Dak

I'm curious: to those who are opposed/not entirely happy with animal testing, what are your oppinions on animal-trials of drugs that are intended for vetinary use, or have dual human-(insert other speiceis here) use? eg, if you think it's wrong to give a rat a drug, and then kill & dissect it to measure the biodistribution of afformentioned drug, in order to test a potential canser-treatment drug to be used in humans, what are your thoughts on doing the same to develop an anti-cancer drug intended to be given to rats? what about using, say, lab-rats to develop a drug intended to treat horses?

i dont really see voter annonymity from the govournment as that big a deal... after all, we trust the govournment with access to lots of other data that we wouldn't want people going through willy-nilly, from social security numbers, address, phone number etc to the possibility that, under certain circumstances, the govournment may read our letters/emails, listen to our phone conversations etc. why not track votes, and just trust the govournment not to use the data unless neccesary, and even then exersize care when using it? if votes were tracked, people could check how their own vote was registered: if someone cares enough to bother to check, they can request, say, a letter that confirms (or belies) that their vote was actually registered correctly: if enough discrepancies were found, surely more people would check and the voting anomoly would be quite easy to spot (thus, vote-fixing would become pretty tricky). espescially useful, imo, given that you've switched to electronic voting machines, which are apparently quite easy to hack

not sure wether stats goes in applied or analysis, but i saw some stuff on probability in this forum... sorry if this is in the wrong place. Basically, i was thinking about why we accept some stuff as random, whilst other stuff is deemed unrandom, even tho the statistical likelyhood is the same. i think i've figured the answre out, but id be interested in wether i'm right or not. Basically, if we, say, roll two dice 1000 times, and get the following results: die1: 1,4,3,1,2,6,etc (i.e., seemingly random string of numbers) die2: 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2... (i.e., the sequence '1,2,3,4,5,6' repeating) then, we'd say die 1 was random, whilst die 2 wasn't; however, the probability of both outcomes is the same -- 1/(6^1000), i believe. so... the result of die 1's rolls has a chance of occouring of 1/(6^1000). this is very unlikely, BUT it would be falicious to say that this result is non-random due to it's unlikely hood, because any result would have the same probability of occouring (compare: 'hey, the die we just rolled once resultied in 4, a result with only a 1/6 chance of occouring -- how statistically unlikely that result was, i therefore question the randomness of this die' ). however, the same seems as if it should be true of die2's result... yes, it's unlikely for that sequence to occour, but any sequence would be equally unlikely, so surely it's incorrect to claim that the die is non-random due to the unlikelyhood of it's result? surely it's only because we see a pattern in die2's result that we question it, whilst, because we can't see a pattern in die1's result, we will accept it as random? surely this is heavily reliant on our perception? I think the conundrum is probably answred like this: H0: die is random HA: die is non-random die1's results have no discernably pattern, so we have no problem accepting H0. die2's results have a discernable pattern, so, reguarding this pattern we have two new hypothesys: H(2)1: the pattern is reasonably expectable to be randomly produced (accept H0) H(2)2: the pattern is not reasonably likely to result from randomness (reject H0) so... in this case, with the probability of the pattern occouring randomly being 1/(6^1000), we reject H0 and assume non-randomness. (if dice2 were only rolled three times, the result would be different: ie, '1,2,3' would have a 1/216 chance of happening, which is resonably acceptable: therefore, accept H(2)1 and H0 -- we can believe that the die is random on a result of '1,2,3') question 1, then, is: is the above correct? (if the answre is yes): question 2 is: relying on our perception, isn't the above somewhat arbritrary? for example, if i randomly arrange the letters of the alphabet to get: qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm according to the above, we can assume non-randomness (the keys are in the same order as the layout on a qwerty keyboard); however, if the qwerty keyboard were never invented, and the dvorak were instead the norm, we would have no problem accepting the above as random? finally, question 3 is: is it neccesary/usefull to work out the likelyhood of getting something that will arbritrarily be recognised as a pattern? e.g, is it neccesary to work out the chance of the alphabet being randomly rearanged resulting in: P(the alphabet) + P(querty layout) + P(dvorak layout) (etc) *2 (because any of them backwards would also be considered a pattern) (etc) so that we can say 'the probability of getting something recognisable as a pattern is x, so getting a pattern is/isn't significant enough to discound randomness? feel free to add anything relevent to randomness v perseption oh, and one request: if possible, could you please tone-down on the squiggly latex? i'll make an effort to understand any squiggles you use, even if i have to learn small amounts of mathematical concepts, but learning all of calculus to understand what you say is a bit beyond my patience

i'm an adult, so i assume i can responsably enjoy evolution?

credit card companys etc would be more profatable, but also waaaaaaaaaaay more likely to be well protected. other companies -- like, for example, pest control companies -- offer less rich, but easyer, pickings, so would consievably be targetted for that reason. it's like saying a corner-shop wouldn't be robbed because everyone will be out robbing banks

avast, talk like a pirate day be commin o'er yon horizon, jimmy. yarr! and, to aid ye land-lubbers in yer internet-related talk like a pirate day, ye might be wantin to lay yer 'ands on the pirate keyboard: YAAAAR! tis as useful to a pirate sailin the seven interwebs as a parrot. [edit]yaar [/edit]

assuming dish-soap is american for washing-up liquid, i've done that with the washing(laundry) machine. a little bit, squirted directly onto a grease-based stain, helps remove those stubborn stains that washing powder alone cannot shift, a huge squirt, however, as i discovered when i was trying to shift a huge stain (you can probably see my logic), makes your washing mashine break, and the bubbles somehow actually come out the waterproof seal, and my god are there alot of bubbles they were up to mid-shin by the washing machine.

