yeh

Yup, i would agree with Shrike. There is actually nothing much that you can do to prevent brute force attack on your password. That responsibility actually lies with the e-mail providers. Choosing difficult and long password is of no use if the e-mail providers do not detect failed login and banned/staggered the login for some time. I'm lazy to do the math here but it doesn't take too long to brute force a password using our fast and cheap computer.

I think we must realize that technology is neutral. It is humans that make technology look good or bad. Think about plastic surgery. Do you think the proportion of people having plastic surgery have it becoz of medical necessity? I would think not. But try telling people that have disfigurement either naturally or due to accidents that plastic surgery must be banned becoz there are more people misusing it than people who genuinely needs it for medical purposes. Like I have mentioned in my previous post, our understanding of genes is not entirely perfect. If there is someone out there that tells you that this combination of genes make you smart, you better be wary of what he/she is telling you. But what the majority of the medical communities have agreed is that certain genes causes hereditary diseases. And we should let couples that have those genes to screen their artificially fertilized eggs. Fearing for doomsday kind of scenario does not apply here unless there is a certain chances that it would happen. Think about the drugs that you take when you are sick. I just thought of an example. Try searching for talidomide, its history and its effects on pregnant women. So, are we gonna ban medical drug usage as well?

Well, you don't exactly have to hope, Quattrux. It will change since oil is not a renewable energy. The thing about price is not just supply and demand but also perception. And oil price has been hovering at such high levels for quite some time that I don't think it will ever come down to USD20 per barrel if we do not switch to other types of fuel. Whether we are switching to clean and safe energy or not, that I am not certain but switching from oil due to strategic and economic consideration is fast becoming a certainty in government policies.

If you are talking about cloning an entire human being, i think we are still far from it. Well, at least not in a quality kinda way. Dolly the clone sheep has been shown to have problems. I'm not trained in biology/genetics... that kind of stuff... but reports have attributed the problem to telomerase. It is something that divides and as it does so, it gets "shorter" until its "lifespan" is used up. So a clone baby would not actually be a baby but rather an old man/woman if the baby is cloned using the old person's genes. Until various kind of problems associated with cloning technology is ironed out, we would not see a clone human for quite some time. The problem now is, of course, in the name of science, somebody is gonna try to clone a full human being. After all, our understanding of the human body and animals is not entirely perfect. Drugs that worked on animals does not necessarily work on humans. Cloning problems associated with animals might not be the same with humans. This is where i support legislation being drawn up to ban full human cloning. Something along the line of human assisted breeding. In artificial breeding, there are more than one fertilised egg but most of them are discarded after some time becoz there are problems associated with the embryos, if I can call it as such. I suppose there is a legislation of how long to keep the fertilized egg before it must be mandatorily destroyed, otherwise it is a crime. That same kind of legislation must be enforced on human cloning. Discussion about spare human body parts do not even crop up becoz the technology is not yet ready. When it is, society shall have another go at whether cloning a human being should be done or not. Right now, I feel strongly that it should not be done.As to picking out which genes you would want, I am all for it. Again, the technology and our understanding of genes is not entirely perfect. As Jeigh has pointed out, if a couple knows that they have a genetic defect and there is a high chance that their baby would too, then picking out which genes in their artificially fertilized egg that does not contain the defects make perfect sense to me. We have to keep in mind that currently, our understanding of genes is quite limited. As such, those science fiction stuff of knowing who would turn out smart, beautiful, killers, serial rapists etc. is not yet quite within our reach. And personally, i don't think it ever will since we are not exactly animals and a large part of our actions is determined by our mind which is conditioned in large part by our environment.

Well, if someone can win in a lawsuit against McDonald's over whether there is sufficient notice that the coffee is hot, then I guess sueing Apple becoz the ipod causes someone to be struck by lightning is not that far fetch after all. Heck, we might all laugh here but who knows... that guy might win after all....

I would agree with Quattrux that nothing is impossible. What techocian said about mutation and luck is pretty true. However, that does not mean that mutants cannot exist. In trying to create Wolverine, lots of people died. And I can tell you know that those incidences that created mutants in comic books would more likely kill you than give you special mutant abilities. But, hey, even though it is hard to strike a lottery, someone does wins those multi-million lottery. So, never say never...

