kaputnik

HiI've been looking out for a piece of desktop software (preferably open-source - windows based) that will allow me to send out a customized (mail merge function) HTML newsletter to a group list of about 4000 subscribers. The thing is that this is not revenue based and I'm not willing to spend any money on a high end software. Problem with this approach is that most bulk email software have a whole lot of restrictions. Since I've spent a good 4 days looking and trying out at least 20 odd programs - I'd be grateful if anyone will be able to point me to software that will sort me out.Thanks

Well, some workplaces (and I may be understating this) have a considerable degree of language as described. Fortunately, I've come across some Greek guys who's completely revamped my language and now, when in India, i use Greek to swear and when outside - it's a combination of a whole bunch of languages (never sure who knows what right..!!)

This is the first I've ever heard of any government using pirated software within it's system. Infact, wth my dealings with the government in India, selling software, these guys are a headache when it comes to keeping to the dotted line. Every software around would highly likely be liscensed and on the right side of the law. In fact with the amount of software the government has actually invested in developing, there's little doubt about the dependance on very large corporations for software (although a very high amount of computing is done on MS platforms).

To be quite honest, when I first downloaded a template, I was shocked with the number of folders that a template contains, each with a massive amount of material. With careful study, I figured out that most of the stuff is really easy to understand. Now, quite a few bought templates will actually give you ooptions which will allow you to go about customizing to a very high degree. The free ones, you just have to replace the images, work a bit on the CSS and pat - you're ready to go. The first step before you buy a template is to go ahead and experiment with fome free templates so that you get the hang of customizing and you're not to sorry if things don't go your way for a while. From experience, I can tell you that even a novice will easily manage to get everything right by the second try. Personally I started off with PHP-Nuke - which was a fantastic experience and I just loved going about modifying my site and working on the look and feel. I have since moved to Dragonfly CMS which I'm finding a lot easier to handle - with out any bugs thus far. All the best

Wow, now that's something I really have to try out in my free time someday. What really bugs me is my Math skills - and being in client servicing, I'm having to grapple with cost sheets on a daily basis and it really takes a toll. This looks like interesting stuff. I also once read a book called "Surely you're joking Mr. Fynman" in which Richard Fynman actually writes about how he goes about getting the better of a guy who was a whiz at the abacus - while doing math in his head alone. Now that really would be something. For now, I'll just try to remember my tables and prowl the internet for more fascinating methods to do math.

What I normally do, and something that really puts in a whole lot of structure into all my web pages is to use tables. Simple HTML will sort this out. To Create a box, all you need is a table with 1 row and 1 column. To keep this in the center, you just need to set the alignment attribute to "center". In fact you can have tables within tables to keep your layout exactly as you want it. What's more - you can specify width and height and - like you['re looking out to doing, set the borders with light and dark colours so that it gives a great 3D effect. From what you've written, Table in the center of the page, with a colour, 3D borders - can be sorted out with something like this: <TABLE WIDTH = "200" HEIGHT = "100" ALIGN = "center" BGCOLOR = "blue" CELLPADDING = "2" BORDER= "3" BORDER-STYLE = "ridge"> <TBODY> <TR> <TD> <CENTER> <Font Color = "White" SIZE = "5">Hope this works out for you..!!</FONT> </CENTER> </TD> </TR> </TBODY></TABLE> Placed in a web page, what this will instantly do is give you a box in the middle of the page with a width of 200 px a height of 100 px; gives you a 3D border (you can get into more detailing with the border properties).. You've got a blue background with the writing int he center and sized to 5. When you make a table - you need to keep in mind that you need to use the TBODY (shows the start of the body of the table, the TR (to designate the start of a row) and the TD attribute which will tell the system that there is a bit of data (like maybe some text or an image). Of course, if you get into detailing some more there are a huge many possibilities to getting your tables just as you want them.