I cant remember the details, but i remember that one of the wifi thingies -- 802.11A, iirc -- is very week, so, if the buisnesses cards and router support it, you could switch over to 802.11A, and if your lucky the wireless signal might be able to go through the office but not be strong enough to penetrate that far outside. you can use tin-foil to 'aim' wifi router signals, which may help limiting the signal range aswell. other than that, make sure they're not broadcasting the network name/ssid/essid, change the passwords regularly, turn off remote administration, change the default user and password for the router, filter by mac address, turn the router's hardware firewall on etc. if this buisness is in any way, shape, or form involving bank details, then i'd advise reccomending they switch over to ethernet (pretty much as rhino said), or at the very least cover your own ass by making them aware of the security risks, and reccomend that they at least don't have computers that deal with, say, payroll and credit controll on the network. yes, it's a bit of a pain in the arse to have a non-networked set of computers, but it's less annoying than having a hacker get into your network and steal your company and employers bank details. if it's a small/medium-small buisness -- as i suspect that it is -- that should be doable with just one computer offline (with a printer and possibly a scanner) to deal with bills for the company and payroll. its a bit complecated, so someone else will have to give you the exact details, but you could probably set up a nice-looking pc in the network and set up an alarmed tarpit in it?

capn: if it's useful, theres no probs with wysiwig in FF in either winXP nor ubuntu (JS on in both cases) on my end

not sure about your closing question, but as to 'what is a furrie': as an anime fan, whenever i've heard it it's been describing manga/carton anthropormorphic animals, e.g. bugs bunny, espesially if there are sexual overtones to the charector, eg cat-girls, or sometimes the fans of these 'furries', again, espescially if there are sexual overtones. furries (definition #2) make me laugh.

if you dont mind me putting a slightly odd twist in this thread... do you think the future will bring 'pasifistic' warfare. reading rhino's comment about the US looking bad for invading iraq but looking worse if they sent a robot army to kill, following mattc's comments on robot armys, made me consider something: i'm sure that the majority of developed countries would wage a war that spared the life of the majority of foreighn soldures wer it not for the facts that: 1/ weapons that incapasitate are less effective than weapons that kill, so using them would put our own soldures at risk, and 2/ capturing soldures ties up a helluva lot of our soldures keeping them prisoner -- more than it takes to kill them (i remember a story, tho im not sure how true it is, of a british advance that seemed unstoppable -- because of this, the enemy soldures gave up en mass, and we had to sped time and effort enprisoning them, which effectively stopped our otherwize 'unstoppable' advance at least for a while) with robots, maybe they could take non-fatal guns, and who really cares if this results in the robots distruction? its not a human life you'd be risking to save another (enemy) souldures life. and maybe the humans could man the third line, guarding the POWs that the robots collect, fixing any POWs that are injured in the process, and perfoming maintanance for the bots, as well as being there to fight the enemy if the bots fail? to mutate rhino's comment: the USA looks bad enough to other countries for invading Iraq with humans. How much better would the perception be if we invaded them with robots and a significantly lowered death toll, maybe not even in triple figures across both sides. in addition, it would somewhat eliminate the protesters who say you're not sending my sons and daughters over there.

more unmanned (limited AI/remote control) weapons. mebbe coil guns too (an advert for metalstorm ltd) I think, no matter how advanced a civilisation, human infantry will allways form the bulk of the army.

afaik, MAS is usually reffered to by the type of wavelength it's adsorbing, eg infra-red adsorption spectroscopy, UV-AS, or just electromagnetic adsorption spectroscopy, so you might want to search for terms such as those... i think AAS measures the adsorption of the constituent atoms across a region of the EM spectrum, whilst MAS measures the adsorption of the molecule across a region of the EM spectrum. I dont think AAS can identify substances, unless they are elements... i know it's used to identify heavy metals, but you can't, say, ID cannabis using AAS (tho i might be wrong)

was this the one where elton john was supposed to turn up, but pulled out at the last second, without giving a reason? iirc, they got a look-a-like and spent the show taking the piss out of elton, but -- I think -- it turned out that elton didn't show because one of his friends had died just before the show, so they ended up appologising and never re-running that show. well, dunno about the last bit, but found this on wp: ----wikipedia: have i got news for you---------------------------- When Sir Elton John failed to appear as billed in 2001, he was replaced by a "look-alike" called Ray Johnson (apparently a taxi driver) who made very little verbal contribution. Each time the scores were recapped, captions appeared on the screen, advertising, praising or saying something about Ray, whilst at the same time, saying something derogatory about Elton, for example, how Ray would never let anyone down, "unlike Elton. Bastard." Ray was credited as Ray "Elton John" son. --------------/ wikipedia----------------------------------------------------

ah right, i see. cheers wasn't really sure if bottlenecks would count as neutral evolution, but couldn't think of any other examples off the top of my head.

isn't neutral evolution stuff like random allele dropout in small populations, genetic drift, stuff like bottlenecking etc? i.e., prosesses that cause allele-frequency changes, but not in a manner that is affected by the fitness-of-survival benifit that the allele confurs to the possessing individual (or, i suppose, totally random 'evolution'). if not, what do those phenomena fit under?

