patronus4000

Wow. That's small. I have calculators that are three millimetres thin, but screens are an altogether different story. They're much harder to make. I wonder, indeed, how they make them? And how they'll repair such things - and how much it'll cost. As Mordent said, I can't see these things as snap resistant, being so thin, so it will be interesting to see them in use.But is it necessary to make such small TVs? I wouldn't carry one around to catch all my favourite shows, or watch movies on a long flight. I think I'd rather bring a book. The screen is too easily stolen and broken. Though I suppose if it's incorporated into a phone or something, it'd be more useful, but still, I think our phones at the moment are pretty good at the moment, minus the fact that they can give you cancer because of the radiation.Serena

I agree that Tickle.com is a good site for personality quizzes and such. They're more professional and are actually interesting, as opposed to sites like quizilla.com where you have all the cheesy, typical quizzes that bored teenagers come up with every ten minutes. Also, you can sign up for an account at Tickle so that you can save your results and compare results with your friends (who must also sign up for an account). There's such a large database of quizzes, I think it'll keep you entertained for a long time. =)Serena

I usually don't have any problems opening Hotmail on Opera, but then again, I'm not an avid user of Hotmail. It does load a bit weird on Opera sometimes, so just use Internet Explorer (as much as you'd prefer Opera) to use Hotmail. Hopefully, they'll fix whatever this is soon enough.Serena

Well, I don't really like using image signatures simply because you have to make them according to the guidelines by the place you're using them at (sometimes they're different, especially about sizes and file types) and then you have to upload them. Too much work for me. (Yes, I can be quite lazy.) But a good image signature for me does not include flashing GIFs (especially like those banners that continuously flash between black and white with bright red text saying that I've won a million bucks - just NO). They can't take up too much space or take too much time to load, because on a thread, you might have 15 users' posts, and if each post had a signature that took fifteen seconds to load, I think I might go crazy.I like text signatures. They load fast, don't take up too much space, and can be just as cool and creative as an image signature. Plus, it's much easier to update. Come up with a witty saying, or put a quote that you really like. Just make sure the colours and fonts don't clash, or it'll look bad. I also agree with skedad on the fact that you have to do what's comfortable to yourself. If you don't like your signature, then it's not really your signature, is it? It doesn't define you. So, do make something that you like, as long as it adheres to good design and file size and dimension limits.Serena

Ahaha. Well, that's smart. I make sure my websites are compatible with IE, Firefox, and Opera, and my sites are mainly just personal sites. This one's a business, and they don't even make an effort to include everyone? I use Opera, so I'm not blocked, but I'm also not supported. I thought it would also be blocked, since Opera's another alternative browser, but I guess not. It incenses me that it should choose to support only IE and AOL. AOL, of all browsers! AOL is so annoying (I should know, since AOL's my current ISP), what with all its obscure updates, quirks, and what not. I just minimize it and not look at it whenever I use the Internet. It's just not good. I'd rather use IE than AOL to surf the 'net.Maybe, like how some others have posted, it was the designer's fault for just giving up when he/she realized that the site didn't work on other browsers. But in that case, it's also the company's fault for letting the designer do this, or not getting someone else to design a cross-browser compatible site. It's not smart. Besides, people using other browsers that visit the site will probably be infuriated that the site just didn't care about them, and so leaves a large portion of possible customers.Serena

No, not really. It's an interesting read, certainly, but there are plenty of not-so-smart people out there. But the thing about spammers shooting out the windshield - now that's scary. Then again, the world isn't a very nice place now anyways; crime is everywhere now. It seems impossible to avoid it.Serena

Yay! More The GIMP users. xD Sorry; it's just that I don't come across people who use this program often. At school, everyone answers with a confused look and "What's that?"Ever since I've started graphics design/editing, I've used The GIMP, because I can't afford Photoshop, being an unemployed high school student and all. The GIMP has a few bugs in it (one of the main ones I encounter is this weird rectangle thing that zooms up from one corner to another every once in a while if you work with the program for an extended period of time), but otherwise, it's a good free alternative. What you can do in Photoshop you can usually do with The GIMP too, but maybe with a few extra steps. It's definitely worth checking out.Serena

