samth85

I'm interested in making a removable device that can I can plug a lamp into that will dim the light coming from it. I bought a second hand dimmer switch off the internet and am not sure how to wire it. There is a single wire coming from the switch and what looks like 5 screws that wires can go into. from top to bottom they read as follows:

- N

- ONE WAY

- COMMON

- TWO WAY

- (symbol of three horizontal lines and one vertical one intersecting it)

here are some pictures:

http://img410.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=photo1hev.jp...

If anyone could offer some advice I'd be most grateful

I've tried to sign up for a Rapidshare premium account like a dozen times now and every time it says the transaction was not accepted by PayPal. I've checked my credit card details each time and everything is correct. Arrrggghh!

I know most classical music is considered to be in the public domain, but does the same apply for Barber's Adagio for Strings? I have a feeling it was written more recently and might still be under copyright. Could one use it in their work without having to seek permission or pay royalties?

I need to reformat my computer and I'm backing everything up, but I have some stuff I'm still downloading off Azureus, if I back that up too can I resume them after I reinstall everything?

With all these questions and answers about abortion going on it seems clear to me that most anti-choice people are Christians or otherwise religious

So is anyone here an atheist and still opposes legal abortions? I'd imagine they'd be quite rare

Richard Dawkins mentions in his books documentaries he's been involved with, I went to go watch one but there's several out there; The Blind Watchmaker, Enemies of Reason et al.

Has anyone seen a few of these and can tell me which is the most interesting?

Why is it whenever you see a monster in a film that looks particularly CGI-ish they always have a really lame looking shot of said monster screaming/roaring at the screen, with bits of air distortion?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBsxqQIu_5s

It would have been great if when we started carbon dating things they revealed the Earth to be 6,500 years old. But that's sadly not true. That's just one example.

So are there any out there that roughly correlate with everything we've learned about our existence in the last few centuries, without having to make ridiculous leaps of logic?

If so, that's the religion for me!

Say a team of scientists take ordinary water as it is found in the oceans and apply a series of procedures to it that could have taken place naturally - something like adding various minerals and zapping the concoction with lightning - and the resulting chemical compound was something like DNA, self-replicating molecules, the most simple form of life that would essentially evolve into bacteria and up from there.

Would this be the final nail in the coffin for religion? Or would creationists stick to their philosophy that 'science doesn't prove anything'.

From what I've read it's fairly likely scientists will be able to do this within my lifetime, so it will be really interesting to see how it plays out.

In your opinion

Here's my problem: Assuming the Christian Heaven exists, I'll never be let in, no matter what I try and do about it.

I'm not amoral or a criminal or anything, I simply do not believe in God, Jesus, Heaven or anything else supernatural. And from what I've gathered belief seems to be the crux of gaining entrance.

Changing your behaviour is easy... but what's required of me is almost impossible. Shy of actually seeing something that science can't explain there really is nothing I can do to about this. It would require a complete about-face of the way my mind works and everything I've come to understand about reality and my own existence, to the point where I wouldn't even really be me anymore. It's not going to happen.

I COULD just SAY that I accept Jesus into my life and ask him to forgive my sins, but deep down I'd know it's all archaic superstition and the only reason I was doing it was on the extremely unlikely chance that I was wrong. If the big guy existed I'm sure he'd detect this kind of insincerity pretty quicksmart.

It hardly seems fair that while I live my life in a pretty upstanding way I'll never see Heaven no matter what I do. Whereas any sort of Machiavellian deviant who repents and asks Jesus to forgive him on his deathbed will be let right in.

I hope you can all see my catch 22. It's just lucky I have a system of morals and being good to your fellow human that doesn't require the existence of a god or afterlife.

I'm on a Mac doing some work for a guy who uses a recent version of Adobe Premiere for Windows. He's asked me to convert some MOV files to AVIs so he can use 'em in Premiere. I'm a little concerned that if I encode in Xvid or similar I'd get something that would be well compressed but might be unreadable on his works computer. Anyone know what codec Premiere natively captures to?

I'm looking to move to Wellington next year and have been looking at some flats. I really need to know what the 'bad' areas are of the city are. Where should I avoid living if I don't want P-heads and gang members as neighbours and don't want to end up burgled and/or murdered?

Wellington seems like a nice place, but every city has its slums, right? I want to find a place I can afford to live in but not if I can't sleep soundly

I've been meaning to get into them a bit more, but I have such a huge collection of thier stuff it's hard to know where to begin. What are some of their biggest and best songs you'd reccomend for me?

I saw this animation on Newgrounds a while ago and now I can't find it again... It had a joke basically where one of the characters mentioned he was in a band and that it was Lynyrd Skynyrd. The other character dismisses this and it cuts to a flashback of him getting fired by the other bandmates for no reason just as the plane is about to take off. Has anyone else seen this one?

I've heard that it will

Just wondering.

I remember this was one of the biggest plot holes I found in Christianity as a kid... I don't remember exactly how it went but Satan was fallen angel who went against God and is now the cause of all the evil in the world. Ok, how come the allmighty didn't just blink him out of reality the second he started giving him the sassmouth?

I'm thinking of studying there, but it's not entirely obvious on the website how long I would need to be there for.