magnafrost

Lol these countries have a good reason to hate Paul but they could be satisfied with the fact that Paul won't be alive till the next world cup. Octopuses live for around three years and Paul is already 2 1/2 years old. So unless someone is planning to implant Paul's brain in some other octopus, the next world cup will most probably be prediction-free!

Awww.. That is so sad! I'll surely miss Paul. Hail Paul. I was almost starting to think that he's immortal !

now i read this topic for the first time and couldn't understand anything till i googled "Paul the octopus" and understood. now what is this all about??
what is the relation between animals and the world's cup?
and do people really believe in that?
please anyone explain to me.

Ok wd. I dunno how much you much got by googling. Basically there's this octopus who's affectionately called Paul. He's somehow been able to 'predict' the winners of matches in this world cup and he's been pretty much right all the time till now. The way he 'predicts' is that in his fish (or octopus ) tank they keep two boxes which have the flags of the competing teams. The video I saw was not very clear but the country that owns the flag of the box he opens is what we call his prediction. As it turns out, whatever flag he picked, that team won. This has been happening for a while now which is why there are lots of people who are very enthusiastic about it. I'm sure there were lots of people who even bet on the results placing faith in Paul. Hope that clarifies it for you There is one youtube video which is kind of like a news presentation introducing Paul. But I'm not able to find it. Let me know if you need it, I'll try and get it for you.

now i read this topic for the first time and couldn't understand anything till i googled "Paul the octopus" and understood. now what is this all about??
what is the relation between animals and the world's cup?
and do people really believe in that?
please anyone explain to me.

Ok wd. I dunno how much you much got by googling. Basically there's this octopus who's affectionately called Paul. He's somehow been able to 'predict' the winners of matches in this world cup and he's been pretty much right all the time till now. The way he 'predicts' is that in his fish (or octopus ) tank they keep two boxes which have the flags of the competing teams. The video I saw was not very clear but the country that owns the flag of the box he opens is what we call his prediction. As it turns out, whatever flag he picked, that team won. This has been happening for a while now which is why there are lots of people who are very enthusiastic about it. I'm sure there were lots of people who even bet on the results placing faith in Paul. Hope that clarifies it for you There is one youtube video which is kind of like a news presentation introducing Paul. But I'm not able to find it. Let me know if you need it, I'll try and get it for you.

Usually whenever I mention using Linux, I also say that I do have dual-boot and use it rarely; I guess I forgot to put in that line this time My Windows 7 PC gets a very rare visit and that is only when I'm too bored with everything else. I don't dare to connect to the internet when in Windows because somehow it just feels too vulnerable, and more importantly, too slow.

 

For a company like Google, which has a racing spirit, the slow Windows isn't a good choice at all

 

Thats the perfect combo! Windows 7 and Linux give you maximum security and flexibility. But .. does the OS really make that much difference w.r.t speed ? Both from client side and server side. I would have thought they'll be pretty much the same .. no ?

Does this happiness from open source buys food for family ? Does this happiness help pays the rent,bills ? Does happiness from open source helps economy at all ? What if tomorrow people start to demand free logos and design, why not give them for free ?See, once this free thing is entered in mindset customers hardly bother to pay for it. This hurts economy a lot. Creating something free for recurring solution does prevent irritation and saves time. But creating everything free as counterpart for commercial project is indeed hurting economy. I think this is going off-topic but let's carry on wrt google's action.
In my country, once people start to get taste of free they'll demand everything free that is associated with that thing and will never pay for labor in programming and installation or support. I know this mindset in people of my country and that is why i hate this free OS concept. I'm sure like my country there are many other countries who have people with similar mindset will come up with excuses for money and hardwork of others.

Upto certain extent open source/free does help but if it starts to affect economy then it's not worth it. Though even if google moves to linux nothing new will happen as there is freedom for google employees to use OS. Their work involves in web development and not on desktop apps(some exceptions) so unless some sites need it they don't advocate certain platform and language. Some of google's projects use C#, ASP.NET while some projects use python and java. That way, google is working on most of the languages and platform. Even if they decide to move to another OS, their work will revolve around multiple platforms and language cause they want to serve people and make money with it. They'll not just move to another platform killing another entirely. Then again, i don't know its about promoting linux or something as some of the other here post cause they failed in their OS project(though they got netbook offer from sony there is not much progress in their OS). I see no reason they'll waste their money on linux projects that don't convert into profits. Funding to projects that doesn't give financial returns is foolist business,it's like digging their own grave.

