Dak

Indeed. also, they arent a very good set of requirements for something to be defined as life... take this robot, for example. Imagine that it was powered by a petrol generator... it would move, respire (take in oxygen for the petrol engine), sense, grow (as it adds blocks to itself), reproduse, excrete (carbon dioxides, sulfoxides, other end-products of petrol combustion), and require nutrition (petrol)... thus qualifying it as 'alive' by the mrs gren rules.

had the links handy, so here you are: Spybot S&D (make sure to select the option to turn teatimer on) Ad-Aware SE Spywareblaster and i'd add Spyware Guard aswell.

I can't say i dont see your reasoning in closing the threads, but wouldnt it be better to allow the conversations to take place? you must remember willow and his 'your sensoring me --> you cant adequately defend ToE --> ToE is indifensible --> you need to silence me to hide the fact that ToE is a LIE!!!!!!!12 --> god created the universe and mankind all on his own without evolution nya nya nya --> but he did it along time ago, 'cos we all know that young earth creationists are 'friking morons'... If we actually start censoring creationists, then they'll just use it as validation of their 'theory'... and what of creationists who would be open to actual scientific/logical comparison of ideas? Plus... science depends heavily on peer-review to catch any mistakes... thanks to creationists and ID'ers continual and failed attempts to disprove it, the theory of evolution is probably one of the most peer-reviewed, and therefore reliable, theories science has. Cheers for that, by the way, creationists

most computer problems are to do with software... hardware faults are actually quite rare, so chanses are good that you wont need to splash out to fix this problem. My advise would be to wait untill someone else comes along with another suggestion... even tho I dont know what the error message meant, im pretty sure that its enough for someone more knowledgable in this area to start diagnosing/fixing properly. hmm... do you have a bootable CD, like the windows install disk? If im understanding this correctly, booting from a disk and loading a disk from within windows use completely different drivers, so trying to boot from a CD might indicate wether or not its a software or hardware fault. How did you clean the optic? I believe that some DVD/CD drives have two optics... if you used an optic-cleaning-disk, you might have to do something to make sure that its trying to read it with the CD lense, so that the CD lense actually gets cleaned... not sure how youd do that tho... maybe check that its an optic-cleaning CD as opposed to an optic-cleaning DVD.

OK, just to eliminate an obviouse cause, can you confirm that you've tried quite a few different cds, ie enough to be sure that the cd's that your trying to play arent actually corrupted. Otherwize, i personally dont know what the problem is, but i believe the error message will be enough info for someone else to figure it out (codec, anyone?)

hmm... if its not there atall, then i assume its never been set to automatically start when your computer logs on; and as your dvd drive used to work, i suppose TCDPlay isn't actually required. i suppose you could try going to start > search > for files and folders, and having a search for TCDPlay.drv, and mannually starting it if its there, and seeing if that will make your computer play cds... but i doubt thats the problem tbh (cant see it hurting to try tho). do you get this problem with both data CDs and audio CDs? What exactly happens when you try to read CDs? do you hear the wirr of the drive spinning? what does the drive icon in 'my computer' say (ie, does it look empty, or does it come up with the name of the CD)? and, if you double-click the drive icon, does it come up with an error message, or just display an empty window? Im assuming that file has only been submitted to that database once, and the one time it was submitted it had been 'found on a toshiba laptop' -- tbh im not sure wether it's to do with toshiba laptops or toshiba CD/DVD drives, or even if its nessesary for proper functioning.

Yeah, hopefully the new licensing laws will curb the violence, by not forsing all the pissed townies out on the street at the same time. but more than that, its a triumph of freedom and liberty over faschist dictatorship and cruel despotism. Have to stop drinking and go home at 11 my arse. I'm drinking till i want to go home tonight

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4461888.stm YAY!

I used to have mild anorexia -- not thru choice, but because of a problem with my intestines, which also prevented me from properly adsorbing what food i did eat. I was all weak and feeble, felt like shit, grumpy and slow (both phisically and mentally), and as for looking cool -- i looked like a zomby/skeleton. I'd advise against putting yourself through it if atall avoidable.

just an idea, but why not make a sub-forum under philosophy/religion espescially for descussions on intelligent desighn and creationism? and add a check-box to the search and new posts options to ignore that sub-forum in all searches? That way, those who can be bothered to tolerate ID/creationism can, and those who cant dont have to. Maybe, on the off-chance that a scientifically good thread gets started in there, it can get moved out into philosophy/religion or evolution, thus screening the IDiots out for those who dont want to put up with them.

