Arbitrary

Blog scripts, eh, well, there's a good number out there. One of the most used would be Wordpress, which I also use myself. Wordpress is great, but it does require that whichever webhost you chose have PHP 5.0 and MySQL. Once it's set up, managing the entire blog becomes really easy--nearly all the work can be done through the admin panel. If you find yourself missing any Wordpress features (like creating a Google sitemap, or structured comments), then you can check out their extensive plugin gallery here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/. Skins can be easily changed with Wordpress--it's done with just the simple click of a mouse. And of course, if you get Akismet, then nearly all comment spam is automatically taken care of. XP Then again, there's also DotClear. The only problem with that is there are little resources of it in English, so you might have a hard time understanding what to do. And of course, I do agree with minnieadkins--you have to decide exactly what kind of features you want from that blog as well as whether or not you'd prefer it in a database.

The new beta was interesting...but I didn't really notice all that many significant changes. Sure, the skin was different--not-in-use tabs were dimmer and the current tab was highlighted. The background behind each tab had a smoother gradient and if you used more than 12 tabs there'd be a scrollbar. Although personally I would prefer to have two layers of tabs when there's too many to fit on the screen than a scroller.And most of the things listed in the desktoplinux site were already in the first beta--things like session restore (I made good use of this one), inline spell checking and the built-in phishing protection (though I have heard that this feature didn't work very well in the last beta). And while it's true that a couple addons don't work for the beta anymore, most of my preferred extensions (such as Adblock and the Gmail notifier) still work fine. Also, it seems like the memory issue with Firefox has quieted quite a bit. Before Firefox 2 Beta 2 came out, FF's memory constantly rose to around 80-90000. Now it's gotten cut down by half (hopefully not because several extensions are incompatible). :)I guess the major advantage IE7 has over Firefox would be the tabs preview thing. That I thought was really interesting, but I later found out that it can be obtained as a Firefox extension. The new RSS feeds thing was interesting and pretty useful too..

Erm. Well, I doubt it has anything to do with Firefox. Can you view sites with Flash and Java in them in IE? If not, then maybe you don't have the right Flash plugin and should head over to Macromedia's site and download it. And for Java, same deal. Go to Sun's website and download it. Here the sites: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ And: https://www.java.com/en/download/ Hope that helped.

I also think the English version is better. It's easier to remember for most people and since you're going to be writing in English, your audience will mostly be speaking English. That way it's more likely your audience will type your domain in and visit. Of course, if the content of your site is mostly about anime or some other Japan-related issue, then it's probably fine to get the Japanese version. But from your description of your site, it seems more personal, so bittersweet-dreams might be better.There is the slight chance that bittersweet-dreams and bittersweetdreams will get confused, but I think it's more likely that the position of the dash will get confusing for people. The existence of the dash seems easier to notice.

I hear it's highly addictive, so I wouldn't dare try it. And beyond me, I've seen a couple of classmates who are highly addicted to it and one of their friends who finally quit. The quitter claimed that in his sophomore year of high school he'd play for around eight hours daily after school, meaning that he starts his homework at around 11pm each night. To think that he managed to sometimes stay awake in class is quite a surprise. Now his friends are going down the same road as him--they're playing eight hour days while he's attempting to warn them. But then again, addicts will be addicts; they'll never listen to an ex-addict, and most certainly not a nongamer parent/teacher/whoever. And I agree with the above--WoW shouldn't be sued. Sure, it's partially their fault for making such an addictive game, but the parents and their kid have to take some responsibility too. It's not as if the WoW creators threatened them to play WoW at gunpoint--he chose of his own accord. And his parents were probably the ones who paid the registration fee since at that age he couldn't have possessed a credit card. Which meant that his parents had plenty of control over him, but just didn't bother to exert it. They need a lesson in parenting, and the kid needs a lesson in priorities. A game can't be at the top of your priority queue unless you make a living off of it. >_< I've also watched a friend play it a couple of times...looked interesting, but fees of any sort always manage to turn me off.