This is with reference to an article here (http://pesn.com/2006/08/25/9500299_Steorn_jury_application_deadline/) and there's some here (http://www.realgeeks.com/); that I turned my attention towards - the possibility of having free energy. We all know that energy conversion from one form to another - like burning wood to create fire and therefore warmth/ source of heat to cook food over - involves some sort of chemical/ mechanical reaction where the energy stored in one medium(wood, gas, oil) is converted to another (heat, electricity etc...); involves a great deal of loss in energy during the process. (Information on energy conversion is available her). Now however there's this company called Steorn which claims that it's created an electro-megnetic-mechanical gadget/ machine that is actually giving an output of greater than 100% - which essentially means that the technological component of the machine - actually draws lesser energy than it outputs. Now, to the common sence, this comes out as absolute hogwash. Physics as we know it to be tells us that something like this is just not possible, since there is loss in any conversion of energy (assuming that the energy is being converted). The big question here thoug seems to be that there is little or no conversion of energy in the electro-megnetic process being used by this company - instead, it seems like they are drawing energy from some "unlimited" source (which is where quantum mechanics comes in. According the technology page on the company's website (which by itself is rather vague and doesn't actually give very many details); the system is actually functional and is producing results in test conditions. Which is why it seems that they actually published press ads challenging the world's physicists to form a 12 member evaluation team and judge their invention/ process. Really exciting stuff and I've signed up to receive more information on the results of the experimentation - once it's completed. Should this technology actually be proven to work - it would mean the immediate (somewhat worrysome question of - exactly where does the "extra" energy actually come from. When we look at stuff like quantum physics/ the multi-verse etc - it could be that the energy being drawn is somehow disrupting our world/ paralel universe/ space-time etc - some source which is not even known of as yet - to exploit this energy. Once though this question of where the extra energy is coming from is answered (even to a reasonable extent), then the world as we know it would undergo a massive change. The most threatened would be the oil and gas industry, who must be looking at these developments with a keen eye. Non renuable fuels would hit a wall as soon as unlimited sources of energy (as long as it is reasonably cheap) becomes available. As per the projections envisaged by the firm/ other journalistic sources - the fructification of this technology could result in stuff like an unlimited powersource for your cellphone (as small as that) your laptop (wow) and consider this - if somehow the technology even operates outside of the earth's influence - interstellar space travel - holy wow. Right - so what do you guys think about this. I have this gut feeling that it's on the even and that we may be looking at a whole new world really soon. And no smoke/ smog and carbon caused global warming.

Yes, like a lot of the guys here have already pointed out; the dating website thing has been done to bits.. there is though another method that'll really help you kick off. The idea also has been done a few times but is not immediately in the spotlight. What I'm talking about is; since you're already making the effort of building a website, why not take this a step ahead in the following manner:Register an offline firm with all the necessary paperwork.Reorganize your dating matching system so that instead of the system automatically sending out e-mails to matches - the system sends you the information - upon which you take action by actually calling up the match pairs and arrange for a meeting by them at a common acceptable venue (along with the introduction made by yourselves - like as if you're the pcommon acquaintance/ friend). This is where you can actually make your financial gain. Your billing would be solely based on this. Since most persons actually shy away from the online billed version of match making (and this is only from asking friends), this would actually work out much better.All the best

Hey - that's really great. I've a personal domain with limited e-mail. My folks have asked me if its possible to sort them out with a web-based e-mail the likes of Gmail and here we are - it's actually possible. I'm thrilled with this discovery. This is why I like Xisto so much - learn something everyday. Will just have to give this a shot right away. What I do notice though is that the feature currently is in Beta. that although not very disturbing is a bit of a worry since I'd indirectly be responsible for other people's e-mail; should this feature suddenly become unavailable or disabled.Right - so I just registered for the service and the response is that they will get back to me if they find my profile suitable for utilization in their test. Keeping my fingers crossed

