Arbitrary

I've been working on writing this program that needs strings to be converted to integers. Sometimes PHP works by doing the converting for me, but sometimes it just breaks down and quits working. I've got no idea why. $sub1 = 0+substr($text, 0, 3);$sub2 = 0+substr($text, 3, 6);$sub3 = 0+substr($text, 6, 9);$sum = 0+$sub1+$sub2+$sub3;echo $sum;Basically, $text is a string of numbers that looks something like: 296294255268313 and so on.Then I use substr to get the first three digits/letters of $text (296) and then the second three digits/letters of $text(294) and the third (255). I add 0 to each of these strings so that PHP can automatically cast it into an integer. This works fine.However, when I then go to add these integers together and put it inside variable $sum, everything goes awry. It outputs a weird (and very large) number. So then I decided to test if it was possible to add integers to strings with the following code:$sub1 = 294+255+substr($text, 0, 3);echo $sub1;And this, to my surprise, outputted the correct sum (845). Does anyone know how this happened or how it can be fixed? Thanks. =]

I would say that there isn't really a "right" or a "wrong" in this world. Rather, the world is just made up of the decisions you make and the consequences that they reap. Say you decided to murder someone--that's a choice on your part and others may not be able to stop you. However, you cannot stop others either when society as a whole binds together to give you a consequence (like jail or death). Right and wrong is all relative. While what society defines as "right" may not be right in your mind, and neither will it be right in some other society's mind. I believe that values are invented by humans, but it is quite obvious that there lacks definite proof for either side. I find it hard to say that values were predetermined--who is there to predetermine them? Obviously values need to be determined by some relatively intelligent creature, say a monkey or a dolphin; they can't be determined by bacteria. So who could've determined them for us humans to then later discover? I'd say that humans determined them in the first place--they were invented by different cultures. And this whole idea of "discovering" values is a paradox. If a culture claims to have "discovered" a value, how do they know if it really is that predetermined value? How do other cultures know if this culture invented the value or discovered it? But the ideals of human nature can often turn into vices. Some ideals are unachievable--it is impossible to be absolutely perfect in everything. Take the example of communism--the ideal is great and all, but in practice, it just turns into an autocracy. And the ideals of a single human may be utterly different from the ideals of another human. What "makes you a good person", as mentioned in your earlier paragraph about values, is relative. Some people may consider a certain action as "good" while others may believe it to be horrible. For #2--you have no guarantee that the rules and duties are good. For instance, let's say in your country, you have a "duty" to stop women from owning property. Is it a duty? Yes. But is it something that women consider good? No. Rules and duties are not necessarily "right" or "ethical"; they're just simple tidbits determined by the government and by tradition. Tradition does not equal correct. Producing good consequences--that depends on whose viewpoint it's from. For some decisions, the consequences will be good for one group of people but bad for another. In that case, what are you supposed to do? Appease the masses? And oppress the minority? Or go for an inbetween decision and satisfy fully neither group? Or satisfy neither group at all so that the benefit balances are equal? Consequences are too relative and vague. Now if a particular decision only affected one person, then this rule can easily be applied. But as long as it applies to multiple people with multiple beliefs, it'll be hard to make it practical. It depends. Because while this "truth" may disrupt harmony for a time, by not telling it, the problem might escalate and the harmony might be totally shattered and unable to be retrieved given time. Therefore, in those cases, it may be better to simply tell the truth. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, so it's impossible to tell when the truth will have a better consequence than simple white lies. Meanwhile, there's also a certain way that people can tell the truth. For instance, let's say there's a person in my school who gets horrible grades and mostly likely will not end up getting into a good college. I could tell him the truth by saying, "There's no way you can succeed in life with your utterly horrendous grades." By telling him that though, I might dash his hopes entirely and successfully turn him into a high school dropout. On the other hand, I could say, "If you do start studying harder and bringing up your grades, you could attend a prestigious college." The latter statement, while also stating the truth, is nicer and more encouraging. Therefore, telling the truth and reaping a "good" consequence may depend on your tone of voice and the encouragement you hold behind your words. The general consensus to this is obvious: No. Buuuuut (yes, that word again), what if this child had murdered, raped, and tortured another child? Is it then still not justified? Now I don't condone revenge, but in some societies (say the age-old Hammurabi's Code), it's quite justifiable. In those societies, the murder of a child murderer would be executed without a second thought. On a personal level, I agree with pluralism. There are no absolutes in life. Not even with the above statement.

