X-Wes

The SphereXP is indeed available and is really quite fun to use. Try it out at http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/ I've been using it for quite a while now and I really like it. It's a great little toy, despite being underpowered for most tasks.

Well the site for Windows Vista is now up. Microsoft is at least moving away from various naming schemes that were, admittedly, quite sub-par. The original version numbering for Windows really wasn't too great for consumers. The year numbering idea really dated their programs more quickly than Microsoft PR could deal with. The tacky abbreviation idea (Me, XP, CE) would have been confusing moving forward. Choosing Vista was a good move.

Like finaldesign has already noted, you would do best to use a partitioning program that can work with your existing filesystems to prevent data loss. Most of these programs will have a "Resize Partition" option. Two of these programs that immediately come to mind are Symantec Norton PartitionMagic and QtParted.

Wow, I feel really quite humbled ;; My first computer was already very modern--it had an Intel 486 DX-2 running at 66 MHz. It had 8 MiB of RAM and a 550 MiB hard disk. The computer even had, in addition to its 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, a dual-speed CD-ROM drive.Sadly, I've had more and more trouble getting it to run what I'd like it to run recently. Especially as the Linux drivers for my CD-ROM drive fail, there is not much I can do with this relatively recent computer.

I was wondering whether the more comprehensive hosting plan uses up hosting credits more quickly. Surely there must be some sort of discrepancy between what is required for Hosting Plan 1 and what is required for Hosting Plan 2.As a bonus, do any of you know how much faster hosting credits are lost on Hosting Plan 2?

microscopic^earthling, you have been kept in the dark about what could be one of the best Windows apps I've ever used. PowerMenu is a great little program that adds the "Always on Top" option to the control menu of each window. It also adds various other useful features--I like the priority setting, myself. I hope that's what you need; good luck! See you on It's Really Cool sometime soon!

Oh. My. Goodness.Today I decided to take the plunge and move completely to a Dvorak keyboard layout. Yes, even this humble little post was painstakingly and lovingly crafted on a Dvorak layout. This is truly a massive pain to use, and I really, really hope this pays off.For those of you who have never tried a new keyboard layout, this is actually quite nutty. So much of the time, when you reach to type a letter, the key you actually press is the position where that key would be if you were on your previous layout. It drives me completely insane.Stay tuned for updates!PS: At least I type so slowly now that I catch nearly all of my spelling mistakes

I'm not totally confident that this will work, but here goes. Click Start, right-click My Documents, click Properties Go to the Sharing tab, uncheck "Make this folder private" Hit OK If that doesn't work, you will probably have to move any documents you want to share into the Shared Documents folder as opposed to keeping them in the My Documents folder. (It just doesn't make sense for a random user connecting to your computer to poke around in your My Documents folder anyway, Windows thinks.)

I have to admit that having a wizard is sometimes something that can be very useful to have on a piece of new and potentially hard-to-understand hardware. I love my Linksys WRT54G to death, and yet I still find that not having a wizard can result in not knowing about certain features of the router to the point of having trouble doing what needs to be done.As for Dlink itself, I have never been a huge fan of its interface. The look of the web interface is a little clumsy at times. However, as the previous poster has said, the Dlink routers get the job done just as well, if not better.I'm probably going to have to get a Dlink if I brick my WRT54G installing a random piece of Sveasoft firmware.

For a solution that doesn't require commercial software, I recommend SystemRescueCd. This is a solution that is based on a distribution of Linux. Thankfully, however, no knowledge of Linux is needed to run SystemRescueCd. As a bonus, SystemRescueCd even includes the program QtParted, a clone of PartitionMagic. Keep in mind that this process is a little longer than simply downloading a demo of PartitionMagic. However, the benefit is that you use truly free software and will have access to this software in the future. Having said all that, you should first download a copy of SystemRescueCd. You can download a copy from SourceForge by clicking any of the little icons on the right side of the page. Once you have downloaded this file (an ISO file), you'll need to record it to CD either by using Nero Burning ROM or a tool such as the ISO Recorder Power Toy. (If anyone reading this has any further problems, feel free to IM me or reply here.) After you finish recording to CD, you'll have a copy of SystemRescueCd. Keep this newly-recorded CD in your computer and restart your computer. If your BIOS is set to boot from CD, you'll see a penguin logo on your screen as the CD waits for its next instruction. (For those of you with BIOS settings that cause your computer not to boot to CD, please feel free to reply or IM, as before.) Simply press enter at this screen, and the computer will load the CD. After a bunch of text scrolls off, you will be left at a prompt with a page full of instructions. Simply type CONSOLE run_qtparted and choose "Auto-Detect" for mouse, and you'll be in the partitioning program QtParted. From there, the controls are somewhat intuitive. Simply click your existing partition, click the resize button, and choose its new size. Next, click on the empty space and create a new partition. If you are using Windows XP, choose "NTFS" as your drive type. For anything older than Windows XP, choose "FAT32" or "FAT" (whichever is available). Finally, just click "commit" and you'll be ready to go. I agree that this seems like a daunting list of instructions, but remember that I'm also detailing instructions I would have given had I recommended PartitionMagic anyway. I'll also think of posting a How-To about using SystemRescueCd based on this post sometime in the future. Good luck, everyone!