This is quite increadable - I can just imagine the look on people's faces if I walk into a meeting boot up my laptop and it says "Windows Pirated Edition". I'd probably get myself arrested too. This though seems to be alike a pretty good tool to play around with the OS. Most of my customization as of present is done through the regular desktop properties route. Right click on desktop> Properties> Appearance tab Throught this I have currently managed to alter my desktop windows settings in the following ways: Active Window - Lialac; Inactive Window - Shades of Grey; Tool tips - yellow; This method of changing the regular window's look and feel does not use up any extra memory - I'll have to use the various applications and figure out if they're utilizing any memory after they've made changes to the OS. Good stuff though

Most interesting.. frankly, it seems dangerous for systems to be accessable so easily. What is very likely though is that such an access method is meant to be solely for the more technically capable and must have been instituted so that specialists etc can retrieve information from systems that have locked out their owners - wo may have forgotten their passwords. All in all, general knowledge of this method (and it has not been tried by myself as yet so I really can't verify it's mechanism), is a dangerous thing since everyone in corporate environments may go about entering other people's systems without authorization. Must give this a shot to veify. Then I guess I'll have to figure out how to circumvent this method.

Google's recent forays on multiple fronts into areas that the company can bring onto the database based search platform is really amazing in terms of speed and spread. Considering the fact that the Google database is very effecient - utilizing the technology in a heavy database workload environment will really put Google through the paces. This is also immediate pointer to the fact that Google is actually coming of age and is prepared to explore areas that are related to it's core field - also shows that (and this is only a possibility) in it's present form, it's unlikely that further upgradations to the search technoloy will actually make immediate improvements to search efficiency. The natural move is to use the efforts invested in creating the technology in widening the base of application. (Example is something like a spoon - the creator makes the spoon, everyone uses it; there's little improvement to the spoon over time - the widening in usage happens only through expanding the base of application - like using it as a spatula, a liquid measure... etc..). In all truth, I really do think it is the right direction. What I'm not really impressed about is that Google's looking at a limited dive into the opensource arena. Perhaps this is a move solely aimed as a test before wholeheartedly plunging in. All in all, I do believe that the more the large players in the field, the better the outcome where development is concerned.

Pretty neat. Related technology is already in malls and other high traffic areas. The last I saw was of a fish tank projected onto the floor in a children's area, As soon as a foot is placed into the projected area, the water ripples and any fish in the area immediately swim away. There's instantly a pop-up of a small ad beside the foot at this point in time. Another I came across another one in a book store where there was an entire book projected onto a wall, and you could manually turn the pages (of course you'd only be touching thin air), but the pages would turn and you could read ahead and backward. Again with associated advertising. Looked into the company that does this and came up with this link. Couldn't find any others. This kind of stuff is really going to transform interactivity whereever we go in the very near future. Will continue some more research into this and look into this more.

I have an external IMB drive that I've had for a while - it's a bit old, and I'd suffered a power outage once while I was de-fragmenting the drive. when I turned it back on, my laptop refused to recognize the drive (although it was coming on just fine and I could hear it whirring along in it's case). Tried it out on other friends' comuters too but with the same result - even tried it on a Linux system - disk mounts but nothing from there on). I've been looking at trying and sorting this problem out for a while now (since the drive contains about 8 GB of some of my most favourite music - the CDs of which were damaged a while back by a kid cousin). If anyne knows a way around this/ some way to access a drive through some way or the other/ I'd be really grateful. I went down to a hardware guy's place, but the rates he quoted me boggles the mind so much that I may as well buy a new External and start collecting my musc from scratch.

Dusting out the fan vent always helps a whole bunch. In fact, I actually carry out this operation once a month, but with a vaccum cleaner, since sourcing air cans are a bit of an up-hill task. since I'm in a dusty area, there's a considerable amount of dust that piles up in the vent. attaching the nozzle head meant for cornors is just right for creating enough of vaccum pressure within a focussed area, so that the vent is covered from one side and draws on the fan unit. Do remember to keep the computer switched off when doing something like this (if you try it) because it may just damage the fan if the vaccum is drawing in the opposite direction to the Laptop vent fan.

