Dak

Could someone please explain to me why the following is statistically falliciouse: The prosecutor's falicy The DNA profile found at the scene matches the suspects. The probability of a randomly chosen person having the same DNA profile is calculated as 1/100. So... if the suspect left the DNA at the scene of crime, the probability that the DNA from the crime scene matches the suspects DNA is 1. If some random person left the DNA at the scene of crime, the chances of the DNA matching the suspects is 1/100. Therefore, the fact that the DNA from the crime scene matches the suspect's is 100 times more probable if the suspect left the DNA at the crime scene than if some unknown person left it. (This next bit is apparently the falicy) It is therefore 100 times more probable that the suspect left the DNA at the crime scene than some unknown person. as i see it: A --> C B --> C Both A and B can result in C (A being the suspect leaving DNA at the scene, B being some random blokey leaving DNA at the scene who happens to have the same DNA profile as A, and C being a DNA profile retrieved from the scene that matches A's). C We have observed C (i.e., found DNA at the crime scene, and have profiled it, and found it to be matching the suspects profile). Either: A --> C or B --> C Because C is true, either A or B must be true to have caused it (i.e. the DNA profile was found, so we can deduce/abduct that either the suspect left it, or someone who coincidentally has a matching DNA profile left it). P(A | A --> C) = 1 P(B | B --> C) = 1/100* A is calculated as being 100 times more likely to result in C than B is. P(A) != 100*P(B) Why can we not now say that because we have observed C, and A is 100 times more likely than B to result in C, that A is 100 times more likely to have been the case than B is? === * in case i've got my notation wrong: I'm taking P(X | Y) = Z to mean 'the probability of Y, given that X is true, equals Z'

realplayer sucks, and is cheeky, but it's not usually this bad. You did download it from the realplayer website, yeah? When you say renamed... do you mean that they no longer end with .mp3? If they do still end with .mp3, then you should just have to reassociate WMP with .mp3s, which might involve some registry editing, depending on how the win98 user interface is (can't rememer to be honest). A quick and dirty way of doing it would probably be to uninstall and reinstall windows media player.

hmm... i read a theory somewhere that corruption is a vital part of a countries economic development, and that attempting to stamp out corruption in 3rd world countries would effectively stunt their economic growth. Cant quite remember the justification, but i think it was something to do with the increased flow of money caused by corruption being useful to poorly developed economies, or something like that. I'll try to find the article.

Yonks. it's rather complicated. Although, pertinent to any question asking for comments on the future state of technology, i'd point out that 20 years ago people thought we'd now be driving flying cars, hopping to the moon for holidays, and for some reason be wearing clothes made out of tin-foil, but no-one guessed we'd develope the travelleresque internet, or even be possesed of the technology neccesary to make the star-treck-esque automatic doors. Who can tell.

Dont forget that a certain level of unenployment is good for the economy/country. too little unenployment equates to a labour-shortage. I believe that something like 10-15% unenployment is supposed to be ideal. Your unenployment rate is <5%, so maybe theire's an economic argument for letting more immigrants in (depends on wether i'm remembering the ideal unemployment rate correctly).

...discussions under control I always read that as: if an expert tells you to behave, and you dont, you'll have a mod up your ass. (in other words, whilst they dont have any of the moderation board privellages, like being able to delete posts, their 'orders', as it were, carry the same weight as a mods).

You may well be right; but, if that's the case, i'd rather see official lowering of minimum wage/tax cuts for certain people, rather than illigal immigration.

Ah right. Actually, come to think of it, i suppose an illegal in the UK would still pay VAT, council tax etc.

How do illegals pay tax? In the UK you'd need a national insurance number, which illegal immigrants wouldnt have? Not actually sure that the BBC has a stance on this, as such. The few articles ive seen about it (other than the one in question) seem to stick to facts, rather than a BBC oppinion.

As i understand it, the problem is that lots of immigrants come over on a temporary visa and then stay, meaning that a/ they dont pay tax, and b/ they get shat upon by enployers. Other than that, i dont think that theres actually any majour problems caused by the number of immigrants that the UK has. It's just one article, by one seemingly biased reporter. it's hardly representative of the BBCs normal stance on this issue. Don't know about the US, but in the uk they do jobs that no-one else wants to do, and get payed about £2 an hour, work rediculose hours a week, and dont complain because they know that theyre illegal immigrants. That's one reason not to tolerate illegal (and thus unregulated, both for the countries good and their own) workers. also, they dont pay tax.

Actually, i found a few more refferences to 'criminalising' illegal immigration... maybe illegal immigration isn't currently a crime per se; rather, just not 'legal' as in not valid. After all, illegal immigrants are deported, not chucked in jail or fined.

lol. illegalising crime. I wish we'd do that in britain: there are far too many criminals around here. a few laws illegalising law-breaking ought to do the trick I liked this bit: wanting to keep the illegal immagrants out is xenophobic? The beeb is usually much better than this. in fact, this article, which is linked to from the one above, seems much better and unbiased (and it appears to have been hundereds of thousands that marched, not millions). [edit]from elsewhere on the bbc site: [/edit]

Of course, all of the studying of HIV that's been going on hasn't in any way shape or form put us into a better position to figure out a cure/vaccine for HIV. Nor, of course, has our development of tests for HIV ever told someone that they have a disease that they should prevent passing on. Nor does HAART ever significantly increase an HIV+ persons life-span. And of course the 'educators' who tell people to wear condoms just guessed that it was an STD and then told us, whilst we were busy squandering our research grants down the pub.

hmm, i see. and i suppose those serveses are the ones that the help-file renderer etc rely on? I believe that most files trying to take advantage of ie directly interact with iexplore.exe, so deleting it might still go a long way towards ameleorating the problems inherent in the rendering engine? (i assumed that the rendering engine was part of iexplore.exe)

