Dak

it depends how often you access your hdd for non-swap purposes and how much you need to use swap. my computer used to get all choked up trying to load something from the hdd into ram, whilst simultaniously trying to ditch something from ram to swap. my 'puta sped up notisably after i got a crappy old hdd and plonked that in as a dedicated swap drive, even tho it's access speed is lower than my main hdd's.

the fact that different countries use different counting systems? or the fact that people find it interesting? anyway, one million means one thousand in either latin or greek, which is what the english word was based on. i can't get over the fact that they count in base 20. why would they do that?

fair enough; tho i actually think i err on the side of freedom, but look at this as not choosing for them, just making assumptions as to what their choice would be if they were more informed (eg, after having done it, and based on other people who have done it). which i guess could be called erring on the side of safety. only till i whitied which is why i don't smoke anymore :-(

hmm... britain does not use the british billion. I did not know that. i thought we used 1million million as being a billion...

yeah, but whenever i've made my point i've allways mentioned 'people regreting it afterwards' or their choices being 'demonstratably crap'. i.e., it's not just some people saying their judjment is off -- it the people who are in the situation that, later, come to the opinion that their choice was crap that makes me consider taking peoples right to choose away from them. which is why i wouldn't dream of banning stuff like parachuting, or boxing. people, on the whole, seem to acknowledge that theres a risk and make the desision wizely. boxers who get really hurt usually maintain that they knew the risks they were taking, and often carry on boxing after they've healed. people who get into crashes without wearing hemets generally start to wear helmets thereafter, somewhat indicating that their descision was stupidly made under an 'it wont happen to me' premice. hence why i'd consider banning smoking -- not because it's unhealthy, or it can cause death -- but because most smokers want to give up but can't, somewhat validating the idea that people, in general, make stupid choices with reguards to smoking. the same cannot, imo, be said about cannabis. the lack of 'regretful cannabis users' is what makes me unprepared to say it should be banned 'to protect the users'. obvioulsy, theres a huge potential for argument over what constitutes an unaceptable rate of making bad choices, and no 'right' answre, but i still think the basic premice is valid -- if people, in general, demonstrate that they're crap at making a particular choice, then that choice should be made for them. hell, i even think that bannage could be justified even in the abscence of regret, but that's a very murky area (pretty much for the reasons you stated). as long as that last bit was sarcastic, you've pretty much stated my opinion. we have an obligation to stop people who cannot fairly judge the risk in a given situation; these situations are less likely after 18, but not non-existant. well, if it's that much of a problem, then maybe govournment regulation would be in order? (tho i'd blame lack of exersize more than sugar intake) of course, in all cases, a more eloquent (but less realistic) solution would be to just make it so that the majority of people weren't so stupid (says the non-hemet wearing smoker)

lmao I also wouldn't have used any 'c's. do eco!

actually, i've just noticed i sent this thread in slightly the wrong direction (2nd law of thermodynamics, rather than the actual question). with reguards to the question about 'it only being possible for information to be reduced, not added', this claim incorporates the 2nd falicy of thermoinformatics, but also generally revolves around the idea that there is no source of new genetic information. i.e., you can't get new genes. simply put, new genetic information can occour from old genetic information by mutation, misuse of 2nd law of thermodynamics notwithstanding. you can even get new genes without losing the old genes via gene-duplication, whereby a gene is duplicated, one copy of the gene stays as the original gene, and the other mutates into a new gene. otherwize, the claim is usually 'mutations can alter things, but not create new things', meaning that fins can change in shape and design, but not turn into hands. which is ignoring the fact that if you keep changing a fin, you'll get a hand.

theres a difference between scientists, scientists, scientists who operate in the relevent field, and science. By certain criteria -- which are the criteria that the petition used, if it's the one i'm thinking of -- I am a scientists, as i hold a BSc. however, this doesn't particularly qualify me to give any particularly reliable interpretations of data, and it certainly doesn't indicate that i'm competent enough to actually have looked properly at all the data before giving an opinion. scientists (as in PhD holders) are generally more reliable, but theres no guarantee that someone with a PhD in genetics will neccesarily understand all the concepts required to give an accurate opinion on global warming, tho you can at least expect that they'll be aware of this (tho not allways) scientists who operate in the relevent field (climate scientists in this case) are the most reliable, but ther'll allways be dissenters. science is the reliable one -- the results of peer-review and consensus opinion (even if there are a few dissenters). scientists like me can, tbh, **** off in matters such as this. scientists and climate scientists occasionally disagree with the consensus. it's probably worth taking their points into consideration (which is what the mechanism that resulted in consensus has done, btw) but, at the end of the day, the scientific consensus is what is reported accurately by the IPCC report, and if you're going to accept anything, scientific consensus is your best bet. 1vedo's right, people treat this like evolution: like evolution, many people don't want it to be true, so they're prepared to accept anything to justify believing that it's not true, including but not limited to logical fallicies, ignoring science and scientific consensus, and the good old fashioned sticking your fingers in your ears and going 'la-la-la-la-la'.

