kaputnik

Yeah, I know where you;re coming from... I use office 2003 myself and I really pile onto all the custom animation of the slides.. then I head out to office and wham, it's all gone to the dogs..!! I mean even all the office laptops have 2000 on them so presenting to clients is a bit tricky if I've worked on something at home and then transferred it to one of the office laptops because I never know when something's not going to go the way I want it to.. really a bit much...!! The new office layout seems very basic and quite plain.. but maybe that helps out in attracting users, and especially useful at not scaring away new users.

Been a bit of a while since I've visited this thread, and I actually went and made a link to 4ppl.com because I thought it'd help the cause in some way.. AND.. I've actually had friends call me up and ask what I'm getting for having that link on my index page.. lols.. will promptly redirect to Xisto.. seems a lot more logical anyhow..

I have a complete spreadsheet tools e-book somewhere.. will hunt it down. Check your PM's for my private mail ID - send me your mailing ID so that I can e-mail you the spreadsheet e-book. you'll need to do a search through the e-book, but if what you're asking for is possible - then I do believe the e-book will be able to sort out your problems. Lemme start digging... Rashid

Hey there Darkool, this is some intereating news. The planet is covered with electrical wiring and it would enable a whole bunch of computers to get online if something like this got off the ground. WiMAX all set to roll out early next year, with average speeds of upto 1mbps, so that would really nullify the need to be wired at any location what soever. Especially since the developers of WiMAX are considing setting up their network alongside exsisting cellular networks. WiMAX is a lot like WiFi, except that the speed of transmission is a lot faster and the coverage area for one base is around a 10 km radius. Do post a link to any article you may have come across on the Matsushita Electronics announcement. Would really like to read through it.

It's really great that there's an initiative of this sort to provide children from across the globe - those from the underprivilidged sections of the global society, access to computing and the internet. I read through some of the reports on the pilot projects and found that this could be the next big revolution in human evolution. Education and more specifically the tools towards self education have been constantly denied to the poorer sections of the global human massess. In India, there are TV and radio programs sponsored by the government that provide education lessons through mass media to inculcate some form of self learnning. But, the efforts to make available a tool like serious computing power, to children 9who automatically have inquisitive minds) looks like the start of a great adventure in a more educated human race. Really an applaudable undertaking.

