Posts by Reverend Jim

I am expecting either no response, or YES, YES and YES. If the latter then I want to stay focused on the justification and get responses to statements from the Qur'an that are either scientifically wrong, contradictory, or completely opposed to the statement.

It doesn't matter if the Qur'an contains accurate statements. If the Qur'an is supposed to be the infallible word of Allah then any blatantly false statement that proves it is fallible shoud settle that discussion. It won't, obviously. But in science (and logic) finding a single case that invalidates the hypothesis is sufficient and the OP wanted (based on the thread title) to argue logic.

I am tired of the faithful telling me that I am wrong for not believing. I am tired of people crying "media bias" for reporting the facts. I do not limit myself to the religious faithful. I also oppose blind faith in political or economic ideology as well as blind faith in junk science such as homeopathy. Basically any belief without thought.

You can simplify the loops by using

For Each phCheck As CheckBox In Me.Controls.OfType(Of CheckBox)()

That will iterate through only CheckBox controls.

I can't help but notice that the OP, Hani1991, decided to leave rather than answer some tough, but simple questions. His response to posts that proved his original statements were false was to say

Sorry I can't get in touch with you any longer. I may stay absent for long time. I'm sorry this is because of some bad circumstances.

The bad circumstances, I suspect, were that he could not defend his statements and he chose to leave rather than continue along a line that might cause him to question his faith. I see also that waqasaslammmeo has not responded with answers to three simple questions that were put to him. I'll ask one more time to give him, or anyone else, a chance to reply.

Can you please give me a yes/no answer to the following questions.

• Do you believe the Qur'an is the word of Allah as handed down to Mohammed?

• Do you believe that the Qur'an is infallible?

• Do you believe that Islam, as laid out in the Qur'an preaches a creed of non-violence?

I would not have started this thread, but I feel that in response to the claims made by the OP I have the right to ask these questions. If no one cares to reply then I suspect I have my answers and the thread will die out.

Ok, well, count that as a slip of the tongue,

I'm glad you got the chance to clarify that. I have trouble reconciling why someone can scoff at ancient peoples for being so gullible as to believe in Zeus, Mercury, Odin, etc., yet wonder in amazement at how you and I cannot accept God or Allah as the almighty.

That's what Christians do when we ridicule their religion or religious figures

It's not my intention to ridicule anyone's religious beliefs, Christian, Muslim or otherwise (except perhaps for snake-tossers and creationists who believe dinosaurs and man coexisted). However, when blatantly false statements are made then I feel obliged to respond.

as you accept that there is changes in bible which means there is doubt in its teachings

I never claimed otherwise. We are discussing Islam and the Qur'an. The validity of the bible is irrelevant.

but in quran not a single word changes in 1400 years

That is not proof that what it contains is true.

1-speak truth
2-respect others
3-never kill anyone who is innocent.
4-avoid alcohol
5-stay away from voilence.
6-Islam is against rape.
7-respect women

1 - sounds good

2 - also good

3 - well now, this depends on your definition of innocent. The Qur'an seems to think that anyone who is a non-believer doesn't qualify

4 - not a bad idea but a personal choice as far as I am concerned

5 - there are far too many examples already given inthis thread that prove this is not true

6 - who wouldn't be?

7 - hmmmm...

"Men are overseers over women, by reason of that wherewith Allah hath made one of them excel over another, and by reason of that which they expend of their substance. Wherefore righteous women are obedient, and are watchers in husbands absence by the aid and protection of Allah. And those wives whose refractoriness ye fear, exhort them, and avoid them in beds, and beat them; but if they obey you, seek not a way against them; verily Allah is ever Lofty, Grand." Qur'an 4:34

"The …

google

I live in Illinois -- two of the last three governors are in prison right now for curruption

I wish we could do that to a few of our elected officials. We had one recently (Bev Oda) was caught altering documents. At first she denied this (in front of Parliament), but then admitted what she had done. Surprisingly (or not if you know Stephen Harper) she did not lose her cabinet post. Nor was she asked to resign. It was only after sticking the taxpayer for a few thousand in charges ($16 orange juice, limo, ultra-posh hotel) while attending a conference on child poverty that her leader cried "enough".