pretty much the same. basically, if you have information and you randomly change it, it will, over time, degrade -- not inprove. however, evolution is not just random changes over time. evolution is random changes over time + a selection mechanism. it is the selection mechanism that basically weeds out the crappy changes and propagates the good ones, thus overcomming the natural 'degredation over time' that would normally be expected with random changes to information. If you look at error catastrophy, which is basically where there are so many random changes that the evolutionary selection process becomes overloaded and stops working, then you can see the natural degredation over time occouring (well, technicly evolution still works during error catastrophy, it's just that evolution slows down the degradation, rather than eliminating it and allowing inprovement).

iirc, drug usage actually seems to have gone down in holland since legalisation? well, for a start it's not just me dictating people shouldn't do something that doesn't interest me: i'm open to persuasion as to why i should change my oppinion, i'm not suggesting that it be illegalised merely because i dont think it should be allowed, and i dont even bother wearing a helmet when i ride my (pedal) bike. secondly, i'm suggesting a balance between freedom, neccesity, convienience, and recognising that in some areas people make crap choices, not an absolute ban on anything unsafe that would result in banning driving, flying, and parachuting. and thirdly, your still making the same mistake that i mentioned earlyer: the reason we forbid childeren from more than we forbid adults from isn't anything to do with 'rights', it's simply that adults are generally bettere at making choices than kids, so don't need the protection as much. adults aren't perfect, tho, so -- for exactly the same reasons that we don't allow kids to drink/smoke/drive/have sex/choose wether they go to school/etc -- we may be justified in not allowing adults to ride bikes without hemets/do drugs/etc. iow, adults still make demonstratably bad choices in certain areas, so we're still justified in 'choosing for them', for the same reason that we're justified in choosing for kids re: alcohol etc. I still think that current drug laws are screwy, but i'm against a blanket legalisation for the above reasons. if it can be demonstrated that enough people make stupid choices reguarding a particular drug (nicotine is actually the easyest to see this in), then it should be illegal imo.

the carriage doesn't return enough for really large text (the carriage doesn't return enough for really large text)... at least not for me. it does in the preview, so i'd assume it's something to do with it collapsing around the avitar

i get where you're coming from, but i think if you look at stuff like alcohol and crack, which demonstratably increase the likelyhood that someone will start a fight, you can see peoples conserns more. even tho i don't get violent on booze, i can see the argument that i shouldn't be allowed booze so that bobby McViolentPants, who does start fights when drunk, isn't allowed booze either. i'd guess that from your pov, me and bobby should both be allowed to drink, and bobby incasorated if he gets violent. from my pov, i think the same attetude is correct up to a point, BUT if enough people have to be incasorated in order to keep the violence under tabs, i think you reach a point where illegalising booze would just be the better option, even tho there are still people who can drink it without getting violent. iow, it's not inplying that all drunk people are criminals; rather, that too many drunk people are criminals. quite a few, along with for ciggarettes. i think this is like seat-belts. ultimately, wearing them is not really a problem, and it can drastically decrease your chance of dying. lots of people who dont wear helmits later regret it, and noone who doesn't wear helmets later regrets it, so i'd feel justified in making people wear helmets. unlike drugs, tho, theres no benifit to not wearing helmets.

UNLIMETED POWER!!! I mean, I'll try to do a good job as a mod, and not abuse my position liek some mods *coff* phi *coff* Now, where's the beer...

BUT, if those hundered of us would have not stolen doughnuts were we not on drugs, then the drugs have to be held partially to blame i'm not assuming that behaviour in all, btw; i'm just acknowledging that it exists in some people, and that drugs can increase the number of people behaving like that. which was more-or-less why i said that its not neccesarily enough to warrant illegalisation: rape and violence is illegal, wether you do it sober or on drugs; the only question is 'to what extent will the drugs promote rape/violence'. that's a little untrue. doing, say, 100 in a 30 mph zone, or drink-driving, is a crime due to it's potential to kill people; it's true that its a worse-a-crime if someone actually gets hit and killed, but even if no-one is hurt it's still a crime due to it's potential to have a victim. the same, in theory, could be said of drugs; if they lower responsibility too much, their illegalisation could be justified by the risk of someone gettting hurt. of course, you could just as easily analogise drugs to cars in the above, and point out that we ban irresponsible driving, not cars themselves. which is also more-or-less where i'm coming from. that's true. also, i feel alot of it is simply bigotry; 'well, I dont, so obvioulsy other people shouldn't be able to'. that doesn't mean that there aren't majour problems associated with drugs, which was the main point i was trying to make. drugs, imo, are not victimless, as they can contribute to non-victimless crimes being commited.

