Dak

A TELLY TUBBY!!! oh, the inhumanity...

I still dont believe you declined my perfectly reasonable request in that incident. and there's nothing rong with my speling.

I can confirm that. Phi has absolutely no sence of humour, and if you cross him, he will abuse his moderating powers and make enbarasing changes to your profile.

reguardless of wether it's justified or not, i dont think there's any doubt that its ethically undesireable. I wonder: if x% of the research from labs that utilise animal research were to be focused on developing animal-test-substitutes -- cultures, plant tumours, in-vitro grown organs, etc -- how many experiments that currently would use animals could be done in other ways after just a few years? i know that some experiments need a fully alive organism, but i suspect that many could be avoided if only we'd make the effort to develop other experimental techniques.

actually, now that you've said that I remembered something: i usually use 'preview thread' for testing purposes, but that doesnt display any img tags that are in the thread, and any ascii-diagrams quite often display differently once posted than they do in the preview 'cos of the side column shifting the position of the line breaks. So yeah, i'd like to bump it up from a veigue suggestion to a request please.

incidentally, the error still hasn't been fixed. you still can't submit a post that contains the string 'curl in' No idea how significant that is, but incase it's been forgotten, there it is again.

I know there's not really that much of a need, but I had to make a test-thread once to pin down an error with the board, and i've just seen someone else post something along the lines of 'test post -- please ignore'. Might be an idea to have a test-forum, which auto-deletes the posts every 24 hours. On other boards i've seen with them, they tend to get used by people practicing BB code or playing with img tags etc. they seem to be veiguely useful.

Hello everyone, and welcome to SFN

yup. and as far as calling emergency services, i believe that in all EU countries, 112 puts you through to a foreign-language emergency services telephone centre.

man, i finally did it. that was such a pain in the arse. cheers both.

there's no easy way to do it? poop. still... i've just discovered the 'split' thing, and i'm having fun i've allready managed to get one of the GET thingies. <h3>Hello<script type="text/javascript"> var url = window.location.href var url2 = url.split("?") var username = url2[1] var username2 = username.split("=") if (username2[0] == "username") { var username3 = username2[1] var username4 = username3.split("&") document.write (" " username4[0]) } </script>, and welcome...</h3> (i know the last document.write bit's wrong btw) whilst kinda fun, this strikes me as the long way of doing this, and i think the fun's going to evaporate as soon as i get onto the rest of the GET data

i need a form that someone can fill out, and which will then redirect them to another page which displays stuff (or not) dependant on the way that they filled out the form. I also need the form to save its data using GET, so that the URL can be copied and passed to someone else, who can then view the page. In other words, i need a form that will allow someone to 'customise' a webpage for someone else. now... i can't play about with any server-side gubbins; the only way i can conditionally display stuff is using javascript. which i dont know i've got as far as figuring out stuff like <script type="text/javascript"> if (variable1 == yes) ( document.write ("you chose variable one") ) </script> but the thing that i can't figure out is how to grab the GET data that is stored in the URL using javascript? I've googled about for ages, and can't find it anywhere. if anyone knows how to do this, i'd greatly appreciate it if they would tell me

the problem's probably with your snes, rather than your cartridges.

^true. i wasn't aware of the non-identification-with-genitalia-based-sexual-classification definition of transgender. I thought it only reffered to post-, and possibly peri-, -sex-change individuals.

