PhilosophiX

I agree with xboxrulz, I've been using Suse Linux since Christmas last year and in the year that I've been using it, it has proven to be very easy to pick up, easy to use, reliable, and with a great community. Of course I've not really tried any other distro, but with Suse I've never felt compelled to try any other distro anyway. It is worth trying. Yeh, I accidentally let my disk space fill up, and then rebooted the machine... well KDE wouldn't start! But it took me about 20 minutes to find the tutorial and learn how to move around and manage files in the console, and that information has proven to be extremely useful time and time again for all manner of things. So do spend a little time on that, and you won't regret it.

Deja Vu... interesting. Our minds are clusters of neurons. Neurons that fire together wire together. Deja Vu is probably a little cross over from one unique event triggering something else from much earlier that gives us that sense of having experienced it before. Okay I'm cheating, I could nip over to google and find you the research that demonstrates what we think a Deja Vu is, but I'm busy hammering out some steampunk right now and neurology is a bit too modern - it would take me out the mood. So my advice is - if you are really interested in what Deja Vu is, then you'll probably find the answer in the field of Neurology, in particular find out about the way connections are formed between neurons, and the ability of the brain to store imagery incredibly well. Somewhere among all that stuff is the answer.

It's not possible, I do not think. The illusion of time travel is created because of the way our minds are structured, storing representations of past events and carrying them forwards in time, and being able to tap into them forever more or until forgotten. Somehow, to us, it is as if that past even still exists, nor is it a far leap to see how H G Wells and his time machine story came about, sparking the whole genre. Time to us seems like a flow. Analogue and continuous, a mysteriously alluring realm. To physicists it is yet more alluring due to relativity - someone sitting in an office at the top of a tall office block is proceeding through time marginally faster than someone whose office is at the bottom of the office block (because the earth's gravity well slows down time). Time actually proceeds forwards in discreet units (or quanta). These units are so small that they are imperceptible to us. Think about that for a moment, because visualizing that happening was what made me realize that time travel is impossible: Time marches forwards in discreet units. Each step wipes out the previous step as the universe hurtles ever forwards towards enthropy. Time and entrophy are just two facets of the same thing. Time is just the steps the Universe is taking to arrange itself into the most energy efficient configuration. haha

That's a good idea. The problem with being split into a stream of bits is that what you are really doing is disintegrating the person and rebuilding them. So say a person called Bob, steps into a teleporter, the person who comes out on the other side is technically 'Copy of Bob'. If Copy of Bob, happens to go back in the same teleporter for the return trip, then Copy 2 of Bob comes out the other side. The original Bob, no longer exists - he was obliterated by the Teleportation Process. Of course Copy 3 of Bob, will have all Bob's memories, and will believe himself to be Bob. But you can easily highlight the problem with this theoretical excercise: Tom gets into the Teleporter in france, and it malfunctions, Copy of Tom gets out at Atlanta, unaware that another Copy of Tom is still in France, because the machine sensed that there was an error, reconstituted Tom in France assuming that he wouldn't reach his destination at all. But the information did reach there anyway. But now, because there was an error and the bits that were Tom got out. Technically the original Tom no longer exists, and now there are two Copies of him in existance. Which one is him? Both have all his memories and believe they are him, which should be allowed to remain with his family? Obviously it would be very hard for a family to deal with there being two Toms. Other than that, teleporters would be brilliant; for sending goods of course. Wormholes are less problematic, there is continuity for the organism, it is not destroyed and rebuilt during a trip through a wormhole (just moving through hyperspace). That's also a brilliant idea. You should patent that asap. Fashion matching phones. I agree with your idea for a cube that uses holographics, thus cutting down the size of the device. In the mid term, there is a similar problem posed by devices getting smaller - as the devices get smaller and smaller they still have to remain big, so that they can accommodate a screen and a user interface. I think fold out paper displays will be used to accomplish something similar to what you suggested with holographics. The Science Fiction writer Ian McDonald's vision or Hoeks and Palmers is by far the most elegant solution I've heard of. In his novel 'River of Gods' (set 2047) as well as some of his other works, everyone uses hoeks, devices that hook behind the ear and project computer imagery directly into the brain. Writing is achieved via a palmer which is a a lot like a chording glove. Chording has existed since the dawn of PDAs (Among the first ever Personal Organizers was the AgendA, which has chording buttons on it), basically typing using combinations of five finger movements or buttons, rather than a keyboard. I think Mc Donald's palmer used more gestures, but he captures the essence of the idea. Computers that let you walk about. That's what I'm after... as you can imagine being a writer I'm stuck in the one place for a while (once I turn the laptop on, wherever that might be, its a pain to pack it up again). It would be great to be able to write a book while going for a walk. Still what you suggested, a cube would be brilliant. That would save lugging a big heavy laptop about. Well if ever you see something like that, give me a shout. hehe I've yet to add my own contribution, so I might as well do it here. I'm looking forward to seeing private space ships. I know that may sound far out, but remember back in the 1900s, flying a plane was a rich man's game (I suppose it still is to a degree, but plenty of people have own their own glider, or small aircraft). I think there will come a time when laymen are building their own spaceships and flying up into space, after all you can't trust the governments to do it, they are way too slow, what you need are pioneers. Couple of years ago the first non-government company, flew a private space craft into space (wining the 10 million dollar X-prize), It's only a matter of time before others follow.