Don't worry about students dropping off from those beginning classes. Like jeigh said, it always happened. If those students are interested in Computer Science, then I guess they have to take those courses anyway. Those courses are mandatory, right? I'm not a graduate from Spain.I would agree with Jeight about linking what students are learning to real world problems. Otherwise, there is no interest whatsoever in the subject being taught. And if a student is not aiming solely for A but a good grade would do, such as B+, then there isn't going to be much enthusiasm on the part of the student.Of course, as mentioned in earlier posts, it is hard to make a connection to the real world problems in introductory courses. My view on this is that a CS degree teaches much more stuff than what a student might be interested in. If a student just like software application programming, those hardware stuff would quite likely bored him/her. It definitely bores me. Hehe.... :(So, i guess the approach that I would suggest is to talk to a few former students of the course, possibly those with better grades. Ask them what they like in the course, their dislikes and more importantly, what approach they would like to be introduced. It would be good to do this face to face. My experience tells me that A students get their A's because they are more determined/disciplined. If they found some parts ultra boring or need better explanation/connection, then i would say quite a lot of students would feel the same too.

Hehe... vultures are always out there, dude... And this applied not just to environmental groups. Some non-governmental organizations task with aiding the poor, helping third world countries etc. are actually skimming away the money meant for those charitable purposes. All these stuff are well documented. Guess that's how the world works... I think the most important question to ask is that whether there are reasons/rationale to conclude that human activities contribute to global warming. Just plotting a graph of pirate activities vs global temperature do not make sense to me. What do you guys think? Now, are there experiments to conclude or refute that CO2 and other greenhouse gases actually increases the temperature of the controlled environment in the experiment. If the answer is a resounding NO, and those experiments and the results can be replicated, then we can all forget about the hypothesis that global warming is due to human activities. However, if the answer is YES, then the second question to ask is what would happen when let's say in 20 years time, the amount of land covered by forests is reduced to 25% of the land area today while the consumption of fossilized fuel increases to twice the amount today. What do you think would happen to all the greenhouse gases?

Hi. I have been experiencing difficulty accessing certain forum topics. This started quite some time back, but I always thought that the forum topics have been completely deleted, thus I'm not able to access it. Now, however, I just saw a forum topic that I could not access previously being in the last post column. I tried again but still I could not access it. The forum topic in this case is "Shoutbox Display Names".Any help would be appreciated. Thanx.

Haha... well done, vujsa. I will keep that in mind when making new posts... No.. don't remove the prorating. I'm all for the prorating, 100%. When I make my earlier posts, I was just wondering whether this prorating info is on Xisto forum, such as annoucement and FAQ. To me, it is quite an important info to have.

Yup... this is a tricky topic. I would agree with Houdini that there's yet any conclusive proof of human activities contributing to global warming. Or put it in another way... global warming could just be a naturally occurring phenomenon. Having said that, the measures proposed by the environmentalists to curb global warming actually helped the environment that we lived in, and it doesn't matter if global warming is due to nature rather than human. However, if human activities do play a role in global warming, then heeding the advice of the environmentalists now would be a great idea, becoz once we have conclusive proof that global warming is happening, it might be too late, since it is happening right in front of us!! With our forests gone and greenhouse gases at its peak, the earth would just heats up for a long time before we can cool it down. And that would most probably take a few generations. So my point on this topic is to see the advice given by the environmentalists on a broader basis. Gazetting natural forests as protected parks, using less oil as fuel(which is a good thing now with oil prices rising) and more renewal energy, etc. can only do good to humanity. Well, this might generate some heat... so if the moderators find this unsuitable, feel free to delete this part. I don't know whether Al Gore did failed his science courses in college, as alleged by Houdini, but what I do know is George Bush was a former drug user and he even admitted it. Again, I don't know whether Al Gore failed 3 times in his presidency bid but if I'm not mistaken, Abraham Lincoln failed numerous times in his presidency bid before he succeeded.

Hmm... I didn't know about this. Is this information listed in the annoucement section or the FAQ section? This info does not affect me currently since I have yet to submit a tutorial but in the future, who knows? Hehe... would like more credits for the same amount of work/content...

Yeah... pretty cool right? I have just read about it couple of weeks back when I was reading about the incident of someone dying from helium inhalation. Anyway, I have a crazy idea. Kids, please just read this ONLY and please... don't try to attempt it. I don't know what will happen...How about putting a mentos into your mouth, then take a big gulp of coke? Hehe.....

Wow.... that's something new to me. Now I see the need for those automatic toothbrush... As for the nanorobot thing... I think there are a few points that have to be taken into account before it can be a success. First is of course that people eat and drink through their mouth. So any nanorobots would diminish pretty quickly after a meal/drink. To counter this problem, some might suggest a self-replicating nanorobot. Then, the scenario suggested by yordan could happen, where people with nanorobots do not consume as much food as they think they should be. Bad news for the slimming/diet industry??? Personally, I don't think a commercial self-replicating nanorobot would come true since that idea just sent shivers down the spine of lots of people, including me. Plus, nano particles can actually enter into our bodies, so it is mighty dangerous if the nanorobots can self-replicate. Btw, anyone knows how those 24 hour protection toothpaste works? I think it is some kind of chemical protection but how does it work actually?

