sheepdog

That is really awsome! When did they discover this? I hadn't heard anything about it. Seems like that should make front page news! Wonder what the tempratures are? With 10% less light I'd guess it would be colder than earth? But I can think of a lot of plant life that could exist with 10% less light than we have here on earth, so it's possible if there is a water source the planet could be quite filled with life. Will be interesting to follow this story as it unfold in the future. It's sad that we are having so many problems here on earth that has caused a big slow down in the exploration of space.

Ha Ha! I do believe that you are exactly right. We have come to expect every politician we elect to screw us over, so I gues your right, it should not come as a suprise to us anymore.

This seems like a remarkably morbid wager... True, it probably is. But it's been so bloody slow around here I was just trying to come up with something to get a conversation going. Whatever works eh? Anyway, I hope your right, that she is scared strait, but I'll bet if she can get out of jail, with all that money burning a hole in her pocket, she will do what ever it takes to keep out or get out of jail. And to k_nitin_r, Funny, I guess cab drivers the world over have a real nasty reputation. I know here in the USA they get accused of taking the long way around to everywhere, padding the fares, rigging meters, and just about everything else. I can't think of any group of people in an occupation that are less trusted, except Carnies. Which I guess really sucks, when a cab driver might beat you out of a dollar on a fare, but a politician or laywer can screw you out of your life savings or all that money you have paid into Social Security a lot quicker than a cab driver can make that one dollar.

Something has my curiosity peaked about a new bit of technoligy in new cars. Been seeing this commercial on TV where a little boy is pushing his teddy bear in a toy plastic car down the side walk and a big SUV is getting ready to back out when the little boy gets behind it, and is about to get run over. Anyway, the back up camera system "see's" the boy and according to the announcer in the commercial it says the car can apply the brakes faster than you can, the car applys the breaks and the little boy is saved. Ok. fine. But what happens when you are flying down the freeway, and all of a sudden a car rushes up on your rear end from behind, or cuts over quickly and gets right behind you? Is your car going to put on the brakes and get you hit in the rear? I don't see how it could work for one thing and not put you in danger from another case scenario. Does anybody have any ideas on how this new technoligy actually works?

Welcome Duptyfied. Great introduction and I am glad we have another dog lover on the forum. What kind of dog is Rip Van Winkle? I love a good dog breed guessing game. On a side note, being conservative doesn't mean you want anybody trying to dictate terms to you. Some one conservative can be the most independant free spirited person you could ever meet and they can still be conservative.

I don't have a problem with kids and dirt bikes, providing they are off road. If anyone's only problem with kids riding dirt bikes was a safty issue in that they might break bones, I would just say that kids can break bones falling out of trees, throwing rocks at each other, tripping over their dogs, falling off porches, horses, monkey bars, swings, slides and as far as that goes, their own 2 feet. You certainly can't ban rocks and trees and all that other stuff.

The news carried a story last night about a recent lottery winner. A young woman one a million dollars in her state lottery. Of course, the government takes a great big bite of her winnings, nearly half, but she still ended up with something like 550,000. Not exactly chump change for sure. Just one problem. She was living on food stamps when she won the money. And she sort of "forgot" to report the income and continued to recieve food stamps. Ended up getting her dumb butt arrested. She claimed she had a lot of bills to pay, and apparently said she owned 2 houses. Not sure how you qualify for food stamps if you own 2 houses, but anyway, now she is in deep doo doo. Knowing she has all that money, any lawyer she hires is going to really lay the screws to her in what he charges to defend her on her failure to report charges. Personally, if it was me I'd not even get an attourney, they pretty much have an iron clad case against her. So, by the time she pays her supposed bills and the lawyer fees, and what ever else she ends up loosing because she will probably end up doing some jail time, I'm betting she ends up broke and back on food stamps. I give her one, or maybe 2 years and she will be right back collecting food stamps. Anybody want to make a wager on it? If she wasn't smart enough to know to report the income, you can pretty well bet she won't have the smarts to invest anything that might be left over in some way to make a better life for herself in the future.

