Saint_Michael

As long as someone is keeping a tally for the nominations that's fine and so I thought I give everyone a little bump and mention that there is still a lot of time to get your nominations and remember the more people nominated in the categories the more fun it will be when it comes down to voting for the winners.

I see some great nomination and a lot of new people getting nominated this year and of course that is a good thing. So keep on nominating people as there is plenty of time to get them in.

Ok for those who are first timers to the Xisto awards, you can nominate as many people as you want to as many categories as you want, however, you would want to nominate those whom the category fits. Also you can nominate mods as well to any category you see fit.Should have mention this, but the Most Reported Posts is a moderator category in which nominate those who have reported posts either for spamming, off topic etc etc, basically if your helping keeping the forums clean through the use of the reported post function.

If it's a large list then go ahead and put it in quotes but if you only select a few people in a couple of categories that is fine as well. Of course, when it comes to self nomination, don't just your name on all the categories as some of them are forum specific and of course not everyone is a mod either. So as you go through the categories, think about where you posted within that year the most and there you go.

It is that time again, it is almost the end of the year and that means the Xisto awards are upon us. The process is simple, nominate as many people as you want for each category, even yourself and by December 15, those with the most votes will move on to the finals and people will get to vote for the overall winners. Now to pick your nominations, here are the following categories you can nominate people in. Also, because of my busy schedule, looking for people to design the Xisto award banner that will be used in January for the the award, and also looking for someone to keep a tally on who has been nominated and how many times they been nominated. If interested in any of these jobs, drop me a line on msn to let me know or send your Xisto banners to me. Good Luck and let the fun begin.

Beer and cake wow, I am just waiting for the entertainment to arrive to really begin the party, but in the mean time thanks everyone.

Only the PS3 60Gb "Fat" has the backward compatibility and so if you own a PS2 fat or slim then that is your best bet to play PS2 games.