I do not agree that open source is ruining the economy. Say, tomorrow if I decide to make a software and give it out for free instead of asking people to pay for it, am I ruining the economy ? No. In case of open source, there is a balance. They've consciously made a choice. They chose to compromise on the price for the sake of advancement. Do you really think its ever possible for as many people to work on a Firefox or Linux if it is not open source ? For the sake of technological advancement, both routes have to be followed. Windows has its own strategies and innovations that are adopted by Linux. Linux has its own advantages too. It is upto the customer to decide which one he wants. The companies cannot blame open source for spoiling their market because its their job to beat it. Come up with features that are so powerful that people choose you over free alternatives. You cannot honestly expect everyone to pay for every single software they use. There are paid versions of everything! Right from email to blogs to development tools and everything else on the planet which has a free alternative. If people are looking for a minimal set and are not looking for reliability, I dont see any reason why they should pay for an expensive commercial software. For instance, all that my parents use in Microsoft Office is Word, and all they use in Word is text, font formatting and tables. Office is too big for them and Wordpad or Notepad too minimal. OpenOffice is perfect for them as it just doesn't make sense for MS Office. Is it not the same as free vs paid blog hosting ? Just because free blog hosts are there, it does not mean the paid ones disappeared. Its a healthy competition. No single company can give a challenge to the big players on their own. Microsoft had started stagnating, and Linux came in with competition which made Microsoft go up a notch. I hate Vista. I love Windows 7. You know very well that it is even more true in the case of browsers. IE was starting to get hopeless and Firefox changed the picture completely. IE is just catching up and is doing very well now. Can you imagine getting stuck with IE6 now ? Its hardly a few years behind but seems like ages.

But yes, like he said lets stick to the topic. Marketing is definitely not the reason google chose Linux. Its just increasing the focus on using Linux machines which makes perfect sense. They'll just make a more conscious effort in choosing the OS which is good for everyone. In case this triggers a competition for more security the way it was for browsers, and Windows emerges the winner, I'll be more than happy.

Phew. My longest post so far

It's all about making money be it linux or windows. Be it operating system company or the consumer using the product. Windows is popular not because it's easier but there is trade and better business build on it. Though many people think business can save money on linux but more business can be easily lost on linux. For example, windows support and security is business in itself, but linux hardly generates revenue on that domain. Apps being free in linux domain kills another aspect of business in the world of programming. Linux/Open source world makes people more lazy and used to free things which is one step ahead of killing economy. Once people start to procrastinate about paying for things and stuff then surely it kills economy. Be it free or paid software, there is money,time and hard work involved in it. Not paying for it makes it low value and people don't even care for those things. Open source made many programmers lazy and simple-copy paster after posting lot of code in public. I failed to see the profit in this linux side. Any platform if gets overused then likely to get abused. Few years earlier people used to claim that linux was virus free and then came script kiddies and small viruses. So saying that it's secure platform is not at all convincing. Just because google moved to linux doesn't mean it's better. It's about business and google will realize it soon when they'll recognize short funds from their search engine revenue. I hope google rethinks on their decision, instead of windows they should move to apple that will keep them on unix(mach BSD) atleast.

Actually, I dont agree that if its free it'll kill the economy or the product. Look at it this way. When you work for a closed source product for which you get paid, I see the money as the main compensation that you get. But, when you work for a open-source product out of your free time, you get a special happiness out of it. I'd say for all the open source developers, this far outweighs the financial compensation that they would get for it and they'll put in lots of effort, probably making a product superior to its closed source counterpart in much lesser man-hours.

I'm using Office 2007 on XP without any problems. And I'm using SP2. I'm not sure why you are facing a problem, maybe it has to do with some minor upgrades in Office 2007. Microsoft still officially support XP (SP3) and I'd be very surprised if it had issues with it. I suggest you get the latest possible installer and try it out. I'm more than happy with Office 2007 for my purposes and I won't be changing for a long time.

Hail Paul does indeed sound better but there are a lot of Germans who want to eat Paul because the prediction psychologically damaged the German team in their game! So Paul better watch out as there are Germans in Wall Street too

I knew Paul would beat Mani! But now he's got to be careful about one more country called Netherlands. He's making too many enemies, kinda like James Bond

I hardly saw any matches in this world cup either. I've managed to be travelling or be out whenever any big match was going on , and was never keen on watching the others. Good that Spain won though. Happy for Paul more than anyone else

Ah, I get where you're coming from now. Sadly I do not know the answer to that. I'm thinking if that's how it's working, though, something is wrong.
You may want to PM Opaque just for confirmation.

