Galahad

Well, when I first took notice of this topic, I had no idea what a Chav means... Based on the topic, I guessed they were some group of anti-social individuals or something... Then I did some google-ing and wikipedia-ing, and found out who the chavs are... I turned out I wasn't far off... Now, don't missunderstand me, I don't have such chav problem here, as we don't have them... But we do have other types of punks... Now, when I say punks, I mean really, punks...We have this other problem, with mostly rich kids, aged from 14 to 18... Their parents are mostly rich folk, who don't quite have the time, and/or will, to be with their children... Their fathers are mainly in the age range of 35-45, and their mothers in range 20-30, where the age difference between mother and father is at least 15 years... Theis fathers got their money in the notorious 1990's, while our country was under sanctions, and they got rich, of course, how else, but by smuggling and other types of criminal actions... And now, they're all "succesfull businessman"... Mothers mostly have spend their days in beauty salons, or in cafes with their girlfriends, and the kids... Well, the kids are off on their own... And the parents, or should I say "parents", believe that they can make up for their lack of interest, by giving their kids money... And so, we have this entire generations of kids, who are full of money, don't get prosecuted for anything they do, because daddy goes and pays the authorities off, and each day, they get bolder and bolder...For instance, there was this group of 4 bous, aged 16 I believe, hanging out in a park, near one night club... They started harassing some girls... Two guys were passing by (aged around 25), and of course, stepped in to help the girls... End reult? Those punks killed one guy, stabbed him with a knife, and beat the crap out of the other, he ended up in the ICU for several weeks, and the guy they killed? They put him in some car, at the parking lot! And what happened? Nothing! Their daddies are too powerfull for anyone to do anything... Short of a mob raising, but that ain't happening...So, in short, I guess I hate... No, not hate, I don't hate anyone... I detest, all types of people forming groups, pretending that they are better than the rest of us... They're all a bunch of cowards, and posers, who have no sense of self-identity, and in order to fill theire puny little lives with some purpose, they go around, bullying everyone who is different... And to me, that's pathetic...And based from what I read here, these chavs are not that different from what I described... Sure, not all the chavs, but most of them... And that's enough to form a stereotype... And that's bad... But hey, what is one to expect, when you have 90% of the people belonging to some group, behaving the same way, and only 10% being different? When I say I'm from Serbia, first thing that comes to peoples minds, are long-bearded, greasy savages, with knives in their mouths... Don't matter that only 20% of the people are like that, we're all labeled that way...Stereotypes are bad, but those type of gruops, like chavs, or any other, are even worse... They help create stereotypes...

I find this pretty odd... It seems to me that IKEA abroad is just some garbage, whereas here, in Europe, it has a name for itself... Dunno... I personally have two moods when I'm shopping for stuff... One is that I'm all for DIY, play around with the parts, and tools... I even made several CD shelves and cabinets for myself, using some scrap wooden panels I found lying in my yard :PAnd then, there's that lazy-i-want-it-all-done mood, where I don't want to have even 3 minutes assembly time, I want it working the instant I unpack it... I sometims look at IKEA catalogues, and dream for the day they open up a store here in Serbia, so I can go in, and buy a ton of stuff... And btw, they don't seem very cheap to me, it costs quite enough... Or at least, that's the case with european IKEA...

And as I neared the Northern wall, a bunch of governmental agents ambushed me, and took me to some secret base.. I believe it was underground, but I can be mistaken... They have interrogated me for hours, and then they drugged me again, and when I woke up, I was in some forrest, several hundred kilometers from the Northern wall... And infected with some unknown virus or bacteria... I'm currently gundergoing some tests, to try and find out what this illness is, and whether it is contagious or not... For the time being, I'm quarantined, to prevent any possible infection of others... But when I get well... I'm going over that wall... Be sure of that...