In chapter three, Collins would begin by saying when it comes to producing good to great companies it was the matter of putting the right people on the "bus" and getting the wrong people off the "bus". However, had talk briefly about that in chapter one, chapter three would seem to get to the important aspect of defining the right people and wrong people. Collins talks about three truths when it comes to using the right people and the wrong people, the first one he talks about who can easily adapt to a changing world. The second truth Collins would talk about is that with the right people any problems the company will have, most of them go away and can produce a bit better and work more cohesive. He would continue by saying that the right people would be able to self-motivate without the need to fire them up. The final truth Collins would mention is if you have the wrong people, no matter what you do, "you still won't have a great company." Therefore, it would seem that not even two pages in Collins really wants to strike home with what management has to do in order to make a great company.He really sets this in stone when he talks about how Wells Fargo set itself up for success from one CEO to another. They hired the best people they could find and it didn't matter what position they were hired in but pick them out from performance. When Carl Reichardt took over in 1983 the team that was there building the company up all become CEO's of various banking firms. One of those CEO talks about getting the best people and then builds them up to be great managers. The only risk to this pattern was the fact those who are built up would move on to bigger and better things. Overall, the important factor that Collins has been driving at in the first few pages that it did not matter the what, but it was “the who” that made these companies great. So, if you have the right management team then you will have the great success, but if you don't then it will backfire and you be going through managers like candy.Another model that Collins talks about that some of the companies have done is called the "genius with a thousand helpers" and its premise is based on that one great person and then those who with that smart person. Of course, the downside to this is that if the genius leaves you might have some problems. Some of those examples were mentioned in chapter two such as Stanley Gault "genius" and how he build up Rubbermaid, but when he left, everyone felt completely loss while trying to mimic his leadership style. Another example they provide was Henry Single, who built a company from the ground up and the company was in great success until he left the company and afterwards it floundered until Allegheny bought them out. While this method seems good at first it has the problem of not being able to maintain it after the "genius" leaves and thus create a major problem for those who do follow that model.However, what really stood out was the assumption that was made for executives, the assumption was the more benefits they receive the better they do. Well Collins pretty much sum up the results of that part of the research by saying, "We were dead wrong in our expectations." It is funny though that you hear in the news about all those big time executives getting all these perks when the company is struggling to make a profit or being bailed from the government. However, Collins would mention, though very arguable, that with the right people they will do the right things regardless of what incentives are giving to them.After talking the benefits and incentives, Collins would continue by making a difference between companies who are rigorous or ruthless. He would clearly define ruthless by the means of "hacking and cutting, especially in difficult times, or wantonly firing people without any thoughtful consideration." However, to be considered rigorous, a good to great company has to be "consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. To be rigorous, not ruthless, means that the best people need not worry about their positions and can concentrate fully on their work." However, it would seem those two distinctions are very grey as it seems to be a constant pattern of companies being ruthless during the down time and barely being rigorous after coming back from that slump. However, Collins does maintain that a good to great company doesn't go swinging the preverbal ax and that "Endless restructuring and mindless hacking were never part of the good-to-great model."In the last section of chapter three, Collins breaks down being rigorous and he starts by talking three practical disciplines. The first practical discipline is "when in doubt, don't hire-keep look", it also went by another name as well, Packard's Law. The premise that Collin's is trying to make is that without the having the right growth of the right people. Then you have the problem of not growing your revenue consistently. Of course, he would solidify this discipline by saying if the revenue growth outpaced people growth, then your company cannot achieve that status of being great.The next discipline Collin's talks about is, "When you know you need to make a people change, act." With this discipline it was a matter not hiring the right people but putting people in the right positions and the reason for that is not everyone is good at one particular task, however, if you were to move them somewhere else you have good odds that something might click and then become a better performer. However, you sometimes have to move people around more than once and so your risk would be moderately high that each new move would be even less effective and make the person very unmotivated.The final discipline Collins would talk about, is "Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems." It would seem that Collins is driving to the fact if a good to great company had the potential to do something even greater, they would select the best of the best of that group of right people and let them to go to work. To give an idea about this Collins talks abut how Joe Cullman of Phillip Morris, took his best executive, George Weissman, and put him in the front seat to help develop the international market. At first, people were trying to figure why this move was made, even George Weissman thought that as well when he said, "Here I was running 99% of the company and the next day I'd be running 1 % or less." However, in just 20 years, the international market grew and grew big. IT grew so big that its Marlboro cigarettes were number one in the market three full years before they were in the US. So, by following this discipline when a company sees that opportunity, they have the chance to become a good to great company.I think what really brought home this chapter was the last section simply titled "First Who, Great Companies, And A Great Life." in this Collins talks about how a good to great leader is life or rather how they find the right balance to his or her work life and home life. He would end by talking to an executive and his wife about Colman Mockler and that thanks to the right people in the right spots, Mockler had the time to enjoy life and be able to spend time at home, at Harvard, working with charities and such. Then the executive's wife would mention that on the day of Mockler's funeral she "looked around and realized how much love was in the room." I would say that two things happen here; the first is if your person who can balance your work life and home life and manage the company greatly, you would reach that level five status and in turn would help produce a good to great company.

To Continue on with my review I have completed chapter 2 for everyone to enjoy.I find chapter two to be of interest for those in the management area, the reason I say that because it would seem that Jim Collins is saying this is what you shouldn’t do when you are at a high level position. He talks about how some of the good-to-great leaders were humble and thought of the company and not themselves. Jim Collins talks about Level 5 Management, in short is a position that blends both personal humility with strong an professional will. Or another way to put it, those good-to-great leaders were able to put their ego aside and build their companies to success.Collins provides great examples such as Darwin Smith who took a Kimberly-Clark from death’s doorsteps to one of the most successful paper companies in just twenty years and this was with the odds against he would recall that one of the board of directors told him he was not qualified. One of most interesting things that Collins covers in this book is a simple phrase of “the meek shall inherent the Earth” because he used such descriptions as awkward shyness, reserved, quiet and pointed out that if people where foolish enough to believe such qualities they would surely lose the battle. A prime example of this was Colman Mockler who fought to keep Gillette going, while others wanted to sell. Even though he would make some serious money he choose to fight for this company and in the end he won outright and made the company even more successful after introducing two new brands of razors.To make his point Jim Collins gave a few examples of great leaders who build up companies and after leaving completely failed outright. One of the examples he gave was Rubbermaid who was lead by Stanley Gault had made this great during the 1980s. However, because of his style of leadership and management, the company would collapse on itself because of management problems and strategic problems as well. Although I was bit surprise by one of the companies mention in this chapter because of what would happen to it in 2008, but Collins would mention Alan Wurtzel A CEO of the now defunct Circuit City. I have to say I am a bit surprise because of the fact that Circuit City would file for bankruptcy and close all the stores and even though there were many other factors of the demise of this company, it would seem that Level 5 was never achieved and thus a great company would become a bad company.Though Collins speculated that there are very specific traits and circumstances to become a Level 5 Manager, the inconsistency of the data suggest any concrete to achieve such a status, but merely suggest that you build you way and practice various other disciples that are used for good-to-great companies and leaders.

