Arbitrary

Ohhh, now that would explain very well the huge discrepancy. I was thinking that there couldn't be a few thousand visitors to vujsa's site that disabled javascript or didn't load the page up to the beginning of </body>. So basically Google Analytics only registers unique hits rather than all hits. I suppose, though, some people may find it more useful for Google Analytics to register both unique and all hits just so they can see the differences. Yeah, if you were doing it on your own server, you could definitely use php to keep track of hits. But Google can't since it's doing it from theirs. They basically have to use javascript because they don't have access to your server. Which basically means that their hits would be off by a bit (probably not that much off since not that many people actually disable javascript.) While this may be possible, I don't think it's all that likely that it would actually happen. But just in case, it's probably better to put the code at the beginning of your site just in case.

Yes, you can do that with a php script, but why would you want to? I'm pretty sure Google would ban you. This isn't way too easy: this is cheating, plain and simple. Think about it. If you were searching for sites about a topic and all the sites near the top about that subject were about unrelated subjects, would you think Google's a good search engine? Evidently not. So google has to find some way to place the right sites at the top. Besides, I think Google doesn't place as much of an emphasis on keywords as it does back links. Because really, keywords are declared by the site creator, and as you just showed, can be changed at any time. But backlinks aren't as easy to change since they're declared by other sites. They're bound to be more accurate since it's not a single webmaster pimping their own site. ;-) Hah! That's what I thought too. I wonder if they choose to disable those words...? XP Okay, probably not.

This definitely very useful. I remember typing in my own test data for populating a database...and though I did make the names quite amusing, it still was wasted time I could've spent on something else. :-) I really like the numerous options it gives, especially the SQL one. I can really see this being put to use on some test project. Looking at the generated data, I see there's lots of use of lorem ipsum. ;-) Funny! It reminds me of this site: http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ which also offers data generation. Granted, it doesn't offer as many options to morph the data (say the phone number format can be changed in generatedata.com, but not in fakenamegenerator, but it does offer more options for the names. Nor does it make it so easy to download the test data. Granted, I think fakenamegenerator is more for a web user who wants to fake their identity on a (possibly) spammy form. Either way, thanks for posting this. :-)

Woah, very interesting. But you know, for some reason, those things just don't seem to...be all that practical. I'm mean, it's great that there're all these innovations that can bring us to coin-thin televisions, but really, it doesn't look very stable to me. And the whole point of a lightweight TV is to be able to move it around, right? So why would it make sense to have something so flimsy? At the same time, this is really cool and I'd like to mess around with one of these... Price is definitely an issue. Price is really the thing that determines whether or not your average household buys it. So if it's not all that cheap (and it won't be as no new technology is), then only the technology-enthusiasts will actually purchase it. Well, in terms of stealing, probably just as easy as it is to steal your cell phone. :-P I wouldn't say it's that big of a deal--it's easier to steal than a TV, sure, but it's probably just as easy to steal as a laptop. So if your security mechanisms prevent your laptop from being stolen, it'll probably prevent this from being stolen as well. :-]

And at the same time, the very people they are banning are the same people who make up their userbase. If they lose their userbase, then they lose the whole point of their business. Besides, people didn't start posting things over and over again until they banned that one user. Nothing would've gotten so big if that hadn't happened. That makes to sense. If the key isn't copyrighted, then there's no reason why it cannot be made public. Sure, it serves a bad purpose, but then I could just as well argue that teaching people how to pick locks could very well serve a bad purpose and shouldn't be published either. This is a matter of free speech: the key isn't copyrighted, just like words aren't copyrighted, and so reproducing them shouldn't be illegal.

Um...I rather agree that it's a bit too repetitive for my tastes. Besides, I think you can clearly see where the image is repeated: there's a clear line about a fourth of the way across that designates where the image started to repeat. I think that really ruins it--it just feels awkward with square edges like those. Moreover, the choice of adding a border around each set of colors really...doesn't bode well. It makes the image more confusing, and I think it'd be better without the dark border. (This, I think, applies to most pictures. I.e., if you drew and colored picture of a human, most of the times it's better not to have a really dark border around the person's face).Finally, the choice of colors is really garish. I don't think the blue, purple and red go well together at all. The red actually really sticks out, and it really hurts my eyes to look at that. Besides, the way the purple melts into the blue makes it feel like the whole thing's a piece of paper with two colors (blue and purple) that had water spilled on it that caused the two colors to melt into each other. It just looks...weird. Then there's the shapes of the design. Perhaps the red wouldn't be so out of place if you'd picked a better set of shapes to color red. Right now, they're all thin and almost line-like. It would really suit this background better if you choose shapes that were each very different from each other to color red, just to give it a tinge of variety. Good luck though, I hope to see other things from you soon. :-)