Aahh... Water... I just love that sensation, when I'm thirsty, and go and pour myself a nice glass of fresh lovely cold tap water... I don't think that there will ever be any sensation that is as good... Some of my friends say that beer is the best drink to freshen yourself on a hot day, and kill the thirst... But not for me... I LOVE water... And I do mean love... I even trained swimming for 2 years when I was younger... And I love to soak in a tub and on the summer, in the river (in Danube, that passes trough my city)...Anyway, why did I start this post... I just found out, by sheer accident, another function, or use, a water can have...Currently, I'm sick as a dog, and can't really eat... And I was taking antibiotics... And, as a result, I have something everyone knows as heartburn, or better known as acid reflux... That's when HCL from your stomach, starts "spilling" overm and retorn to your asophagus, and since it kind of "eats" on it, it burns... But, I don't have a typical heartburn, I can't eat virtually nothing... Just this morning, I tried to drink a vitamin C tablet, that dissolves in a glass of water... Drank one sip, and instantly my acid was rising up to my throat... Soup... Raises it too, but not as much as vitamin C...Anyway, I found out, that if I drink relly cold water, it would calm my heartburn.... It would burn for a second or two, and subside... So, you could see me this evening, drinking one sip of soup, and one sip of cold water But to hell, it works... One could also eat ice chips, swallowing them direclty, it has a nice sensation, and actualy calms the stomach... So now, my fridge is full of bottles filled with water, and freezer if full of bags with ice...You just can't help, but love water, can you?

Jeez! Didn't even notice this topic until today... I was lucky though, that my account was not affected by this, probably due to a fact that I don't use dictionary words, and like to make my p4S5w0rDs a bit complicated It appears to me, that the hacker wanted to use someones bandwidth, or something, to host those files found in that directory... I got curious (as I always do), and checked a whois on that domain... Here's what I got: And, copied from AboutUs, containing this sites' description: I suppose this guy (or girl, or many of them ) are trying to perform large scale bandwidth theft from Xisto members, obviousely succeeding in that for a short period... Lucky for us we have such vigorous admins that keep an eye for us... I would also join the appeal to disclose perpetrators IP's, in order to include them in my scripts, and effectively ban them from my websites, to prevent any future hassle with them... Also, because of this, my password just doubled in length, so now, crackers would have about 12,401,769,434,657,526,912,139,264 combinations to go trough... So I guess, in about 39,325,752,900.35 years, they could reach the solution yay me... Check these pages for some info on passwords... Calculate your password strength, and Calculate time needed to crack you password

Since now we have proof that Earth is in fact flat, and that there is a wall surrounding it, the wall of ice, I have a little question... Does Earth stop there? What's behind that wall, why are governments so afraid to tell us about this ice wall? Something fishy is going on, and I intend to find out what... As Alex dared to go, and find that ice wall, and bring back proff, I shall dare and go on a quest to the ice wall, and go beyond it, and find out what it is they're hiding! Averyone is welcome to join me, help will be greatly appreciated, and will probably be needed...If I don't return, don't forget me...

I\ve heard of Sudoku, a while back... However, I was reluctant to try and solve it, because it had numbers in it! And I really, and I mean REALLY, don't like anything remotely related to mathematics (yeah, I know, a programmer that hates math, but yeah, we do exist )... Anyways, a few weeks back, I decided to try Sudoku, don't know why... So I found an online version (one player), and gave it a try... At first, I couldn't get it - how the hell can one guess where the numbers were... So, my first Sudoku game lasted about 50 minutes... Then, as I practiced, I started developing some strange strategy, looking at 3x3 squares, rows, columns, trying to determine which number goes where... And now, I'm hooked... I must play Sudoku, at least once a day, or I go nuts... Of Kakuro I heard, but never saw it, and now that I know how it looks like, and what it requires, I can with certainty say - there is no way in hell I'll be playing this! Yeah, you guessed, too much math Sadly, no newspapers in my country, or at least those that I can get a hold of, don't print Sudoku, just old plain boring crosswords... Maybe I'll start a Sudoku Mag or something... Anyways, great tutorial, wish you wrote it when I started playing, then I wouldn't need 50 minutes to solve my first Sudoku

Let me give you my 2 cents on this matter... Those who know me, mainly my family and close friends, know I'm kind of a jealous guy... Some would even say I'm very jealous... But, here's how it goes... I see flirting as a natural, um, let's say condition... People flirt with each other constantly, whether it's in a store, a bus, train station, night club, wherever... Ofcourse, flirting happens between persons of the opposite sex... I\m politicaly very active, and it's kind of my 2nd job, and in that line, at least here, in Serbia, there is a lot of flirting... It's all harmless ofcourse, because we all know where the line is, and what's tastefull and what's not, and we never cross it... But flirting makes people feel good, and I see nothing wrong with people feeling good... Flirting is ok by my book, and I don't have anything against it, as long as all parties know where to draw the line... I'm currently in a very serious relationship, we're planing to move in together, and I must say, for the first time in my life, I'm not jealous at all (well, I do admit I did have some jealous episodes, but only in private, and in the form of very mild discussions )... I figure, it has something with the trust... I completely trust her, and truth be told, she never lied to me, not once, not on a single matter... I must admit I was pleasantly surprised because of that...Anyways, flirting is OK, and I believe kissing is crossing the line... Kiss, I could forgive, but anything else - end of discussion...