For one of my projects in a management course, I had to pick out a book and read and then provide an overall summary to at the end of the course and so I thought I would share with every my thoughts about this book. It is called Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't. Now each summary are based on notes I have taken in a essay like writing format to make the transition for the final paper a lot easier and so here is my chapter 1 summary. My initial impression of this book has made me somewhat interested in management. Especially when you start your book out with something interesting and though provoking, in which Jim Collins says, "Good is the enemy of great”. Which I found interesting and throughout this chapter I would came back to that statement several times, as I read this first chapter. As for the premise of this chapter, it is a introductory chapter about what this book is about in which good companies become great. Some of the questions that Jim Collins will answer or attempt to answer is Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how? On the other hand, is the disease of "just being good" incurable? Of course, looking at that question and reading the chapter it would seem that is the primary question that will try to be answered in later chapters. He gives great examples right away of good companies who become great companies such as Walgreens, in which it started outperforming such companies as Coca-Cola and General Electric. Therefore, the general idea of this book or rather the project is to see what examples though could find that match a specific good-to-great pattern with very specific details and trends. This is done in a 30-year time span in which 15 years of mediocre business and profitability a transition point and then 15 years of explosive profitability and productivity. To imagine the scope of this project, Jim Collins would mention the size of data collect as such, "We read and systematically coded nearly 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts, and created 384 million bytes of computer data. Of course, Collins would go on to say that putting together the data with 21-member team was a challenge as it was process of going back and forth, developing and testing, revising, building, something going wrong and having to be rebuilt again. However, they did happen to find a lot of interesting things while going through that data, such as find out that good-to-great leaders got the right people instead of trying out new strategies, and getting the wrong people out in order to succeed. Another interesting fact that good-to-great leader had a bit of faith in their business as well of which I find interesting because it would seem that faith in your business, your product and those who work for you would very strong in the business world. To end my summary I think this little snippet of insight might give a good idea what to expect as you read further in this book."That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem."In a way, it would seem that management has two sides to it but which side to pick is what makes this a book a interesting to read.

I use mostly Firefox (current version), but I sometimes hop onto Chrome or IE. Of course, I also keep myself updated with safari and opera as well but I barely use them though.

Your correct, and if understand Dragon enough, its a hoss in the memory department of which a netbook cannot really handle. I would have to go with rayzor that you would need something additionally to get it going, almost sounds like you need to some hardware hacking in order ot make the netbook go beyond what it is intended to do.

Thanks, part of the project is to identify or define typic or atypical users and so with this survey it will help me get a good idea what they will be. Such as age, gender, writing skill, education level and although I should have put it in the survey as well, if you are employed or not. Of course, I was in such a rush to produce this survey and get as many people as possible that I skipped a few questions. To give an idea what I am referring I show you the information based on what I have gotten, although a few of things were not added on the survey though. Typical User Age: 13-70 Gender: Male/Female Physical Abilities: Can use their hands and eyes Cognitive abilities: can think, interpret and understand the information they are writing about Education: at least a high school student and above Training: Taught how to write in English, understand how to write essays or research papers Language Skills: Recognize and understand the English writing structure Vocabulary: Good use of vocabulary Job Experience: Working or currently a student Job Level: Various positions Wage: Various Interaction with people: sociable, good communication skills Tools: computers, writing utensils, paper, word processing software, type write, school resources, teachers, tutors Organizations: various Atypical Age: Younger than 13, older then 70 Physical Abilities: Unable to use hands, cannot see Cognitive abilities: Dyslexic, ADD, ADHD, slow learners, never graduated school, unable to read or write. Education: private school, home school, never went to school, learning to write Training: little to no training in writing or reading Language Skills: English as a second language Vocabulary: Good use of vocabulary Job Experience: Not working, retired, no experience, high executive Job Level: Executive (CEO, President etc) Wage: various Interaction with people: non-social, poor communication skills Tools: no computer access, cannot afford word processing software, can?t use tutoring services Organizations - various You can say this aspect of the project is to figure out how to develop it more based on information for the atypical and thus make it a stronger product.

