Vardigon

The response times in Firefox 3 are indeed much faster. You might want to wait a while though, as a lot of the plugins haven't caught up with the release of FF3. It's brand-spanking-new. The page load times are quite good. FF3 uses 6.8% of 1 GB of RAM on my computer. (You do the math.) I had to get the source out of the testing repository as it hasn't been added to the stable branch yet :/.Of course, the fastest browser is elinks. xD

I think that something called Destiny does exist. It just doesn't related directly to the physical realm per-se. I also believe it is possible to see through the veil of "time" into the future, and predict outcomes that have not yet occurred.My beliefs with destiny presuppose the concept of archetypes, the mental plane, etc. Basically, that what has happened, what is happening, what is going to happen all exist in one timeless conceptual state of awareness. Just pure being. As far as destiny goes, it can exist on this level because we do away with the idea of "time," which I just believe is human conception.With predicting the future, I believe this is also possible. Please do not refer to chaotic events as random, or pure chance. Chaos has a semblance of order, and yes, reality does work by chaos. (Ever studied chaos mathematics or chaos magick? Do so.) There is a predetermined course of events based on the momentum of previous events. It is possible with a strong enough exertion of willpower to change this momentum into a different direction, or to use your own "higher powers" to see through and know where the river goes, so to speak. It has happened that certain individuals have won the lottery twice. Surely this must be beyond the realm of pure chance?As far as Einstein's ideas go, E = MC^2, and so forth, I personally believe that this 'macro' view of reality is a "for all practical intents and purposes" perspective. We label things as we see them. As we have come across science such as Quantum Mechanics, we find that reality works very differently from our normal conceptions. Have you ever heard of a book, The Holographic Universe? You should check it out some time, as it is very enlightening.But as destiny goes, I'm not a fatalist. I believe that anyone can change their lives by doing and believing certain principles.Here's a metaphor that's sometimes used within the realm of Christianity, that paints a picture of this paradox of destiny quite well:A person, standing in a sea of white light, sees a gate before him, golden in appearance. The gate is open. He decides to walk through. After he has walked a few steps through the gate, he hears it close behind him. He turns back. Marked on the gate is the word "CHOSEN."So did the gate choose him or did he choose the gate? It's both. ;)That's why reality is a mix of opposites: you choose what happens, yet everything that will happen has already happened, on one plane of reality.

Thanks rvalkass. I think I decided on a Brother HL-5250DN. I was reading the reviews on Amazon and Newegg and found that a great number of people had bought the printer. And, it comes with LPR drivers and a CUPS wrapper for Linux . HP is a good company. I have a feeling though that they might overcharge for some of their products. Besides, I saw that the Brother printer had Duplex printing, and I had to have it! (Instantly!)

Hey guys,As the title says above, I'm looking to buy a laser printer. I'm sacrificing color printing capability to bring the price down a bit. My birthday is coming up (June 14, 2008), and I'll be 20 years old . So, I'm looking for a laser printer with the capability for high capacity, as I'll be using it to print lots of digital media, stuff like ebooks, etc. Because I don't like reading mounds and mounds of text on my monitor. Plus, they're just useful to have.So I'm wondering if any of the members of the forum can recommend me some different models of monochrome laser printers. My budget is around $200 max.Thanks for your help.Edit: Oh yeah, it would be nice if it played well with Linux, but I'm sure that can be worked out.

