Trouble with intelligent design is it falls foul of recursion. If we decide that something complex must be designed then it must have been designed by something more complex. So thus this complex thing must have been designed by something even more complex, rinse and repeat until you realise its not a reasonable explanation of how things ended up the way they are in the world.

I live in a ski resort, this is my 6th winter season, I ski 2-3 times a week.

Has it really been six years, must have been either your first or second year then we first stayed with you !!

It’s all to do with the blind different blindspots that boarders and skiers have and neither understanding what the other can and cant see. Those that do both will very rarely crash into either

Yep this was not something I was aware of until I did a lot of sking/riding with borders.

Does that mean you believe it will never be challenged?

Seriously, I’m not being facile. Do you believe that?

No it mean I believe you personally have no challenge to the theory of evolution, when you initially said you were challenging it :-)

You appear to be trying to change the question now a technique often employed by people of faith ( I realise I cant extrapolate that you are a person of faith from the evidence of this thread :-) ) In fact it was a technique that in the stories of the bible Jesus used to great effect :-)

Completely agree. It is, however, still a comparatively recent theory and so may indeed show itself to be incomplete in the future.

I love the whole notion of evolution and find it makes me marvel at life in its many forms.
But again, for me, it only answers a small part of the puzzle of life.

But you can offer nothing to challenge it then ?

Doesn’t mean we should stop asking the question, does it?

No but its irrelevant in discussion about evolution though isn’t it ?

It’s one of the most tested theories in science, its continually tested and to date has not been shown to be wrong.

Agreed. But that is my problem with people’s over-excitement about evolution. It only explains what is going on in our small system.

It does not pretend to explain anything beyond this does it ?

However, it says nothing about the real question of life and WHY it exists in the way it does in the first place.

It makes sense that evolution evolved as life that could not change to adapt to its environment would die out, so it makes sense that evolution is selected for in the first place. So it makes sense that if we didn’t have evolution life possible would not have lasted very long.

To suggest that we have solved the whole mystery of life by seeing how it has grown and changed into myriad forms over millions of years is incredibly arrogant and blinkered.

Again it does not claim to solve the complete mystery, it gives the mechanism but not the details of what selecting forces shaped life as we know it.

Do you think what you have said so far challenges the theory of evolution in any tangible way ? (trying to open debate not insult you by the way)

Life starting and life evolving are two different things.

So lets get back to the gaping holes and the challenging of the theory of evolution.

It does bug me that evolution, although only a theory, is nearly always presented as a fact – D’oh!

There are gaping holes in the theory so big you could drive a bus through them!

What are the gaping holes ?

Solution? ride with a little care and don’t go hurtling over blind crests.

But the crests are there so you can get some air :-)

Its generally only dodery non confident skiers that don’t like boarders. They are under stress and its one more stress item to deal with. Skiers and boarders who are reasonable don’t give a fig about the others.

Also the majority of people who live and work in the mountains dont give a fig either. The hatred is mainly from the 1 week a year skiers.

It can be quiet in the Alps too, it depends on when you go.

Though Kicking Horse has to be up there for me in terms of getting the place to yourself.

Now at least there is a group of people boarders and skiers can both hate. BLADER’s :-)

If you want clear piste then Canadian rockies is the place for you other than Louise

Or just get up early in the morning !!!

I think beginner skiers and lower intermediate skiers traverse more and are a bit more erratic than a more experienced skier

But they are easy to spot and you know they could cut you up, so you make allowances for that. Yes it can spoil your fun but so can an open tib/fib fracture.

Thing is semi decent boarders and skiers do take chances here and there, some people more than others. End of the day we can generally spot 99% of the time someone who is likely to traverse across in front of us. Some people choose to slow down others don’t.

You pays your money and takes your chance :-)

skiing = tight turns with faster traversing speed. skiing = tight turns with faster traversing speed.

Unless you can actually ski then you can choose to do either :-)

I am a skier but I reckon there are just as many reckless skiers around. Its not a border thing.

My Octavia Vrs estate is comming upto 130K miles, I have had it from new and it deffo does not drive like it did when it was new. Would like to change it but cant get up the motivation to waste a load of money.

I did a mix of mountain biking and motorcycle touring around Morzine one year. After riding a VFR800 (boring but sooooo comfy for long days) The mountain bike felt so light and nimble :-)

Counter steering relies on two things, the first is the gyroscopic force from the front wheel, force it side ways and the resultant force will cause the wheel to lean on its side. Then due to the shape of the tyre camber thrust will cause it to turn, this is due to the fact the inside diameter of the contact patch is smaller than the outside, you effectively have a cone rolling on its side.

Crap explanation, but its how I think it works ;-)

For it to freeze completely its probably something wrong with the hardware or a kernel driver issue. A user space program should not be able to bring the system down completely.

Does the program use any special drivers or kernel modules etc ?

