Dak

'installing a non-ie browser' tends to be a standard part of the reccomendations on how to secure windows, so you can reasonably assume that someone running firefox is more likely to also be running an anti-virus/firewall/etc than someone running ie. there are a few viruses that seem to specifically target secure machines (able to install and run in a limited account, kill anti-viruses, etc), presumably with the intent of grabbing the best secured boxes all to themselves, rather than having to share them with every other infection on the web, which would be a specific reason to target ff. anyhoo, you can set a server up to use one exploit when visited by ie, and another when visited by firefox, thus allowing for greater numbers of infection, tho i've no doubt ie is still the more attractive target due (mainly) to market share. really? try breaking into my house obviously i'm going to lock the door aswell, but still... also, (afaik) most OSS bug-trackers have a way of marking a bug as a security issue and thus hiding it from most people whilst it's fixed, thus at least partially relying on security-through-obscurity over the short-term to protect vulnerable OSs whilst the exploit is patched.

seven8s, please stop linking to billy joel music videos for no apparent reason.

maybe keep your eye on this page for the paper + marking scheme: http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/science_twentyfirst_century_science_a/documents.html#past_papers dunno when it'll be up.

OK, couple of questions before i carry on googling: 1/ would googling 'carnot engines' and looking into what hot/cold reservoirs are help me understand this: 2/ by any chance does the 2nd law demand that Th and Tc approach one-another over time?

cool, basic understanding of something to do with physics is cool for me thanks (grumble grumble, stoopid 'lose', never get that one right...)

so... lets see if i've got this right... 1/ traveling things have energy 2/ if they loose this energy, they will slow down 3/ to avoid loosing their energy, a traveling thing would have to break the 2nd law of thermodynamics, i.e., the energy would have to avoid being spread out (?) 4/ the only way around the above involves breaking the 1st law of thermodynamics 5/ hence, all traveling things will shed energy and thus slow down.

damnit, i allways get those two confused hmm... other forms of energy as in other ways that the travelling thing can shed energy? so... it'd have to either be 100% efficient (not possible), or, to compensate for it's ineficiency and sustain perpetual motion, it'd have to break one of the first two laws of thermodynamics? which also isn't possible?

ok... but, the entire solar system is moving in one direction? that's kinda what i was talking about (less so the orbiting) so, you'd have to completely get rid of friction? isn't there part of space that is 100% empty? 'beyond the boundries' of the bit of space that has 'stuff' in it? or is it not that simple? well, all it'd need is temporarily permenent motion. obviously. ---- ok, related question: what about all the movement that goes on in the universe as a whole? will that one day stop? or, will the movement 'spread out' through the unvierse till most things are travelling at the same speed? sorry if this all sounds crap btw, i've never really studied phisics or astrology

what is the earth being gravitationally attracted to? hmm... ok, if space were truly a vaccume, wouldn't the earth continue indefinately? or is a true vaccume impossible?

to what?

how is the earth not a perpetual motion thingy? what with it moving through space, presumably untill it desintegrates or the sun explodes? or is 'perpetual motion machine' more than just something that perpetually moves untill it breaks (i'm taking 'because it'll one day be destroyed' as a lame answre btw)

bacteria couple their negative-entropy multiplication with a positive-entropy chemical reaction to gain energy, giving an overall positive-entropy change when you take into account their replication and the breaking down of chemicals for energy. possibly something involving the sun, if they were photosynthetic bacteria. so 'no'. btw, you know you're not very good at phisics when I can spot your mistakes

no, i think he probably is, what with psychology having come a long way since his day and having accepted the need for, e.g., empiricism.

what about reason without faith? I can't really see anything wrong with that?

