Arbitrary

I rather enjoy FireFTP since it's integrated with the Firefox browser so I don't have to open more windows. Of course, you might not want so many bloated things clogging up Firefox. If I had to go with a client that's not browser-based, I'd go for either Filezilla or SmartFTP (if you're using Windows). I've also heard some nice things about CuteFTP, but I've never used it. Also, here's a list of FTP clients that you might want to take a look at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_FTP_clients Personally I'd say the list is a bit too long to really be able to pick a good one...but who knows?

Well, if you're not looking to create your own high scores list, there's a site called Vex K that can create high score lists for Game Maker games. Here's the link: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ The good thing is that the scores are accessible in the game without using a web browser. So far there's four themes, but you can also make custom ones (which I'd suggest...) And I believe its max limit on scores is 100. The creator's got some instructions on how to use it here: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=333478

Don't we just all love Windows 3.1? Heh, kidding, kidding. My first was a Windows 95. I don't remember much about it though--I was only around five then. I do remember seeing a lot of bloatware (wow, firefox spell check recognizes this as a word!) installed on it, but that isn't really the fault of Windows. Afterwards my dad bought Windows 98, which I ended up using extensively as well. I didn't really notice that much of a difference from 95 back then, but then again, I was only a kid. Later on he bought Windows 2000, which we used for many, many years. I never had many problems with Win 2K and rather liked its minimalist style with graphics. (I'm not a big fan of fancy graphics unless I'm looking at a print ad or unless it serves a major purpose.) I didn't get as many blue screens of death as everyone else seemed to report.I had an extremely short experience with XP and very quickly moved to Vista, which I find fine. I haven't had many problems getting things to work on Vista. The graphics I don't particularly like, but that's fine because I've also managed to disable them, so now the graphics run just like Windows XP and don't take up any extra memory. I've also got Ubuntu installed, but I still haven't been able to get my wireless working (oh, thou art disgusting, Broadcom!). I would go and buy a more Linux-compatible wireless card, but I'd need money for that (which my cash-strapped self does not have...) I've tried installing the drivers and then getting ndiswrapper, but none of the methods I've found have worked. I think I might work on settling Ubuntu on a desktop instead so that I can avoid the hassles with wireless.

This has been done before in the CakePHP framework (see http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ and I'm sure numerous other PHP frameworks that I don't work extensively with as well), except that Cake didn't take advantage of PHP's OOP because it also wanted to be PHP 4 compatible. It just requires that you pass in the variables in a certain format (in Cake's case it's an array) and then parse based on the fields and values in that format. It is really quite flexible and makes saving data a lot faster than writing the same old INSERT functions. Especially in this case where the insert function is exceptionally huge, having a function like that would be a huge advantage. Hey hotsam! I'd say for your firearms and reviews, you don't need a many-to-many relationship. After all, each review only has one firearm; each review wouldn't have multiple firearms, would they? Then each firearm would have many reviews, which would make sense. As for the business to firearm relationship, I'm not sure if a firearm can have many businesses--that would depend on the license, right? Aren't many firearms licensed so that they're only made by one business? (Then again, I'm not familiar with their creation...) Everything else makes sense to me. :-) Good luck!

I installed ubuntu; I'm currently dual-booting it with Vista. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get wireless working (broadcom drivers truly are the bane of my existence), even when I did install the correct drivers and downloaded ndiswrapper. Nothing suggested in the numerous forums I searched worked, so I finally just gave up. I guess I'll mess around with Ubuntu on a desktop next time with a wired connection so that I don't have to worry about wireless. Or maybe I'll get a job and go buy myself some wireless adaptors that are more Linux-friendly...

Now, it does have plenty of free skills, but being a free player is often a bad idea. Actually, playing Runescape is in general a bad idea--(for one) it's a giant time suck, (for two) it's a giant money suck if you decide to be a member and save a little time. Many free skills are easier to level up in members, but members requires that you have money (and I'm broke...haha). Take, for instance, smithing, which has few easy recourses to level with in free-to-play, but in members you can always use the steel bars to cannonballs method and generate some money on the wayside. And most free-to-play skills are not as useful when you get up to a high-ish level. I.e., mining--if you get up to above 85, mining for runite in the wilderness is a major pain. Members, on the other hand, have far more places to do their mining. It's the same with magic and many other skills. (Smithing might be the only respite. :-D)

