possible123

Would it make any difference if life was a game or something else? We humans would never have thought ofor saw or heard about a big system controlling the universe. We don't know how would a thing be designedor how many of those "big machines of life" are out there. No matter what you call it, it still would besomething unique, never seen before. It can't be compared to anything, because there has beennothing similar to it.Nothing has ever been on such a large scale, so comparing it to anything would be a bad comparison.I guess that is why I continue onward in life thinking that I can influence it, what other choice do I have?Even if life was a game, nothing would have changed except what we think of life. Life would stillhave the same rules, punishments, rewards, and challenges.On an off topic note, these forums are so thought-provoking. I love it here.

I also think that a direct democracy ( vote for laws, not people ) is the best way to go, but I have always thoughtof something that would be a cross between a democracy, republic, and a dictatorship. People could vote forindividuals that work in psychology and other subjects dealing with the mind as well as learning. Thoseindividuals could create a set of tests. A person who wants to become leader will take those tests. The firsttests will be easy and get progressively harder and more secretive as nobody should be cheating.The finalists will then be voted for. The votes will not be the ones that define who will be the leader,but as a way to check how effective the test was. In other words, if a person passes the test with flying colors,but 70% of the nation voted against that person, whether or not that person becomes a leader will be reconsidered,but still might become a leader after an additional analysis.If that person does become a leader, that person will then have complete control. However, he will have to attenda hearing for any decision that is at least somewhat important ( like the date for a new holiday wouldn't get a hearing ).The leader will then get advice from the smartest people in their field. That way, the leader can make surehis logic make sense.There will be a vote for really important decisions or decisions that seem like they are wrong. If there is a largeamount of people against it, the decision could be reconsidered or just prevented from taking effect ( depending onhow many people voted against it ). Because the votes could be pretty frequent, they will be optional. The peoplethat do participate in it can pay less money for taxes.If a leader has a large history of people voting against his decisions, he will be sacked and a new leader will be chosen.If a leader will be ending his term in a few years, people will take the tests and the votes to see who will be the nextleader. The person that passes through will then become the apprentice of the current leader until the end of currentleader's term.I would think that this kind of system of government would let only good leaders in, and try to stop bad leaders.Even if a bad leader managed to escape the tests, there would still be the votes. Even if the bad leader escapedthe votes, he still would have to face the hearings for his decisions. Even if he does things his way despitewhat was said at the hearings, there will still be the votes. If he is voted against too many times, he can get sackedlike previously mentioned.

Same here. Lying on the internet is acceptable and recommended to some degree, but don't take it too far. I have lied too much and I have learned it the hard way. Now, I just avoid questions or try to confuse who's asking it. For example, if somebody wants to know my age, I'll give them a complex equation and tell them that the answer they get is my age. I even lie then, if I think that the person asking is capable of completing the equation properly. I give a latitude and longitude region for my location, as untrustworthy people don't have maps ( from my personal experience, only nice people can figure out my location that way ).

