Sayonara

People who have no social life because they spend all their life slaving away obsessively at one thing. Because as we all know, going to keggers and vomitting up your own stomach is more important and clever than curing HIV or producing clean energy.

The population equilibrium size - a comparative point where the demands of the population at that size can be sustained indefinitely by the available resources (including space, food etc), taking into account ecological factors (both biotic and abiotic) but not unpredictable change. It moves about, populations head away from it or towards it... it all gets horribly complicated. But if a population drops below K and keeps declining, that's bad.

I think he wants to know what an oxidising agent does. Gene, it would help if we knew what you needed the info for.

I realise it's entertainment, and you're well within your rights to watch and enjoy it. By the same token I am well within my rights to complain that the already dumbed-down population, who are so completely alienated from science, knowledge and the betterment of the self that they often actually ridicule academic ambition, are now being presented with yet another programme that says "hey kids, science is boring and scientists are just geeks. But we stole their fire and made THIS with it - isn't it fun? Who cares how it works." Don't tell me to lighten up when I am expressing genuine and well-founded concerns about the direction society is heading - it's not an appropriate response.

Their test of "do redheads experience more pain than brunettes" - as an example - can hardly be called scientific. They had a sample group of 1 individual for each test group. They had no control group. They produced no quantifiable data of any kind. Their interpretation of the experiment was arbitrary. They consulted (and cited) no references. It is not scientific. They are using 'things' that science 'discovered'. That does not make their actions scientific. That's like calling me a fireman because I let off a fire extinguisher.

The ecology of a species is inherently internal, and only becomes external as you widen your field of view. I am not dicussing environmental issues, I am discussing the population biology of the species. A population can exert enough pressure on itself to cause a massive decline to well below the K-line. There are so many variables as to make it impossible to predict, I'd like to get hold of the Drake equation notes and go through them

True, but only true because that's not an analogy for my argument, not because my argument is unfounded. The correct analogy would be your disco dancers passing off their trade as ballet, and the ballet dancer becoming rightfully disdainful of them.

heh heh heh

The population does not need to kill itself as such, it just needs to force ecological conditions that bring about the species' demise. Also there is no time constraint placed on the processes leading to extintion - it can happen over millenia, you don't need to get all your slaughtering done in the same weekend. Also you're falling prey to the very folly you originally pointed out (assuming another society will be like ours) and only considering a widely-dispersed, planetary population that is difficult to kill off.

True, although it does depend how you parse the info.

You mean "binny hippy"? AHHH HA HAAAAAAA.

Let's all kick him while he's down, that'll make us better than him. I don't see why the news is making such a big deal over it, after all he ain't no WOMD.

A small air-fuel bomb would actually be quite funny, but NOT SCIENCE DAMMIT! It's the equivalent of "yeah, but I loosened it for you" arguments over a jar lid.

This is such a small check that it would be better to do it server-side rather than client-side, and thereby reduce the threat to platform independence.

That's only a temporary shift in ranking - the "WOMD 404" page was the funniest I've seen. The method can't be used to permanently "fix" the rankings though, more's the pity.

Unless he was stuffed with WOMD when they found him, that's not really here nor there. Of course, after the interrogation things might be different.

Sorry I missed all that, I was offline most of yesterday Faf's banned him. Having read his posts in the holding area, I think you know really that had I been online he would have been squished very quickly

Don't worry about it, they're arbitrarily assigned

I'm sure people do forget that, but remembering it does not mean that it's right. See my above post. Intra-specific competition is inevitable in an expanding population, period. You don't actually need advanced technology or a lack of morals to drive yourself extinct.

It would be the slowest neural net in the universe, and therefore of no practical uses. However if humans were travelling between the star systems, they would be moving information, which you could argue might make the routes a neural net by definition.

Population density and resource control will ultimately drive an expanding species to intra-specific competition, even where none previously existed. If that species has high technology, and arms race is pretty much going to be inevitable.

Varchar(2) is the same as CHAR(2) as far as this example is concerned Like Faf says Ann, you need to validate the length of the string with a script before inserting it. if (strlen($THE_STRING) == 10) { // do the insert query } else { // send the user back to the form (or whatever) // add a warning message for good measure }

I just saw YT's post in the "News" section, lol.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3317429.stm Read. Laugh.

You're on, fafman!