Cretien walked after being at the centre of a sponsorship scandal. Mulroney skirted on the Air-Bus scandal.

Most likely because most of Canada is frozen wasteland

We actually do have some parts that are quite nice. At least at times ;-) It just seems colder because we are on Celcius.

If by "redirect" you are talking about a web app and web pages then I can't make any suggestions. I've never worked with web apps other than as a user.

These millions of people are spread in all corners of the world from as young as 7 yo child to 90 yo.

No amount of belief establishes a fact.

if you are talking about bible and other religious books then you will find many versions of each

The Old Testament comprises writings from (estimated) 1400 BCE to approximately 400 BCE, and the New Testament between 45 CE and 96 CE. Both of these volumes are from multiple sources and are not even all in the same language. These volumes were copied by hand and translated many times. At each of these stages, changes were introduced by accident, for political or ideological reasons, or because the translator did not understand the idioms of the time. For example, in the Old Testament, an older version states that at one point Jonah was in a big fish. Taken literally, the only logical conclusion is that he was swallowed by a whale. In the idiom of the time, stating that someone was in a big fish was like someone today stating that he was "in a pickle" or in a lot of trouble. If you don't understand the jargon you can make some bad translations.

None of the four gospels of the New Testament were written by people who were present at the time of the events in the writing. Today we are familiar with the "friend of a friend" phenomenon and how that results in the spreading of urban …

@Ancient_Dragon - Thanks for the link. That's very interesting reading. Hete's one for you on the NRA

To summarize:

The NRA has blocked all attempts to close a loophole that allows guns to be sold at gun shows without background checks despite the fact that 69% of NRA members are in favour of such a law.

People on the US terror watch list can legally purchase guns and explosives. The NRA opposes enacting more restrictive measures even though 82% of NRA members are in favour of such restrictions.

The NRA is opposed to various agencies sharing data which would make it easier for them to get to the bottom of how guns came to be used in a crime even though 69% of NRA members are in fovour of inter-agency sharing.

The NRA is opposed to any law requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to the police even though 78% of NRA members are in favour of such reporting laws.

And why? I suppose the fact that much of the money that the NRA gets is from the people who profit from these loopholes and this money, in turn, is used to fund re-election campaigns. Money talks.

Now let me say something about your system that I like. Here in Winnipeg, the police have arrested what they believe is a serial killer. They are aware of three recent killings and are trying to link him to others. One thing that shocks me in …

@Pride

What I said has nothing to do with saving. It doesn't matter if lines() is saved en masse to the file or a line at a time. All that Filter does is return an array of strings that either contain or do not contain the given string. If the intention was to read or save the lines one at a time then the array would not be necessary. The lines could be read into or save directly from the ListBox control.

Astrology is not a science. It is superstition. I'll assume you meant astronomy. Astronomers really get upset when you conflate the two. Searching for life on other planets, or even just searching for other planets does not involve hypothesis. It's just gathering data. Unless you consider how they decide which stars out of the billions out there are worth investigating.

Or am I just beng anal ;-P

If lines() is the original array of lines from the text file (that you have copied to the textbox for display), you can remove a particular line (or lines) from the array by using the Filter function

dim newlines() as String = Filter(lines,"some string",include)

If include=True then Filtere will return all of the lines that contain the string. If include=False then all lines NOT containing the string will be returned. The easiest way to maintain the list is to apply filter every time an item is removed from the listbox as in

lines = Filter(lines,removedText,False)

Wasn't this already asked and answered here?

Of course my condolances go out to the surviviors and the families of the victims of this horrible tragedy. I apologize for not stating that at the very start. But when something like this happens, how long a period is it necessary to wait before discussing what to do to fix the problem? I notice the police didn't waste any time arresting the shooter. This is the most obvious first step to take. The next step is to take action to prevent further tragedies of this sort. You don't honour the memories of the victims by allowing more people to die.