This article put me right into aggressive research mode. Global warming, greenhouse effects and human interaction with the environment has for a while now (nearly as long as I can remember), been on the forefront of news, debates and other hullabaloo. In my quest towards further understanding our environment, the conflicting views, the raw and processed data..etc.. I’ve come across some very interesting facts, figures, notions and concepts indeed. Before you read any further, I suggest you do the following: Grab a rugged mountain backpack order some sort of all weather fire lighting gadget like this (Check this out), put in all the essential survival gear, read up a bit on all weather survival and food gathering and finally be prepared to head for the hills. Before I get along with making wild conclusions, let me review in short some of the material I’ve recently had the chance of coming across (all of it on the internet – most of it all referenced to research data). Global Warming: Our understanding – that of the common person, of global warming is that we humans pollute the air with carbon dioxide, which accumulates in the atmosphere, trapping in heat from the sun (caused by light bouncing of material surfaces causing heat which is not dissipated thus becoming entrapped in the atmosphere – making things really warm). Global warming is this and more. Sure, global warming is caused to a certain extent by the green house effect, but that is a natural occurrence that has been happening on this planet since the planet’s forming an atmosphere. The greenhouse effect essentially traps heat within our atmosphere because of the composition of the atmosphere itself. That’s something that we all understand. However, it may be that human involvement in creating excess carbon dioxide, thus directly affecting earth’s temperature is miniscule indeed (appx. 0.2% to 0.3% of all the carbon dioxide released every year)< data here>. Now, looking back at earth’s history (through the study of ice-core samples from Arctic and Antarctic ice stations), scientists have come to the conclusion that earth may actually be going through a “normal” phase of heating which occurs in cycles. These cycles occur every 40 years, 400 years, 20,000 years, 40,000 years and a 100,000 years. As far as my understanding of the studied research goes, there are small troughs in the weather pattern with temperatures dropping every 40 years , with the over all temperature forming a deeper trough every 400 years and so on where there is a massive drop in the trough in the middle of the 100,000 year cycle. However, at the end of each trough when the temperatures do rise, there are dramatic changes in the Earth’s environment. < Some Timelines > Now, cool brisk air is all right, but imagine the famine, hunger and worldwide disaster if the world suddenly became covered swathed in humongous sheets of ice and glacier..!! Life really would become inconvenient then. But we shall come to that in a bit. Lets look at the other reasons why our planet tends to heat up (since that is what all the fuss is about all the time). We definitely have the sun and Earth’s rather elliptical orbit to blame. And, in cycles matching exactly to the figures mentioned before when there are drops in the temperature, is when the planet moves away from the sun a bit or there is some kind of solar activity. There are also a great number of variation is the amount of white material available on the planet at any given time which reflects heat building light. (Also given the fact that polar ice is melting, we’re going to have less of the reflective stuff around). There’s also the shifting of continents and thus resulting in the change of course of ocean currents that play a major role in the heating of the planet. < Loads of infor on global heating and iceages> Results of global warming as I see it: The heat is building, we all know it and there’s not too much we can actually do about it. It’s what is bound to happen that is scary, shocking and in terms of self preservation, absolutely mind blowing. First: Heat buildup – whether caused by humans of not ( most likely this is an uncontrollable phenomenon caused by all carbon bio-forms together) will result in the polar ice melting. Polar ice melting will immediately result in a lowered reflective profile for the north hemisphere. Result – faster heating. Second: The rising heat will cause methane hydrates on the ocean floors to melt and release tremendous amounts of methane into the atmosphere. According to the US ocean drilling program there is about 200,000 trillion tones of methane hydrate (US shores) on the ocean floor < Lowdown on methane hydrates > (good news if we learn how to tap it since it would cover world energy needs for the next few thousand years). Also, methane is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and one pound of methane hydrate can release 160 times its volume in gas. All that methane released into the air because of warming water will cause a flash build up of heat, overpower life-forms that survive on oxygen and bring about massive firestorms over ocean stretches. Third: With the above two happening, the ice caps will further melt causing the ocean levels to rise by 20 to 30 feet. If you’ve ever put a few cubes of ice into a glass and then poured water into the glass you’d have noticed that ice floats. You may even have guessed what’s on my mind. The Ross Ice Shelf. < The Ross Ice Shelf - more on it> What would happen is that the suddenly rising waters, other than totally flooding countries like Holland and Bangladesh, will crack the Ross Ice Shelf off the Antarctic Continent and form the worlds largest and potentially the most deadliest ice cube ever. Why I say deadly is because, a mass of ice that large, pushed into the ocean my prevailing currents would cause the Earth to shudder, wobble and finally topple over by about 90 degrees. Result - instant doomsday. There would be Earthquakes the likes humans have not seen, floods which Noah would only understand and shifting of landmasses that planets being built would only undergo. And you wonder why so many countries are so aggressively gunning to find water on Mars. Yes, now you probably understand the underlying fears. As of now, we’re stuck on the planet. An Ice age – Another world a-coming. Right, so all this catestrophy occurs. What’s the result?? Well immense fractures int eh Earth’s crust would cause innumerable volcanoes. These would thrust very large amounts of dust and soot into the atmosphere, completely blocking out most sunlight for a great many years, suddenly chilling down the planet. By the time the dust settles, any survivors would be facing a full blown ice age, to be overtaken by global warming in… say about another 100,000 years perhaps??!! Some of the reading I did to come to the above conclusion:

