Dak

other than the pop-up blocker that came with FF, try turning any advertisment/popup blockers off. some prevent the display of anything that has 'ad' in its address, and the sfn images that aren't being displayed appear to be stored at: http://www.scienceforums.net/images/gradients/gradient_thead.gif

and often for the same reasons: a bloody-mined refusal to admit the possibility that you might be wrong or that there might be another way, coupled with a presumption that whatever you do is right if it is in furtharance of the thing that you believe in. i doubt that every ideology could have the above said about it, but most seem to be susceptable, including religon. the only problem i have with religon, as such, is that it seems more inclined to the above than other ideologies. so, i guess 'what makes a religon bad' would be an encouragment for the followers to adopt the above presumptions -- that they are, without a doubt, right, and that anything they do is correct and justified, as long as it is religous.

my skeptisism doesn't have to be based on anything. my trust of peta would have to be based on something, and it's something that i dont feel peta has -- trustworthyness: honesty, inclination to be representative, accuracy etc. ultimately, it doesnt matter if im skepticle, all it means is it's harder to convince me, not inpossable. skeptisism is, by it's nature, an assumption neccesarily made before knowledge, so the fact that it's semi-intuitive is not incorrect (says the person who usually hugs logic like a teddy-bear). however: PETA support the ALF, who are, imo, dicks. also, pertinant to the case in hand: and, ultimately, they have an agenda -- and, as with any organisation that has an agenda, their PR releases should be taken with a pinch of salt. or, rather, a lab that iams hired to do research on it's behalf. the animals filmed were, apparently, not actually part of the iams-commisioned research 1 right. not a nice buisness. none of this justifies PETA in misrepresenting the truth, however. also, moaning about iams ditching the lab is a bit unfair. they ditched the lab due to inadiquate ventilation, which they discovered after investigating the peta's claims. what should they have done, stuck with the lab? which: a/ was not a law suite, but a request for intervention by the FCC, and b/ was rejected. unless your referring to the uk complaint, which a/ was not a law suite, but a complaint to the advertising standards commision, and b/ was about the advertisment of the health benifits of iams pet food, not the treatment of the animals or maybe the third thing on that page, which: a/ was a lawsuite, but it only says it was 'filed': not won, and b/ was, again, against false advertising, not animal treatment. bear in mind, at this point, that this isn't an IAMS-commisioned experiment, merely one being done in the same lab as was working for iams on a seperate envenstigation peta investigators have previously identified, on film, as acid that which seems to be water (see wiki citation above), so you'll have to forgive me if i maintain my skeptisism. it could easily be a breathing tube. alternatively: only one. the above statement comes from the same school as advertisers who scream that their £999.99p product is "UNDER A THOUSAND POUNDS!!!" which is why my skeptesism radar goes 'beepelybeepelybeep' like that stoned bird form the apple advert whenever im talking to an AR-evangelist which, coinsidentally, correctly identifies it as an iams contract lab, but fails to mention that the research was not iams-commisioned. excerpts which are intended to make it seem as if iams are being harsh to animals and make them boycot them; the immpression that the mundain event is being portraid as a tradgedy is not, i suspect, an accident -- or else, why not add commentary to clarify, or take some other means to avoid confusion? IMM, that is actually out-and-out untrue. the quotes, which you attribute to 'emails passed back an forth PETA and IAMS spokesmen', all come from one email from alv (animal liberation victoria), an email that starts off "Below is one such excerpt (copied verbatim from a PETA website)". hardly iams 'full acknowledgement', what with the source of your quotes being peta, and not iams. it's more of an accusation. iams, in fact, completely denies the allegations in the emails that you quote (you'll notice this is the complete opposite of 'fully acknowledging') note their claim that the investigators job was to prevent what the peta are winging about, and that, then, iams claim is that: the investigator shirked her juty the investigator filmed the results of her shirking her duty the investigator published the film, and blamed iams for it. it's apparent that peta have in the past misrepresented facts. there is ample evidence to suggest that they are doing so now. there is little/no evidence to suggest actual mistreatment of animals to an extend inpermissable by law. there is a perfectly reasonable claim by iams that explains the situation satisfactorally. lots of people who i trust more than peta seem to think iams is ok. in short, i see no reason to accept petas claims, nor boycott iams.

