darran

There is something which no one can disagree against and that is how computers have revolutionized our world, in many aspects, not just in the different fields but also the way we work and play. There is always this talk about how we are going to enter the new generation filled by this amazingly built processors. We can go on about how computers really help to conserve a lot of things, take for e.g. with more reliance on computers, we would not need to cut down as many trees, and we could help go a further step in saving our environment, saving the habitats of our animals in the world who needs these trees to survive. However, we have to go forward in a realistic point of view. Documents on a computer, they are all digitalized forms, there can be 1001 ways for anyone to gain access, delete or modify them. We honestly can't hope to have a 100% safe way of protecting them, because there isn't. Look at how many sites are hacked per day, that should really give you an idea. Soft copies may be the in-thing but hard copies in my opinion should not be disregarded no matter how far we progress in terms of building our information highway. Grades may be entered in the database or through some web portal of the school, teaching can be done wirelessly and through certain output devices but what I am trying to emphasize here is not to be over-reliant on a PC. Lets have 2 sides, one based on the raw materials and one based on technology. If ever a day comes whereby somehow our computer crashes and all servers are not functioning, what then? We will be thanking these raw materials.

My point is that, we have more than 50 forums including subbed and are the few good moderators we have on the site sufficient to block out repeated topics and actually organize the forum in a neat way? I do appreciate the effort of our moderators but I don't think it is enough. These guys can work their asses off, but at the end of the day, considering the scale of Xisto, it isn't going to be enough.

If this is true, I don't see the purpose of Vista in the first place, a replacement OS for 2 years before Vienna? 5 million of codes for nothing? Ripping Mac's interface and creating such a huge hype all for nothing? Be it Vista, Vienna or Venice, I am definitely not going into Windows. The Mac is my only choice now, and though I am using Windows now, it will not last long before I switch on my desktop. Nonetheless, on my laptop I will continue using Windows because that is what majority of the workforce in Singapore use, they are not very Mac-inclined too.

For all those who are interested out there, I already purchased my external 2.5" 120 GB Seagate harddisk for SGD $125 which is equivalent to a USD $83. I hope I got a good deal though. It has been working very well for me, no problems expected. A lot of harddisks I see always have problems when you try to safety remove the device and the only solution was to power down the entire PC and then remove it. But with Seagate, the only reason why I can't safety remove is when I have one of the folders open. Other than that, I have no problems whatsoever removing my harddisk from the USB port.

The search function is something which doesn't apply to some of the topics we are looking for and sometimes could be deemed useless. For e.g. lets say I want to search for AVI, I can't possibly be typing Audio Video Interlaced ... etc am I right? This was something which I have been talking about for quite a long time, and sadly this is the way it has got to be, you have to search for at least 4 characters. Not user friendly in my opinion.I agree that that the forum is way too messy, very often you find repetitive topics in the same forum in the first page itself. In the Mobile forum, you could have several instances of the same topic asking about which is the best mobile phone. I don't really understand why we couldn't organize it better, perhaps to employ a moderator for each particular forum so that they can clean up the mess. We can't always be relying on Opaque, Buffalo ... etc to come editing our post, telling us to post to the guidelines and adhere to the rules ... etc

I got the error as saying the socket is not configured properly so it is definitely a server side error, we can only hope Xisto fixes it soon because it gets very irritating. Everytime I make a post on my blog, and this error decides to pop up, I lose whatever I typed and it is increasingly getting frustrating. This problem has been here for a very long time btw.

I seem to be getting those database connection errors, the database is fine. The problem is that this problem only occurs occasionally, I do not know whether this is a problem still in the process of being fixed. Maybe you can clarify so then I know whether I should send an email to Xisto or not.

I am not sure exactly what you are referring to. But if you are talking about class, activity, use-case diagrams, I have the tool you need. Back in my studying days, we always use this tool because it is free, and it can accurately draw out these diagrams. Very crucial to designing system solutions. The best part about this software that it is free. http://staruml.io/ The interface look a little like Visual Studio though.

It is really a simple process. There isn't any complexity in it. But to be safe ... you can do this: Backup your files There are 2 ways of doing this. You can either backup using the backup plugin provided by wordpress, generate a sql file and then you can use this file to execute the query in your phpadmin. Depending on the number of posts you have, the size of this file may vary. If I am not wrong, phpadmin only allows you to execute a 10mb sql query. Another way which I would prefer is to use the export function. Go to Manage > Export. It would save your posts, comments, custom fields, and categories. That is basically what you want in your blog. Download all your themes and plugins to your desktop. There is no need to download the entire directory because the wp-content/themes and wp-content/plugins are the only places where you would add your stuff in unless of course you created some stuff out of these 2 folders. Back it up too. Download the new version of WordPress Go to their site, grab it and unzip, unrar it whatever it is. Then simply upload it to the directory where you have wordpress installed. Overwrite everything and in less than 5 minutes everything would be upgraded. This is the way I have been upgrading. All the way from the 1.5 version till the latest 2.1.3 version. And there have been no problems at all. You can trust me on this, I have been using WordPress for almost 2 years now.

By web applications, I believe you mean as they are website services. Based on what I have seen, I do not need to download anything. I think out of the 3, the 1st application is the most interesting. Imeem, now I am able to play songs on my blog without using my own files. It really is a good service, for the office processor and messenger, I believe we already have Openoffice and MSN Messenger to do that. But this is really something to look into. It would be great if there are more web applications out there you could share.