There are tons and tons of free games out there. On that list, I remembered loving N (for Ninja). But I've got to say that there were numerous levels that were tedious and hard-to-beat. It wasn't so much as hard to find a way to beat it (in my mind I could already imagine the way to win), but I was unable to control the ninja to land in the correct spots to actually win. It's a hard game, but it got me addicted for quite a long time.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ -- The Classroom was amusing. Basically the point of the game is a stimulation of a classroom environment where one is expected to cheat. The teacher's vision is shown by a greenish arc, and your objective is to stay out of the arc as you cheat off others. The arc turns red once the teacher has caught you cheating and the game is over. There are other versions of this game located here: http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-954.htm, and here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ for collections, there are TONS of game collections out there. Here are some sites I've found:http://www.ugotgames.com/ ----- UGotGames.com --mostly flash games https://www.gamerebels.com/ ----- GameRebels -- mostly flash games http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ----- Jarkey -- mostly flash games http://www.onlinefreegaming.com/ ----- Online Free Gaming --numerous flash games http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ----- Nearly Good -- ditto http://www.mostfungames.com/ ----- Most Fun Games -- ditto http://www.gamesloth.com/ ----- Game Sloth -- ditto http://www.addictinggames.com/ ----- Addicting Games -- mostly flash, but also some java games https://www.devppl.com/flash-games/ ----- as url says, flash games http://www.smashingames.com/ ----- Smashing Games -- flash, for the most part http://www.pepere.org/flash-games_1/ ----- Pepere -- Flash and Java games http://www.gamesolo.com/ ----- GameSolo -- games are added every week, mostly flash http://www.flashgamestudio.com/ ----- Flash Game Studio -- the url and title should make it more than obvious--flash!http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ----- Funzap -- ditto http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ----- Flash Game Giant -- ditto http://www.miniclip.com/games/en/ ----- MiniClip -- a frequently updated flash game site http://www.ugo.com/ -- UGoPlayer -- a place to download flash games http://www.sess.net/ ----- Sess -- more flash games http://www.flashgamescenter.com/ ----- Flash Games Center --url and title make it quite obvious http://www.flashgamesite.com/ ----- Flash Game Site -- ditto /cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi ----- ditto with above http://www.wecollectgames.com/ps4/best-ps4-bundles-and-deals/ ---- ditto http://ww1.netstupidity.com/ ---- The Net Gone Stupid -- flash games http://www.killsometime.com/games/ ----- Kill Some Time -- more flash games http://www.gprime.net/ ----- GPrime -- ditto http://www.crazygames.dk/ ----- Crazy Games -- ditto

Oh my god! This is sooo cool! Xisto is great! =]This is definitely an innovation in the free web hosting world. To think that sites like freewebs and geocities still have customers is quite shocking. Xisto is the best out of all those free hosting sites. Ahhhh gods. *takes a deeeep breath*

Mmmm. I would say that is Google's fault. Google has no right to direct the way sites work. Every site is free to code the way they want, including in a way that throws the Google system off balance. Google's job is to sort those sites in a manner that helps us searchers. Regardless of how "cheap" these web designers are, Google has to sort these sites. If they don't sort the sites well, then, it's their fault. That's their job, and by not sorting the sites well, they're shirking their job. Nonetheless, to answer the first post, I haven't noticed any difference. I don't get any more spam sites from Google now than I did before (and I've got to say it's very few in the first place). And sometimes when spam sites do show up it's usually an outdated domain that Google has yet to recrawl and discover. Once they do recrawl and find out that the domain no longer holds the same site, it's usually updated. Overall though, I still find Google to be better than other search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Live etc. And in the business world, I suppose that's what matters. Even if we as consumers would prefer a constant increase of quality, it's just not going to happen unless there's lots of competition/rivarly to drive things up the wall.