Check box number 2 just got checked off. I see India has another leg up on the road to being a superpower country. Saw on the news last night that they just successfully tested a missile that can launch an atomic bomb! Just what everybody wants eh? The news comentators were bringing attention to the fact that nobody really said much or complained about India doing it, but how everyone had such a fit when North Korea did. I have no idea how this would help the common man though. Unless it prevented another country from attacking Inda since they now have this type of weaponry.

Oh, I agree completely, in this day and age a web site is a must have. For my own business, it is a real life saver. I can put out so much more information than I could with any other type of advertising media, and as long as I keep up with posting here at Xisto, the cost is very minimal. I just have to pay for my domain name now, $110 for 3 years, high enough but not out of site completely. Though I do admit it annoys me to pay to own my own name. The 2 things the site helps me with the most is saving me a ton of time answering emails, as I have my frequently asked questions page for people to read. I can post puppy pictures on my site and just send the link in an email when people inquire about a puppy, instead of taking the time to attatch pictures to every email I get, which can be a lot of emails some days. Not only pictures but pedigrees too, which take forever to attatch and send when I get the occasional inquiry for one. It also saves me tons of time digging threw the 1,000's of pictures I have on cd's when someone wants a picture of the sire and dam of the puppy they are interested in. And then there is my health guarantee right there for everyone to read. Then the other big plus in having a web site is that is sets me apart from the all too numerous con artists out there who advertise having pups for sale, but probably don't even own a dog, they steal other breeders pictures and send them out as their own, and pretend to have pups but then just con people out of the money for the puppy. This type of thieves do not take the time to build and maintain a web site, they want no way to have a ripped off customer track them down. Have a long establised web site lets my customers know I'm not a fly by night crook.

Yes, I heard this one on the news today too. Very sad. I suppose a lot of the young whipper snappers here won't remember him from the great old Rock and Roll show, "American Bandstand." Some of the most famous rock groups ever to hit the airwaves and concert tours got started on his stage. Even Elvis made American Bandstand. I remember seeing it when my parents were around and how they used to complain about Rock and Roll the same way I'm sure parents complain about whatever kind of music kids listen to today.

Some months have gone by since your post, and as you may know, the political battles have not even slowed. they just keep getting worse and worse by the day. I'm getting so sick of politics I can hardly stand to be in the same room with a tv on. The back stabbing, lying, fact twisting has been some of the worst I have ever seen. Here's a bold statement I'd love to debate. Obama is the worst racist of the lot. He plays the race card at every turn. Let a white policeman arrest a black man and they get invited to the white house to have a few beers and work out their differences. Hispanic (originally reported by the media as a white) kills a black youth and Obama is going on about how that could of been his child that was killed. The Black panthers publicly put out a million dollar bounty on a man that at the time was not even charged with a crime against a black and nothing is done about that. Blacks try to intimidate white voters and prevent them from voting, and they won't press charges against them. I think Obama is deliberatly and intentually stiring up racial tensions because he is a racist, and because it distracts from all the terrible screwed up things he is doing to this country. He thinks it will help get him relected if he shames white people into voting for him so they can say they aren't racist. In the process, he is hurting the black community because it is stiring up feelings of the anti black sentiment that in reality has greatly faded away in the years past. Obama is trying to divide the country and pit white against black. I am not particularly racist myself, but when I saw those Black Panthers on TV threatening to take the law into their own hands it was almost enough to make me become one.

I never heard the one about somebody was going to die when a cat growled, that's a new one for me. I once had an indian (American indian) friend who went balistic if he ever heard an owl hoot, acording to indian legend, it was a sign that someone was going to die. Isn't it funny how there are so many strange customs around the world? I guess in ancient times cats were sacred in Eygpt, and were worshipped. Then you have sacred cows in India. Dogs however, are frowned upon in many cultures. Pigs are bad news to some and a favorite dinner for others. Pretty strange when you consider all the numerous variations. I can see some cat worship in the event of a plague like the bubonic plague that was spread by rats and mice. I still haven't figured out the one about cows though. They taste too good.