Hmm... im not sure that would allow telomeres to be done away with. as well as solving the shrinking chromosome problem, they have a few other roles... most notably, they protect the ends of chromosomes from damage (the long strand of the telomere folds up into a knot, and anyway the telomere can bear a little damage as its non-coding). without telomeres, the chromosomes would likely shrink anyway due to wear and tear. there was a reason that my answre was only one word long: I switched off during my lectures on the regulation of the cell-cycle due to an incredibly booring lecturer... i just remember it being something complicated involving lots of chemical checkpoints. Cheers, but my posts in the 'test' thread got deleted by mokele, so im back down to <1,200 again now

test buggerit... why wont it let me post my response? hang on, ill try to edit it in in installments. [edit]done[/edit] Question 1: due to the way that DNA polymerase works, it is not possible for it to copy a strand of DNA all the way to the end, resulting in the copied strand being slightly shorter than the original. This is because the foremost part of DNApolyIII is used as an engine, to pull the rest of the enzyme -- including the bit that does the copying, located to the rear -- along the existing DNA strand like a train along tracks. At the 3' end of the strand of DNA, DNApolyIII 'runs out of track', and cannot copy any further. [b]Figure 1 -- DNApolyIII at the end of the line[/b] KEY: = -- DNA [color=red]left part of DNA polymerase[/color] -- Bit that does the copying [color=blue]right part of DNA polymerase[/color] -- bit that pulls the DNApoly along ___________________ [color=red]|---------|[/color][color=blue]|-------|[/color] [b]}--DNA polymerase, moving thataway -->[/b] =============================== ===================== At the point shown above, DNA polymerase has run out of DNA to pull itself along on, and so cannot move (and thus copy) further upstream. To circumvent this, chromosomes end in a telomere -- a non-coding stretch of repetative DNA (CCCTAAA in the case of humans). So, when the dna is copied, the telomere will be a bit shorter in the new strand than in the original. this is reversed by telomerase, which whacks in a few more CCCTAAA repeats to bring the telomere back up to the correct size. like this: [b]Figure 2 -- telomerase doin' its thang[/b] [color=red]|[/color] [color=red]|[/color] [color=red]|[/color] [color=red]|[/color] [color=red]|[/color] [color=blue]|[/color]---->DNA polymerase-->[color=blue]|[/color]---->telomerase-->[color=blue]|[/color] [color=blue]|[/color] [color=blue]|[/color] [color=blue]|[/color] [color=blue]|[/color] [color=blue]|[/color] [color=blue]| [/color] [color=blue]coding DNA[/color] [color=red]Telomeric, non-coding DNA[/color] The reason that telomerase can do this is that it doesnt have to move along, or even copy, the DNA from the origial strand as it knows the DNA will be CCCTAAA (or GGGATTT), which the enzyme reverse-transcribes from an RNA template located inside the enzyme intself, thus circumventing the 'cant copy at the end of the chromosome' problem. Anyway, if something goes wrong with this, the telomeres will become shorter and shorter with each replication, untill eventially a little bit of coding DNA is lost from the end of the chromosome every time that the DNA is replicated. The reason that proof-reading doesnt catch these errors is that the proof-reading is done at more-or-less the same time as the DNA copying, the proof-reading enzymes following the replicative enzymes along as they copy the DNA (is the simplified version). as the 3' end isnt copied by the normal enzymes in the normal way, the proof-reading isnt carried out on it. Anyway, one strand of the telomer is supposed to be longer than the other and form a double strand with itself... thus making error-checking it for length pretty dificult. Cells seem to cope with this by relying on the fact that telomerase may elongate the shortened telomer either too much or too little, and overall the length of the telomere remains dynamically steady, ie it will randomly increase and decrease in size, but remain roughly the same length over time. this obviously doesnt work brilliantly, as old people quite oftern are lacking telomeres Question 2: Chemicals.

Hmm.. as far as I can tell, toshiba CD/DVD ROMs (might) rely on the program TCDPlay.drv being set to start on system boot in order to function correctly.1 go to start > run, and type in msconfig click on the 'startup' tab, and check wether or not the TCDPlay entry is there with a tick next to it.

What i learnt in school, is that to be classified as alive something has to exhibit all of the following criteria: Movement: check -- component parts of the computers on which the internet is stored move. Respire: Nope -- the internet is metabolically inert. sense: check -- the internet alters its behaviour dependant on stimuli Grow: check -- servers are added all the time Reproduse nope -- there's only one internet. Excrete: check -- see this thread for proof that shit most definately does come out of the internet. require nutrition: check -- energy, in the form of electricity, goes into it. So, even being very generouse, the internet doesnt meet all the requirements of a living organism. Note that the above requirements are by no means the universally accepted definition of life: theres alot of debate as to what actually constitutes life; but im not aware of a definition of life that would qualify the internet as alive. Anyway, the internet is just a collection of networks, which themselves are just collections of computers.

one thing: if your going to dual boot, make sure you back up your files from the OS that is installed already. My last attempt to install ubuntu alongside windows XP resulted in a less-than-amusing loss of my master partition table and all of my boot sectors took me ages to repair my hdd/recover the original windows install. [edit]actually, that was kinda my fault; but still, i'v heard from people who had it happen to them without doing anything foolish[/edit]

speaking of updating drivers: have you done that lately, or accepted any of the hardware updates from the microsoft update service (i believe that they are drivers). played any new CDs bought from sony? anything else atall that might seem relevant? just clutching at straws here. You could try going to start > settings > control pannel, double-clicking on system, and going to hardware > device manager. do any of the devices have a little ! in a yellow circle by them?

if you look them up and need any help understanding, then feel free to ask questions here. to better understand recessive/dominant, you might want to look up both gene and allele aswell.