Now that's a really well written article for sure.. sort of reminded me of Mark Antony speech in Shakespere's Julius Ceasar.. "I come to bury Ceasar, not praise him.. and Brutus is a wonderful guy...!!" In our every day lives it is not just software that is getting easier to use and the very basics are completely ignored. But, if we look through human history, we'll also notice that as humans, we leave primary learning to people who have thought about primary learning and most of us go about learning from them. For example, when we learn how to drive, all we learn is how to steer, a bit about the pedals, lights and other gizmo switches.. how many of us would go to the extent of learning how to fix the distributor if water got into it?? okay.. may be that was too complex.. How about another example.. most us have used a cart of some kind at some point of time.. but how many of us understand the very basic geometry that goes into making a wheel.. even though we're all taught at school - exactly how to draw, measure and design circular and cylindrical objects. The miserable bit about life is that the human brain is only equipped enough to take in a cirtain amount of learning.. and for any kind of progress to take place, we as humans (I'm talking about the average person with an IQ of between 90 and 130), have to learn from other's learnings and simplify future work by building on foundations built. As long as the few retain knowledge about how to maintain the very basics - the general populance will progress at an astonishing pace... and ignorance of the basics of each relm will continue to spread. NO, I'm not advocating the spread of ignorance - there's no excuse for not learning as much about everything as possible. BUT look at it this way. Hundreds and thousands of people across the globe use a microwave oven every day. And the use of a microwave oven is relatively simple - yet - nearly every user makes one critical mistake - they inadvertantly put in some foil which instantly starts to fizzle and burn as soon as the microwave is turned on. The need to learn only comes from making mistakes, and unless a mistake is made, we as humans are not prepared to take things seriously and learn about the basics about anything. On the software front: I truely believe that MS in its software (and they do have a convenient, easy to use GUI) should have some sort of tracking mechanism where as soon as a person logs on, a scan is made of the person's computer to automatically identify an erring malware and warns the user - proceeds to shut down the internet connection and provide manual instruction to the user on how to get rid of, and further how to prevent the installation of malware/ trojans/viruses... or else - with all the money they have made over the years - just provide a computer scanning service for free that id's and rectifies all malware on computers that use Windows automatically online.

Evolution theory dictates that organisms with biological systems change through time in response to pattern changes that affect the organisms, in the immediate or even the indirect environment. This essentially means that anything that is animate or has life should in the course of a few generations evolve to better blend in its functions within its environment. The recent outbreak of disease in India like Japanese Encephalitis (http://news.trust.org//humanitarian/) and in Singapore like Dengue; and of course the spread of SARS indicate how organisms at the lower order range (simple organisms with one or few cells), evolve at a much faster pace in reaction to even the most minute changes in their environments, then their much more complex counterparts. In reflection, it got me thinking that evolution is a process not only of natural selection, but also a designable and planable scenario. We humans consider (and possibly rightly) ourselves to be the most advanced form of evolution on the planet. This since we have visible and tangible results of our evolution evident across the globe; and, because we are mostly able to control the environments in which we live in to a great extent. An article I recently came across (http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_9565.shtml/?gtnjs=1) tells of how the human brain is constantly in a state of evolution, and how major changes in the brainâs structure and makeup, and, possibly functioning have coincided with dramatic changes in human social environment. Like, there was a possibility of mass changes to the evolution of the brain when humans first began to grow crops through agriculture (defining a quantum shift from the nomadic thinking required to hunt and forage to the more settled and social shift to locational dominance through development of land and the harnessing of nature to produce food instead of going hunting or foraging like the rest of the biological environment). Now, my thought is that: how about making evolution an active part of our lives. Perhaps we are geared to forge ahead with our natural evolution by making a conscious effort to evolve. Learning is a part of our everyday lives â especially so during the early years of our life. Perhaps we ought to bring about the thought of conscious evolution into human minds at the very school level, so that by the time children grow up, they automatically make an attempt to learn, they automatically attempt to make a conscious effort to hear better, see better, learn better, think better, utilize physical and mental human resources better. Perhaps as adults, the thought process ought to be self evident. As humans, we automatically compete with one another for resources from the very basic like food to the most complex like having the very latest in gadgetry. Personally evolving, may institute a change in everyone to collaborate â overcome world hunger â develop technologies in a collaborative environment instead of a competitive one. Perhaps it comes down to our very competitive spirit. We as humans are naturally competitive â so are every other living organism, and competition within ourselves as well as without is what drives the evolutionary process. So, how about we all compete as we normally will in our lives â but consciously compete to evolve. Perhaps that is the momentum required to jump into the next human realm of creativity and progress.