Hey that's a good one. You need to patent that quick... hehehe Especially in this modern world of ours.

I wonder what would happen if someone had AOL, Symantec, and Real Player (all three of the notoriously heavyweight (supposedly) background applications - all running at the same time? Would such a system even work... would you be able to do anything besides open a Word document? Has anyone used such a combination? Just a strange thought I had when I was thinking about Symantec. You know what they say, curiosity killed the cat. This is of course a Hypothetical question, or one aimed at past experience, since I hear that AOL and Real are trying to change their wicked ways these days.P.S. Tavox@Peru, Thanks. I agree - Norton was good back then, that was back in the (good old?) days when computers came bundled with Norton and IBM Via Voice, and all the billions of superfluous applications that were there to encourage you to pay $2000 for a PC... these days most people (the ones I know I mean) just walk into the computer shop and buy the box for like 200-400 bucks... they already have tons of spare monitors and peripherals anyway, and all the software they're likely to use, so they don't need a package. But norton was good back in the days when everyone had first started buying their PC, and PCs came in packages. Not that they don't still come in packages, I just mean that back then most people had to buy the package. God I'm waffling. You know what I mean....

I agree with everything else you've said, except above. W can forgive old games for looking like that because the designers were pushing the limits of what computers could actually do, pushing the limits of hardware and game play, and latterly graphics. But I don't think that we have to put up with crap looking games, just because they have other redeeming qualities. Take Darwinia for example, that was made by three people in a bedroom, and it looks amazing. (It doesn't look amazing because they had a team of 50 people working on it including 20 artists like most modern big budget games,) it looks amazing because the designers, knowing they were at a disadvantage because there was only 3 of them - took that disadvantage and turned it into an advantage by making very stylistically, reto, cool looking graphics. Most indie developers are in the same boat in comparison to the big developers, but they all manage. They find a way to do it. There are many other examples of games that look brilliant, and it was just one person working on it. But there's still a lot of crap out there... you know all the ones that look good in a thumbnail screen shot, but once you start playing it you realized that there's something unpleasant about the graphics, and it's not something you can bear to play?

This is all very true, and EMP weapons are definitely a very real threat now that we are all so dependent upon technology. The governments are now very interested in nano sized mechanical chips. These would be entirely resistant to EMP. You can see why, they would be interested in the technology, for essential military installations and troops on the battlefield. The nano mechanical chips would be much slower than normal chips, but they are more robust and apparently use less energy. Also they do not heat up so much, making them useful for applications that regular chips just can't be used for because of the heat. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6912023.stm