Oh ok .. I'll send him a PM and see whether he can do something about it ..

If only the other countries had this luxury. Hmm maybe the other countries do not care too much about security like Russia does! Now it's only a matter of time before some Russian hacker leaks the code....



Till then you could install Ubuntu Linux inside Windows, as a separate drive. Try it out if you want You won't regret the decision.



We're all waiting for the day when Linux finally supports gaming on a large scale. That would certainly bring in a large chunk of Windows users over to Linux. But the game developers have to start supporting Linux as well otherwise there won't be any major shift in the gamer community.

I still stick to the old school when it comes to gaming. Windows windows and more windows! Pressing the windows key mid game and shouting at your friends to pause the game while you struggle to get back kind of appeals to me But seriously, get dual OS on your system. Use linux for everything, and windows for gaming. You'll be happy I promise

When you subscribe (I'm guessing you did so through clicking the icon in the top right of the forums?) you have the choice of many different options.
Based on your request I'm thinking what you want is the "Latest Posts" one. In that case, the direct link to the feed seems to be:

http://forums.xisto.com/rss/forums/6-Xisto-latest-posts/

Although I am not currently using a feed reader so I'm not completely sure -- it's weird that it's in pure text form and not formatted. I've only used the Joomla RSS feeds before but it was a lot more organized (or it could be that I'm using Google Chrome now instead of IE like I used to).

Either way, hope that helps.

I did that. The problem is that the feed I get seems to show the starting post in the thread instead of the latest post. So basically its like I know which thread has got the latest post but thats it. Im not sure if I'm doing something wrong or whether this is a bug or if thats the only way it could work!

By being able to see the source it's also easier to protect it from flaws.

 

The problem with Windows is only Microsoft employees are able to see what is going on in the code. As we have seen in the past, they can't even stabilize their OS, much less fix security breaches. Linux has more people working on it and stabilized their OS's years ago; something Microsoft has still failed to manage.

 

It's really like forum bases. For example, VBulletin often goes through security breaches. phpBB, on the other hand, goes through them on a much lower rate, because there are soo many others working on the same system.

 

 

 

Some claim that Linux isn't really "harder" to hack, it's just that it isn't mainstream (there was a report a while ago about how less than 3% of all PC users are using Linux). As such, it just isn't worth the time to do so.

 

 

Either way, I feel safer with open source than proprietary. At least with open source I know what I'm getting.

 

Yes, from what you say I gather that Linux is a lot more value for money in any case.

 

The code, before being released as a software release, is studied by loads of people. If security problems are spotted, they're fixed before the code is marked as released. If, at that stage, someone malicious spots a problem with the code then the developers are also incredibly likely to spot the same problem, and fix it, so there is no risk. If problems manage to sneak through to code that gets released then they're usually spotted quickly and fixed quickly. For example, someone recently tried to release a screensaver (if I recall correctly) that contained malicious code. Within a few minutes of its release, people had spotted the problem. Then they fixed it. All in under an hour I think. Pretty impressive!

 

 

 

And the Russian secret service, don't forget! https://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/09/0042238/Microsoft-Opens-Source-Code-To-KGBs-Successor-Agency?art_pos=1

It seems they just didn't believe it was secure, and demanded to inspect the source before they would consider using it.

 

That makes perfect sense. I'm actually considering switching to Linux from now. Just waiting to get a new laptop for that though.

Lol the crackers can't just inject malicious code on a Linux machine just because they can modify the original source code. Cracking a Linux machine takes much more skill than it does for Windows. Have you used Linux before? If so you might have noticed that visiting malicious websites from inside Linux doesn't affect your system at all, and you can try executing Windows' worms and get away with it Plus it's super-fast and many popular Windows applications run comfortably inside Linux. So there are many good reasons to use Linux over Windows. In some aspects Mac OS X is much better, but Linux is free while you need to pay a premium for a licensed OS X.
@rob: It's excellent that of all companies, Google decided to take this step, because it's the biggest one out there and this might encourage smaller companies to follow their lead. Ultimately this could mean a large increase in the user-base of both Linux and OS X.