This would be really great. And after a while, numerous industries will end up going out of business as it will be extra easy for the consumer to make products at home. Like if I wanted to make a toaster and I knew exactly what the components of the toaster are, I could probably design it and then "print" it at home instead of going out and purchasing it. Of course, there will most likely also be some knew 3d design program that comes with premade designs for numerous practical household objects as well as the option to create your own objects. This is seriously a dream come true.

While I agree that ideally one should be working with XHTML 1.1 Strict, I still believe that it's best to adapt to the situation. Not every one of your visitors have browsers that support the XHTML standards (say strict). Therefore, it's better to figure out what the majority of the visitors want and do that instead. And there are some changes to XHTML that I just don't get. Like how does changing the bold tag from <b></b> to <strong></strong> make the code "cleaner" or "faster"? It seems to me that <strong></strong> is obviously longer than <b></b>, so how could it possibly be faster? Although I believe sticking to the standard is a good thing, I fail to see how the current coding methods are improvements from before. Agreed. You can have a table for the layout an CSS all-in-one. I remember I did something like that for my first website. CSS for layouts is quite helpful--all the styles in one compact file. There's no need to repeat styles over and over again for every tag; it's a bit like writing functions to reuse the code instead of copying and pasting it. Nonetheless, I don't see what's wrong with using <div>'s or <span>'s in a site. Many well-coded CSS-heavy sites that I've seen almost always use them. There really aren't that many other tags to latch a style onto besides <div>, <p> etc. So use what you have when you want. Neither of those two tags are "bad". This I do not agree on. While it's nice and dandy to use fieldsets and legends (they do make the form a lot clearer), it's not recommended since numerous browsers don't support it (and, from what I've heard, make a mess of it). You'll have to decide what browser the majority of your audience uses--if the majority uses Firefox, then depending heavily on fieldsets and legends can be very useful. But if they use IE6, forget it. They won't see anything and you should depend on something else to highlight sections of your forms. (Say <div>'s or something) Ahhh...the horrors of cross-browser compliance. Ugh. I hate how there's so many different browsers; it makes it insanely difficult to cater to everyone's tastes. Why can't everyone just be a bit more...compliant and change their browser as needed?

Well, whether or not you save thousands by not smoking I don't know, but I do know that you save plenty of money. Therefore, it's definitely better to not start smoking while you're at it, or quit while you can. Personally, I don't really enjoy being in the presence of smokers--I can't stand the smell of smoke. It really irks me to see a smoker in my vicinity. Nonetheless, I try to remind myself to be a proponent of free will and let people decide if they want to smoke. It's their choice to ruin their lungs after all, and I don't have a right to say something about it. (I do, on the other hand, have a right to run away. XD) Sometimes I wonder why with all the anti-smoking and anti-drug education we have there are still so many smokers. And I'm not talking about the adults who can't quit, but the young people who start despite the lessons they've learned about the consequences. Surely most people would be readily able to recognize that smelling bad and later dying of lung cancer is not anywhere near the notion of "cool"? And surely people wouldn't want to sacrifice their own health and hygiene for the sake of "coolness"? I really can't believe those who start smoking despite the fact that they're informed. On the other hand, for the people who started but were only vaguely or not at all informed, then I guess I can't say much. I understand that quitting is highly difficult, and obviously those smoking companies adding in addictive chemicals are not making the job any easier. Still, if one truly wishes to quit and will not stop no matter what, they should be capable of quitting. Sometimes I wonder if there's some sort of gene that makes some people more determined than others not to give up.

Comic Sans I truly dislike. I think once upon a time (back when I was really young) I liked Comic Sans plenty, but eventually I began to hate it. I'm not sure exactly what drives me to dislike it so much, but maybe because it's just "uncreatively immature" or something like that.I think at some point I also like Papyrus a lot. For now, I don't really like it as much, but I don't hate it either. It's just rather hard to read if one intends on scanning a bunch of text really quickly. But in terms of aesthetics, it is quite nice.Times New Roman is the all-purpose print front. If it's printed on paper, then Times New Roman is the guaranteed as the best-choice font. But it doesn't look as good on the web though--most likely because the serif aspect of it makes it hard to read, and reading on the computer is already tiring, coupled with reading from a difficult to scrutinize font...that just makes Internet browsing hell.I suppose the fonts that actually intrigue me are the very original. They may not be readable, but I don't exactly like them for their practical uses. I just enjoy them because they're fun to look at. XD

