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I think it's nice, that such art & culture, which might be hard to find an interested audience for in your hometown can be promoted on the internet.But on the other hand, I often feel, that the internet put's a lock on my creative brain boiling. I mean have you never had an idea, that seemed great and innovative, you tell your friends and a week later you google something, to find some info and you find out that a thousand people already did it a thousand times. It really sucks for unique and funny names too. I mean, you invent the name yourself, but then you google it and there are already 7 crappy sites with the variations.It adds some difficulty to being creative, because you can end up easily being seen as a faker. I mean it's easy to pull of jokes and ideas and nicknames from weird locations on the internet and showing them off as your own. I sometimes notice people, who use stuff they read on bash.org as "their" jokes. Ok, you can't own jokes, but it seems a little poor to me to specially create certain situations in a conversation, so you can drop a line you read somewhere else..Don't know, these kinds of websites always make me think that it's really hard to have unique idea nowadays.

In layout you learn that you should use a serif font for headlines and sans-serif fonts for the texts. They also say, that you should be straight about your fonts, never use more than about three on a page (except maybe for some layouting statement..).Would you say that one can apply these rules to web design too?I would say that it is ok to use a more stylish font for headlines, but I would suggest to refrain from pictures of headlines with exotic fonts in them. One should stick to the standard fonts or at least have them as second choice. What are the standard fonts by the way? The ones I'd know by heart would be: Times New Roman, Verdana, Arial, Arial Black, Courier, Courier New, Comic Sans MS, Tahoma, Helvetica, Georgia.. But there might be fonts that aren't on Linux systems etc. Go Live has some standard font collections, that I use, meaning that I just trust that they got reliable combinations and move them in the order I want.I think there are techniques to embed a font in a CSS, anyone knows anything about that? Because some "exotic" fonts are really great and sometimes, you need a special kind (like Stencil fonts for me).interesting discussion!ruben

Yeah, in my eyes Google isn't there to give a tool of judgement for link-legitimacy. I mean this is definitively going to be used to cheat on link exchanges and ****. In Wikipedia for example, why shouldn't you get credit if your link is good enough to stay in place in an article? Google should show me the popular pages. And pages with links in popular places are popular! That's how the pagerank works.

I really don't get what you are trying to say. The rel="nofollow" can be applied to any <a href> link on any website. It does not mean that Google won't spider that site, it just means, that it doesn't increase its pagerank.You can stop all or some of your own pages from being spidered by using the robot.txt, but that's really old news. If you stop your guestbook from being spidered, that's a way too, but it's not the same thing. You would never want to do that for Blogs with comments on them for example, because if you don't let Google spider the comments on the page, using robot.txt you can only exclude the whole entry. That's what the rel="nofollow" is made for, but it can be abused too, to make legitimate links not heighten their pagerank accordingly!