^ indeed. it's forsing as much as, say, teaching integration in maths and then possibly having a question on integration in the exam is forsing people to learn integration (and about as justified aswell). As for being in the same place, i'd point out that i'm still against this bill IF it's legeslature, as opposed to the govournments curriculum policy. (I dont suppose you know which one it is, do you? I can't figure it out, not knowing enough about american law/govournmental operations; i was under the impression, tho, that 'bills', if passed, become law, although it certainly reads more like a curriculum outline?) Also, this: Its a bit of an assumption, but due to the relitively recent prevalence of transgenderation, i dont really see how there can be enough transgenders to have collectively made a significant contribution, so i dont really see how this bit is justified or do-able. but yeah, generally in the same place. the original disagreement was due to my misinterpretation of the bill, for which i appologise again.

i was actually refering to the motives, as opposed to the stated reasons. either way, my original point I retract, as it was against the 'teaching gays within history lesson' thingy which isn't actually the case. the powers-that-be have descided that certian groups should be learnt about. one of those groups is homosexuals. hence, focusing on homosexuals. Maybe 'targetting' would have been a better word, or 'focusing on a group of groups, one of which is homosexuals'. i wasnt meaning to imply that the course would focus mainly on gays, to the exclusion of other groups; merely trying to point out that neither of our summing-ups of the situation were accurate: it is, as you said, NOT gay history (this was me being confuzzled), but it's also not merely history with gay people left in. Yes, of course. and i at no point said that i objected to discussing the sexuality of an historical figure, who was chosen for his historical relevence. But if someone is included in a history lesson just so that his sexuality can be discussed, then this is hijacking as far as i'm concerned, because it's is taking a lesson designed to be teaching about history, and teaching social science/propoganda. note, again, that now that i've done some checking up i realise that the above (i.e. history lessons having to focus on gays) is not actually the case. yes, i know. hence why the text that you quoted was from the part of my post that can be summed up as 'whoops! i retract this, this, and that. sorry'. to ensure that there's no more confusion residual from my initial mistake: we are, as far as i can tell, both in agreance that the issue that this bill is addressing is a valid issue that needs to be addressed, and that that the aim of the bill (to prevent the unfair exclusion of gay's from the sylabus) is a justified aim. the only thing we possibly (i'm still not going to comment without knowing wether this is law, policy or a bit of both) disagree on is the execution. plus a few ancillary arguments that, whilst interesting and not exactly off-topic, aren't directly related to the central argument any more as they are left-overs from arguments against points that I have now retracted. what if the question is 'describe the role of homosexuals in recent californian history'? It has only very rarely been my experience that something would be included in the sylabus that would not be assessed in one way or another. I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one quesiton about either the contemporary or historical role of one of the groups marked for inclusion (gay's, transgenders, an ethnic group etc). for the record, i just meant that mentioning someone's sexuality without it holding any contextual relevence would be implying some kind of base significance of ones sexuality that, in my oppinion, does not exist. again, it was part of the 'whoops, i take this bit back' bit for the record, i concider it heavy-handed because it's, in effect, positive discrimination (possibly -- see below). I always feel that, rather than the heavy-handed "oh so your discriminating, eh? well, take this *KAPOW* now you're legally oblidged to discriminate in the opposite direction, to counter-act your previouse discrimination", the situation should be handelled by blanket-forbiding unjustified discrimination of any form, introdusing mechanisms to identify and 'complain about' unjustified discrimination, assessing any area where discrimination is apparently occouring, and, if genuine and unjustified discrimination is found to exist, punish the person responsible and ensure that they stop it. HOWEVER, i'd like to make two points: 1/ whilst i hold the above to be ideologically true, realistically it is sometimes not possible; and there are certainly arguments in favour of 'positively' discriminating, at least temporaraly, in certain cases. 2/ wether or not i object to the bill on the above grounds depends on wether it is legeslature, focusing only upon equal-rights, or educational policy/curriculumn etc, focusing on academic needs without prejudice.

whee, that's a hard-core li'l cartridge. The systems were harder too... i dropped my snes down the stairs when moving house, and it works fine. doubt my PC would prove as hardy I suspect that the disk's ability to survive boiling/freezing/submersion etc are due to the fact that they're hard-wired, and not re-wrightable; as i understand it, the chips inside a nes/gb cartridge store their data in a manner more analogouse to CDs than to the more fradgile (but usefully re-wrightable) magnetic floppies. I'm interested tho: did the game that you used to test this have any save features (save game, hi score etc), and if so did the data persist your tests, and do the save features still work?

i've only tried it briefly, and i dont really know that much about it (ie wether it's a good chooice for you), but damn small linux would definately not be too big for your computer.