Would that be the Goobuntu OS that seemed to once be the talk of the day? I thought at some point Google openly declared that they weren't intending to create a Google OS anytime soon, but rumors seemed to hype the thing up a lot. I also agree that a Google OS would be reaching into rather far waters. But if they did create an online version of an OS, I'd be glad to try it out. Not officially as a permanent OS though, obviously, since it would take too long to load and you'd need another OS just to run it in the first place (unless your browser can be run without an OS). I find nothing wrong in Google selling domains--it just seems to fit along with the rest of Google's web packet. Google offers hosting, so why shouldn't it also sell domains? It just seems to go nicely with Adsense, webhosting, and the like. So they're just attempting to crawl into the webmaster's hole. I don't really see how Google is going to "control" the Internet as so you say. The one that has the biggest likelihood of controlling the Internet as of now would probably be the ISP's. If they somehow blocked access to a certain site (aka censorship, ahem!), then there probably isn't a way to overturn that. And ISP's aren't easily defeated. With Google, its main uses are as a portal to the rest of the Internet. If you're saying that Google's "control" of the 'Net comes from it being a portal, then you can always switch to a different portal like Yahoo or MSN and quit Google. Your call. And the biggest problem with the Google OS theory is that Google doesn't have one to begin with. People just want Google to directly go against Microsoft (frankly, because a lot of people really don't like Microsoft, and having their favorite search company go against it is like some hero fighting against the sinister Dark Lord, which everyone enjoys) by creating an OS. But Google's not doing that, and so most of that is just pure imagination/speculation. Not useful in the support of Google's "sinister ploy for the future", because there's no solid evidence that Google's attempting to take over the desktop industry. And Google investing in bandwidth should be obvious--Google has tons of visitors everyday. How exactly does it expect to keep up with its services if it doesn't get a ton of bandwidth? It won't be able to, period.

That sounds quite nice--that is, for those who use IMs frequently. But I think I'll skip for now. My reasons:1) I don't have an instant messenger. If only they offered something like this from the windows task manager. The windows task manager could be divided into personal tasks and computer tasks. Easier for me since I have that open all the time.1) I used a number of these time-management tools and it just doesn't work for me. I end up spending more time managing my calendar (aka dragging things where they belong when the computer messes up somehow) than actually saving time to do other things. That I find pretty sad. I remember when I first started using Tiddlers, I ended up wasting time figuring out how to work the thing and change the menu--wasted a good half hour. Two days later I downloaded another similar program and started messing again, therefore wasting more time. Saaaad.

Hmmmmm, I'm pretty sure this last bit shows that Gmail Drive is against Google policies. Using your Gmail account to store files sure doesn't sound like using your account for email. So it's a definite violation. On the other hand, if Google doesn't discover you, I suppose it doesn't really matter. Suspending your account for 24 hours really isn't that bad; at least not as bad as being permanently banned or as long as it's not happening on a frequent basis (and if it is, Google will probably realize something fishy is going on). I don't really feel like using Gmail Drive though, mainly because if I really wanted to store files somewhere, it's probably better if I find a server that's dedicated to that rather than mooch off Google's. There are sites out there that are dedicated to this type of thing (for free too) and using something as slow and sluggish like Gmail Drive that can also risk me being unable to log into my account is just pointless. And really, depending on what kind of files you want to save, Google already offers file space for certain types of files anyway. If you wanted to save a word document, you could go to Google's "Docs and Sheets" and store it there. The same goes for a Excel sheet. And there's tons of websites out there that let you store images or flash files or the like.

