Mahone

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Everything posted by Mahone

  1. The hypothetical situation of one person has two results, one for if the situation is true and one for if it isn't true. If it is true, he leaves that night. If it isn't, it goes onto the next step (two people) and repeats over and so on and so forth. Finally it gets to 100 blue eyed people and that IS true, so they all leave on the 100th night. So really, the first hypothetical situation isn't "wrong" as such, the result is just returned as false, so goes into the next one. It's all part of the same solution. Wow, I sound like I'm writing pseudo-programming code lol.
  2. I don't know about non-members but members (mostly those who have never been on a mission themselves) often tend to not see missionaries as just 19/20 year old men who are simply members of the church just like they are, just with a different calling. Instead people tend to see them as some kind of supreme being and if they ever seen to be making a mistake, the reaction to that mistake is vastly amplified simply due to the fact they are a missionary. This is similar to the way pupils don't see teachers as humans and when they see one of their teachers buying alcohol in the store outside of work time, it becomes the story of the playground for weeks *shock* you mean teachers actually have lives outside of school? lol.
  3. No, the solution does work, regardless of how many coloured eyes there are on the island. Start off from thinking there is just one person on the island with blue eyes. When the guru says "hey, I can see someone with blue eyes", that person will look around and think "there is no-one I can see with blue eyes, by jove, it must be me", so he will leave that night. If there is you and someone else on the island with blue eyes, you will look at each other and each think "I can see one person with blue eyes, if he leaves tonight, I know that he believes he is the only person on the island with blue eyes as he cannot see anyone else with blue eyes, therefore I don't have blue eyes". If he doesn't leave that night, you know he can see someone else with blue eyes and as you can only see him with blue eyes, you know the other person must be you and so you both leave on the second night. They both think like this as they are "perfect logicians" as has been mentioned. You can take take the number up one at a time until it reaches 100 and the logic still works.
  4. Well done, you are the first person I have come across to have worked it out without looking at the answer. Though your bit at the end about the brown eyed people leaving is incorrect because they do not know that there is only blue and brown eyed people (and one green eyed) on the island, by this I mean are far each person is aware, he/she has red eyes and the rest have brown/blue/green.
  5. The answer to this puzzle is interesting in that it is quite simple yet until you read it, you probably wouldn't think of it in a million years. Neither me, my brother or work colleagues could work it out by ourselves. The puzzle is at follows: Try and figure it out before you look at the answer, which can be found here.
  6. All fair points, and I can now understand more about why you do things the way you do. I guess my original reasoning comes from working in the education system too. I've seen schools where they worked almost to a white list (a list of allowed sites and everything else is blocked) and then others who were a lot more relaxed with their filtering. I attended an e-safety course once run by the local authority who was in charge of the filtering for about 90% of the schools in the city I lived in where they spoke out against the schools that added the extra filtering on top of the local authority filtering. The reasons for this were similar to the ones I stated above and to be honest, I agreed with them, the harsh filtering was affecting the childrens education, even with sites continually being added to the whitelist on demand. Then I've seen other schools which are far too relaxed with their filtering, usually due to not having anyone who is actually operating the filter - it just got more and more out of date - this was some time ago now though, back when the internet was just becoming common place in schools. But as has been stated, there are valid reasons both for and against very strong filtering and it's up to each individual how they want to operate theirs.
  7. that is why I included the words "in my opinion", because that is what it is, not fact. I think often it is good to hear other peoples opinions, even if you disagree with them.