RGB might be quite a bit easier for some. Personally I think RGB is easier, since it's easy to figure out how much to specify for each color rather than to convert things into hex. I sometimes use online hex converters, but most of the time I prefer to test with Adobe Photoshop Elements. Photoshop has a nice color to hexadecimal converter, and it's a lot easier to have the palette/code right next to your layout--comparing colors becomes a cinch. No more clicking back and forth between Firefox tabs to compare colors. XDTutorial's quite nice, but I wouldn't spend any time remembering hex codes. It's much easier to depend on an already-made program or something of the sort to do that busybody work for you. Then you can spend more time on the "important" things like layout and coding. :}

Wow. Wow. Wow. That's just...scary. It's hard to imagine a Microsoft employee acting so unprofessional...I would've expected just a slight amount of subtleness from them. But isn't it also likely that the employee didn't really understand the implications behind those words? I mean, sure, he knew they were swear words and everything, but unless he spoke the language, he wouldn't feel the fervor behind the words. If he doesn't feel the fervor behind the words, he won't really associate them with "bad" in his mind, and thus he will feel that it's not such a big deal to use them in a letter. On another note, I also believe it's faked. If this Microsoft employee knew that these were swear words, it would really stupid of him to use them in a letter to people who are most familiar with the words. >_<

It really depends on how much education you have had in a foreign language [English]. For instance, if Xisto were a French board, my posts would be littered with grammar and spelling mistakes, and that's not because I don't want to try to better myself in French. I suppose the most important thing is to write in a way that everyone can understand. Now I could come here and post as if I were Shakespeare and have immaculate grammar, but if no one had a clue what I was saying, it still wouldn't be effective communication. That's worse than semi-bad spelling but getting my point across. They should, but it's also likely that whatever topic they want to discuss is not available in their native language. Or that they don't seem to get any replies off of someone who is speaking their mother tongue. If that's the case, then they have no choice but to go on an English forum, which is better than leaving their question unanswered. Nonetheless, I agree entirely with KDEWolf. Condescending posts only eventually lead to flame wars, which is not effective communication.

Yeah, that is possible with CSS. If you want to align the text either left or right, you can just use the text-align attribute and apply it to whichever block of text you want, like this: <div class="left"></div> First create the class and call it what you please... Then in the CSS code, you can label the class with: div.left { text-align: left;}Other attributes for text-align are right, center and justify. I guess if you wanted to have the next 3 lines 10 spaces in you could always specify a blockquote, like this: <blockquote>your text here</blockquote> Then you can use CSS to decorate the blockquote to suit your needs (i.e. add a border on the left to show its indentation or something. Then for your submit regions to be aligned right you can add another <div class="right"></div> and then specify styles for that. I suppose if you wanted you could do the same with a <p class="left"></p> if you don't want to use <div>s in your form.

I guess Wikipedia was what made the concept of Wikis popular (or at least I first learned about wikis from Wikipedia) Like everyone mentioned above, a wiki is just a site that's editable by anyone. Of course, whoever owns the wiki can limit you from editing if you're not a member or if you decide to vandalize their wiki. On the whole, I like the wiki idea, after all, many brains put together is often much better than one, especially when it's on a controversial topic. However, there are times when it could be problematic. Not all articles get checked in time for accuracy before publishing (though this obviously depends on the size of the site and the number of regular editors), so there often ends up being some bogus article floating around (and this article tends to be about an obscure topic hard to find elsewhere...though not always, as I once saw an article about fat that said it's chemical makeup was made of "carbon". I was thinking, "What?! That's just stating the obvious...>_<"). A source like Wikipedia can be good if you're just doing a casual report or finding out more info, but it's always good to check out more professional sources if you're really keen on getting accurate information. Either that or read the "discussion" tab to see exactly what is controversial about the article.

I learned this one from some kind of puzzles/math tricks book. I thought it was quite interesting; it was labeled in the book as the Russian Peasant method of Multiplication (guess it was developed by the peasants) And even normal multiplication methods are not practical with small numbers or if you have a calculator, so I guess this could be a good replacement for regular methods. Though, of course, the practitioner would have to have some basic knowledge of division, or else it gets us nowhere.