I do not believe I will upgrade to Vista >.>. Not unless there's some game I really, really want. I'm not buying their schemes to force people to update to a new OS that probably furthers their objectives to keep a closer eye on users and force them to do as they wish. To me, Vista seems a bit like Windows ME. Have fun with it folks. I use Linux most of the time anyway. As far as updating to Vista for security reasons, maybe not. I mean, in any new piece of software there are going to be bugs. XP is at least time-tested. And everyone thinks Vista is buggy. How many of these bugs are exploitable remotely? I don't need any new security updates. And I don't take kindly to their Genuine Advantage gambit, trying to peek on me to make sure I'm doing my good duty as a citizen of "society." And yes, my copy of XP is legal, so I'm not saying that to get out of anything.What Microsoft has been moving towards has seemed like communism. I read a blog post somewhere the other day that noted something that was said by a Microsoft developer on a forum. Namely, their plan to make a /mandatory update/ for those that had Messenger 8.1 to Windows Live Messenger. Their reason why? We need to do what's best for the security of the network. (Their logic being that they didn't want anyone that could act as a gateway for a virus.) Still, even if their intentions are good, it's tyranny. People should be able to choose whether or not they want to update. "For the good of the community." Sounds like Russia to me.

I can understand this. It's one of the things I've tried to make not happen in my life. There's something about living in a modern society and doing that which doesn't appeal to me. Mostly because it seems boring. And we wonder why Fantasy thrives these days . It's because people were born and bred for adventure and a somewhat 'high' life. Men, in my opinion, weren't made to sit in cubicles all day and do menial tasks. This is what we should use computers for. And then we just reap the benefits and do something different and more interesting. Thousands of years ago, you don't see people doing such repetitive work. Heck, men were game hunters, women farmed and took care of families, and people were on the move and busy exploring the world all the time. Noone was stuck in one place: if they wanted to move, they just packed their stuff up and left. The problem, one of them, with modern society is that it tends to be very "lock step," that is, "you must do things on our schedule, in the exact manner that we do things." Children are required to go to school from ages 5 to who knows when. Some people (Ph.Ds) don't get out of this loop until their late twenties. I've read forums where Ph.Ds discuss things occasionally, and read things such as, "after I finished my PhD, I was so burnt out that I couldn't read anything. Finally my friend got me to read X children's book. It was enjoyable!" Too much useless junk clouding the mind in my opinion. The problem with a lot of high level work is that it tends to be nothing but minutiae that will never benefit anyone. Public school, in my honest opinion, and the way we teach our children, is the #1 problem in my opinion for putting people into the mindset of doing droning tasks over and over again their entire lives. I mean, when exactly do children have chances to be children in today's modern society, and be creative? Most of their days in our society are spent 7 hours a day in a desk, with teachers who have the idea that children are tabula rasas, or blank slates, who need their heads to be filled chock full of knowledge and dates, formulas and methods. A lot of this method of learning in today's society comes from a system we adopted called the Prussian Model -- look it up, the information on it is astounding. (It was designed to make drones for war. Countries around the world study this Prussian Model. ) In my opinion, if you don't stifle the imagination of a person at a young age, they won't be mindless drones, insects, who are happy and content with working menial jobs as such. Men were born leaders, explorers, creative beings. This mass factory-ization of people is probably one of the worst things, I believe, to happen. It not only affects people physically, mentally, and emotionally, but spiritually as well. People believing in Indian religion, such as the Hindi religion, state that the Earth is in some sort of Kali Yuga, or spiritual winter. People are so bound by their earthly, day-to-day mindsets that they don't reach out and look up to the stars anymore, which is how men first came to greatness. They valued (if they believed) in God, and worshipped him in their own way, as in their time, there were too few people spread out in such a way as to promote individualized ways of growing. Sorry if this has seemed a digression, but I merely wished to amplify the reason why that droning cycle exists in today's society. Yes, it's a deep problem . And I know that at least one person will read the post above and think, "But we have so many people. Someone has to do all this busy work, right?" Well, perhaps if we actually focused our efforts on teaching people something that mattered from a practical standpoint in school, we'd begin turning out inventors and those capable of originality again at a high degree. Some say it isn't possible, but I believe it can be done. We have not reached some sort of threshold or plateau that we cannot move beyond. We've always wanted to actually go and live among the stars, right? And, always, there will be some people who desire to do nothing else but the details and little things in life, and that is good. We do need at least some people to handle such things. But that doesn't mean that they have to be drones who walk through life without seeing how good it is.