Wow, this is really amazing. I've been trying to move to Linux partially because installing Apache is a fun adventure on Windows, but this really looks promising. This will probably be useful for (if nothing else) installing and working backwards to see what things I've done wrong with trying to get a fully-functioning Apache installation on Windows in the past. Thanks in advance, Houdini!

Xevian, although the powerful players can pass avatars to their new accounts, these accounts don't gain impunity on the avatar-off servers. However, newbie accounts on the newbie servers do tend to be annoying at times. The solution is simple though. If you see a player with a thoroughly-overpowering avatar, find someone who isn't. Also, since gifted items cannnot be regifted, the spread of such things is largely controlled.

Well, now that E3 has come and gone, yes, I have definately heard of Revolution. We can only assume that Miyamoto will eventually create another Mario game to dazzle us. Unfortunately, Miyamoto seems to be spending more and more time on his other pet projects, such as the recently released Nintendogs. While such other games are wonderful, I would still like to see a nice, traditional 2-D Mario game. I hope those gyroscopic controllers don't replace the simplicity of having a button for run and a button for jump.I can't complain completely though--the Revolution will be backwards-compatible down to the Nintendo Entertainment System, that thing from way long ago. Far be it from me to complain that a game isn't as good as "Super Mario Bros. 3" or such, when I can download the classic and relive it any time I want.

Hi, everyone. After a long, long break, I'm back yet again.Yes, proxy settings are very unintuitive for Java applets. As I've recently cleared off my hard drive, I don't have Java VM installed on my computer. From what I remember, Windows users can change their default Java proxy settings from their control panel. Also, I believe that the Java VM can take the default Windows proxy settings from the control panel as well. Obviously, for those who only configure their proxies through Firefox, I'd bet that Java apps would run into a lot of trouble.I don't quite know what else to say for now. Combined with a good set of instructions, this applet should be very useful. It all depends how popular the IRC channels get.

That's true--SMF doesn't really lack anything from phpBB, so there really isn't so much of a reason to switch back to phpBB. Also, I agree that a tentative move for the users to experiment might be good as well.I didn't actually think of using different themes to simplify the look of the forums. I'll have to remember to include some instructions on choosing a theme in the forums so that users can choose a theme of their choice should the default not satisfy them.I will probably try to move users over to the new forums soon. Thanks again for your input, and I look forward to using only SMF for the forums on my account.

Hi everyone, sorry for being MIA for such a long time. I've finally been able restrain my MapleStory addiction just slightly. As such, I have a little bit of news to report, and I would also like to ask for a bit of help from IE users. I've managed to sign the applets (linked below), and I've been able to have them run much the same as they always have on Mozilla Firefox with Java 1.5.0. If a user were to actually read the box that pops up, that user would notice that this box is phrased slightly more trustingly to the applet. However, the box still appears. I am wondering as to whether Internet Explorer running the Microsoft Virtual Machine would get a scary message box when attempting to use this applet. If you are running a copy of Windows older than XP with service pack 2, I'd really appreciate it if you could test this out. The link to the page with the applet is below. Signed IRC applet Also, would such an applet be useful if we must ask every user who uses it to accept the applet? Viz and others seem rather incredulous of using an applet to access the IRC channels, yet to former Yahoo! Chat users like myself, this idea is just fine. Is the dialog box really intimidating to such a degree? Thanks in advance for your input; I'll continue to look for any other possibilities that may appear.