It depends on how you look at it. A lot of words in chemistry are longer than that. Any name for a chemical compoundhas a "word form". A simple chemical compound that has a "word form" of Dinitrogen Trioxide has two nitrogen atoms and three oxygen atoms. If you find some complex compound, you can easily have a longer word. However, chemical names in word form aren't usually in an English dictionary so they don't usually count. I remember reading that a really huge chemical compound was put in a dictionary for some reason, so that would be longer. Now see the word in it's massively powerful letters. drumroll ACETYL­SERYL­TYROSYL­SERYL­ISO­LEUCYL­THREONYL­SERYL­PROLYL­SERYL­GLUTAMINYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­VALYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­LEUCYL­SERYL­SERYL­VALYL­TRYPTOPHYL­ALANYL­ASPARTYL­PROLYL­ISOLEUCYL­GLUTAMYL­LEUCYL­LEUCYL­ASPARAGINYL­VALYL­CYSTEINYL­THREONYL­SERYL­SERYL­LEUCYL­GLYCYL­ASPARAGINYL­GLUTAMINYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­GLUTAMINYL­THREONYL­GLUTAMINYL­GLUTAMINYL­ALANYL­ARGINYL­THREONYL­THREONYL­GLUTAMINYL­VALYL­GLUTAMINYL­GLUTAMINYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­SERYL­GLUTAMINYL­VALYL­TRYPTOPHYL­LYSYL­PROLYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­PROLYL­GLUTAMINYL­SERYL­THREONYL­VALYL­ARGINYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­PROLYL­GLYCYL­ASPARTYL­VALYL­TYROSYL­LYSYL­VALYL­TYROSYL­ARGINYL­TYROSYL­ASPARAGINYL­ALANYL­VALYL­LEUCYL­ASPARTYL­PROLYL­LEUCYL­ISOLEUCYL­THREONYL­ALANYL­LEUCYL­LEUCYL­GLYCYL­THREONYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­ASPARTYL­THREONYL­ARGINYL­ASPARAGINYL­ARGINYL­ISOLEUCYL­ISOLEUCYL­GLUTAMYL­VALYL­GLUTAMYL­ASPARAGINYL­GLUTAMINYL­GLUTAMINYL­SERYL­PROLYL­THREONYL­THREONYL­ALANYL­GLUTAMYL­THREONYL­LEUCYL­ASPARTYL­ALANYL­THREONYL­ARGINYL­ARGINYL­VALYL­ASPARTYL­ASPARTYL­ALANYL­THREONYL­VALYL­ALANYL­ISOLEUCYL­ARGINYL­SERYL­ALANYL­ASPARAGINYL­ISOLEUCYL­ASPARAGINYL­LEUCYL­VALYL­ASPARAGINYL­GLUTAMYL­LEUCYL­VALYL­ARGINYL­GLYCYL­THREONYL­GLYCYL­LEUCYL­TYROSYL­ASPARAGINYL­GLUTAMINYL­ASPARAGINYL­THREONYL­PHENYL­ALANYL­GLUTAMYL­SERYL­METHIONYL­SERYL­GLYCYL­LEUCYL­VALYL­TRYPTOPHYL­THREONYL­SERYL­ALANYL­PROLYL­ALANYL­SERINE Ta Da! If I put this in my signature, I'll never have a one or two liner post.

I really appreciate you saying that. Some of my friends say that the original is better, but you also have to consider that I don't have the spending budget of Weird Al and I cannot hire a cast of actors and actresses to film the video for me. I also think that some parts of the video weren't that funny, however I do think I got lucky on some of the images. To others that have watched this video, please tell me what you think about it.

Well, I am for cloning. I don't think that there will be copies of people running around the place, but I think that the technology of cloning will go to making copies of stem cells and using them to regrow body parts. This happens by making and growing an embryo and taking the stem cells out. A lot of people are against this because getting the stem cells involves killing the embryo. Normally, the embryo will be taken out of the "extras" in a fertility clinic and scientists will grow the embryo to get the stem cells. What people don't realize is the embryo will be killed anyway in the fertility clinic. All scientists are doing is extracting more use out of the embryos and improving a person's life. But should scientists kill the embryo anyway? At what point does a cell become a human? I think that the embryo counts a human, but should we kill it? We kill animals and plants, what difference would a cell make? When you eat meat, you have ended the life of an animal. Why have you ended the life of that animal? Because you need protein. Although there are other ways to get protein, you still take the meat. Saving somebody's life is more important than protein from animals, I would think. Although scientists are working on other ways to get stem cells without killing an embryo, the result would not be as good as with an embryo. I think that if humans can eat meat, we should be able to save lives with stem cells.

Email isn't dead yet. RSS will compliment email. RSS will kill off the email newsletter, but not email communication between friends, family, coworkers, etc. Companies will never let go of email, simply because coworkers can email each other useful information. Things can get done faster. Google knows this very well that RSS will complement email. That is why they have rolled out their "web clips" ( rss feeds displayed on a bar over the message area ). Thunderbird, an email client, can handle RSS and email so you only have to use one application. The general idea of email will never die. PMs on a forum are basically a mini email system. That is just one example of how modified versions of email will appear on future technology.