(Yes, this is a bit late, since Diwali's past already, but...) happy Diwali to you too. Personally, I'm not Hindu, but I am taking World Religions in high school, and this past Friday our school had a very loud and colourful Diwali celebration during lunch. Fun, except that they turned the music up too loud; I thought I would go deaf after sitting there for one hour. xDSerena

I use Yahoo! most, though I do have accounts with Hotmail (now Windows Live), GMail, and AOL. I began using Yahoo! long before GMail came along, and at that time, it provided a sizeable inbox with POP3 and SMTP (with SMTP, it will no add the advert at the end of the emails you send - another benefit to using Yahoo! mail) as well as other services. It loaded faster than other sites and was more reliable than Hotmail. (The only reason I signed up for Hotmail was just to use it for Messenger, and to house those stupid chain letters some of my contacts feel the need to forward to me.) With Yahoo!, in addition to your email service, you get a host of many, many other useful services, including Geocities (for anyone who wants to start dabbling with making websites) and Briefcase, as well as entertainment services like Launchcast. A fairly new addition to Yahoo! Mail is that they now allow you to create two email addresses for the same account; in other words, both email addresses will deposit the email you receive in one inbox. Now, GMail has come along, and it's sort of like Yahoo! as it provides so many services with one email account. It's not bad; I just don't like how it looks in Opera, that's all. (The rounded corners look bad.) But I still prefer Yahoo!; its community and services are more varied, and after all these years, they've got my loyalty to them. Hey. Yahoo! isn't a bad email service provider; don't use it for such purposes. If you want to keep spammers from getting your email address, then use spamgourmet. You sign up at this service, and you can create a lot of temporary email addresses that you can use at sites that might use your address for less-than-appropriate purposes. Any email they send you (like maybe the confirmation email you'll be getting from them) will be forwarded from this temporary address to your inbox. If you don't want to sign up at spamgourmet, you could always try temporaryinbox.com, where you can just make an email up on the fly and use it. You can then get an RSS feed to this temporary inbox to check for new emails. However, the downside to temporaryinbox is that there's no password; if someone else accidentally accessed the email address you made up (it's not probable, but it could happen if you made a simple email address), they'll be able to read and delete any emails you may have received. Serena

I completely agree with Jeigh. I haven't used or visited Friendster or MyYearbook, so I can't comment on those, but I have been to MySpace, and I can say that I absolutely hate that site. It has a jumble of all types of media that bogs down the whole page so that it takes about ten years to load one page. The design is horrible, and yes, the animations on some of the backgrounds are so nauseating. Some people have text that are almost the same colour as the background so that it's impossible to read anything, and others write weird comments containing profanity, scams, or some other odd advertisements that you'd usually see in your email junk folder. Just...no. No MySpace. The site should be completely redone or closed down.I signed up with Facebook after receiving ten Facebook invites a week in my inbox for a year. I figured I should sign up since just about everyone I know had signed up already. And back when I signed up, it wasn't so bad. It was controlled, the pages were organized and neat, it loaded quickly, and best of all, you were not driven insane when you looked at a page. But now, I'm scared that it will become a MySpace clone. The introduction of Facebook Apps has allowed users to add a multitude of random little widget-like things on their pages, and for a lot of people, they love adding every single App they come across. The result is that their user page is bogged down and dizzying with all the random things on their page. It's creepy to come across those kinds of pages, and I try to stay away from them. Facebook isn't bad, but I'm afraid of the takeover of insanity-inducing pages.Serena

Um, to put it in one word, no. Unless the content was really, really, really, REALLY good, I'd never like a site like that. If it was really that bad, I'd probably attempt to locate an email address on the first page (I'd probably not surf anywhere beyond the first page on that site) and send them an email on how to fix everything, to the extent of my knowledge. I hate to see sites like that, especially if they have good content, because the quality of the content is wasted on such a horrific page.Serena

I used to have funny error pages back when I was hosted at FusionXHost, but after I moved, I got too lazy to use them here. Maybe one day I'll stop procrastinating and put them back on. xD There was a website that listed all the funny and interesting 404 error pages on its own error page. I don't know where it is anymore though; it's been a while since I've been to that site. One of the interesting ones was a Flash 404 at the Homestar Runner site. This one, at 404error.info, however, is my favourite: ^^ Serena

