Mordent

Love it, even if it means I have to get used to working out where to find things again. :rolleyes:Keep it up, Xisto!

Possible in theory, and certainly not a bad little idea, but I reckon we'd need to refine the efficiency of solar cells. That, or make them cheap enough to make worthwhile. Perhaps if you expand on the idea slightly, such as using the solar cells more effectively by having a means of using them to power only what they need to power? As an example, let's say it's ridiculously sunny, but not all that warm. Do you really want air conditioning blasting away?Being at uni I see a lot of other different branches of engineering around, and interestingly systems engineers seem to be playing a pretty important role these days. Basically they're the ones who pull people together, more of a managerial role than anything, and one of the titbits of information I've gleaned from being around them is that one of the key factors in designing a new product is making sure that it's worthwhile monetarily. These solar-powered air conditioning units could only be used in areas with a lot of sun (which I suppose doesn't really matter, as that's where you'll want them, right? ), but why not simply install a regular air-con unit that "ticks over"? You could potentially combine the idea, by having the car battery (which is what will be powering the air conditioning) charge up slowly when in sunlight. In the short term this may seem like a poor idea, as the amount of energy that you'd generate would be minimal, but as the technology is refined we can get ever increasing amounts of energy out of that big, burning ball of gas in the sky.Personally, I think using alternative fuels or energy sources for mundane applications such as this is, in the short term, an expensive bit of research. We simply haven't got the technology to make it worthwhile yet, so more money has to be poured in to working out how to miniaturise things, or make them more efficient etc. Once we cross over a certain point, though, we'll be able to hopefully sustain things such as this indefinitely, meaning our cars will always be nice and cool in summer without us having to worry about it.

Just so anyone who's interested knows, although I haven't had a chance to try this on my home machine yet (currently using a public PC), apparently the issue has been resolved. From fedoraforum.org: Linky to topic From the desk of Paul Frields. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ I expect to be able to give it a try in the next hour or two, so I'll let you know whether it solves the problems or not. Here's to hoping it does! EDIT: Works like a charm.

I'd have to say I've never tried running virtual machines, and never intend to. I'll admit that I use Windows because I'm familiar with it, but the other main reason is, naturally, the fact that I've yet to find a means of playing computer games pretty flawlessly on Linux. As said games are mainly pretty graphics intensive, I'll stick with using Windows with them for now, although I'm loathe to have to "upgrade" to Vista to get the "most" of my fairly nice machine. Note that I put a couple words in quotation marks, as I don't really see the move as a positive step, at least for now. In other news, after browsing various Fedora forums and such I've worked out that I can still use yum to install bits and pieces.

First of all, good to see that your domain name's been sorted in my enforced absence (computer issues, woohoo...). Any update on the slip up with the domain being given to the wrong person? :)Nice idea in using the dashed name as the actual one, and redirecting those who use the non-dashed domain name. It does mean that you needed two domain names, but ah well. Given that you've done the work for it already, both names are yours for a year, so you'd might as well enjoy them.

Oh, agreed that the issue isn't all that hard to resolve, but I'm not holding my breath until that update package comes through. I'll admit that the main problem with this particular "update" is that someone popped it on to the update stream before it should have been, but it's amazing what a few clicks can do to a whole community of people worldwide when a fair few bits of their OS suddenly stop working as they should. From what I can gather, Fedora updates on a Sunday, but as I'm unable to do any update checks (due to the DBus bug) I'm not sure whether I'll be able to "update" around it this Sunday coming. What if Fedora is unable to update? I'm not saying that everything won't be alright, but I'm curious as to what us Linux-newbies are supposed to do should something like that end up happening. Still, come Christmas I'll have access to my Windows XP discs again. I certainly prefer the idea of Linux when it comes to the ideas of an OS being open-source, but I get the impression that it's better to have both an OS that you agree with and one that you're comfortable with on the same system. It sounds like I'll be having a bit more fun trying to partition my hard drive and get the dual boot idea going again. Still, this time I'll make sure I have everything backed up before I start tinkering... Come on Sunday, where are you?