The thread was originally focused on guns and gun laws but, as happens, digressed into government and corruption of same. It seems that as the frequency of these incidents increases, the reaction is to pass laws that relax the gun restrictions even further. This is not a conspiracy theory. The statistics show that you are more likely to be shot in the states that have the least restrictive gun laws.

Here in Canada we have had our own problems with guns and violence. We have had school shootings, and just recently there were several deaths at a block party in Toronto when someone started shooting. We are not immune to the problems you are facing. We are just a little further behind the curve so what happens down south is of great interest to me.

Your collapsing economy and the violence are not unrelated. The economy did not collapse …

I am pleased that you find this interesting and entertaining. If it gets people thinking then all the better. It's when you let other people do your thinking for you that things start to fall apart.

One important aspect of science that I neglected to mention is that the hypothesis has to be verifiable. It is pointless to propose a hypothesis that cannot be tested either by experimentation or observation.

the big bang is the start of the universe, and there cannot be anything before that

Not quite true. There are some scientists that hypothesize that the current universe is just one of a cycle and that if the current universe contains enough matter, it will eventually contract resulting in another "big bang". Just because we can't imagine what came before the big bang doesn't mean that there was nothing. It might be better to say that we can't know what came before the big bang so let's not worry about it.

You forgot Celine Dion and Justin Bieber. I'm so very sorry.

This is the way that science works:

• observations are made about the physical universe
• a hypothesis is formulated to try to explain these observations
• the hypothesis is checked against the observations to see if it is consistent
• the hypothesis is modified as required
• the hypothesis is used (when possible) to predict results
• if, after rigorous testing (by the scientist and by independent researchers), the hypothesis proves its worth as a predictor, the hypothesis becomes a theory that is generally accepted

Good science does not waste time exploring the non-sensical. Good science is not accepting the statement "this book is the word of God because the book says so". That's not good science. That's not any kind of science.

You run a query on the database to determine if the room is booked for the requested time. I can't be any more specific becuase you haven't provided any details. But as an example, assuming that bookings are for one hour periods, then the query

select * from bookings where room='C101' and day='2012-07-28' and hour=14

would return one record if room C101 was booked for 2 PM on July 28 by someone else, and zero records if it was free for use.

BTW, I agree with you on Romney. Loved his first two ads. Blatant lies then a bullsh!t response to justify them. Although, Santorum provided more than enough fodder as well. I miss Sarah Palin. She was just so easy - like shooting fish in a barrel.

As for the previous post, we hear in Canada have our share of legal travesties. Donald Marshall and Davil Milgard for two. Both spend years in jail for crimes that they did not commit and for which the police knew they were innocent. No money involved but corrupt nonetheless. Same thing with the construction industry in Quebec. Rotten to the core.

The laws are not written so that they can be legally discriminatory. That would be unconstitutional. They are written so that predominantly poor and/or black people are more likely to be affected. Typically these people vote Democrat. Just because the law was not technically discriminatory that does not mean that wasn't the intention. These voter restriction laws are being passed exclusively by Republican legislators.

As well, electronic voting machines are coming into wider use. Ostensibly, this is to prevent "chad" and other problems that result in spoiled ballots. Unfortunately, the voting machines being put into circulation have already been shown to vulnerable to hacking, resulting in further disenfranchisement. These machines produce no backup. A proper electronic voting machine would allow the voter to select candidates. It would indicate to the voter when a ballot was incorrectly filled out. When the voter pressed "VOTE", a paper ballot would be printed that the voter could then read to determine that it was filled out as requested. Only then would the voter take that ballot and feed it into an electronic counter.

That method produces a backup that can be counted by hand in the event of a dispute. Any method that produces no manual backupp should immediately ring the alarm bells.

Back to "corrupt". Can you explain to me how a non-corrupt system can sentence an Ex-Mortgage CEO to three years prison for a three billion dollar fraud, yet a homeless man who steals $100, then turns himself in to …

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.

Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

The BBC persuaded Mr Shaath to go on the record for the first time for a three-part series on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Elusive Peace, which begins on Monday.

That was from October, 2005

In the book , "Bush Family Fortunes", it was revealed that George Bush (jr) was advised that in order to win the presidency he would have to get the vote of the religious right. Perhaps that explains why at a …

there biography itselg witnesses that they must be true

So the Qur'an is the word of God because it says it is and because it is the word of God then it must be true. That's called circular reasoning and it is invalid. That's like the old joke where a guy walks into a bank and is asked for ID. He asks for a mirror, then looks into it and announces "yup, that's me alright".

u even cant prove it wrong

I never claimed it was wrong. All I said was that this is an extraordiniary claim that I won't believe in without proof. Have you heard of Bertrand Russell's teacup, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Church of Last Thursday? They are all outrageous ideas that have as much proof as God or Allah or an afterlife. There is no reason to believe in any of these.

Neither he has Children nor has Parents. These traits(children , Parents) are attributes of perishable entities But God is Eternal

It seems that some people have a problem with the idea that the universe could have always existed, but not with the idea that God has always existed. If you can believe in the latter I don't see what the former is such a difficult concept. Believers say the universe must have had a creator, but when a non-believer asks, "then who created God", the response is "God is eternal". You can't argue both ways. If …

One thing I noticed is many people are 'speaking in code'

If you mean code as in computer code, except in the trivial case I try to post comments and explanations with my code. In my "read this before posting" thread on the vb.net forum I encourage posters to organize their thoughts and ask clear questions. In spite of this, some people still post code followed by "it's broken". Can't be helped I suppose.

Other kinds of code which I try to discourage are chatroom speak (IMHO, IANAL, etc) and leet which are difficult enough for us English-only dinosaurs to follow at times let alone our foreign friends.

On my first day, I thought about contributing -and I did, and --- I got hacked when I made a mistake, and a vet user of DaniWeb hacked me!

DaniWeb is made up of many individuals with many varied personality types. Try not to let a bad comment from another user turn you off. Perhaps he was just having a bad day. I've had days like that when I have reacted in a way that I later regretted. It happens and it's nothing personal.

Also, with so many PhD’s, and people with B.S. (lol), and Masters degrees, you would think they would be enlightened enough to 'TEACH' or guide noobs down the electronic bit-path(?).

Having a degree doesn't make you nice or enlightened. It just makes you a more educated version of what you were before. …

I received the same PM as did Mike_2000_17. It's being looked into.

System.Convert.ToInt32("9a12c",16)

As long as the first argument is a string representation of a hex value this will work. In the general case, the first argument is a string and the second argument is the base so you could also use this to convert other bases such as

System.Convert.ToInt32("203",8)

which would convert 203 octal to base 10.

The OP posted

Well, there are plenty of pieces of evidence that prove that the Qur'an is the word of God who created this universe. There are scientific proofs, historical proofs, and many others.

He made the claim that there was evidence and scientific proof to support the claims made in the Qur'an. Obviously he believes that this is not so esoteric as you claim. Since he made the claim I merely asked him to share it with us. It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove that something (in this case, God or Allah) does not exist. I would not attempt to do so. However, when someone makes a claim such as "this book is the divinely inspired word of the almighty", I require more proof than, "the book says it is so it must be true because this is the book of God". Generally people believe things for a reason. I just want to know the basis for that belief.

Sorry, i guess my last post couldn't be labeled as observation of Islam related to other religions. Sorry, Jim, i cant go on on this thread. My believes, U know.

I understand. Your religion doesn't allow you to use reason and logic. It expects only blind obedience. Don't worry about it. Your religion is not unique in that respect.

i'm actually making the difference between beliefs and sientific facts that can be prooved.