unfortunately -- for me, at least -- groups like peta have done too many crazy/stupid/dishonest things for me to trust them. they have a belief to spread, and they will lie to spread it; they have objectives to achieve, and they will lie to achieve them. is this film representative? is it even from the Iams lab? who knows? i suspect that some of the things that look disturbing in the video aren't. they show some pictures of anethetised dogs... anethetised dogs are allways spredagled, and allways look odd to the point of being disturbing. and, iirc, slapping them is the correct vetinary way to resurrect them if they stop breathing under anesthetic; strapping them on their back aids their breathing whilst under anesthetic. my main question: if the labs were that bad, why did it take a full 9 months to get just over 8 minutes of footage of 'mistreatment'? that's less than 1 minute/month... maybe the 'cruelty' is not that common in the lab, and they had to hold out for ages to find enough for a film. if not... if the cruelty is that prolific... why, after 9 months, is the worst phisical injary just a minor one? why are all the cages clean? could they not find anything more disturbing to show, try as they might? bottom line: this could easily be bull-shit, and the peta certainly dont have a good enough reputation for me to trust them to have accurately represented the situation. as mokele said, why dont they hand their evidence over to a relevent authority? if they are not willing to do so -- espescially as it would effectively protect the animals -- then i can only assume that it is because they don't have enough evidence, even after 9 months, to make a case, or that -- in a fair forum -- they could point out that, for example, maybe the cages are only 'observation cages' for just after treatment, with their main cages, where they spend most their time, being much larger?. i'd suggest that people dont let peta damage the buisness of a company for no reason. don't boycott Iams unless it can be proven (ie, in a court of law or to a neutral regulating body, where it will be ensured that the evidence is not one-sided and unrepresentative) that they are acting unnaceptably. then, by all means, boycott away. but not untill then. one thing that allways sticks in my mind when viewing 'animal cruelty' videos is a leaflet i got given once, about cruelty to rats in labs: it had a picture of rats all squished up on top of each other, and said 'look how little space they have'. rats. like. being. squished. if you give 20 of them a cubic metre cage, they will all squish in one corner. they feel safe when squished. my rats used to prefer bedding-down under my bed (ground-clearance of about an inch) to their spacious cage. and these were big rats. when i finally got them in their cage after having them out to play, they used to squish into a house which was approximately the size of 1.5 rats. i genuinely don't know how they both fit in. their cage had four, spacious levels. rats like being squished. 'aww, look at the poor squished rats'... when dealing with organisations like peta, it's healthy skeptisism time imo.

not true. i've allready said my problem isn't with religon per se, rather just some commonly associated traits; many atheists are against religon, but many aren't; many would actually fight for the right of religos people to have freedom of religon. similarly, for many people, religon takes a back-seat in their lifes, and is inportant but not the be-all and end-all. i see that your trying to avoid a religon bashing thread, but please realise that broad generalisations such as the above are over-simplistic to the point of being untrue and somewhat prejudiced -- atheist != anti-religon any more than religon = mental fundie. anecdotally, most atheists simply dont care one way or the other about religon. then dont discuss it or, prefferably, share your oppinions -- maybe you'll modify other people's.

religion diarrhoea cat these spellings were brought to you by FF2.0 hmm... it suggests replacing firefox with fire box ---------- why would you actually want IE? its demonstrated to be buggy, insecure, it's forced on you, and it's bad for the web. in short, it has nothing going for it. atall. firefox is sweet, opera is also nifty (not to my taste tho), netscape allows you to switch between geko and trident (ie IE... umm... you know what i mean) engines and has loads of security stuff inbuilt. the few goodish bits of IE7 (anti-phishing, tabs) have been available in other browzers for yonks. FF, opera, and netscape have tabs; netskape has had anti-phishing for yonks and FF introduced it in 2.0, and i'd assume there's an opera plugin. in other words, the bits that could count for IE dont, because they're pretty standard, and i'd strongly suspect implimented better in other browsers. i genuinely dont understand why people would even consider IE, barring ignorance of alternative choices.

