Dak

molecules and other unliving matter do evolve if the correct conditions are met, ie there is competition for resorses and the molecules can pass there information on (ie, there is hereditary). i can imagine how prions could be used to demonstrate this principle, with 'unbent' protons being introduced into a mixture of different prions (so that the prions could 'pass on' their shape to the unbent protons). in this case, the prions that are more stable would be present at a higher rate, and so 'unbent' protiens would be more likely meet, and thus adopt, the succesful prion shape. by changing the temperature, the ration of the prions would change, with the most stable-at-the-given-temperature prion being the most comon -- thus, the colection of prions would 'evolve' in reponce to the changing environment. now imagine these prions contained within a micelle. micelles are little spontaniously-forming spheres of phospholipids. if more phospholipids are added, then the micelles will incorporate them, grow in size, and eventually grow so large that they are unstable, at which point they will split and divide into two. now, to finish our thought experiment, imagine a whole range of prions contained within many micelles, and with 'unbent' protiens and phospholipids being continuously added to the mixture. the micelles with the best mixture of prions (eg prions which strengthen the micelle wall, prions which are more temperature resistant, prions which increase the rate at wich 'unbent' protiens/phospholipids are taken up etc) will survive more oftern than the other micelles and, upon splitting in two, will pass-on their prions, and thus their inheritable material, to the daughter micelles, with the occasional prion being randomly not present in the daughter micelle, or a prion being taken up from the invironment. over time, this collection of basically inert matter will 'evolve' untill it is more adapted to the enviroment, eg more resiliant to the temperature of the system. if detergents are added, then eventually the mycelles will evolve so that most of them have the highest possible resilience to detergents by posessing the prions (if any exist within the system) that confer this resistance. as for the bit about nucleotides... if i savvy what your saying, then i believe that your talking about abiogenesis. evolution assumes living creatures exist, and describes how these living creatures could improve; so evolution explains how, for example, humans could result from simple bacteria. where the first life originally came from and how it evolved when it was non-living (abiogenesis) and the whole question of how the DNA --> RNA --> protien system evolved, the conundrum is: given that nucleotides are benificial because they code for protiens, so without protiens theyd have no advantage and so couldnt evolve; whereas protiens cannot evolve because they cannot pass on hereditary information. the currently favoured model is that RNA came first. as RNA can act as an enzyme, and also can replicate itself, it meets the condition for something that can evolve, and both DNA and protiens could have evolved from it. as for how non-living matter spawned life in the first plase... no one really knows. there are a few theorys involving micelles, the chemistry of the surface of clay, and/or the conditions on earth yonx ago, but no-one is really sure, but as i said its a slightly seperate (though by no means entirely unrelated) issue; evolution generally assumes that there are already living creatures existing for evolution to act upon. phew! sorry if i completely missed your point, im a bit tired

although, if they could breath fire, could they inflate themselves with hot air like a balloon, to partially counteract their weight.

mokele: good points, but i disagree with this bit: this is one, pretty large, reason for the increase in cancer levels, but lifestyle does also play a part: smoking, certain pollutiants, certain diets etc. one of the worst modern diseases, 1918 influenza (aka spanish flu), which killed 20-50 million people world wide (sourses vary) was most pathogenic in healthy young (early twenties) people.

hmm, the only thing that i can think of is to try and get hold of a chinese windows xp disk and use the recovery console. sorry if thats not much help. (ps, did you manage to get the file c_950.nls re-installed? if so, did it help?)

the base changes are random, but - by a prosess of natural selection - the bad changes are filtered out, and the good changes propagated. thusly, evolution is not random. evolution is the natural prosess whereby random changes result in a non-random improvement over time, and so i suppose could be seen as self-guiding, although i think im using "guided" in a slightly different way than you did.

