J'Dona

Nope, you were the one who suddenly forgot about the pockmarks. I simply stated that your ignoring them showed a lack of required knowledge for the conclusions your drawing on your website. Look familiar? And as for your next point about things I've invented and you never said, of course I wouldn't do that; that would be a strawman tactic. But you did directly imply those things: You have just testified that the interior of a rock was exposed to running water.

Perhaps it has something to do with geology, a field which is critical when researching Martian rocks and one which, by all indications, you know nothing about. And if measurements were done inside the riock, how could they at all be related to running water on the surface of the rock in your summer? I ask because, apparently, you think that water damage from yesterday could affect the interior of a rock, and that water damage from many, many years ago could not.

She did the step papers and got S and 1 (where her offer required 1 and 2). The strange thing is, she was rejected from Trinity college for maths, and was immediately snatched up in the pool for Newnham college, which she didn't want to go to because it was a grils-only college. I'll bet Trinity would regret it now. I'm hoping to do Natural Sciences (physical) at Cambridge, or Physics if at another university (maybe with astronomy), though I'm not yet decided on all of my alternative universities. More A-Level students, post your results!

Half an hour left, good luck everyone.

For NavajoEverclear Maybe I'm biased in this case, but if you don't like turn-based, anime RPG's (and probably rightly so) then there are a few FPS real-time ones set in the future. I don't know many but one is Planetside, and another is Neocron, which I mentioned before. Neocron is a cyberpunk RPG set in the future and is quite extensive, and incidentally the graphics are pretty good too: http://www.gamershell.com/hellzone_MMORPG_Neocron.shtml It's all 1st-person (or 2nd-person so that it's just over your shoulder if you want) and real time, like any FPS, so combat's pretty decent. I've never actually played it, mind you, but I've watched my borther play it for years and I know more about it than some players do. It's lined up for expansions and gets regular patches, so it's got quite a bit of playing time left. Or you could wait a month for the sequel...

They're the qualification before university in the UK. Your acceptance into university (if you're going there) is based on the results, and hence your future careers. So tomorrow is quite a major day for a few people!

The limits don't apply to avatars that have already been loaded (otherwise those people would suddenly have blank avatars and that would be pretty annoying). The same does for signature limits, with some being over 100 characters at the moment because they were set before the limit was reduced. So anyone with an avatar or signature over those limits who changes it will lose their "bonus". :/

For those 17 to 18-year-olds in the UK, they're going to be getting their A-Level results tomorrow morning! Here's a buffer for those who want to spill the beans and cry with joy/despair over the fate of their UCAS applications, and thus future lives. As far as I know, results will be available from 10:30 AM to 2:30 PM at your school or college across the UK (or at least at mine it is). Some people won't stop to say how things went here, of course, as they're probably going out to get drunk immediately afterward, whether the day's result was good or bad.

SFN used to allow 100 by 100 pixel avatars, but I guess it was reduced for memory issues. The servers easily have space themselves, of course, but every time someone new views the site it has to upload avatars again, so it leads to hefty bandwidth pressure. That wasn't so much of a problem in the past, but SFN is getting bigger and more viewers are coming in.

The only thing I've played seriously like that is Diablo 2. And Diablo 2 isn't really an RPG. And it sucks... your life away, that is. RPG's can very, very easily take large portions of your life away, leaving you in a state of bewilderment when you look at the clock and find the hour hand one number before the last time you looked, but it's worth it because - hey! - you gained three strength points! My brother plays MMORPG's a lot though, particularly Anarchy Online and especially Neocron. He'd play it all night while I was trying to sleep back when we shared a room. If I listen hard enough, I can still hear those city announcer voices: "Neocron Police Department informs: regular lectures about your responsibility and rights as a Neocron citizen. Weekly at the NCPD in Via Rosso Sector Two."

And caesium explodes in water. Eeeexcellent.

Wow, a pound of silicon carbide for only $5... but unfortunately they don't ship to the UK.

Although I've not finished it yet (just reading the last part) I'd have to recommend 'Stranger in a Strange Land' by Robert A. Heinlein, if you haven't read it yet. It's generally considered to be the best science fiction novel ever written, and one of the most controversial. It was also the longest SF novel at the time, and goes very in depth about psychology, politics, religion, ethics, and so forth. It doesn't go so much into science (perhaps a good thing since it was written in 1961, and talks about life and a breathable atmosphere on Mars) but it does include some detailed description of alien psychology (notably the Martians) and the impact caused by a mix of their way of thinking and that of humans.

