Spectre

Ok. I don't use Google Earth, so as I said, I wouldn't know.

Assuming you mean Area 51 - in relation to the whole conspiracy theories that have been circulating since the 1940s regarding the supposed crash landing of an unidentified flying object - try Groom Lake Base, Nevada (near Rachel, approximately 90 miles north of Las Vegas, apparently). Roswell - where, according to the stories and media hype (you'll have to excuse me, but I think it's a load of garbage), the incident supposedly occurred - is in New Mexio.I don't know, but it's possible the US government restricts aerial photographic shots of military bases and other areas of restricted airspace. Sattelite capturing the images may have been required to either not photograph that area at all, not photograph it in great detail, or have any photographs of it removed later on. But I don't know.

Apparently, MSN is considering firing up a 'paid to search' style program as an incentive for users to change to the engine somewhere in the future. Google Earth provides easy, instant access to very detailed maps all around the globe. Some are cocerned that terrorists may use this information to plan and execute attacks. The thing is that it's all information that you would be able to obtain anyway - Google Earth (and similar programs) just makes it a little easier. Personally, I think it's a little like the Rockstar/Hot Coffee thing - making a fuss just for the sake of it.

Apparently, Microsoft is looking at paying real money to users to use the MSN search engine. Not as an affiliate or a publisher - just general, everyday searching that you would otherwise use your search engine of preference for. In an interview, Bill Gates stated that: Keep in mind that this is not happening yet, and is only an idea as to what MSN might incorporate into their search engine at a later time. But as it is coming from the company behind the engine, it is unlikely to be false (as much as you may love or hate Microsoft, a corporation in such a position can't go stating blatantly false information). I've received a few emails regarding this from various people, as well as from SEO-related and other general newsletters. One article by David Utter fom WebProNews on Entireweb noted that:

As Bill Gates commented in a recently delivered speech regarding the direction of MSN, Google is great, but it's mostly 'look at me too' technology that serves no real purpose other than to attract attention to the company. Corporate slander is to be expected, of course, but it is true. Not there's anything wrong with that - but in my opinion, Google is a very good search engine, with a whole heap of other stuff nobody really needs.

My favorite way to start the day is by throwing the alarm clock through the window and going back to sleep after a long night studying / partying / whatevering. Short of that, about a litre of a highly caffienated brew and a quick shower usually gets me going. The most annoying start to the day is rushing with a razor and winding up slicing half your face off. And then missing the train. And then realizing it's Sunday.

Personally, I prefer vBulletin over IPB, but they are both good forum packages. It just depends on personal preference. I would say the best free forum is phpBB (as has been mentioned), but if you are in a position to put up some cash, you would be better off going for a commercial solution. Whereas phpBB is more widely used and supported than most other free forum applicatons that I know of, commercial packages usually come with priority support and other bonuses, and the authors are obligated to get on top of any security issues or other problems pretty much as soon as they become known. The phpBB people do an excellent job, but costs aside, it's not quite as good as the paid alternative.

Primarily advertising. Those sponsored links that you see along side search results aren't put there for free, and the ones at the top for popular search terms cost a packet. Google serves millions of search results on a daily basis, and the sponsored links are cleverly designed so that users often click on them when searching for something if it appears related. Not to mention the revenue they draw in from their AdSense publishers, public investment (as you mentioned), and probably other forms of income we don't know about.

It depends how you set it up. When using cPanel (Xisto provides free cPanel hosting) you can either park it in your current account so that it is served from the public_html directory (as would be blah1234.trap17.com, meaning they would be the same site), or you can set it up as a new site to be served from a directory underneath public_html (in which case a subdomain wold be set up under your main account) - such as you.com/ might be served from /public_html/you. This can be done from within cPanel - see Parked and Add-On domains.