Well that explains a fair bit =P Without the certificate, the Java applet is not allowed to connect to other servers (namely Dal.net). Agreeing to the certificate is, unfortunately, a must. No, there is no application that relays the "stuff". A signed certificate, however, can grant permission for the applet to access other servers and such. The applet itself is just an application that could do all these things, but is limited due to security restrictions. A certificate allows the applet to do such restricted things. First off, thanks for clarifying the reasoning behind the IRC applet, m^e. You've managed to state my original intention in more precise detail than I thought was even possible ; Indeed, your idea sounds good--and as with all good ideas, it has been proposed by others as well. A small group of people on the PJIRC forums have suggested a method by which the applet could be signed. The process seems rather involved, so I have been procrastinating in applying it. If you do manage to beat me to the punch, m^e (or anyone else), I hope you'll find their forum topic useful. A link to this topic follows: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ If I do manage to get this signage working, I'll be sure to post what I have done. Please feel free to do the same

Exactly my reason for using it ^_~ I've seen JIRC, but I tend to shy away from shareware where I can get away with using a free alternative. Alright, let's try to tackle this by parts. --- Long, boring details follow According to the PJIRC website, the problem with IE can arise under one of two conditions. In one case, the security certificate with which PJIRC is signed is rejected by the user. This means that the user was presented with a dialog box and the user clicked "No". However, since this problem seems to be affecting both of you IE people, I'll assume that you replied "Yes" to any dialogs that appeared. (Correct me on this if I'm making a bad assumption... though I can't imagine why anyone would reject the certificate.) The other possibility is that I am referring to the Internet Explorer packages in the wrong way. There are packages in .jar format for most browsers running Java. These .jar files come in two varieties described as "signed" and "unsigned". Since we don't have access to dal.net, we use the signed packages to tell the users' browsers that this is safe. However, the .cab files that IE uses contain both the signed and unsigned files. I will be looking into how to force Microsoft VM to use the files in signed mode. --- End long, boring details vizskywalker, the differences between using a Java applet to chat on IRC and using a program such as mIRC are rather minimal. The idea is the same: user runs a piece of software, the software connects to the IRC server and channel desired, and the software provides a user-interface for the user. The Java applet is downloaded to the user's computer when the user visits the web page, and this Java applet is run off of the user's computer (inside the browser). The only major difference between using the Java applet (other than a really different user interface) is that there is no installation needed. You still fetch a program, run the program, and let the program connect your computer to the IRC network. It's just that the program is written in Java. Well time to see if I can't fix that little IE snafu that has cropped up. Wish me luck!

I've been considering the idea of setting up a web page with an IRC client Java applet. Instead of guiding users through the rather involved process of downloading a client program and using slash-commands to get onto #Xisto, a member could simply direct them to a link to click to open this applet. This applet would then automatically connect the user to #Xisto on DALnet. I've begun testing a Java IRC applet called PJIRC. This applet seems to be supported both on Internet Explorer and normal browsers. (The distinction here is that Internet Explorer will use .cab cabinet files instead of standard .jar Java archive files.) More importantly, here are some of the features that sound intriguing: No setup required by user Limited to DALnet Limited to the Xisto Network channels Can be banned by hostmask I'm currently playing around with PJIRC to see whether it's worthwhile. Try the applet out on my webspace here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. Even if there is ultimately not enough of a demand for this type of thing to be necessary, I'd love to keep this applet up just to make it easier for the general Xisto population to find our channels should they need it. As such, please leave a message below if you can think of anything that should be changed, fixed, or modified right off the bat. Thanks in advance! I don't mean to double-post, but editing has been disabled...so here goes. An update: Nakulgupta has been able to give the site a quick run in Internet Explorer. I would assume that he might use Microsoft VM. In any case, he couldn't get the applet to run. If anyone else has a similar problem, or any other problem, I'm definately open to fixes. Meanwhile, I will go and check some of my HTML syntax there, to make sure I didn't make an obvious mistake

Hi hast-webben,I wouldn't mind taking some time to lead you through the process of setting up your E-mail account. Please give me a PM if you still need assistance, and we can meet on MSN Messenger, ICQ, or something of that sort. Hopefully, we'll be able to pinpoint the step in the process that seems to be causing problems.You can find all of my contact information in my profile--just click my name to see it. Please be sure to PM me to let me know which instant messaging network you would like to meet on. (IRC and Jabber are not listed in my profile, but both are fine by me as well.)Meanwhile, I'd like to clarify: you've set up a POP/SMTP account already, and you've configured Outlook Express to use this account. Outlook Express gives you an error with an error code.I hope this message doesn't come too late for you. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