Most interesting - My granddad passed away from parkinson's and it isn't a managable thing to have. I'll be looking out for more iinformation on this. Been to a lot of old age homes too and seen the individual suffering that comes from Parkinson's. Even more promising is the fact that neurons can be triggered to grow in the brain. This by itself has a lot of future possibilities, for use against brain cell degeneration to perhaps helping brain caused retarded children.

Yeah - I can relate to that - I tried to access root in Apple (on a friends computer ) to get a feel for it and I just couldn't figure it out. Apple should be dished out to all corporate staff that constantly manage to get their Windows machines absolutely and totally ruined. More research on the Apple Mac required.

I actually gave Linux (Redhat 9) a shot for about a year on my personal Laptop. After getting through the initial furies of installing any new application (which is a bit of a process in itself) the going was pretty easy. The one and only downside were the broad specrum of applications available on the Widows platform - which were not (even comparable apps) available for Linux. this unfortunately drove me right back to Windows. I'm wholly in support of freeware, especially those developed by amatures & professionals just for the point of making supremely effecient products. I guess I may have to wait a while before attempting to switch completely over to Linux (or I can afford another computer to complment my present one). A Google OS that is free (I most certainly would not venture to purchase one unless it is massively cheap), and encompasses the positives of Linux, Windows & Mac - or be truely indpendent of these while being totally efficient - would actually be the trimming to the cake - as far as computing is concerned. I can actually percieve what such a scenario would b like - where you load a basic package (of the OS) from a floppy/ CD onto your drive - it automatically connects to a host that lets it download the entire Google OS through P2P (like a lot of other Linux distros are available through). It then provides a menu of every concievable application type pvailable and you just need to select the types/ ones you require and - again a download procedure that automatically configures the software. Free ofcost - efficient - automatically updated without leeching private information and secure.

I'm currently using Windows XP - but as far as Windows OS goes - I'd have to say that Windows 98SE was by far the best I'd every had. Infact - it never crashed once in the 5 years that I used it. Now, that's saying a lot for any OS. Also, it was very simple to administer - and considering it was the first OS I'd ever operated, it worked out just right for me. Then again, at that point in time I'd usually be using only one application at a time, since I was inexperienced at multitasking on the computer and I was also mainly concerned with content production on Word, using spreadsheets & where absolutely necessary presentation applications or web page design. Windoes 98SE never let me down with these. Again, the system I was using was 700 odd Megs of Intel CPU with a mere 128 MB RAM (which was great in those days) and to top it all - a 2 GM Hard drive. I have a bit of appreciation for Windows XP professional too since, now a days, I'm always multi-tasking with upto 10 applications open at any point in time, on a machine with 1 Gz processor, 55MB RAM & 20 GB hard drive. (and I'm not evenconsidering the 30 odd processess running in the background). The hang rate is pretty low and I'm yet to actually face a system glitch (which has required me to actually have to dig into the system to figure what went wrong). Windows XP has been doing me great service for a good 5 years odd now, and I've yet to actually suffer for it.

Well here's a credit card sized computer, and it packs quite a fair bit into the card sized space. link is here. A bit of reading some like this interesting article, will instantly point to the fact that technology as we know it is boutnd to undertake a mammoth leap towards stuff like utilizing atomic restructuring for data storage and computational power, as well as drawing energy from thin air by somehow tapping into atoms at the very basic quantum foam level. What we do know is that computers will reach their physical limits in miniturization in about 10 years - and by this time, all the basic physics of computing would have shifted onto new platforms. This page outlines historically how the thought towards quantum computing came about and this Caltech page outlines what quantum computers are all about. A more detailed understanding can be found here where the mechanics of quantum computing are looked into and various theories for actually programming a quantum computer are talked about. Its very interesting to see that a quantum computer would be able to perform the regular tasks currently undertalen by normal physical transistor based computing systems from today as well as to provide additional information on the probability of an answer being different. Other than this, I have yet to come across any other form of computing that would be immediately viable to our world in the near future.