Well there's WiMAX coming out soon, and we should see products supporting WiMax in the market very soon, possibly by mid next year... WiMAX is the IEEE 802.16 standatd for wireless communications, mainly broadband commuications capabilities over long distances. Information on this is available at the WiMAX Forum (here). Basically, WiMAX will enable us to roam freely within defined areas (very much like the cells within which we may roam in while using our mobile phones). In fact, in India, there are companies planning on rolling out WiMAX solutions alongside mobile phone operators so that exhisting infrastructure and permissions can be taken advantage of; as early as Feburary next year. At present, the company I work with is in talks about managing the next WiMAX forum in New Delhi the following January (2006), which will be attended by the who's who of the decision makers in the WiMAX forum. Also, they are planning on showcasing WiMAX oppurtunities within India, and spreading from here, to the rest of the World at a rapid pace. There are numerous companies developing WiMAX technology, amongst which are Intel and Beceem. The next time you hop onto a train, coach or cab in India, hopefully you'll be able to take your office work with you, tele-converse through WiMAX VoIP and watch a streaming movie while on the move. Exciting times ahead I think.

My office computer does not seem to recognize any image file for some odd reason.. so I went and downloaded Pisca as my tool for searching for, organizing and doing simple retouching to images. The reason I require an Image search program is because I download upto a hundred pictures a day, all of them of course free to use, and most of them used in some form or the other in artworks, creatives or in the numerous presentations I seem to churn out everyday towards developing new business with prospective BTL spending clients. Pisca has prooven very helpful as a tool towards quickly finding and locating pictures that I require. It sorts pictures according to the date it was saved to the computer, by file name, by folder name as well as by keywords that have been attached to the file. Frankly, if you manage images in a structured folder, and maintain it every now and so often, there's little need for an image management software on your computer. However, if you're in a high pressure environment and need to locate perticular type of pictures fast and through a visual medium, then the sorts of Pisca is definately recomended.

Well I don't quite remember any of the hoopala about the time Win95 was launched.. I'd just passed out of school and was headed into college, and the truth be told.. I really didn't know much about computing.. in-fact.. at that point in time, I didn't even have an e-mail ID.. but at college we had to really get into using computers.. loads of projects.. so then it was just use document editors... lol.. I actually just used notepad and thought that it was really cool.. :-)... then I graduated to Word.. and I learnt my first shortcut keys.. wow.. was I excited.... The thing about Windows Vista is that, although well publicized.. there are already enough windows versions around.. So people with computers already have an OS to run... also, businessess that have invested in an OS will want to wait a reasonable amount of time till they replace their OS. So, although there will be a moderate rush to purchase Vista, there I don't believe there is going to be a 'mad' rush..