Yeah, they do have "better" graphics now, but I wouldn't say it's that great. On the other hand, I don't really believe in slagging on Runescape for having poor graphics because the point of their game was to be accessible to all sorts of computers, including those who weren't good enough to handle heavy graphics. Otherwise, why would they choose to create the game in Java and put it in a web browser? No, they'd make you download it instead, which is something many find a hassle (not that it would drive the number of players down, just look at WoW, but their goal is evidently different than Blizzard's). I'm far more into criticizing Runescape's gameplay and/or players. To those who say that Runescape is a totally different game just because it has been given a new graphical update--you're rather off. The most important part of the problem--Runescape's community---still hasn't changed. Lydubs is quite spot-on in complaining about the incessant cursing and flaming. It's annoying and makes it difficult to enjoy a game that is played by a bunch of immature kids. The gameplay itself is at times interesting and at times...boring. A lot of quests seem like a large waste of time, and the destruction of pking as we knew it makes it more boring. Also, considering how many inflammatory comments have been directed towards bots by Runescape's creators, Jagex should probably realize that there is a reason for bots and fight the reason instead of the result. The reason: skilling is immensely boring. No one wants to sit for hours a day at a computer and click a few buttons over and over again like a robot. That, as said in the sentence, is the job of a robot. Smart people like automated tasks. So would smart people really enjoy skilling? Evidently not. So how do they evade it? Autoing, no duh. So if Jagex really wanted to rid Runescape of autoing, perhaps they should start finding more interesting ways for people to level their skills other than clicking the same three spots over and over again. I suppose another aspect of mmorpgs that was always enjoyable was the community. However, by destroying trading, pking, and dueling, it seems as if Jagex is trying to tone down the interaction in the community. Jagex, like a government, only wants its citizens to communicate in certain ways and will not tolerate other forms of discourse. I remember reading some conspiracy theory about how Jagex was just like a communist government, and laughing. Obviously that example is too extreme (as Runescape players are free to withdraw from the game if they feel their freedoms are being encroached upon whereas citizens of communist countries cannot), but it's not too extreme to say that Jagex is controlling a bit too much. Another interesting point I noticed was the order of the "inflammatory updates" (the series of updates that Jagex did that caused a lot of angry Runescapers to rise up)--the first one was actually about dueling, whereas, according to Jagex, their end goal was to eliminate real world trading. So, let's think logically. Before any of these "inflammatory updates" took place (such as the pking one or the trade one), which function in the game would you most likely use to real world trade? Pking? Dueling? I think not. You'd most likely use trade. And yet, in the first update, they got rid of dueling! Why that first when the real issue is trading? If it was to prepare us for the biggest one, at least Jagex could've explained things clearly and say that it was about RWT instead of hiding those updates behind fluffy covers of "ooh! new quest!". Oooh, I must say I really enjoy online text-based games. I remember playing one called Smartmonsters and really enjoying it. The only difficulty I had with that game was the lack of a manual and the extreme quickness with which I died. :-( I'm going to check out some of those games you've mentioned--they look interesting.

I would also go with resizing your images, as they're probably too huge for web consumption. If you're going to use GD to resize your images, you should probably set up a server on your own computer where you can change the memory constraints for php without having to bother the webhost. I think if you take a look at php's page for its gd function imagecopyresized you'll see how to resize them. I also have this piece of code that I used to resize images with gd on a gallery: function createthumb($name,$filename,$new_w,$new_h) { $system=explode(".",$name); if ("jpg" == $system[1]){$src_img=imagecreatefromjpeg($name);} if ("png" == $system[1]){$src_img=imagecreatefrompng($name);} else $src_img=imagecreatefromjpeg($name); $old_x=imageSX($src_img); $old_y=imageSY($src_img); if ($old_x > $old_y) { $thumb_w=$new_w; $thumb_h=$old_y*($new_h/$old_x); } if ($old_x < $old_y) { $thumb_w=$old_x*($new_w/$old_y); $thumb_h=$new_h; } if ($old_x == $old_y) { $thumb_w=$new_w; $thumb_h=$new_h; } $dst_img=ImageCreateTrueColor($thumb_w,$thumb_h); imagecopyresampled($dst_img,$src_img,0,0,0,0,$thumb_w,$thumb_h,$old_x,$old_y); if (preg_match("/png/",$system[1])) { imagepng($dst_img,$filename); } else { imagejpeg($dst_img,$filename); } imagedestroy($dst_img); imagedestroy($src_img); }This one is using imagecreatetruecolor and imagecopyresampled instead of the other function I mentioned above. I'm not sure which one is better; I've never explicitly compared the two. I have no idea if Photoshop has macros, but I'm sure you could also just write a quick macro script with autohotkey (https://www.autohotkey.com/) and run it with any image editing program you want. Then just leave the computer on for some time and just let your image program resize the images. I'd personally prefer the php method since you can actually stay at your computer. EDIT: Oops, I forgot. If you just install php on your computer, you should be able to run phpthumb on your computer, resize the images and not have to worry about memory constraints, right? Then you won't have to worry about custom-writing an image resizing function.