I do mind Google being everywhere. Competition is the driving force behind any amount of success that these companies have with their products. Without competition from other companies, Google wouldn't have any incentive to change and most likely wouldn't change as long as the money is still rolling in from their monopoly. Without competition, Google could potentially turn into something similar to Microsoft with their lack of updates and slow service. As long as there are other companies still thriving and I have a choice of products, I'd be happy to see Google thriving as well. Having a choice, to me, is the most important thing. If I had one product (one essential product) of poor quality to choose from and I had to buy that product, then I end up in a dead end. I agree with HiddenKenshin that societies thriving on information can cause numerous problems. Just because Google didn't share user information last time (and actually struck up a big case with the supreme court in our defense too) doesn't mean they won't do it next time. I would rather that 'next time' be prevented more than anything else. Breeches of privacy is simply not fun. On the other hand, the title of this topic does sound a bit exaggerated. It seems far-fetched to say that Google may 'dominate the world'. However, breaking it down, Google has a small, itty bitty chance. Google is a search engine company. Therefore it has a high chance of dominating the search industry and then the computing industry (It pretty much already has in that respect. Unless, of course, you count China, where Baidu is the obvious winner in search. Heck, even I use Baidu when I search in Chinese. Habit.). As a relatively large company, it's sure to have some force in politics (it currently doesn't seem to do so well, but most large companies seem to have a force in politics). And it's this force in politics that leads to said 'world domination'. Not very likely, as companies will probably fall faster than your average presidential campaign, but the chance remains. EDIT: On the other hand, if Google truly wished to be immoral, they could also just use whatever information they have on their hands about users and blackmail them. Said users might just decide to listen to what Google says and shut up. But seriously, that has a virtually nil chance of happening. And Google is lacking something big to back themselves up: an army. Traditional, yes, but needed. Information can only go so far.

If you really want a WYSIWYG editor, then I'd have to say go for Macromedia Dreamweaver. But do keep in the mind that the costs for that program are not exactly ideal; they border on the costs of Photoshop.On the other hand, I'd really recommend that you not use a WYSIWYG editor. More often than not (Dreamweaver is not an exception), WYSIWYG editors put the CSS styles within the html code itself (you know like <a href="#" style="color:#000;">Click</a>), which destroys the purpose of having CSS in the first place. Moreover, it makes your code messy and more bulky. If you put the same style for all link elements, then you've just copied the same code a good dozen times and wasted a bunch of space that could easily be saved with an external CSS file.Now onto a good non WYSIWYG editor. Truely there are TONS of these. I myself use Notepad++. It has tabs, making it nice to navigate. It also has built-in highlighting for a number of languages besides CSS (say in case you wanted to code in php or something). For me, it so far has covered most of my needs.-Cssed ------ this one is purely for editing CSS, hence the name-gedit ------ I used this at school before...it was okay, I suppose. But I do remember not liking it all that much.-GLeDitor ------ Written in pascal...-jEdit — written in Java. From what I've used of it at school, I've liked this editor a lot. It has numerous useful functions (such as the split screen).-Leafpad-NEdit ------ Used this one at school too. It was nice--loaded quickly. Clean and to the point.-Notepad2 ------ I was considering this in addition to Notepad++

It's an interesting site, that's true, but I don't think I'd really make use of it. Usually I just want to get to my results (because more often than not they can be found very easily) and don't wish to go through all this fancy choosing before I get there. I mean, think about it. If I could search Google and get my results faster, I might as well do that. Using a secondary site would only be a hassle. sidekiq.com can only be a site that I'd use only if I'd run out of other options. Also, sidekiq.com isn't the fastest thing in the world. If loading it turns out to be a hassle, I could always use that search bar in Firefox to pick and choose which search engine I think I might need the most. No need to waste time by loading an extra webpage on top of the search page. Sorry! XD

Seems so. I like how when you click on a picture, a frame with the original image search is placed on the side. In Google, it's rather annoying to have to click back and forth and back and forth just to conduct searches. The Ajax implementation is nice, but it is also rather slow. Perhaps they ought to offer an option that lets people view their image search in plain html without the fancy Ajax stuff. So while on the outside Live Image search looks great (it would be great too if my computer were faster), it really isn't fun for dialup users or those who are trying to search quickly. And for image searching, I wish companies could up the notch a bit and really do something original. Say you really wanted to search for a particular image--it'd be nice if the search engine allowed you to draw a rough sketch of what you thought the image might look like. Then, it would scrounge its database for the nearest matches to the search image. Though this method is difficult bordering on insanity...