For those who have been wondering about my slight absence from the forum, I've had, to be blunt, a catastrophic meltdown of all things vaguely useful on my PC at the end of the last week. Everything went down the drain, leaving me with no choice other than completely starting from scratch with a new OS installation. Being at university means my Windows XP discs were back home, so installing Windows is, for now, out of the question. Instead I decided to give this here Linux-malarky a go and, using someone else's computer, got hold of Fedora 10. Installing it was fine (just as an aside, I have the 64 bit version), and didn't take all that long. Over the weekend, however, Fedora released an "update" which is a nasty little piece of work. For almost all extents and purposes, it's a self-defeating thing that makes further updating tricky (Linky). Now, is it just me, or is this the sort of thing that could be a pretty hefty blow to an OS that is used by so many people worldwide? As of now there are a few temporary workarounds suggested by people on Fedora's forums regarding this issue, but being nigh on forced to use Linux I'm less than happy with tampering with any integral files which could cause some pretty nasty crashes. The way I see it, I'm leaving the issue until those who deal with the "official" updates get around to sorting out the mess, as fun as not having the "easy" way of installing software is. Just so you know, this isn't a rant at Fedora as such, as overall I'm impressed with the simplicity of it so far, but it certainly is a mite vexing that you need a pretty in-depth understanding of the system to perform any corrective tweaks as suggested by the forum's community. Has anyone else had any issues with Fedora? Anyone else actually use it? Any advice for a Fedora newbie like myself on what to do if something like this happens? Any and all feedback is appreciated!

I wasn't aware of the ads that are found when people get here from a search engine, but that's always good to know... Anyway, I can vouch for the fact that word of mouth works. Over my time here I've directed three people to using the paid hosting (at Xisto - Web Hosting, they haven't got the time to post on the forums), merely because I've never had a bad experience with Xisto as a whole. Sure, there have been a few teething problems here and there in switching to new ways of doing things and so on, but overall they've been dealt with better and quicker than expected, and for a company that can do that, keep improving what it offers, and still provide a means of nigh-on flawless free hosting? I count that as a pretty first-rate service, and one that I'm more than happy to tell people about any day of the week. While I'll confess to never having directly paid Xisto a cent, by keeping me happy with their hosting plans for free (and it likely cost them next to nothing, anyway) they've indirectly made three customers who pay regularly for their hosting. To be honest, I'm reaching the stage where even I'm considering paying a chunk to boot my earnings up to get my domain and plan, and supplementing it every so often, too. Give it a few more weeks and we'll see if I decide to take the plunge and actually pay for my hosting or not.

No worries, I've no problem pondering up things for people. I know next to nothing about the game itself, so how likely is it that a new version is going to a come out sometime in the near future? Before you get bored of running the forum, I mean. Options as I see it are fewer and farther between, but by no means few and far between, if you want it without the specific version...ignoring the idea of making the name good on search engines and whatnot (as I have no idea how to do that...) some suggestions for you are below (with WHOIS links for each for you to check if they're still available, and capitalisation so you can see what I'm getting at): Short(-ish) MSFSZone.com (MicroSoft Flight Simulator Zone, it is a Microsoft program, right?) FS-Talk.com (TAKEN, but the first of my attempts with a hyphen...tried hyphenated ones yet?) FS-Zone.com (TAKEN as well, but I'm not giving up yet!) FS-Forum.com (TAKEN too...drat!) FS-Forums.com (TAKEN yet again...maybe something a little more obscure, but still pretty short?) FS-TalkZone.com (Available, hurray! Alright, time for a couple more before moving on...) TalkFS.com (Switches the order of the words around, but ah well. Maybe you like it more?) ZoneFS.com (Still free, as well...although I don't particularly personally like it) Talk-FS.com (Free, so it's down to personal preference, I suppose...) Descriptive Longer and more of a pain to type, but they're less generic and are pretty clear as to what they are from the URL alone. FlightSimulatorZone.com (I'm actually surprised this one's still available. Not a bad little domain name right there...) FlightSimulatorForums.com (TAKEN, but an idea, perhaps?) FlightSimulatorForum.com (TAKEN too...) FlightSimulatorTalk.com (Another pretty reasonable find...) Non Dot-Com TLDs Basically I went through a few TLDs that were already taken in the list above and checked out .net and .org versions of each. Clearly .com is preferred, but as it's sometimes worth getting a nice sounding TLD in favour of the .com status, there's some options here for you. Of the two, I think .net would probably be better sounding, but the choice is yours. FS-Talk.net (Not bad, by any means...) FS-Talk.org (For a forum, I think .net sounds better, but meh...) FlightSimulatorForum.net (Not bad?) Whew! That'll do me for now. There should be one or two you like there, or at least a few ideas to spark your own imagination. Personally I'd steer away from anything with "forum(s)" in the name, and have a subdomain used for the forum (which is where you can install any forum software you'll be using), like forums.zonefs.com. It gives you the chance to use the same TLD for any other little projects you have in mind, and even if you don't have anything else planned you can redirect straight from the TLD to the subdomain. Just a quick point: although I capitalised the first letter of every word in the suggested TLDs, domain names are case-insensitive (e.g. Xisto.com; Xisto.com; Xisto.com; Xisto.com; Xisto.com (and any other variation you care to come up with) all link to the same place). Hope this helps!