Ug that second link has been giving me trouble all day, I changed some settings mahesh so when you get a chance check it out and see if it works. Yep its part of my BA in Managing Information Systems and work is no joke either as each week I am reading nearly 200 pages of text, plus assignments and forum posting, it is insane.

Doing a quick survey for part of my project in HCI(Human-Computer Interaction) and its based on writing skills and writing resources. It is in two part because of the limitation this survey site I am using. Survey's should take about 5-10 minutes tops, answer as truthfully as possible for accurate results. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ The goal of these two surveys is to generate a basic demographic of users from high school to retiree's to help generate a typical user for m project. The more people who fill this out the better the results. Of course, try to answer them honestly as I want to get as accurate as possible.

Came up with PFS when I posted a picture of me with my nephew when he was born. Of course, it really started when I posed with the computer I built a year before that. Of course, even gave PFS to my misses too . It is amazing how quickly that spread when i am near people .

Before I complain can someone clear this up for me, does it matter if your working or not that your required to pay that fine, because right now I am unemployed student and I be damn if they get a single penny from me. No wonder everyone has been an in uproar last few months, heck I also see a lot of people going to jail because no one will be able to pay that fine, especially families. Trying to figure out how the government thinks everyone is rich all of a sudden, my parents barely get buy as it is, granted they are retired and get social security, but that isn't enough.I tell them straight send me to jail as I will not be paying a single dime for that BS health bill.

Here is my latest one enjoy Update: Needed to fix something with the sig

Back up browser...hmmm...I got four of them but I seem to lean more towards Chrome because I don't have a ton of stuff on it and it loads faster for me. Of course, I tend to go to Internet Explorer 8 next if I have to, but I usually don't touch Safari or Opera even though I make sure they are updated and what not.

Since I know your talking about me, I gave the member a chance he decided to refuse, and since the information was not his to begin with it was a matter of copyright issues and he even admitted it in a posts that he was going to do it. I know you never like the way I did things, but like I said he refused and so I did what was necessary.

In my defense, I ask him to fix the problem he refused, and if you also think out the box all that information was copyrighted and thus the Xisto could be held accountable and some form of legal action could used. Besides I don't remember seeing any reports from you saying that there was something fishy about the posts and the member in question only popped into radar once he did get busted for copying and paste. I give people chances, its up them if they want to get a second chance. and so the topic is closed now.

Yeah I have to agree to that as well, granted I am starting school again, but finding new topics to talk about is is a bit tricky, especially hen it comes to web design and other computer related things. Although I hope to incorporate my business classes into some topics as time goes on here and might get the creative juices flowing. Of course, with the new system in place that is when the posts started to slow down a bit, saying nothing is wrong with that but now people have several methods to get hosting on Xisto/xisto/Xisto - Web Hosting.Of course, this is the school season and usually that is when it starts slowing down as most of members are teens and what not. Usually the holidays we will see somewhat of a spike in terms of posts but it shouldn't really be a problem. My recommendation is start using websites such as digg to bring up topics of interest to start getting people to post and what not.

Well I know god wouldn't look at it for the porn or look up interesting facts as he/she knows all and see's all. I think he/she would do it for the interaction and so you see God hitting up all the social networking websites, forums and chat rooms just to talk to people. God already knows how messed up we are, of course, it makes me wonder how long it would take God to through millions of terabytes of data that the internet now holds. Obviously we would know that God is on if the whole internet is on dial up speed since he would have to hog up a lot of bandwidth just to get through everything.Of course, God could skip all that and be the only online gamer never to be killed in anything as he would be the ultimate computer hacker to pull such a feat. To conclude though, if I were God I would hack the world network and just crash it to the point that all data is unrecoverable. Talk about setting humans back thousands of years right there.

This member got warn for copying and pasting and after making a thorough investigation of this members posts, it was indeed plagiarism from video content. Also this member was giving a notice to correct all the posts but since they did not, those posts will be remove and the member formally suspended.Regardless of the intentions of posting such content, spiritual or otherwise, if it is not your own words quote it and that is how simple it is.