Collective

Hold F8 as Windows starts loading. That should bring up Windows' boot menu. Select "Enable VGA Mode" and hopefully you'll be able to get to the desktop/welcome screen.

In the part I quoted you were in fact blatantly responding to venomai, well after your original "deliberate" hyperbole and still defending it...but ok. I agree, it does indeed appear that everyone else missed your non-existent punchline. Including your best friend forever venomai and quite possibly Lenticular. [Edited] To sum up: I don't believe for a second that you were using satire on the abstinence topic, and if you were then I most certainly wasn't the only one not to notice. I might, just about, be able to swallow that you were using hyperbole when you mentioned 'fascism', but that really doesn't make your point much better. ...and I still won't care. Again, I was responding to someone else mentioning how long they've been on the forums. Did you miss that, or is that really the best I've given you to criticize me for? It's nonsense like that that makes me not care what 90% of this forum's users think of me.

...no, that wasn't satire. Claim that it was if you like, but know that it warms me to the depths of my soul to see you back down so quickly. So what, you were just trolling with that reply then? Ooh, it's that warm feeling again! Honestly, that was some of the fastest and most unconvincing back-tracking I've ever seen. I'd ask for an encore but you'd have to climb back in to the womb. Spectacular. If you really believe that having a join date earlier than ours makes you right, then you are having problems anyways. Helps to cut out what I was responding to, doesn't it?

False dichotomy. My intention was neither to debate nor simply to irritate people. My intention was to draw attention to the absurdity of Barihawk's post was in a somewhat more direct way than you seem willing to. I don't think what he wrote is worthy of "respect", not least because I don't believe that it's really what he thinks. He knows perfectly well how much of an influence politicians' opinions have on their actions and, quite rightly, their electability. I would hope he's also aware that 'fascism' and 'voting for people who believe as you do' aren't even in the same ball park.

The notion that not wanting someone in power whose political opinions clash with yours makes you "fascist" is also pretty nasty, is it not? ...but yes, yes I am.

Take a hint: I have no interest in your respect. I believe I was reasonably clear that I was saying that abstinence education doesn't work, not only because I quoted a post that was talking about abstinence education, but also because I linked to an article about it. Again, stick to cheer leading. I've been here longer than you. Hell, I've been here longer than him. I have no interest in 'debating' him - his post was absolutely ridiculous and I felt like pointing that out. Venomai was far too kind.

That's not abstinence not working. That's people rebelling. THE WORLD IS LIKE THAT. If you literally believe abstinence doesn't make you less likely to get an STD or knock someone up...Just no LOL wat? I think you just knocked barihawk's post off the top of "dumbest [cabbage] ever" league table. I didn't say abstinence didn't work; I said abstinence education didn't work, and then you agreed with me. Stupid, stupid, stupid person. I suggest you keep to cheer leading for barihawk from the sidelines in future.

Ooh! I know this! I know this! It's because it doesn't work! That's why! Also: and the rest of the post after it is the dumbest [cabbage] I've ever read. Your argument effectively boils down to "Vote for my preferred candidate or you're a Nazi." Of course someone's political view points should affect whether or not they're elected to a position of power. That's the entire point of democracy. Are you 'speshul' or something? Edit: All right, not the *entire* point.

Hm? Actually I'm mostly in agreement with you. In both the later stages of pregnancy and the case of a woman having PND (or other complications) it's entirely unreasonable for a woman to work, hence she should be supported (again, through sick leave and government support). Obviously neither of those commonly applies to the father, so that would be in addition to any shared parental leave. What you say regarding the strain on the public purse is true, but other countries (including, according to that list, Australia) seem to manage. Also it's worth noting that any increase in taxes on businesses would be offset by the fact they'd no longer be directly paying for maternity leave, which in turn would help reduce the perception that women are a potential burden and as a consequence companies would be less likely to base their hiring/pay decisions on gender. [/armchair-economist]

Male or same-sex partners to mothers are entitled to paternity leave and pay, in the UK at least. (To both of you) Proposed/existing levels of paternity leave are very different in scale to current maternity leave, to the point where they're incomparable. As stated previously, I have no problem with pregnant women who are unable to work being properly supported, but this is a societal issue that should be paid for by governments, not businesses. Paternity leave in fact only makes this worse. Provision could be made in my suggested system for reasonable, equal parental leave for both men and women and still reduce the burden on businesses. Also: Parental leave rights by country

Then you've been too rough with them and now they're broken. Buy tougher headphones or be a little more careful, particularly when untangling them.