This is actually quite interesting. Initially I was going to say that wasn't this already released by Google with something similar? Then I realized that Google doesn't quite offer the same level of functionality since what Google searches from your site has to already be indexed by Google, whereas with this API that Yahoo released, it will just give you its product and let you do whatever you want with it. Although personally I don't find Yahoo search to be all that great, I wouldn't say it's horrid either just because there are fewer people using it. Personally, I must say that the ability to change the order of the results seems very interesting, and I'd like to download this just to see such a function in action. The fact that there are unlimited queries is a plus.

Yes, basically that should be what happens. It just basically replaces the Xisto url with the example.co.cc one. Personally though, I'd go for an actual domain name. There are sites that offer free domain names if you post (similar to Xisto). I currently use hostbidder (http://www.findingresult.com/?dn=hostbidder.com&pid=9POR3TG0A), and I've used it for the last two years. Seems to be working well.

Ah, and it looks like, according to Wordpress's support forums, this plugin is being spammed to numerous forums. (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-phonefactor-plugin-being-spammed/) I guess you're just another one of them, since this plugin evidently has little to no use.

Just write two insertion statements, one that inserts the data into labdatainfo and one into labdata. So say your insertion statement for labdatainfo is something like the following: mysql_query("INSERT INTO labdatainfo (title, data) VALUES ('theTitle', 'theData')"); After you call this, php has a nice function called mysql_insert_id() that will retrieve the primary key of the most recent insert. So you would then call mysql_insert_id, grab the unique id and then insert that id into labdata as the foreign key. I.e: $id = mysql_insert_id();mysql_query("INSERT INTO labdata (foreignkey) VALUES ('$id')"); The key to your question is probably just that php function. :-) It's quite the obscure function too, for something so useful. As for your question suicide, I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you unable to automate the data that you have to insert instead of writing 500 different insert statements?

From what I've read somewhere, you can create a dll and then link it to the database. There are actually multiple choices for dlls, such as the MySQL++ one and the libmysql.dll one, which I believe comes with MySQL itself. Oh the other hand, it really would be a lot easier for you to get an answer if you head to the official game maker forums, especially this particular sub forum: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/?showforum=6 Oh, and just Googled, and this was the link I originally found that spoke of creating dlls to connect to the database: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?s=502bbed2dedf7cc843eaa29b551f05f1&showtopic=5526 EDIT: On another note, I don't use Game Maker, so I wouldn't really be able to help outside of Google. I just read a lot of random...urh...stuff.