  8. I have to agree with digitalshadow. A lot of parents become way too protective when it comes to the Internet, partly due to a lack of understanding (a fear of the unknown) and partly due to the vast media coverage telling all the bad stories (which are not as common as you would think) and not covering the wealth of good the Internet can do. In my opinion, harsh filtering like has been mentioned is a little over the top. That will likely do more damage than good. They won't get access to a lot of sites they may need access to for homework, and asking for every site that comes up for their search terms on the first page of google to be unblocked is tedious and they won't bother in the end. To my knowledge, having a fake alias on facebook is against their terms and conditions and I don't really see a lot of good it will do. No-one can get anything with your name and as an adult, I doubt anyone other than your friends will be interested where you live (a possible exception is phishers but they need many more details then that). What I would do personally is set up a basic filter which only blocked the really bad stuff and also logged all activity, so I could read msn conversations, look at browsing logs and read emails they send. This gives them freedom of the full Internet without disabling limitations and allows me to keep an eye on them in case anything suspicious was going on. There is plenty of free software which will do this, some which is not at all easy to get around, even by the most knowledgable kids.
  9. As I said, I wasn't saying you held this opinion, however a lot of people subconsciously do and those are the ones I was referring to. I was sitting in an institute class once and the teacher made a passing statement about an ex boyfriend of his daughter, saying "I was shocked at what she bought home, he had come home early from his mission etc." and I felt like saying "wait, stop right there! What is the issue with coming home early from a mission? That is between the Lord and the missionary, NOT any other member of the church". Yet interesting coming home early from a mission is generally seen with distaste in the church, even officially, hence my response. A lot of church positions have to be held by missionaries that have "returned honourably". As for MTC missionaries being restricted in handshaking... wow, that's half the training out the window
  10. A lot of missionaries that come home early are automatically assumed to have been "too weak" or something along those lines to cope with standard missionary work. Fortunately this is not always the case, there are many factors to consider. I don't like the attitude a lot of people assume towards those who returned early without knowing the facts, and I usually have rather a lot to say to these people. I'm not saying this is the case with you, I'm just pointing out it's not always a case of just being "too hard" to handle.
  11. VPN stands for virtual private network. Basically, a VPN is a network that uses the internet to join segments of the network due to the long distance between them. Say for instance you had one building which had a network and you also had another building 20 miles away which had another network, and you wanted the two networks to become one as if they were next to each other, it would not be feasible to run your own cables the distance of 20 miles, so instead you'd make use of the internet. Both buildings would have an internet connection, so that is your physical connection already. Correctly configured VPN software on either end is what would join them together as if they were in the same LAN. Then the computers in either building would be able to talk to the computers in the other building in the same way that they would if they were in the same building. VPN on your phone allows you to connect to a VPN enabled network regardless of where you actually are, providing you have signal. It's effectively the same as being connected wirelessly to the network through an access point when you are in the building, with the exception that you are not in the building. So it really is pretty useful.
  12. I've had family members join the army... from what I've seen, it either makes you or destroys you. Unfortunately one person in my family is still suffering from the damage inflicted on him by the army. Not just by his peers either, but people who are supposed to be leaders. When he complained to superiors about the way he was being treated, he came home with a broken nose as a result. I personally have never even considered joining the army. I know without even having to research it that it's not for me in any capacity there. I'm not very good at following orders without an valid explanation, something I'm still trying to overcome but I'm pretty sure they'd get pee'd off with me continually asking 'why?'. I'd just rather have all the facts and make my own decisions to an extent, or at least have the facts so I can see their reasoning behind decisions and if I disagee I usually say so. This probably isn't such a good trait in the army.
  13. For clarification, I don't kill spiders. Whenever I hear the scream either from the other room or over the phone etc I usually put it out of the window or take it outside and put it in the garden somewhere. However my mum would like me to take it outside and kill it and I just don't mention to her that it is in fact still alive. If I did, quite frankly she'd leave the house for the night. And that's just the reaction to spiders... our neighbours had a rats nest in their garden some years ago when I was about 16, which they got sorted quite quickly thankfully, however before they did I had an incident with one of them. As I took the rubbish out of a bin in our garden a rat ran up my arm and into the house. I was reluctant to tell her at first, hoping to get it out before she ever knew about it, but she heard it. I've never seen her so hysterical in my life before, it was actually scary. She was literally sitting at the top of the stairs with her head in her hands shaking and rocking back and forth. Yet as far as I know she has not had any experiences which would explain her extreme fear of them. I did learn something that night though... never corner a rat. Thankfully I've not seen one again.