So you want the comments stored and viewable on the site itself? Basically someone typing something in and hitting "Submit", at which point it sallies off for you to read? If so, you'll need a level of server-side scripting, as it's nigh on impossible to do otherwise. I'd suggest PHP, simply because it's the only decent server-side language I know, and it's pretty good at the sort of thing you're after. Luckily for you, Xisto (where any hosting you end up getting from Xisto really ends up) is able to "run" PHP files, so you should be fine here once you've worked out the PHP code for what you want to do. While I could nigh-on write the script for you, it does little good if you're unable to do so yourself. A few pointers I'd recommend are checking out W3Schools, particularly their PHP tutorial, although a whole bunch of the stuff on their site is good to read. It's pretty much where I got all of my first PHP knowledge from, and even now I glance back at it or use their forums now and then. Hope this gets you off to a good start!

Hmmm, I'd never heard of Xisto - Domains, but I suppose the domains we register at Xisto have to be properly registered somewhere! Interesting to see that it's a partner of Xisto - Web Hosting, though. It seems Xisto - Web Hosting has got all of the bases covered these days. I take it Xisto - Domains is part of Xisto, as it's in the list of sites that are part of the Xisto network (same thing, right?) at the top right of the forum (click on the drop down arrow next to 'Xisto').

The site fsxforum.co.cc didn't work or link to your site when I tried yesterday. Clearly it's working fine now, so meh...anyway, thoughts on the TLDs I suggested? fsxzone.com is apparently taken (WHOIS), but not really used (no actual site on it). fsxtalk.com is still available, so it might not be a bad idea. fstalkforum.com is also still available, but looking at it like this makes it look like (f)stalk forum, which is a bit odd. These are just some TLD options out there, but I genuinely suggest that you try to keep it as simple as possible. A decent domain name costs just as much as a rubbish one if you're the first person to register it, so it's worth thinking about. Note that although the links are from whois.net and they allow domain registration, you're just as able to register elsewhere. I used the whois function to see if anyone had registered the domains yet.

After a quick flick through the various Logic Plans, it turns out the only one that comes with a free domain (for a year) is the Ideal Plan when you register it for a year ($126.00, or $222.00 for two years, but meh), so they're hardly cheap if you use that method. I'd suggest earning enough myCENTs (around $15 worth), then registering your domain for about $10 along with your hosting. Sure, it takes a while, but in the long run you get the domain for a year and you can upgrade the hosting whenever you want (within reason ), as you're only paying a few dollars worth of myCENTs every month. Failing that, you could try to earn up enough to pay for the hosting for a year, but that seems a little silly if you're not sure if you'll be using it for that long.

I'm curious...you have a site URL listed already that doesn't seem to actually work or link to anything...I'm guessing it's where you're going to list suggestions or something, or where you already have your site up? (I know you can get free .co.cc domains, so good on you so far!)Anyway, you're certainly best off with a .com TLD, and at $9.99 for a year's worth of domain registration it's certainly not a bad move, especially considering it's effectively free. :)I'm curious why you chose fstalkzone.com as an idea, as as far as I can tell both fsxtalk.com and fsxzone.com are both available (haven't bothered with a WHOIS, just checked in my browser). Interestingly, fszone.com is similar to the idea you had, and is a forum about Flight Similator X, so it might not be a bad idea to nab fsxzone.com and therefore semi-associate yourself with them (i.e. the occasional mistype might land you some more traffic).I'm not at all an expert when it comes to TLDs, but I gather that it wouldn't be any sort of trademark nicking (or whatever they call it these days...).Good luck with it, I remember when I got my first TLD. I was so proud...*sniff*...