My own thoughts on this topic; I've been using AVG for years along with Zone Alarm, and I have to say that I would thoroughly recommend them to anyone. Sure AVG can't catch everything, by then no virus checker can. I would argue that what is more important is exercising caution when downloading, being careful, taking sensible precautions. Under these circumstances then a small, light Virus Checker like AVG is a joy. I don't recommend Symantec at all. They used to be okay back in the 90s, now they are dreadful. I had the pleasure of talking to one of their executives, and he doesn't have a clue about viruses other than the sales pitch for corporations that's been drummed into him. My discussion about the latest anti-virus research baffled him. Symantec are only interested in corporates and banks. Any Virus checkers they have available aimed at personal users and small businesses were created as an afterthought. It's an obnoxiously large piece of crap that spawns no less than 10 different processes, uses an incredibly ridiculous amount of system resources, like AOL it won't uninstall cleanly, and causes too many crashes.AVG I have never had any problems with and will continue to use it.

https://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/404.png Obviously no one is going to point to the picture above and say, that was designed by god. Because we all know it wasn't - it was evolved - inside a computer. It's part of an artificial evolution study. Evolution works - clearly - and is capable of producing all the complicated structures and organs that creationists want to believe are proof of design. Below is an ultra efficient antenna that NASA evolved. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Clearly evolution works, and needs no designer.

I don't see scientists running around blowing themselves up in trains and planes... I don't see scientists burning Harry Potter books because it's got witchcraft in it... I've never heard of scientists hunting innocent old ladies and then drowning them in the river to see if they were a witch... I've never heard of quantum physicists mounting holy crusades against classical physicists... I've never heard of scientists do anything other than do their job. Religion is ignorant. There have been more wars and death and blood at the hands of religion than anything else in this world, and you have the cheek to say that science is ignorant? Religion isn't just ignorant; it encourages ignorance... it encourages people to hand over their money to an institution in exchange for something that doesn't really exist, and holds people back. And right now religion is whimpering like a dog while science takes a torch to the dark mysterious caverns of religion... revealing them to be utterly empty. I'm a Hindu, and an atheist. I don't need to attack science because, quite frankly, if religion depends on ignorance - then I would much rather be a heathen, and at least see the universe for what it is, in all its true magnificence.

God is comforting, born of our need to pretend that when we die we continue to exist. But what is comforting and what is true are two different things. When someone sees design in the world around them, and they reject the scientific explanation for these designs, it is clearly so that they can pretend that these are evidence of a designer, and that there must be a god, and that there is a comforting afterlife to look forward to. The reason there is such a big debate between science and religion, is not because science is wrong: it's because the current religions have such a flimsy back story, written by men thousand of years ago, that like witches / elves / unicorns / magic - and all the other figments of the primitive ages - science reveals them for what they are - and those who wish to draw comfort in religion fight it because they are terrified by the new light shone upon their comforting religion.Remember the Egyptians believed in their gods, just as fanatically as anybody believes in their god today. You think they were wrong. But what about the Africans and the native Indians, the Hindus, Buddhists, The Romans, The Greeks, The Aztecs, The Gauls, and they all believed in there gods or explanation just as you believe in yours. And once everyone's forgotten about your religion, and they are on to the next one, your religion joins the above list as all religions will eventually do, once they go defunct. Were all the people who believed these religions wrong? I doubt it. They were all equally valid, made up to comfort the people, and believed just as strongly.So if you want something comforting, why don't you just make up something that fits with science, and then you wouldn't have to make a fool of yourself debating about science being wrong every time science accidentally swipes the legs from under your small god.You should take up astronomy... find out how vast the universe is... how ancient... and you would see that there is no god in the words of man that compares to the magnificence of the universe in all its natural beauty, nor does it need a god, it just is.

I have no idea about that one. You could ask your manufacturer. Alternatively, if it's a brand new computer, the manual will have a complete specification listing somewhere. I know that most laptops are already coming with them, so if its a laptop you bought then there's an even greater chance you already have one. If it's a PC, probably not so much. Some new Intel chips have the frizz chip built into them. All I can suggest is checking out the against TCPA website, since they appear to have a hardware list, although I don't know how comprehensive it is: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ The thing I find most offensive about this initiative, is the fact that a computer with such a chip is no longer a Turing Machine. I suppose I better explain that one. Alan Turing was the man who practically invented modern day computers. He envisaged a computing platform which became known as the 'Turing Machine'. A Turing machine is a computer that is programmed to do something. And it can become any other Turing Machine by reprogramming it. So IBM PC is a Turing Machine, because it can emulate any other machine by changing the software. With these stupid chips, the PC can't emulate any other machine - because the users can no longer decide what software they want to install on it - only approved software will run. Another good reason why this sucks... if you're a small programming company, before you can start making money by selling your product - you have to sell so many units to make back the money you've just paid to Microsoft to certify your software. (I say Microsoft, because they started the Trusted Computing Group, and regardless of whoever else jumps on board we best not forget that). So talk about monopoly, now Microsoft would get a share of money for every program ever written. They say it's to stop spyware, and adware... who are they trying to kid... the spyware and adware companies are all massive and wealthy and can more than easily afford the certification. What will suffer, will be innovation... all the amazing freeware you get at the moment would be dead in the water. I guess that grinding noise you can hear is my gnashing of teeth.....