I agree with wutske and Jeigh: use relative style sheets. When you make your CSS pages, don't define absolute values so that your site will resize itself to fit your viewer's window. However, that can be pretty messy sometimes if you don't do it well; some browsers may mess it up, and they might not see what you intended them to see, or perhaps they won't see anything at all!Since most people today are using monitors with at least 1024x768 resolution, design for that. I don't see many computers set to 800x600 nowadays - certainly, new computers are never set like that anymore - and when I do see a computer set to that resolution, I itch to go change it to 1024x768, because things just look too big to me on 800x600. So design for 1024x768, but make sure those who have 800x600 resolution and those who have a (useless) mass of toolbars in their browser can view your site properly too.Serena

I doubt Zune will ever hurt the iPod. The iPod is, in essence, a MP3 player, right? But often, it seems as if it has its own category, separate from just the MP3 players. (i.e.: At the beginning of the school year, when our teacher was listing the electronic devices that would not be allowed in class: "No cell phones, MP3 players, iPods...") We see iPods and their influence everywhere; even vector art with a black silhouette of a person are called "iPod-ad" style now. Just about everyone knows about the iPod, and many people will buy this regardless of all the other MP3 players on the market just because the iPod is so famous and declared wonderful and...well, cool. The iPod has secured a niche, and won't lose it - definitely not to the new Microsoft Zune, that's for sure. Serena

I like Yahoo! best too. It has a nice inbox size, loads quickly, and your account also allows you to access all the other Yahoo! services. It also allows you to use POP3 and SMTP, and if you do use that, then there will be no ads attached to the end of the emails you send. And Gmail (and Google), apparently, aren't that safe, and some reports claim that Google tracks your information. I have AOL (as in, the ISP), so I have AOL email too, but to access it through the website itself, it takes forever. Hotmail (now Windows Live Mail) is okay; it loads fairly fast now, but I still don't like their junk filter. It blocks out too many emails and makes life annoying (i.e.: you always have to check back with the person through some other form of communication to see whether they got the email or not). As for any other email services, I can't really say since I haven't used them thoroughly yet.Yep, Yahoo! has to be the best mainstream email service, in my opinion. =) Yahoo!! xDSerena

Heh, interesting. The list is a bit long though. xD Whoa. Never knew that. It's shocking to think that a five year old wrote something that we'd be singing to kids everyday in the whole world for the next few hundred years. You don't see such smart five year olds anymore, do you? I wonder how that works; I know that batteries last longer in the fridge, and you can microwave masking tape to make it sticky again, but rubber bands in fridges? I suppose as long as you let them warm up before you use them, maybe they will last longer (or else they'll just snap - that much I know). Same thing for sharks. Who discovered this? A better question might be, why bother to calculate this? o.O I don't think it's safe to post anywhere, in case people might use this in desperation to lose weight. D= Such...irony. But that is how the world works; to look on the bright side, that $160,000 or so helped feed a killer whale. Serena

Hmm, I still use XP, so I wouldn't know how to get past your problems. As others said, try turning off Parental Controls. Or maybe try a proxy. Just make sure that proxies don't get blocked (as they eventually did at my school). I hate parental controls. They're useless. They let us see everything we shouldn't see, and block everything that isn't the least bit harmful to kids. Let's take AOL as an example. About four years ago, my AOL account was set to "Mature Teen". Generally, I could surf pretty well, but it was still annoying because it kept blocking stuff. The funny thing was that it even blocked the Rice Krispies site. o.O Rice Krispies! They're a cereal, for crying out loud! I got my dad to switch me to the "General" setting soon after that. Although if I was as knowledgeable about computers as I am now, I probably could've gotten past that by using another browser (i.e. Firefox, Opera). xD Good luck with Vista, Ronel. Serena

I find it pointless to embellish a laptop (or any other piece of technology) with gold and diamonds. Because technology changes so fast, in maybe three years, you'll probably get a new laptop or whatever to get the latest technology. And these people would be able to do this; if they didn't, they wouldn't be embedding diamonds into their laptop, would they? But then if they bought a new laptop after this gold-and-diamond laptop, are they going to embellish this one too? What are they going to do with their previous laptop? Besides, as DevilCuy said, they could've just left their laptop alone and donated some of the money they spent on the gold and diamonds to help out the poor. And Impious, good luck with your English. Living in Canada, I know how many people see English as a difficult language to learn. Just speak/write it all the time and watch a lot of English TV shows. xD You'll probably get fairly proficient with English in no time. (By the way, your English, for me, really isn't too hard to understand.) Serena