"it is impossible for anything within nature to be unnatural" I agree. But, whilst i dont really have an ethical problem with tinkering with nature, i tend to think we should avoid it for 'ooh, what does this do *boom* oh, probably shouldnt have done that" reasons. i.e. untill we understand certain things to a much greater degree than we currently do, certain 'tinkerings' should be avoided including, arguably, eugenics (with the possible exeption of cases like this one).

aww... i was quite enjoying the fusion between ectymology, gramma, genetics and ethics. I was going to try to nudge the conversation towards a discussion of the ethics of using semi-colons. or something. getting slightly back on topic -- if, naturally, an allele's spread throughout a population would be suppressed by it causing the owner's death, and modern medicine over-comes this suppression by allowing the owner of the allele to survive, and then modern medicine artificially suppresses the spread of the allele, are we actually 'tinkering' with nature? i.e. do the two effects cancel each other out? i'm with you there. i actually think we should get rid of the capitol letters: they dont really do anything, and we could trim the english alphabet down by 50%, making it easyer to learn and more compact.

i'm pretty sure that singularity --> universe involves a rather significant increase in disorder.

I think this would work: OK, two gametes form a zygote: |X |X |X <--this is a diploid zygote, OK |X then, it duplicates. these will eventually form 'identicle' twins, so we can think of these as the genomes of the two twins: A..............B |X............|X |X............|X |X............|X |X............|X Then, post-fertilisation recombination occours (i've marked one out): A..............B |X............|X |X............|X |X............X| X|............X| note that, whilst containing exactly the same alleles, the two genomes are NOT actually identicle. Now, say the offspring recieves the following gamete: X | |--recombination inherited X--from twin A. It's pretty clear, from the lower recombination point, that this is twin A's child (the upper recombination point is a new one, not inhereted from either parent). Of cource, it could just be a coincidence, but the whole thing could be approached probabalistically, eg: if the child has recombinations at point a, b, c, d, w, x, y and z; w, x, y, and z are recombinations not present in either twin, and so can be assumed to be recombination during formation of sperm, reguardless of which twin is the parent; recombination points a, b, c and d are present in twin A, but not twin B; therefore, what is the probability of both twin A and twin B's child having the recombinations at those points? if it's really really low, i'd say youv proven that it's twin A's child. As for how easy that would be to do experimentally...

I'm dyslexic. my spelling is retarded. any similarities to french are entirely coincidental

interesting. ya learn something every day it wasn't my intention to say that there wasnt an ethical difference or anything like that -- more that, reguardless of the motivation, artificially selecting against a trait is eugenics, which has numerous disadvantages

in english(UK), the correct pronunciation of 'honour' is 'onour'; because the 'h' isn't pronounced, it is said -- and written -- with an 'an' as opposed to an 'a': 'an honour'. 'hotel' used to be the same, which is why you'll occasionally see 'an hotel', although -- as the 'h' is now pronounced -- it should be both spoken and written as 'a hotel'. as for 'an hereditary'... i dont believe this has ever been correctly pronounced 'ereditary', so id guess it's actually a result of the author speaking slangy and not pronounsing his 'aiches': if he pronounces it 'ereditary, he's likely to spell it 'an hereditary'. Similarly, i tend to say an 'otel, or an 'ole, and so might accidentally wright an hotel, or even an hole. as for the baby: what's the difference between choosing it so that it didn't have a heart condition, or for it's hair colour... i can never descide wether this kind of eugenics would be justified or not. I mean, there's alot to say that eugenics of any kind are inadvisable, but then if it weren't for medical intervention, the owners of alot of these alleles may not even make it to reproduction age, so would stuff like this just be countering other eugenic-esque things that we have inadvertantly been doing?