Before I had my own computer, and when I lived with my mom, she had an Apple Macintosh, /way/ back in the day. I remember playing a game on it where you had a dinosaur whose bones you had to put back in their places. How could you hate macs!? They're much more stylish than PCs, and the interface is a lot more integrated, it seems. They might be more expensive as hardware, but the OS software is cheaper, etc. etc. And they're good for digital artists.

My first computer was an IBM Aptiva Multimedia. My parents bought it for me one Christmas when I was eight years old, at the price of around $2500 from Radio Shack. It had a Pentium I, 100 Mhz processor in it. Pretty slow, eh? It also came with Windows 3.1(1) installed, with a CD for an optional OS/2 Warp operating system. My method of learning to use it was through experience. I simply explored by clicking different buttons and reading help files, etc., and it seemed to come naturally to me. One of the famous mishaps that dealt with this computer was when I accidentally put a BIOS password on it and forgot the freaking password. Ha! Hilarious. The hard drives that we put in it have run down a couple of times, but other than that, the hardware has worked perfectly for 11 years. One agonizing thing that led me to explore more of this system was my accidental installation of the ENTIRE other OS, OS/2 Warp LOL. There was a button labeled with OS/2 Warp in one of the panels and I clicked it. I inserted the CD ROM as it prompted me, and it proceeded to overwrite windows with OS/2 Warp. I was pretty wrecked because I didn't know how to play any of my games or use any of the typical software I used on it. It took me a while to learn how to revert back to Windows. I remember being extremely happy one evening when I finally figured out how.This computer was also the first computer on which I ventured onto the Internet, under a child's AOL account. (I subsequently manipulated my dad's password out of him, so I could explore the entire net as I wished .) Voila, chatrooms, etc. One funny thing about this was that the computer didn't even come with a modem back in the nineties, so my uncle, who was versed in computers, bought me a winmodem for it. This was also the same computer I first tried Linux on, that is, Red Hat Linux 7. I've had 4 computers since then.

Well, I just got to the community, and I might be interested in reading some of the old topics. What about the topics in the tutorials section, etc.? These are still useful. There's good information in those posts. If the forum has the space it needs on the hard drive, why go and delete stuff? I think some of these older topics provide a solid base from which we can work. Oh, and I certainly don't want to lose any credits. I'll admit that I was overwhelmed at first with the amount of niched forums, but I think this is useful now as it keeps everything organized, and you know which section to go to in order to find what you need. If there are less sub-areas, you'll have to wade through larger subforums, and it might take longer to find what you need, unless you're an expert at using the forum search engine.

I wonder what honey is good for? It's a deep golden color. Does that mean that it's good for everything? I know that honey is an antimicrobial/antibiotic. It's actually quite good at killing germs that some drugs can't handle. (See: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). As far as nuts, they are quite healthy. You might want to check out Dr. Mercola's web site for more information on them. Not only are they high in protein, but fat as well! And contrary to popular opinion, fat isn't necessarily a bad thing in moderation (and all things should be moderated, right?) I personally prefer cashews, almonds, and macadamias due to taste. The only problem with nuts is that they have enzyme inhibitors, which make them hard to digest. They are like seeds, meant to produce offspring and new plants. So they have to have a defense against birds and people eating them and no new plants being produced . I've heard that you should soak and dry them to cure this problem. Overnight soaking, and somehow getting the water out of them afterward, which I haven't discovered how to do yet.

Actually, Adobe Acrobat is not free. Adobe Acrobat Reader is free. There are two different programs . As far as Adobe Photoshop goes, I've always thought that they should lower the price of their software, but maybe not. Heck, their program is able to do amazing things. I wonder if GIMP can compare?

