yeh

Yup... I totally agree with beatgammit. Some people think that they are totally anonymous on the web but actually, most of the time, they are not. So if it is something that you wouldn't say face to face, then don't say it online.

Well, I do sincerely believe that the problem lies in the sort of separation of state and church found in the Western world that is not found in the Islamic world. I know of moderate Muslims myself who don't wear the veil and don't go around threatening other people or forcing their religion/culture on other people. But when it comes to contradicting what their religious elders/authorities said, most of them go silent. Religious figures are still highly regarded and most Muslims would not or dare not openly criticize their religious authorities. So, like what I have said in my previous post, only a separation of state and church would solve the current conflict. Extremist religious leaders are not confined to the Islamic world. An evangelical Christian leader in the US, if I'm not mistaken, with the name of Pat Robertson, something like that, once advocate that the President of Venezuala be assassinated by US secret intelligence services. But because people dare to speak up to their religious leaders in the US that it doesn't snowball into a big problem as compared to what would happen in the Islamic world.

Hehe... I know that this is a topic on religion and philosophy but I just wanna share a few lines of my thought...Well, if we negate the existence of God, then the problem of evil and suffering becomes very clear. People commit evil stuff to satisfy themselves. It could be greed, power, sex, etc. Most people choose good becoz society is created as such, with punishment meted out to evil deeds. And how do society come about with such a rule? This is becoz to progress, humans must co-operate and do good to each other.

Well, I'm not a Muslim and not of any particular religion but I would like to share my thoughts on this topic.What is happening in the Islamic world has actually happened in the Christian world too. What happened to paganistic religion when Christianity arrives? How about the persecutions conducted against scientists/explorers? How about the split between Cahotlics and Protestants and the subsequent persecutions? And other religions in the world has done this kind of stuff as well. What people fail to understand is the power of religion. In the West, there is a separation of state and church. Why do you think there is such a rule? Unfortunately, in the Muslim world, there is yet a separation of state and the Islamic religion. And I do believe that unless there is such a separation, the current conflict that we are witnessing is not going to stop. And the only way this separation can happened is by Muslims themselves. They would have to decide when and how.

Well, I'm not quite sure what Mafamba is trying to say when he/she pointed out the contradictions in religion. But to me, that is a very good point. Let's face it, people treat religion differently than science. Scientific facts can changed anytime but a religious edict is divine and therefore, it cannot be wrong. What mitchellmckain and Jeigh have said about religion adapting and using the best information available is unfortunately, not shared by lots of other religious people.

Yup... I do think it is true. This is becoz fishes in the ocean doesn't actually belong to someone and so it is pretty hard to regulate the industry. Self-regulation amongst fishermen is the only way to go but alas... people are naturally short-sighted and so I don't forsee anyting being done. Nature just have to run its course. As fish stocks depletes, the number of fishermen would decline and there might even be instances where the whole fishing industry just collapses... that would give the fish time to replenish itself. The bigger worry is more of pollution as polluted waters might actually kill off everything and what we are left would be a dead sea, so to speak. As for farming the fishes that we eat, I think that would be the way to go in the future. Come on, most of the stuff that we eat aren't wild anymore. Our vegetables, pork, beef, chicken, mutton, ostriches etc. are mostly farmed. And as human population continues to explode, if we want to eat fish, then we would have to farm them. And it is not that far-fetched since we already farmed salmon and sturgeon that produces caviar. Hehe... I'm waiting for them to farm sharks so that I can indulge myself without guilt in shark's fin. Currently, I try to avoid shark's fin whenever possible.

Haha... that would be really ironic, Jeigh... :)Thanx vujsa for letting us know about the 1.5x credits being deleted. I never know about this and I have actually replied to some deleted posts. So now I should be more careful... And I do agree that it is a good system since it doesn't encourage people to reply to junk/spam posts.

Oopps... szupie is right about the diamond thing. Looks like I gave an example that is non-related to the topic in discussion. Hehe...

Yup, I agree with Mark420. Gmail does a good job in filering out spam. Hotmail is real lousy in that aspect. And his suggestion of getting back at these spammers companies is really good. Hit them where it counts. And that's at the e-mail addresses that they use 'normally', that is not for spamming. I too, would like to hear more about the frog thingy. But I have a serious doubt about the efficacy of the frog thingy. Unless the frog software continuously sends a spam e-mail to the spammer's address, otherwise the spammer can just spam in the wee morning and then shut down their mail server. Or all incoming mail is not allowed. I don't know. Like I said, I would love to know more about this frog thingy.