Good morning! Most of you have probably heard about this, but I haven't found a thread concerning this here yet even though I searched a lot. Google introduced a new way to prevent link-spamming. By link-spamming they mean people or bots who purposefully link their websites in dozens of comment sites, wikis, guestbooks etc to increase their page rank. It's common among those who also spam emails so you can guess who: penis pumps, discount drugs and ways to become a millionaire. Google has had trouble with these fellows because this is hard to control. Now they decided to implement a new standard (very interesting that Google is setting the standard but Yahoo Search and MSN are just going to obey it.), that enables webmasters to mark links as worthless. This way the links don't get an increased page rank because of the link (it doesn't decrease either though). This topic has been discussed a lot lately especially on Wikipedia, another standard-setter on the internet, (The Wikipedia:Nofollow Page is a good example). Right now all links on the Wikimedia projects are marked no-pagerank except the links on the English Wikipedia (with the explanation that link-spamming would be noticed quite fast on such an active project). The way it works: The attribute rel is standard in Strict, Transitional and Frameset.It works in the following elements as far as it is compatible with the W3C specifications: <a> (normal link), <link> (Multiply applicable header tag) That leaves the tag <area> which specifies links in imagemaps and the tag <base> (well it would not be a of use there anyway) out, because they may not have the rel-attribute. I don't know if Google parses them all though, if anyone knows: tell me! The way I understood they just use it for simple links à la <a> only, because it was invented to prevent spamming blogs. Let's get to it: Blog owners and others are invited to implement user inserted links in the comments sections etc. this way from now on: <a href="http://someweb.site" rel="nofollow">I ain't gaining no pagerank</a>So you can just put in rel="nofollow" in all link tags that you wish to not gain any page rank. A quite powerful instrument.According to Google this is to prevent comment-spam in Blogs and the following Big ones have already signed on: The nofollow value for the rel attribute is also recognised if seperated from other values by punctuation (preferably standard-conform spaces).The rel-attribute was originally meant to show logical relationships between pages (together with its little buddy rev. rel was for logical forward-relations and rev for logical backward-relations.) The following values were possible But the nofollow tag is still valid. This excerpt was taken from the W3C specifications. Also interesting: How they express the use of rel/rev Well, so Google has been screwing with standards, just gave webmasters a powerful weapon to kill others pageranks and screw with Google's system and nobody is talking about it here? WHAT'S UP? I hope this incites a discussion. Best regards, Ruben

Hrmcht.. what are you saying young men? you have to speak a bit louder, my old ears aren't what they used to be, heheeee. Good Link to read - Wikipedia I think everybody must have noticed sometimes, that it hurts if you take out your earphones/-buds after having been in a loud environment and adjusting them and then put them in again. The reason is, as the Wikipedia says, that you don't feel the usual pain because of all the noise. Solutions to that problem are: not listening to music in noisy places (hell no) using closed headphones (worse sound quality, but less disturbance by and for others) using canalphones (damn expensive, if you want them right, but keep noise out) using Noise Cancelling Headphones (good for steady noise, but not for speech etc. Cancel noise out with noise...) Using earphones/-buds is a bad solution, because they don't isolate at all and you normally make it really loud. I've got these iPod headphones which different-size rubber cushions, they are supposedly canalphones, but they don't work that great of course. When biking, they work like a funnel for the wind, so that I get some ear tornado and don't hear the music. Plus I notice that I hear my in-mouth sounds much louder, like chewing, speaking, teeth-brushing or even breathing. Additionally I really dislike the feeling of having something shoved up my brain But I do listen to music on a lower level this way. By the way, wearing bonnets while biking helps a bit against the in-ear-tornados. I used to have these old DJ headphones from my father, they were really big over-ear headphones and really kept others out of my ears (DJs need that), but one contact broke, so I couldn't use them anymore. Weren't made for the street. Additionally you need some attitude to wear this kind of headphones, earphones are for the normal people, everything bigger needs some aplomb to back it up =) If you got that: great! Hear ya not, Ruben

Hi folks, I'm trying to realise a dictionary search, that means that I have got a row of words and I want to give out those that are similar to the search query. For example if someone searches for "slup" it should give out words like this page: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ but also terms like sluptastic, deslupnitration, slup brothers, the slup experience, sup, slu.. I'm a beginner concerning RegExp and well the "Like" request seems not to fulfill all my requirements. I know that in PHP, I could use the levenshtein function, but that is not available in MySQL is it? So many dictionaries use this kind of search, so there has to be some common way, could someone tell me which please? Thanks a lot, Ruben PS.: I thought of a very "rough" regexp request + sorting the words after similarity (as said by levenshtein function) and only giving out the 50 best ones or something.