Some people believe that the brain has untapped potential: I believe this is possible. It has been said (search Google) that it is a myth that people only use 5-7% of their brains. I think this might be true, but I'm not absolutely sure. It might be good for you to examine holograph theory in relation to the mind and the universe if you want to know more. The basic idea of holograms is that in one, you can store a massive amount of information: so I do believe that the brain is able to store a lot more information than we'd normally think, if it really is a store of information. Another idea of mental ability, which I ascribe to, is that the brain acts more as a router than a hard drive and CPU, and that the actual components are on a non-physical level of reality. Astral plane, energetic plane, other planes, vibrations, and levels of existences are basically what I'm talking about. I posit that the brain just acts as a compositor of this information. My reasoning on this theory? It's based in meditation. If you look in certain metaphysics groups, and discover what they see through meditation, I think you'd be quite astounded. People are supposedly able to interact with a deeper part of their beings -- they feel that it's true. This is what one might call the 'soul' or 'spirit' of the human. Remote viewing, telepathy, empathy, and all sorts of psychic/psionic faculties can possibly be described by saying that the brain isn't the only utility we have in the mental/cognitive realm. All of these theories wouldn't be so popular if there was at least some truth underlying the myth, amirite? Even if it might not be what you expect it to be. So it's not just the brain, but also whether or not we have other parts and components on currently unseeable levels that drive our potential up. If you want more information on how to do these metaphysical activites, I'd suggest you check out a website, http://vsociety.net/, and search for Dynamic Psi. Of course, one might believe that this is all hogwash. Even so, you still have holograph theory . And the idea that the brain uses quantum tunneling, which might explain its speed. So you have an increased hard drive space through holograms in the brain, and increased CPU speed through quantum tunneling. If you read the book The Holographic Universe, you'll discover that holograms don't even have to be placed in normal physical spatial terms of X, Y, and Z. We can store memories anywhere we like.

I'm currently a Christian. I believe the classical interpretation of it according to evangelicals: Jesus Christ crucified, raised again, bodily, for the remission of sins. Aside from this, my interpretations of the Bible are quite open compared to most Christians. My advice to you is that if you wanted to ever study Christianity in-depth, is that you should take a look at some of the older documents relating to Christianity, that is, what the church fathers and so forth have written. This should take some of the modern slant out of what modern Christians posit about the Bible. It also helps to check what it says in the original language, because translators don't do good jobs sometimes . As far as the proof of the existence of God and Jesus Christ, I believe based on faith, and just because I see order in the universe. I used to rely a lot on logical argument and "evidence for Christianity," but I found this could often be refuted in endless loops, back and forth. Not very reliable in my eyes. As far as a mystical interpretation to the Bible, I'm also open to sort of "hidden" meanings that underly the scriptures, especially within the Old Testament and Torah -- which was supposedly given to Moses through something like automatic writing, if you believe in the existence of Bible Codes (also known as Equidistant Letter Theory). The religion itself to me is far deeper than what the preachers on television talk about, or what your average Christian knows and follows. As with everything: know it for yourself, not through anyone else.

I was recently watching a video on Google that dealt with that subject, I believe. It talked about a model of the universe that related to some type of plasma cosmology. They posited such things as instantaneous energy transfer from one point of the universe to another (which might be nothing new), and they related it to mythological stories of old societies, and put forth the idea that the night sky was different thousands of years ago, and that's how we got such symbols as the cross and ouroboros, etc. Also in the same video was the concept that the sun was black/hollow on the inside, and the reason it hadn't already died out or swelled to such a great extent was that it was "portaling" so to speak, energy from other parts of the universe. Does this sound like what you read?