the thing that i cant work out about that song, is wether its A/quite artistically intellegent, or B/ stupid. i mean, none of the actuall things mentioned in the song are ironic. eg: "its like raaa-iii-aaaaaaain, on your wedding day, oh isn't it ironic?" no. its not ironic. annoying, yes; ironic, no. as far as i can tell, the entire song doesnt contain one reference to any genuinely ironic event. which, for a song entitled 'isnt it ironic' is, itself -- well, quite ironic. so, mebbe it was intended that way, in a kinda cool artistic "this is a song about irony which, ironically, doesnt actually contain any irony", or mebbe its just cak. it also creates a kinda paradox: is the song ironic? no. then the fact that its entitled 'isnt it ironic' makes the entire song ironic. so, is it ironic? yes. but then, if it is actually ironic, that means the title is apt and not ironic (thus removing the only irony in the song), so.. is it ironic? no (etc)

see you guys there

in the spirit of 'its better to learn how to find the answer your self than to just be given it', here are a few links demonstrating how the answre could be found: the most powerful scientific research tool known to mankind the most powerful scientific research tool known to mankind -- revisited another invaluble scientific resorze

detergents disrupt the lipid (ie fat) cell membrane of bacteria, thus distroying them. burning kills bacteria in much the same way that it kills humans. option C is also viable. so basically all three options could work. all three options are used in science to decontaminate septic things. as to wether theyre actually used to decontaminate soil... im not sure, sorry.

how did you get rid of the virus? it might help us to know wether we're dealing with bits of the virus, the entire virus or just the artifacts left by the infection. please list everything that you did to get rid of it

were you actually trying to set your pc's 'local language' to chinese? if not, then i suppose that it could be a virus attempting to exploit the bug in windows. what anti-malware (anti-virus, anti-spyware etc) programs do you have installed? and finally, do you have any of the service packs installed, eg SP1 or SP2?

i guess that a couple of cells in a petri dish wont complain at being pressed into work as a pilot, but if this technology kicks off and becomes more developed, will we eventually be able to custom build brains to control our machines? would that mean that the machines could feel? i dont think id be happy flying in a plane that i knew could feel and was being pressed, without its consent, into serving me (or, for that matter, i wouldnt be comfortable getting into what could possibly be, by dint of being able to experience emotions, a terminally depressed plane).

hmmmm. have you ever used xp? albertree: nls files are 'national language support' files. c_950.nls is the file which contains chineese charechters. i dont think this file could account for your problems, unless you were actually attempting to run your pc with your local language set to chinese(traditional), in which case windows has been known to fail (apparently). in this case, it might not be the fault of c_950.nls, but of missing coding and reg-keys and such-stuff. is it possible to get your pc running atall, using a boot disk, safe mode, or boot to last known good configuration (hit F8 whilst booting up to get a menu of boot-up options)? if so, try seting your local language to english(UK) or english(US) and see if that makes your pc work

not if you stab someone in the stomach. but yeah, guns are both phisically and psycologically easier to kill with. with a gun, you only have the persons blood on your hands metaphorically...

i didnt get your "whoosh" either, but felt that as you were getting all onomatopaeic on me, id reply with a random sound too. re. the noun 'virus': i thought that if your talking about the condition, the singular is virus and plural viruses, ie "the flu virus and the cold virus are both viruses"; whereas if your talking about the etiological agents themselves, virion is the singular and virus is the plural, ie "if just one virion sucessfully infects a cell, many virus may be prodused". though i could be wrong. twould definately not be the first time i have made an etymological mistake.

although having said that, i cant remember what colours they are exactly, but i think if a computer displays a red image on a blue background, the image seems to be hovering out above the blue background, thus giving a 3D image on a 2D screen, so i suppose 4D isnt so unbelievable. still cant understand it tho. im happy with concepts of 0D, 1D, 2D, 3D, and 3D+time, but trying to contemplate what 4D would be makes my brain bleed.

iv heard of 4D graphs, where the 2D representation of a 3D graph changes with time, allowing things to be plotted in 4, for want of a better word, dimentions; and iv heard of ones which use colour to plot a 5th dimention, where 'dimention' is roughly synonomouse with 'representation of a variable' -- but actual 4D images displayed in a 3D universe? surely not? that'd be paradoxical, wouldnt it? and what is 2.5D?

