Nice. -Chris

Oh well then, are there even any of them around at all? I mean, I wonder if anyone still has any running that you can dial into? -Kaster

Am I the only one that misses dialing up at 3am to check an online bbs for messages? or am I just living in the past? -Kaster

Yes well, I'm still not sure as to whether to make the jump to W7. I mean, it looks all nice and peachy, but I have as yet been unable to find someone who can answer me questions like "Besides the pretty stuff, how does this work?" whenever I go to a place to buy it. I'm not talking our local Harvey Norman either, I'm talking specialist custom PC ships who should know this stuff. What happened to when things just worked? No matter how damn ugly they were? I don't think MSDOS or Windows 3.1 ever won any beauty awards. So far Windows 7 is under developed for me, I know it's gonna be a pain, but I might go the extra step and go from Windows XP to Windows 8, it's things like this movie maker thing that make me not like it. Hell, half the time my Broadband drops out and I have to go back to Dialup. What happens to people like me when my net is only 50kb/s instead of the preferred 512kb/s that seems to be the minimum now?? I'll tell you, nothing works! -Kaster

Mark Wallace wrote:

Rajesh R Subramanian wrote: Hey, but it works on my machine. Put that Mac down!

Concur! -GateHawk

Basically his idea of the Stargate model involved having 2...lets just use Stargates for the purposes of this discussion. Basically, you have 2 "Stargates" linked over the Internet, you want to go from one to the other, first you send a command to initialize each one, once each one is initialized, they will find each other on some subspace network or something and form a wormhole between themselves, then, once the wormhole has formed a radio transmission will be sent through the wormhole to make sure the connections is A) Secure and B) to the right "gate" and then you will be clear to step through. His idea was more for getting around Earth than traveling to other planets, but in theory, dump one on Mars and you could get people there and back very easily. -Kasterborus

My High School Fizziks teacher actually taught us about Warp field Theory and Stargate wormhole Theory, thing is, he was convinced that both concepts could work, if certain things were able to be brought into play, such as with Warp Field Theory, it would be possible if you could manipulate spacetime with ultra-powerful electromagnetic currents, and even said he could build a working prototype, only problem being that the fields that enabled said travel would rip a person to shreds, or at the very least scramble them rather well... -Kasterborus

Here, I fixed it. -Kasterborus

OriginalGriff wrote:

I included a paragraph about sacrifice of the first-born for breaches.

Did you ever have to collect?? -Kasterborus

jschell wrote:

Must be one really, really weird government where one action must inevitably lead to liability for the government. Certainly there are many actions by many governments every day where that doesn't happen because governments by their very nature can deny that. So what makes this particular one special?

Basically, like Turing, what will happen is that they will say: "You have now admitted that what you ruled was wrong, that the law was unjust! My life, my family, my career, they were all destroyed by that ruling! I want compensation for the fact that you ruined my life!" At least, that is what would happen here in Australia and I'm sure in America... -Kasterborus

Basically, look at who made the internet: Take a bunch of Nerdy, Bug Eyed, Virginic Computer Geeks Give them a couple of hundred million dollars Tell them you want one box to talk to another box on the other side of the country Then sit back and watch them use the new toy to digitize and swap their porn collections. Wow...1999...I was still that young I hadn't hit double digits, being born late 1990 I had just turned 9 back then. (Yeah guys, I hope you all feel old now ;P )...actually, makes me feel a little old that does... Anyways, I was still in Primary School (Grade School in the States I think it's called?) and was still a couple of years away from High School (Middle School?), I was trying to convince my parents that Y2K was a load of rubbish, I'd read every computer book the school had, my own computer was an old something with DOS and Windows 3.11 on it, booted it into DOS and then launched Windows from a command line...I miss those days, computers were a tad simpler then... Now I'm just thinking of all that has happened since, wow, and there's a lot. Makes me want to write a "We Didn't Start the Fire" type song starting at 2000 and working to now... -Kasterborus

Ok, now, I don't mean to sound like an ass, but: 1. Yes he was a brilliant man, some argue a leader in his field, but with the war over, his one shining achievement was just that, ONE shining achievement. Who is to say he would have ever had another one? After all, by the time of his death his interests were moving from Computing to Chemistry. 2.

Turing was homosexual, living in an era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and homosexual acts were illegal.