Well, you seem to know Windows so let's start there: It is the operating system by Microsoft, it is the one, that most home users use and it is also the one, that most games and stuff are developed for (maybe after game consoles like PlayStation etc.). Windows is a pre-compiled system, so you install a finished package on your computer and it is supposed to work right from the start. It can NOT be installed on any computer, not Power PCs for example. The advantages of Windows: It is very common, so probably all your friends have one, this makes it easier to use them, for example for LAN parties etc. Most applications come out first for Windows (especially games and such, applications for creative work are always released for Macintosh too). The disadvantages of Windows: It is so common, that almost every virus out there is developed for it, so it is VERY vulnerable and if you surf the internet, you need extra software like Norton AntiVirus and a Firewall. It costs money. It is quite unstable compared to other operating systems. The software that it comes with is quite bad, so a good user will use nearly only third party applications. MacOS X: This is a quite young system by the company apple, it is based on the first system: UNIX (very stable), but unlike UNIX it has a GUI (Graphical User Interface). The current version is called OS X Tiger, it is also what I am using. OS X used to only work on special Apple Computers (the ones with the nice Design, iMac, iBook, etc.) but now they're making it compatible to the Intel-architecture too. The advantages of Mac OS X: Very good look & feel, they invest a lot in design and user friendliness. It is quite stable, because it is based on UNIX. There are not that many viruses. It comes with a lot of very useful applications (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iCal, Mail, GarageBand, Safari (Web Browser), that many of the users use, because they are so user-friendly and nicely designed). If you want to design and be creative (Programming, web-design, photoshoppin', Music mixing, etc.) then you got all apps that you need. Gamers get satisfied a bit more every day, since Mac OS gets more users, but still there are fewer games available. The disadvantages of Mac OS X: It is not compatible with all the HOT, NEW stuff like games, periphery etc. It is quite expensive. Linux: There are MANY variants of Linux, so you can't really describe the Linux. The important thing to know: It is available under the GNU license, which means: you can look at the source code, you may change it, you may use it, whatever and it is free (as in speech, but also as in beer). A linux system is not something that you plug in your computer and it justs works, you usually compile your version to fit your needs (there are precompiled version though). The advantages of Linux: You can adapt it to your needs very easily, it is getting better all the time and it's free. + you can help to improve it. The disadvantages of Linux: Well, there are near-to-no commercial applications for Linux and GNU-apps are usually a bit behind, because they are, well, free. No real incentive to spend all your time on it, eh. You have to learn how to use Linux if you are used to Windows. That's a very summed up version and there are a LOT more sides to the subject and also more OSes but these are the three most common and now you at least have an idea, what the differences are, so you can read on :-)

Well, DigitalDingo doesn't seem to be hosted anymore, but just in case that someone else reads this topic afterwards: It is a very bad idea to change site content using Javascript, because there are a lot of users with JS turned off or not even integrated, who would not be able to view your site properly. Also the function document.getElementById is not supported by all the old browsers, there are two alternatives: document.all (old Microsoft Internet Explorers) and document.layers (old Netscape browsers). So do yourself a favor and don't rely on JS for such essential things as showing and hiding content. If you do, then be sure to do it so, that the site is still viewable for those who don't have the JS support. In this case for example you could do it like this: <div id="firstpage"><a name="first">...</a></div><div id="secondpage"><a name="second">...</a></div><div id="thirdpage"><a name="third">...</a></div>and then you can dynamically hide the layers onLoad (be sure to set it up so that you use the DOM-model, the IE-model and the Netscape-model (getElementById, all, layers) to provide maximum compatibility.Btw. if you're worried that your index file might get to big, but you totally don't want to reload a page (which is stupid I think, but well.. there might be good reasons for this), you can make use of the AJAX-code (JS communicates with the server and gets the new content when it needs it. AJAX tends to get more widely supported, but it's still quite new! Oh and if you, DigitalDingo, are still wondering what to put for item, the correct syntax would be to call the function change, the following way: <a href="java script:change('the_id_of_the_element_you_want_to_show')">Show Second Page, hide old Page</a>Get it? Remember that's not so great code, if you really intend using something like this, post back and we can work something out.