apparently, the professional way to cook a lobster is to kill it with hammer and nail, and then chuck it into boiling water, at which point the air escaping it's shell makes a screaming noise, thus convinsing observers that the lobster is being boiled alive, and causing them to imitate it and spread the myth that the 'proper' way to kill a lobster is to boil it alive.

no. two main differences: 1/ the scientific method is self-correcting, with an actual emphasis on critical examination and identification and remedy of any crap bits; compair to the unwillingness of religons to change their fundamental bits -- not a problem specific to religons: forms of govournance generally have the smae problem (democracy is teh one true way!!!!!!!!!7) 2/ the scientific method revolves around ways to cautiously and logically/emperically discern the truth. religon generally (but not allways) centers around an acceptance of intuition over logic. this, i think, is dangerous. with a logical person, you can demonstrate to him when he is wrong; it is not allways possible to do the same with an intuit. so, my problems aren't with religon per se, rather with some things that are (not exclusively nor neccesarily) part of religon. so... religon, not neccesarily bad. a clinging to intuitively held and unchanging beliefs in the face of evidence (which, unfortunately, is what religon all too often means) is bad. I also think that, when present, the above flaws tend to be worse in religous people than in atheists that have the same flaws: if you feel that your intuitive beliefs are put there/agreed with by god, your not going to change them, and if you think that you are unnacountable to ethics/other humans due to your Absolute Guaranteed Acess To Heaven For Following Your Random Intuitive Desires Gods Rules, then people are in the very dangerous position whereby they can act with percied inpunity, and unstoppable conviction. like i said: the above dont 'have' to be part of religon; they just all too commonly are

the second from bottom both have the same father. i remember another case like that in the uk: the mother was white, the father black, and the twins were one white, one black.

everyone knows nazareth is just outside berkshire. nice to see a website without adverts.

evenly. one father's sperm fertilises one egg, the others the other. iirc, whilst some sperm goes off looking for the egg, some sperm set up a 'blockade' and will kill any sperm from another man that they find.

"every 2.5 seconds, someone dies and goes to hell. you don't have to be a hell statistic." don't know why, but that one nearly made me wet myself

.~؟

aha now i can be bemused with gusto. wtf‽

gotta laugh when the best option is to buy a legal version of the OS, get a hold of a cracked version, and then install the cracked version and keep the bought-version on your shelf so that it's all legal*. or at least it used to be... they probably come pre-installed with rootkits nowadays... *at least from your pov. modding and redistributing windows is still illegal. but sod it, it's like copy-protection on dvd's: i have a legal right to copy dvds that i have bought for personal use, and by preventing me from doing so they're forsing me to get (still perfectly legal) copys of my dvds via bit-torrent, thus legitamising the whole thing. [/rant] like demo and klaynos said, this is pretty simply solved by phoning ms. and swearing at them.

not the easyest thing to google if you can't remember the name (mecanical pen copying thingy, anyone ), but pantographs can copy hand-written doohickies, and are simple enough that you can make one yourself out of mechano. simply trace over the drawing with an inkless-pen (read: small stick), and the pen copies the image. as a bonus, it can enlarge too, but you can design it to copy the same size (btw, if doing that, you'd get a better image if the inkless-pen is the one furthest from the pivot, and the pen is the one in the middle) note that this wont work for forging signatures for a variety of reasons, mainly to do with pen pressure (i believe it's called the cadence of the signature); even pro forgers have difficulty with this, applying incorret pressure in parts of the signature, and stensiling a signature will have an obviouse even and slow cadence that makes it clear it was traced. or try googling for offset, it's what was used before photocopyers, tho the same problem of cadence exist