Fraid I can't help you much with the last question since I studied programming at university before I used gamemaker. What exactly is it you're hoping to do? GML is very much like C and C++, which is itself very much like Java. Visual Basic is entirely different... Of course it doesn't really make much difference. C++ has the advantage of speed, but it is more difficult. Anything programmed in Visual Basic will run slower (although that's becoming a negligible concern as computers increase in speed). But if it's games you want to make, then you might be better off going to a language such as Dark Basic, which is specifically for creating games. If you go down the C++ route, then you will have no problems there either; professional gaming engines such as Torque are available on cheap indie licenses and like gamemaker take care of all the drudgery. If you want to go for pure C++ or visual basic, then be prepared for a lot of work if you want to make games with them. It's easy to start romanticizing about building your own game from the ground up, but 95% of indie games are never finished. There are literally millions of unfinished game engines floating about the net. However, whatever you decide, I wish you the best of luck. Stick at it.

Actually Game Maker works the other way around. Someone who has no idea about coding starts by using Game Maker to drag and drop syntax into place - soon they realize that coding is much faster and off they are, coding everything with GML, until they are hardly dragging and dropping at all. There comes a point where they outgrow game maker and then they seek out a genuine language or professional engine that they can use. The person who created Game Maker teaches game making at university. His software is designed as a learning platform, one which far from limiting individuals allows them to grow. It gives priceless experience. I would argue that sending someone to C++ or Visual Basic from the onset is counter productive. What they going to do with C++ or VB in a short enough time? In Game Maker they can throw together working games very quickly - then they can make much better games... Being able to make many working games is going let someone hold onto their passion far longer than working for six months on a game engine in C++ and then giving up because it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I've seen it all before... new coders are impatient to get started... before they are ready.. before they've learned the basics... they are off and at it with their own gaming engine. And besides, what gaming company builds their one engine these days? Especially not the smaller ones. Most license another engine and modify it. I['d say start with Game Maker, learn with it, then move on to a language such as C++. Further more "creating games of any real quality" isn't about C++ at all... it's all about graphics... look around at all the open source 2D games we've got out there, (the ones started by enthusiasts, not the ones developed professionally and later released) and 99% of them look s***, and that's because a bunch of coders got together to make a game - but they forgot to look for decent artists while they were at it. The battle of wesnoth is the only decent looking 2D open source game I can think of.

