Dak

wouldnt a moving wallpaper be immensly irritating?

suspected it might have been. Cheers dave. It wasnt a majour issue, but it was a bit of a pain in the bum ps@dave: the curl-in error is happening.

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?p=231069#post231069 Its an idea for a competition' date=' see who can design the best christmas style banner Cheers, Ryan Jones[/quote'] Just to get the ball rolling, here's my entry

I notice that the links no longer have the '&type=hms' in them, so it works again now -- cheers to whoever fixed it.

Just out of curiosity, whats the disadvantage of the technology coming from overseas?

Why is genetics in the medicine forum?

tangently related

As far as I'm concerned, you lose your freedom of speach when what your saying is desighned soley to offend -- if he's doing it to offend people, then I'd argue he shouldnt be allowed; any other reason, and its ok by me. And before we go too far down the 'santa hanging by his kneck disturbing image' road, maybe we should apply the same argument to the christmas-tree faeries

their explanation is that it removes 'bloat'; ie, you can chose what you want installed, and not have anything unnessesary. The functionality of a few of the most common extentions are included in FF 1.5 (mainly to do with the tabbed browsing)

May I request a 'people who have been banned/suspended and why' thread please? It would give us all (especially the newer posters) a better idea of what isn't tolerated, and -- with the moderators that we have -- would likely be hilariouse

ah, thats a different issue. if you think that the go-slow zones are unwarrated, then I see your point. Don't go faster than 70mph then Why couldnt a computer spot it? they can measure distance and speed; surely safe stopping distances are just a function of speed? (ok, road conditions too, but a computer could atleast spot the blatant tail-gaters and flagg them up for a police constable) Yeah, i dont like the idea of computer programs auto-fining people, for example. i'd like the computers to flag everything that they find for review by an actual policeman, for the reason you mentioned above. --- if we put aside the question of wether the speedlimits/go-slow-zones etc are justified and assume for the sake of argument that they are, then the speed laws are a good argument for CCTV. We'll never have enough police men to assure that noone ever speeds; CCTV -- especially with some kind of computer program to highlight the speeders -- is the only feasable way of attaining a near 100% enforsment of the speed laws. i think the main problem people have is not with being filmed -- it happens whenever we go into a shop, usually without a complaint -- but with being filmed 100% of the time, which i dont understand to be honest and reguarding the toilet CCTV: id have no problem, as long as i was assured that the tape wouldnt be viewed unless a crime was commited in the toilets... although I wouldnt really be that bothered if they were viewed -- it wouldnt affect me if someone watched me taking a dump, so i dont see the problem. [edit]actually, i can see ecoli's slippery slope arguemt more now i think about it... if CCTV could be viewed by AI that would flag any crimes, but not viewed by a human in the abscense of any crime, then i can see the possibility of them being compulsary within certain peoples homes; people with criminal records, known drug addicts... I can't see people complaining at the prospect of paedophiles having to have the AI-CCTV in their homes. I suppose the slippery-slope argument is a bit disturbing...[/edit]

ok: is it correct to say that if we assume the entire seasponge is 'the system', it doesnt completely satisfy each requirement of 'life'; however, if we view a seasponge cell as 'the system', it fully meets all of the criteria of 'life'? when you get right down to it, though, brains/neural-networks/nerves are just chemical tripwires.

I never understand it when people say this... speeding is illegal, and no-one has any right to complain at being punished for breaking the law, or at the govournment for wanting to introduce measures to stop people breaking the law, unless that law is unjust or unfair. Its not as if the speed laws are unwarranted -- the faster you go, the more chance you have of killing someone if you hit them. Although i do agree with you concerns as to the security of the system.

sorry, slow typer; you hadnt replyed when i started. As mokele said, a slippery slope fallicy. Manditory 1984esk security cameras in each persons house are no more likely to be a result of an increasing number of CCTV cameras, than compulsary burgalar alarms are likely to result from the increase in burgalar alarms and the option for people to put them in their homes, reguardless of the amount of crime that compulsary burgalar alarms would cut. Police need a warrant to search someones home -- the same sense of the need to preserve the privacy of the innocent will prevent compulsary home-CCTV. You guys wont even let the govournment take your guns away to cut crime -- what are the chances that you'd let them set up cameras in your home

If its viewed as a colony, then the problem goes away; each individual cell would be alive, and each individual cell would definately sense in the way that you described it. The problem is simply with its status as a living multi-cellular organism, rather than a collection of living monocellular organisms; thinking about it more, the definition that you gave (pertaining just to sense) is quite fitting, as of all animals the seasponges are the least 'organismy', and more like living blobs of tissue, so its perhaps apt that they dont quite fulfill all of the criteria if viewed as a single, multicellular entity.