Yes, I've heard of them... And used them... First, BASIC V2 on my Commodore 64, over 12 or 13 years ago.. Then QBasic 4.0 on my first PC, then tried GW Basic and Basica, but they were a lot less powerful than QB, and then I got ahold og QBasic 7.1 Extended edition... I made tns and tons of programms with (Q)Basic languages, and it's not true they are hard to learn... Basic is one of the easiest languages to learn, and that's about the first language that is tought.. Basic, and Pascal...I created login protections, many user applications only I had use for, like spreadsheet under DOS, when everyone was using excel, I made several database engines, numerous phone book programs, with different functionalities... Games, countles and countles games... Drawing program in DOS, that used a mouse, and 640x480 resolution!Ahh... Those were the days...

Ummmm... Would you mind clarifying a bit? Do you have a PC that has Xubuntu installed as an OS, and you wish to use it as a router to connect with another PC, or? If I got you right, that is the question...I'm not quite sure how Xubuntu looks, but I do believe it is virtualy identical to Ubuntu, except it requires less powerfull machine... In order to have that Xubuntu PC act as a server, first you need 2 LAN adapters... You probably have 1 on your motherboard, and you'd have to install additional LAN card in your PC, or if you have older machine, two LAN cards...Now, setting it up as a router should be fairly easy, I don't have it in front of me, to explain step by step, but since you're a novice in this area, I would recommend you google for Coyote Linux, if you wish to use tah one PC only as a router... Coyote prety much installs itself, and sets it self up, and you don't have to worry about a thing...Hopefully, someone will add their 2 cents to this topic, maybe actual step by step explanation (I'm really tight with time these days) how to configure your Xubuntu...

Just the fact that M$ has lousy support, is the reason enough to run from them... It means they don't care about their customers, just how to get you to pay... Now, I'm not saying that all the companies realy care, but they care in a way, that they provide good support, and quality service...I'm not going to preach how M$ sucks big time, and how they don't quality test their products, but for such a matter, if you have a legit windows, registered and all, you could sue their a*es off... I'm a software developer, and I know how hard it is to create a bug free application, but this error... This is not a bug, that's a whole bug colony of huuuuge bugs... Only an idiot can create such mistake, and not notice it...I guess that's another minus for M$, at least in my eyes (not that they need any more minuses, the've got plenty already)