Well calling the Human Race advanced is a bit of the ego running wild now isn't it... When we look at the timeline of The Universe, it's easily recognizable that life has had billions of years to evolve and spread throughout the universe... The Universe is suoopsed to be 15 bn years old.. Our Sun and the Solar system were born about 5 bn years ago.. (point - other star systems which may support life have had a good 5-8 billion years headstart to develop).. After the sun was formed and the solar system took shape - it took a mere 1.2 billion years for the earliest lifeforms to become created on planet Earth (ref). Should other planets around the universe have life, and there are appx one million planets in the Milkyway alone according to 'The Drake Equation' - Drake and Carl Segan, then it's pretty likely that they have had a tremendous head start towards developing life. Even is we suppose that there is a skew towards the development of lifeforms, and looking at planet Earth, we've taken 3.8 billion years to get to life as we know it in it's present state; there must be a higher end to the skew where life may have evolved at a much more rapid pace owing to conditions much more conducive to the evolution of life. Now in most environments for life to exist, there is competition for resources. competition of any sort forces life to evolve so as to overcome its difficulties, cut out a niche in its environment and thus further eveolve. Luckily for human beings, we've had to face huge odds due to our very construction which does not let us rely on any 'advantage' in a hostile environment; forcing our brains to evolve, and our physical shape to eveolve in a manner in which our physycal beings complement our ability to utilize our brains far more effectively than other creatures. Now, should there be life out there in the Universe, and even if it is plant form (and life could be of forms and dimentions not even known to human beings) they will most likely be multiple forms of life in any environment capable of supporting life. This will automatically lead to competition for resources and therefore all lifeforms in the environment will be forced to eveolve. If there's even one life that's forced to eveolve (or is naturally capable of evolving) faster than the human race (and we've evolved in 600,000 years since the first *person*-sapien, and looking at the timelines of the universe, that's like a second); then we most likely have a few (I would say a great many) evolved complex lifeforms capable of technology which is eons ahead of ours. The only way to conclusively prove that life exists in the Universe (other than here on Earth) will be to find it. As soon as we do, we as humans will be forced to evolve at a faster rate - even if the life found is inferior to ours, we will 'know' that there has just got to be some more life there which may be superior. And then the playing field would have become larger - spanning galaxies, and we will have to become superior - just to control resources. I think that's what life is all about - control, intellegence and knowlage - overall the simple act of eveolving to a higher form.

It clearly defies logical reasoning that the creator of an object/program.. or anything.. should be responsible for the end usage of the item. Lets look at a few cases/ideas... 'It's round and about the stone age when this bright young fellow, who's been reposing against a sloping hill, looking up at the sky with a buddy of his, finds he has nothing to think about. Suddenly, just then, a boulder (very round) loosens itself fromt he hill face and rolls by these guys. The guy's buddy (lets just call him buddy) suddenly gets the thought.. "Rolling stones, gather no moss", and goes on to become the forst ever philosopher...! THe bright young fellow (buddy's friend) however, thinks.. "A stone rolled by". He goes home (a beautiful cave on the hillside).. has himself an excellent stew and beans... lies down on his bunch of dried leaves and thinks some more "A stone rolledby us today... it was rolling.. it was kinda round.. never seen a square stone roll, although it just may"... So this bright young guy goes onto the hillside with the boulders and finds himself a stone that's not round at all... and tries to roll this down the hill.. it stops right after the second tumble.. he tries again.. it stops right after the first plonk... He's got it.. "Not round stones do not roll" so if you lie on the hillside under 'not round stones' you're unlikely to get run over" .. So that evening he communicates to everyone in the community that 'not round stones will not run you over' After about a year this same fellow was still thinking about 'not round stones', when he rememembered the original incident of the round stone... Then he figured, that if round objects roll, then he could probably fabricate a round object from ..say.. a block of wood, using a sharp piece of stone.. so he does it.. and it works.. and he show's off his new toy to the whole community.. They all like it and they all try it.. His best friend, who's a little raw using a sharp stone gets it all wrong and ends up with a slightly narrow cylinder.. and he's also a little lost trying to balance his new toy so he makes a hole in the center and puts a bent stick through the hole.... Viola.. "Inventor of the first wheel"... NOW.. is this guy responsible for all the lives lost during all the wars throughout himan history, when wheels have been fitted to carrages, used as torture machines to stretch people during the inquisition, fitted to multiple barrels to get a gattling gun, fitted as the running platform for tank treds.. used to run over people and road kill in every-day accidents...?? I think not... what evolved as a simple wheel could be the worlds biggest blunder.. Simple fact.. the Microsoft Windows Media Player.. may be used to 'rip' copyrighted music form CD's.. Ripped copyrighted music may then be shared.. "that's criminal" isn't it.. maybe Microsoft should be held responsible for allowing its software to be utilized for ripping copyright music.. and since they are present on about 80% of the world's machines.. maybe they should be taken to court right away.. Nope.. I think not..!! It's the end use of a product that makes the right and wrong... From then on, it's highly debatable about what is right and what is wrong...

