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Thanks darkpsy... so is that really the only way? having only one user without a password?Well maybe I am asking too much, that "assume this user always login to the computer" was just an extra feature on XP and it's not supposed to be the norm. Thinking about Linux I think I've never seen that, it always prompts you for username and password, but I'm not an experienced Linux user

I mostly use FF (version 2 and 3) and sometimes Safari (win version) and Chrome, I've never installed IE7. Unfortunately I find that still many websites, especially the ones that provide public services, are designed solely for IE... they won't display things correctly or won't work at all in FF! I understand that sometimes those websites may have been designed a few years back when IE was the norm, together with a few Netscape users but I sometimes notice the same behavior for newly designed websites, just as the initiator of this topic reports...Official statistics say IE is still the most widely used browser and that's why designers think about it first but I wonder if that's really true, I mean 90% of the people I ask to say they use firefox and don't even want to hear about IE, maybe I just know very anti-conformist people? I think one reason could be that occasional internet users, like the ones that only use it for booking air tickets or vacations, are likely to use IE as it comes with all Windows installation and they don't even bother installing FF... so it is a safe bet to optimize these sites for IE, more advanced users will be ready to open IE if they notice something is not working properly on the site they are using.

I like portable hard drives and use them a lot... just be careful not to rely on them too much needless to say, but I noticed it's quite easy to get excited about the countless space and excellent portability and connectivity these devices offer and forget that, like all hard drives, they can fail! Possibly portable hard drives are even more susceptible to failure because of the way we handle them, environment changes and so on. It should also not be forgotten that we can actually lose them or have them stolen. Any important data, something we don't want to lose, has to be recorded in as many separate devices as common sense suggests, plus one more just in case ^_^Many times we overhear these things until something happens to our storage devices, then we realize those suggestions were right... I must say though sometimes for me it has be a good thing having a hard disk failure as I could get rid of stuff I didn't really need but couldn't delete for a similar sort of attachment to that we develop for items piled up in our storage rooms yeah, backup should be selective...

It depends, if just search engine definitely not... if some particular service that might not be available anywhere else for free, I'd rather pay Google than other companies if they keep the same efficiency and ease of use they show in other services... but basically I find it hard to have to pay for any internet service, normally there is always a free one that does the job unless we're talking about a very specific task or a business environment...

Yeah, I think that is what he means... well I wouldn't be surprised if there were some site out there already doing that. After all it is just another "marketplace" just like selling goods, information, jobs or dozens others. Anyway I've never heard nor thought about building something like this and I think it could be a good idea although it might have some big competitor, namely patents. If an inventor achieves a breakthrough he or she will likely file a patent application and that's the place where potential investors look if they are ready to put money in some new technology. Certainly not every invention makes its way to the patents database and a platform to allow inventors and investors to meet at a less formal level might find its niche... sure it'd have to be done in such way that no patent is breached and confidentiality of the parties is assured.

Hey, I'm not an expert but I think clickbank & C. are not the only way to advertise online, although they are probably the easiest. I would think that you could advertise any product as long as you do not infringe any regulation, certainly you might want to contact the creator of the product to find out if they are interested in giving you money for your adverts...

Hi all,I'm sure some of you gave a thought to this, why does Vista always show the login screen when booting? In XP there was an option somewhere in control panel to "assume this user always login to the computer" or something like that. That way if you used the same user 99% of the time and wanted to keep a second user as say an administrator you could do so by setting that option. If you ever wanted to switch to the "hidden" user you could do so with Log Off or Switch User in Start Menu.Now this is not possible in Vista, the user is given the login screen no matter what. I know this is not a big deal, it is just annoying having to look after the computer when it boots in order to provide that always-the-same click, instead of just pushing the button and coming back in a few minutes with the system ready to work...Anyone knows of a tweak to get rid of that issue?Thanks.

I think the problem is that technology advances but humans do not! When it comes to laptops, PDAs, cellphones, etc. everyone would love to have something small and easy to carry but that strikes a contrast with the "datasheet" of our body whose eyesight was originally intended for moving around, hunting and other basic and survival tasks and already suffers from intensive reading or other activities that require to look at something too close for too long... eventually evolution might be able to adjust our skills but certainly not in the space of a few generations which is the timespan in which most advancements in the information technologies have been made. Coming to the eeepc I think it's a good compromise if you don't really need it more like an extra than something you rely on for your daily work/study, it's not a substitute of a proper desktop/laptop computer but can well serve to take advantage of free wifi around town, it is certainly more comfortable than a PDA or cellphone and fits in any small bag... now they have a version with a 10 or 11-inch screen which is similar to other portable laptops on the market and thus nothing revolutionary, apart from the price which is still very affordable...