I'm well in to the process of planning out a complete move of my domains to Xisto - Web Hosting. At the moment I have all of my domains over at NameCheap, but the fact that I have to pay about the same amount Xisto - Web Hosting is charging plus the fact that I can't post to earn that cash over there means it's high on my to-do list.The only quibble I have is that Xisto - Web Hosting doesn't allow registration/transfer of .co.uk domains, but I guess that's a location issue more than anything else. Ah well, it doesn't take much to find an equivalent .com to replace them with. :)Anyway, the only problem I have at the moment is getting enough myCENTs together to get both the domain transfer and the year's hosting for it (it's cheaper in the long run, and I don't see me going away from the hosting here for a good while). It's a bit of a hefty lump sum to have to pay upfront (all in all I'm looking to go for around $80-90 worth of stuff, so eeek), not to mention the fact that I'm taking a dent in the amount in my account every month to keep the hosting I have already going.Still, persistence will pay off in the long run, so given a bit of luck I should have my entire domain name portfolio (with the hosting for it) here at Xisto - Web Hosting by 2009. Whether I can put that many credits together between now and then we'll just have to see.

In principle, it sounds like a great idea. The only problem I'd have with it is, as rvalkass mentioned, the fact that it's more about paying for a license than paying for a file. For instance, if you head out and buy a CD today, you're really buying the right to listen to the music on it. That's why borrowing/lending/sharing of music is generally considered "illegal", and special licenses have to be bought in order to play the music publicly (at a nightclub, in a bar, on the radio etc.) Perhaps a smarter move would be the ability to purchase licenses that have no music that come with them. While I'm certainly against the idea of the big-brother society, perhaps there could be a central "database" of music (and other licensed files, such as films, eBooks and so on...) where it's possible to download copies of the music (in whatever format you wish, or perhaps depending on the level of the license you bought) that link to your personal license? Naturally this will be wide open for "pirate" copies of licenses and so on to be distributed etc., but I think the main issue with pirated media at the moment is the fact that it's nigh on impossible to track. Once a file's been downloaded, there's no further trace. This file can then be copied, uploaded elsewhere, downloaded by someone else, etc. etc. While the licensing idea is by no means perfect, I think it's important to remember that there will always be a small portion of the people who listen to music that insist on getting it for free. Of course, that's all illegal and such, but in my mind it could perhaps be expanded on to make it not worth the while of the spreaders of licensed material. Let's say that you want to listen to such-and-such an album. You download the album (for free, and legally from the central "database" I was talking about). The format of said file would be such that it requests a license every day if it's ran, or perhaps only allows a certain number of plays before stopping? If the file was redownloaded it would start the counter from scratch, so while you can listen to the music free of charge indefinitely, it becomes a major hassle to do so if you want a fair amount of it. Buying a license (maybe a personal one, so it links to you and requires registration etc.) allows you to "unlock" the file if your license is present on the system that's accessing the file. Doing so wouldn't alter the file format, merely permanently link it to your license. Naturally having more than one license on a system is possible (more than one user on a home PC, for instance)...either way, I think the way to combat pirated media is, ironically, to make the media easier to access for free, but more annoying to keep. And now I've gone off on a tangent from the original topic, so I'd better bring it back on track... Music has to have a format, else the players wouldn't know how to play the file. While I'm more than comfortable with the idea that you could download a file in different formats, the licenses associated with some of them make that impossible. Each file format is likely linked or licensed to a certain company etc., meaning that putting media in to those formats would probably be costly. What I think we really need is more open-source formats that are easily accessible. At the moment not many people know much about music format (.mp3, .wma, .wav, .ogg, the list is nigh on endless) and stick to what they know works. If you (like me) have been using .mp3 files most of your life then you're likely to want to have any new music you get in .mp3 format. That's just the way it works. Introducing a new, more universal and standardised format that's playable by everyone (in different levels of quality, sure, but essentially the same format...) would hopefully make people more comfortable with open-source content, which I'm strongly in favour of. Whew...this ramble went on much longer than I first thought!

Ah, pyramid schemes. Got to love the number of emails I get in my inbox about them, not to mention the fact that almost all of them immediately get caught by the spam filter. Poor folks. Anyway, reminds me of this witty little snippet from The Office: YouTube linky Got to love it, really.

Got to love DeviantArt...I don't suppose you'd mind posting your profile link/PMing me it? I like to have a look at people's work.