It really depends what type of music you would like to stream. MP3 music, for example, can be streamed very easily from a website, as long as your website visitors have a plugin or program that can do this. For example, I believe the Quicktime player is able to stream MP3s off a website. Also, if you're savvy with Macromedia Flash, you can create a small flash animation that plays music as it downloads. Simply set the music you would like to stream to the appropriate keyframe and choose "stream" as the behaviour. However, if you are interested in creating something a little bit more enterprising, such as an Internet radio station, I believe you'll need a server with different capabilities than what Xisto is offering. Generally speaking, though, if you just want to have a little music to play while others view a page on your server, the setup should be alright. As I'm not exceptionally familiar with the Terms of Service of Xisto, I can't tell whether streaming music off of this server to a web page on another server is legal. As far as I've been able to tell based on the combined TOS and AUP, there is no clause prohibiting you from doing so. I'm hoping that someone more familiar with the document can confirm this though. I hope that helps; feel free to send me a private message if you'd like some help setting up the coding your Xanga page

While I'm not that familiar with the spyware controversy surrounding eXeem, I do know that a lite version has been developed. According to the eXeem lite webpage, eXeem contains Cydoor, a program that is not fun, to say the least. Regardless of whether the official copy of eXeem has Cydoor or other spyware built in, I would rather have a slightly modified version of their program. In this way, if there is a backdoor to their program, it will be harder for them to work through my modified program. In any case, here are the links I've talked about above: eXeem eXeem Lite About Cydoor Since everyone else is chiming in with their choice of peer-to-peer application, I have to ask why nobody here uses BitTorrent. Though searching for a tracker that lists the file you're after may be a pain, BitTorrent is generally still very fast on a properly-configured system. Also, most of the good torrents are on a few select trackers anyways, and almost each niche has its own major tracker. I generally use TorrentSpy and TorrentReactor.

Thanks for the tip about shooter platformers; sounds like something that's worth a look when I get the time. I'm still playing around with MapleStory at the moment, but I'll remember that for when I need a break. Ouch, that's what I didn't want to hear ;; It's really too bad that there aren't many more of that type of game showing up recently. I do hear that there will be a game for Nintendo DS tentatively named New Super Mario Bros., though. Sadly, it looks like the home consoles just aren't 2-D friendly anymore. (And no, Super Smash Bros. in Adventure Mode isn't that much of a platformer, being part of another game, so that doesn't count for the purposes of this discussion.) I can't help but think that there still is a market for a standalone, two-dimensional, console platform game. This would be expecially true if they smack the title of some established character on the box. The nostalgia factor alone would be enormous. Would anyone else among you care to buy such a game, if it were to exist? Oh well, I shouldn't really complain that much. Super Mario 64 wasn't that bad at all. And if all goes badly, I can try my hand at some RPGs and other games. At least, that's the plan.

In general, the game is all get-your-feel and aim and shoot. Thus, it's probably a good idea to use a simple mobile at first. I suggest using Bigfoot if you're not too comfortable with aiming. All three shots (1, 2, and Special) have a relatively wide range. Thus, you can aim in the general direction of your enemy and examine the effect of the wind/gravity on your shot. Once you've become somewhat more familiar with shooting, you can progress onto mobiles with multiple shots or shots with odd behaviour. NakMachine's tunneling shot 2 is a great change from the ordinary, and A. Sate provides a completely different perspective of shooting an enemy. Of course, my favourite mobile is BoomerLauncher, but using that thing will really drive you up the wall. Unless you just naturally grow to love and embrace Boomer's quirks, this mobile is best left only for experts and novices who like the experiment. I lie firmly within the second group ^_~ So--get out there and start shooting. Don't get intimidated, and don't worry too much about EXP. Gunbound is a game, as is every other game. Have fun, and enjoy it for it's entertainment value

I tend to worry at times.Better integration between the various tools is a very desirable course of action, of course. However, I worry about Adobe's flirtations with program bloat at times. Macromedia has tended to make simple programs thus far, and the Macromedia Flash Player is one of the best plug-ins I've seen thus far in terms of ease/speed of installation and operation.I would hate, for example, to have an Adobe Reader and Player, for example, I use a relatively fast computer with good resources all around. I still cringe every time I see Adobe Reader 6 load when I click a link to a PDF. Imagine such a wait--or even half of such a wait--to load an SWF animation.Please prove me wrong, Adobe. For the sake of our Internet, please prove me wrong.