Hi TirexMan! what do you mean by that? are you trying to understand everyone's position in the forum? good luck anyway, the little story you brought up fits quite well with the situation of the human race... we have grown bigger and bigger, outnumbering other species and posing a threat to the survival of many of them. Will this come back to us? Logic would say "yes". It makes little sense that our numbers keep growing the way they have in the last century without running in some sort of barrier, being it lack of resources, triggering of catastrophic events or what seems to comprise both of the above, that is climate change. Whether we should look for another planet to live on or try to save our planet is an open debate? personally I think it would be morally appropriate to try the second talking about moral, I don't think the discussion on abortion is the best example of "something seemingly trivial", there certainly are more trivial things we do and worry about, those, I agree could and should be put behind and priority be given to looking into ways to guarantee the survival of our race. But I was just thinking, is the survival of the race what we as individuals ultimately want?

Are those two numbers really the same (2^160)? I think you meant the outputs are fewer than the inputs so you can have outputs with multiple inputs... anyway, thanks a lot, very clear and precise description

When recording, transmitting, storing a password in a web-based application is not a good idea to do so in plain text. Fair enough.Looking at ways to "disguise" a password before, say, storing it in a database I found that functions known as "hash functions" are widely used. Basically what these functions do is "messing around" with the string that contains the password until it is turned in some other string or binary value which hides the "real" password. When we want to retrieve the original string so that it can for example be checked against the user input we'll run the function again on the same and the original value will be returned.In PHP one can for example use the built-in function sha1() to apply the hash function SHA1 which will turn your password into a 40-char (160-bit) string of seemingly random alphanumeric values.My question is: can anyone decrypt such a string provided he or she has access to the same hash function that was used for encryption? in other words, is knowing which encryption function was used sufficient to decrypt a string?If the answer is yes, I guess a much more secure way would be that of writing your own encryption function and store it in a very safe place or maybe customize one of the common hash functions in a way that it acts in a unique way (for example providing it with some "key").I know there's no "absolute security", was just wondering what the common practice is in this cases.Thanks for any answer.

is it possible to live without a computer? possible, yes, easy, no!many people would need to rearrange their lives if computers were to disappear, I'm not talking about those who use their computer solely for entertainment purpose, rather those who make a living out of it! sure nobody feeds on computers but computers may feed them and if a programmer had to invent a new job for himself without a computer... well it wouldn't be fun!as for how much time a day is to be considered "fair usage" outside "living-earning-hours", I don't think a general rule applies. Think for example about people living in very different environments, one in a large city one in the countryside... they certainly have different options as for how to use their time differently than sitting in front of a computer. It all comes down to how meaningful is our computer usage to us, some people may find it meaningful to walk up and down a mountain, others to explore a shopping mall, yet others to play computer games and keep themselves up-to-date through the internet. Since all the above activities are not strictly vital to us as human beings it is in my opinion solely a matter of choice

I think leaving your computer on 24/7 without any specific reason is first of all a bad practice towards our planet! sure, a few tens/hundreds of watts don't mean much but... hang on, how many computers are there in the world? :lol:I don't want to be pathetic or say anything obvious but if there's no reason to have it on all the time, it should be switched off whenever we are not planning to use it for, say, a few hours... it's certainly no use to switch it off for a few minutes, lunch break or so on, but who among us only sleeps a few minutes a day...? if we really need to leave it on overnight (server usage, updates, etc.) we should at least switch off the monitor which will also spare us some electromagnetic fields :DI guess most 24/7 computers are to be found in places where the user does not directly pay the electricity bill (e.g. office, rented property, etc.) and often convenience is adducted as excuse for not switching it off... but come on how long does it take for the slowest Windows to reboot? 3-4 minutes? just the time to visit the restroom :DI'm not saying I have never left my computer on overnight, I surely have, just pointing out how this should not be simply a habit or something we do just because nobody tells us not to do it... believe me if i had to go through a lengthy 10 minutes active process (like closing each one process by hand...) I surely wouldn't do it! but I think 2 or 3 extra clicks won't spoil my day :Das for whether it is good or bad for the electronics inside the computer, I am not an expert but i believe most components should work just fine if powered on and off once or twice a day... besides Windows doesn't seem to be able to hold stable for much longer than a day in my experience :Dwhen using XP on a laptop I've actually made extensive use of "standby mode", which should only consume a fraction of the power and yet allow you to quickly resume your system, previously "frozen" into RAM... I was quite surprised when i could not locate that same function on Vista, where only a Sleep mode (not really sure what sleeps...) or Hibernate mode (dumps everything to disk and takes just about as long as a normal power off) are available... or maybe it's just the version I have used...ok, enough of this, I think i got my point across... hang on, how much precious power did I waste writing this comment??