If the impression to click ratio seems a little high - that is, there are an unusually large number of clicks for the number of visitors that have viewed the ad - then Google will investigate your account, and check to make sure you haven't been trying to cheat them out of money (even if you haven't, they will probably ban you if you aren't a particularly good publisher - i.e. you don't deliver to a very large audience).Out of 1,000,000 people, it is almost impossible not to receive a single click. If that ever happens, you should probably shut down your website and pursue another hobby/career. I was just using that as an example - if, for some reason, nobody did click it, you still wouldn't receive anything. On a CPM payment model, however, you would receive 1,000 * (whatever the CPM rate is). Obviously.Different ads in Google's AdSense program also pay different amounts per click. You might get a few cents for a single click on some ad types, or a few dollars for others. Some real estate ads, for example, are reputed for having very nice CPC rates, whereas ads for computer hardware might may less. It depends on how much the advertiser is spending on the campaign. This is the reason why you cannot modify your page's content with the sole intention of manipulating which ads will be displayed on your site, and a lot of copy writing is done with targeted advertising in mind - whole articles are often written only to try and attract certain ads, rather than for the sake of presenting the information in the article.

It's not possible to get DSL speeds on standard <= 56k dial-up, ever. You can do little things here and there to boost the speeds, but you cannot increase a 56k connection to 256k and above just by tweaking it. It's not as if dial-up is an intentionally restricted form of DSL than you can 'unlock' or anything. The physical build of the phone line has limitations of the speed of data it can transfer on the layer a dial-up modem uses, so it's not possible to exceed standard dial-up speeds by a significant amount.This small hack make the page appear to load faster, but it seems to be just rendering the HTML quickly and then the images (and other content) later.

No, AdSense does not pay on a CPM rate - it is on a CPC payment model. You can have 1,000,000 impressions, but if not a single valid click-through occurs, you won't be paid a cent. And there isn't really such a thing as a 'valid' impression - there can be unique hits and page views (the former where an impression is only counted for every new hit, and the latter counting all hits, whether by the same people or not).Google does display in the statistics the 'effective CPM', but this is basically jut a projection of earnings if on a CPM rate, not what you are being paid per impression - which is nothing.

100% of people are never going to be using the same web browser, ever (as much as certain FireFox users may like that to happen). As for donations, not everyone is in a position to donate, regardless of whether or not they would like to. A lot of the members we get at Xisto are quite young - from 13 up (there are probably younger people here who just lie about their age to circumvent the COPPA compliance issue). Most of these people will not or can not donate, but can still earn a site commission through the advertisements it has. And no, of course FireFox shouldn't be 'blamed' for anything. It is an excellent browser. It is not going to be responsible for shutting down any sites, but users who use it in conjunction with AdBlock to prevent banners (or other advertisement types) being displayed which are paying on a CPM model are going to hurt the site in question if it relies on advertising to run.

Ah, very good, rvalkass. It does indeed work. I didn't know it was possible with Internet Explorer at all. And that is why client-side scripting languages are not my area.

Ugh. I can't stand the 'shorthand' that seems to have become popular in recent times. And what makes it worse is that it takes about two milliseconds more to type the full word. Typing 'How are you?' is just as easy as 'how r u LOL'. It also irritates me when people don't even try and use correct grammar when posting or through any other form of text-based communication. Everybody makes mistakes, and that's fine and to be expected - but when people don't even try is when it gets to me.

I'll assume you are asking that as a question ('How do I...' would be more indicative of such than 'How to...'). Anyway, the simple answer is you can't. You cannot explicitly force a browser window to remain above other windows at all times. You can, however, exploit a little JavaScript to keep your window focused - but it would not work with all browsers, and may cause problems. One option would be to focus the window on a timer basis, so that it focuses itself every x [milli]seconds. Another would be to instruct the window to focus itself on the body onblur() event. As I said, these would only work in some browsers (I would assume they would both be effective in Internet Explorer - assuming the worst for that browser is usually accurate), and could be prevented in any web browser by disablign JavaScript or selectively disabling certain JavaScript functions or events.

I will bite my tongue and keep my personal opinions regarding this matter (read: dating sites) to myself, and attempt to take an objective stance. This idea of yours might work. It could take off and turn out to be very successful. But unless you already have an established site with a decently sized loyal client base, it might not. It's all well and good to offer advertising and other resources in order for 'custom' hosting packages which differ from the status quo (which, unless I am mistaken, is what you are getting at), promising that a good result will come of the project - but it might end up flopping, and only Xisto would stand to lose in such a case. I would suggest that you go about the normal methods of requesting free hosting as any other member would, and work from there. If you require additional space or bandwidth or other features, you can always purchase high-quality web hosting from Xisto - Web Hosting, the budget web hosting provider (you can find banners splashed througouht Xisto).