Now, as wrong as we perceive this to be today, those were the attitudes and the laws of the time. Really, who are we to judge history? Does this mean that all "wrong" rulings in regards to all homosexuals that were ever tried and convicted under this law will get an apology? Or just Turing? We have to remember, that if the government of now apologizes, they accept that they were liable for damages caused by the ruling and the law at the time. Which thus opens them up to lawsuits from people who were convicted of the law and may still be alive today. 3. One other thing that I would like to note:

Because Turing's homosexuality was perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested.[37] Supporters of the assassination theory point out that Turing's British passport was not revoked after his conviction (although he was denied entry to the United States). He was still free to teach mathematics and to travel to other European countries, which he did on many occasions.

So this could mean that, while yes, the legal ruling handed down by the government as a result of him breaking a (what we now consider to be a wrongful) law. His death in 1954 may have nothing to do with that. We have to also take into account the times in which he lived, and the world in which he lived. Something that people have trouble doing now that they don't live in the threat of being nuked every second of the day and they don't have to worry that the new guy in town may be a spy ready to pump you for information. (Now we only have to worry about his C4 laden underpants). One more thing: What good would an apology do after all these years? After all, those who consider him a homosexual will still paint him the same after the apology, and those of us in the computing world who know what he did and recognize his achievements are able to see past that part of his life and recognize the achievements that he made before his "unjust" conviction. -Kas

One teacher at school asked us to hand in an assignment on a disc, now, all the other kids had fancy computers with those 3" drives, I however was stuck with one of those 5" critters. So anyways, I stuck my assignment (In a .txt file!) onto it from windows 3.1 and took it into him, he said "Thanks Chris" and then proceeded to fold it in half, then in half again, and stick it in the box with the 3" floppies... When he complained that it didn't work I said "Well, I'll make you another copy but this time don't break it" and he said "I didn't break the last one" I gave the copy to his supervising teacher. -Kasterborus

How about a version of Linux that can be shoved onto an iPhone and allows you to do everything the iPhone can't (Such as secure your data/copypasta/interface with something other than iTunes) and also have it boot in half the time, work on the network AND take up say...1/2 the size of the current iPhone OS... Also, it may provide you an interesting sandbox for OTHER "apps" to go on it, and one rule of producing "apps" for this iNix would be that they have to be as small as possible. Oh, and being Free, Open Source, and Public, there would be almost no way for crap to sneak through, as long as everything gets peer checked and can not possibly be any smaller will it be approved for download onto the NixPhone. Just a suggestion...and so much more fun than the others... -Kasterborus Light a man a fire and he's warm for the night, light that man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...

Syed M Hussain wrote:

I'm trying to get a general definition for the term "IT Support" that is, what are the job roles of the IT Support staff at your work. To cut a long story short, I am preparing for war with my managers to dispute the definition of IT Support. Ive tried to find a general description of IT Support on the internet with no luck.

Does it have electricity in it? If the answer is yes, then IT Supports this. This does also (According to some lusers) include the Speedo in their car, their electric pencil sharpener, their desk heater (Gets mighty cold in some office blocks of a morning) and their personal MP3 player... At least, that's how the lusers describe IT support...Personally, my definition is Something along these lines[^]

Don Burton wrote:

Is there a recent problem with MS Updates working? Suddenly, (over the past few weeks) both auto and manual updates are slow or non-existent. I've heard everything from Vista SP volume to Registry problems trying to expain it away. Anyone have some insight?

They worked to begin with?... :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Remember, we're talking about Microsoft here...

Though one would suggest a Landcruiser Ute would make a better time travel vehicle...I mean, how many Abrams can winch themselves up a cliff?

Dalek Dave wrote:

Police Box?

Knew that was coming...It's like the Doctor Who version of Godwin's Law when you mention time travel...well, how about I introduce a new rule, such vehicle would need to reach 88 miles per hour to commence time travel...now the aforementioned Sumbarine could do this if it had some cavitation system on board I assume...however, I doubt your police box could do this. Would be so retro-awesome if it could though :-D

Henry Minute wrote:

A HANDBAG?!!

Holy Crap! *Grabs BFG 9000* Men! At the ready!

Just got the Back To The Future Trilogy and watched them today, just wondering out of all of you here, what sort of vehicle would you love to transform into a Time Machine to go adventuring through time?