taking drugs isn't 100% victimless. anything from dependancy-induced crime, to usage-induced violence, to drugged-driving, there are lots of ways that an 'innocent' third party could get hurt by someone taking drugs (all of the above are independant of the fact that drugs are illegal). for alot of drugs, i dont think this is enough to warrant illegalisation of the drug itself, but still, drugs are very rarely completely victimless.

I wasn't particularly attacking them, more pointing out that they're the kinda group that, in situations like this, are likely to try to throw a spanner in the works of any movements that are trying to limit the consumption of their product. having said that, exxonmobil seem to have recently stopped

you gotta admit, the petrochemical industry is no more likely to admit that CO2 is in any way causing global warming than the tobacco industry was prepared to admit that ciggarrettes caused lung cancer, for the simple reason that it'd greatly hurt their profits.

how would they be breaching the dpa?

Which is why stuff is peer-reviewed; i assume 'Research on Social Work Practice' is a peer-reviewed journal? i'd like to read the meta-analysis, to see wether the patients knew that they were being prayed for (i.e., allows placebo), or didn't (i.e., doesn't allow placebo by our current knowledge).

we tend to buy CF to replace our old bulbs when they blow. so, about half of our bulbs are CF. It's espescially useful as we have an RCD, which knocks out the light-ring in the house whenever a lightbulb blows. which, of course, is at night when it's dark... cue falling-down-stairs action to find the RCD and throw the light-ring back on having lightbulbs that don't blow as often is really cool.

afaik, all british troops have permission to surrender if the only alternative is death. as in this case. would you honestly have prefered them martyred?

yeah, but then you can inpair your judgment in a safe and responsible way; eg, when people go to the pub to get tipsy/drunk, they are inpairing their judgment, but most people still dont get violent or drive after having done so, dispite the fact that they've inpaired their judgment. same holds true for drugs. you can go out and get wrecked, but then not do any thing stupid. the trick is to know your limits, know how you'll behave on the drug, and make descisions whilst sober. eg, if you know you get violent on crack/alcohol, descide not to do it. if you know that extasy turns you into a dangerously retarded tit, don't do extasy. etc. fwiw, many people treat cannabis the same way as 'a drink with lunch', eg they just have one spliff in order to be a bit more chilled/relaxed, not 10 buckets to be paraplegic.

which one's not true? it should be pretty easy to figure out... the wikipedia article probably mentions it in one of the first paragraphs

yeah, but, you'll note that it's drink-driving that's illegal, not drinking. similarly with beating someone up in a drunken fit; violence is illegal, not drinking. so, arguing that drugs maybe should be illegalised to stop people from becoming irresponsible and hurting others is kinda out-of-line with our atetude to alcohol (or tobacco, for that matter). one thing that comes to mind here is what the dutch call 'seperation of markets'. cannabis is pretty safe, and a whopping girt big number of people do it as a result. because it's illegal, this means that those people: #come into contact with illegal drug dealers, who may also sell crack, heroine, etc #loose the psycological barrier towards doing illegal drugs #come into contact with other illegal drug users, who may use crack, etc. by quasi-legalising cannabis and making sure that coffy shops don't also sell hard drugs, the dutch now have the situation whereby if someone does pot, they don't neccesarily come into contact with people who do/sell harder drugs, and theres still a psycological distinction between cannabis and harder drugs, and thusly hard drug use is pretty low in holland.

well, yeah, that's stupid. France has allready been mentioned as an example of why. we get the same whining in the UK whenever a british country makes mass layoffs, and they expect our govournment to do something about it; but, often, if the company doesn't make the layoffs it'd become uneconomical and collapse, thus not being able enploy anyone; and i'm sure people don't want to pay extra taxes to support a company so that it can enploy extra people... but, with the above situations, the layed-off people can allways go get other jobs so it's not really a problem imo, even if they have to get unglamorous and lower-payed jobs as a result. if you're of the oppinion that jobs/job opertunities are a right, then the second question becomes superfolous.