I've watched the White and Nerdy videos on Youtube, and I thought that I could make my own video. This is just another one of those videos that take images from Google Images that are related to the verse that the singer is singing. Most videos like that aren't very good, but I think mine is because I managed to find some extremely funny images on Google Images, and partly because the song is so good. Let me know what you think of it and how I could improve it. The video is at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Well, I agree on the part by David Pogue. I also have to say that some things are just universal. Although if you are creative you can come up with many ways to do things, only a few ways will actually fit the demands of most people. It would be like suing somebody for making a web browser toolbar and saying that the general idea of additional toolbars was their idea or something like that. It would be crazy to do such a thing. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents were created to protect work from being stolen. I'm pretty sure that we all know that. However, not much is actually being "stolen". These things are just universal. As we get more advanced, we might think that these thing are not universal, especially with something like Aero and the funky GUIs. At the end of the day, most of those things are universal. Now of Apple comes up with something brilliant ( again ), and Windows takes it without much change, there has to be some complaints there. What Microsoft can do is get inspiration from Apple and make a better version of Apple's product. Also, Microsoft would never attempt to hurt Apple furiously like I saw described in an earlier post. That would just decrease Microsoft's popularity dramatically. Microsoft doing that could have a worse effect on Microsoft itself than Apple. When Apple gets revenge, Microsoft will be hurt even worse. Because of the possibility of that happening, Microsoft has to strive to be as angelic as Apple, but Microsoft is a position where everything that they do can be perceived as evil. Because of that position, Microsoft is a sitting duck. Let me rephrase that. A rich sitting duck.

I doubt that somebody could make a virus that infiltrates the OS. First of all, the OS would probably be Linux, one of the most secure operating systems out there. Second of all, the device would have to be connected to the Internet for a virus to get onto the system. Third of all, there would have to be a camera installed to have somebody see you shower. I see no reason for your shower to be connected to the Internet and have a camera attached to it that can broadcast what's inside your shower to any hacker that wants to watch. On the other hand, I see no reason that people should have a "Smart Shower" anyway, so I might not be the best person to comment here. This was a little similar to an idea that I had about improvements that could happen in a bathroom. My idea was to have the faucet to dispense soap as well as water. Some of you probably have seen those new water faucets in public bathrooms where you can hold your hands under the faucet and water comes out. I was thinking. What if you waved one hand over the faucet, and soap came out of the faucet. Rub your hands with soap for a few seconds, and put your hands under the faucet. Water comes out. This way, people can save money because fewer people will use too much soap as it would take slightly longer to repeatedly wave your hands over the soap. Also, germs will not get on the faucet because almost nobody will need to touch it. The soap would come out a smaller tube that hides behind the main "hole" that the water comes out of. That way, the soap will not contaminate the water when people are trying to refill a water bottle or something. Also, that would make the design simpler.

I didn't even know that people are afraid of the number until 6/6/2006.It seems way too silly for me. Also, how in the world would you avoid 2/3?2/3 is a very common fraction. Also, 2/3 equals 0.666666... not 666. 0.666... is differentfrom 666, I would think. Being afraid to 0.66666... would be even more silly, as you arenow not only afraid of something that can't hurt you, but you are now afraid of two thingsthat cannot hurt you.

This is an extremely interesting idea. I think that there are other showers that can do some of the things that you have described, although they don't have the fancyLinux OS and voice activation.However, what about cost? Think of the demand. Some people, like me, are perfectlyokay with their current shower even though it might be too hot or too cold sometimes.To some people, the cost of such a device just wouldn't be worth it. Also, what about installation? The installation would involve making some connectionsand modifications to the original shower. You would have to get somebody to comeand fix it in. That person would have to be paid. That person would have to be trainedtoo. It takes money to train a person to do a job.In selling the product, you would have to consider:## Advertising## Installation fee | ** Installer's salary ** Installer training ** Misc. installation related fees ( tools, gas, van/truck, etc. )## OS programming costs## Hardware costs## Assembly costs## Shipping costs## Worker recruitment costs## Factory costs## Voice activation programming costs ( voice activation is hard to program )This might be a good tutorial to write, but selling it would be extremely difficult.However, I might be wrong. There might a market among people who lovetaking a shower. Nearly everybody I met has this problem, but nobody I knowwould want to spend the money on that.

You make a lot of good points. However, some people will always continue poaching. I think it is the law of supply and demand. I am sure that some poachers could take up some other business, but they choose poaching because it brings the most money. Some people will want a dead lion to own, and some people will go find, kill, and sell the lion to get money. I guess that poaching is a term of respect, in some ways. You only see rare and popular animals being poached. Nobody goes around poaching spiders ( to the farthest extent of my knowledge ) because they are easy to find and not that respected. Even rare spiders are not poached ( again, to the farthest extent of my knowledge ). A lion would be poached because the lion is the "king of the jungle". Some people get pleasure that they own a dead "king". On an off topic note, this also explains why Egyptian graves were frequently robbed of their mummies. They are rare and respected.