These signatures are quite interesting. I think I like the second one best. That being said, I think the font of the second one--that of the words on the top left corner, could be changed to suit the rest of the signature. Right now it seems a bit out of place and misaligned when compared to the rest of the words on the image. The image in the background is really a nice touch. :-P The first one is good, but I think it looks too much like a logo than a signature. For a logo on the cover of something that would look brilliant, but for a standalone sig I think you'd be better off adding some other graphics into the mix just so the letters don't look so plain they way they do right now. I like the colors though--just the plainness irks me a bit.Finally, the third one. I think the white behind the text on the left side of the third one is a bit...off. It just doesn't seem to fit well with the rest of the signature, especially the darkness of the right side. Nonetheless, I like how the greenish background fits well with the picture on the right. Perhaps if you change the background behind the text you'll make everything look even better. ;-)Good luck and these are really a great start for someone who's new to making sigs!

This is quite untrue. Google does have ads--advertisers pay it to advertise (see the sponsored links on the side of the page?), otherwise how would Google make any money at all? It got rich off advertisements. See, let's say you search for shoes: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=samp;btnG=Search Look to the right side and you'll see a bunch of advertisements that say things like "Designer Shoes on Sale" and "NineWest Outlet Store". It's quite obvious these stores paid Google to be plugged in the search results for shoes. Granted, Google has no flash ads, which is great. These text links on the side don't really bother my searching, and every once in a while when something's of interest, I feel fine clicking. With flash ads though, their annoyance just causes me to make sure I don't click regardless of whether I like their product or not. Wikipedia's nice. It does, in any case, rank near the top for most google searches, so I don't usually tend to go to wikipedia first. (Besides, I have discovered that wikipedia search isn't so great, so sometimes it returns articles that have no relevance to what I'm searching for, while using Google usually ends up returning a relevant wikipedia article anyway. So it all plays out well in the end.) Of course, there are some articles from wikipedia that are not necessarily good--I don't tend to trust articles on controversial subject matters since they're almost always biased or lack factual information. There's usually a tag that denotes that, so when I see the tag I tend to either leave or scroll down and check out their references. For the most part Google searches get what I want, but there's been a (recent?) change that has skewed up the results a bit for me. Gmail too--their recent change has caused it to become a lot slower. In any case, at least Gmail offers an option to switch to the older version of it in case one doesn't like the new version. I liked Google images, and I think it's somehow improved from before. :-P I remembered when I searched for something like sticky notes: /search?q=sticky+nart%3D40&tbm=isch&sa=N&gbv=1&sei=cWRNWJe5C5LejwPT2rvIAQ there used to be quite a bit of irrevelant pictures (there was a picture of a person once...made no sense whatsoever), but now it seems the first page is covered with sticky note-related pictures, which is great. I've never been a fan of Google toolbar, mainly because I'm not a fan of a toolbar from any company. Basically the only thing I would ever use would be the search bar, but considering that Firefox already has a search box (with google as an option), there's no need for a second one. Nor is there need for a spell checker or a popup blocker, as Firefox already offers both of those. I suppose the toolbar would be a useful piece of work for IE users, but for FF users, not so much. It's really funny how I was originally attracted to Google (in 2000, I think) by its design. Everyone calls out Google on its design, about how it's really plain, but for some reason, I was a big fan of those 'o's. Granted, I was in third grade at the time...hahaha. Gmail is definitely nice. There's so much functionality that most of the other email services don't offer. (ie POP3 access, IMAP.) I also like how Google doesn't append ads at the end of your emails the way hotmail and yahoo do. And that they don't have huge flash advertisements every time you check your email. They have a working spam filter too, which is really a big plus--I don't think I've seen a single spam message for the last few months. Granted, there are a few false positives, but I also like how Google apparently learns when you tell them that it's not spam. That's the way a true spam filter ought to work.

Ah, thank you guys at Xisto! :rolleyes:I'm really happy about the fast responses. :]

I've already done that. I suppose I should just wait for a reply? How long does it usually take them to reply?I emailed them...oh...I think it was around noon.

I was inactive for a few days and had negative credit. Then, I came back and posted until I had 11 credits, which should have allowed my site to go back up automatically. Unfortunately, this is not happening. My site is still down nearly 24 hours after posting. It's url is: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I'm not sure what's going on, but some feedback here would certainly be nice. Thank you!