I did an experiment once, here in the UK. i walked back from town to my house, making a note of when i was on camera and when i wasnt. The majority of my journey was documented, wether it was from shop security cameras pointing out of their windows, the cameras atop the traffic lights (desighned to catch people who run red lights), speed cameras, or the CCTV cameras put up to catch crime and constantly monitered (i probably missed a few, like cameras in busses and taxis that could have caught me on camera). I, and most people, are confortable with this, as -- unless we commit a crime, or have a crime commited on us -- the fact that we are videotaped is entirely inconsiquental. BUT, i think if the govournment wanted to, say, put cameras up in our own homes thered be a fuss despite our level of acceptance of CCTV. ----- I can think of two times when the fact that i was video recorded actually had even the slightest inpact on my life. one was when someone tried to mug me. he was caught on camera. I believe he is in jail now. the other was one time when i was incredibly annoyed, and was elbowing lamp-posts on my way home. I stopped whenever anyone was about so as not to concern them, but still a police van turned up and asked if i was alright, in a 'hello hello hello, whats going on here then we know you've been assaulting lamposts they have not filed a complaint because they are not alive hint hint ps is your arm alright' kinda way, which i assume was due to me being seen on CCTV (like i said, i stoped when anyone was around, and the police van came strait for me... didnt look like it was just patroling). so... pretty effective, and non-intrusive unless an intrusion is justified imo.

Yes, very nice tool... recently managed to distroy my MBR and all of my bootsectors, and managed to fix my hdd and windows install with the UBCD. Note, though, that some of the tools are 'free trial' versions, and have limited functionality. UBCD isnt actually for windows, its has its own operating-system (FreeDOS, iirc), and does complicated low-level stuff like tinkering with your BIOS and hdd... nothing thats directly to do with your operating system. i believe that the 'windows' UBCD has some tools on it that are specific to the windows operating system, like the root-kit tool. Root-kits can be undetectable from within windows, but could be spotted by a correctly desighned tool running indipendantly from the infected OS (from FreeDOS, for example)... i doubt that a rootkit detector desighned for windows would work on a linux distro, and the other tools are presumably desighned specifically for tinkering with windows OSs without actually loading the windows OS.

Ahh, getcha now. By that definition, though, it would be hard to classify sea-sponges as a single living organism, rather than a hetrologouse colony of genetically identical cells (like seaweeds are) -- although, i believe that i've heard that argument put forward before; maybe that was why.

^ I thought it probably was... but i wasn't sure if it was a 'squish the hippy who thinks the interweb is alive' type post [edit]my bad... missed the 'furthermore' at the beginning[/edit] What's your view on the 'internet qualifying as sensing' point i made? Im not sure of the exact definition of 'responding to' in reguards to 'sensing is responding to external stimuli'... what i said was valid, but then again it would be valid to say that a vase responds to the external stimuli of being poked by falling over... do you know what the differense between a direct repercussion type response and a 'sense' response is?

I was trying to point out that, even if we try to view it as alive, it cannot be viewed as such, even with what is imo the most lax of the definitions of life. Parts of the servers move when they recieve eletrical signals that are in response to external stimuli; I'd argue that they sence as much as jelly-fish do. No argument with your other points, exept: it was a joke

nice find on the AVG/cd rom issue 5614. RE: the antivirus & touchpad: thats odd... never heard of AVG doing that before i dont mind trying to help you get AVG and your touch pad to work at the same time if youd prefer, but an easyer solution might be to leave AVG uninstalled and replace it with Avast!. RE: the drive. if one of your friends has a cd burner, you could try downloading and burning the ultimate boot cd and seeing if that will boot on your computer. if not... id start to suspect that its a hardware fault.

Main tips: get two (cos, unlike anti-viruses, anti-slyware programs are no where near 100% effective), and make sure theyre not one of the bogus ones that install loads of crap on your computer, finds it, and then offers to remove it if you pay for the full version. http://www.spywarewarrior.com/ <--list of good/bad anti-slyware apps. YT: tracking cookies arent too bad, but if they bug you, spywareblaster will add loads of tracking cookies to internet explorer's/firefox's 'block' list, so they shouldnt get put back on your computer.

hey, im not litterally white; but for the sake of succinctness, i wont get offended if anyone wants to refer to me as 'white', as opposed to the more accurate but less eloquent 'person of pinky-slightlylightbrown-whitish ethnicity'.

^ Metabolism - The chemical and physiological processes by which the body builds and maintains itself and by which it breaks down food and nutrients to produce energy." http://www.cytosport.com [emphasis mine] Breaking stuff down into less complicated stuff (usually to get energy from it) is catabolism, building stuff into more complicated molecules is anabolism... an organism that does both has a metabolism. The robot only breaks stuff down, so it has a catabolism, but not a metabolism. Plus... petrol isn't food The robot could relatively easily be redesighned to actually have a metabolism tho, id assume; maybe some (non-standard) catalytic converter in its exaust pipe, that would probably classify it as having a metabolism. hmm... i remember reading something about some scientists who were trying to artificially make something that satisfied all of the requirements of 'life'; it was essentially some enzymes in lycelles, with a DNA substitute inside... ill try and find the link. My point was just that its pretty easy to imagine something being built that could qualify as life by most of the current definitions, without actually being life -- or to think of stuff that blatantly is alive, but wouldnt count as alive (like your imortal being, and clarisse's mule).

here's a link to the researchers web-site, which has a movie of the robot self-replicating. Basically, it assembles the blocks to form a copy of itself. it would probably count as catabolism But your right, as it doesnt 'build up' chemicals (anabolism), i dont think it could be said to have a metabolism. 'twas my point I dont realy think that there is such a thing as 'life'... we're just bundles of chemical machinary and information of varying degrees of complexity... whilst that doesnt make life any less special, i think it makes it pretty much impossible to adequately define without resorting to some kind of arbritrary bench-marks. having said that... ...unless we're talking michael jakson, I'm pretty sure we can exclude stars from the list of things posessing 'life'