Ooh, quite nice. I do like the level of detail here--it helps people actually get a grasp of MySQL instead of just looking at the code and guessing that x happens and y happens. I'll be looking forward to any other tutorials on this you have to write. Khalilov: Let's say your form looks something like this: <form action="index.php" method="post"></form In this case, after the user clicks the "submit" button, it will lead to the file index.php and execute any php scripts that are located in that file. The method "post" simply refers to how the data is transferred from the form to the server--if it is "post", the data is not revealed in the url, whereas if it is request, the data is revealed in the url. A good example of a site that uses "request" methods would be Google--if you look at this url (https://www.google.com/search?q=php+hash+functions), you can see that there is data being passed with the q=php+hash+functions. Meanwhile, to the actual meat of the form, say you add a few text boxes and a submit button to the form so that it now looks something like this: <form action="index.php" method="post"><input type="text" name="username" value="" /><input type="password" name="password" value="" /><input type="submit" value="Add" /></form> Pay special attention to the name attribute in the input tags, as it is the name that determines how to access the data. If you choose to use "post" as your method, then all form data is stored in a php variable called $_POST after you submit the form. $_POST is an associative array, and its structure looks something like this: array ( ["name"] => "value", ["name2"] => "value2" ) In order to get the post data, you would use this: $username = $_POST['username'];$password = $_POST['username']; This is all relatively straightforward. Then you would want to store the data you retrieve from the form into the database with MySQL. Php has a nice function for executing MySQL queries called mysql_query. So, a sample query to put the data into the database would be something like the following: mysql_query("INSERT INTO table_name (field1, field2) VALUES ('value1', 'value2')"); In order to actually make this work for our earlier example involving inserting a username and password into the database, you'd put replace the table_name with its obvious replacement (say users), field1 and field2 with 'username' and 'password' and value1 and value2 with the variables we defined earlier from our $_POST values. So in short, like this: mysql_query("INSERT INTO users (username, password) VALUES ('$username', '$password')"); The query is relatively obvious--you insert the values of the username and password under the fields username and password into the table users. The current query is obviously immensely insecure, and you should not use it for actual storage of passwords. Before doing anything with passwords it's best to hash them (with a hash function of sha1 or better), and it's even better with a salt (a random string hashed with the password to make it more secure). But as this is supposed to be simple, I'll leave discussion of hash functions to another thread. There are other MySQL queries you can do, such as editing data or delete data from the table. Those would look something like the following: For updating: mysql_query("UPDATE table_name SET field1 = 'one' WHERE field2 = '1'"); For deleting: mysql_query("DELETE FROM table_name WHERE field='robot';"); Wikipedia also has a nice collection of SQL queries if you'd like to check it out. (Scroll down to the bottom and you'll see a full list next to the "SQL" tab. Have fun.

Nonetheless, using md5 still isn't a great course of action. md5 has already been cracked, so really, does anyone want to take the chance with important data? I think quatrux's method with a salt is very useful--makes it quite difficult for crackers to obtain the actual password. On another note, php also has many other functions for encryption besides md5 (unfortunately, this is only available to php 5.1.2 and above...sad). With 5.1.2, there's a function called hash: The $algo can be any from a long list of hash functions, including but not limited to 'sha256' (which I think is the new government standard after sha1 was kicked out of use due to it being cracked), ripemd160, whirlpool etc. Php also provides a full list of its supported hash functions with the function hash_algos (http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.hash-algos.php). The list looks something like this: So, yes, with php 5, there are quite a variety of hash functions to choose from, including extremely secure (currently un-cracked) ones. However, if you're stuck with php 4, there's always the sha1 function, which is still quite a ways better than md5 for mid-level security things.

Well, compatibility issues can sometimes be fixed with Nightly Tester, which lets you force the add-on to be compatible with the browser. Of course, this doesn't always work because oftentimes there is a deeply ingrained problem with the add-on that would really cause it and/or Firefox to break down when it is forced. I remember that I wasn't able to get FireFTP working with it, but I was able to get Gmail Manager going. You have two options:Use Adblock, which blocks most ads that are flash and therefore are extremely annoying. Sites with flash as the content are still annoying but are less so when compared to ads. (IMO) Use Noscript, which I believe was compatible with Firefox 3 since its beta versions. It has a built in Flashblocker, which is nice. Though I'm sure that by now, all these days after the release of Firefox 3, the newer versions of all those extensions would've started to come out. I remember looking at the betas for Firefox 3 and being really excited about its speed (it still doesn't quite beat Opera though). I guess I only really upgraded for the speed, since it's nice having tabs that don't stop for a moment as I move from tab to tab. It does, however, crash and burn more often than Firefox 2 does (but this is most likely due to the fact that it's new and hasn't been tested extensively enough, so I can wait). Other than that, I don't notice any visible differences--the memory imprint seems to be about the same as Firefox 2, still quite a bit worse off than Opera. This may be, of course, due to the extensions that I have installed... I have also noticed a lot of moments where Firefox just randomly freezes up and I'm forced to close it. Granted, this happens less often than IE does, but still often enough for me to complain. Hmmm...solution to problem: don't use Word or Dreamweaver! In general, I don't really think Word is going to create websites well at all--it's a word processor, not meant to generate line after line of html. Dreamweaver may be for html generation, but the html it does generate definitely isn't as clear as something you hand code. Most WYSIWYG html editors aren't really that great because it's very difficult to generate error, and table free code. Form editors, on the other hand, are a whole 'nother thing.