Ever since I connected a program I made in Visual Basic to MySQL database, I had an idea to create some sort of a status page... And I did that, where I updated my connection status every 60 seconds, updated my Winamp playlist, and several other interesting things... Then, I figured I could create an image, and display all that info, and show it on forums, as a signature... And I made a great PHP script, that look real fancy, and does the job perfectly... So, I was adding the reference to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ to all the forums... BUT (there's always that but) as well as it worked on some forums, on some forums, like here, on Xisto, I couldn't add a link to PHP file, it just didn't work between IMG BBCodes... So, i pondered, and pondered, and couldn't get the solution... So I asked alex7h3pr0gr4m3r here, since he made a sort of a dynamic sig... And he told me the folder.extension trick... Name your folder image.jpg and place index.php inside, and voila, instant dynamic picture... But this solution is not very ellegant one... So, I did a little more digging, and found a great solution, which I will implement on my site... Actualy, I'm planing a sort of a system for people to get sigs from my site, and I'll create a public version of Windows application for it... Anyway, here's what I found, and learned... You can use .htaccess file, to control the behaviour of web server in a particular folder... Let's say you have a site called http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/,'>http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, and want to have a subdomain called sigs, that would be sigs.signatures.com... And let's say you want your users to be able to show their dynamic signatures in this form: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ... Now, that works fine, if you add folders manualy, naming them user.jpg, and placing index.php inside, but that's kind of a hassle.. You are running a site that gets let's say 100 new users each day, and you need to have a script that will create folders, files... Too much hassle, and let's not forget it uses disk space... There is an ellegant solution to this, without any bother, and that's .htaccess... What we do, is tell web server to rewrite HTTP requests for certain files... And without furter ado, here's the magic: This goes in .htaccess file, located in root folder for your subdomain sigs (eg. /public_htm/sigs/ would be tha path here on Xisto) RewriteEngine onRewriteBase /RewriteRule ^(.+).jpg http://sigs.signatures.com/signature.php\?user\=$1 [NC,L]RewriteRule ^(.*).jpg http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ [R=permanent,NC,L] Now, the line RewriteRule ^(.+).jpg http://sigs.signatures.com/signature.php\?user\=$1 [NC,L]tels web server to redirect silently all requests for files containing one ore mora characters, and have .jpg extension, to the address specified at the end.... Variable at the end of the URL, $1, will be replaced with whatever is entered as a file name, before jpg, in our case it will contain text "user"...NC tells web server that case insensitive match should be performed, and L tells web server to stop matching other rules... This speeds up response times for the web server... Now, when I say silently, that means that location bar in your browser will not reflect the change in URL, that is, if you type http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, that's exactly what location bar will show, not http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/... That way, noone knows that any redirection is performed.... Second line RewriteRule ^(.*).jpg http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ [R,NC,L]tells web server to redirect blank requests (eg. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) to main page of our site, where users can sign up for our service, enquire about our services, or something similar... R=permanent does a redirection, and a location bar in your browser will reflect this change, URL will be changed to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/... Now, all you need to do, in that signatures.php, is create a script that will query a database for user name specified in a GET variable "user", and create a dynamic image based on users preferences... If that user doesn't exist, you can display a generic image, advertising your site, or redirecting to main page, and asking a user to register that username... And that's it folks

Thanks for that, I already talked to alex7h3pr0gr4m3r about his dynamic Xisto status image, and he said he used that folder.jpg method, with index.php script inside... It is so simple, and so obvious, that it completely eluded me, and I think I would have never thought of it... But, as you can see now, there is a dynamic image in my sig, and I'm actualy working on releasing a public version, with software to download and update ones status, and a sig for every user... But it's a big work ahead of me Hopefully, I will find some beta testers here

I believe there was some minor confusion about this issue... SQL is Structured Query Language, and is mostly used by database engines, to allow ease of manipulation with the data, in a english-alike language... MySQL is a database engine, using SQL to allow operation with it, from different programming languages and programs... Micro$oft SQL Server (often confused with SQL), is also a database engine (in a way like M$ Access), using SQL for the same purpose as MySQL... PosgreSQL - same story, database engine, and many others... MySQL has it's own advantages, M$ SQL has it's advantages, only thing required is for a developer, to find which engine suits him and his needs, in the best way... My option is mostly on MySQL, as it is free, whereas M$ SQL costs a lot of money, but offers nothing that I don't have in MySQL already...

Well, I have created a certain signature, that I use in forums that allow members to have hosted images in their signatures via IMG tag, and don't check for extensions... Xisto doesn't allow it, so I'm not using it here, but I certainly can see how one could easily make a malicios PHP script, and take over some site, or crash it... If you want to see my signature, go see http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ... It is a pure JPEG picture, no malicious code... If it's not allowed to have links here, mods, please remove this section, it's not my intent to promote my site, just to show how ot would work

Yeah... That's the other reason I don't like .NET languages... You have an application whose distribution is no more than 2Mb with all the runtimes, and additional files you need, and then, you have a .NET application, whose distribution is what, 25Mb? Don't like it... Though, great to hear you're making progress...

Well, if you know PHP, it shouldn't be hard transfering to Visual Basic... I don't know how VB 2008 Express looks like, but it's quite different from all previous versions of Visual Basic... It's completely object oriented, and as a PHP programmer, that could pose a small obstacle...You can't save a project as exe, you should compile it... Lok for Compile as .EXE, or Compile, Build, or Make in the menus, dunno how they did it in .NET...Hope that helped a bit...