I do share the point as cangor. I assume that you are still in high school, exposing you to different fields would do you good. Be it Literature, History, Geography ... etc these are to broaden your choices and find out what you want to do. In a way, history is important if you want to become a politician, it is imperative for you to know what happens because history is simple in a sense that it tells you a simple logic: what were the mistakes of your forefathers and how you can help to prevent them. As you go college, you would be able to choose where you want to major in. That is the big difference, in high school, you are just being taught the basics or should I say fundamentals to go further in your studies. So don't worry about it, enjoy high school because college is a lot different where you are exposed to more technical stuff related to what you are trying to major in.When I was in Polytechnic, studying IT. I was given modules like critical reasoning skills and creativity-related stuff, those were totally irrelevant to what I was majoring in. I always question why am I studying something not related to my major, however when you look back and think about it; it never hurts to have an additional skill, it will help you in the long run.

I think Web 2.0 simply means more interaction between the site and the users and also adhering to the standards of W3C's XHTML and CSS validation, not forgetting that moving away from static websites into dynamic ones. Static websites are like your html pages, having to edit the content in Dreamweaver and then uploading it. Of course, technologies like Ajax and RSS feeds helps soothen it even further, no need for any refresh, you can instantly see your comment posted just like in blogs and getting updates whenever it is done instead of having to go to the site every few hours. However I don't think we are entirely ready to move into Ajax at the moment, so many browsers out there who are still very primitive. Some of them are concerned about javascript securities and as we all know, in a way we are using Javascript to make use of AJAX. Take out Javascript and AJAX is gone too. A lot of us are trying to build our sites to be Web 2.0 but I wonder whether is it too early for that?

I seriously do not know where to post this, there was no specific forum for holiday experiences, so I figured I would just place it here. Mods: Please feel free to move it as you wish. I am going for a 6 days holiday in Taiwan next month, and I would like to know which hotel would you recommend. And also what are the attractions there? Anything to look out for? I speak Mandarin as my 2nd language, so there would be absolutely no problem communicating there. I do know the food is amazing, I would definitely put Shi Lin as one of my destination stops. The chicken franchise they have here, set up by a local is really delicious and I want to taste how the originator's version. If you know any websites which can give me the information I need, do not hesitate to list them down here.

pinwillie, I have downloaded the .pdf to my desktop. So if you still want the file, just drop me a PM. I did not encounter any of those restrictions you have mentioned.

There is nothing to hate about America. I don't follow the war with Iraq very closely, I just treat Americans as a fellow human. I may hate or I may like them, it all depends but that does not happen until I get to interact with them. At the moment, Americans to me are nice people, well at least those I know.

I am facing the same problem as me, inconsistent database connection errors, really nothing we can do except hope that Xisto solves this as soon as possible.

Thank god I am not one of those people whose data could have been erased. I only have the occasional SQL problem where it does not manage to make a connection. That is slowly fixing by itself, and I don't know whether it is just me, but the site seems to be loading much quicker now.

That is peculiar. I can access my site fine, barr the ridiculous SQL connection problems, for some reason or another at times it can't connect to the SQL and thus resulting in some error pages, can any of the admins explain what is going on?

I do agree with what is said here. A lot of us just lose motivation to continue blogging because we don't receive any feedback at all. I can say that is happening to me, the only ones who comment are people who actually know me in person, and even so, it is very rare to receive their comments. The others are just spammers advertising their website or product and people who see a need to come insulting me for no apparent reason. But usually I don't let all these get to me, I just try to make my blog better and better. I average say 30 unique people a day to my blog, and the challenge for me is to actually get them to stay longer, maybe comment on any of the entries. It would be really good to have some interaction in my blog, but that doesn't stop me from blogging. I like blogging because I would like to make myself heard, not only about my personal life but other things which I find interesting. Of course, I never divulge anything personal in my blog, that goes out to my close ones. In anycase, this is my blog URL: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

It is all down, can anyone explain what is going on? This doesn't look like it is a routine server maintenance, it has been going on for 6 hours since I last check and still no improvements

The folder name is [s-h-i-t]. Thanks a lot in advance

I tried changing the permissions but it doesn't work, they give me an operation not permitted. I hope I can get some assistance ASAP

I have already tried that, but the file is still there. Can you manually delete it for me?

I installed a plugin and then I removed it from the ftp, but it seems their created folder is still in my directory. When I try to remove it, I got a FTP 550 Permission denied error, how can I fix this? I believe it is causing some problems with my other plugin. Also what is the default permissions for any file? Can I set them to be a certain permission level, because I need them to be able to execute. Here is the screenshot:

Here's my stance, I am NOT going to upgrade my PC to a Windows Vista. Enough reason to see why? I am going for an iMac, be it this year, next year or the following. It is costly for sure, just SGD 2548 for a middle end Mac when I can buy a good Desktop for that price. But it is worth it, Windows for me is just going downhill, Vista in particular tries to copy Mac in everyway and fails badly. Mac is the way to go, bootcamp emulates Windows for you, so I don't see why you need to even consider Mac as an OS which does not have much support. It is a relatively new technology and it may take a few more years to be a real stable technology but I am not worried about that. Mac has less viruses, runs more efficiently, has the overall better design. The only downside: the price and the support, but you pay for what you get and as for the lack of support, it is improving, more games are coming out for Mac versions but if you want a short term solution, switch to a Windows partition. AS SIMPLE AS THAT!