they're all still people, with certain common needs. and, if co-operation between the countries benifits each individual country, then it would benifit each individual people. and so they have their own govournment and so they also share a gouvounement. 'lack of culture' is no reason to not co-operate. imo, it's common needs, or mutual benifit, not common culture, that dictates wether it's a good or a bad idea for peoples to unite. america is a good parrelel... at it's inception, there were many different cultures -- british, french, dutch, yiddish, and a few chinese iirc. i'm sure they didn't neccesarily feel as if they were one culture, but they still recognised that they would benifit from uniting. at the end of the day, people from england and romania do share certain things in common, wether they know/like it or not -- desire for protection of fundamental human rights, a decent economy, efficient protection from international crime etc. these common things can be provided by the eu, whilst leaving the local rule to the states. actually, one of the areas in which i was most dissapointed with the eu was their proposal to divvy up the countries into different adminastrative regions, with total disreguard for the national boundries, placing, for example, southampton in the same adminastrative region as le harve but not as liverpool. it was a blatant attempt to degrade national boundries, and, imo, it was a pretty effective one -- it would have worked, and given the aims of the eu i think it was a good descision. however, the eu denied that this was the intent, but failed to offer any other reason for the divisions, making the whole thing underhanded and sneaky... i was kinda hoping the eu would be transparent afaikt, it went like this: european parlimient discuss sacking the commision re: fraud handling european parliment descides to forse an independant investigation and code of conduct on the commision instead 1 independant report not exactly flattering. european parliment begins motions to sack the commision commision resigns2 interim commision set up -- it consists, mainly, of the old commision (without the president)3 new (no old members) commision formed4 so, looks like it worked. maybe it could have gone faster, and there were the usual political shenanegans there, but, ultimately, the deomcratic part did it's job -- the leaders were incompetent to a degree that allowed corruption, and the leaders were sacked. compare with the fact that blair has resisted a proper independent inquiry over lying about WMD, and bush about vote-fixing -- both more serious than incompetence and both with enough evidence for an independant inquiry to be justified imo and the eu's democratic aspect actually seems to be working quite well. your local MEPs. seriously, it's only going to be as unpopular as when the UK govournment outlawed imperial mesurements the first time. govournments do unpopular things (occasionally justifyably), wether they're local, national, or supranational govournments. if i have to order a half-litre in the pub, tho, then i think they're guilty of heavy-handedness. i'm genuinely grateful that i can operate in base-10, and not pounds/ounces, £/s/d, feet/inches, and (in most situations) litres; but taking away something like the british pint (for foreighners: 'the british pint' reffers only to a pint (~ 1/2 litre) of beer bought in a pub) is crossing over from 'lets clean up the stupid measurements system' into 'lets arbritrarily destroy quirky little personality traits of a country', imo. ah cummon, that's democracy. if you cant do something with the blessing of the people, do it without them noticing. see also: new labour; america. the fact that the eu did it, if anything, makes it more democratic anyhoo... the constitution would have created one european state, which, afaik, was what the eu needed the countries permission for -- not the peoples, that was left up to the individual heads of state (eg, france decided on a refferendumn, other countries head-of-state were just going to say 'yes'). without that power, the eu remains as it was re three loose amalgamation of states, but that's no reason to not include any of the other, less controversial, aspects of the constitution. i'd disagree, but i suspect it would be more of a somatic disagreement.

cheers for the info. i'm pretty sure that the eu's opinion is that the members of the eu can be viewed as one demos; and, tbh, i don't see how it's fundamentally different than the demoi* of london and warwickshire being treated as one demos by the english government, the demoi of northern france and southern france being treated as one demos, the demoi of california and new york etc... as long as the people are having a say in certain, fundamental aspects of the governance, then it is democratic. how so? ---------- *demoi being my guess at the plural of demos

Mrs tilly likes riddles even tho she hates questions phew! figuring out the puzzle was easy, but forming an answre was difficult

i've heard of a trojan that spreads via iPod, but not one exactly as your describing. it sounds like your describing a lab virus -- a proof of consept virus made by researchers -- but, tbh, i woulnd't be surprised if it existed in the wild. i assume it could easily be done by infecting the usb device's boot sector (but i dont know enough about how they work, tbh).