And history is a series of science time and again putting the lie to beliefs in things that were at one time thought unprovable. So according to your distinction, if it can't be proven then it is a belief. Until it can be proven. So if we go back a number of centuries and make two lists, one being "things we know for sure" and the other "things we believe but for which there is no proof", and then step through the years from then until now what do we see? We see list number two shrinking while list number one grows. There are many instances of science explaining what was once thought to be incomprehensible. I don't recall any instances where religion offered a better explanation for anything which has been scientifically proven.

"I believe the sun travels around the Earth".

"I believe "bad air" causes malaria".

"I believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

In any case, we are getting off topic. I responded to the OP for lying about the "facts" behind Islam, then again about his supposed use of logic to justify belief in Islam. He can believe what he wants. My point is that he cannot provide any justification for those beliefs. If I play in traffic I believe I will eventually get hit by a vehicle. That is a rational belief based on observation and experience.

Imho noone's believings should be tested

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong!

Everyone's beliefs should be tested. That's how we learn the difference between reality (fact) and superstition (fiction). At one time people believed that most ailments could be cured by proper blood-letting. It was only by questioning that belief (and others like it) that we learned about the causes of diseases and the cure of many.

For a clarification of the usage of "everyone", I'm going to define that as "an over-whelming majority"

That's only because the over-whelming majority was told by their president, a man who, under a non-currupt system should be trusted, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Your vice-president had strong ties to a company that stood to make untold billions as long as Americans could be duped into invading a country that posed no threat to the United States. Bush claimed that "God" told him to invade Iraq. It wasn't God, It was Chaney and Haliburton and the arms manufacturers.

Law and order are everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy. - Herbert Marcuse

Not interference just unconstitutional. AFAIK there are no such laws left in the USA, they have all been abolushed years and years ago.

Under New Pennsylvania Voter Suppression Law, 43 Percent of Philadelphia Voters May lack Most Common Form of Photo ID

A large portion of those at risk of missing the vote reside in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, a city where 44 percent of the population is African-American and where it is estimated that 18 percent of voters do not have the necessary card to present at the polls.

All of these voters may forfeit their most fundamental right of citizenship despite the fact that, as documented by a stipulation signed by the State of Pennsylvania and submitted to the Court in the above-mentioned case, there "have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states." See here

Florida GOP Takes Voter Suppression to a Brazen New Extreme

Senate hearing targets Ohio voter suppression law

The first example is happening now and the second was in 2000. If the suppression had never happened it is almost certain that Bush would have lost Florida. Your economy would likely not be in the toilet and Iraq would likely never have happened. I guess we'll never know. Do you actually do any research?

Estimated spending on congressional elections by political committees …

having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain

Right. Because we know that the hundreds of millions of dollars in political contributions, the gifts given to elected officials by lobbyists and the untold millions that are put into PACs are all donated altruistically with no quid pro quo expected. By the way, our Conservative government is trying to put an end to publicly financed campaigns because they know that by doing so it would cripple the opposition's ability to mount a proper campaign in response to their attack ads.

I'm not in favor of government interference in the lives of ordinary law-abiding people.

What do you consider interference? Any law, by definition, is "interference". Do you consider passing laws to disenfranchise millions of predominantly black voters in order to win elections to be interference? Oh, wait. That's not interference. That's corruption.

It was the Democrates who first set up free speech zones during the democratic national convention of 1988.

I'll give you that one. However, that just shows that the Democrats are as willing to suspend your rights when it suits them.

But to say the entire government is corrupt is unfounded

A general rule of thumb based on the cost of running a campaign is that a sitting senator/congressman must raise $10,000 per week starting the day he/she is elected in order to have enough money for the next election. It has been estimated …

You'll have to read all of the lines into an array, modify the requested line, then write the array back out to the file. All you are doing is modifying the line in memory.

Dim lines() as String = IO.File.ReadAllLines(MYFILE)

For i As Integer = 0 to Ubound(lines)
    If lines(i).Contains(...
        lines(i) = 'new value of line
        Exit For
    End If
Next

IO.File.WriteAllLines(MYFILE,lines)

first thing that all of you will beleive is that there is a some supernatural power,called God, who created this whole universe

Bad assumption. I'm still waiting for any solid evidence on this. If you are going to claim logic then let's see some of it used to justify this statement.

if you really want to live a peaceful life, follow your lord,the creator of all universe(in other words be muslim).