Being a web developer, i doubt that you would. There are, however, many reasons that other people would want to. I've seen trojans that, once on your computer, will use IE (and IE flaws) to download more crap onto your computer or pop up ads, even if it is not your default browser, and that aren't programmed to/capable of use(ing) any other browser to do so. Ive seen one method of installation that took advantage of some kind of sun java VM exploit to run itself using through IE (i.e. even if you viewed the page in firefox, opera, etc, the javascript or java applett (forget which) would be run by IE) whereupon IEs plethora of flaws were used to d/l trojans to the machine. Wanting to remove something that could allow you to get infected, or could allow those infections to run, is certainly not an unreasonable desire, espescially for businesses whom should be worrying more than others about possible infections creating information leaks or knocking their PCs offline (instant messengers and IRC clients are often removed from business PCs as security risks -- why shouldn't IE be?) So, mainly it's a security issue, although addmittedly many of these issues can be addressed mearly by blocking IE in a two-way software firewall (having said that tho, I dont think many corporate boxes have software firewalls, just a one-way firewall on their gateway). Anyway, after all that MS have done to spite their competitors in the past, i dont see how spiting MS is neccesarily a bad reason.

the most cost-effective way would probably be to get a bare-back PC-laptop with a large battery and whach a linux distro and open office on it (thus saving money on the OS and office suite). I doubt you'd have to pay anywhere near $1,100 for a laptop with similarish specs as the macbook if you do it that way (tho i'm not too up to speed with laptop prices... i prefer to steer clear of 'em 'cos theyre expensive)

Well, given that this was originally proposed as a security improvement, you could argue that iexplore.exe is all you really need to get rid of. So, you could unregister/delete all BHOs, toolbars, active-x's (exept WGAValidator) and plug-ins (except java, which windows update uses), delete certain IE reg values (like the trusted zone entries), set the security to the highest possible and so on, and set your firewall so that IE has to ask permission for net access, to basically get a skinny, crippled IE. Then, you could rename all copies of iexplore.exe to iexplore.old, to disable it completely. When updating, you could rename iexplore.old to iexplore.exe, give it one-time permission to access the net, update windows, and then rename iexplore.exe to iexplore.old. Would that pose any problems? I guess that certain things (like windows help center not being able to access the net like it sometimes does, and active desctops not working) would not work, but i dont think there'd be any majour issues. If the odd dll remains, i dont really think that'd be a security problem? note: don't try this at home, unless you know enough about computers to fix your pc if this cripples it

Didn't the america v microsoft anti-trust case establish that IE could be removed without destabalising the PC, and that MS were a bit naughty for not providing an uninstaller?

it can http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mozilla_Suite_:_FAQs_:_Remove_IE I guess people might buy your program. Donationware might be a better bet (some people feel very strongly about this, so i'd imagine that you'd get a bunch of donations). I'm busy at the mo, but if you want a beta tester in a weeks time, i have a virtual machine set up on my PC, so I can risk annhiolating XP by testing your tool if you want.

you need IE for security updates. ergo, removing IE actually lowers your PC's security. Annoyingly. You could allways remove permission for IE to access the internet in your firewall, and manually allow it every month when you update.

I dont see the point in most cases. It's easy enough to unregister and delete a BHO or a toolbar, which accounts for a large percentage of infections. Even viruses, worms, and trojans aren't that difficult to be pretty sure that you've gotton rid of, unless they're particularly bitching/new. Although: if this is a busness PC, that kinda changes things.

If you do ever hallucinate, make sure you've got one, reliable, non-halusinating person that you trust there to take care of you. If a trip goes wrong and you start getting dillusional... you want someone there who's going to hide the knifes, tell you that, no, you are not the mushroom king, and even if you were that would not give you diplomatic immunity, so please put your clothes back on and get inside the house etc.

Have you got haxdoor again herme? It's not so much that firewalls are so easy to tinker with as -- in the case of haxdoor, your previouse two infections -- that haxdoor is a very well constructed piece of shit. hmm... haxdoor can infect either IE or the windows explorer-shell (forget which), and i remember that you dropped out of the thread on the first instance that you had haxdoor before it was certain, to my mind, that you had completely cleared it from your pc. If it's the same pc, i'd have to condier the possibility that you've had haxdoor once, and it's never been properly shifted. for the record: symantec are amongst the best AVs in lab tests. The reason they're oftern slated is cos of their high resorse profile. And herme: Do not delete anything from your LSP stack as encypher suggested without also modifying the stack in the registry, otherwise you will not be able to access the internet. I've never had to do it, but i hear that fixing the registry entries for the winsock LSP is very difficult. If it's haxdoor -- which seems to be herme's favorite -- it wont, 'cos haxdoor hides itself with a root-kit.

But like i said, even genetically identical twins are not entirely genetically identical. they'd have recombined differently after fertalisation. This wouldn't, i shouldnt imagine, make a difference in how the genes are expressed in the two individuals in the vast majority of cases, but there's still a difference that you can test for. Actually, as recombination tends to change the length of repetitive DNA, if you're really lucky, they might even have slightly different RFLP DNA fingerprints (not sure wether the difference would show up on an RFLP test tho).

normally, to get a complete uninstall/reinstall, i: uninstall the offending program. reboot. delete the folder in program files run the registry clearning bit of ccleaner (does what bluesmodge reccomended doing) run ccleaner again (repeat till ccleaner doesnt find anything) reinstall. that usually works. openoffice and MS office both have majour failings... i have both installed, and tend to use whichever is less-cack for what i'm trying to do. MS office is actually quite good. apart from that paper-clip.