I think what browser you want/need ultimately depends on you.Now to counter the security risks of Internet Explorer 6, you could always get some antivirus program and keep it running. That would definitely keep it up to par with Firefox's security. If you don't like tabs and hope for a relatively smaller memory usage from whatever browser you choose, you might consider going for IE (assuming your security holes are covered) or Opera (though tabs are still there). Each browser has their own advantages and disadvantages and those have to be weighed to decide which browser suits you best. If you're going for speed and relatively lower memory usage, Opera is great. If you're looking for a number of extra functions (aka Firefox's numerous extensions), then Firefox it is. (I, for one, cannot live without Firefox's extensions).Picking a browser solely based on what others say probably won't help you much. Perhaps your best chance is to download what browsers are available for download and see which one you like best. =)

I agree with abhiram, I don't really think this whole IE adopting the same icon thing is that big of a deal. I also don't think an icon really explains things that well. People who are entirely unfamiliar with RSS are not going to have any idea why there's an orange little icon there. Those same people would probably benefit more if the RSS icon had some explanations to it, or else they'll probably just ignore the feature like everyone else.And remember that most of the people who do upgrade to IE7 are probably using IE6 right now. They probably haven't used other browsers such as Firefox and therefore were not exposed to this RSS standard of orange icons. Without them being exposed to something already, adapting to something new really isn't a problem. Starting from point zero is easier than moving from point ten to zero and then moving back.Of course, for those of used to the orange RSS icon, having it in IE would be quite nice. But there is no difference made for those who have never seen it before.

Dang! That is a great picture! Perhaps it would be even better if we could see it in the content with the background? As of now though, you've still got the lighting captured really well, as well as the ominous yet "clanly" feeling this seems to evoke. The shades on the story teller was done nicely and the shadows in the forefront added a nice touch.The not-quite-square shape of the pic fits its theme of coming from long ago.

I really don't think most people care about quality. They just want to take their photographs, capture their "great moments in time" and then show it off somewhere or stash it for their memories. They really don't stress over every little factor of the picture; not everyone is a professional. Therefore, digital will win just because it's easier to use than film and ordinary people find ease of use to be more important than quality. So basically, each side has their conveniences, and whether you think film is better than digital or digital is better than film depends on what you're using it for. If you're a photographer, then there's no need to harp about the "greatness of film" to the ordinary folk as they more than likely won't care. And I agree with bad-and-ugly that digital is better for the environment. Less waste = a lot better.

I'm thinking that those sites probably all use the same database. And then perhaps each different domain really just all directs to the same site, which is the reason why all the topic numbers are the same. Perhaps this could be sorted with the right amount of filtering with some categories? Let's say you're using Wordpress (if you're coding your own then anything is doable =P ). You could put the "root" posts under one category, say "root". And then put your other posts under other categories, say "radio" and "tv". Then, you can use the category filters for the "loop" to display only posts from root or combinations of posts from root, radio and tv. And then all you have to do is create several of these index pages and point your domain to each different index page. Eh, sorry if that explanation made little sense. XD

@Leafbunk, though it might be offensive, I'm not sure he quite meant it that way. I myself never knew queer had this other meaning; I always thought it meant "weird" and used it as so until some people told me otherwise. As for saneax, perhaps you could link to an article talking about this Shilpa Shetty's actions? Perhaps that way I'd be able to comment a bit more, as you're current comments don't really provide enough information for me to elaborate. According to what you say about her "being nice towards racists", I suppose there really isn't anything wrong with. What's wrong with her being nice? Does she have to be utterly angry and hurt others with her words? I really don't think hurting others will get anywhere. Racist people will just get more angry and think even lower of your race as a whole (because they're used to generalizing). If she wants to be nice, that's a good thing as that shows she's better than the rest of them--she has lofty ideals and is willing to sacrifice her pride to achieve them. Insulting her for being nice is really not justified.Oh, and by the way, I'm not really sure if that offense to Indian gods is really an "offense" so to speak. It may be just that those film makers no absolutely nothing about the traditions of India and the amount of respect with which they treat their gods. If you don't know a culture well enough and try to make a movie off of it, you're obviously going to mess up at some point or another. In that movie's case, it just happen to take a turn for the worse and become offensive.EDIT: Alright, I've just read a Wikipedia article on Shetty, and yeah, the racism directed against is quite horrible. But her reaction is truly honorable. Even if she did it for money--it still helps others set things right. If it had been me, I'm sure I would've performed random acts of violence against those who insulted me. But she's obviously not so unforgiving. Hate begets hate, no? The less hate the better, and she's directing us that way.