Well... i'm not sure about gold but you can certainly make diamonds. Sounds good.. hehe... Actually scientists can already "fissionize" stuff. That is how you get nuclear energy presently. As for fusion, I'm waiting for the technology to progress and mature to a stage where we can harness energy for daily use and not just for mass destruction purposes. Imagine a clean, infinite energy source. As for the Chernobyl, I don't know why you think it is intentional. Nuclear power stations are not inherently safe. When people mention "not much danger", they are forgetting the effects of a nuclear meltdown and its associated radioactive costs. Just to illustrate my point. If you ever need to go for a major surgery and the doctor tells you that there is a 1% chance of failure, it seems like a good odds to me and I would certainly go for the surgery. But if you have a nuclear power station and the odds of them blowing up is 1%, do you still think it is acceptable to have a nuclear power station near your home? I certainly would not.

Yeah... I agree with demlaynyc. For those who knows about computers or maybe is involve in engineering/science, it is not funny since it cannot be true. But imagine telling that to someone who is not technologically competent and see his/her reaction... hehe....

Yup, I would agree with xboxrulz. I'm not exactly certain why your shutdown time is slow but here is a suggestion. You can try manually shutting down applications/processes before you clicked shutdown. If you leave it to the OS, sometimes it is a little bit slower.

Very nicely said, mitchellmckain. I think before you start replying to Graffiti, maybe you should ask him to define life. After reading his countless posts, I am beginning to think that his definition of life might not involve bacteria and other simpler organisms. After all, maybe all he/she wants to show is that we, humans, cannot just evolved but be created by some higher being, supposedly God. And no one can reasonably satisfy him because the only evidence that someone can produce would be fossils and Graffiti can always insist that the fossils has nothing to do with modern humans.

Well, just out of curiosity, could you put the link to the theory that you mentioned? I am not that interested in disecting that theory now, but who knows in the future? It could be a Sunday morning and I might have nothing else better to do... hehe....

Well, I am basically a person that only kinda mind my own business. Not very much actually gets my attention. Don't quite like to get into debate with people since I am basically, well.... lazy!! Hehe... However, there is a trend to push religion into science, into economics, into education and etc. and that is something that kinda gets my attention. I actually believe in a higher being but not quite sure whether there is only one God or multiple Gods. I am definitely not affiliated to any particular religion. Now, back to what Graffiti said. Hehe... Now, what makes you say that as soon as a primitive life form evolved, it would have died? SARS virus have evolved from some primitive virus found in birds. In fact, there is a huge effort amongst health care professionals to check the spread of H5N1 virus. Now, are you saying they are all wrong and wasting precious government resources since once the H5N1 virus mutates into something that threatens us, human beings, it would just die off, so there is no need to worry? By the way, if we were to throw out evolution and instead adopt creationism, what are we to do with the SARS virus? Are you saying that God created the virus to kill human beings? And please... don't tell me that only those that don't believe in God died from SARS... And then, there is the moral argument as to why God must exist, or need to exist for society to function. Graffiti and abartar argued that, but Graffiti goes on to say that wars and persecution had been done in the name of God. That is exactly my point. The argument that society would corrupt without God is kinda pointless since there are tonnes of examples of society getting corrupt with God around. Abartar goes on to make the link between economics and the corruption that results from the non-existence of God. My question now, is, tell me how many teocratic states in the world today that is rich? I mean, those states are ruled by people who believed in God, so there shouldn't be any corruption and their economies should be in excellent condition. I would really like to know. At the very least, it can changed my perception of teocratic states.

Thanx for all the suggestions. :)Vujsa, you're right. It is a lot of trouble. I do have internet connection at home. It is dial-up though. I wanted to get broadband but there seems to be some complication. The phone line is in someone else's name and it is quite a hassle to get him to agree. Ok, after reading the suggestions yesterday, I decided to have a look again at the source of the webpages using notepad. Well, since this time I kinda have an idea what to look for... I managed to fix the problem. Hurrah!! I think vujsa right, about the html pages requesting an external resource. I went into the source and deleted those banner ads. And everything worked perfectly after that.. :DNow, is there a way to prevent this kind of problems in the future? I am actually just saving these html pages for offline browsing at home. Hehe... I'm a very lazy person and don't feel like looking at the source and deleting ads every time. So, any suggestions?

I think you would have already got all the info you want from the countless posts above. I just have something to add. Even though Prolog and Lisp is commonly associated with AI, you can actually do AI stuff without using those languages. Since you mentioned genetic algorithm, I would believe there are libraries implementing genetic algorithm in either C/C++/Java, one of those. Do a search for them. Or if you feel like it, write them yourself once you understand the algorithm. Good luck...