How do we form our opinions of the way reality truly is? The first layer of reality, the foundation of it, begins with unconnected dots floating on a black background, a void in space. When we, as human beings, look upon this star scape, we immediately engage our minds and attempt to use reason, intuition, emotion, et al., in order to connect these dots and integrate them into a whole, a world view, or what I would like to call, a "reality tunnel." Reality is not necessarily the connections we make between these dots, for there are an infinite number of connections that we could possibly create, but the dots themselves. And yet, in our everyday lives, all of us (me, you, everyone, without exception), are subjected to seeing our connections, rather than the raw information that makes up reality. Why? Because this is easier for us to deal with. Everyone speaks of labels. Especially when person A accuses person B of mislabeling them or pigeonholing them into some group in which they do not belong. But, I believe that it's pretty much proven fact that most of us prefer to see simplified abstractions that contain a caricature or an ideal way of looking at things, based on our reality tunnel. Anything we learn when growing up, including religious experience, time spent in public schools, unconscious learning, how people react to us, and even our direct physical environment, influences us to a great degree. For instance, and to analogize how creative our minds are when weaving together the dots of reality, I submit the idea of 'sensory deprivation.' When a mind, brain, is deprived of all stimulus, sensory input, as per sensory deprivation tanks, or any other method, we know by experimentation and experience that the mind will begin to create its own reality, a hallucination, in order to survive. We often think of the mind as having an upper limit of too much stimulus input, but it also has a lower limit, which wen passed, the mind will begin to generate its own content. In some people, the mechanisms of the mind are a bit faulty, and we see in people such as schizophrenics wild hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, all because they're not able to shut out sensory input as much as a normal human being is (there's research that has recently been done on this, and I'll find a link and post it if anyone is interested in further information on the topic.) The point to all of this is, and I quote: From an excellent, if crudely presented book, Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson, we see the rule of thumb that people, whatever ideology they come from, will inevitably find some way of proving to themselves that what they believe is true. And yet we know that logic is limited to personal experience: if we don't have enough data, we can't make the right conclusions. Wrong dots, always wrong connections. And by this, we are locked into our old ways of thinking, which promotes a stagnation of imagination and creativity, and ultimately slows the human race down in its evolution. My appeal to all people, members of this forum included, is to look closely at what you believe and try to break it into pieces and see if it actually works. Learn something new, and approach reality from a new perspective. By this, we'll become truly un-robotized people that just walk around in a daze of a LaLa land reality that doesn't exist, and ascend upward into true greatness.

I don't attend an actual university, but a technical community college in my locality. On one hand, it's much cheaper than going to a university, I have a closer interaction with the faculty, and I don't have to walk far to class. Also, I can drive there and back every day. On the down side, I have less of a choice of peers for friends, and I don't get to stay as far away from my parents :/. Oh well, you must give and take as things go, you know? I didn't attend in the spring semester of 2008, and I dropped 3 of my classes, all but Psychology, in the fall semester of 2007, due to some personal issues (read: lack of maturity, depression). I hope to be going back though, full time, this fall. I checked out the school website and the government's FAFSA homepage to make sure I was within the deadlines -- I was worrying a lot about those, heh. As it turns out, the federal deadline for the FAFSA in 08-09 school year is June 30, 2009. And my school's registration is in August, so I shouldn't have worried . My major is Computer Engineering. I don't necessarily enjoy working with the circuits and actual hardware components as much as I enjoy programming them, though. I'm interested in Operating Systems programming, so maybe I'll find something to do in that area. Go GNU/Linux!!! (And C.)

Hi there everyone. As far as this forum goes, my nick happens to be Vardigon -- which is what I guess everyone'll call me by. I'm a nineteen-year-old guy who lives in the Southeastern US. My interests focus on the areas of human potential, metaphysics, and technology. And we all know what wide fields these tend to be O.o. Any attempts at my focusing on one subject seem to have failed so far, so perhaps I'll find a way to simply continue doing what I'm doing and just reconcile all the different subjects together into an overall model. I enjoy reading -- a lot -- and the purpose of the web site which I plan to have in the future through Xisto has to do with literature -- at least to begin with. I recently decided that instead of passively reading, I might try my hand at writing a story based in a completely original (though nothing develops in a void) world .Nice to meet you all, and I hope to chat sometime.

All of my dreams except one have been in full colour -- though sometimes a bit bistorted to create for the proper emotional atmosphere of the dream. In the one case where I had a dream that was black and white, it was during a period of sleep paralysis, which is something that happens to people occasionally upon waking. When it occurs, the person is absolutely paralyzed, basically, without even the ability to open their eyelids. It scared the poo out of me, ha! Not only that, but during the dream I had with that experience, I had a strange sense of forboding evil that pervaded my mind. I was glad when I finally felt warmth shoot through my body and I snapped out of it.

