Pestneb

France has this, but I wasn't aware of such an organisation specifically for Spanish, Italian Portuguese and Romanian? The French one is worried about everything, keeps them a job

basically yes, byki is not by any stretch of the imagination a complete solution, but then I'm yet to find one that is. I thought their paragraph basically said, just they used different "technical" terms to the ones you used. They have another product which seems (from their marketing speak!) to be good for the grammatical competence. I will be looking to see how well I can progress with alternative (and free) products before I look into it though. I think you misunderstood me on where I rank grammar. also I think the reason most people in this country never get far with foreign languages is because there is no perceived advantage to it. I'm half french, and it took me losing my life line (my mum, who translated everything for us into English ) to make me realise that actually speaking the language myself may help me out. If I didn't have french family I would never have pursued language as an interest, because frankly the language education I received was appalling. meh I'm tired now, brain has shut down.. hopefully I said what I was trying to say in this post.. :s night

Byki has some lists of phrases, but it also has lists of words, which are what I have used so far. I would say the most fundemental thing to learning a foreign language is recognising and reproducing the sounds, no? for most people it is, if not reading, which requires simple word recognition. Grammar comes third for most of us. However, it is important. I shall let byki defend themselves here: byki focuses on "declarative learning," which is learning the words, phrases and other important "language chunks" of your new language. The other big part of language learning is "procedural Learning" which is about the skill of putting all those language chunks together on the fly to make or to understand natural sentences and paragraphs. so no, to develop procedural learning either buy one of their products, or find an alternative is basically what they say. so.. I'm trying out romanian, simply because 1) I have a couple of romanian friends 2) I like its similarities to Latin 3) Its more interesting than italian/portugese/spanish (imo) 4) the verbs get rid of the person. Ie I am = sunt in romanian. no "I". kinda like the french dropping the "je" from "je suis" to make it just "suis". or like us saying "am English" instead of "I am English." I like that. Italian is very tempting as an alternative though... if only because my impression is Italian food > romanian food... http://www.byki.com Pick French or Spanish on byki, then google free resources.. like podcasts, check wikipedia and google news, obviously in your target language. when you find a word you don't know and can't correctly guess, use babelfish to get a translation, stick it on a flash card. I did that with french, learnt hundreds of words a week. anyway, apparently it takes 30 repetitions for it to stick so :s and then you need to practice.. hence french/spanish probably being a best second language, just because there are plenty of resources to practice with

Doing an assignment for uni I stumbled upon a site claiming to offer some amazing software for language learning, all for free. I was skeptical at first.. and still am, but I selected a random(ish) language, and have picked up a surprising amount.. considering I was.. slightly influenced by alcohol and sleep deprivation when trying it out, I anticipated poor results. however, the following morning I awoke to thinking "bunâ dimineata" (just realised I ought to explain that is "good morning". weirdly I realised I had remembered everything... also that I was saying good morning to myself. anyway, its possible to make your own lesson sets.. these being a set word/phrase, possibly if appropriate an image, and vocal recording of a native saying the word/phrase since its N-europe, and I presume there are a few languages represented here, I was wondering if a few people here would be interested in a sort of language exchange of sorts.. making lessons for one another on set topics, and then learning languages from each other? I don't know how many people would be up for this at all, but just thought I would put it out there and see what happens. Just thought, putting the web address in would probably count as advertising, so I've just removed it.. but if people are interested I guess I could pm it to them, or admins could give me a green light perhaps... assuming people are interested? since I have permission: http://www.byki.com hopefully it counts as actually being worthwhile. I've read through and it appears making custom lists requires a purchase of the software. I also got the impression you could only practice one language at the time, but I just tested that and nope, I have several now.. although I've heard it is best practice to only learn one new language at a time.

he can still suffocate though, right? just give him carbon monoxide poisoning, the pump his lungs full carbon monoxide gas, freeze solid, launch out into space using telekinesis. once he gets close enough to the sun sure it would melt away, but there's not an abundance of breathable air out there, and once unconcious sylar gets close enough to the sun, he would melt, then evaporate, eventually becoming plasma. and sylar would become little more than a sunbeam seems plausible to me, no? just as long as he hasn't absorbed "I don't have to breath at all" ability

when you talk about choice you are discussing responsibility. The person making choices is the one who takes responsibility. If the guy has no say in the choice making process, then he has no responsibility at that point. therefore it cuts him out totally. therefore you can see any baby born as being the sole decision of the mother, who chose not to abort. Thus laying 100% responsibility on her. In this instance though, yes the guy has 0% right unless he asks for her to keep the baby, in which instance he would be signing up to be step dad for at least the next 2 decades... One other thing here the bio father could complicate matters, if he knows he is the father or finds out down the line

