JackC

Sort of. On the main page for each forum there are lists of thread titles. In flat mode, some of these threads have more than one page of posts. All I was suggesting was a link to each page in a thread on the main forum page next to the thread titles. When you get into the thread itself there is a row of links to each page in the thread at the top of that page. I don't log in most of the time so when I click on a 47 page thread with three new pages of posts at the end, instead of just clicking on a link next to the thread title to take me to the page I want, at the moment I have to go to the first page in the thread and then navigate from there. Lots of forums put these links in and I wondered if DZ.com could too. I thought it might cut down on Sangiro's bandwidth.

I've noticed a couple of features in other forums that are quite useful. One is links in the main page for each forum that takes you to individual pages in each thread so for example a thread title might look like: Results of USPA meeting re: pattern separation 1 2 ... last where the numbers take you to the 1st, 2nd (etc) and last page in a thread. This is quite useful when you want to go to the n-th page in a thread without getting sent to the first unread post. Second, I've noticed some forums have alt tags that pop up when you position your mouse pointer over the thread title link which contain the first 80 odd characters of the posts contents. It's sometimes nice to get an idea what's going on in the thread before you click the link. Just a thought.

Do you really think she'd be better off with a knife or baseball bat? It'd just get taken off them. Erm no... I think Mike wants every 85 year old grandmother to look like this but not like this.

Apparently not. After looking into it I find that both Zimmerman and PGPi both deny any back doors or otherwise weakened algorithms and since it's open source one could check it, if so inclined. So I take it back, PGP doesn't appear to have any back doors. I was wrong.

Rumour has it that the NSA made PGP put a back door into their algorithms so that it could be cracked easily. Early version (I forget which ones) didn't have the backdoor and are therefore considered "superior". Certainly, at one time (I don't know if it is still true) exporting encryption algorthms outside the US was a felony. On topic though, I like Truecrypt for securing hardrives and the like. The encrypted files can be emailed just like any other attachment. It also supports double encryption with "plausible deniability" for super safe delivery if you need to go OTT. One time pads are theoretically unbreakable but the key generation and distribution is difficult. For most practical purposes, a well chosen book cypher works quite well.

Hey, they rocked

That was the sound of retribution.

WTF?!!? It is absolutely not allowed for an ankle biter to be better than me. I've been playing longer than he's been alive. Focker. I hope you realise I now have to post this clip to make myself feel better.

OK I'm not much of an acoustic player but I've got to give Thomas Leeb a mention. Well worth a listen. The late Eric Roche is awesome too. Quite how he gets an acoustic to sound like it's going through a wah pedal with nothing but his fingers I'll never know.

Ahh Buckethead... Can be a bit hit and miss but he certainly can play. I like the Monsters and Robots album (featuring Night of the Slunk a personal favourite) and also Crime Slunk Scene and the acoustic album Colma is excelent. Bucketheadland on the other hand isn't that great. But then he has produced about 30 solo albums meaning he's got to be just about the most prolific guitarist ever. Paul Gilbert is another great guitarist. Technical Difficulties is currently on my learn-to-play list. Scarified is another one I keep having a go at. Just to throw out another Govan track, check out the tapping lick at 1:10 in this clip. Now that is a total bastard to play. I've been trying for months. [/guitar geek]

Yes I have. Now that boy can play! If you like that type of percussive playing check out Thomas Leeb and Eric Roche. Both awesome. I've got to say though, I'm not much of an acoustic player which is why I'd gravititate towards Guthrie's playing over Andy McKee. Some more clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J503OvHWKko http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JPPTzQUKdk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEubiUaDq0o

There are times I just want to smash all my guitars into little tiny peices. Ladies and gentlemen, Guthrie Govan for your viewing pleasure... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yPEewaalik&mode=related&search= Don't it make you sick?

That's when I saw these great dangleberries hanging down and all hell broke loose

Another week of this and fluffy could afford that new flea collar

You have got to be kidding!

I don't see what all the fuss is about. You don't need no stinkin' ring thing to make a pledge. My guess is the sparkly thing is more important to this girl than whatever it is meant to represent.

Agreed. It's funny but I thought the monkey/typewriter thing was from that very book, I could be wrong though. Still, here is the entire book for those who won't pay actual money for it. Pajarito, are you listening? Edit to fix clicky The Blind Watchmaker (7.7MB)

It is my understanding that this is the answer (sort of). If you have a load of monkeys bashing away on typewriters you are going to end up with a load of random junk interspersed with the occasional nugget of gold. This obviously isn't going to get you the entire works of Shakespeare. Natural selection however gives you the edge. Each time a monkey randomly bashes out a recognisable word fragment, you keep it because it is useful. The odds of any monkey getting a word right is tiny but each time they do, you get to keep it. With enough monkeys you're soon going to start collecting useful words. Eventually you might even have enough words to write the entire works of Shakespeare. Or at least cobble together a reasonable sonnet.