i believe your entitled to the same level of health care as a german would be, so if a german requires private medical insurance, i guess you would too; otherwize, im pretty sure you'd get long-term medical care. as for unenployment benefit (doll must be a local slang term, sorry), as i understood it, as long as you are capable of supporting yourself when you go to a country, you are elegeble to draw from the state, so i'd have thought that being medically incapasitated in the country would make you elegeble for doll (could easily be wrong tho). in both cases, i believe the policies have stuff built-in so that countries can deport people who come just to draw doll/get treated. also, i think i was wrong when i said that the eu guarenteed your right to live and work within germany -- afaict, that's covered by the schengen packt, which the uk is not part of.

w00t, it's back. thank you, whoever fixed it. the ads by goooooooooooooooooooogle still display over the SFN logo in 800*600, and the nav buttons bar is too long in 800*600, but only in linux (ubuntu, firefox and opera) for some strange reason... it's fine in windows (FF)

how is it not a free market? and yes, the eec was all that was neccesary for the free market. but its still part of the consept of the eu. you could have just it, but the argument is that the underlining concept -- a united europe -- is benificial in all areas. agree with last two points (at least for the uk nhs). obviously this is less relevent to you, as you were actually employed (presumably) by the german govournments phisics research thing, but is more applicable/useful to others. was my point. if you live in the uk, and pay taxes, and dont draw from the state, then move to germany and get hit by a bus and need extensive medical treatment and doll, then: 1/ you dont winge that you payed the uk loads of money without getting anything in return 2/ the german govournment doens't winge that it's having to pay out more for you than you've payed in tax. ah, thats different. i can't really see how that's good in any way, shape, or form: private pentions should be private, not state controlled. hence private pention. and not state pention. not really sure what's going on there. that's not what i was saying. the leaders aren't directly democratically voted for, but they are democratic by proxy (being chosen by democratically elected leaders, making them as 'undemocratic' as any minister), and are accountable to -- and generally require permission to act from -- the democratically elected european parliment. what i said was that they benifit from not being directly involved with/hindered by the democratic process. democracys, whilst having many good points, unarguably have bad points. popularity/charisma is more likely to get you elected than actual competence for a start, and you become week, having to do any hair-brained thing that enough people want you to do just to get re-elected. transparancy becomes difficult, as a wize but unpopular desision will lower your chances of re-election; opaqueness limits ones ability to make an informed desision, and compounds the 'popularity competition' problems of democracys. by distancing the executive and legeslative branches, they are somewhat freed from this failing. i can't see the eu being run by carismatic, yet incompetent, people, and nor can i see the leaders enacting stupid schemes just because lots of people want them to; transparancy becomes theoryoretically achievable (tho, imo, they are not currently being fully transparent). however, there is a democratic element, which is perfectly positioned to prevent the leaders from being: too incompetent insane evil despotic which is all that's really required of a democracy, when you get right down to it. it's neccesary for the administration, execution, legeslation etc to be done, but not neccesarily democratically; the only thing that democracy offers above other current forms of govournance is safety, and i feel the democracy in the eu is sufficient to provide that. tbh, im actually relieved that the actual running of the eu isn't done by people who's only qualification is the ability to persuade people to vote for them. in short: they are democratically accountable for big things (such as breaches of human rights, overall competence, etc) but not for little things (individual choices), so you wont (hopefully) get the phenomena whereby they are forced into action by public oppinion. furthermore: its your fault you can't name your local MEPs, not the eu's; i can't name my local MP, which doesnt say all that much about the UK govournment; and, as allready mentioned, the european parlement does have power, has used it (including its ultimate power), and is roadmapped to get more.