That's a great and interesting topic you've started Anne. I have to say there are indeed a lot of great open source solutions out there for education such as Moodle, which is a free version of Black Board, and it works great. So I think if they continue to improve like this then Open Source has a very bright future, there is just one cloud on the horizon, and unsurprisingly it's coming from Microsoft. I think one thing that people readily overlook when they begin discussing open source is freedom. I switched from Windows to Linux at christmas, and I've never looked back. The main reason I switched was because I read Microsoft's technical specification of Windows Vista. It is a hideous document which paints a Microsoft future in between George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. By using Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office, you are agreeing that you don't own any of what you've purchased - you just have permission to use it through their license. Further to this, they stipulate that they can change their license at any point. This is dangerous, what if at some point they decide to change the license so that they charge a monthly rent for using their products? Don't tell me they wouldn't, if they could get away with it they would. So once you are using Vista you become locked in to their platform, and that is where Micrsoft are being the most devious. They have set up the "Trusted Computing" group to see to it that "Trusted Computing" chips are put inside computers. Trusted Computing, sounds great doesn't it? But what it means is that you no longer are able to decide what software to run on your computer, because only software that has been "certificated" by the software company paying money to the "Trusted Computing Group", will actually run on such a chipped machine. So you see, they already decided what to trust and what not to trust, and they already decided not to trust you.. the user. This system isn't some far future totalarian vision... it's happening now... some manufacturers are already putting these chips inside of machines, where they will lie in wait for the day they are turned on - no doubt once Microsoft et al have generated enough support. You can see the problem the fee creates for open source... having to pay a fee for it to work would stifle innovation. Once you have such a chip in your computer, open source won't work, unless the developers have all pitched together to pay a fee to the Trusted Computing Group. Microsoft always did say they hated Open Source, and Linux... well now they are working away at getting rid of it altogether - and if successful, while there is no way they can ever get rid of open source, they will fragment the Computer Industry further, so that if you want to run open source, you have to specifically buy a Linux capable PC (one without the chip). A Vista PC with the chip activated won't run Linux or any other open source, unless they have been approved. Is that not censorship? Well to me it is. Once you are locked in to Vista and the Trusted computing chip (TC), what next? Oh it gets better - they can stop your copy of Windows or Office or any other software within the system from working if they wish to do so. Why would they do such a thing? Perhaps someone somewhere tried to crack a copy of Vista, and it just happens they used a Key that is the same as your legally purchased copy... they would revoke the license key. Your copy of office would stop working. Nor would you have any recourse, how could you prove that you didn't give someone a copy? Microsoft are growing ever paranoid. Even better, under this system, every file you've ever written using Micrsoft Office would be unopenable in any other copy of Micrsoft Office, or any other application. That's why I switched.. there are many more terrible examples of things possible under Vista that are terrifying, but I limit it to this - the core reason I changed to Open Source. I'm a writer and the prospect of giving Microsoft such power over everything I've ever written - every source file - every novel and story, every photograph from my digital camera showing my travels and people I know, all the digitized things I keep in my computer. Giving them the power to remove it all at a whim. I couldn't take the thought of if it... and I changed to Linux. So you see, when you compare open source to proprietary systems, there are not just issues of cost, but issues of freedom as well.

From science fiction, to science fact... what are your favorite speculations from fiction. And why? I see many threads started "what's your must have gadget" - well this is similar - what's your must have gadget that doesn't exist yet?

Before you were born; of your own big bang as it were - you were nothing, nonexistent... did you come from an infinite nothingness or a finite nothingness? No. Nothingness is merely an absence of something - finite or infinite can't be attached to it. Nothingness is a human concept. Do not imagine that because we can not peer back beyond the big bang; that means the universe came from nothing. More likely our universe is just one small cyclical system within a much larger whole. For example: If the universe were held within an apple, everyone within that apple universe would be industrially debating whether or not their universe came from nothing - indeed the apple didn't exist before it began to grow upon the tree - but the tree, the system within which the apple formed, had been around for a lot longer. Unable to see that - they assume their apple universe came from nothing. To continue the metaphor; many apples had grown upon it, and many would continue to grow upon it. We come again to the oldest and most obvious cliché of philosophy; 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?' ... The egg came first. The creatures that evolved into chickens, before they had taken on all the aspects of 'chickeness' were obviously laying eggs, there was never a definite point when an egg was laid by something different and out popped a chicken -- instead, so very slowly and over time, something evolved into a chicken. It would be very hard to find a definite point where this happened. You could slip back in time, and eventually you would come to a point where you could say very definitely that these weren't quite chickens, but these ancestors that weren't quite chickens, obviously, laid eggs. Still, slowly over time chickens may evolve into something else, and they will probably still be laying eggs. Perhaps, the universe is an egg as it were - a seed laid by an earlier version - but not necessarily. Animals replicate by reproduction - there is no evidence to support that this would be the case with the universe, it could just as easily be an isolated event that occurs now and then due to the maths of the multiverse - like an eclipse - an eclipse is not born of a prior eclipse, it merely happens because the planetary bodies just happen to be set up in the right way. The maths work out, and we get a beautiful eclipse. More likely, the universe & the multiverse, just happen to be set up the right way.