  14. I've regularly tried to explain to my mother that spiders cannot morph through closed windows and so therefore the spider the size of a fingernail I just put outside of her window no longer has the ability to crawl down her throat at night., even if it wanted to... the logical never seems to sink in though. However, l can completely understand why she will no longer sleep in the same house unless I go down the back of the garden and kill it with a spade if in her mind she imagines this... Can do this... (follow link) This is why you shouldn't mess with spiders - Sharenator.org Original
  15. I could show you a video which appeared in our media recently which would apparently fit into that 0.1%. Granted, it seems the guy was probably purposely taunting officers by walking slowly in front of them, but knocking him to the ground for this is again a case of losing their self control. Incidently the man in question suffered a heart attack and died minutes after this occured, so the likely cause of his death was the police officer losing his temper. It's about being able to control themselves. It's fine if they don't have the temptation to beat someone to begin with because he did exactly as they asked, but a primary part of the job is being able to control themselves and think with a clear mind when things don't go exactly as they wish as they very often won't in their line of work. So again it comes back to the fact that if they are incapable of controlling themselves when things don't go as they want, they are in the wrong job.
  16. I suspect the question was hypothetical. For all we know, she may have been celebrating with those coworkers and sharing a part in the money had she not been counseled not to gamble
  17. I would not quit as far as I know. I've always said I don't work in my line of work for the money. Though gaining that much money would no doubt affect my career plans in the future. Either way, I would not stop working, whether it be paid, working for myself or voluntry
  18. That's an interesting response, fighting fire with fire. Talk about double standards. The law applies to law enforcement officers as well. If you beat someone for which the only purpose is to satisfy your adrenaline rush, then you should be prosecuted for ABH/GBH/assault like everyone else would be in the same situation. Adrenaline has never and hopefully never will be a valid excuse for breaking the law. As someone else said, if they can't control it, they are definiately in the wrong job.
  19. Well we have the mormon.org website, an official website owned by the church. People will probably argue it's for marketing purposes however it's quite clearly referred to as the "mormon church" several times. It may not be the official name, however the church are not doing an awful lot to prevent it's usage, they just regularly clarify LDS and mormon are referring to the same thing.
  20. Aye. Not that I'm a member or anything. I'm a Scrooge when it comes to money. My colleages just talk about it a lot, so I have it on the brain anyway . Anyway, don't want to derail this thread, back to the true wow
  21. I must lead a really sad life... I thought this topic title was "questions about World of Warcraft" until I opened it .
  22. They need to get the internet infrastructure right first... youtube, bbc iplayer and bittorrent have already caused nightmares for ISPs who just don't want to spend the money upgrading their infrastructure to consumer demand. We are seeing this particularly in the UK at the moment, insteading of upgrading to comsumer demand, they are imposing serious throttling at peak hours which would not do anything to aid in in implementing the above system.
  23. I agree, I don't actually remember the last time I turned on a TV on in order to actually watch television. I only use it to watch movies every now and then which I already have a copy of in my house. Internet TV wise, I've watched something on BBC iPlayer once I think. I'd probably watch it more if we subscribed to some decent channels, like the documentary channel.
  24. I wonder how different peoples responses would be if they were catholic and has believed in this religious policy all of your life. Because you have never held this belief it's really easy to bash those that do - the same as with a lot of our beliefs that we all get so angry about when people take issue with them, yes? I don't know how their excommunication works, however if it is anything like our church where it is supposed to be done out of love and kindness in order to help them repent, then what he was doing by excommunicating her was helping her, not punishing her, in his own eyes and in the eyes of the catholic church.
  25. I agree too. Anyone who knows me in person knows I regularly waffle on about something and then say "now I can't remember where I was going with this or the point of what I was just saying" and will need reminding of exactly what I'd just said.