Not directly in answre to your question, but: Actually, RNA does use more than 4 bases, due to the fact that more than one codon can code for the same amino acid. For example, alanine is coded for by CGA, CGC, CGG and CGT; in otherwords, CGx. this would nessesatate 4 different types of tRNA: CGA, CGC, CGG and CGU; the last base is referred to as the 'wobble' position, because it can be changed to another base without changing the amino acid that it codes for. The non-standard base inosine (I) can pair with C,A or U; meaning that you only need two different types of tRNA for alanine: CGI and CGC. There are other non-standard bases that will bond with both pyramidines (ie U and A) or both purines (ie C or G), allowing greater flexibility in the genetic code, and cutting down on the amount of tRNA molecules needed. In addition, the bases dihydrouridylate, thymine, and pseudouridylate are present in two of the four arms of the tRNA molecule, and i believe they play a role in joining the tRNA molecule to the ribosome during protien synthesys (tho im not too sure on that bit)

PC4200 ram? I didnt know my computer was that old... iv only got pc133. cheers for all the groovy tips

Yeah, I'v changed some bits over before, but never the whole thing at once, and there are some bits that i've never played with before. I'm a tad put off by the fact that there are so many different things that you have to keep in mind: eg, with ram i believe that both cards have to be the same type (eg both SDRAM), both have to be the same speed (eg PC133) otherwize the faster one will slow down to the speed of the slower, the MOBO has to have the right slot for the type of ram, both the MOBO and BIOS both have limits the max speed and size of RAM they can use etc... With all those little things that have to be bore in mind for each component... hmm... I suppose it would be best to chose the components first, and then the MOBO after?

Cheers guys -- it seems a lot less mysteriouse and alien now I keep meaning to have a go at building a computer on of these days, so that info should come in handy.

Im curiouse; what are all of those little slots on my mobo actually for? Does my mobo have some kind of untapped potential? I found a photo of my mobo on the net, and have annotated it to the best of my abilities; if anyone could fill in the gaps, espesially as to the mysteriouse green thing, which has intregued me mightily, that would be appreciated. cheers

most strains of HIV take a long time to kill (espescially with the correct treatment), so quite a few people manage to dye of something else before the HIV kills them. and, as mokele said, some people are immune to the more common strains due to the delta-9 mutation. Other than that, when you are first exposed to HIV it is possible for your body to raise anti-bodies against it, and kill the relatively few virions and infected white-blood-cells off; so I suppose you could say that you can become a very little bit infected and then recover. But the bloke mentioned above is, to my knowledge, the only person who has become properly HIV+ and then gone back to being HIV-.

from the D2C site: in my understanding, its not aimed at creation or creationists per se, but aimed at the tactic, employed by certain creationists, of using/spreading bull-****, intelectually dishonest, and plain out-right incorrect logic/facts, in an attempt to promote creationism and/or to supress acceptance of the theory of evolution. I'll admit that the name is a tad unfriendly, but the intention -- as clarified in the 'about us' link -- is nothing to do with peoples right to have/spread a certain opinion, but more about taking umberage with people who lye to/misinform other people to spread afformentioned opinion.

^ good ideas. a few suggestions, as youll be tinkering with the wealcome thread. the first 'and' should read 'an'. scientifically ...Read the Science Forums ettiquette ? And you may find the common accronyms thread and the vbulletin FAQ helpful ? --- maybe a little bit addressing the differenses and similarities between 'micro'evolution and 'macro'evolution? --- and if your going to lock the thread, maybe a bit about how someone could comment on the thread, if they have any thing to add/comment on? (all the links still work by the way, just in case you were planning on testing them) as for the definitions, based on common usage and wikipedea, i'd suggest something along the lines of: creation -ism/-ist: a beliefe that a deity/deitys created stuff; litteral, or at least semi-litteral, belief in the book of genesis; incompatable with the theory of evolution. theistic-evolution(ist)/intelligent desighn(er): evolution, as dun by mr god. some discrepancies with ToE; can range from a completely different version of ToE to a very slightly changed ToE. for example, 'other animals evolved but humans were created as-is by god' evolution(ist): evolution, as defined by sciense. Note that saying stuff like 'god set it up this way' or 'god keeps it happening', or even 'god guided our evolution so that humans would exist and be special' doesn't nessesaraly conflict with the ToE; so, for example, Phi would be an evolutionist, even tho (i think) he believes that a higher forse created the universe in such a way that evolution would happen (appologies if that is incorrect).