I'm living a peaceful (and a moral) life without a belief in the supernatural. Are you claiming that belief in a deity is required for one to be moral? If the only reason you are acting morally is out of fear of punishment or the hope of reward in the afterlife then you are merely acting out of self-interest.

prophets are the human beings like us to whom God showed the right way

Can you prove this? How do you tell the difference between the prophet who "hears the voice of God" and those like Charles Manson or Jim Jones who are just bat-crap looney tunes?

they were role models for all humans who want to live true sucessful life

I can pick a better role model than someone who advocates mass murder

the third most basic concept is the life after death.

If by that you mean "the desperate need to believe in life after death" then we agree. Nobody knows if this is a possibility. Extraordinary claims …

I already said I thought they should be banned.

You are far more likely to die from a gun in states with the laxest gun control laws.

20 Deadliest Gun States

My older son completed his PhD at Arizona State University just as the state legislature was considering allowing people to carry concealed weapons on University property. Can you tell me how, in a sane country, this can be justified? And if that can be justified, why should it not be legal for anyone to carry weapons into, say, a courtroom? According to the standard rhetoric, courtrooms would be a lot safer if everyone were pasking heat. Where does one draw the line?

You have a party (Republican) that responds to any measures attempted by the Democrats to improve your lives, with flag waving and rhetoric (and out and out lies) that your freedoms are being stripped away even though they (Republicans) were responsible for things like the Partiot Act and designated free speech zones. That is a corrupt system. I do not believe that here in Canada we are immune to the same problems. A previous Liberal government spent billions setting up a national long gun registry. This was several magnitudes greater than necessary (in Manitoba we built a state of the art control centre with state of the art computer systems to control our provincial energy grid for 64 million dollars). Our current Conservative government is determined not only to scrap the registry but …

According to New York Mayor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

You know, to arm everybody and have the Wild West all the time is one of the more nonsensical things you can say, ... It just does not make any sense. The bottom line is if we had fewer guns, we would have a lot fewer murders. ... Do you really think that you’d be safe if anyone in the audience could pull out a gun and start shooting? I don’t think so.

New York has the strictest gun control legislation in the country and is one of the safest states in which to live.

Question - do you feel it was appropriate for the shooter to amass the weapons and ammunition that he carried into the theatre?

Question - what is the justification for owning an assault rifle capable of firing 5-60 rounds per minute?

Question - why is it that buying two packages of Sudefed at a time is enough to get you on a watch list but6000 rounds of ammo is not?

Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths. That amounts to ten 911-scale tragedies every year. When foreigners kill 3000 Americans, the country (and quite rightly) reacts strongly. Apparently, though, it's quite alright if Americans kill ten times that many Americans every year. There are the expressions of outrage and sympathy for a week or two and then it's business as usual until the next killing spree.

What system do you mean? Who says its corrupt?

A system that sees nothing wrong with carrying concealed weapons in a church. A system that can't even pass a law that restricts handgun sales to only three per month. A system that allows someone to purchase 6000 rounds of ammunition and a one hundred shot clip (drum) with no warning flags. A system that says even if you have several emails from someone stating their intention to "shoot-em-up" the authorities cannot prevent that person from legally obtaining a weapon. A system that refers to the systematic sexual assault of young boys over a 15 year period as a "sex scandal" instead of what it really is (rape). A system that allows more gun dealers than gas stations and ten times as many gun dealers as there are McDonalds. A system that (as of ten years ago) was still putting three million guns per year into circulation.

A lot of Americans are broke, or angry, or paranoid, or all three, and a lot of these people are heavily armed. It’s not exactly a shock that this combination of factors helps produce 15,000 murders per year.