I might be wrong here, so correct me if I am. I think what the worm does is when you open your mail, it would automatically mails itself to other people on your contacts. Does no harm to your computer, actually. I think it is run on the server and thus affects both IE and firefox.

That is a good question by illini319. Space missions are not exactly cheap. Stephen Hawkins can argue about uman colonies in space but the ultimate decision would come down to cost-benefit analysis. Having a manned moon mission and a manned mars mission for the pride of nations and technological advancement is different from colonizing the moon or mars. Unless of course, you are referring to small scale colony of just a few personnel for research purposes like what we are having on the International Space Station and its predecessor, Mir space station. But if we can discover some minerals that are not found on earth or is particularly scarce and its use is difficult to be substituted by other minerals/compound, then I think we are on the way to colonizing moon or mars. You would then see nations racing to have a colony of their own. Yup... you are right that we are only humans and we make tonnes of mistakes. And to make it worse, we seem to never learn from our mistakes. However, this "trend" of making mistakes is getting ever more costly due to technological advancement. If World War III were to happen and all the nuclear weapons that we have today is successfully launched and detonated, I dare say that it is the end of humanity. Even if a particular land area is not bombarded with the nuclear missile, the eventual massive global nuclear fallout would certainly wipe us, humans, out. Good enough reason to have a colony on the moon or mars?

Haha.... you are complaining about the size and you have yet to host anything there.... . When I registered a couple of weeks ago, the file size is still only 5MB.

Yup.. that's correct. For more info, please refer to the annoucement section and also the FAQ section. You can clarify any doubts my making a post. Another alternative for JSP would be myjavaserver.com, formerly known as mycgiserver. I have registered myself there but yet to do anything. I'm new to web stuff, so still planning/deciding what to do. Anyway, it offer free JSP web hosting but you have to pass a test first. After that, it is free hosting all the way. No need to post anything. If you have tried myjavaserver.com and you have some comments about it, please post it here. I would love to know what you think.

I can't seem to find it too.... There's a change password but don't seem to have a change display name???

Hi. How can I change my username, the one you enter before you logged in? How about the display name, the one seen in your posts? I know the display name can be changed coz I seen one of the users here having a different display name when i rechecked his/her posts. Any help would be appreciated. Thanx. Btw, if this is not the correct forum, feel free to move it.

BitShift, even if they found oil there in Mars, they wouldn't transport it back. At least, that's how I view it. There's nothing that oil can do that cannot be substituted. Petrol can actually be processed from coal. And this technology is quite old. Been used by Hitler in World War 2. As for generating electricity, there are tonnes of other alternative fuel source, some environmentally friendly and some not. Most probably the resources that would be mined in the moon or mars are those not found on earth or the mineral is very scarce on earth and its use cannot be easily substituted.

Err... i'm actually hosted here already. But don't seem to have any info about JVM in the cpanel. So, how do I go about the JSP thing? And is servlet supported in Xisto as well? All help is appreciated. Thanx.

It's been a long time since I got anything to do with probability and statistics. But here is what I think. Or better still... if you already have the answer but don't know how to get it, post it here. Easier to figure out technique...I think it should be (9x8x7x6x5) / (5x4x3x2x1).

In the first quote, American people would resist the building of an empire. This means politically, there is a huge road block to building an empire. Of course, whether that is true or what factors/assumptions made it true, is another topic altogether. In the second quote, and also throughout your comment, politics get in the way of winning or solving a conflict. So, is there a contradiction here? And the final thing is, what is the role of politics in war, then?

I think there are a few characters in the X-Men movie/comic franchise that can be a reality in the future. One of them is Wolverine. Retractable claws aka bone... hmm... seems possible to me. Wolverine has super strong bones thanx to adamantium. I have read somewhere that Japanese researchers have a prototype thingy that helps people carry extra weight. It is an external device, but in the future, who knows? Super healing power....well, there are currently already oxygen chambers, or something like that, to increase the healing process. An advancement in technology coupled with the correct genes would come close to what Wolverine has in the movie/comic. Btw, lots of people died in the experiment that created Wolverine. Only Wolverine's genes made him suited to the technology used to alter his body.Anyway, what is the special ability of Beast? You know, the blue creature that is smart? If it is just strength and agility, well, I think it is achievable in the future. Hehe... maybe we can even do it better than the comic. Girls, how about a handsome, strong, agile and smart man?