Weiser.. it depends on how many people are online and which time zone they are in... Usually, you'd get a very prompt reply around 9pm IST (-5.5 hrs for GMT) when most of Asia is getting out of office, or are home, and most of the west is just into office or are around that time of the day when no one has much to do and promptly come online to look around... as for myself... I come online at all odd hours just to take a brain break.. Now on your problem... I've used Frontpage Professional on the Office XP package and I do believe the installation is a full featured version. Any upgrade will most likely give you bug-fixes although I can not confirm about feature enhancements... For HTML editing, Frontpage does a good job... if however, you want to do other scripting in VB, Java or want to do CSS and play around some more.. go with dreamweaver... Once you get the hang of HTML.. you'll just see the page developing in your head as you code so even a test editor will suffice... All the best..

Making those few extra posts a day sounds like a really good idea... What I originally did was install PHPNuke through Fantastico.. but of course.. there was the space issue.. so I downloaded the latest free version and played around with it a little bit... Basically, all you need to do is delete all the language files that you will not be utilizing in the package as well as remove all the additional images that come along with the languages.. like flags and stuff.. then also remove the templates that you're not going to use.. all of them if you're using your own (in which case you'll have to add your personal template - although you'll want to do this after you have gone through with the installation since the installation process utilizes the default template).. After having deleted all these unnecessary files, the package size comes down to around 12 MB.. and it runs pretty well too.. Infact.. it comes down quite a bit more than 12 MB... since the 12 MB that I have is after I've installed an image management module into the PHP Nuke.. But.. like Logan says.. it always pays to have those extra megs available since as soon as you start using the Nuke site... uploading content, the forums and especially images.. then you're going to begin chocking up those mits really quick.. :-)

hey hey hey... :-) never a good idea to give up.. I'm really sure you'll figure it all out.. keep at it and one day.. "Viola"... you'll realize you have your site up just the way you like it.. All the very best... Rashid

Hummm... Widgets sound really quite interesting... its bound to be useful having a program hanging out on your desktop telling what the weather is going to be like when you've a happy... all by yourself picnic planned out.. On a more serious note.. there's other possibilities that widgets may have in the future... plugged in, in a p2p format, it could enable updating of any sort of information across the globe in real time... imagine for a minute that you're logged online and you need to find out the current rate of lentils (don't quite know for what) in Jakartha in Indonesia. Now if widgets were to get plugged into your Yahoo Messenger or into a p2p software, all you would have to do is type out a query and select a region, where you want the information from, and anyone participating in widgets in their messenger or other p2p software would be handed the query; and you'd be instantly connected (quite annonomously) with someone who may be able to provide you with information about lentils through widgets... and the lentils information would become available 'under a defined lable' in the widgets.... the enormity of it all is that compared to static information that may be minutes, hours or days old, information through widgets, could be instant, and live.. the only drawback is that there may be a lot of false information that may have to be weeded through... although this could be overcome by some sort of grading of information by local peers... for instance... if someone from Jakartha posted the price of lentils as $20 a kilo, and the real price is $1.2, then local peers could also post alternative prises (more correct) while ranking each other's prices.. so the price with the best rank would most likely be the most relavant informations.... Tremendous potential...