In some browsers, closing a top-level window via JavaScript's window.close() will result in a confirmation dialog being displayed. That I know of, this cannot be prevented through the code itself (you may be able to disable it in some browsers, though). Only new windows opened from within that window may be closed without confirmation. Other browsers, however, will simply close the window, no questions asked; it just depends on the respective JavaScript engine and how the developers have opted to handle such an event by default.

It is very unlikely that it is going to shut down the entire web (as in, it is not going to happen). It is even unlikely that it will cause the shut down of any sites, unless all of the visitors to that site use FireFox and AdBlock, which isn't likely either. But FearMonger does have a point. People insist on having everything for free, and yet they refuse to accept those services which are advertising supported, which is ludicrous. Take Xisto, for example - the hosting is 100% free. You never, ever have to pay a single cent (although you can pay for quality web hosting if you wish). Obviously, OpaQue doesn't just 'magically' obtains the resources to fund this site from nowhere - they come from forum-based advertising, as you can see. If all Xisto members were to use FireFox and AdBlock, or other equivalent programs, to block these ads, then OpaQue would be forced to shut the free service down. FireFox and most Linux distributions are supported by donations (whether financially or otherwise). They both receive a great deal of support from very large communities, and cannot be compared to web sites which rely on advertising revenue to remain free.

I don't know why an attorney (particularly one with Thompson's track record) would ever be considered honest or have any integrity whatsoever, but as you've probably read, he backed out of donating $10,000 to charity - which was originally the 'reward' for creating his proposed game - on the grounds that it was all just a joke. Of course, everyone is incredibly shocked by this - I always thought he was such a decent, honest man who stood for good values and wasn't really interested in just getting his face on the news at the expense of families who have suffered a tragedy. End of satirical statement.

Many, many sites that provide a service for free (hosting, email, etc) rely on some form of advertising for revenue, or at least to cover the costs of providing the service (other than strictly non-profit organizations, anyway). People obviously aren't going to be all that interested in providing a service to complete strangers that they will never meet out of their own pockets. So yes, blocking all advertising without exception is likely to cause some sites to shut down (I don't use FireFox, so I don't know how this extension works, and whether or not it can block anything other than pop ups).

As you may be aware, the controller ports on the original Xbox are essentially modified USB ports, meaning you can wire in a USB plug and use your keyboard with it (although games are intended to be used with the controller). I don't know about the Xbox 360, but if this is the case, you may be able to use a keyboard as a replacement for a controller (although it is unlikely this will be 'officially' supported).That said, I don't know a great deal about either the Xbox or the Xbox 360, so don't take my word for it. Try reading Microsoft's specification of the system - it may indicate whether or not keyboard usage will be supported by default. It is, however, unlikely, as this allows people to use it for other purposes - such as Xbox Linux.Anyway, all that aside, I think that the controllers would probably be better for playing games, as they are designed specifically for that purpose. I'm not hugely into gaming on any platform, but generally speaking, the controller is designed to allow for optimal control and instant reflex reactions which are harder to do on a keyboard due to the somewhat awkward layout.

In my opinion, you should not bother with AdSense as a publisher unless your site receives reasonable traffic (personally, I would recommend at least 1,500 unique visitors per day), and your site contains decent content that people are actually going to notice. As with any other advertising campaign which pays on a per click (or per action) basis, users are required to 'interact' with AdSense ads and unless they click-through you aren't going to get paid, so if your site doesn't contain anything to catch and hold their attention, they probably aren't going to take a lot of notice of the ads. You can't just place a bunch of random advertisements on any page and expect to earn revenue - you would do better to research which program and payment model would best suit your needs, and position advertisements where they are likely to be noticed

Yahoo!'s attempt at competing with Google's AdSense - the Yahoo! Publisher Network - is still in the beta testing phase, and I don't think they are open to everyone yet. A brief scan of the details indicates they are only accepting US publishers at the moment, and would probably only accept high-quality, high-traffic sites at this stage in order to text the system as extensively as possible (although I don't know). It is likely the conditions will be pretty much the same as those at AdSense, so not everyone is going to be able to become a publisher even when beta testing is over.

The error I received: This is because you aren't closing all your if() statements. You need to include a closing squigly bracket ('}') to inform the script that you wish to end the statement there (or depending on your style of coding, there are other ways to acheive this).