But you then have the same situation. If you have 2 employees both equally qualified for the job but one has a "condition". I wasn't really talking about the original decision to hire someone, just what the situation should be when a female employee does get pregnant. There's no such law that I'm aware of, seems somewhat foolish that an employer could get in trouble for not employing someone. Most, if not all, western countries have such a law. In Australia: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/emplo ... al/sda.htm Also of interest.

From the employer's perspective pregnancy should be treated as any other physical/mental condition that stops someone working. Currently it is not, and this is the special treatment. That doesn't rule out any other state benefits for specifically for pregnant women, of course.

Being Rich =/= make you 'know more' about the election. No, but it might shut up all the delusional people who think they're ever going to be rich enough to be adversely affected by Obama's tax plan. Interestingly, most of these people probably live in states that get more federal money than they give. How horribly communisty of them! Also, Bill Gates endorsed Obama too.

It was a landslide in terms of Electoral College votes only. The popular vote was split 52.5% Obama to 46% McCain. 6% is a decent lead, but it's not a landslide.

Reality has a liberal bias so I'm going to post a link teeming with my own biases that contradicts all other evidence about a place I've never even been. *picks his nose*

I'm pretty sure we're done arguing, but I hardly believe that the chart is a joke. It would be nice to get a source though... http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/stateiq.asp Did I say otherwise? Of course that's its purpose! Get a sense of humour, kthx. Whatever IQ measures it means something.

...before a war breaks out I should point out that the chart is actually a joke.

-­­­

No, that would be completely unrealistic. It is, however, about as good as it gets.

That's more or less what TrueCrypt allows you to do. It can install a boot loader that asks you for a password, and, depending on which password you enter, load a different operating system. http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden ... ing-system

Of course there could be, but there isn't. As it stands encryption will outwit this firewall without legal consequences for the user. Any plans to change this would cause political uproar. I'm not denying it could happen in the future, but for now it can be discounted entirely. Also, you don't need Linux to encrypt your system partition - see TrueCrypt. Edit: Fixed quote

That encrypted data might be treated as suspicious after the filter is introduced. Ah, but you may(in the governments mind) be accessing illegal material(as it would be avoiding the filter), and justify an investigation from that. I don't think you understand how completely impractical and unrealistic that is. Firstly there's the question of what exactly they would investigate. They can't obtain a warrant to seize your computer equipment simply on the basis of you using encryption and nothing in the proposals changes that. Secondly they simply couldn't investigate everyone who uses encryption - it's used far too widely already and this firewall will only drive people to use it more.

Encrypted data isn't inherently suspicious - there are a multitude of good reasons to use a secure medium. Simply sending encrypted data, even a lot of it, wouldn't be justification for an investigation.

1) It's common knowledge and referenced in numerous news articles about paedophile rings being broken. He might also have an IQ above 30, basic deduction skills, or technical knowledge equivalent to knowing how to program a VCR. The question is why do you feel the need to challenge him when you're so blatantly uninformed? 2) Did you really just ask why we don't need a national filtering system costing millions of dollars in order to stop children seeing porn? There are numerous effective (and even free) solutions out there for parents to use. More importantly, though, the internet is not a child-minding service and this firewall won't make it safe to use it as one. Even if it did stop paedophiles getting child porn it won't stop them grooming kids online and will leave parents with a false sense of security in this regard. If you're worried about what your kids see and do online then try doing your job as a parent. As for what harm implementing this could do, try wiping that government spunk out of your eyes and reading 1984. 6) This filter simply will not stop child porn, and if you genuinely believe it will then I've got a rock I'd like to sell you.