I'm currently reading two books. I've just about finished one of them. The first is The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix. It's a composite of his three books Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen. It's not the absolute best fantasy series that I've read in my life, with such authors as David Eddings and Terry Brooks being better, I think, but it's certainly entertaining. I really like the unique ideas that he's had for his system of magic: necromancer bells, two (perhaps three) different forms of magic, one of them made by a pact in the beginning of time. The other is a brand of literary fiction, horror, science fiction, weird fiction: the collected Tales of HP Lovecraft, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Haha! Now there's an excellent author. I've read two of his so far: The Outsider, and The Music of Erich Zann. Both of these had situations where reality started out all too real, and then by the end was a cacophony in outer space, which is all too like him. That's how gothic stories go in general: they have a mostly real setting, but then an element of the supernatural that tweaks your senses for a moment before overtaking you completely, sending you off into a nebulous realm where only the author's ideas reign in either splendor or chaos. The introduction of the latter is quite a read, and she really provides some insight into the inner workings of Lovecraft's mind, and how he viewed the world. Quite good stuff.

My favorite book of all time would have to be within the fantasy genre . Quite a popular one, and an abused one. Straken by Terry Brooks. Best. Thing. Ever. Not only is he able to demonstrate in the book that a character's physical quest is a metaphysical quest for self, but he also paints an idealistic environment where the colors seem more vibrant, and the landscapes more stunning. And he's able to do it without a load of verbiage, which is what some authors try to do. My favorite book by my favorite author . I just love the way his realities seem so surreal. He has a way of capturing you and bringing you into the story in such a way that you never want to leave. I remember that when reading the last book, Straken, I stayed up until 5 AM just so that I could finish the entire story in one block. Simply elegant. Everyone should read it.

I've had one interesting dream where I had semi-control: though it was only over myself, and not my environment. The dream occurred in my own home, though at night, and the lighting was kind of odd (As dreams sometimes are. Movies don't exaggerate on this point.) My sight was a bit fuzzy, etc. And I recall standing in the half-bathroom of our place and thinking, "I'm dreaming. I want to pinch myself so I can wake up." And I remember being in the dream and pinching myself several times, but no matter the effort, I still couldn't wake up from inside the dream. Talk about a wild fluke , as I'd never heard of lucid dreaming before in my life. So yes, if you're "lucid" or aware while in a dream state, you can control what happens in your dreams, though only to a certain extent, depending on your skill with such states.

I personally give some credence to the ideas of astrology, but I believe it is more general than most people think. Instead of being a system of knowing when you're going to find true love, what type of job you're going to have, where/how you're going to get money, etc. etc., it's more a factor of one's personality. If you look at a site like astrofaces.com, you can compare the features of people with certain astrological correspondences and see that there is a similarity in their personalities, and the signs match up. So is there something to it? I believe so.As far as science linking astrology and personality, I think it's possible, though I haven't studied it myself. The idea of all of these signs, that are related to positions of heavenly bodies, could have a magnetic effect on the brain (however slight) during the prenatal period. And the sign you're given when you actually pop out of mom (haha), is basically the end result of said influence. So you could see how there might be a physical idea behind astrology, as well.Also note that there are different systems of astrology in the world: you have the tropical, sidereal, referred to respectively as Western and Vedic. Both of these have their merits and you can see some different qualities of a personality by looking at each and comparing similarities and dissimilarities. I'm not sure which I trust more, though. Under the Western system, my sun turns out to be Gemini, my moon Cancer, and my ascendant Sagittarius. Under the Vedic system, my moon sign switches to Gemini. Although, I've looked at the characteristics of the cancer moon sign, and seen some people that no doubt have its influence in their personalities, and I would say that I share some of their characteristics.