Pangloss

If I remember correctly the astronauts often heard extraneous noises coming from outside the cockpit, but you have to bear in mind that the phrase "outside the cockpit" includes most of the spacecraft, much of which is (more or less) open to the vacuum of space. I'm sure the explosion of the Service Module in the Apollo 13 mission, for example, made a hell of a bang. Since the ship is physically connected, there's plenty of metal for the sound waves to propagate along.

Since you've installed IIS, the easiest thing to do would be to add the SMTP components to IIS. This is done via either the Add/Remove Programs control panel, or if you're running Windows Server, the Manage Your Server utility.

He backed off from complete disagreement, though, saying in essence that he still feels ID has a place, but not as a science. Oddly enough, this position scores a lot of points with me personally. Unlike Bill Frist's pathetic flip-flop last week, this one actually resonates with me somewhat.

That sounds about right, but I'd subtract Jeb from the list Douglas stated above, and add John McCain. Cheney isn't a moderate, but it's a moot point, as he's not going to run (but I do think McCain will take a crack at it). Ahnold can't run, of course. Other moderate Republicans to keep an eye on include Colin Powell, Tom Ridge, Arlen Specter (hey, if McCain's gonna run....), and Michael Bloomberg.

Cloud I think that's perfectly reasonable reasoning, and I wish you luck with it. Personally I'm not really interested in mobile gaming, but surely there must be a lot of people who are, and it seems to be a lucrative and underexplored market. I say go for it. Just my two bits, of course.

Well Rick Santorum does not meet the qualifications of my original question. Let me repeat that, since it has fallen back behind us there on the first page. Rick Santorum is not a moderate, and as you point out, John, his position on the issue is already well known, so I'm afraid he doesn't qualify for this particular question. I still think it's an interesting question, but it doesn't sound like anybody wants to take a stab at it.

I wonder if it will get easier to write visually-simple 3d applications once we have Windows and Linux desktops running in a 3d workspace. Presumably you'd be able to just make straight calls to the standard display API, rather than having to work with something like DirectX or OpenGL. But I don't know if that would actually be easier or not -- I've never done any programming in DX or GL.

Interesting points. You're more or less in the same boat developing games for the PC, aren't you? In terms of being restricted to working in C++ and the DirectX API? Of course I guess you have a few more options there, such as alternate languages and OpenGL, but wouldn't you still be looking at a similar level of difficulty? Even if the alternatives are "not as hard", you'd still have to put a lot of time and effort into it. And I'm not sure that's entirely the case, by the way. Surely it's possible to start simple and work your way up, with rewards along the way in the form of increasingly complex and interesting game apps as your skills improve. Sometimes you just have to start putting one foot in front of the other and see where your motivation leads you. (That's one of the things I love about computers, that there are so many opportunities like that.)

But as we saw this week, and MulderMan pointed out on the previous page, the President often sets the agenda, or curriculum. So ID got a big boost this week when President Bush talked about it. And this is often the case in American politics. The President has no sway over the issue of abortion, for example, but his position on the issue is certainly a great cause of concern amongst voters.

This would be true of a general election, but remember, the candidate first must be approved by party voters, deciding amongst themselves (i.e. the "primary" system). Hence why we have George Bush in office instead of John McCain. The old axiom is that candidates run to the extremes during primary races, and run back to the center for the general election. Which brings me back to the original question: Which moderate Republican will cave first on ID? (Or will they?)

Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster! One thing I wonder about is which Republican presidential hopefull, currently labelled a "moderate", will be the first to cave in on ID in the classrooms. It's an easy cave for a presidential candidate, if you're looking for a way to pander to the religious right, because they really won't have anything to do with whether or not it happens. (Seeing as it's something that typically gets fought out at the local level.) Anyone want to take a guess? We should start a betting pool on this.

More information is needed in terms of what you tried, what you were unable to do, and what sorts of error messages you received. Regarding wireless security, if you're using Windows XP you need to go to Windows Update and download all the patches and service packs. That will provide your computer with WPA authentication. If your router has WPA (which I assume it does, being a new router), you should then be able to configure it with some straightforward button clicks. Holler if you have any problems.