iPod Touch. Just when the price of the regular iPod was dropping to an affordable level, guess what? They're gone, and in comes this new, pricey iPhone-like thing. Imagine if you bought both an iPhone and an iPod, and you picked up the wrong one when rushing out to work. Gosh. Although I highly doubt that one'd buy both, since you can play music on the iPhone, right? Besides, I think the current iPod looks a lot cooler than the facade of the iPhone.I've a few friends who are absolutely crazy over the iPhone, except they just can't buy one since they're not availabe in Canada yet. I don't see what the hype's about though, since it costs something like $600. Affordable? No. I'd rather buy some other cell phone, skip the fancy touch screen stuff, because it really isn't a need. More like a, "Cool! Another fun technology by Apple, Inc."No offense, I think Apple products look pretty awesome, it's just that they're seriously overpriced when compared to other similar products.Serena

Ah, that's pretty cool. I'd prefer to have an offline converter though, simply because some Internet connection (like mines) can be quite slow sometimes. But I guess it can be useful when you can't get an conversion app, or can't install one (like at school). I'll make sure I keep it in mind. =)Serena

Yeah, I saw that on Daily Planet (that's a show on Discovery Channel). They dedicated a whole episode on this concept. One of them was much like the motion gloves, only more fancy. Basically, you go into this sphere that looks like a cage, wear special wireless gloves/sensors and a pair of goggles, and you enter a virtual world. Whatever you do will imitate your actions in the game/simulation; it's sort of like the Nintendo Wii in that way, but much more sophisticated. The US Army actually uses it to train soldiers how to react in certain situations. However, unless you're really, really, really rich, you won't be able to afford this; it costs about $1 million per set (cage, equipment, etc.). Maybe in thirty years though. Maybe the average Joe will be able to own one then. Maybe. Serena

I already knew most of these shortcuts but there are a few that I didn't know, like pressing ESC to stop animating GIFs or about:cache. It's really too bad that I'm more of an Opera user now than a Firefox user; I find Opera much more streamlined than Firefox. *shrug*

Internet access on planes would be awesome (and I do assume that headphones will be provided for each computer). I have never gone on a plane before simply because I haven't had to and am afraid of plane crashes. It'd be great to, as some others have said, get some work done, keep yourself entertained during the long flights. I don't think there'd be a lot of social issues though. There might be people who are too curious for their own good and try to look at what you're typing or reading (and then try to comment on it). And it might be annoying if you're trying to sleep and the guy next to you types really loudly. I doubt that there will be alienation issues. For example, if two passengers want to talk badly enough, they won't be surfing the Internet or watching in-flight movies; they'd be talking to each other. For the rest of us, since we'd rather not talk to strangers most of the time, the Internet would be a nice way to pass the time.Regarding the cost issue, I don't think that Internet access (even on planes) will cost too much. I think they should charge only those who use the connection separately in the beginning, to see how many passengers actually utilize this feature. If most of the passengers use this, they could just simply incorporate the fee into the cost of the ticket.Serena

Sounds fun. I've been to Braingle before; I love doing their brainteasers when I have time (which isn't often, especially now that school has started). I'm not one of the people who fear tests. Most of the time, I'm okay with them, just worried that I haven't studied everything I needed to or that my teacher decided to just take leave from the curriculum and ask questions on a completely different subject. The only tests I fear are math tests (math just isn't my subject) and tests I haven't studied for (rarely have those anymore).(I want a 48-hour day too! Maybe I'll finally get a good nine hours of sleep for once, if the day was that long. xD)Serena

I hope when you say you buy 32 packs of water bottles twice a month, you mean that you buy two packs of 32 water bottles, because if the former's true, that's just...shocking. I find buying water bottles a waste of money if you buy a lot of them, because it's just water. There was some news story a while back about how some of the water bottles contain just about the same water (like mineral content and such) as the water that comes out of your tap. Besides that, all the plastic used is really not environmentally friendly at all, as you've said.I also use my own plastic bottle, a durable Rubbermaid thing that doesn't ever seem to break no matter how many times I drop it or gets knocked over by some of my more clumsier peers at school. It's more than a little scratched, but that doesn't matter much as long as it's leakproof. (Wouldn't it be scary if it leaked water onto my essay? o.O)Serena