dave0293

In the past few days my computer has started to run extremely slowly. Now, even when CPU is 10% or less, basically every program I use stops responding. What information should I look at (and give you guys) to determine the problem? I have a Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz Memory: 502MB RAM Page File: 649MB used, 877MB available Do you guys want to see processes? System config? This is really bugging me, as before a couple days ago, my computer was running fine.

Thanks so much, it looks way better now. If anyone else still wants to have a go with it, feel free.

I know I posted this before, but I was wondering if someone could play around with this photo again as I wanted to improve it to print a copy for a teacher who loves eagles. I'm horrible at photoshop, so I have no idea on what to do to make it better, and would greatly appreciate it if any of you worked on it.

Finally got my power back! :thumbsup: (Lost it from last storm) My guess is that this could be true today as Islam doesn't have a religous history apart from its political history. Christianity was around before Constantine, Judaism existed before the Kingdom of Israel. Therefore, other religions have more of a seperation of church and state. This might also explain why Islam won't adapt to modern ideas.

Just playing devils advocate: So it's just coincidence that violence pervades in the Muslim world? http://www.systemicpeace.org/PC2005.pdf Are definitions of Jihad all misinterpretations? It seems from some passages that the Qu'ran promotes violence. Is it just coincidence that suicide bombers follow the Quran? That Islamic terrorism is faith-based? http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52184 Even if Islam doesn't promote violence, it certainly seems to be used to justify it.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks and all the violence in the Middle East and South Asia, has made me wonder: Does Islam promote violence? On one side, some state that terrorism and violence are present in many Muslim nations, that Islamic terrorism is based on faith and Islam is used to justify some terrorists acts, some Muslim religious leaders promote violence, and the Quran and Muhammad promote violence. On the other side, many state that Jihad means striving instead of holy war, verses from the Quran are often misquoted, the media seems to have a double standard regarding Islam, and that as Islam is a religion that is not widely understood in the United States, Islam has falsely been described as promoting violence. In my opinion, while it is hard to deny that many who adhere to Islam behave violently, and some use Islam to justify violence, it doesn't change the fact that religions do not promote violence, man promotes violence; most every philosophy can been used to justify violent behavior. Islam is no different in its violent history from any other philosophy, or religion, with many similarities to other religions. Its seems hard to have an open view on a topic where the media has a bias view, where the west seems to believe that Islam promotes violence, without knowing the true nature of Islam. Sadly, as I do not yet know enough about the religion to form an intelligent opinion, I have written this topic wondering your opinion. Discuss. Does Islam promote violence?

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The bacon explosion: http://www.bbqaddicts.com/blog/recipes/bacon-explosion/ As for me, I'm into a lot more gourmet and fancy food.