Very true. We can get rid of weapons, but we cannot get rid of war. You can see this in America's maximum security prisons. A maximum security prison isn't like any other prison. Any thing that could be used as a weapon has been removed or welded to something to prevent prisoners from breaking out. The creative mind of a human can do either great good things or great bad things. Unfortunately, some use it for the bad. As Albert Einstein once said: People will always find a reason to fight, the only thing we can do about it is try to control it and handle it in a respectful and safe way.

Perhaps it is, but according to the article, some people claim that they are actually getting better.This might actually work, or this could be the placebo effect. The important thing is that some people are feeling better, if only a little. While I doubt that this could be THE CURE for AIDS, his treatment might show to have some sort of positive effect on the immune system. like one of those "superfoods". I hope that this might be the cure, but I am skeptical.

Just a look at a history textbook will show you how low somebody can go for money. There have been many times in history when somebody did something that was pure evil only for their own advantage. In the future, more things like this will happen. It is simply the nature of some humans. Everybody reading this can take one step to stop things like this poaching from happening by donating to charities that support endangered species like the IFAW. Remember the ancient Chinese proverb:

I don't work in the medical field, but I know many people who do. I think that people that work in the medical field know that they are helping the patient, not hurting the patient. They understand that although it looks like the patient is being cut up that they are improving the patient's health. Many people have seen a lot of pain and suffering. Some of those people go to the medical field to help those in need of relief. They may have a personal experience that keeps them motivated. They also must have had the necessary training in medical school. In medical school, most people working in the field probably will have overcome the "yuck" factor before they graduate. However, some of the people in the medical field might naturally not feel as bad when they are doing surgery. They might just "be" that way. Maybe that is why that they chose the medical field, because of the slight advantage that they would have. This is just some of my thinking.

It sounds like a great idea, but the problem is that laying down all our weapons will never happen. In war, people will always want more advanced weapons than the enemy. Even if everybody went back to medieval times in terms of weapons, in the future, we still would come back to the same state. There is also the problem that somebody will come and attack us after we have laid all our weapons down. We have to keep our current weapons and make sure that they stay powerful. The trick is to only use them to uphold justice. A person is evil when they use a weapon against somebody or something for some other reason than upholding justice. The only real solution to long lasting peace is gradual. We have to take future technology and make sure that it doesn't go in the wrong hands. For example: The United States Government wants to be the first to have weapons in outer space. Other countries don't trust the US. In my opinion, the best thing to do is to make sure that nobody gets weapons in space. That way, nobody feels threatened. Who knows how long it will take. Ten years, fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years. Whenever we get as close to peace as possible, I hope that children of the future will look at our history books and think how much of war-hawks the people of today and the past are.

I know how you feel. On other forums, I really don't have much to say. On this forum, there are many people with topics that I can write a lengthy reply to. I think that in some cases, a two or three liner isn't really that bad. What is important is that the post makes a point, tells a story, or is thought-provoking. Some people are good at condensing a post, while others have to go on and on.... But I may not be the expert in whether a forum post is good or not. That is just what I think it should be like. On the other hand though, it is easier to prove a point in a long post than a short one and short ones are probably more likely to be useless. That doesn't mean that all of them are though, I think.

The family and friends of the victims would care. Everybody cares about death. There are other effects besides saving lives that I mentioned earlier.