[paraphrase=blair]but what are you talking about? of course it's voluntary! you dont have to go on holiday![/paraphrase] bloody labour. ah, but consensus can be forsed by the PM, due to the strength of the whip system in uk politics. similarly, he can choose who is in his cabinate and who isnt, so he can boss the cabinate around. british PMs have been described as 'elected dictators' for a reason

japan. it just looks mental. i mean, talking toilets -- wtf? and, as i understand, japanese rasism ensures that i will be treated as some form of ogre, so, if im understanding this correctly, i can shout 'gaijin sumashu' and jump queues, have my own personal space on the underground, etc. on the other hand, beer is about £8 a pint other than that, germany -- it's allways interested me, for some reason. plus it's beer is nice.

well, if your interested: wing chun is all about speed and accuracy (conservation of movement: getting from point A to B directly), and also simultanious blocking and attacking, so you can attack whilst half their guard is down. the end result is a very fast art that sacrafices power, but compensates for this by aiming for vulnerable bits (if the intent is to go from A to B asap, and point B is the throat, a lack of power isn't all that relevent). punches are optomised for speed, with about 8 per second being possible, so you can basically overwhelm an opponent with multiple punches (anything youve heard about, say, 50-punches-per-second is bull. i was at about 6/second, and my instructor, who does this entirely as a job, trains 6 days a week, started as a kid, and is all-round exeptionally good, was at 8/s, which most the instructors could match) Most blocks rely on dissapating the energy of the blocks insetead of meeting it full-on. and, the most fun bit, an emphasis is placed on feeling and reacting to the opponents movements. at all points, a 'bridge' (phisical contact) should ideally be maintained, so that the movements of the opponent can be felt, rather than relying upon sight to detect attacks (more easyer at close distances, and also faster to react to once learnt). (Chi sau sensitivity training technique) hmm... the last thing of note i can think of is the range (pretty damn close), which is ninjaesqu in philosophy: most people cant strike effectively at really close range, so basically it'd be funny if we learnt to, and then got really close to people we want to hit. then, we can, say, elbow them in the chin or chop-'em in the throat, and they can't effectively fight back, ahahaha! A few weaknesses of wing chun to be aware of: its ability to be used on the ground is pretty non-existant, its view being not to go down (all well and good, but slightly lacking in contingency i feel), so i'd suggest learning a ground-fighting art aswell -- ju jitsu for example. in fact, once you've learnt to fight on the ground, some of wing chun's technichues come in useful. secondly, it's designed for chinese, and i've rarely seen it modified for caucasian body plans -- the main thing being that caucasians need to put their elbows out further than chineese people do in order for the blocks to work (espescially the taun-sau, which doesnt work atall for europeans in its classical, elbows-in form)

^ i just wanted to quickly say that i'm actually quite chuffed that i grasped that me and phisics are not usually on speaking terms. *wanders off feeling happy*

hmm... the masses of the iceberg and the water displased are (obviously) identicle, sooo.... given that icebergs are made of water, the iceberg can only fit an amount of itself equal to the volume of the water from which it is created into the water? aaaaaaaaaaand, the same is true of the water that would result from melting the iceberg, hence there will be no more nor less displacement if the iceberg is melted? then, alchemy was sort of right: melting ice-caps, in and of themselves, dont directly matter atall re: sea levels? alchemy i've heard the following argued: ice is reflective, so bounses back alot of heat from the sun. melting ice en-mass will make the earth adsorb more heat, and so will amplify global warming, and thus any other effects (eg, swansonts water-expansion), so melting ice caps may indirectly effect water-levels by making the world heat up more; however, i heard that argued of all the large bodies of ice on earth -- i've no idea wether the amount of ice located just in ice-bergs is enough to have a significant reflective-cooling effect.

you're some kind of alien vagina?

I did wing chun (kung fu) mixed with grace ju-jitsu. it was really great, and i loved the almost poetic mixture of eloquent grace and vicious violence, and the fact that it's designed to be really fast wing chun was designed by women, so, in a similar vein to gcol's comments, it had lots of eye-gouging, throught-punching goodness but then i got IBS and had to stop also did some samurai-sword fighting with bokken, which is possibly the most fun thing in the entire universe, unless you catch you fingers. unless there's two of them

quick question: as ice takes up more volume than water, and as icebergs are mostly underwater, wouldn't a total melting of all icebergs actually cause a drop in sea levels?

it looks as if it might have dropped off towards the end of june, if thats any help http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=r&url=www.scienceforums.net hmm...