The article seems a little bit behind: http://blogs.poz.com/paul/archives/2008/06/my_journey_with.html [hide=]My journey with KP-1461 The moment I saw the email, I knew something was amiss. It was from Stephen Becker, MD- the medical director for Koronis Pharmaceuticals, a Seattle-based company developing a new HIV drug. The email was addressed to all of the members of their advisory board, which I am a community member, and implored each of us to speak with Stephen (he hates it when I call him Dr. Becker) the next day. Emails like this are the industry equivalent of your girlfriend or boyfriend saying, we need to talk,- often a sign of trouble ahead. It was. As I wrote about here http://projectinform.org/news/2008/061208.shtml, Becker was letting us know about a stunning setback for their drug- called KP-1461. The short version is laboratory studies called in to question the drugs viability. Worse still, a look at the results from the ongoing study confirmed these concerns. Within a few days, the one ongoing study of KP-1461 was halted, I broke the story on our website, and Stephen announced his resignation from Koronis. The future of this product looks bleak at best. Setbacks are part of the drug development process. The road from discovery to commercialization is indeed fraught with pitfalls, scientific, logistical and economic. In just the past few years, we have seen aplaviroc, T-1249, PL-100, brecanavir and others fail for reasons ranging from formulation problems, to liver toxicity. Is this just another bump in the road, or something more? I dont know, but it feels significant to me. My relationship with KP-1461 goes back to my earliest days working on drug development with Project Inform. I was in the office one day, when Marty walked in. Marty works from home, so there is always a reason when he appears at the office. When I asked him why he was in, he told me to meet with a new pharmaceutical company, and I should sit it the meeting. We sat in our conference room looking with a couple of folks from this Seattle company, I had never heard of. They had a drug they thought held promise for HIV, which worked in a radically new way. It was the radical new way that caught my attention, and piqued my imagination. KP-1461 was supposed to work in a very count-intuitive way- by encouraging HIV mutation. All other HIV drugs seek to prevent HIV from mutating- a difficult task for sure, but one crucial to the success of ARVs. This drug turned that on its head and proposed that you could actually mutate HIV to death. I have seen several names for this approach. Koronis website calls it Viral Decay Acceleration. My favorite term is terminal mutigenesis, which I probably like in part because it sounds like a heavy metal band name. Why in the world would you ever want to encourage HIV to mutate? Doesnt it do that enough on its own? Isnt mutation a bad thing? In the HIV world we do talk about HIV mutation as a bad thing- and it usually is. HIV is very prone to mutation, making it very adaptable to changing environments. This leads many people to think HIV is clever or wily. Not really. HIV is sloppy, sometimes to its advantage. It reminds me of the story of Dock Ellis. In 1970, Ellis was a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Unaware that he was scheduled to start against the San Diego Padres later that day, Ellis and his girlfriend took LSD. Ellis learned later in the day that he was the starting pitcher. Ellis pitched anyway, throwing what would be the defining game of his career. He allowed no hits, while walking 8 batters and hit one batter. In baseball they call this effectively wild. HIV is effectively wild. That is, it makes many, many mistakes while replicating. Most of those mistakes are either harmful or neutral. If a person is not taking HIV drugs, the vast majority of mutations go away. When a person is taking HIV drugs, certain mistakes give the virus an advantage- allowing the virus to evade drugs. We often think of viruses in a science fiction manner, particularly when it comes to mutation. The word itself conjures up images of extra terrestrials and shape shifters, growing ever stronger with each change. The truth is quite different. Mutation rarely makes a virus stronger. It may provide a survival benefit when one is taking drugs, but is likely to make the virus somewhat weaker on its own. For example, one very common drug resistance associated mutation is called M184V, which often happens when a person is taking either Epivir (3TC) or Emtriva (FTC). While M184V allows HIV to evade these drugs, it also makes it less fit- or able to infect cells and replicate. (This is why a person might stay on these drugs despite harboring the mutation. If you go off the drug the mutation will sort of go away. It doesnt fully go away, but it will cease to become the dominant viral strain in the body.) Koronis sought to exploit the reduction in viral fitness by accelerating the rate of mutation. The goal was to make HIV accumulate so many mutations that it would no long be viable- that is it could no longer infect cells and replicate. Back to the conference room: Marty and I were meeting with Koronis folks to review their pre-clinical data and their development plan. It is fair to say that both Marty and I were fascinated by this idea. At the same time we saw a rocky road ahead. How would such a drug be studied? In whom? How would it be evaluated? What would the FDA have to say about it? Would people with HIV take such a drug? The drug went ahead. The FDA had concerns, but saw the drugs potential. I was asked by the company to join their scientific advisory committee, to review the research and advise the company on its plans. The early research was promising. The drug appeared well tolerated- which is the most important factor in early human research. There were signs that the drug was working, but the research was far too preliminary to know with any certainty. The company received approval to do a phase II trail in the US, and one in Argentina. The US trail was for treatment experienced people and the Argentine for people taking HIV drugs for the first time. Although it was slow to recruit, the US trial was up and running. The Argentine study faced regulatory hurdles, but was recently approved. I talked with Stephen the day after I got the we should talk email, I expected bad news. I didnt expect his to say what he did. He explained that the FDA had asked them to repeat a set of tests called, serial passage experiments where HIV is exposed to varying concentrations of a drug in order to force drug resistance to develop. This is a normal part of the drug development process. The FDA required Koronis to repeat their earlier serial passage experiment, because drug resistance did not emerge in the earlier experiments. The idea was to keep the experiment going until resistance did emerge. It never emerged, because the experiments showed that the drug was having no affect whatsoever on HIV. They went and looked at the results from the US study, and found little to no evidence that the drug was working. Had the clinical data shown the drug working, it would have likely trumped the lab results. I am both a activist and a journalist. I sat on the story for a few days to make sure that all of the study participants heard from the study, rather than our website. Once I was confident that the information was publically available, I posted the story to the web. As quoted in our story, Becker said the company was committed to understanding what went wrong. He estimated it would take 2 months to figure it out. A week ago today, Stephen sent out an email announcing his resignation from Koronis. I was saddened if not surprised. It casts a pall on the future for this drug- most likely it is DOA. I dont know what led him to resign. Whatever led him to leave Koronis, Stephens acted in a highly ethical and straightforward manner throughout the process. I hope he doesnt stray far from HIV, we need folks like him on our side. Before writing this entry, I went to Koronis website, and there is no mention of either the setback of Beckers resignation. I hope the company does the right thing, invests the resources necessary to figure out what went wrong and continue to follow Stephens example of transparency and forthrightness with community. This setback feels bigger to me than losing aplaviroc or Beckers last companys CXCR4 inhibitor. The pipeline is both thin and unimpressive. The mechanism of accelerated viral decay is precisely the kind of thing that could lead to true breakthroughs in treatment. We need this kind of creative thinking to move to the next level in HIV. Posted by Paul Dalton on June 27, 2008 10:58 AM[/hide] Something seems a bit weird about this. Furhtermore, on the drug's website it says that the first phase went well, but they suspended the second: http://www.koronispharma.com/KP1461forHIV.html

Hard to pick, I liked a lot of these. My favorite was 9. (Shortly followed by 13).

