Dave

The method for proof by contradiction is quite simple. Basically you assume a logical statement, then use a number of operations to manipulate your statement so that it implies something that is not true, hence the original statement must be wrong and hence false.

There's been so many discussions about this on other webpages that I'll redirect everyone's attention to here

ZoneAlarm's quite good, although I haven't tried the free version. It is a bit annoying at first, but it does protect you against programs trying to access the internet that might be some kind of trojan/remote ddos/etc program.

Was wondering whether anyone had actually installed this on a test system yet, because I'm quite tempted to just to see how well the new MySQLi interface works, since they've now made it object oriented. If anyone has any comments etc on it, it'd be nice to find out since I've not got around to testing it on my test box yet. Cheers.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-affected-rows.php

Unless vB wanted to pay a rather extortionate fee for the Zend encryption stuff for php, they have to make it open source really - plus it creates the entire modding environment. They still make a hell of a lot of money out of it though, because it's a very advanced bit of forum software.

I resent the fact that RTS's like C&C and starcraft aren't on teh poll

That a subscriber paper or somethin? Don't get anythin like that round my neck of the woods

I have to say, I didn't notice them for about 10 minutes before it became particularly apparent.

To be fair, if you're stupid to shove a battery "where the sun don't shine" then you're just asking for bad things to happen.

If you think about it, how can you have the arrangement of -1 objects? It just doesn't make sense. The factorial function can be extended to cover the entire set of real and complex numbers, and it is called the gamma function. If you're interested in it, you can find more details here.

0/0 is undefined for the same reason that any quantity is defined. It makes a lot more sense if you just think about it for a couple of seconds. The definition of "a divided by b" is to find some number x such that b*x=a. Now consider the case 1/0 - in this case, a = 1, b = 0. so we want to find a number such that 0*x=1. But this is impossible, so 1/0 is not defined. You can use a similar argument to show that we can't define any number divided by 0.

e^(x) = 1 + x + x^(2)/2! + x^(3)/3! + ... + x^(n)/n! + ... As I said before, it's important for things like radioactive decay (nuclear reactors, medical uses, etc), thermal properties of materials, capacitor discharge and various other things. It plays a quite important role in the solutions for many mathematical problems, so inevitably it is involved in real life problems as well.

There's really only two things to consider when you're considering PHP security. The first is file permissions. This usually isn't a problem, but you might want to create a directory for all your include files and make this inaccessible to the outside world with a .htaccess file (assuming you're using apache). The other thing is SQL injection. Basically, make sure that whenever anyone submits any type of data and that data is subsequently used in an sql query, that you use addslashes() to properly escape the data. Otherwise some person could quite happily come along and screw your entire database over for a laugh. And remember, always keep a backup of your database and source files, just in case.

I'd personally advise not eating batteries unless you want a rather unpleasent trip to the toilet

Seems to be fixed now, whatever it was.

I have to say, the arcade blatently rocks. Cheers blike.

buahahahaha On a sidenote, just got another high score. w00t

I got Gave.

Definately an option in user CP i think.

Yes, it's a joke. If you read the last page, it provides a link to a poll in which the guy basically says "did you actually think i'd do that?". Very funny

I saw this a few months back on PA Forums, but it's bloody funny

JATO stands for (if my memory serves me correctly) Jet Assisted Take Off. I think they're used on large planes when the runways are too short to give them an extra boost (otherwise they'd end up reaching the end of the runway and not take off). Edit: Didn't see the explanation above. However, if you want to see the story (it's quite funny even though it didn't happen) check http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html.

From BBC News: The Israeli military is equipping its forces with a new range of spy drones small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack, the army said on Thursday. Birdy can be carried and launched by a single soldier, who guides the drone by clicking on coordinates on a laptop computer. It has a five-kilometre range (three miles), IAI said. The Mosquito 1 and Mosquito 1.5 micro-drones have a wingspan of 33 centimetres (13 inches). Their small size allows them to fly through windows and to provide images to military units behind it, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. It'll be interesting to see how those work out. More at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3571261.stm