Bill, that's wrong. The string "sxyxvawtu" contains more information than the word "superman" because it has more letters in it. The word "superman" takes 56 bits to transmit, but "sxyxvawtu" takes 64 bits to transmit. Just because "superman" means something in English doesn't mean "sxyxvawtu" is meaningless. It could be that "sxyxvawtu" is a word from the ngoto region of burkmenistan referring to a particular type of penile wart. Or it could be an encrypted string meaning "attack at dawn". Meaning is not the same as information.

Oh for crying out loud. Wrong wrong wrong. let's do a short course in information theory. Lets take the string of letters: INQORPAAION The information in that string is fixed at 11 letters long. If I randomly mutate one letter I get the string INQORPATION The amount of information has not changed. It's still 11 letters long. If I mutate another letter: INQORMATION It's still 11 letters long. And now another letter: INFORMATION It's still 11 letters long and the information has not changed. The only difference is that now, in the English language, INFORMATION is a word that has meaning. If each of those letters was a code for some other word, all of those srings have meaning. Meaning is not the same is the amount of information there is contained in the string. Any string of letters can have any meaning you assign to them. Any meaning at all. In our case the natural selection would be to choose the word INFORMATION as being useful. But that doesn't stop more random mutaions taking place. If I mutate a few more letters, I get INCONFUSION which is also a word we could naturally select. But the overall amount of information remains constant. Think about it like this. A string of 11 letters takes 77 binary bits to transmit down the phone line to your computer. It doesn't matter which 11 letters I choose, It always takes the same number of bits to transmit it. So 5GE^&563BRH takes the same amount of information to transmit as FORGODSSAKE. Your "Dr" Don Batton is not wrong on a subtle point of biology, He's not wrong on a matter of interpretation. He's wrong on a point of maths. Pure fucking mathematics. It's like he's saying 2+2=597. Is that clear enough for you? Can you please pick on another line of complete bullshit to perpetuate now?

Paj, you're just plain wrong. Natural selection is just a mechanism whereby favorable traits that are heritable become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable traits that are heritable become less common. After a given mutation in the DNA sequence, the information contained in the sequence is different but there isn't any more or less information there. The overall amount of information doesn't change as a result of natural selection. If you got your science from science sources instead of creationist propaganda sites, you'd know this. Why oh why is it not possible for you to criticize science for what it actually is for once? It's not like you haven't been pulled up on this before.

Paj, I don't buy into the existnce of god let alone the validity of the whole sin and hell thing. You do. You wont budge no matter what I say and I haven't seen you give any good reason why I should either. So that doesn't leave us much room for manoeuvre does it?

So you missed the part where Pajarito said I "know" God exists and that His Word is true. I am solid in my belief. Nothing will ever change that. How can you reason with someone who has already decided they wont reason? But you're right. It is better to say "here's why I think you're wrong". Unfortunately it wont get us anywhere because no matter how powerful my argument, Pajarito has already decided I'm wrong. Eventually frustration sets in and all you can do is walk away before you rip your own hair out. Now I also have a problem with "unrealistic questions". Ones like "can god make a rock so heavy he can't lift it" or pulling out the old "problem of evil" argument. What's so unrealistic about that? It's reductio ad absurdum and it's perfectly acceptable in my book. But because it reduces the argument for god to an absurdity (which is the whole point) it suddenly becomes an unrealistic question and people take offense. Normally, having the absurdity of an argument pointed out to you is grounds for re-evaluating your position. Unless you're religious. Then it's ground for shouting "unreasonable question". That's special pleading and it just won't do. Fair enough. I do try not to be too antagonistic but then you have this: I fully expect most people to react just like you did. The Bible says that the gospel message is very offensive and foolish to the world. If a Christian isn't taking heat for speaking the truth, then he/she is failing in their task. Pajarito seems to be saying that antagonism is the intention or at least he's acknowledging that it will be the effect. So you have the fan, and the shit...

You do know what reductio ad absurdum is right? It's not a personal attack. Pajarito frequently posts about how how heathens will burn in hell (example) in fact his sig is devoted to it. That's fine, but he has to expect people to react to being told such things.