Wow, it looks like they keep finding water everywhere on Mars... unless they are making it up to keep the topic hot, that's also possible after all NASA should now accelerate its preparation to a Mars manned mission if they don't want to be overtaken by China

that's a good point, humans try to go to other planets and yet they haven't been inside ours... except in movies! but what about drilling with probes, did they do that just for ice layers in Antarctica? is that considered "exploring" at all? beside all that, do you think there is a point in favor of going deeper into the Earth crust? I mean, ultrasonic mapping and the like have given many insights about the inner composition of our planet and it seems like nothing too interesting can come from there, if not some more magma has anyone ever mentioned there might be extraterrestrial life down there? just a few thoughts anyway... I do think pretty much everything has its own interesting stuff in it, we just have to look for it and perhaps find a way to make it interesting

Yes, the Nazca lines are another of those intriguing mysteries and, as opposed to crop circles, where drawn at a time when we would not expect such sophisticated technology nor opportunistic media... thus the 'alien' theory holds better for that case! After all the explanation for these phenomena might be "simple"... if we admit several dimensions, beside space-time, coexist in the same "place"... well in that case there might be 'leakages' from another dimensions we cannot see, something like "oops, I didn't mean it, I went a bit too far!" of course that's a bit far-fetched for our present knowledge of the universe, however didn't we think for millennia that "time is absolute"?

on the other hand if people are busy thinking of aliens they do not concentrate so much in criticizing government policies and the like That's so true, almost anything can be faked with a little effort especially when talking about recordings or photos... in the case of the circles it might well be an attempt to revive sinking revenues from agricultural crops

I like this section of the forum because we can discuss about all these cool and at times intriguing stuff... so this is one of them! I've seen a couple of documentaries and read a couple of articles about those drawings appearing from time to time in the countryside of England (and not only there I think). If you haven't heard of the phenomenon before here is a short introduction: on a quiet summer dawn people drive/walk to their field only to discover something unusual has happened that night: part of the crop has been pushed down to the ground and entangled by a mysterious force it's only by looking from high above that the drawings become clear, as they span through a large area, their patterns seem to resemble old drawings from lost civilization and they are all characterized by precise proportion and faultless symmetry a closer look gives us more hints: dead flies appear on the corn stems as if they were hit by a strong electromagnetic field, moreover a higher than normal concentration of ferric material is detected around the area Now, those hints suggest two things: some kind of electromagnetic field is involved in the process it is very unlikely anyone could make those drawings by standing amidst the crop, given the size and the intricate geometries of the drawings that make it seem more likely a 'top-view' is assumed by the 'artist' Among the 'terrestrial' theories is the one claiming the military might be accountable for the phenomena, they would do that by using helicopters equipped with some kind of 'maser', which is like a laser but uses coherent magnetic waves instead of light waves. This maser beam would be projected onto the field through a 'mask' holding the desired pattern and... here we are, our piece of art is ready! The 'alien' theories come in several flavors and include links to ancient South American civilizations, however they usually fail to state the reason for the circles, why would someone from out there do that? there has to be a reason, it can't be just for fun To me the 'military theory' seems pretty reasonable, although there are a few holes, for example the fact nobody has ever reported of hearing helicopters during those nights... So, what do you think about it? dun forget to vote

yeah it's pretty simple... by chance do you know about a way to change the "file last modified" or "folder created" dates? I know there are applications that can do that, or claim to, but I haven't found any freeware yet... apart from that it'd be nice to be able to do it from the command line so that you can set up some kind of batch mode thanks!