Hi,maybe one of you already came across this, so I ask. I'll continue searching on.I've got two vocable trainers, one is Windows-native, the other one is on the web.While I can't control the output of the Windows-thing (so I can't export them to a *csv or something), I can write an import script. But since I'm not that great with Regular Expressions and don't know anything about *.mdb (that is MS SQL, isn't it?) files, I would need some finished thing to make out the field information and put it in arrays or something more readable. It wouldn't be that good if it was an OS-application, I'd like to implement in my website.Thanks a lot,Ruben

Well, I guess we all would have some difficulty gulping our own mothers, but they way I see it, there are a lot of things in our culture hat are just plain stupid.Like right now, most western cultures bury or burn corpses, which is one of the stupidest things I could ever think of. Besides rocketing them into space, probably a trend-to-be. I mean it's a waste of good, healthy meat and we even waste more energy on it to get rid of it.I can imagine that a 83 year old chain smoker would not make it on my favourite dishes list, but a teenager, that died from cancer in his best age could be some delicatesse. Of course we're far from such efficiency in our cultures, but I do like the way of leaving corpses to the animals or something A LOT better than the western stuff, which says to me mostly: Let's please get rid of this body, so that we will never have to see it again. This may sound cruel to religious people, but for me a dead body is just some flesh & bones. Of course you can be emotionally bonded to that body, but still, nothing is gonna happen with it anymore.I guess some of you have heard about the Cannibal from Rothenburg, Germany, they released a movie about it now. He found someone on the internet, that was willing to be eaten in exchange for the ultimate sexual kick (eating his own penis) and they did it. He didn't even want to kill the person, just eat him. If the person hadn't been psychically sick, I would have seen nothing wrong about that, but of course in this culture anybody that accepts to be eaten is sick.The cannibal got 8 years for manslaughter (they weren discussing it to be euthanasia or kill on request, but that was dismissed because of the psychic problems.The movie is banned in Germany by the way :-) Not because of its content, but because it might hurt the cannibal personal rights.While I'm not that peckish to eat someone, I can understand that he was (it was a thing of completely uniting with a person and practically absorbing him).Still a lot of things to optimise about our culture.

Hi. I swear last time I checked, the permissions were perfectly right, but now they were wrong.. Dunno, what I did, but now I fixed them and it works. Thanks for your tips anyway...Ruben

Oh, I'm sorry, my .htaccess made this go in the wrong direction. The file upload actually works fine (never tried more than 10KB though).It is completely other parts of my website, for example my shoutbox, which is an old script, using only text files, that are changed with PHP. For some weird reason it doesn't work anymore. I just thought the .htaccess file might be related to the problem.

Hello, I'm writing again today, because the issue remains unresolved and I'm getting really desperate about this. I have been searching the internet and asking experts, but no one can provide me with possible reasons other than broken connections in the site (caused by mysql_pconnect and no close). This is the Xisto - Support-Document in which they generously helped me quite often, but they are growing tired of it of course and I still can't find the cause for my problem. As you can read in the support document, I tried deleting all my databases and making my mysql-sites inaccessible. I just checked if it worked on a 100% working file twice. First time it worked and few hours later it was broken again. So unless there is something on my homepage that I don't know about (which I can't believe), then it must come from the outside somehow. I'm currently running my main MySQL-based page on another server, stable for two days now, so that I've reason to believe that the reason lies somewhere beyond my understanding. Anyone here who has experienced similar or who has an idea, what might be causing this? Please right the support-document too, so that you know what I have been up to till now. Thanks a lot, if anyone can help! Ruben

Hi puny humans, I'm getting error messages like this everywhere on my sites where I try to change text files using PHP, even though I thought the right permissions were assigned and it worked earlier. Do you have any idea what I did wrong? Maybe some setting in Cpanel that I screwed up or something? Or something in my .htaccess file? I sadly don't know the time of the screw-up, so I can't link it to my actions. I suspect something in .htaccess, that's why I post it here: php_value upload_max_filesize 70Mphp_flag register_globals offphp_flag magic_quotes_gpc offphp_flag magic_quotes_runtime offAddType application/x-httpd-php rssAddHandler application/x-httpd-php rss I am using the fopen functions, not popen and the files are set to have their user rights set to "everyone may do anything" (i believe the number is 666?). All help appreciated, Ruben

Oh and eat the letters you receive. I just got kicked out by my host family because of a snail mail letter that concerned them, which they found and read. Since then, I decided for a strict digestion policy for all snail mail. OK, Khymnon, now I prove myself wrong, I've got things to hide, but not necessarily from government agencies. Of course I committed petty crimes in my life, and I may also have talked about it, but I hardly believe that "even" in America the FBI would storm my house if I talked about smoking pot or downloading music like once or twice in email.