Of course, only trusted people would be allowed to load scripts onto the site and ranked them. I don't think a free-for-all system, where eveyone is allowed to load their scripts and ranked them would work. Of course, we can have a review system where everyone can participate. Each script would have its rank, done by trusted individuals and a review section, done by anybody interested to comment on the script. After all, you can't say that all the masters of php is on your trusted individuals list. There might be some out there who are not and hearing their comments would be good. If there are some nut-job giving out *BLEEP* comments, well.... i'm pretty sure programmers can differentiate which comment is worth listening to.

Hehe... one party says his explanation is correct but not someone else's. And then someone defends the supposedly incomplete explanation. Recipe for all out war??? :)Nay, in fact, I think all the explanation is correct actually. They are just looking at the problem in different ways. Of course, tamer3kz explanation is the easiest to follow, since it involves easy mathematical equation. However, there is a need to involve the definition and also the logic/philosophy to fully understand such problems. As mentioned above by evought, what does "twice as hot" means? In "normal" mathematics, we know that multiplication is just another form of addition, that is 2*3 is actually 3+3. But when it comes to temperature, when you add volume A of water with 1C and volume B of water with 2C, do you get volume of water with 3C, that is 1+2 = 3? I don't think the equation is correct in the situation I just mentioned, even though 1+2=3 is definitely correct mathematically. This is just to illustrate the point of knowing the underlying logic/definition when applying mathematical equations.

Thanx for all the suggestions. Yup, that is correct, yordan. So, is there a program out there that do not need installation and would solve my problem? Yup.. in fact, I did open the html file using notepad. Thought i know some programming, so maybe I could fix it. Haha... that document has tonnes of lines and I'm just too lazy to go through all of it. However, your suggestion that it may refer to some wrong absolute path might just solve the problem. Like I have said earlier, I download those pages in a cybercafe and saved them in my USB flash drive. And I forgot to mention this. I brought back the USB flash drive and I cut and paste those pages into my hard disk. So maybe the scripts are still referring to F: drive, that is my USB drive? Is there such a possibility?

Err... I disagreed with what Graffiti is saying. Evolution is NOT a religion, and evolution CANNOT be compared to creationism. Unless you are saying biology is not a science. Evolution is one of the bedrock of biology. Lots of research in biology dealing with DNA has got to do with the evolution theory. Actually, the people advocating that god exists are religious people. And most religious people belong to a faith, that is they are either Christians, Muslims, Jewish, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. Very few of them actually subscribe to multi faiths, that is they are both Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus at the same time, for example. So actually, whether god exists or not does not help them in their cause because they can't prove that their god exists and not others. Or for that matter, whether gods exist since there are some faith, like during the ancient Greece that have multiple gods. Of course, not everyone sees this logic. I have tonnes of friends that bought into the whole argument of the existence of god from some religious people and converted into their religion, saying god existed without realizing that other faiths proclaim the existence of god/gods as well. So which faith actually knows the truth? And should we use the word god or gods?

This is a very good idea from saint-michael. Congrets!!!! :)And I like very much what vujsa said. Not just rank those scripts on their functionality but also other very important criteria like security, optimization etc. I could usually figure out whether some things work or not as they are claimed, but it's far more difficult to know whether it is the best way to do it or whether the coding is actually secure. I am very interested in this project if it takes off. Can't really contribute much though since I'm a newbie in php. But do post it in annoucement if ever this project takes off.

Yes, I did that, religiously, every single time I remove my USB flash disk. Yup... I'm downloading html pages.. Ok, so how do I know whether those downloaded pages are referencing other local pages on the cybercafe computer? Not all the downloaded pages have the problem. Only some pages have that hover problem So, how do I overcome this "local pages" thingy?

Ok, this might not be the response that you are looking for but just in case... You can try asking that question in the Sun Java forum. It is free to join... just go to the Sun website... And if I remember correctly, I think Java does allow you to communicate using Bluetooth... there is some libraries, something like that....

Hi.. I downloaded some webpages from the net from the cybercafe. Saved it in my USB flash disk. Tested it in the cybercafe since I experienced the same problem before. Could open it. Brought it back home and there is an error with the saved pages. Not that the whole page could not open... just the hover function not working properly. When the mouse hovers above certain pictures, some info suppose to come up but it can't when I tried it at home using internet explorer. And yes, I downloaded it using internet explorer as well in the various cybercafes. I am using Windows XP SP2 as my OS.Any suggestions on how to solve the problem? Thanx..