SteveThaiBinh

One that would require a very small font. Actually, let's not discuss the practicalities of this. It's late, and I'm planning on sleeping tonight. Plus Gabrielle's getting annoyed. I had a little google for an image of a rainbow, but found nothing that captures one well. Sunsets and sunrises are more spectacular, but rainbows I can just stare at for as long as they last.

I feel for you. Gothic 2 killed my video card. Now the game sits at the back of the cupboard, destined never to be replayed. I'd sell it if I thought anyone would be interested. I'm still playing Civilization IV. Getting heartily sick of the Aztecs, mind.

Across her bra, you mean?

There's nothing to indicate there will be more patches, and good reason to believe there won't be, sadly. The Sith Lords Restoration Project is working on their mod, though.

I see your solar flare, and raise you a flower with raindrops. Yin and Yang, as you say, and I see beauty in solar flares, but the calming beauty of the flower suits my mood at the moment.

Sadly, it sounds only too believable. Is that TV series still going to happen? Let's hope it's successful and distracts Mr. Lucas from attempting to make movies. It might be quite good, as presumably George isn't actually going to be writing it.

Waterfalls are beautiful. More than atomic bombs exploding, at least. The holocaust museum in Hiroshima gave me nightmares, and the mushroom cloud still gives me the creeps.

I don't know anything about the US healthcare system, other than that in Europe it's popularly believed not to exist, but a few general points occur to me. This I don't really follow. The US is a free market, so surely poor people already have the right to access private healthcare if they wish, and if they have the funds. The fact that public healthcare supposedly offers poor quality service and yet poor people continue to use it surely suggests that they don't have the funds to go private. If you're suggesting that by embracing pure laissez-faire capitalism the poor would either disappear or shrink to a sufficiently small number that privately charity could make provision for them, that's an interesting suggestion. Many developing countries that have moved from state control to free markets have experienced dramatic increases in poverty as health and education programmes, not to mention government jobs and other subsidies, have been cut back. Whether it's beneficial in the long run is debatable, but what's less debatable is that there's a tremendous short-term shock and a lot of people who are just above the poverty line get plunged back down into poverty for years. the people that are defrauding it, no. the people that work in the bloated bureaucracy, no. those that regularly get screwed by red-tape or other related nightmares, yes. it does not work. period. the care medicare patients get is substandard, and they have very little choice in their care givers. So compared to an efficient private healthcare system for the poor, they're getting a substandard service, but they're at least getting something? The question is, would removing public health services cause such an efficient private healthcare system to come into being, if it doesn't already exist? It seems unlikely that poor Americans would be able to contribute sufficient funds to make pay for their treatments and make a profit. If it can work, why hasn't such a system come into being as a result of entrepreneurs who see a good opportunity?

I wish we didn't have to have Christmas decorations, songs and all that rubbish for weeks and weeks in advance. One week's preparation is enough, and any public mention of Christmas before December 18th should be banned and subject to heavy fine. It would undermine the materialistic commercial aspect of Christmas, leaving secularists free to move about in public spaces without religion in our faces all the time, and true Christians would also be happy because it would concentrate minds on the spiritual rather than commerical aspect of Christmas.

The Nazis hated everyone, including themselves. As a newcomer to this thread, it was really hard to follow the arguments because so many mini-debates had spawned and crowded in over the main one, this being perhaps the most redundant of all. What criteria can we use to decide whether a health service is working well or failing? Economic efficiency is one, of course - money lost to corruption or waste isn't desirable. However, processes and health outcomes are important criteria too, and need to be measured more accurately than just using anecdotal evidence. If a health programme has grown 7 times faster than expected, is that a bad thing or a good thing. Doesn't that suggest that many more people are receiving treatment that they need? A great success, perhaps, and a wise investment of public funds. I don't know much detail about the US system (not even sure if the name is right), but would the people who benefit from it regard it as a failure?

Our government is trying to outlaw incitement to religious hatred, and not doing terribly well at it. The law will come very close to banning all criticism of religious beliefs (criminalising several UK posters on this forum ), but we're supposed to relax because the government promises not to use the law against normal people, only bad people.

Evidence can't really be an issue in this, because the very idea of evidence belongs to the world of the doubter, not the believer. Asking for evidence for a religious belief is like asking if an atheist has 'faith' in evolutionary theory. Two worlds collide, and confusion is the result.

@Blank: Thank you for trying to save us. I appreciate the thought behind it. Please let me, for my part, try to save you. Is it possible that the reason it seems to you unjust that good non-believers go to hell is because it would be unjust? Trust your instincts, not a two thousand year old book. Punishment because you don't believe what you're told? We wouldn't accept that from any government, so why should we accept it from God?

Wise words.

No, I realise that you're not saying that, but I'm suggesting that the text may be. It seems to me to support a very unpleasant interpretation, that the truth of God is suppressed by the wickedness of man, and therefore anyone who denies God is wicked. It's possible that the passage can be interpreted in other ways, so as a non-Christian and non-expert, I'd like to know how moderate Christians interpret this passage from the Bible.

I do take the point - the counter-argument would be that a Romance language would be more useful to know, since it's related to the others and a useful language in its own right. Depending on the kind of text, I can do not too bad reading Italian on the strength of my Spanish and French.

Doesn't this mean than that there aren't any good people except for Christians? Only Christians can be good. All who don't share the Christian faith are wicked, because: This kind of idea always struck me as odd, because it seems intolerant and unjust, yet most Christians that I know personally are tolerant and caring people, often committed to inter-faith dialogue and helping their fellow man. How do you reconcile these two opposing positions?

I remember the part in Return of the Jedi when the Emperor and Luke are watching the rebel fleet get destroyed through the window, and the Emperor is taunting Luke about it. I suppose that's my favourite bit, because it's the part that always comes to mind. It's so long since I've seen it, though, I'm sure my remembered version is highly edited from the original. The endings of the new series weren't good, because there was still a possibility that Jar Jar could reappear during the credits to do a little joke or outtake, or even singing the theme song. You weren't safe until you were out of the cinema.

I suppose it's more of an undead language, since it's been officially dead for hundreds of years and yet is still hanging around.

I thought up a lame joke for the previous incarnation of this thread, and I'm not doing another one.

I think Gabrielle's version is more fitting.

That's what I'll do. I'll ask them about the size, as I got the computer from them in the first place. I'll have to look out my order number and stuff. It will be nice to play games with a bit less jerkiness. I might even give VtM:B another run.

OK. At least if the thing explodes, they're local and I can take it back. They sold me my computer, so they'll probably know if I have enough power. I'll order it in the morning. I need a good night's sleep before I can face Novatech's customer service. :ph34r:

Well, the full name of the card is Novatech Geforce 6800Ultra 8x AGP DVI TV Out Graphics Card . Novatech is the name of our (fairly large) local computer supplier, but I can't imagine they do much more than attach a sticker with their name on it on a component that's come in from the Far East. They do sell LeadTek cards, just not this particular one. Do you think it's worth hunting around for another retailer that will give me a LeadTek version of the 6800Ultra? I plan for this to last another 2 or at most 3 years, at which point my computer will be 5 years old, and it will be time to scrap it and buy a new one. So if a decent AGP card will serve me until then, it makes sense for me to stick with it, I guess.