Gee, and I thought I wasn't a cat person! You seriously dislike cats don't you?Actually, you are right on one issue in particular, cats are a serious threat to the eco system in some respects. Certainly, we appreciate their ability to control vermin like rats and mice, but they also kill various birds that would help control the insect population and many other benificial animals. They can also be carriers of disease, zoonotic to humans. Ring worm springs to mind. The domestic cat has a considerable advantage over other wild preditors. Wild animals are at the mercy of their enviornment. When their natural food sources are thinned out, they tend to die out from starvation. Pet cats are feed and sheltered by their owners and they are generally fit and healthy and well fed, so they kill basicly for sport. They don't have to rely on catching something to eat so they can mantain the strength and stamina, unlike wild animals that are not so pampered. Even the so called ferral cats have no problem finding some soft hearted human that will feel sorry for them and think that they can tame them and so will put out food in an effort to try to "befriend" the wild cat and make it a pet. So starvation is seldom a problem for domestic cats. Cats reproduce easily, the unspayed ferrel cat population can very easily get out of control, which in turn decimates the song bird population in the problem areas. While shooting them out of trees may not be the solution most people would want to see, there are organizations that actually live trap ferral cats and then have them spayed/neutered, and then release them. At least this will help curb the overpopulation problem, though I am not sure how much it will help, as any cats not traped and fixed can reproduce quickly enough to replace the numbers. I'm sure the cat lovers here are fuming and have smoke rolling from their ears after reading your post. I find it funny how humans have "favorite" animals that somehow are "untouchable" when it comes to any form of use or population control. Pamper and preen the pretty pony, and lets just have a hamburger for lunch. Or scarf down those tuna sandwiches before you to to the local protest of the tuna fisherman who accidentally trap a dollfin in their nets. Humans are supposed to be on the top of the food chain, but honestly, sometimes I wonder about the intelligence of our species.

It is absolutly amazing that there were no casualites with an earthquake of that magnatude! I feel bad for people that live in earthquake prone areas. I'm not too far from one big fault line myself, the New madrid fault line, but we never feel any here. We just have to deal with tornados. But at least if you know a tornado is coming, you go hide in the root cellar, unlike an earthquake, where there is simply no place to hide.

I just got an email from Xisto, I'll paste part of it belowThis email is to notify you that your account which is currently hosted on server GAMMA will be migrated onto better servers in our cluster. Once transfer is completed, you will receive a second email confirming the status & server details. For those using External DNS solutions, you will have to update your dns configuration with the new ip in order to avoid disruption of service.I don't really understand this. What does it mean I will have to update my dns configuration? What's external DNS? I don't know if I use it or not.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this. There are certain "advances" in technoligy that actually bug me a little.Case in point, those toilets that flush for you. Honestly, when humans get to lazy/nasty/crude that they can't fulsh the toilet after themselves, I find that pretty disgusting that we have a need for such devices. As for the self driving cars, sure, it would be a great advantage for some people, especially the blind like you mentioned, but I'm not really sure how it would be a big help in some of the claims, like make less traffic and polution, since it would still be driving around, and it's unlikely that many people would be willing to share the same car, and if they did it would still be out there running up and down the road. Anyway, there are those of us that like to drive. I don't think I want to get in a vehicle, punch some buttons and then sit there like a lump. If I'm just going to be sitting there, I could stay home and watch TV!