I had this seto to 0, for over 3 years now (yes, same win instalation, no reinstalls for 3 years), and there are no side-effects... I would agree, that the system reserves 20% of badnwidth when commiting updates, and I'm quite sure it reserves 20% of bandwidth when it's communicating with microsoft servers, sending them who knows what data... I have this as a fact, as when I installed a firewall, I could see that certain processes are attempting to contact a certain IP (that is registered to microsoft) very often, somewhere between once a minute, to few times a minute... So, there's your privacy...Anyways, since I have never ever used that update feature, and never updated from m$ site, I set this to 0, nad I'm happy about it... Though, I suspect that this setting is sort of for show, and that the system still reserves certain amouont of bandwidth for it's own tasks...

This is one great gadget... It MAY be rather useless, but that doesn't diminish it's usefulness Did I mention I also love making great, but useless gadgets :XD: Anyways, I have one, maybe more questions... How did you get Xisto board to display it, or rather, how did you get the server to parse files with .gif extensions? Or did you use cron jobs to refresh the physical image every x minutes? I'm asking you this, because I made this online status thing, and would like to add it as my signature, and maybe even share it with the world... It's made up of two parts, one is software application, running on your computer, refreshing data in MySQL on my server, and the other is PHP script, that creates an image, with all the info needed... It also has Winamp history (10 last played songs)... I would really like to assist you on this, if you'd like, and we could exchange knowledge Here's what I made: Text mode: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Image: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/stat.php Hope to be hearing from you soon...

I don't know if this reply will fit the topic, but it goes with this software... Well, with firewalls that is... If you want to check how good your firewall is... I tested my firewall with this online tool http://www.auditmypc.com/, and it showed no open ports, except HTTP 80 and HTTP 3306, which I left open on purpose, so I could access my Apache and MySQL remotely... Test your firewalls, and see if your security is at the appropriate level... I again apologize if maybe this posti is out of place, and moderators will either move it to appropriate topic, or delete it fully...

Internet radio broadcasters are in immediate danger! I have been following this issue for some time, hoping it wouldn't become so serius, and that logic will prevail... But, as always, money weighs much more, than common sense, and common good... I'm a devoted fan of Digitally Imported radio (http://www.di.fm/upgrade-browser), and they are also threatened buy these new prices... This is my personal appeal to all of you living in the USA, to call your Congressmen, and tell tem to support Internet Radio Equality Act S. 1353 in the Senate, and H.R. 2060 in the House! Today is the Day Of Silence, as the bradcasters call it, the day when all the internet broadcasting shows are halted, and no shows can be heard... This is their way of silent protest... I appologize in advance, if this topic is out of it's place, and if in violation of the rules, I will ask the moderators to move it to appropriate section, or remove it completely...

MsgBox(prompt[, buttons] [, title] [, helpfile, context]) Buttons argument; can be combined using butwise operator OR: This is the list of available constants that determine which buttons will appear on the message box: 0 - vbOKOnly - OK button only. 1 - vbOKCancel - OK and Cancel buttons. 2 - vbAbortRetryIgnore - Abort, Retry, and Ignore buttons. 3 - vbYesNoCancel - Yes, No, and Cancel buttons. 4 - vbYesNo - Yes and No buttons. 5 - vbRetryCancel - Retry and Cancel buttons. This is the list of available constants that determine which images will appear on the message box: 16 - vbCritical - Critical Message icon. 32 - vbQuestion - Warning Query icon. 48 - vbExclamation -Warning Message icon. 64 - vbInformation - Information Message icon. There are some more constants, determinig behaviour of the buttons, or the message box itself, but they can be found in the Visual Basic help... MsgBox can also be used as a function, where it returns different values, for different buttons that are pressed: 1 - vbOK - OK 2 - vbCancel - Cancel 3 - vbAbort - Abort 4 - vbRetry - Retry 5 - vbIgnore - Ignore 6 - vbYes - Yes 7 - vbNo - No

What is exactly will you do with the code? I do have a few examples of my own encryption, that I would give you to use (compiled ofcourse )... But not if it is for any mallicious use...I would recommend looking at TEA, ROT13, and some of those easier encryption algorythms... PM me for any more details, and/or help...

Yaaaay... 3 years of Xisto HAPPY BIRTHDAY Xisto!!!!Come to think of it, I'm here almost 3 years as well... May our Xisto live to be 33, with all of us still here, and many, many new members... And many, many new features...Long live Xisto!