There are tons of different forums that can be hosted on your own server. You can start with this list...but to get more I'd suggest that you just Google what you want and look around to decide what's best for you. There's lots of discussion on which forums are useful for what, and obviously phpBB is not for everyone. https://www.phpbb.com/-- rather well known, but is known elsewhere as being insecure and difficult to mod https://bbpress.org/ -- made by the creators of wordpressbeehiveforum.sourceforge.net -- has what you wanted regarding the image verification thing http://www.minibb.com/ -- heard that it was optimized for Google, so if search is your thing, then go for it http://punbb.informer.com/ -- your regular forum, seems to be rather well known though http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ -- lots of features, this one.http://monkeyboards.zenco.net/ -- small filesize, just your regular discussion forum http://www.usebb.net/ -- used mostly for medium sized sites http://icebb.net/ -- yet another regular forum https://sourceforge.net/projects/metabb/ -- seems to be created by those at phpBB yabbforum.com/ -- same as above Anyways, if you search Google for something like, "Free internet forums" then you might find yourself getting somewhere. Wikipedia has a nice article putting together all of these free forums into one category. =)

I truly do not like Myspace much at all. Its code is probably the only thing that I can actually criticize about the site (it's un standardized and I would've thought such a popular site to have better code, then again, Google has the same problem...). The rest of the its problem probably lies with its userbase. I find myself cringing quite often at the two to five YouTube videos that can pop up on a Myspace page. Or perhaps the gaudy music ringing in the background, and some eye-killing color combinations (like bright yellow and dark black) and listening to my computer make screechy scratchy noises as it attempts to handle the gargantuan size of the Myspace page. I sometimes wonder if all Myspace users have super fast computers or something--how can they stand to wait for their profiles (or that of their friends, for that matter) to load while their computers freezes and dies on them while attempting to perform said action? And of course, the userbase seems to enjoy screaming and yelling at each other and getting into flame wars every two seconds. I visited their forums once or twice and gods, was there a lot of swearing and mean folk waltzing about. I fail to see how Myspace is an ideal place for social networking--it's more of an ideal place for social antagonism. And the place is a mess when it comes down to spam! I have a test account up there and the amount of spam I receive far exceeds that of the amount of "regular" mail I receive. There's a bunch of advertisements for random things going around here and there and inviting me to come (and some of these things really aren't appropriate...so just how the heck is Myspace okay for anyone under eighteen?) I really don't think it'd be that hard for Myspace to start working on a spam filter and perhaps start kicking out some of those fraudsters and bots. Another thing that bothers me about Myspace--it apparently censors words out of entries and forum posts. I don't remember the exact words that it censored, but I think it had something to do with a rival company's affiliation. Now I just find that to be rather pathetic. What in the world is wrong with saying a rival company's affiliate's name? Where exactly did free speech and the first amendment run off to? Of all things Myspace can do, this one I find the most annoying.

@bluefish, I believe Gmail had antivirus for a lonnnng time. Considering the start of this thread (December of 2005), that was nearly a year ago! Though, I am not sure if Gmail actually scans the email itself for viruses; according to the descriptions I see near my mailbox, it seems to only scan attachments. Which is fine with me, since usually viruses do come by attachments.Gmail's spam filter is wonderfully nice. In fact, it's so wonderfully nice that nearly all spam with some unidentified-possible-virus-holding attachment in them are all filtered to spam. I really doubt a Google Antivirus Beta will come out...it just doesn't seem like something they'd focus on. I can't even pinpoint a reason why, just intuition I guess. But then again, you never know, I could be entirely wrong and Google might just surprise us all. They sure have already done that once.