North Korea Opts For Multilateral Talks

[Biggles]

J2k4



Agreed - postulating no cold war was in fact contra-factual history (my old professor would have bust a gut) It is a most seductive pastime though.

I understand the US's desire for a local solution but looking for logic from someone as paranoid as KJI is perhaps asking too much. Hence, in my view, the US's fairly realistic agreement to a short 1:1. I am moderately hopeful that NK will be reasoned with through diplomatic means, but there are a lot of variables in international relations at the moment so I am perhaps making my assessment on hope rather than judgement.

[j2k4]

Biggles-

I wasn't familiar with your term "contra-factual" but find it apt and suitable to describe a friend who likes to engage in such (historical) debates as exercise-I tell him that if he desires "exercise", actual events are a much more worthwhile application of effort, as well as an opportunity for a friendly wager as to relative prognosticative accuracy.

He then lords his two advanced degrees over me, as I have none; it is at this point I trump him with my physical superiority.

We get along famously.

[Biggles]

J2K4



What is known as a "full and frank" exchange views. I have similar friends whose eyes narrow and say "you are not going to let it lie are you"? I find the bruising goes down relatively quickly.

Contra-factual history was a pet hate of an eminent professor at my old university - that and split infinitives (as I found to my embarrassment). For all I know, he may have actually coined the term.

Although I am sure you must consider some of my views seriously liberal (the parameters of Scottish culture make it hard to be otherwise) I enjoy your posts. A well structured argument never hurt anyone - unless delivered on the end of a baseball bat.

Does anyone know why Kazaa collapses on such a regular basis? After posting last night it subsequently gave me an error message for the rest of the evening.

[lynx]

Originally posted by Biggles@22 August 2003 - 18:00
Does anyone know why Kazaa collapses on such a regular basis? After posting last night it subsequently gave me an error message for the rest of the evening.

Somewhat OT, but I assume you mean this forum rather then Kazaa.
I believe the official reason is still that the board is getting DOS attacks, but I think that someone found that there is a reported bug in the version of MySQL currently being used, which makes one (or more) of the files appear to be missing. And if there's no-one around to correct the fault the problem presumably lasts for quite a while. I suspect that this bug has actually existed for quite a while, and that there was a work around which caused problems about once an hour, but only for a few minutes. I expect that the recent move to the new server has 'lost' this work around, leaving us with the current disasters.

[Biggles]

Lynx

Yes! MySQL that is the one.

You are of course right the rest of Kazaa is creaking under the strain of the bizarre Japanese Anime music my daughter insists on downloading and is working perfectly. Even more bizarre is that other people upload this stuff totally ignoring my Dr. Strangely Strange songs - how can this be?