psst! eco' closed the thread 4 posts ago

i think we've allready had a thread about this, but the reason, in a nutshel, is this: some religious people tend to get bitchy and flamey whenever their religion is critisized at all, in the slightest. some atheists tend to refuse to acknowledge that 'thinking that you're right' does not remove the burden of tact and common courtasy (coinsidentally, if you're not open to the posibility you're wrong, you may as well not discuss it). hence, they all ended up as 'you're a dumb christian/atheist', which drew alot of the more chilled people into the flame-fest, and it created too much moderator work and ill-feeling across the board so was closed and religious discussion banned. that joke being 'religion is stoopid'. the fact that people who know full well that people are sensitive about religion still refuse to exhibit any tact is half the problem

are you honestly saying that the majority of atheists who use the symbol are doing so to piss off the majority of christians? i think not. If you assume that the intent is bad, then obviously it'll seem bad. but, i don't think that the majority of atheists, at least where i come from, have anything against christians, so i'd be inclined to grant the benifit of the doubt (tho admitedly it may be different in america, or even scotland) not by me, and yes (as long as you don't actually mean to offend me). which, iirc, was what you did anyway. and i was chilled, and didn't get offended, because i assumed you were taking the piss in a non-malicious way. anywai, my spelling's inproved a lot sins then

i said most. most people who use the word 'nigger' are racists, so it makes sence to assume that anyone using the word 'nigger' is a racist. most atheists aren't anti-religion, just a few, so why assume someone with an atheistic symbol is being maliciously offensive towards religion? why not assume that they're maybe just being offensive towards fundies, which afaict *is* an attitude that's prevalent amongst american atheists? if the christians can be said to have stolen the fishy symbol, then I'd assume it'd be for the same reason as stealing christmas trees etc, vis to incorporate the heathen's practices and symbology into christianity to aid in their conversion, which is a relatively well established historical fact. tho it's not exactly a complex symbol so could just be coincidence, and is most likely in refference to the feeding of the 5K (i believe the symbol means 'faith') the darwin fish is quite obviously in mockery of the jesus fish, the only question being who and what, exactly, is being mocked, and why. why, what do you think the motives were?

glider: ignoring the fact that freud isn't (i dont think) legitimate psycology anymore, isn't the above incorrect even by freud's theories? i.e., wasn't it that freud thought that, because the anal pseudosexual stage was designed to make you poo in the corner, rather than all over the place, it was fundamentally about hygiene, so anyone who becomes 'fixated' at the anal stage becomes overly fastiduouse about hygene/neatness, and just in general in all aspects of their life. and also it gets confused with the genital stage, so, not to put it too finely, people who are anal retentive like it up the bum? or am i just confused?

as i see it tho, the above would apply to, say, why you shouldn't call an individual black person a nigger, because it'll offend all/most black people. however, the kind of people who use the word nigger are almost without exception racists, who do think lowly of all black people. even if that's not the case in a particular instance, it's what'll be (justifiedly) assumed to be the case. but when it comes to the jesus fish, i think it's pretty obvious that *most* people using it are just aiming it at fundies. so i don't really see why most christians can't assume that, and assume that it's (in most cases) not mocking christianity as a whole, just extremist christianity. in fact, i'd assume that the thinking in most cases was 'if they're not fundies, they'll be chilled and not get offended'.

meh. the darwin fish has legs, it could out-maneuveur the jesus fish --- kinda like swansont and sysiphus said: the intent seems mainly to mock the kinda christian who wants creationism taught in the science classroom. no doubt a few atheists wear it as a general '**** you christianity' statement, but i still don't see why so many people are so offended? i mean, why not just take it as a joke in somewhat poor taste and shrug it off? for christians such as YT (i.e., who don't fall under the category of 'christians who feel that their faith overrides science, and they have to forse everyone else to be taught this', and who should know that the 'religion-hating atheists' are a small minority) i don't see why it's so offensive?

hmm... I get why it's offensive to some, but i don't really get why it's so offensive to some? I mean it's kinda taking the piss, but it's not exactly on the same level as satanism's inverted cross..?

'all' != 'most'

firescape, you could be just a bit bi. y'know how there are some women who aren't particularly hot, but when you're drunk they seem much more acceptable? maybe that's your stance towards men

you could allways just set ^m to auto-insert the [maf][/maf] tags and plonk the cursor in the middle, like happens for ,, etc (^b, ^i, ^u respectively) btw, if you do could you also make ^q == quote tags please?