Yes, those are all huge benefits, but remember what I said about carelessness? It might become a habit for a lot of people. Habits can follow a person everywhere and can affect their destiny in that way. Being careless in driving could affect other parts of a person's life. Those habits may spread. No drinking and driving campaigns could mean more drinking overall. More alcohol might raise the rate of other crime. This could raise the price of oil due to high demand. Also having no auto accidents would mean near immortality as long as a person stayed in a land vehicle and was not the victim of the annual auto accident. This could mean that a lot of people would be too afraid to leave their cars. There would be more stealing of cars, also because they provide safety. A big influx of drivers due to no need for a driving age means that traffic would become worse, and goods would not be transported via land as fast. More drivers mean that the roads would wear down faster. More roads would be needed to support the additional traffic. More roads means that some roads would have to cut across the habitats of animals. A road crossing forest would divide it in two as it is difficult for trees on one side of the road to pollinate the trees on the other side of the road. The forest would be weaker when they are divided. Land animals cannot cross the road to get to necessary mating grounds which might decrease the population of that animal. There would also be more demand for metal. The metal mining industry is extremely unkind to the land. Having the spell on one nation could affect the environments of where the metal is mined. More people driving cars means more people wanting car repair. Although there are no accidents, you still need to maintain your car to keep it working. This would mean that more car repair shops would open. Those shops would take up more space, further destroying the environment. You also have to consider that parking lots for any kind of shop would have to be larger because of more drivers. All those parking lots would take up more space too. That space could be the habitat for wildlife. We already have enough trouble protecting the environment, adding to it might make our situation worse. You also have to consider that there will be one accident involving two cars regardless of how many other cars are there. There will always be one annual accident with two cars if there are only five cars in the world or five trillion. By that logic, the more cars that there are. the less likely you are going to be in the annual accident. There could also be scams involving devices that the sellers claim that the device will keep you safe from the annual accident. It would be difficult to verify if the devices actually worked because the spell would be in effect. Yes, there is always a chance of being in a car accident only because a careless driver smashed into you. You are more likely to be in an accident if you are careless too. That is the good thing about having normal accidents, you can do your part to prevent them. The annual accident that comes with accepting the offer could happen to anybody, regardless of how safe you drive. Well, I didn't mean that the public would think it would be magic right off the bat. People who keep track of accidentswould notice that the amount of accidents has sharply dropped after one day. They would notice the annual accident and how horrible it was. In my imagination, spells don't take effect gradually. They would be able to pinpoint the day that the spell was cast. Also in my imagination, that would be the same day that the mage asked the leader and the leader said yes. Somebody might track where the leader went that day. There are many ways to find out the truth. When your country has the lowest rate of car accidents, there might be a lot of immigrants, legal or illegal. Those immigrants would get cars and drive on the roads. Even more drivers would wear down the roads worse than before. Natural resources might not be able to support those immigrants or they cannot get jobs, making them poor. There are a bunch of reasons why not to choose the spell.

That tutorial isn't the only way to skin gmail. I know of a few other ways. All require the download of Firefox extensions. First up is gmailskins.mozdev.org/ It is an extension designed specifically for skinning gmail, but it contains a few other things. You can't make your own skins yet. You can also use greasespot.net/ It is the home of the very popular Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. They have a lot of skins for gmail and other things that add functionality to Gmail. You can find greasemonkey user scripts at userscripts.org/ If you want to cut to the chase and find gmail related scripts, you can find them at this search result page Greasemonkey and Gmail Skins aren't the only way to skin Gmail. There is also Stylish at userstyles.org/ They have both the styles and the download link there. Again, if you want to get to the gmail styles fast, you can find them at This other results page. As for people saying that it is against the TOS to do this, I disagree. Like many posters before me said, it is just how the browser views the content. No change is being made on the server. Except for Gmail Skins. The Gmail Skins extension makes a "hidden label" in Gmail. You know how labels work in Gmail, right? Gmail Skins basically makes a label that is hidden in some views. That label contains your preferences. If your friend's computer has Gmail Skins on Firefox, and you log onto that computer, your settings will come into effect. Not that any harmful changes are happening to the server though, just a little label.

Weapons of any sort will exist forever. Everybody knows that. If humans could not feel physical or emotionalpain, then weapons would not have been invented. The purpose of a weapon is to cause physical and/oremotional pain. A person being stabbed is feeling physical pain, and the family and friends of the victimare feeling emotional pain. The problem is that pain would stop intentional attacks, but accidents would beon the rise as the lack of physical pain means that people would not know that things could hurt them.

I would not accept the offer. If there were no accidents on roads, people would become really careless on the roads.This wouldn't be a bad thing with the spell in effect, but the careless attitude might spill over into other parts of people's lives. Those parts might affect your nation in a negative way. Suppose everybody started being careless with money. Most people would end up poor while a selected few have all the money. Knowing that there will be a car accident once a year would make people more nervous. They would know that no matter how safely that they drive, that they always would still have a chance to die in an accident. Normally, if you are a safe driver, you are less likely to get into an accident. If you didn't tell the people about the spell, researchers would notice the trends and find out. You couldn't fool the public forever. That is when the fear of being the one that dies comes in as well as the carelessness. At first, it might look good, but in the long run it would be very bad idea to accept the offer to cast the spell.

I don't like the fact that Google is being sued. I am a big fan of Google. Viacom is clearly doing this for money. Viacom isn't trying to enforce anything. The internet is so full of copyrighted content that they might as well give up. It would take forever to clean up all of the copyrighted content. Viacom should be thanking Youtube and Google. They are getting free advertising of their content. That should be good for their business. If Viacom isn't actually doing this for the money and is trying to get rid of their copyrighted content, I think that they just need to chill off. It is most likely that Viacom is just trying to get rich off of Google.