unlike the last two flu pandemics we have had, this flu bug is the same type as the 1918 flu, which killed about 30-100 times as many as the other two pandemics. public awareness is important to help ensure that this flu doesn't have quite as devastating effect. How pissed would you be if 3 people you care about die, and the media and the government hadn't bothered even talking about the flu? (which as I gather is pretty much what happened in mexico initially) Malaria is a known concern, and funnily enough things are being done about. shocking. interesting fact for you by the by, malaria can actually kill white people too! wow. like, its totally not racist. just thought you ought to know that. There are lots of "things" that kill lots of people, and people are working to fix these problems, but the ones left around aren't simple, there are surrounding issues that do have to be taken into account. on a local scale full blown, on a global scale... if it didn't leave the UK it would be a 4. however good point, the rage virus, if it existed and was in "the wild" would be far scarier than this flu virus. the main thing with this swine flu is that its likely to kill people between 20-40, whereas normal victims tend to be babies, who basically only have direct family who truely care say a decade later, and people who were pretty old, so the knowledge one day soon they would be no more was already there.. less shocking. when someone between 10-50 dies its more of a shock, you expected them to be round a bit longer.

I see that point of view. but then, if the man has no responsibility for the baby at that point, why does he suddenly gain responsibility when the baby is born and he's asked to pay to support this child? Either a guy has responsibility from start to finish, or he should have no responsibility at all, surely? On topic, it obviously depends on a lot of factors, but I hope that I would dump her regardless, I suppose it depends on the exact circumstances, but I'd probably cut off at that point and leave baby stuff to the parents.

Lol. from wikipedia: An influenza pandemic is an epidemic of an influenza virus that spreads on a worldwide scale and infects a large proportion of the human population. In contrast to the regular seasonal epidemics of influenza, these pandemics occur irregularly, with the 1918 Spanish flu the most serious pandemic in recent history. Pandemics can cause high levels of mortality, with the Spanish influenza being responsible for the deaths of over 50 million people. There have been about 3 influenza pandemics in each century for the last 300 years. The most recent ones were the Asian Flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong Flu in 1968. statistically then, we've had 3 out breaks in the last 100 years, so we should be good for another 9 years :P I hope :/ If it does hit here, isolated populations are most vulnerable.. ie since the uk gets reasonable through traffic we get a wide range of nasties introduced to us.. so our immune systems are generally better adapted to responding to new "challenges". death rates seem to be generally below 20%... so that would be 1 in 5, more likely 1 in 10 or lower these days I would have thought. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:W_curve.png there's a nice graph showing mortality rates at different ages from 1918. apparently 25-34 is a bad age to be if this one hits :/ however, it seems it kills by way of cytokine storm. in which case late nights, alcohol misuse, nicotine use, little exercise, high fat foods should all help. so basically, if you're unhealthy chill. if you're healthy... get your mask :P

You forgot to mention how humble you are too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7962180.stm Basically, from what I understand, the game is on a server somewhere, you connect to that server, and play the game through your PC. You get a pretty high end game, and the impression of playing it on your PC. I guess its fairly simple - all that is sent is your input, and you receive a video of what you just did, they just need a nice machine to do the number crunching bits and send back data pronto. Anyway - do you think the big 3 are worried? tbh I'm surprised they haven't done this themselves, from the point of view of piracy this is pretty fail safe, as in people would have to physically hack in to the server to steal games. on the downside.. if my internet connection dies I'm angry. If I was using this system and the net died on me I would be that much angrier, and bored. also I kinda like the box cases... Pricing isn't mentioned either.. do they charge per go, per month, per game you play? anyway, what do you guys think?

Just a slight side track, are there games out there that allow violence but encourage passive approaches that avoid violence where possible? ie getting the message across that "kill kill kill" mindless destroy break crush tactics aren't always the best way forward? The closest I can think of are stealth titles, but these tend to be more avoidance of self harm than avoidance of harming others...

from the point of view of sources of information. If Mugabe ploughs a truck into Morgans car, Morgan being someone the international community would notice if he went missing, what do you think he would be willing to do to any witnesses willing to point out irregularities? Even if Mugabe had nothing to do with this I think most people who care about the situation in Zimbabwe will believe he had something to do with this - which basically shows how little credibility he has as far as integrity and morals are concerned.