I think this thread should be restricted to the politics of the situation. There are many ID-vs-Evo threads around this board. We don't need another one. The politics of the situation, however, are quite fascinating, and involve many interesting facets of political activity in this country (and by example, other countries which may be struggling with the same principles). We should look at: - Why ID has come to the political forefront (mostly obvious, but some aspects of this have yet to be fully explored) - The birth of interesting catch-phrases, such as "anti-creationism", and what they mean and why they are used - Why the ID-proponents are no longer satisfied with the teaching of religion in an historical context (e.g. the historical significance of christianity in western civilization) - The political acceptance of evolution in other societies - What aspects of ID-vs-Evo will be influential in the next Presidential (and upcoming mid-term) election(s), and how each candidate's position on the issue will be important

Well you don't speak for me. I thought that was a well-reasoned and interesting argument, IMM.

Actually the funny thing is that you actually seem to believe that everyone who shows up in the lower-left quarter is a socialist.

Well that's a poor generalization, given the size of the statistical sample. On the other hand, it's not an atypical application of the scientific method. Certainly a good example of why so many theories get overturned.

I'm reading an interesting new book right now called "1776" by David McCullough that covers some of this ground. I don't have anything to add to the discussion, but I did want to mention that the book is pretty interesting.

One of the more interesting problems is that if your goal is to represent an analog entity in a digital (binary) fashion, you're more or less stuck with one approach -- sampling. The accuracy of a digital sample of an analog event or entity is dependent upon the frequency with which you sample. So long as your threshold of detection is below the frequency rate of the sample, you don't (in theory) have a problem. But perception is a funny thing, and this always seems to be a compromise. Since your sampling frequency could never in theory equate to a 1:1 relationship of analog to digital data, the answer to the original question of this thread would seem to be "no". But perhaps someone who knows more about sampling and its inherent problems can give an answer.

You know, this is really a yes/no kind of a subject. I mean, the answer is pretty black-and-white, wouldn't you say?

Sarajevo?

Because the subject of this thread (which you started) is "We have finally totally and thoroughly blown it in Iraq". My point is that it seems likely to me that there is no method that could have been chosen that you would have deemed acceptable, because you are not capable of rendering objective judgement about any activities of the Bush administration. Anything they do is automatically wrong, regardless of what the actual situation may be.

It is often said that the definition of insanity is "Doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result." In the early 1980s the US needed a strong ally in the Middle East to help it oppose the threat of a religiously-controlled Iran. Iraq, and its dictator leader Saddam Hussein, provided a ready answer, and money and weapons flowed into that country. The resulting war cost Iraq and Iran dearly in lives, with no clear victory or resolution to anybody's problems. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US needed a strong ally in the Middle East to help it oppose the threat of a religiously-controlled Afghanistan. Pakistan, and its dictator leader General Pervez Musharraf, provided a ready answer, and money and weapons flowed into that country. The resulting war toppled the Taliban regime and appeared to at least initially resolve the United States' problem, but it remains to be seen if either (a) the Taliban is truly out of power, or (b) secular government in Afghanistan can succeed. Meanwhile Musharraf maintains an uneasy hold over power in Pakistan. I guess my question is this: Are we insane? Or is there a shred of logic here, behind the madness?

I agree, but that is not the subject of this thread. The subject of this thread is that "we have finally totally and thoroughly blown it in Iraq". What does our motivation for invasion have to do with how we've handled the situation since then? Again, what I'm looking for here is evidence on your part that some other course of action would have produced a better result following the fall of Hussein's government. If you can't answer these questions, then the reader must obviously conclude that you have no basis for the assumption you make in the first post of this thread. The reader is forced to conclude that you have decided that any action we might have taken in Iraq since Hussein's fall will be declared erroneous, because you are not capable of rendering fair and impartial judgement. You don't want that to happen, do you? Just as a side note, I don't know why people think that biased ideological ranting can ever convince anyone of anything. When I point out these simple and obvious contradictions, and all they can do (left or right!) is repeat the same mantra, why then do they continue to feel that their opinion has any weight or merit in debate whatsoever? Might as well crawl under a rock, for all the convincing you're ever going to do.

Heh, I wish I'd know that earlier. I just taught an Excel VBA class last week, and I told the class that it was a great introduction into programming. I just didn't have an example of anybody I knew who'd gotten into programming that way. It's amazing how many "real" programming concepts I have to put forth in that class. Objects (=nouns, methods=verbs, properties=adjectives), variables and data types, parameter passing (by ref as well as by value!), procedures vs functions, and more. It's amazing what a great intro to serious OOP that makes. Anyway, now I do know someone like that, which is cool.

Not only will I support that, but just because this conversation made me think of it, I'll suggest to my training partners that we revisit the issue of offering non-MS "office" application training. That hasn't been looked at in my market in some time now, and it makes a lot of sense.