Wow, what a fantastic introduction! I think you have made one of the longest intro's anybody has here in a long time. I'm really glad to because how can you respond to a post that just says hi, I'm new here? I wish more of our new members would go into as much detail about themselves as you did. So much easier to get a good conversation going that way. Of course I can't contribute much to a conversation about cognitive science or quantum mechanics, that's way over my head, I'm a way down to earth practical sort of person, more into dogs, goats, farming, gardening, all that stuff. Honestly, I'm not all that crazy about computers even. They are just a nessary evil to promoting puppy sales. We can however, agree on Sci Fi! I love a good sci fi movie, or tv series. I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do it's strictly for entertainment. My better half watches a lot of news, and while it will sometimes catch my interest with an occasional story, after just a little while I find myself being bored or depressed by it.

I am constantly amazed at the stupid things people "share" on social media outlets. I find it hard to believe that people give out all the information that they do, and then there are those pictures........gads, what are people thinking? Have they no shame at all? Don't they realize that this sort of thing can very well come back and bite them in the butt? Sure, your just a horny teenager now, but some day you are going to grow up and maybe want to become some one important, and can you imagine the hay day the press would have with a presidential candidate's naked teenager pictures? While I can't feel too sorry for those stupid enough to give away their personal information, there are far to many cases where people are tricked into giving it, or it is just flat stolen from them threw no fault of their own. There are just too many ways for people to steal this information.

Just exactly what is it your Testing? How to drive us crazy? What language is that, it doesn't even sound like Klingon.

I don't see one i like in a lot of places, but one of the forums I used to be on had this cool little red devil complete with pitch fork and horns. I do think smilies and your other various emoticons are really handy. Sometimes it's hard when writing to convey what you actually mean, you can say something innocent and make somebody mad because they take it the wrong way, so having smilies to use really can help a lot of the times.

You should be proud of your family if they have have taken a stand against such inhume treatment of women. It is always best to lead by example. I hope eveyone follows your lead, this barbaric treatment of widows should end and end now. It still boggles my mind that female humans are treated so poorly around the globe.

Oh wow, that is pretty amazing! I've always been wild about watching thunderstorms and lightening. When I was little and it would storm, my mom would come in my bedroom at night and close the curtains, so I wouldn't be afraid, but as soon as she would leave I would get up and open them again so I could watch the storm. I always thought the light show was really cool. Now getting struck by lightening would be pretty terrible. I've come close to that natural disaster twice. Once as a child while riding a pony, it struck close enough I felt the heat of the flash, so did the pony, and it reared and nearly dumped me, and another time just a few years ago, I was standing out by the front door of the kennel watching a storm, and like a dummy I had my arm resting on the pen next to me, and I felt the tingle come threw the wire when a lightening bold struck the ground nearby. Since then I make sure I'm not touching any fences while storm watching. We live on a hilltop, so while I don't have to worry about floods, we are frequently hit by lightening here. I can't count the number of telephones we have lost. Several computers too, if I happen to be away and can't shut them down.

Oh, that sounds absolutly yummy! I wonder how it would work on some older tougher birds? Wonder if the cooking time would be long enough to soften them up. I have some older laying hens that are about due for retirenment..........

I have always been curious about the ghost thing. Heard those ghost stories all my life. Personally, I have never seen one, so it makes it pretty hard to believe they actually do exist. But I do have a good friend that has told me several time that she has been visited by departed loved ones on several occasions, and I believe she is speaking the truth. I do tend to lean toward some belief in the supernatural side, so I suppose I should be more of a believer in ghosts. But until I actually see one for myself, I'm afraid I'm stuck with my doubts on this subject. I actually would like to see one. I don't think it would scare in in particular, but it would be cool to finally have some proof, even if it was just for my own mind, since nobody else would probably believe me anyway.

Yes, it's just not possible for the police to be everywhere. A person needs to take some responsibility for their own safety. It is after all, your life we are talking about here. It's amazing the little things you can do to make a difference. The big thing is not to freak out. Keep your wits about you, be quick to judge your options and possibilites for a different outcome than getting ripped off. Always be aware of your surroundings. Keep your eyes and ears open and know what's going on around you at all times.