How would you just, for example, I crop the second one? I don't like the branches behind the eagle, it would have been better if I had a smaller aperture (in my opinion).

This look like some pretty nice photos. As others have said they seem a bit washed out. Take your time when composing, setting shutter speed, etc. It's something I really need to work on. The great thing about digital is you can experiment and take as many photos as you want. Keep experimenting and trying new things. For example, number 8, if it had been shot, in those golden hours as woopido had said (hour before sunrise, sunset to an hour after), I'm sure it would have looked even better. Post some more soon.

Thanks for all the replies, sorry for not commenting as my Internet provider was having some problems. @Yaff, All of them seem a little out of focus. I think I have to work on setting up and composing the picture, getting right focus more before I take the picture @Nad Thanks a lot, that looks a lot better. I hadn't done any minor adjustments to any, mainly I don't really have a sense of what I should do to each picture to improve it. I don't really remember how close I was, I saw it fly in outside with the fish so I ran downstairs to get the camera and shot it (quickly, and not completely in focus). I think I might have been around 20 feet away with a 70-210mm lens. As for the river ones, I shot those around sunset. What should I do next time to make them look better?

I haven't posted here in a while, so I thought I would post some recent photos, one of a nearby river, a eagle that landed in our backyard, and one from a bonfire we had. [hide=][/hide] [hide=][/hide] [hide=][/hide] [hide=][/hide] [hide=][/hide] Sorry about the size.

If we don't have free will, how can we be random? Doesn't entirely apply, but I thought this study was interesting: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

Does anybody actually read whole threads anymore?

Gratz on the sale. : I felt the same way as you when I got mine sold. :lol: Made some pots from my farming herbs: Den. I think the guy you sold your Phat to is the guy in purple right there >.< Lmfao. [/hide] The guy in purple is wearing a purple phat...not yellow>.< Den sold a purple one...

I haven't done any macro work, mostly landscapes and such. Speaking of which, I need to get a cable release, but I don't think they make one for the D70. It gets annoying to use the timer. Anyways, I can't think of any other ideas, but once again, what you have looks great.

Nice. I see nothing wrong with that statement. Neither do I.

Zooming in more is hard :( I end up missing a ton of shots. They would only work well for pictures like #2, maybe #3, and #5. But then I'd miss every picture like #4 because they'd get cut off :( If you can't afford a macro lens, you could always get a set of Kenko extension tubes. They won't give you the image quality or quite the same magnification as a macro lens, but they're a few hundred dollars cheaper :) ------------ Thank you so much for your comments everyone! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: I have too first decide how much I'm into photography, as right now I'm quite busy with school and some other issues. If zooming in doesn't work, perhaps zooming out more, or perhaps using a longer exposure; I love how silky smooth, rivers and water looks over a long period of time. (Even though it wasn't what you were going for with splash photography) How did you coordinate the splash making and photography?

:thumbup: Anyways, it just looks a little weird to me, but I am guessing that it is because there is no reference point, which is sometimes needed to create a perspective (like, something is closer to me than something else) I think the problem is that the top right line is to little of an angle, perhaps brining it out a tad might look a little better. Looks great for a start.

I should really get a macro lens, all I have is a 18-70 and a 70-210mm for my D70. Don't get me wrong, I like the colors, they just seemed sort of unnatural (not really the best word here, but I couldn't think of a better one). As for the angle, I don't have anything off the back, it's not like you could shoot from above, as with flowers, it would look boring. Perhaps maybe don't fill the frame as much or not have the splash in the middle, I don't really know. Perhaps you could also zoom in even more, like how flower shots where you can't see the whole flower look great.

Wow, can't believe no one has replied to these, they are great. I like them all, perhaps the first one the most. My only criticism would be the color, which even though it seems you planned it to be that way, because of it, they seem unnatural. To however you interpret this could be a good or bad thing. As for me, I would almost like them to be more blue, like the water on your other splash photos. Nevertheless the still are amazing photos. What lens/set-up did you use? (Sorry if this was asked in the previous thread :oops:) EDIT: After looking at them again, another thing that might be interesting for the future is if they were shot at a different angle. Right now the centering seems a tad bit boring and repetitive.

Yes. You have a 1/3 chance of getting it in the 1st place, and a 1/2 after the 1st door. However, once he asks, that changes everything (aka variable oods). If you say yes, ill change, you'll have a 66% chance of winnning. Cookies to who figure outs what thats from :XD: Timestoppers, 21 or Spiderman, for some reason those movies are morphing together into one Timestopping-webshooting-casino-cheating ball in my head. Its the Monty Hall problem, originally from the TV show Lets Make a Deal (I think).

After hearing your song, I commit suicide.