ok so after some research I now understand a bit more about addon domains, and I think I have already answered all my previous questions... yes the process is completely transparent to the web user who will see http://www.newdomain.com/ in the URL as if it were a stand-alone domain... I've also read something about SEO issues, like "are search engines going to downgrade my domain and subdomain just because they share the same IP address?", many different opinions on that matter, anyone has some brilliant insight?

so in the above example, what will I see in the browser URL? (www.)subdomain.com or subdomain.example.com? in other words, let's say my current website hosted on Xisto is http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ and I register a new domain called http://www.newdomain.com/...'>http://www.newdomain.com/... will I be able to host this new domain on Xisto as addon domain in a way that the visitor is not aware of the fact the two websites are co-hosted? will the URL be http://www.newdomain.com/ or newdomain.mytrapwebsite.com thanks!

I've also noticed this contradiction... I think the reason why "science" is taught in school instead of "religion" for most subjects (except of course religion itself) is that "science" has allowed mankind to advance to the present status very rapidly (few thousands years) in Earth's history... certainly what we call "religion" might have contributed to the process by posing new questions for science to deal with or why not criticizing and opposing who was trying to change the way things were looked upon. A religion might well be a scientific theory which does a very big assumption to start with... but what we call "scientific theories" have plenty of assumptions within them too, though they also have many ways of substantiating themselves, beyond the assumptions are undeniable facts, we can easily say "this theory works!", not so easily said about a religion.

that's an interesting point as well... how much weight can one save by not painting the livery of their aircrafts? I'm not sure about the order of magnitude of this number, though the feeling is that it could be secondary to other parts, but sure everything counts especially in the long run! on the other hand we could consider the example-setting side of the decision, something that goes like: "let's not paint our planes, silver is beautiful and our Earth can be spared dangerous chemicals and waste of resources!", that might eventually work out, who knows and sure enough the same concept could be extended to other areas of our life, cut off the 'unnecessary' will eventually benefit everyone, won't it? well, everyone but the ones who thrive on the 'unnecessary'... but then we will be asked: "so, what's necessary to us humans? some food and a place to sleep? is that all we are supposed to do on Earth?", well the answer could be complex and highly philosophical and we would spend yet more resources while trying to find this answer. But I do believe there is so much 'unnecessary' out there that a normal dose of common sense should be enough to start doing something about it

Hi,wondering if someone can help me out with this...I'm trying to set up a router with print server capabilities in my office. The router/switch has four LAN ports and a WAN port to connect it to the modem/gateway (sorry if using wrong terms...). It also has a USB port where a printer can be hooked up.Now, if I connect the WAN port to the corporate LAN network and a PC to one of its LAN ports the router will assign a "subnet IP address" (e.g. 192.168.0.x) to the PC and the PC will thus be able to access the internet and also to print, so far so good :)The thing is, we don't want to have computers attached to the router this way as their IP addresses would be hidden behind that of the router, thus we would like to use the router uniquely as print server, thus using only its WAN port to connect to the corporate LAN and its USB port to the printer... will that work?Here is what I did:1. went on the router management page in the browser and found out the IP address the router had been assigned on the WAN side (e.g. in the corporate subnet)2. on another computer attached to the corporate network set up a port [winXP>Add printer>Local printer>Create a new port] with the above IP address of the router and all other parameters same as before, when I was using instead the subnet address 192.168.0.1 (the address of the router with pc attached to it)3. result --> FAILEDany help with that would be appreciated, maybe I'm just trying to do something that cannot work because of my limited knowledge of networking :)thanks!ps the router model is DI-524UP from D-Link

hey, I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression there! I was actually "using" your idea as a mere starting point to state my idea on labeling in gmail, which was not intended to go against your idea... yeah reading it back it might have sounded a bit like that though, sorry for that and yes, the idea of collapsing/hiding labels under a common group name makes sense, I also have the same "problem" with forwarded addresses labels, it will look a bit (just a bit!) like folders but it could be worthwhile... again, I was just stating my own experience regarding this point, your idea of such a client is great! being synchronized virtually everywhere, on your primary machine, laptop and "on-the-go", including your own files... it probably goes beyond the idea of an email client, more like a desktop management tool which could surely be very useful if it were as efficient and easy-to-use as gmail! I'm wondering, though, if Google is willing to shift decisively from being an excellent web search engine to an all round software producer...