No, this is something you would do on Xisto. Basically, if you access cpanel with what turbopower suggested (i.e., at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/), then you can remove your currently parked or addon domain. After you remove it, add the domain again. Then you should go to your domain register site (in this case GoDaddy) and make sure that the nameservers you entered are correct. They are ns.computinghost.com and ns2.computinghost.com. If you wait a bit, your site should be up. In fact, I just tried the mentioned method and my site worked almost immediately. :-) Good luck.

Well, prior to this I had ns1.astahost.com and ns2.astahost.com, not the Xisto - Web Hosting.com ones. Am I supposed to keep the Xisto nameservers or do I change it to ns1.computinghost.com? I've tried both combinations and neither seems to be working. =/

ns1.astahost.com and ns2.astahost.com are not working for me. =[ I'm slightly confused about this...for Xisto, do we have to change the nameservers as well? And if so, what do we change it to? EDIT: Oh, I think I get it. We change it to ns.computinghost.com now? I thought that Xisto - Web Hosting.com was for the paid hosting version of Xisto...Well, anyways, I've changed it, but so far the domain still doesn't seem to be working. I'll wait a while and check back tomorrow morning.

Hehe, I think one of the reasons we're all crowded at Xisto is because we obviously want free hosting. If any of us had been able to pay, I'm sure we would be looking more at paid hosting sites. However, I have had to host several websites for a school club, and I'm always impartial to nearlyfreespeech.net. I do believe it offers the best money to server and bandwidth usage ratio--mainly because it charges you based on how much you use. So, whereas for other hosting sites you'd have to buy more server space and bandwidth usage than needed (because it'd be quite the horror if you ran out), on nearlyfreepspeech you only pay for what you need.I've also tried Xisto's Xisto - Web Hosting, which is basically a paid version of hosting made by the creators of Xisto. I rather enjoyed Xisto - Web Hosting and would definitely recommend anyone looking for reliable paid hosting to look there. I remember the one time I had a problem, their customer support replied within an hour of my email, leaving me quite shocked as no other web service has done that before. :-)

Yeah, sure, Google. I'm totally going to do that...now, if only you had some more conclusive plans. You know, at some point Google released an April fool's joke about printing your email. I was immensely amused upon hearing so, and, nearly believing it was real, went and did a little search. Pity that Google won't perform such a service for us...hey look, my inbox is just waiting to be nicely formatted on printer paper...Google! The survey part of it does make it seem more real. I do wonder how many people will actually believe this, considering all the wacky things Google has done. (Though, evidently, this one would take the wackiest prize of all if it were actually carried out.) Nonetheless, Google's best April Fool's is probably still the Gmail joke, because, after all, that one turned out to be real, which was probably even more of an April Fool's joke than the original. Hah.

There's also nearly free speech: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/domains They offer .com, .org, .net, .biz, .name domain names for $7.99 per year. I've always thought nearly free speech's hosting service was pretty good, so I'm relatively inclined to trust that their domain service will remain up to par as well. Of course, as their company name says, they do defend your free speech (within U.S. laws) to a T. Good luck in your endeavors! :-) --Arbitrary

1. How fast do you type? Informal estimates are fine. I only know my "official" typing speed because I was tested for a job interview. My average is around 85 words per minute. Granted, a lot of this also depends on the keyboard I'm typing with, because some keyboards help me type faster whereas other ones slow me down. I remember having a typing contest with a kid who sat next to me in freshman year high school---my keyboard had annoyingly sticky keys and pressing down each one required real effort. The kid next to me, however, lucked out with one of the better keyboards in the classroom. There are also certain laptop keyboards that tend to catch my fingernails as I type (like the one I'm currently using right now.) These are immensely annoying as they also tend to catch any dirt and grime on my fingernails and dump them into the keyboard. 2. Where, if any place, do you get the most reaction? Well, most of my friends can type about as fast as, if not faster than me, so there isn't much of a reaction going on. I probably obtain the biggest reaction from my mom, but that's mainly because she's still learning how to type quickly. (And well, she's not really succeeding. Though I suspect this has more to do with lack of practice than dexterity like she claims...) When I was younger, a couple of my friends were surprised at the speed of my typing, but nowadays...definitely not. I did, however, crowd around with my classmates around this one guy who typed extremely quickly in a programming class freshman year of high school. I think he had upwards of 120 words per minute. He gained fame, I believe, by winning nearly all the typing contests held in the class (informal contests, these were), even when he used the "stickier" keyboards. According to him, most of his typing skill was perfected while gaming. (He must've chatted a lot then...I see...) 3. I'm also curious about how other people learned how to type. I learned to type during elementary school, incidentally. There was a touch typing class, and in order to force the class to actually touch type, the teachers placed boxes over the keyboard to prevent us from stealing a look at the keys. Though, when we first started out, we didn't actually use the boxes--we were allowed to stare at the keys. But a couple of weeks into the class, we discovered new structures (aka boxes) surrounding the keyboards and were dumbfounded. Most people did not react positively to the boxes and attempted to sneak peaks at the keyboard below. (I was amongst them) But eventually we had to learn and did--it did turn out to be immensely useful after all. My typing became faster after I started playing several text-based role playing games. I guess part of it was keeping up with others' conversations (which moved at quite the blinding speed), but the other part was just to keep my character consistently alive by entering certain vital commands quickly. (the "flee" command, in any case, was probably the word I learned to type fastest!) Possibly, but it would definitely take some practice. I think most people who have learned to type with a certain style will most likely be averse to having to switch to a new style. After all, all the things they learned typing for will be rendered useless if they switch a keyboard. Moreover, most keyboards nowadays seem to be set to Qwerty...not that that's a good reason to use qwerty, but it is something to consider if you're going to pick a keyboard layout to learn.

