually happening and you ending up at Z. so, as you approach Z, you'll hit more and more people's semi-arbritrary cutoff point. due to it's semi-arbritraryness, they won't be able to justify stopping at that exact point other than by saying that we need a cutoff point, else we'll end up at Z. taking the "patroiot act -> martial law" example from the OP: with increasing military powers, you have to acknowledge that your moving towards a martial state. that's ok, as long as you don't end up actually at the martial law stage. rationally, if you're going to pass the patriot act, you may as well pass the patriot+ act; if you're going to pass the patriot+ act, you may as well pass the patriot++ act, etc, untill you're finally in a martial state -- a bad situation that you don't want to be in (i.e., you experience the slippery slope paradox) so, basically, as you go further and further towards a martial state, you hit more and more people's semi-arbritrary cutoff points, way before you've actually gone too far. they won't be able to justify their cutoff point being exactly where it is (otherwize, there wouldn't be a slippery slope paradox), but they can justify having a cutoff point, and refusing to shift it, by citing the slipperly slope paradox. iow, if someone says 'the patriot act's gone too far; we should have stopped just before it to avoid ending up going step-by-step into a martial state' they're not neccesarily commiting a fallicy, tho claiming that if the govournment doesn't adopt their cutoff point we'll end up in a martial state is still fallicious as it ignores the fact that the govrournment will have it's own cutoff point (probably the mean of the populations cutoff points). cadevats: the cutoff points are only semi-arbritrary. in the first example, whilst M cannot be justified over N, and this doesn't invalidate it as a cutoff point, M can probably be justified over C as a cutoff point -- the neccesity of a cutoff point in a general area can be justified, it's only it's exact placement in that area that is not justified; also, if something doesn't actually form a progression (gay marriage -> bestiality, for example), then slippery slope can never be used as a justification; also, if any of the points represent an actually justifyable stopping point, then theres no slippery slope paradox (thus, calls to the slippery slope paradox cannot be justified). phew! sorry that was so long

barring a few accidental ctrl+alt+del restarts, and continually typing dir rather than ls, the only problems i had was that i needed to configure lots of things (mainly wifi card and mouse) as soon as it was installed; but, i didn't know how to use linux as soon as it was installed. which was annoying. still, i found it a much easyer OS to learn than windows.

iirc, i got realmedia files playing on either mplayer or totem on my computer. (i can't check, because i exploded my wifi card, so i'm not actualy using my pc for now )

however, could they, locally, affect the concentration of water in the ground-level-air an appreciable amount? think a million kettles, all steaming, and imagine how soggy and hot everything would get or, does anyone know roughly at what rate they'd exhaust water? are we talking the exhaust steaming like a kettle, or more/less? what about incomplete combustion of the hydrogen? wouldn't that be some H3O+ that gets formed? so...... would the exhaust steam be acidic?

that means that you'd have a car full of H2 and O2? I wouldn't like to see that crash! BOOM!!!

ach! animated smileys are evil...

This seems suspiciously like a homework assignment

Hydrogen power is often lauded as a 'clean' energy storage medium, as it only 'pollutes' water -- as long as the power stations that generate the electricity required to split hydrogen from water are clean, then the whole process becomes clean. For things like cars, hydrogen would certainly seem to be cleaner than petrol/diesel/etc. however, what would actually be the effects of thousands of cars exhausting water vapour in a city? I'm not saying that it would contribute to global warming or anything, but H2O is a powerful greenhouse gas... would all that water vapour increase the average air temperature in a city? would the increased air humidity encourage damp-rot? make it harder to dry your cloths? change the local flaura to those more suited to damp conditions? tbh, i'm not sure how quickly the water would come out of the air and just dribble away down the drains. would you hardly notice the difference, or would it be constantly misty around conjested roads? at the very least, when it's cold i can see there being a problem with increased (black?) ice due to the steam comming out of the backs of all the cars, settling and then freezing. so yeah, what would the problems be if all cars ran on hydrogen and exhaled steam? would the steam have to be captured by the car, cooled into water, and then dumped down the drain, or would it not matter if the cars 'polluted' steam/water vapour?

it seems suspiciously like an attempt to improve things without spending any money... which, imo, is pretty stereotypical of labour. does anyone make any large profits from private schools, or are all the scholarships spent on teachers and equipment?

can I move the first '1', and lay it diagonally across the equals sign? like this: [math]01-102{\neq}1[/math] sort of

what do you mean by catastrophist? not really. atmospheric CO2 concentrations amplify temperature changes, and a change in atmospheric CO2 concentrations causes a temperature change (irreguardless of wether the change is +ve or -ve); it don't cause the temperature to go up and stay up, nor to keep going up forever. I'm not entirely sure what you mean tbh. do you mean that, without negative feedback loops, an increase in [CO2] will cause the temperature to go up and stay up, or do you mean that temperatuer and [CO2] will keep feeding-back to one another, causing an infinite temperature increase (i.e., inc(T) -> inc[CO2] -> inc(T) -> inc[CO2] -> etc for infinity)? assuming you're using "negative-feedback loop" to mean, say, "something that an increase in temperature will cause that will then lower temperature", then iirc there are several 'negitive feedback loops' included in the projection models, which still project an overall increase in temperature due to increased [CO2] (actually, iirc the more catastrophic unlikely-worst-case predictions usually revolve around assuming that limiting factors are acting to buffer GW, but can be 'overloaded', which will effectively dramatically increase the temperature after we reach a certain point; an example would be the idea that the ocean, which is currently adsorbing atmospheric CO2 and thus limiting GW, will, after a certain temperature, start pumping CO2 out into the atmosphere, thus accellerating GW after a certain temperature is reached). the reason that 'negative feedback loops' aren't mentioned more is probably due to the fact that there are none known to play a significant role in GW (unlike the temperature/[CO2] loop). again, why? science has traditionally welcomed informed and supported views that differ from what's accepted. if what they're saying is supported by the evidence, and the interpretation is not flawed, then they shouldn't have any trouble getting published.

this pretty much says it all other than the peer-reviewed journal's disinclination to print obvious crap, do the skeptics offer any explanation for their difficulty in getting published?