I agree with saxsux on the sinking quality of posts, I especially am annoyed by threads, that are about current events, (and thereby according to my understanding "News") being published in forums, with related contents (like stuff about the sony rootkit in security issues). This kind of stuff floods everything and makes it difficult to find the threads where people are actually looking for help. I don't think, publishing News is a bad thing, I just think, that they should stay in their forum, because they rarely result in replies that are interesting two months later.On the other hand, saxsux, I think no one should be bashed for his/her spelling problems, because the opinion behind doesn't get any less worthy if the writer spelled "grammar" wrong. That's why I suggested the [spell][/spell] stuff. That makes it easier to note down mistakes and help without any scornful notions.Good observations on Astahosts topicality though, I agree, that this also contributes to an unprofessional look. Another thing, I would ask for, is the "My Assistant" Tool to be upgraded, so that it can be made easier to keep track of threads, that you are interested in (not only topics you started). I image it in a way, that I flag threads, that I'm interested in. I know that I can search for "replies to my topics", but there might be threads, that I can't contribute to, but that I'm interested in. Furthermore the Advanced Search thing gets cluttered up with the sticky threads, because they are sticky in search too, no matter how old they are (completely senseless in my eyes).I hope we can change Xisto to the better together!

Very interesting article, didn't know all that. Since I can say, that I have almost nothhing to hide, I won't bother that much about it though. The potential of abuse will be quite low, if you read your mail mostly offline with POP3, right?It is quite difficult to act on multi-national companies, because you can't apply the same rules everywhere.. and neither the same problems. In Germany the secret service (BND) is not regarded as a threat, or at least not as heavily as in the US.

Hi PureHeart,this behaviour might be temporary. Which server are you on? Requests like this should go to support AT Xisto DOT com, they can help you. By the way, there was no need to post all the messages, it is pretty clear, that the mysql_queries etc. fail, because the connection could never be built up.Regards, Ruben

TreasureTrooper And this is the non-referral link..

Well, digress as much as you want, fellows, but don't lose the main point: Keeping Xisto a forum, that is worth to be read. I personally feel that especially tutorials, but also normal threads should be written in a manner, that invites others to research in these forums for information, find the threads and get answers. This is not possible, if a thread deals mostly with kiddies expressing their amusement with lols and hehes. But on the other hand, certainly everyone agrees that we're still humans and should have a personal level too. But since this topic should concentrate on the English language and it's proper use, I would like to get back to my recommendation: Often I notice little spelling mistakes (not common typos, which I would ask everyone to remove by looking at one's text again before submittal) but I don't correct them because I don't want to get on people's nerves etc. Another thing that occurs to me often is that people, who are too eager to get credits answer my questions without properly reading them. Because they are not so good at English, they don't get the whole point directly and tell me stuff I knew since birth. It might seem like a too simple solution, but it is a first step, to assign BB-codes to these events, so that one could simply blast misunderstandings with a [misunderstanding] which ends up as "Please read my posting again, you have misunderstood me due to language problems. I ask you to look up words you don't know and try again" or something more polite. Plus the spelling extension.. I would really like that, also for myself. At the moment I'm relying on Mac OS X integrated spell check, but since I write in German, Swedish and English simultaneously it is set to "Multilingual" and therefore doesn't notice some common mistakes. Others might not have a spell checker at all in their posts. I would really like to get better at English while using the forum. I disagree with all you saying that advanced language is only used to impress peasants, I think it contributes to beauty of writing and it makes it easier for us to read a text fluently (better language leads to better understanding if you don't suck at English and only know the basics).