The violence link is old... what I really would like to know is, could watching comedy make you funnier?

absolutely nothing happens, the timer doesn't even bother to flicker up. also just thought I'd add, if I go to the folder the programs are in and click directly on those icons the same thing happens. Its weird because other programs open up with no problems, and there's no link between a text editor, media player, and paint program. even the Microsoft link is a dead end because internet explorer isn't affected, nor is calculator and other Microsoft programs.

ok, bit of a weird one certain programs won't open when I click the icon on the desktop or in quick launch. Windows media player, paint and notepad are the only programs I've found that are affected. Other programs such as Firefox, internet explorer etc. are ok. I'm behind a corporate firewall (which I wouldn't trust to much really cos the IT guys are a bit of a joke) and I have ZoneAlarm and AVG. I've scanned my PC with AVG, all seems ok, ZoneAlarm settings all seem ok, all set to maximum, no weird programs have access rights or anything like that. The only way the programs work is by clicking start and then run and opening them that way. any ideas what could do this? Microsoft sticking malware on my pc in the form of "security updates" is my number one idea. I go back home for christmas, so I'll grab an XP disk then and reinstall everything, but I'd rather avoid that as I've only just got everything sorted, and I'd be a bit nervous moving all my uni files around and risking losing something. (I have got backups which I like to think are comprehensive enough, but still I prefer my backups to remain just that). Anyway, if any of you guys have any ideas of what I can do (other than reinstall windows, or go for Linux) I'd appreciate it.

Bit presumptuous. surely we should wait and see what happens before we state they made the right choice. In fact, perhaps there wasn't even a right choice available for all we know... To be honest, to me this election seemed to be based too much on an anti bush sentiment than on the merits of the individual candidates, which isn't a good thing in my eyes (though it is understandable). The fact that the senate, house AND president are all from the same party is concerning, especially with the margins involved in the house and senate. One thing I will say is (imo indisputably) good is that it breaks the invisible barrier of race when it comes to president. McCain was gracious in defeat too, which is nice to see.

As far as I was aware they hadn't made a definitive link to a gene that meant you would be gay, they had only suggested that it was a possibility. Judging by the replies to Nasir I guess they've now confirmed 100% now though, so could someone link me to a credible site that documents exactly which gene indicates whether or not you are homosexual? I think it would be interesting to read about how they made this incredible breakthrough in science.

you know, for new tracks I actually feel this game does better than any other mk game with exception of the snes version. I absolutely LOVE all the snes tracks on the game.. the battle track brings back too many good memories. its just a shame they don't have the feather, and the battle arena with the water.

true enough. the volume of money given to footballers is absurd, but its not the footballers who are at fault, its the muppets who pay them (ie the fans ) lets face it, if someone offered to pay you £20k a week for surfing the net, would you say no?

one offer is infinitely better than 0. as long as its a uni and course you're ok with that is. anyway, there's always clearing

no one is perfect.Churchill is considered a hero for the good he has done. He is honoured because of that. he probably ate chicken in his life time. we don't comment on that. why? because its mundane, and doesn't make him stand out from the crowd. its the same with his racism. it was a VERY rare person back then who wasn't racist, and sexist. lets face it, its not like women had been able to vote when he was born. if someone is born in a puddle of mud, you shouldn't be surprised if they're muddy. your environment affects you more than you like to think, and if you were alive in those days its more than likely you would hold similar views. YES such a comment is racist. NO nothing big ought to be made of it. If people of the 1940's could critique our views and ways of live in the same manner that we can theirs, they would on the whole be pretty disgusted and outraged, and really they'd be just as justified to do so as we are in critiquing them now.

sorry.. but was that an intentional example of irony?

that fridge analogy just doesn't work. I don't open my fridge, see there's no room, then take the food item out the fridge to make room. I know there's no room in my fridge so I don't buy any more food that needs to be kept cool. this translates into - I have 2 vc games, and don't plan on buying anymore until I get a "bigger fridge" to use her analogy. I'm not going to constantly delete and re-download EVERY time I want to play a game. to me it would be better if I had links to downloads, and everytime I play a game its downloaded fresh off the server. state is stored locally, and the link, other than that the game is lost everytime I exit. have the option of doing things as they currently are though.. my wii is rarely (if ever) online these days, so if they had that system exclusively I'd not buy any games. but some sort of on demand system where you essentially have a stub that takes less space up makes sense to me, for those who have/want more games.

good question.. but what do you mean by Civilisation? I think its one of those terms that is difficult to define... and what comes before a civilisation?