A point to note here. The basic reasoning behind WMA & WMV were to restrict change of format and to enable advanced features where copyright may be protected. Also, when dealing with Windows formats, it becomes necessary to utlize appropriate software - most of which is not free. Now Freedom to do what you want with any item once it's on you computer is what makes say an MP3 file so much more popular than a .wma file. Similarly, if someone sends you a small video - it's pretty likely to be and avi or mpg instead of wmv - because if you want to play around with it - whammo - you're sitting on a bundle of problems from the point of view of applications which will handle it. I mean like I even have come across one wma file where you HAVE to watch the whole movie from start - it disables the jump forward feature by dragging the progress bar forward. I mean like how silly is that? Also try opening a wmp file into VirtualDub if you want to say recompress it into a format you're more comfortable with - that's a no-no. That is why, windows released formats do not do all that well. I'ts because of the lack of freedom to do what you want with it once t's on your computer. sooner or later it's going to catch up with Microsoft and bite it hard. Because of a person's natural instinct that draws a person to something that is free and versatile instead of being attached to a cost and being restrictive. Currently, the reason why MS apps are so very popular is because it is restrictive - and the fact that a kitten can begin operating (other than my mother who looks at a computer and just shies away). MS actively encourages corporates to utilize it's products with the extra 'helping hand' of support being only a call away - and the fact that since MS actively encourages schools and educational institutions to teach on it's software, manpower automatically adapts to using MS - and therefore are more acceptable to moving towards MS and specifically Windows formats.

I actually didn't know and hadn't even considered the fact that a hardware upgrade would cost me a possible failure in Windows OS. Where I'm coming from is that to date, I have always worked off a laptop computer, but I have been considering a purchase of a desktop for home - something that I can actually leave on for extended periods of time without having to worry too much about it. The responing I had about purchasing a desktop was that I'd be able to go about upgrading my hardware whenever I required myself to do so. And for the sake of convenience to my family, who require a whole bunch of handholding with computig, I'd considered windows as the OS of choice. The frightening thing is that once Windows has been loaded - (a purchased version), should I want to change the HDD, I'd actually have to purchase a new version of Windows along with it - (say I do not want to retain my old HDD) - or (if I swap HDD with another machine - it'd probably not work since Windows would not recognize the rest of the machine configuration). how stupid is that? Good point for Linux. My only problem with linux is that configuring a wireless CDMA internet modem is not readily supported by the primary service provider on anything other than Redhat (I suppose it would be supported but I personally have to have someone show me the ropes of how to connect to the modem on something like Debian - most internet tutorials have never helped - and I had to swtch right back to Windows a while back because of this). But that was for my laptop, now, for my desktop purchase - I'll probably want to look at Linux - as long as I can sort out the internet connectivity. Need to do more research and learning.

Just gave Sketchup a go and I think that it's great to have a 3D software available that's right for the masses (the masses being myself). First of, it does not spew out the aura of being overly hightech and especially does not seem threatening. At first glance, it reminds one of a paint program, except that it's control functions are mostly 3D related. Now, I've not done any 3Dmodeling myself, so starting up this program for the first time held some aprhensive moments, but then jumping right into the application to try out a few basic models came as fluidly as drawing with a pencil. If you've not tried out 3D modeling before, now is a great time to give it a go with Sketchup. I think I'm going to try and design my dream home - on a different planet.

Virtual or not, I do think Google does have the funds to invest in massive amounts of storage. More importantly, I do think that Google has the funds to put into R&D into developing cutting edge quantum computing and quantum information storage (as a much more future proof technology). Resources of course should hardly be much of a problem seeing that Google's Fy'05 results post $1.46 billion in NET earnings; playing around with that kind of a war chest has got to put Google on the path to getting the best in areas it focusses on.

Personally I'd go in with the recomendation to use GIMP. First of all, it's free. The great part is that it's features are very much similar to using Photoshop (although you may miss a few of the neat cropping features that are available on Photoshop untill you figure out the equivalent on GIMP). Most features are readily available on 'right click' as well as through shortcuts, so you won't really have to go about mucking about looking for feature. Install the help files (available sepeerately from the site) and it'll quickly set you on the right path to most of your queries.