You should probably try the older version of Gmail as FirefoxRocks says. Actually, though, I don't believe they put up the older version until a week or so ago, because before then I don't remember seeing that particular option. I also didn't like Gmail's update a few weeks back. It caused Gmail to load a lot slower (though according to reports it was supposed to have loaded faster: gmail was trying to fix loading times...but apparently made it worse.). I wish they could still allow filter creation in Basic HTML. It's not as if I'll die without the Ajax in filter creations: I'm fine with a few extra clicks here and there since it actually saves me more time than Gmail realizes. Does anyone know a way to force Gmail to load basic html without turning off javascript? (I do this through noscript--I just block google.com. Unfortunately, I don't want to block google.com (iGoogle won't work then...same with Google reader and notebook), I just want to block gmail.)

I'll add my vote to Joomla here. There are a lot of templates to choose from, it's easy to set up, so on and so forth. Joomla also seems to be one of the easier CMSs to learn to use (compared to Drupal, at least...). There's also a lot more that you can do with Joomla if you look around for extensions and the like. I'd say checking out that link ethergeek gave is a good idea: you might as well figure you what suits you most. :-)And personally, I would definitely not consider a paid CMS. At least not until after you have tried all the available free ones and decided that you don't like any of them (that is seriously not likely .)

Sure, they update, but the point is it's not all that refreshing updates. You still end up doing the same things over and over again. You may take a year to fully explore everything, but if the exploration process is boring, why bother spending the time? A world can be big but still remain boring. Granted, this is my opinion, so you'll have to play to figure out if you like it or not.

Well, if you're going to do the latter, you might as well put that in css. IE: <table class="info"> Then in your css file: .info { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; } Or, in a more generic manner, you can just specify what you want for tables: table { //layout info } And you can specify how you want to layout the table with the info class. Maybe it'd be better if you (Chesso) posted the code for the whole page so that people can get a better of idea of why the table is causing the page to break? I mean, it's true that you can emulate tables with divs, but I think it's better to use tables all the same. Also, maybe linking to the site would be better so that people can sort through things without looking at your php code.

I've also noticed this. (I'm using Firefox 2.0) But, considering how this person obviously has no idea what they're doing, it seems to make sense that they didn't even block browsers correctly. Besides, even if they had blocked browsers correctly, they still wouldn't have been able to stop me from accessing their site. All I have to do is change my user-agent using a Firefox extension (this can be done in Opera without an extension) to IE6. That would trick them into thinking I was using IE. :-P Even from a business sense it makes no sense to block browsers: if it doesn't look good in Firefox or some other browser besides IE, it doesn't mean they shouldn't let people access it. Sometimes a tiny detail that's off-centered wouldn't bother people so much as it bothers the web designer. You never know how much business you can gain by letting people access your site. :-) Granted, it's not blocked so I can't say anything more about the issue. Mark420 is probably right: whoever designed it did a horrible job and didn't bother to fix what he had and chose instead to dump the responsilibity on the users. I'm relatively surprised they even let him keep the job. In fact, just looking at that page makes me surprised. I have heard of sites blocking Firefox because of Adblock, and I find that equally stupid. I could, like mentioned above, change my user-agent, after all.

Chesso: You can download dictionaries for many languages from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/language-tools/, including three different versions of English: Australian, British and American. Granted, I supposed it doesn't change that much since you know those words well enough to know you're right. I only wish Firefox would stop underlining proper nouns--they're meant to not be in the dictionary. :-P

Yeah, but grammar checkers usually suck. There are so many exceptions (and exceptions wrapped within exceptions) in the English language that it's really difficult to build a good grammar checker. Even the one MS Word employs (which, by the way, is quite good compared to the others), still has many mistakes. If I wrote an essay and changed all the grammar mistakes according to Word's suggestions, I'd have many problems on my paper. If the Firefox devs can create a better grammar checker, kudos to them, but I highly doubt that's happening anytime soon. And if they're using some existing implementation, I'd prefer not to have that integrated. Extension would be better.

Indeed, but if we give votes to a special class of voters (the electoral college in the US, say), there's 1) These people are most likely the people who control media in the first place. By giving them and only them the right to vote, we're not making the situation any better. If they controlled the masses before, they have a very tight hold on the populace now. 2) No guarantee that these people aren't influenced by the media I still say direct democracy's the best, since there are other ways for people to get informed (internet, anyone?). On the other hand, there's no way you can force electors to vote for candidates in the majority's interest--they'll stick to their own selfish interests--even worse than the media.