Yet, why do scientists get to define life? I mean, they decide that a living organism must contain 1), 2), and 3), but why? That's only a very abstract decision on their part to categorize things into groups. There was no inherent definition that one thing was "living" and another was "non-living". Although I suppose you could argue that by getting rid of that definition, it's almost impossible to have any standards to go by at all.... Though, according to the current definition of life as quoted by the scientists, then yes, I too agree that viruses are not alive, as webintern stated very well.

Yeah, I've got to agree on the image format/compression part needing a good amount of attention. A lot of sites would do much better if they checked the sites through one of those fake dial-up connections. I think there was a Java applet that could fake a dial-up connection to test your site...Anyways, just because the sitemaker has Broadband does not mean he/she should automatically assume everyone else does too. Also, sometimes for image galleries people decide to just put the big image there and then resize it with the html properties of height and width. But that can be really annoying because the user still has to download the big image, and it's not just one big image in this case. So the *cough*preview*cough* images are actually killing the user's computer. The webmaster shouldn't be lazy in this case--they should get one of those mass image resizing programs and resize all their gallery images.

I really don't use anything along the lines of AIM, Yahoo, Jabber etc. At one point I tried AIM, but it became burdensome since everyone suddenly decided they wanted to talk to me--a major waste of time. So then I uninstalled it. I like Skype so far though, it's a nice way for me and my parents to talk to my grandparents (overseas) and the sound quality is great. I use Google Talk a lot, since most of the people I know are on there. But it's not fun when I don't want to talk to someone but I need to log into my inbox. Then I can't log in because I know they'll immediately start a conversation with me...which can be really annoying. >_<

I spend a lot of time on forum, programming...etc. I do a lot of things, actually, so I'll just spout a list: -Read/post at forums... -Read blogs (most of the time I just randomly browse Google; I use GReader to catch my feeds...) -Programming on Notepad++ (currently I'm making a Wordpress plugin to easily customize your css) -I used to read a lot of manga on the Internet, but now, that has been taken over by programming -Draw on Photoshop (often kills my eyes after seven-eight hours of staring at the screen) -When I'm really bored, I get on Google Suggest and try random search queries. I also read Fanfiction, check my deviantArt etc. -I sometimes chat with Google Talk, but most of the times I dislike chatting and try not to stay on. -I used ICQ one time recently, but afterwards I uninstalled it because of the ads. -Then, when I am really really bored, I play some random online game that I find for a couple of hours.

I'd recommend one of Sun's JDKs or JREs. But using any of those takes some time to customize, so you might want to just mess around with Borland if you don't feel like customizing that stuff to fit your needs.

I believe they named it Googlemail because in the UK (I think) Gmail was already in use by some other group. So, to avoid copyright issues, they decided to change the name to Googlemail. Of course, I'd prefer Gmail any day, since it is, after all, a lot shorter than Googlemail. Although if you lived in the UK, I'm sure you could still get people to email you at yourname@gmail.com and everything would still be fine.

Well, all kingdoms have to fall sooner or later, and Microsoft is no exception. The thing is when, and I don't think it'll be that much in the near future. I mean, think about the average user. They have a PC with Windows on it. Do they really want to spend all that time switching to Linux/Unix? Some people argue that it isn't that hard to switch, but the average Joe is not going to listen. I mean, come on, what's easier--switching your OS or just sticking with what you have now? It's obviously sticking with what you have now. Unless Windows causes these users a huge problem, I doubt they'll be interested in switching. Necessity is still the only thing that will force people to change. Now, if Google gave out an OS...that'd be a different story. Especially for the newer generation of computer users.

Well, there's obviously the environment factor to be taken into consideration in all of these--people say that there may be genes causing a person to lean toward sociopathic behavior, but whether or not that person becomes a serial killer depends on their environment. So I guess genes can determine inclinations, but not absolutes. (No one's sure about this though...not even the researchers. ) I don't think anyone knows if likes or dislikes are carried out by genes, no one has done enough research in the area to know whether or not it's true. Genes could be so very complicated that they set a timer that at one point in your life your like/dislike of a certain thing will change. But of course, that's all hypothetical.

