yeh

I think the whole thing has been done badly. How many judges have been changed in the case? Like what all the other things that is happening in Iraq, the execution of Saddam is done in the wrong way. To me, his execution is more of like revenge than justice. If the USA do not get the situation in Iraq and the Middle East under control, a few years from now, Saddam could be the figurehead for resistance movements. He could be the leader who got assassinated for standing up against imperial forces, as other leaders in the past have died from colonial forces controlled courts. His death may not be the last that we have heard of Saddam....

Ok, I need to say here first that I'm no financial whiz kid. Maybe a couple of years down the road... Hehe.... :)But if anyone is serious on investing, how about learning from supposedly the best investor in the world? I am referring to Warren Buffett. There are tonnes of books out there about his investment philosophy. There's no harm in getting more information anyway. My take on investment is to understand the work "RISK". Always know that there is a risk in any investment. And I mean ANY investment. Some people would tell you that bonds and houses are risk-free investment. No, that's not true, at least not to me. House prices can collapse and companies can default on their bonds. You can say that well, just buy big companies bonds. But big companies can fail. Think of WorldCom and Enron. So, my suggestion would be to understand risk first before embarking on any investment. Hey, not investing your money might not make you a millionare/billionaire but lousy investments that result in you losing your money(especially when you try leveraging) might make you a bankrupt.

Well, that is no longer the case as the prices of oil has increased tremendously from the lows of USD20 a few years back. The problem right now is more of like corruption, where the government is trying to protect certain sector of the economy rather than protecting the nation as a whole. Renewable energy is not that expensive when you factor in all the costs, such as energy security, waste disposal etc. But hey, who are the people that contributes to the political campaign funds and employ tonnes of workers? Renewable energy companies cannot grow if government keeps on supporting/buying oil and oil related companies. When it comes to energy, the private sector can only do so much. It is still pretty much a government thing.

Hehe... this seems a little bit late but what the heck...Happy New Year everybody!!!!

Well, there is another point that we have to consider when talking about taxes, and that is the deficit budget proposed/implemented by the government. No amount of reform to the tax system would give significant benefits to the people if the government budget is not balanced over a certain period of time, like say 5 or 10 years. To me, this is precisely the problem we are facing. Government budgets are in deficit and in order to cover this deficit, they start coming out with more ideas on how to increase their revenue... tax reform, more general sales tax etc. But the main problem now is expenditure. You can get more and more revenue but there is so many new stuff to spend on. It's like the situation where someone hits the multimillion jackpot but ends up a few years later in debt. The whole problem lies in expenditure.

Hi. I just read a report about this on ComputerWorld. Here's the address http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Basically, Microsoft is not letting security vendor modify the Vista kernel. Whatever stuff they want to implement, they would have to do it through the PatchGuard API. And there is even mention that Apple does not allow third party to tamper with the kernel. I'm no security experts, so here are my questions to the security gurus... If Apple does not allow third party to tamper with its kernel, how do security software companies implement their products for the Apple platform? Or there is actually a discrepancy between what is offered for Microsoft platform, excluding Vista, as compared to the Apple platform? What does it mean actually by not letting third party modify the kernel? Does that mean that how the kernel works is kept secret? Or are there actually security mechanisms to ensure that no modification is done to the kernel? Rootkits are developing into a big security problem. I'm not an Apple user, but are rootkits in existence on the Apple platform? If there are, how do they know how to modify the Apple kernel? Is it through some sort of reverse engineering or someone actually divulges the Apple kernel secret? Hmm... I think that's all the questions for now. Thanks in advance for the reply.

I would agree with vujsa that a simpler system is the best way forward for Xisto. And also any new addition/changes to the system might not be better, as mirdux has pointed out However, the idea on the Best Post of the Week does not actually meant that all the mods and admins would have to scour every posts and everyone must agree unanimously on the winner. There could be a couple of variations on how to achieve this. One of them is that when a mod/admin comes across a post that he/she likes, then they just suggest it by maybe listing the title of the posts. Each mods/admins can only list one post since I assume that they can only vote once. Of course, changes to the list can be done before the week has ended. When the week has ended, mods and admins would have 3 to 5 days to vote on which post they think would be the Best Post of the Week. If some mods/admins do not vote, it is ok. I don't think you need a unanimous decision. If there is a tie, well, you can alwasy have 2 Best Post of the Week and the bonus credits divided between them. If there are more than 2 posts with the same highest number of votes, then the admins would decide. To me, the selection of Best Post of the Week is not a Presidential election where everything has to be exact. It is more of like selecting an Oscar. Of course, at the end of the day, the implementation of the Best Post of the Week would entails more work for the admins/mods. Not to mention additional programming to implement the system. And like vujsa has said, the current system is working fine as it is. But this is just a suggestion. I do think it is a good and workable one. Besides, I need some credits to unsuspend my account. Hehe....