haxdoor leaves the bios alone. its a relatively lame infection, although it was apparently bitching when it first came out. to be honest should be no problem for AVG. mannualy deleting the registry keys shouldnt be nessesary, but if it is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\debug and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ MPRServices\TestService\MPRServices\Testservices should be deleted after the scan. dont screw with your registry if you dont know what your doing.

the reason that policy in the uk is to avoid this, is partly because of the native bacteria in your gut, such as E.coli. the E.coli in your gut has been there for ages, and is quite established and so will likely survive the course of antibiotics. however, they will be exposed to the antibiotics and some may die, which could give them the chance to evolve immunity. now say that, later, you have a second course of (different) anti-biotics... the E.coli could pick up a second antibiotic immunity. this could have two seriouse repurcussions: if the E.coli goes visiouse and starts to infect people, then it could have a head start in being resistant to some antibiotics; and also, there is a chance that the E.coli will share its antibiotic resistance by swapping plasmids with invading bacteria, making the invading bacteria antibiotic resistant. not likely, but possible. no charge

i thought that IQ scales were constructed so that 100 = average ie 50% would score <100 IQ?

AVG and avast are two of the very best antiviruses going. and theyre free zone alarm is one of the very best firewalls going. and its free. i believe kerio firewall is also highly recommended, and also is free. the only anti-malware program you can justify paying for is an anti-slyware* one -- the free antislywares, even m$-antispyware, are not 100% comparable to the payed-for ones such as spysweeper. even then tho, you can get away with using the free ones as long as you know a little about computers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- *slyware = spyware, adware, dialers, browser hijackers etc.

ahem! exuse me, but i did not avoid becoming a paedophile by becoming insane. i avoided becoming a paedophile simply by not having the desire to have sex with kids. and i do not feel isolated from society or that its completely corrupt etc, when i said 'this is how i feel' i was agreeing with the last centanse, ie 'why should we follow these peoples rules etc', but reguardless of the reasons, the effect is still that i have no inclination to respect the rules of society. however, i am not a paedophile or, may i add, schitzophrenic, autistic, a member of the monstor raving loony party etc. my point was that disreguard for the rules of society does not nessesaraly equate to paedophile

oh, ad-aware is no longer supported, if it actually is just ad-aware that you have then you should download and install ad-aware SE

hmm, symantech isnt the best AV available, try downloading AVG free updating the virus definitions and scanning your pc, its one of the best AVs. if that doesnt work, then try the following: #uninstall the program that you installed at the same time that the virus appeared (as the program itself might be installing the virus -- i remember spending ages trying to get rid of Cydoor before realising that flashget download-accelorator was installing it everytime that my pc booted up) #turn system restore points off, (right click 'my computer' and select properties. click 'turn off system restore' under the 'system restore' tag) #restart in safe mode (repeatadly poke F8 whilst your pc boots up) #bring up the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) and look, under prosesses, for JSDAPI.EXE, select it (if its there) and click 'end prosess' #scan again with AVG. failing that, download microsoft antispyware beta and repeat the prosess with m$ antispyware inplace of AVG. if that doesnt work swear loudly and hit your pc (dont forget to turn system restore back on after you have removed haxdoor)

are you saying that the labeling of paedophiles as mentally ill causes them to become mentally ill, or that the labelling of someone as a paedophile causes them to become a paedophile? this is exactly how i have always felt. i follow my own rules, not the rules that society attempts to press upon me. in my mind, if something is illegal, this equates to 'dont get caught doing it'. however, i have never had sex with a kid. i guess that getting annoyed with society could be a factor which makes it easyer for paedophiles to have sex with childeren, but they would need the inclination to have sex with kids first. unless its just to spite society, which is mindlessly distructive enough that id assume the perpetrator was mentally ill.