I had forgotten about the elastic band connection between the wheels and the engine. That wiffly waffly noise it makes while it is deciding if its going to go faster or not :-)

Suppose that with a diesel engine and a relaxed driving style you can always pull away even if it does change up in bends. Definitely manual mode for me if I want to drive faster.

Reckon the 3.5L petrol V6 had more low down torque than a lot diesels. Its not like it would not do it, it was just annoying.

Even in manual mode the changes were really slow, but at least it held onto the gears.

You could still drive it fast, it just felt like you were driving around its problems rather than the car working with you IYKWIM ?

If I was driving round London in traffic I would probably feel differently. The right tool for the job and all that.

I would give a DSG or a SMG box a go though as I know they can change gear a lot faster, though I do like to use the clutch so would take a bit of convincing.

Wife had a Merc SLK350 with a 7 speed auto box, was probably the worst thing about the car.

1) Pulling away, either like a granny or mach 1
2) balanced throttle through a bend I don’t want you to change up for me.
3) Lifting off at a roundabout to time entry I dont want you to change gear.
4) Paddle shifts when I press to change gear I mean now, not in two days time.

Didn’t work for me most of the time, fab in traffic though :-)

Edited to add
5) Even in sport mode it would not hang on to the gears long enough to make the most of the great engine.

Yes I have some

‘regret nothing’, another is ‘it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission’

That used to be my mantra, and to be honest it may have lead to my regret !!!

All I would say is make sure it well below book. Make the seller realise you are doing him a favour and are taking a right chance and you need it to be the deal of the century.

I must admit after being 1/2 of a duo I wished that I had had two. I had to choose between two of my best friends and I should have had both of them do it especially as I know both of their skills would have complemented each other.. I have was (singly) best man for both of them.

Does it ship from the UK or the US ? Am I going to get hit for customs charges ?

you can currently get a 128mb SSD direct from crucial for about £140

Do you have a link to the drive and the code :-)

thought Dell had discontinued the XPS series as they own Alienware

I think they might have done for a while, I bought my current i7 XPS15 about three months ago.

XPS 15 840QM (quad 1.86), 1080p RGB screen and 9cell battery as well as the usual spec – £700
And some on here have tried to persuade us that Macs are no more expensive than Windows PCs…

Funnily I was thinking about giving a MBP a go to see what all the fuss is about. I did the cost comparison and ended up buying the above as it was literally less half the price.

Its quite nice apart from I don’t get on with the keyboard that well on it compared to other laptops. Stonkingly fast though !!!

Thinking of putting either a SSD disk in it or a hybrid disk as an upgrade ( I need a 2.5″ disk for something else so though I could improve my fastest laptop in the process).

I hope it fairs better than the XPS1330 that I bought a few years back that fell foul of a well known Nvidia graphics chip problem :-(

I was half of a best man duo and it worked really well.

I have been an individual best man too and if you take it seriously there is a lot to do, so sharing it is actually not a bad thing.

For the speech we did it together as a sort of double act, it worked really well ( I think :-) )

I think the main problem is, that in the last 10years or so I am not sure if I have worked on any project they had enough funding to actually do what they wanted to do properly.

Who do they come to when they can’t figure out why XA transactions aren’t being propagated across components and no-one else can figure it out?

I have no idea what you are talking about so maybe you are the real software engineer :-)

Yep, along with geeks getting aeriated about ‘programming principles’ when what’s needed is a good quick solution that’s appropriate

I agree you need to be pragmatic sometimes and the quick and dirty solution is the right thing. Problem is that later the business comes back and moans at you because you now cant maintain/scale that solution !!!

And I’m working with Enterprise Java

So your not a proper software engineer then :D

That’s why agile/TDD/XP are the right way to go, and waterfall is not.

Really depends on the type of project and there is no one size fits all.

I really like TDD (Test Driven Development) biggest problem is getting project managers to buy into it.

Off to Val D’Isere on the 4th of March for just over a week. My fourth trip of the season so far :-)

Orange Patriot (or maybe an alpine now days)

I lost out big time as the compensation is capped and like someone else said they won’t pay for parking so I ended up turning a 35minute journey by car into a 1 1/2 hour train journey plus a 10minute car journey funded by me.

Still as others have said it is your duty and if you want a decent justice system its a small price to pay.

Was boring for most of it though, spent 2 days in court out of 10 :-(

Bazzer

It does seem that the market is pretty immature at the moment with stereo bluetooth headphones. I am sure soon the major headphone players will get involved.

I was just hoping the Nokia’s would last until something with really good sound came along. Well I hoped they would last more than one visit to the gym !!!

How does the sound quality of the S10s compare to the rubbish white things that come with an ipod ?

S10s might be my next port of call if they replace the Nokia’s and they fail again.

Geoff, have you tried different headphones with the MW600 receiver ?

Yep looked at the MW600s but like the idea of having no wires to worry about.