I started using Linux at the beginning of this year. I tried many different distros and eventually settled for Suse Linux. I have to say that Linux is much better than windows. I'd been using windows for years, but what finally made me switch was Vista. I read the technical specification for vista and realized that with all the DRM they were putting in it, they were turning windows from an Operating System into an Orwellian System. As a writer, my writing is very important to me, and I don't like the idea of Microsoft having control of my files - but that's exactly what you get if you use Vista. They can change their agreement at any time, and once you're locked into their proprietary formats then it's game over. I found it rather disturbing to learn that if they decided to lock out your copy of Microsoft Office (perhaps they think your copy has been pirated), it wouldn't just stop working, but all the files that had ever been created would stop working as well - so you couldn't just nip across to another system and use your files, they wouldn't work. Even worse they would be able to delete any file on your computer they wanted. Then there's the Trusted Computing Group they set up, with the purpose of putting chips into computers so that only trusted software will work. Well, I'll be damned if I let Microsoft decide what can run on my computer. Then there's part of the specification where every driver has to be designed separately and the solution kept secret - which reverses the current situation where many drivers are open, and often the devices will happily interface with generic drivers - that's just going to push prices up and it will be us (the consumer) that's got to pay for all the extra development. Then there's the overhead all the DRM and encryption Vista uses when it runs, the processing overhead for which I'm sure I won't be paying for. Not to mention the paranoid defenses that come with vista, that would shut down the system at the slightest sniff of an attack upon so called "Premium Content". Won't be long either until Microsoft are trying to claim the internet for themselves. So Microsoft can swivel. Suse Linux is brilliant. I keep XP on a small partition and dual boot just in case I need it, but I hardly ever use it anymore. I think a lot of people shy away from Linux because the myth that it's hard to use still persists, but I found adapting to Linux rather easy.

As a science fiction reader (and writer), the one gadget that I would love to see which isn't widely available yet, is the wearable computer. It's a screen shown inside a pair of sunglasses and a glove, which allows one to 'chord'. Chording is brilliant, you make a letter by combinations of finger presses, and other movements / gestures. So you can type one handed, nor do you need a table. I suspect that chording never took off because people are inherently too lazy to learn anything other than 'qwerty' unless they have to, which is why chording keyboards are only a niche market for disabled people (or graphic artists who want their drawing hand free).Fortunately we see the problem with devices getting smaller, and there is no room for an input device except those nasty thumb keyboards. I think soon someone's going to digg up the chording concept and finally reinstate it back into PDAs (I say back into PDAs because one of the first ever PDAs, the AgendA, actually had chording buttons on it (although you did have to sit it on a table to chord.)So what's so good about chording? 30 - 60 words per minute with one hand, and you could chord anywhere (unlike keyboard based input).At the moment I'm frustrated by the lack of cheap devices. Surely by now someone slapped together a portable device that has a keyboard, a rudimentary screen, a little memory, takes AA batteries... surely you could pick up such a thing for under $50 dollars? Nope. Someone did slap up something like what I described, but they sell it to "educational' establishments as an electronic note taker, for $500! Which proves to me that colleges and universities have more money than sense.Pretty soon, I think there will be decent little laptops available for less than $100, since the "one laptop per child program" took off, everyone's rushing to get in on the idea. My best bet, if I want something light and portable will be the Asus Eee PC, $200 and it's tiny. At the moment if I want a laptop that small they cost at least $1000. Sure it's underpowered, but that's the point. Right now my laptop is something of a tank. Actually that's not far from the truth. My wife's a bit clumsy, so I got one that's built to military standard 810F. It's Drop Resistant, Shock Resistant, Spill Proof; but that doesn't matter because it's so heavy I can't be bothered moving it off the table, unless I'm going to really need it. So it wont be long until we have cheap little runabouts that we can take where we can't even be bothered taking our laptops.But the ultimate in mobility, is the PSION 5. It's small enough to fit inside a jacket pocket (or being in a tropical country I'd wear combats with big pockets to fit it in), has a keyboard you can squeeze 30-40 words per minute out of (big enough to touch type) sure it doesn't have WiFi (although you can buy a card), and it's got a black and white screen, but it runs on AA batteries, so armed with on of those, the dedicated writer would be able to write from the deepest jungle (yes you can buy AA batteries in the jungle (unless you're lost deep deep deep deep in the jungle - but even then you could write for days or weeks if you brought a few spare batteries)). I had one and it broke. Soon I'll buy another one, because I've really been missing it. They don't make them any more but you can buy them on ebay or factory reconditioned elsewhere on the web. Worth checking out. Or you can wait for chording to take off!