I don't like most of these communities. Just not that interesting. I have friends, but it's easier for me to keep in touch with them in real life or over email. Myspace in particular pisses me off. I, like Jeigh, can't stand the videos and music that people really enjoy sticking into their profiles. Every time I load a Myspace page, I'm afraid my computer's going to freeze and die (which it does sometimes). Of course, Myspace is a lot tamer with Firefox, Adblock, Noscript, and Flashblock. That being said, I really feel sorry for all the people who use IE.I have used Friendster before, and it really depends on who you interact with. At least the profiles (when I went a while back) weren't nearly as crazy as Myspace's, so I could accept it. It was a waste of time though, since I preferred not to be constantly prodded by others to become friends, so I chose not to go on.Facebook I haven’t really used, but so far I like the cleanness that it presents its content with. Nothing like Myspace, I can definitely vow. Though I think most of the complaints above are about the userbase rather than the site, I suppose userbase is really just as important as the site (ie semantics, functioning etc). No one wants to go to a place where few people share their interests, or in their terms, act like “annoying idiots”. Or perhaps we could say that a certain website style would attract a certain group of people. Nonetheless, Myspace still fails in terms of both semantics and functioning. (It’s down more often than not, and one look at its markup will reveal how horrid it is. Lots of people have also mentioned the CSS hacks they had to use to get a certain design to work on Myspace. Truly sad.)

Indeed, that is true. (Like in the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, or the transformation from the "snobs to the mobs"). The uninformed citizen is mob rule, more or less. But do we really have a system that is better than this one? Sure, you could say that your average citizen lacks the brain power to vote accurately, but would having a few educated people make all decisions be better? Obviously these few educated people (the "snobs") would not consider the needs of your average citizen, and many of them would end up in poverty. If you are in favor of something akin to the "electoral college" so that elected officials vote for the president instead of the average citizen, then there is much evidence of its problems. Sure, this "electoral college" is supposedly educated (in fact, its original purpose was to prevent the rule of the uninformed citizen mob), but it definitely won't act in the best interests of the country. It was this electoral college that managed to get Bush elected even though Gore had won the direct vote. This group of officials could obviously care less for the well-being of their country and its citizens--they'd rather take advantage of their power. I rather agree with ruled_paper when he says the democracy has its pros and its cons. You have to give something before you can take. Looking at all the forms of government in action in this world though, it seems that democracy is the best choice for now. Unless some brilliant thinker can concoct a new form of government, an autocratic form of government would most certainly not be better.

Interesting as it sounds, nah. I'd pass on the idea of images. Some people just don't (or rarely) enable images, and so I wouldn't be able to get a message to them at all. Besides, I'm quite sure people would find it annoying if they received an email and then suddenly found that it had disappeared. Or that they have an empty email in their inbox. Frankly, if someone sent me a few of these "empty" emails, I would filter them away and forget about them. Wouldn't want to do that to anyone I know either...Besides, wouldn't POP3 access kinda defeat the purpose of this? Say after my client has already downloaded the image, then the server at bigstring can't not render the image--it has already been rendered and saved, so I get to retain it. Too bad, I say, too bad.

Well, lots of domains are wastes these days. I think the worst I've seen is those parker domains. For instance, if you have something like 'google.com' and the web surfer misspells google.com as goooogle.com/ they'll get a parked domain filled with ads. Whoever registered that domain is basically just trying to take advantage of people <- snipped -> and gaining money. That, IMO, is pathetic. Granted, I never click on any ads, but it's still rather irksome. (Not to mention stupid) How 'bout just use Firefox? Or Opera, for that matter? And if you can't deal with ads, use Adblock (Firefox) or the (ahem) Content Blocker in Opera. It seems as though for every widely filed complaint, there's a solution out there, you just have to find it. :-)

I've seen that article you mention. They were talking about automated ads and how that affects Gmail's safety. That makes no sense--automated implies that it's done with a script, and NOT by a bunch of hired Googlers. If you think that Gmaill would willingly sort through emails like that and put in ads...gods. Think of the amount of man power you'd have to put in. The profit isn't nearly enough. It should be rather obvious that Google doesn't read your email, it just gets a robot to automatically sort through your mail and put in ads based on what the script sees. Gmail isn't safe? It tracks your emails? I call *BLEEP*. How do you even know Yahoo Mail is safe? Or MSN, for that matter? How can you expect these companies to not check your email messages? How would ever know whether or not they would decide to defend you when the government comes knocking at their door for information? That Gmail debunking I saw is a joke--it's probably true for every company and not just unique to Gmail.

Well, learning it really does not take that long. (Took me a few hours of experimenting to get the basic tags down) Actually getting good at it takes far, far longer. There's always going to be new stuff to learn, so the cycle is rather endless. I've found the w3school''s html tutorial to be good (link: http://www.w3schools.com/html/). However, I think the best thing you could do is pick up a book, because those are really more comprehensive than anything you can find online. Afterwards, you don't really need books. Just set a goal in mind and start creating a site. Eventually, you'll reach problems along the way and you'll have to look around to find answers to. There, you've just added to the experience factor. :-) Good luck!