And getting back to the 100-shot clip - I understand that if it hadn't jammed, there could easily have been dozens more dead. Of course you will respond, "if everone else in the theatre had been armed someone would have shot him before so many were killed or injured". You are retired so I'm …

So how is the media going to spin this so that all the issues will be discussed except the one that really matters? What hoops are the politicians going to jump through so that they can appear to be doing something but actually leave things exactly as they are now? I see that Bloomburg is calling on the president to take steps, although he has avoided actually suggesting what steps might be appropriate. The only people who are making suggestions are those people who do not rely on votes. Obama and Romney have been quick to offer their sympathies but little else.

The media has been quick to label the shooter as possibly schizophrenic. Blame a medical condition rather than a corrupt system. If the shooter is schizo then no one is to blame. The authorities have labeled him a lone-wolf terrorist. Naturally, if they label him a terrorist then the obvious response is to throw more money into the "war against terrorism" rather than to address the core issues.

They have labeleled the shooter a terrorist. I think, instead, he should be considered a canary; just like the ones they supposedly used in coal mines years ago. I think we're seeing the tip of the iceberg. As more and more people see the American Dream washed away by a torrent of debt; when people, especially those with college degrees (bought with loans which they will likely never pay off) realize that the only jobs in their future are McJobs, …

As in

Try
    num = CInt(InputBox("Enter Integer"))
    If num > max Then max = num
    If num < min Then min = num
    x += 1
Catch ex As Exception
    MsgBox("oops")
End Try

And by the way, x is almost never a good choice for a descriptive variable name.

The queen is back. Did you have a good vacation? All recharged?

You can start by setting the values of min and max outside the loop as follows

Dim min As Integer = Integer.MaxValue
Dim max As Integer = Integer.MinValue

InputBox returns a string so you can't assign it directly to a numeric variable. You have to convert it. However, just because a string is numeric that doesn't mean it can be safely converted and assigned. For example, the string "999999999999999999999" is numeric but you can't convert it to a 32 bit integer. So you'll still need the Try-Catch. You want to minimize the code in the structure so put it inside the loop.

Try
    num = CInt(InputBox("Enter Integer"))
    'update max and min here
Catch ex As Exception
    MsgBox("oops")
End Try

Tell me in English (not in code) what you want (not just the last part put the whole thing) and I'll see if we can come up with something simpler.

You don't need to create a bootable disc (or USB) to install Office. You have to have Windows running in order to have somewhere to install Office to. You only need to create bootable media in certain cases such as

• to install or reinstall your operating system
• to run an alternate system such as a linux live CD or Windows PE
• to run special utilities like anti-virus, SpinRite, etc

Just about everything else needs to have an OS already running. What you want to do is mount the iso file as a virtual disc then copy all the files to the USB. I prefer Virtual Clone Drive from SlySoft. It's free and very easy to use.

Your original post was ambiguous. You said you had a tab delimited file which means one complete record per line with the individual fields separated by a tab character. The form you gave an example of is not tab delimited. I based my answer on option one because I am a programmer and therefore lazy. If your data is in the second form then you sorta do it the same way. If the file contains only one set of data then you can use the following (which will work no matter what order the data is in)

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

        Dim record As New Dictionary(Of String, String)

        For Each line As String In System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("d:\temp\test.txt")
            Dim fields() As String = line.Split(":")
            record.Add(Trim(fields(0)), Trim(fields(1)))
        Next

        TextBox1.Text = record("Forename")
        TextBox2.Text = record("Surname")
        TextBox3.Text = record("Employee Number")

    End Sub

End Class

If you have multiple employees in the file then you can create nested dictionaries where the outer dictionary is a

Dim Employees As New Dictionary(Of String, Dictionary(Of String,String))

The key would be something unique such as the Employee Number.

For Each line As String In System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("myfile.txt")
    Dim fields() As String = line.Split(vbTab)
Next

After the Split, fields will contain all of the fields in the input line, one field per entry. Forename, Surname and EmployeeNumber are fields(1, 3 and 5) respectively.