Holy wow, now that's called being lucky. I mean like the woman must be crazily light to have floated down like a feather. Other than that, she must have been 'Mary Poppins' who fell asleep on the way down and forgot to land on her feet. On a more serious note, if there was a fast flowing convection current in the area in which she fell, then the warm (or in this case really hot) air would have been rising fast enough to have de-acclerated her desent towards the ground (and mind that anything falling towards the earth would be acclerating at a speed of 9.8 meters per second); so that she slowed enough before impacting with the ground to make the fall seem like it was from a 2 -3 story building. The reason I though about this was because: like most people know, there are hail storms every so often. This is caused by light little droplets of water being raised by convection currents to higher altitudes where they cool and freeze, then they drop to a lower altitude and mix with more water particles; when all of a sudden they are raised up to a higher altitude and re-cooled - over time they form sizes from marbles to footballs and some have been known to become much larger. This way, convection currents do have the lift necessary to de-accelerate an old woman who may have been light enough for such a current to slow her descent down to the ground enough for her to have survived.

I had Google desktop search for a while and I found it quite helpful while I was using it. This was with my previous employer. I joined the firm to find that there was a huge history of files, relating to all sorts of stuff that could be and was actually useful to me. Unfortunately, nearly everything was on seperate computers. What I did was to dump all document, spreadsheet, presentation and media files onto the server into folders dedicated to the perticular type of files. Then I installed Google Desktop search and let it index the bunch of files.This was especially helpful to anyone, who needed to find files that may have reffered to ground level advertising events etc... on finding the file this could be instantly transferred to the person's individual computer. As a document management software it has a few failings. Although the corporate version does have search capabilities across a network, this instantly becomes an expense, that individuals of small groups can not easily afford or access.As soon as one is willing to pay for a software, it always makes the best sence to go for the best, and with a little bit of investment, a software called ZyLab can be implemented. Now, this is like a mother of all desktop, network as well as intra application search program. Primarily, the program can be run as a stand-alone desktop version, and, it can also be run as a network based search, through a server. Now, this software is not just geared to search for nearly all known file types, through the contents of each file type, but it can also do image and video search where there are key words inserted through xml tags, or the software can actually scan through the files to extract text, which may then be searched for. Also, the software is best suited for scanning and running OCR of huge ammounts of documents. Infact, the FBI used the software as a primary solution when they needed to feed reams and reams of documents and scan through it all during the investigation into the Microsoft case. Files can be searched with parameters and any file in whichever format, when located may be always automatically redirected to the searcher (anywhere in the world through e-mail or FTP) while the original file is stored on a central server. This server also supports multiple copying to support redundency; so if there's a fire and a whole building goes down , the data generated may be replicated in multiple locations acrosss the globe and instantly accessed.Google desktop search is great for the individual personal computer user, but for enterprise wide search and document management solutions, there's a lot of work that could still go into the software to make it the very best. But, when Google does manage a mega cool software like the type I was mentioning above, and, it is free, wow... that would be really the best... !!

Well I've been using Open Office for the last 4 months now, on my personal computer. There are a bunch of features not yet available in the Open Office suite like making the background tables dissapear in Calc while in Excel, something like this is quite simple. Also, since I make a huge number of presentations, and just about all of them require a good deal of animation and customization, I find a large gap in the available features and the simplicity of usage between Impress and Powerpoint. Other than that.. getting used to the various Open Office software was no problem at all, infact it all came quite naturally. Here in India, Acer has begun offering very cheap computers, fully loaded, with Linux and OO s/w, and a large majority of personal users are migrating to open source.

