Sayonara

What do you think is the darkest part of Zim? The bit I thought parents of young children would like least was the fate of Keef's eyes.

How is a CIP going to propel a spacecraft?

I think the NASA web site has an entire section devoted to extreme environment technologies.

They were probably too girly.

I found out what that means. "Registered User" members are those who have not validated their accounts yet. It's nothing to do with the ranking system apparently.

I will do my special dance in a new hat.

If we merged all the chemistry sub-forums into one because of a lack of interest in the different topics, why would we make a new forum for a smattering of threads?

Well yes, but the troops won't be there forever, which is why the "Afghanistan went back down the pan when coalition forces left" thing is so distressingly relevant to Iraq.

I'm sure it will, but somehow I don't think - in either case - rolling in and flattening part of the country is what anyone sensible would call "helping".

I still use IE for windows update, and that's about it. I mainly use other browsers because they ALL have better features than IE, but even if they didn't the security concerns alone would make me avoid using it. I used the "disable IE" function that the DoJ forced Microsoft to install. Guess what - it doesn't do anything other than remove shortcuts.

IE is broken. This isn't just a popularity contest - it's many flaws and failures are extremely well-documented.

Nutshell: We did exactly the same thing there, and the country is now screwed.

I specified the control panel route because the start menu route depends on your setup.

*cough* Afghanistan *cough*

"I heard..." carries no weight here whatsoever.

Yes, he did get a PM from me. It was a reply to one he sent me, so it shouldn't have come as any great surprise. That's kind of what I am trying to determine.

It amazes me that after all the long discussions we have had about Iraq, people still think that the key to justifying the invasion and occupation of the country is their opinion of a single person.

There are so many things wrong with this I am not sure where to begin. "Whining", jesus

I think the parents shared a lot of the blame, but that's not the issue. The issue is that armed with pointy sticks the assailants would not have done anywhere near as much damage. As far as school deaths go, Dunblane is a much better example of why access to guns needs to be very strictly controlled. This has all been covered already though in this thread, so I'm not going to re-tread it all here. Do you not think that the fact assault weapons have been banned since 1967 might account for them having a tiny share of the gun deaths? What was the share prior to them being banned?

In populations that form groups or herds as an anti-predation strategy, not standing out as an individual with any particular weakness increases chances of survival. I wonder if this is some kind of related psychological relic?

I don't really think I have been trolling, although if I was you deserve it for your block-headedness. Pasting random quotes and links and then demanding the same is not a cohesive argument. I haven't suspended him. It was probably either Blike or YT. When he told you he was clueless you should have laughed in his face (well, you know, insofar as you can do on the net). This is exactly what I have been trying to highlight to Cap'n, albeit in a somewhat tired and ham-fisted way. Particularly the concept of "potential software" - I simply don't think calling everything software is particularly helpful given the original question that was asked, because if it were then we could reply with "a text file containing a non-breaking space", or anything equally trivial, which is clearly not what 5605 was asking for. I agree redefining "software" is a bad plan, but that does not preclude us from applying arbitrary limits in this discussion. And fair play to you, but have not been trying to redefine anything here. I have simply been trying to place limits on what we need to consider as "software", given the original question. Really I suppose I should have just ignored the one-upmanship coming from Refsmmat. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.

The reason it is getting nowhere quickly is that you are making the classical mistake of trying to have a new discussion outside the context of the original one. Were it not for the actual question being asked in the original post (or my interpretation of it, which is of course subjective), I'd most likely be taking the same hardline stance as yourself. I have already accounted for all of your questions in previous posts (I direct your attention in particular to post #43, and the last paragraph of post #36). You have ignored the questions I asked you, so I don't see what right you have to make any demands of me under the pretext of forwarding the discussion. My entire case is contingent on what was being asked in the first post, and it is not within my power to ensure that you understand that. Well, this is the question, isn't it? Well done for spotting it. If you're going to insist on looking for snippets on the web that look like they might agree with you, instead of actually applying knowledge of computing, I am just going to carry on this discussion with DoorNumber1, who has the distinct advantage of being able to speak from experience. As fascinating as this discussion is chaps I'm now off to bed, so fire away.

That's not a requirement for the manipulation of data, it's a generalisation about what programs do. Don't put words in my mouth.

Not really. "Simplest possible definition using friendly words" is not going to work here. "Software is a generic term for organized collections of computer data and instructions, often broken into two major categories: system software that provides the basic non-task-specific functions of the computer, and application software which is used by users to accomplish specific tasks" actually doesn't support your case at all.

In that case I'd love to hear what you think of the analogy I drew between viral instructions being picked up by a program, and an input file (such as image or text) being read by a viewer application.