Hold the bus here! There's a lot of talk about scientific proof going on here, and it must be said, right here and now, with great emphasis upon this fact before it continues: There is no such thing as scientific proof A theory can be supported, but it can never be proven. This is why: You come up with the hypothesis that all swans are white. You select a sample of 100 lakes and monitor them, observing and writing down the colour of every single swan you see. After three months you have recorded 37,343 sightings of swans and they are all white. That supports your theory that all swans are white, but it doesn't prove that all swans are white. You can sit a a million lakes for a million years, and observe ten trillion swans, and even if they are all white, you still haven't proven that all swans are white, you have only supported your theory that all swans are white. Why? Because all it would take is for one person to observe a pink swan, or a black swan, and your theory is instantly disproven. So you see, you can disprove a theory, but you can never prove a theory. Science is not about proving anything. Science is about building a model of how the world works (called a theory). A theory is incredibly useful, it lets us understand the universe from a particular point of view. A spaceship can be accurately sent to anywhere in the solar system using nothing more than Newton's equations to plan its trajectory. Even though we know Newton's theory doesn't explain everything, and Einstein demonstrated that Newton's equations break down at larger distances, the later theories allowed us to understand when and when not to use the earlier theory - just as the earlier theories allowed us to get to the later ones. When the model is shown to be wrong, the theory is adapted, thrown out, or moved aside. Scientific progress is about paradigm shifts towards greater understanding. So please, before using science to try and further an argument, at least try to understand what science really is. And while on the topic of god, my own personal belief is that 6 million years ago our monkey ancestors began to eat the Tabernanthe iboga roots. At this time we came down from the trees and began to wander the plains of Africa, while our primary food source was meat, our back teeth adapted for grinding which suggests that we were eating these roots as a secondary food source. This is very interesting, since these roots contain indolic alkaloids, especially ibogaine, which is supposedly the compound responsible for hallucinogenic effects. Fascinating. 100 thousand years ago, mankind arrived in his current form, although his intelligence was a bit iffy, only 30 thousand years ago was there a great spark of creativity and you start seeing necklaces, art, better tools... so with all this creativity and thought about what the universe is all about then obviously someone is going to suggest a "creator". So someone jumped in that and became the creator's representative for the tribe (witchdoctor / holy-man), because that gave him power. Then when tribes became villages and the witchdoctors got themselves organized they became priests in the villages and towns, and they did so because it gave them power and wealth. Because humans came from nothing, they get all attached to consciousness (cogito ergo sum), and they can't cope with the ultimate finality of death, so a psychological process kicks in called Cognitive Dissonance, where they rationalize death away by clinging to what the holy-men are saying (to make a quick buck), because that makes the thought of death bearable... I'm a Hindu. So I believe everyone is entitled to hold their own belief system and worship as many (or as few) gods as they want, as long as they don't try to force people into their religion, or staying in their religion (not pointing any elbows). I look forward to the day when children are raised as non-religious and given the choice to pick the one (or none) that suits them when they come of age. Alas that is unlikely since I see a lot of kids who are brought up with the same beliefs as their parents, without ever being given the opportunity to question these assumptions. So to come back to the point, I gaze at the universe and I see a beautiful and terrifying natural phenomenon; one that is all the more wondrous for the fact that complicated beings such as us evolved and are now able to admire it.

Hello everyone,I'm a writer/author, and I was hosting my web site somewhere else, that is currently down and when searching to find out why it's down I stumbled across this website. I can see how the system works and I have to say it's a fantastically brilliant idea! I hope to contribute a fair few interesting topics to barter my hosting.I'm originally from Scotland but I'm now living in Malaysia with my lovely Malaysian wife. I studied computing and psychology originally with thoughts of going into A.I. research, but I changed my mind. Fortunately as a writer I can use everything I learned anyway, computing comes in handy - I never loose my work - and psychology comes in handy for character building.Will look forward to hearing from everyone, Thanks for reading my postBest Regards to all