Frankly, human beings are naturally very curious. From the moment we're born, we're constantly seeking information and becoming aware about our surroundings. as we grow the further our awareness expands. During early infancy, a child may just be aware about the room it's crib is in. As the child grows, the home may become the all-encompassing world. Further development and age leads to going to school, learning a few basic routes, being bombarded by information, and, become ever more aware. Awareness of space and any area out of this planet's domain is just a natural extension of human (and I'm talking about the entire population of this planet as a single entity) spread of awareness of the world, the sky, space - our surroundings. Exploration does not 'just' extend to space. From ancient times, exploration has been assisted by technology and that is what defines the domain that humans are safely/ and ocassionally unsafely, capable to explore and discover. Ocean exploration is as much in its infancy today that space exploration was in the nineteen fiftys. The technology for safety under pressure, and being underwater at great depths simply is not feasable at the present time (not that its not available). So exploring space is a natural extension of the human ability to absorb informaiton at an exponential rate. The more we learn, the more capable we become, and the further we like to explore - to learn more. I occasionally have wonderded about why we're present on this planet in the form we reproduce into. An I've reached the conclusion that every living, and if you care to look into matter - even the inanimate - is in some form or the other, attempting to consolidate information as best as possible. Human beings have evolved/ or have arrived at the present stage of development, in a persuit of knowlage and informaiton assimilation. To cite an example - a single cell creature contains enough genetic material to consume food and reproduce by splitting itself. More advanced biologiacl entities like ourselves, have a much - much - higher degree of basic genetic knowlage and stored information, and, we're possessed by the ability to reproduce information, store information and utilize the information to gain even more information. The ability to derive more information from our surroundings, is what compells humans to explore.We often comment about the primary human driver being the sex drive (agreed that the sex bit of the chromosome is multiplied over on itself a great many times - something pretty unique to humans), but, I do believe, that a stronger drive - maybe even the strongest human drive is natural curiosity. And that is why we learn. That is why we want to know more about space. And space exploration is an extension of our world, into areas that have not been explored. We as humans, by our very nature - will want to , need to, and have to explore space. Even if it is "just to know what's out there"..!!

No by compile - do you mean ./configure followed by 'make' and finally 'make install'; or, do you mean some other procedure I'm not yet aware off...?? So far I've been doing the ./configure followed by make and install route. When I tried to install Kaffine it gave me some errors which I'll try and dishipher today after work... :-) I really wanted to go with Debian or Fedora but my ISP is is through a mobile connection and the service provider only has support for Redhat... Thanks for the inputs...

Thanks.. I'll run the command as soon as I get home from office.. and, will also get hold of win32codecs and compile these... Really hope to get things running today...

What I really have pondered about is.. while the previous universe collappsed in on itself because of gravity/ being squished by some other force, it must have had to exist in some space...!! okay so this space must have been large enough to contain the entire mass of the universe and increadibly strong to be able to support all the mass of the universe - whether in its present expanded state or as tiny as a pinhead. What do we call the containing space that holds onto the universe - especially when it was a little peanut, where was it contained. To give you a picture of what I mean - imagine you have a sheet of news paper (the universe) and you begin to crumple it making it into a ball. This ball you now put into a jar (the universe as we know it - the newspaper, is now contained in a jar). You take a stick and mash in the news paper till it's a little mass at the bottom of the jar (the universe is still held in the jar). Even if you manage to make the mass of paper as tiny as a pebble (it's still contained in the jar). After a while of leaving the jar by itself with the lid on, the newspaper willl un-crumple and expand (the big bang) and fill out the jar again. Yet, its filling out the jar right???!! So my big questions about the big bang and the universe is- What contains the Universe?? Some serious thinking and loads of browsing have not answered this question..

The last few days have been spent in trying to get .avi files (Previously encoded using DivX codecs in Windows). I've a collection of movies that I've backed up as .avi files and I'm out of options trying one thing after another. So far: I have installed Helix player & Real Player; I have the DivX4Linux files but do not know how to install these (unlike configuring and 'make install' since there is no configure file and there are not instructions either). Also, Xine player (Xine-UI) which I've finally got working plays VCDs DVDs and Audio CD's but does not play my other media files. !!??!! Need a bit of guidance here too. I'm using Redhat 9 with KDE desktop. I really would appreaciate some hand holding here. thanks...