Well, it depends on what you are looking for. If you are intending to do something professional, then Photoshop is the way to go. It does indeed have some features that the Gimp does not have (cmyk support, for instance, is a crucial if you intend to use the Gimp for print design. The Gimp, shockingly, however, does not support this.) On the other hand, if you are just in need of an image editing program, then the Gimp will definitely do. Most people don't need to do everything that Photoshop has to offer. (I remember when I had Photoshop before, I rarely even touched the cmyk settings...so the Gimp was definitely a better option for me.) This is simply not true. The Gimp, for instance, does not offer cmyk support whereas Photoshop does, out of the box. That's one huge no no for print designers intending on using the Gimp, you know.

Well, I prefer Google for several reasons: (one) The Google homepage loads a lot faster than the Yahoo one does. This is instrumental if I'm doing a quick search--I'm not interested in spending a lot of time staring at the webpage's news (or even ad)-filled content. Google gets to its point faster than Yahoo, so I'd much rather stick to a service provider that doesn't attempt to distract me. (two) Google usually returns better results than Yahoo. Granted, a lot of general searches do return the same results, but usually, hidden towards the end of the first or beginning of the second page, there's some gem that Google included that Yahoo did not. Of course, what maybe be useful to one user may be detrimental to the next. Yahoo's homepage, for instance, offers search suggestions the same way that experiment in Google Labs did. Evidently the Labs experiment never made it onto the Google homepage, which I find to be a good thing. It's not so much that the suggestion feature was bad, on the contrary, it is quite nice. However, putting it on the homepage makes search for a single word (or even a part of a word if you are a slow typer) an annoying task as I wait for the search suggestions to load. I know this was all done with good intentions, but slowing down its own homepage when one of the most valued things about search is speed (or getting to the result!) is a bad idea. I want to get to my result quickly, not sit around and wait for things to load. However, once you start searching, I believe Yahoo's drop down menu of search terms related to the original search query is quite useful. My only balk is at the drop down menu--there really is no need to use excessive amounts of javascript (especially since the drop down was animated quite smoothly too...) as that just slows things down. Why can't Yahoo just plug the newly suggested search terms at the bottom of the search results page so that it is neither disruptive nor non-existent? I know Baidu does this and believe it works quite effectively without hogging the user's computer's resources. (three) This has nothing to do with search and everything to do with flexibility. Google's search can be used as a calculator. For instance: https://www.google.com/search?q=2ln(3)%2Bsin(pi) - 2ln(3)+sin(pi) = 2.19722458 https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=5amp;btnG=Search - 5ft/s to km/hr - 5 (ft / s) = 5.4864 km / hr Incidentally, I tend to use Google's search box for calculations as well (usually simple arithmetic, but I've also found the units conversion to be especially useful when I'm working on physics. Yahoo, unfortunately, does not integrate this ability with its search. Though this doesn't technically degrade the quality of Yahoo's search, it does mean that I won't pick it as my search engine of choice for my browser since it isn't quite as flexible as Google. After all, why wouldn't I want that search box in the browser to be usable as both a calculator and a search engine?