Hmm, but I'd say that's where the problem stems. Yes, our wishes are good in that we're hoping to help the general population, but they turn bad. Like I mentioned earlier about the rich and the poor, the rich will have easy access to these medicines, but the poor will not. The same problem is already happening today--a number of people in the poorer countries are unable to vaccinate their children. This problem will exacerbate as our technology gets better--the rich will become healthier and healthier, while the poor become less healthy (this is all relative). Eventually, the determining factors of evolution will no longer be genes but money. The more money you have, the more likely you'll survive. But of course I know the ideal is a good thing, even if population-control could be a problem.

I agree with mpinsky on this one--why should they be allowed to clone? This could easily turn into a class war--the rich people get to clone because they can afford it, so in turn they live many times happier than the poor with all their wishes fulfilled. The poor have no way of compensating for the payment and thus the gap between the rich and poor widens even further. It's also implying that lives can be bought, and that the wealthy's lives are worth more than the indigent. @Chesso, yes, it probably seems a lot better to base it off choice--you do what you want, but in turn this can have problems. Suppose Family A decides that they want their child's genes to be chosen by them and Family B lets nature chose. It's most likely that Family A will have the smarter, prettier, better, etc child than Family B, meaning that Family A's child is better at Family B's child in nearly everything that matters in our world. Now Family B will feel annoyed that their child cannot make it in the competitive world and the next child they have they will most likely decide to choose its genes. This in turn becomes a cycle--no family wants their child to be incompetent and unable to survive in their world, so they have to change the genes, all because of one family. Moreover, even with choice there is still the factor with the rich and the poor--by allowing the filtering of unwanted genes, who is rich and who is poor will be defined by whose genes have been chosen and whose have not. Those whose genes have not been filtered will end up being poor, and vice versa. And since it is most likely that those with chosen genes will be more intelligent than their counterparts, their counterparts may not even realize that they are being manipulated to do manual labor/some other form of unwanted work. Freedom of choice cannot really be achieved unless everyone starts on equal grounds. And even if everyone did start on equal grounds now, they won't once some of them decide to choose genes and others decide not to.

Uh...you know, just because Google offers it doesn't mean you should automatically trust them. That's rather blind. Besides, you wouldn't store any sensitive pieces of info with these services--like your tax returns or some secret corporate message. If you're just uploading a couple of family photos and picnic videos, I don't think any of them would be interested in taking your stuff. I suppose GDrive sounds interesting--unlimited space? But I've never heard of this anywhere in the news. Perhaps you could provide a link?

Yeah, I have already tried setting cache to zero, but for some reason, Firefox continues to save the cache. Then I tried what you suggested and hit shift + refresh, and everything miraculously worked. Cache on Opera is even more annoying--Opera managed to save cache for over a month. That's just scary--if a visitor of my website was using Opera, they probably would never be able to see an updated version until after a month or until after they clear cache. ><In IE I have also tried changing cache to zero, but apparently that too does not work. It's the same problem as Firefox--the browser doesn't listen to you and continues to store cache.

Mine is bad. And very slow. And all that crap.Intel Pentium III128MBUSB 1.1CD-ROM driveetc etcNo additions to it. So my computer ends up having a lot of freeze-ups. >_>

I don't think we should sue, but of course that doesn't make companies like McDonald or tobacco corporations any less evil. Worse 'n Microsoft, no doubt. It is indeed the people's own fault. They ought to remember that just because they won a lawsuit against McDonalds does not mean that they will automatically lose weight. Thus, if their true scheme had been based on health-related concerns, they ought to not have sued, but have attempted to boycott McDonalds. In another way though, you could also very well argue it's McDonald's fault. Let's say you're a kid who watches TV every now and then and you see an advertisement for McDonalds. You're hooked by the ad (many kids are), and decide you must go to McDonalds. You make a begging session with mommy and daddy and then you get a chance to go to McDonalds. There--the child is being manipulated by McDonald's advertisements when he/she was not at a age to make educated decisions. If he/she had been older, then okay, blame it on the child. Of course, the same ad-manipulation problem could be argued for nearly any company...