imatfaal

Marat - where is all this bile coming from? Doctors spend less time studying than archaeologists? Well - the longest archaeology degree in UK is 4 years full time and the shortest medical degree is 5 years. No medical advances since the 50s - where is this from - better not tell all the people with Heart transplants/bypass surgery, those who have survived cancer, or are on anti-retrovirals. Doctors in the UK are also very well paid - so i don't think any movement to a more socially funded model will make an enormous change

I think I would argue the fact that the "international effort thus far has been pretty good"; in the last two weeks five vessels were taken, four people killed, and over 80 kidnapped. At the moment well over 600 seafarers are held for ransom, taken with 30 vessels. The area of danger is enormous, most of the Arabian Sea, and the east coast of Africa from Red Sea to Madagascar. I wouldn't go as far as Rigney - but some form of removal from area and punishment needs to be used on captured pirates; at present most are returned to Somalia to be prosecuted there and this really isn't working. I can really only see the solution coming from some form of maritime exclusion zone being enacted along the Somalian Coast - but this is impossible for a country that relies on fishing to a large extent

I should have stressed generated - sure we can observe and use the non-deterministic nature of qm; what I meant (and didn't explain properly) was "can we ever envisage a mathematical/programming system that creates truly random output". does the 'taint' of deterministic origins remain no matter how small in any human-created system?

Your question seems to rely on the claim that homosexuality and gay marriage are not endorsed by society. Perhaps this is true in some countries, but it is a long way away from reality in others

ooops - foot in mouth feeling. Grammatical has two Ms and ellipses has two Ls

I might try ebaying for one - mainly cos I really dislike my business principals using my pc; I cannot say no when they ask, but with a weird keyboard...

I was given an amazing device - it allows you to electrocute the flying menaces. Its like a tennis racquet but with wires instead of strings and a power source

I was refering to Prof Gilbert and Lady Murray founding Oxfam - both committed and campaigning humanists/rationalists, of the many phases of an organisation we are comparing different parts. CJC was an amazing man - motivated through his faith, he used his enthusiasm, cash and business acumen to start many organisations and put a great number of British charities on a level footing. Actionaid is now avowedly non-religious - but I take your point that this is not the same as atheist. But why would an atheist feel the need to start a charity when there are such great charities already that do not espouse any creed. Atheism (despite what this particular forum might suggest) is not proselytising. Hadn't read about South Forks Club - although seems a bit of a stretch to lay it at Carnegie's door (based on a very short reading) - and frankly quite a lot of ignominy can be laid at M Theresa's door as well. to clarify my final point, you said "but I'll line up beside the Salvos any day, for any fight". The SA have some views on personal morality that I find pretty abhorrent; my question is would you line up besides the Salvos to fight against homosexuality? You object to "all or nothing affair" - and that is understandable and correct; I object to the argument that because some people of religion do great good, therefore religion cannot be bad

Steevey - I am trying to help here. Maths and physics use very precise definitions and getting them confused, conflating them, or using them wrongly will totally throw you. As an example, you use the phrase above "squared negative numbers" - most people would say that a squared negative number is a positive number ( eg (-2)2 = 4); the imaginary number is a 'square root of negative number' or alternatively a number whose square is negative.

Just an aside, and because I was curious how this might come about - the dictionary which auto-spell checks our posts doesn't recognize ornery (bad-tempered, stubborn) nor orneriness but does recognize orneriness's (which I am not sure is a word at all). EDIT OK - Now I have noticed that the spell checker is across all sites so it must be specific to me, or to chrome

I don't have the time to check nor the details - but I am pretty sure that complexity of solution time will not scale once you have a decent amount of combination. ie if you only have one way of purchasing .com then that massively eases the problem, ditto with .net. But if you could buy .com with or without .net and with/without mailboxes, and then add in .co.uk (for me!) .org and .ac.uk ;all with various combo plans - then suddenly it becomes an ornery problem

If it is not too metaphysical a question - can anything truly random be generated? BTW tree that signature is one hell of a good example of Skitt's Law/Muphry's Law - where is it from?

Susskind tells the story of a colloquium / conference when various heavyweights were discussing what it means for a particle to be fundamental with no form of agreement being reached - in the end t'hooft stood up and said "a particle is fundamental when it is useful to think of it as fundamental" - and everyone agreed that was the best they were gonna get in terms of a definition.

And Pi isn't an imaginary number. An imaginary number has a square that is negative and are usually shown by using a multiple of i which is defined as the square root of minus one . Pi is an irrational (ie is not the ratio of two integers) and transcendental number (ie is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients)

Agree with the Tree - at the back of my brain I have a memory of a cypher being broken because of the cypher's partial reliance on an internal clock, will try and dig out a reference.

Your update2 enlarged on what I was trying to say - whilst there is only one way of buying .net and .com, there is a very simple solution. You will get real difficulties if you have multiple combinations - with only 3 products I don't think it would ever get too hard to calculate with a fairly simple algorithm, but if you had 20 products and various combinations working out the cheapest plan would be getting close to impossible. Unless I am mistaken this is not a simply scalable problem - the time taken to work out a slightly more complicated problem could be exponentially more than the marginally simpler question.

Brendan I must be missing something - cos the way I read your message is that nothing fancy is required (and I think that means I must have read wrongly) Why need for a recursive function? The .com resource and the .net resource each provide 4 mailbox resources - that's 8; therefore you need 992 mailbox resources. the three plans you have given have only one common feature (the mailboxes); therefore to minimally evaluate cost all you need to do is [# .com]*$10 + [# .net ]*$10 + ([# mailboxes]-[# .com]*4 - [# .net]*4) *$1 if the final part is less than one just drop it. The only reason would need to trial and error test is when you have multiple options with multiple crossovers at different pricing. This rapidly becomes difficult.

I often use the passive voice just to annoy #@!$ing microsoft word and I do not consider rephrasing so as to double the injury.

Good Luck with that Captain. Has anyone here ever used one of those split keyboards - or a Dvorak style keyboard?

Yes - in course of my studies I have read other holy books; mediocre to bad philosophy, mediocre to good poetry, mediocre to staggering ideology/dogma and earned slightly less respect for the strength of their convictions in stopping their children have vital blood transfusions and other procedures Without knocking the the work on the streets of the SA (who do an amazing job) - You mean like Oxfam, Medecins San Frontier, ActionAid - or individuals like Andrew Carnegie Do you include their rejection of homosexuality, strong anti-abortion stance, and proscriptive marriage rules in that?

I think we are still relying on Bruce Willis

Thanks Doc - I had always disliked previous explanations I had heard, I couldn't work out why the acceleration and deceleration wouldn't cancel; your quick expo above made it clear.

Youv'e lost me there

seems a bit homeworky JULIET I'll look to like, if looking liking move: But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

Agree Captain - London to Paris is now a complete doddle (when the trains don't get stuck in the snow!) , the actual transit takes longer. But its central London to central Paris rather than god-foresaken holes like heathrow and de gaulle - and much as I love flying , the train is less stressful both mentally and physically.