As a public service I have somewhat shortened KBR's post for people who don't have time to read quite as much. Since I don't know enough about the material itself, I've been careful to include all information (removing only unnecessary adverbs and turns of phrase, or sentence fragments which did not relate to the actual subject matter), and leave judgement entirely to the professionals. If I wasn't sure about one part or couldn't reduce it, I left it alone to preserve its meaning. If parts of this version don't mean what they did originally, KBR, it's because I didn't understand them in the first one, and I'll edit any parts you don't like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The question of whether or not anything of consideration really exists is an popular but hardly stimulating idea for the average man. A lot of counterarguments occur as the denouncement of the existence of anything, particularly with regard to whatever spatial issue of 'truth': and/or time. The discarding of 'reality' has long been a ploy for those who disdain the responsibility of recognizing and acknowledging it. Pythagorean geometry and as well as would and do exist, with or without subjectivity. The physical universe is as indifferent to humanity as the mathematics and philosophy that prove 'truth', whether or not people deign to acknowledge such realities - such eternal truths, or not... The following may not be the last word on the superfluous question of whether or not there is anything at all - perhaps most popularly asked regarding the issue of time, otherwise accounted for in the following text. Justifying its removal, by demand from members or mods, for which many other amateur and professional scientists and philosophers may only be grateful, if not humbled. Those immune to humility may find facts which overpower their egocentrism in the following text: "A WORD ABOUT SIGNS OF THE TIMES. A Disinformational Tyme Of The Signs: "Time is a hallucination purveyed by the inventors of space." - By Kent Benjamin Robertson THE MYTHOLOGY OF ARBITRARY SPACE & TIME: (Note: paragraph deleted because it refers to American imperial units as an arbitrary form of units, and bases following arguments on subjectivity from that. Most here will agree that it is arbitrary; that's why scientists use metric. It's also not the standard form anywhere outside the USA.) This arbitrary determination of the value of space brought about a misunderstanding that the existence and/or value of time is likewise arbitrary (a 'human invention'), just as the above described value of space was determined by arbitrary means, whereas space (which we have only recently learned to be inseparable from time, evolving from 'space and time', to 'space-time') would, in fact, still exist, whether humans existed to observe and measure it or not. (Moving right along: Racing & weaving through and between the spacing.) The formal definition of time is synonymous with motion. Motion occurs in space; within which space-time is the interval between two or more events. This is why Einstein modified Newtonian translation of 'Time and Space' to the Relativistic expression of space-time. There cannot be time without space, nor vice-versa, much as there is no magnetism without electricity, or electriciy without magnetism. (Monopoles - electricity or magnetism independent of the other, have yet to be found or proven. The same is true of 'particles', 'black holes', the 'big bang theory', and bastardized thermodynamic interpretations lurching to the myth of an 'inevitable, universal entropic heat death'...) (Note: I'd just like to say that at this point, KBR, you're losing just a little tiny bit of the objectivity that would otherwise have made your time on this forum more peaceful. Calling 'black holes' a 'bastardized thermodynamic interpretation' isn't going to enforce fair peer review, particularly when you earlier called this text [among other things] an "impersonal observation") "Time is a hallucination purveyed by the inventors of space." - Part II Terrestrial time standards are based on astronomical motions of the planet(s) through space around the sun. A planetary year is the time taken for its completion of a round trip about the sun. An earth month of 30 days is 1/12th of a year. A week is 1/4th of that month. A day is 1/7th of that week. An hour is 1/24th of a day. A minute is 1/60th of an hour. A second is 1/60th of a minute... Consequently, a second of time is also 18 1/2 miles of space, as traveled by the earth in its orbit around the sun. A 24 hour day is based on the rotational period of the earth on it's own axis. The circumference of the earth is just over 24,000 miles; that is how far a point on the surface moves each day. Proving very simply and elegantly that space, time and motion are synonymous; no single one could exist without the other two... Time has come today from the past to the present and future. ABC, Moments 1, 2, 3; et cetera, squared... Einstein's 'Non-Absolute Relativistic 4-D space-time.' What it is: Time in 4 dimensions is shorter and faster in smaller, past spaces, and slower (dilated) in future, larger spaces; when compared to present time at any given moment of an observer in the present: exactly between small-fast-space and large-slow-space. In a 4-dimensional, physically expanding universe a *square mile is not the same spatial size when compared with itself; from the present, relative to (smaller, more dense) past or (larger, less dense) future 4-D expanding physical matter, and causing the observed - non 'big bang' initiated - expansion of space (Hubble's expanding Universe.) Neither therefore, is 60 *miles per hour (or 186,282 miles s-1, the speed of light) always the same relative speed. Nor is a year, month, week, day, hour, or second always the same length in the present than in the past or future. This proves that the value of time varies with the value of space it occurs in. Consider relativistic 'time dilation' and relativistic 'non-absolute time', with slow time occurring in relatively larger spaces and fast time occurring in relatively smaller spaces. Consider the relativity of time values for which, until here and now, there are not even any failed explanations. In a 4-D expanding universe, the value of time and space (4-D space-time) varies from coordinate system to coordinate system. The speed of light, for example, is ever-increasing, while remaining constant relative to the coordinate system in which it originates and from which it is measured. The value of time being covariant with the smaller and larger - earlier and later - 4-D space-times it occurs and/or is measured in." - Updated Excerpt from, GRAVITY IS THE 4th DIMENSION: Electricity Is The 5th Dimension, Magnetism is the 6th Dimension (The Reinstatement Of Einstein's Presently Abandoned <Steady State> Unified Field, w'out Mathematics.) - by Kent Benjamin Robertson, Copyrights, '59, '60. '66, '70, '79, '85 & '99. Thank you for reading this text.