My point is that knowing the source code makes it easier for the attacker to explore and figure out the loopholes. It might have just 0.1% of the number of loopholes that windows has, but its also that much easier. Like rvalkass said the whole power of open source is that there are a lot of people looking at the code and saying "hey there's an issue here". While most of the people who see that will try to fix it, someone could try to exploit it. Thats why I am saying a combination of open source and closed source is better. Use a linux base which has been waded through by the community, but put in some closed source effort from your end too!

I totally agree. In my place about 8 years back, we were given the option of either getting Telephone books or CDs. I of course chose the CDs but my grand parents made me go get the book. In any case, I haven't even seen the phone books for a long time ! God knows what happened to them!

I'm sure google did not decide Linux for the sake of promotion . In any case, I'm not so sure about how secure linux could be either. There's gotta be security flaws in it and considering that the code is open it'll be easier to spot. My guess is google should pool in some resources for modifying the OS source code itself and have a custom linux OS with a little more security. Though, RHEL and the type might already be highly secure.

My vote goes for Deadmad and then wd. Deadmad you might consider making yours a little 'less simple' . I'm no pro but I think if you add a little more 'blurriness' to the background in your image it might improve it.

Paul the octopus has become a celebrity and it's no surprise that there are others who want to have a share of the fame as well. So now there are a lot of other fortune-telling animals/birds out there and everyone wants to hog the limelight. In any case, Paul will remain at the top and as you may already know, Spain is Paul's favourite to win the world cup now. There have been some other predictions which second Paul's decision, but another 'celebrity' who is a parrot from Singapore has predicted that the Netherlands will win. The parrot's name is Mani, and it has had a perfect prediction record just like Paul. But now their predictions contradict each other and one of them is bound to be wrong.
There are still 10 hours for the final match to begin. Who will win? No I'm not asking about Spain or Holland, but about Paul and Mani!

I've always had a liking for Octopuses , and Hail Paul sounds a lot better than hail Mani. So, go go go Paul ! We're with you ! Waiting for the day when you enter Wall Street

I just subscribed to the RSS feed for latest posts and I have a "make or break" suggestion. The feed now displays the starting topic of the thread which kind of does not make sense. There is already a "New topics" thread and I would much rather have the latest post in the RSS than the starting topic. Plus, I am not sure if the current RSS feed is "live" or whether there is a small delay. I seem to get updates in bunches though the problem might be from my feed reader. I just wanted to know if its possible to fix these.

This was the reason I left retail.

You seem to have a knack of resurrecting old threads comp2. I'm fairly new myself so I dunno if thats fine but maybe you should check it up.

Nokia 5800

 

 

 

I love it because of its brilliant value for money. Though I'm planning to upgrade any time now.

I think that the lock ness monster is very real and exists. Mainly because since there is no real description of it, any 'monster' can be called lock ness. Maybe the yeti. Maybe the yeti and the lock ness monster are the same. Maybe what people call the yeti is just a mutated polar bear! We never know!

My list is pretty easy to make for me1) Diablo 22) NFS 63) UnchartedWell that actually my list for today There might be a different one tomorrow but hey, thats how it works !

Let us enter my fantasy world for a few minutes.  Let think about what lies beyond the solar system right now.  Let us not think about hate comments after reading this.  Think about these following questions in your head.  After the questions, I will give my own opinion about each of the questions. 
Do you believe in life existing beyond our solar system?  I believe that there is life that is found in other solar systems.  The universe is a pretty large and I bet that there are tons of different life forms everywhere.  Some are probably thinking the same questions that we are thinking.  Maybe some of the other life forms have discovered each other.

How intelligent do you think the life forms are? Do you think that they are smarter or dumber?  I believe that some life can be smarter than us humans but most of the other life forms are probably dumb.  As in dumb, I mean illiterate, ignorant, etc.  Sort of like sheep.  Maybe some life forms out there have developed technology that you have seen in Star Trek or something.  What if someone is looking at Planet Earth through some advanced telescope?

Do you think that someday, we will be able to meet some other life forms?  I do not think that we will be able to encounter them in this generation but maybe in later generations.  They may not greet us nicely.  They might throw a full invasion on us unexpectedly or have them wipe us out in a few seconds.  Maybe someday, a UFO will come falling down and see one of these.  Do you believe that humans will ever befriend any of these life forms?