what i found useful, is figuring out how you, personally, learn best. the four most common ways, iirc, are: having something explained to you talking about it. reading stuff doing it having stuff shown, rather than explained, to you yeah, i know thats 5 and not 4, but i can't remember what the 4 are i tend to learn best by reading and doing; hence, when i was studying, i'd read up on stuff then help 'teach' people who were revising it (as close to doing as i could get without a lab in my house). for you, this might not work, but if you can figure out which of those ways works best, then you should be able to figure out how best to learn. a common problem that i saw in uni is that people would read shit-loads because thats what other people who were doing well were doing/thats what they thought uni students do, but it just never went in. but, they always got the consepts after i explained it to them, and they always got the consepts that were tought in the lectures (hence, i'd figure they learn best from having stuff explained to them). I, on the other hand, missed the vast majority of my lectures, and only rarely asked people to explain the stuff to me, 'cos i simply dont learn well from people explaining stuff to me, whereas if i have a book and the interweb, i can learn quite well. so yeah, i guess my advice would be to pay attention to wether you pick stuff up easyest in lectures, from reading books, from practase questions, from demonstrations, or from discussing stuff with a mate, and then centre your revision around that: if you learn well reading, read; if you learn well by doing, try to get lots of practice problems and work through them. as YT said, practice problems are neccesary, reguardless of wether you learn well that way, as they tell you how well you've learnt something. remembering is technically different from learning, but is an intergral part, and depends on how your trying to learn, but generally requires repetition; with me, for example, i read stuff, took notes (writing down #1), amalgamated them into one set of notes (writing down #2), and copied out a neat version of the notes with highlighted bullet-points (#3) twice (#4), and then copied the bullet points out multiple times, and then the whole notes again (#5) a week or so later. it sucks cock, but it forses it into your mind (at least, i found it did) also, i left a gap inbetween each copying, so that it stimulated my memory each time i copied it. by the last copying, i usually found that i didn't really have to look at my notes that much, and could usually pull the consepts from my memory. then read up somemore, but tryed to predict where the book was going before i actually finished the paragraph/centance. when i could skim-read stuff and not find anything i didn't realy understand... well, tbh this was usually 1 in the morning before the exam, 'cos i tend to leave revision to the last minute, but if i were more organised, this would be the point where i went to the pub cos i figured i'd revised enough. or 'vised' as i called it, what with my tendancy to miss lectures.

indeed. im actually quite anti-eu, but i am certainly not nationalistic, and intend to move to germany soon for about a year, just for the experience of living in a foreighn country (not that i need to prove im not nationalistic, but there you are). having said that: severian, your accounts dont neccesarily indicate incompetence rather than toothing problems. the eu (or at lest the organisations/pacts that the eu is formed on) have also achieved alot -- free trade/common market, for example; international cooperation in policing matters; even the pention thing that has annoyed you is, i believe, part of shingen -- a policy that guarentees you your right to live and work in germany, and for your german wife to move to the uk with you, and for you/your wife to draw from the state (get medical treatment, for example) reguardless of where you were born/are currently residing, and also smooths over potential problems -- you pay tax etc to a european state, and a european state provides for you, with medical care, doll, pention etc, even if the providing state != the state to which you payed tax. it's not really the eu's fault that british pentions are tighter than german ones (actually, i believe theres some pressure on the germans to lower the pentions their country). as for democratic: it's got the european (democratic) parliment in order to ceep checks on the non-democratically elected parts, which, anyway, are chosen by democratically elected people. personally, i think that fully seperating the executive and legeslative branches from the democratic aspects might actually go a long way to ameliorating some of the downfalls of democrasys (a tendancy towards petty beurocracy and 'weekness': the need to pander to people) whilst keeping the main benifits (limits on what can and kannot be done -- ultimately, the majority cannot be the servants of a ruling minority). surely, the human rights aspects and the democracy that exists are sufficient to prevent this actually becoming an oligarchy/beurocratic despotism? no. communism is essentially state-controlled trade in order to fully protect consumers from predetory buisnesses, and to ensure that buisnesses exist to serve their enployers and customers, rather than their owners, and that percieved essential services -- medical, insurance, legal representation, public transport etc -- are provided for free (or, at least, publically funded). the control and command aspect was present in the russian communism, but isn't technically part of communism, any more than democracy is part of capatalism, even tho the biggest and most famouse example of a capatilist state -- the us -- is democratic; you can have democratic comunisms and despotic capatalisms. anyhoo... the eu requires, for membership, that, amongst other things: the state is democratic. the state has a liberal economic market (comunism being the way in which you could most totally fail to meet this requirement) have stable mechanisms to preserve above two thingies. so, fears that the eu is 'undemocratic' or 'communistic' are somwhat unfounded, i feel.