Actually, some of the games already have ratings on them. Not sure about the enforcement, though. In the future, I would say that the ratings would be made mandatory and it would be given out by an independent body. Just like what is going on in the movie industry. And kids would only be able to buy a game not rated for them if it is bought by their parents. Kinda like the enforcement on alcohol buying. I do not believe that violence, in general, would be outlawed in games. Maybe some context specific parts that are offending to people would be censored or deleted. Other than that, violence in games would stay with us. I don't see the reason why there is so much emphasis on violent video games when other stuff in our lives is violent and sometimes, it is real violence. Boxing is legal, and it is telecast live to millions of viewers. Some boxers died on the ring by knockout while there is a case where one boxer got his ear bitten off by his opponent. Some kids, who are less than 10 years old, know more about wrestling and their star/idol wrestlers than me. How about paintball game, where you literally have guns, bullets and grenades and you go around shooting your "enemy"? The list can go on and on... I think the emphasis now is on adults teaching their kids what is right and wrong. It is not the function of the state to babysit your kids.

Haha.... that sums it up nicely... I couldn't have said it better myself.

I like the idea of the Best Post of the Week. And Mark420 setup/plan for the Best Post of the Week is good. Only the admins and mods can vote for it. This idea would not just make the forum a little more active but also shows visitors and members that Xisto is more of a professional forum, with posts having content rather than just junk/spam. Maybe after some discussion on this topic, Mark420 could write a new forum topic and ask the members to vote? Hmm... I think Mark420 has this in his mind too... anyway, there should be something on the main page of Xisto, that is index.php, that would let members/guests jump to a page where all the Best Post of the Week are listed. As for the referral system, I'm against it but I guess that idea is kinda dead right now.

Haha... that is a good one, vujsa. I am all for credit lottery. So, the prize should be like, let's say, 1 million credits... Yup, i'm all for credit buying. Not that I need it now but I think it is a good concept. And the process would have to be automated, like what transx said.

I think the question now is how much does gaming affects behavior. To say that gaming does not affects behavior is definitely not true becoz everything affects the mind which ultimately affects our behavior. But I do not think that the effect of gaming on behavior is that great that we should be concerned about. People talk about violence in games but how about movies? Lots of blockbuster movies actually have fight scenes on them. So should we now banned all movies with fight scenes on them? You should think of movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings etc. before you answer yes to the above question. And to complicate matters even more, how about our everyday life? If there is someone bullying in the school, should anyone who witnessed it then turn to be a bully? And how do you stop bullying in school, or anyway? And if our behavior can be changed that easily, than i guess our society is doomed already since violence has been with humanity for centuries. My take on decreasing violence is more on enforcing the law and having laws that act as a deterrent to violence. Unfortunately, that is not the case with modern society nowadays. I cannot understand how the authorities can talk about cost-cutting in the prison system. So now you have criminals given parole after serving just half or maybe even less of their sentence. Heck, then why sentenced them to such a lengthy periods anyway in the first place? You have to remember one thing. One of the functions of the law is to prevent crime in the first place. The deterrent effect of the law is of crucial importance to society. When criminals don't think that they would pay for their crime, heck... why not commit it? Hey, you might not get caught and even if you do, the jury or judge might find you not guilty. If indeed you are found guilty, well, put on your best behavior and you can be out pretty soon. Sounds like a good deal?

Ok, I have just voted for others. Since I don't own a PS or XBOX, I only occasionally play games on other consoles besides PC at my friends place. As for PC games, I would go for Warcraft, Age of Empires, Civilization, Heroes, Starcraft.... hmm... can't really think of any now but I'm pretty sure there are others that I've enjoyed over the years. Yeah... how about Diablo...

Well, I would disagree with you, saint-michael. Even though the topic is about some advanced ancient tool, I feel the need to express my disagreement that advanced weaponry is the way to protect the survival of an empire or nation. Of course, you need weapons to defend your country, and preferably weapons that are more technologically advanced than your enemy. But the downfall of an empire or a powerful nation has more got to do with itself than with other people. Corruption is the prime reason of why most empires collapsed. The other is the waste of resources in fighting wars. There is only so much wars that you can fight before you stretch yourself too thin. A bad stroke of luck, and you would see your whole nation/empire collapsed right before your eyes. Real wars are not like those we play on the computer, where if you have better troops, you would win. History is full of examples where troops of insignificant quality defeated better equipped and feared troops.

Well, I'm always of the opinion that people last time and people now are mostly of the same "innate intelligence", even though now we have computers, ipods, automobiles, fighter jets, etc. It is just that people now have access to a huge storage of knowledge that they can leverage on to create useful products and to discover more new knowledge. It doesn't surprise me if scientists today cannot replicate exactly the ancient tools used if the knowledge to produce them is gone. You basically would need to find a genius to figure out the problem, since a genius might have created that ancient tools in the first place. Like what KDEWolf said, the difference between some very intelligent people and a genius.