Do you think that humans will be able to inhabit other planets such as Venus or Mars?  Sooner or later, the human population will grow so much that the Earth will not provide enough space for the population.  The human population is growing exponentially whether we know it or not.  Around 1750, the Earth had about one billion people on this earth.  By the year 2050, we expect to have around ten billion humans walking around everywhere.  We are also depleting our resources rapidly. Do you think that humans could develop some type of device to generate resources?

How big could other life forms be?  Could they be as large as dinosaurs or small like flies?  What if those life forms were even larger than dinosaurs?

Do you think that there are such things as wormholes that can make space travel faster?  I bet that it would be extremely dangerous.  Do you think that wormholes could provide ways of time travel?  There may be such thing as a fourth dimension.  Possibly a fifth or sixth. 

The universe is extremely big.  The universe measures billions/trillions of light years.  Maybe the universe is infinite.  Who knows?  Could there be no end to the universe?  We live in the Milky Way galaxy.  The milky way galaxy is extremely large and could take light 100,000 years to travel through it.  The solar system is a microscopic spec when looking at the milky way.  Also, there are millions and trillions of galaxies existing throughout the universe.

I want to hear your ideas on this subject.  What do you think about this.  Do you think any of this is possible?  Do you think I am crazy?

I am absolutely certain that life exists elsewhere in the universe. But, to give it a slightly different view, I dont know if they'll be on planets. They might be on satelites. They might be in raw space. We never know. We are making too many assumptions by comparing other life forms to us. We assume they'll be on some extreme. Either that they'll look exactly the way we do, or that they are little green monsters and the like. My perspective is that we have absolutely no perspective. Like someone mentioned, the universe is so huge that we can be absolutely certain about life existing elsewhere. Put in also the dimension of time, and you get a much bigger number. Basically a probability of 1/ (Infinity(space) * Infinity(time)). For the question of whether we'll ever make contact with alien life forms, I think the answer is no. This is because I do not expect any life forms in a distance that we are capable of perceiving in the near future, and we will be extinct by the time we get that technologically advanced. I believe any life form that evolves will get extinct at some point or other, probably by killing themselves or because of natural events and not have an infinite technological advancement. The only way in which life forms from two different planets have met is if they happen to be very close in space, say like mars for us. While I agree that is not an impossibility, this will reduce the number of alien species contacts in the universe by a very huge number making it a single or double digit number in my opinion. But I do agree that there is a very slight chance that alien contact has already been made in earth and a handful of people know about it. Lets see. In case we ever get lucky enough to meet them, say a "Hi"

Is anyone else having issues with posts being out of order? Like, for example, I just replied in a thread and their post shows as last, even though I replied after theirs. It even shows them as the last poster.
This has happened a few times lately and I'm wondering if it's just my account or if you others are experiencing it as well.

The timing seems to be irrelevant (such as the last one, I posted at 4:24 and they posted 5-6 minutes before that and mine still showed up before theirs and put them as the last poster).

This also happens whether or not I am quoting them, so that doesn't seem to be impacting it.

I too noticed this behavior. I suppose, its because of TIMEZONE settings.

Yes, I have observed this issue before though I dont think I've actually faced it. They've really been funny because in one of the posts I saw, a post had quoted a post 'after' it! For all I know it might've been yours. Now that mycents are fixed, I think opaque can start looking at these issues.
The only problem I've faced now is that I posted a reply on the global warming topic, but my reply did not come up. I tried again 3 or 4 times and then I suddenly saw a "this post needs approval from a moderator before posting". I'm not exactly sure when that came up (though I'm hoping I dont get banned for spamming when I wasn't even trying to!). Sorry to the mods if it was my fault, and if it wasnt, please take a look into it opaque!

But if they show the correct times, wouldn't that mean they should be logged with the correct times as well?
Example : You would see a post that says 3:19 AM and another that says 3:42 AM but the 3:42 would be above the 3:19. If it was a time-zone issue I'd think it would show the wrong time as well.

Did we just get the issue in this very thread? I could actually see opaque's reply before I clicked on "Add reply" but I go there and see that my post is there before his. RPG has a post even after that ! And I can see the timing for mine behind RPG's by about 10 minutes !

Ok take a look at this! Definitely an issue with times. I can see that there is a lag in times. I get the feeling that the system is being used instead of server time as my post shows the exact same time. Opaque, see if you can fix this.

Did we just get the issue in this very thread? I could actually see opaque's reply before I clicked on "Add reply" but I go there and see that my post is there before his. RPG has a post even after that ! And I can see the timing for mine behind RPG's by about 10 minutes !