Thanks for trying to answer my questions, but you misunderstood me in every aspect. I know that I can set a max. attachment size, but what will the script do as soon as the database exceeds the limit? Stop sending emails or start splitting them? I know, that the script is supposed to make database backups. The question asked was: Which path do I have to specify in the crontab in order for it to find the cronjob file? If I have my cronjob named "cron.daily" in the folder home/ruben/etc/, how do I have to specify the path in the crontab? I've tried various (home/ruben/etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.daily, etc/cron.daily), but neither worked (once there was a permission problem first, but then it didn't find it again). To answer your question: You specify the variables in the script, then you save it in some not-publicly accessable folder on your website like /home/saint-michael/etc/ (the file name/ending is not important). Then you specify the file to be called in the crontab. And THEN you get to all my problems.

You're wrong there snutz, the good iPods have had functions for notes, games, calendar stuff for a long time now (wasn't for windows at first but now it works with outlook too) + the new ones can play movies & show photos. The only thing it can't do is shooting photos/movies and phoning.If you buy a multiple-function tool, you'd better ensure that it is good at all the features that you want to use. A normal SD-card can't store more than 4 GB.

Well, I agree, that sometimes it could be made much easier to understand a post if the author invested a minute more to correct his/her spelling and grammar. But I do believe, that for most people here, the reason is that they didn't get a lot of English education (I see that because some people who speak other languages that I know, still use "their" word order etc.). I like the international touch very much about Xisto and I wouldn't like those, who didn't get the best English education, to stay outside. Of course, we shouldn't become a Babeltower, but I think, a little bit more acceptance is appropriate. The question remains: What should be done? I mean, those who write bad English are punished hard enough by the fact that know one will understand them. Of course we could put up a little tutorial on how to assemble facts and maybe link some language resources, but I doubt that this would help. My proposition would be to kindly remind writers of their mistakes and giving advice. Since writing more will be rewarded, I think that most of us would not mind the extra effort. This way the users here would not only learn more about programming but also get better at English, which sounds promising to me. Maybe a little BB-Code for spelling remarks would be apropriate. For example: -- Lalala .. Blind text, actual reply to post [spell]it's spelled "appropriate", ruben[/spell] -- This way, spelling remarks could be easily skipped by native speakers, but those who are still learning would gain something. What do you say?

Well, I submitted a ticket about this to xisto-support now, did this before, but due to my own idioty I think it never arrived. Plus the helpdesk was down an hour ago or something. Saint-Michael: I don't actually believe that this is caused by a visitor mooching (can't be sure of course, but the website with database access is not very popular yet), but how could they cause connection errors? Does anyone have real knowledge on why hosts get banned and how to prevent it? I saw in a log file, that two operations were left open. As far as i know not by my bad coding practice, but I could be wrong needless to say.. Are you sure about the fact, that I wouldn't be able to access mysqladmin with SSH access? My Google searches told me differently and this is not exactly something, that affects all users (I mean if gamma.xisto.com was banned as access host for all users we would have a damn riot here ^^). PureHeart, btw. you should not post Email-adresses in straight form, because this way they are left as prey to spambots. Maybe a mod could mask the address in your post. Thanks a lot for all your help, Ruben Sorry for double-posting, but I wanted those who have the same problem to find help here. So, I asked Xisto-Support to flush hosts for me, because (as PureHeart knew) I don't have the privileges for mysqladmin commands. They did, everything worked fine for a day, but on the next day I had the same problem again. Something in my website is causing this error and I have no idea what. I was told in support that I should close all connections (I checked and I think I do) and to use neat code. Well, no sooo neat, but it worked before and I don't remember any major changes. Does anyone know, what else causes a host to get banned with MySQL? And especially where I could find out what it was on my site? I verified that every MySQL connection is closed, there is no information in the error-log, so I guess that I'll have to search on. My next step is checking the statistics for pages that were called 10 times on the day of the downtime (because I was told that the mysql-banning borderline is 10 errors). Please help!