It depends what kind you're looking for. If you've got good programs for modifying pitures (e.g. Photoshop) then you could turn pretty much any picture into an avatar, in which case you just need to find a site with good pictures of the sort of thing you're looking for, or do an image search in Google. But if, as I suspect, you're looking for premade avatars... I can only recommend that you put "avatars" or "forums avatars" into google and look from there. Personally I think custom avatars are more personal, but they take work so one of those sites would probably be better. Don't forget, this forum has a max avatar size of 75x75 pixels, just so you know when you're searching.

You know, I know nowhere near enough about the university system to make conclusions like I did, so I'd better disown them immediately. I probably should have stuck with talking about A-Levels, seeing as I know quite a bit about them (having done them for three years), and less about university (having done it for zero years), and I only felt compelled to defend myself because two people had mentioned that paragraph. Anyway, I think Dapthar has heard all he needs to about A-Levels so I'll leave any more questions to you guys.

Yeah, as neo007 already pointed out, I could have perhaps been a little clearer. However, at the end of a degree course in Europe where you've taken time to study in areas not strictly a part of your actual degree course, I don't think you end up with an official, lesser qualification (i.e. minor) as well as your main degree (major)... or at least one which matters to or is expected by employers and post-graduate professors. That being the case, a lot of university students would only concentrate on their main course, seeing as diversity into unrelated or somewhat-related subjects isn't compulsory.

I'll play you, been getting bored of the competition I've got at home

I agree with dave completely. Hubble's done more for science than just about any other single project in history (certainly NASA project, and any in space), and the cost to extend its lifetime by a few years is only about 1% of NASA's budget. Hubble is still making new discoveries, and those few years could mean a lot. If they weren't going all safety and abandoning the planned shuttle mission...

Cheers, it works! Thanks blike There aren't many suggestions I can make, as I think the new setup is indeed far better than the last. A lot fo the stuff you had to search for before is now on the main page, which helps. Just about the only thing I can suggest is that the Latest Forum Topics on the main page be extended a bit so that more fit on. Maybe the section of it showing the forum name could be compressed onto multiple lines so that the thread name wasn't as often, which might save a bit of space for extras.

When I click the New Thread button, I get something like the following: Since it only started a couple days ago, I assumed it was something to do with the server changes, but it may have just been my fiddling with the email that caused it (which involved me having to reenter the same password as my new one as well). I'm just assuming it has something to do with the "Registered User" tag. At the bottom of the page it says:

No effect. I hope it's not because I changed my email and it altered the way the server recognised me or something. I don't like posting so many times on a public thread so I'll just try and sort it out myself for a bit...

Ooh, also having the "Who's Online" page again would be nice, or being able to create new threads, or edit posts! My settings must be really messed up.

Well, I'd give some more general suggestions... but I'd prefer just to be able to vote on polls again, or reply to my "Ending the 0.999~ = 1 debates" thread, or not show up as "Registered User" under my name instead of "Atom". I can't do any at the moment and I don't know why, so I'm guessing that some settings were changed and I didn't know. Also, what's the word on the SFN Chess page? Not sure that's going on there, as apparantly some people see it and others don't. Sounds good though.