Oh, by no means did I say that it was a photo that had been manipulated in any way, I was just curious. I'm a hopeless artist, being a pretty much completely logically minded person. The best work I've come up with digitally has been entirely vector-based stuff using Inkscape. The thing I really wanted to know was what you based your opinion of your painting looking like a flower was off of. I assume you started with the idea of "a flower" in your mind, perhaps a rough kind of flower or colours or somesuch, then - as you said - went at it with different approaches, layers, effects etc. until you got a result that you were happy with. Either way, I certainly like the effect. After rummaging through your galleries (I assume they're the ones accessible in your signature link?) I'm a teensy bit confused, so perhaps you could clarify something for me: "My Digital and Watercolor Art": I can't say I can see anywhere which ones are digital and which ones are watercolour (I'm guessing the "watercolour" ones are scanned in ones based on actual physical paintings you have done?), or am I getting the wrong end of the paintbrush on this one? Either way, keep up the good work, some of that stuff's pretty awesome and I admire the fact that you allow people to download it.

By no means am I suggesting that English is the most widely spoken language, but you'd have to admit that in terms of how prevalent it is in the modern world (the internet being a great example of how English is having an impact) it's certainly a forerunner. As an example, while variants/derivatives of Chinese are, I'm sure, spoken by a hefty percentage of the world's population, you'd be hard pushed to prove that it is the most commonly spoken language by other frames of reference. Using my previous example of the internet, while I'm aware that there are a whole host of Chinese internet sites out there I doubt they're as "international" (i.e. used by a wide range of nationalities and cultures) as English sites are. I haven't got any proof to back that up, but it's a pretty big hunch I have. Again, though, we could argue about which language is the most common and therefore the "best" world language out there for years, my main argument, and the way this thread seems to be going, is in working out which language would make the best "international" language. Clearly there are many languages which stake a claim to being the best candidate, but does it really matter? Given that the language would be introduced over time, after being approved by each nation that's interested, of course, why not construct the language from scratch? It would be just as difficult to learn for all nationalities (in theory), and would not be biased towards one particular nation in that they already know the language itself. As for the remote regions that basically have little/no contact with the rest of the world, does it matter? Whatever language is used as the international language, they wouldn't know any better any way.

I'll admit that the new plans are pretty hefty. Nice to see we have both scaling and customisation, though. The only real thing I miss in the Logic Plan that I feel obliged to pay more for is the addon domains and MySQL databases. Nice to see that Xisto is catering to it's customers' desires, though. I don't think you'll find many people complaining about it, especially as it's still essentially free hosting. :rolleyes:A major thumbs up to Xisto for this move, even if it is a little out of my price range. I guess I'll just have to start posting more.

I'm intrigued...what counts as a "Digital Painting"? I realise it's stored on computer, so therefore is stored digitally, but did you make it on the computer itself? Is it a digital manipulation of a photograph that was scanned in/taken on a digital camera? I'm just curious, as it's pretty good and wondered what you're basing it off of.Nice work, by the way, I thought "flower" before reading your description, which I suppose is a good thing.

Hmmm...sounds about right, but I'm curious as to the billing process. With Xisto you effectively build up credit which is deducted whenever you buy any of their products or have to renew one. At what time in this process would you be billed for the domain, and if you order a domain transfer along with a hosting plan are they both approved at the same time? For instance, say I have a domain currently registered with a registrar other than Xisto. I want to do two things: 1) transfer the domain to Xisto and 2) have it hosted here, under a new hosting plan. Clearly I need a domain name to have hosting at Xisto, but I'd imagine that I'd be billed for the transfer ($9.99 at the last check) and the hosting simultaneously and before the domain transfer took place. I say that, as I can't imagine Xisto waiting for it's regular customers to arrange the domain transfer, and then charge them for it (am I right?). My question is only really relevant because I'm curious as to whether I would be able to access the hosting plan during the time between ordering the domain transfer with Xisto and its completion, and when I'd be billed for the whole lot. Similarly, would the days between the transfer starting and it being finally "sorted" count towards the hosting time? Say I do all of this on the 1st of December (registering a domain for a year and starting up a hosting plan for a year). Let's assume it gets sorted by the 4th of December (i.e. domain transferred, everything approved etc.). Would I next be billed on the 1st of December 2009 (a year later), 4th of December 2009 (a year after everything was sorted), or some other date? If it's a new domain would the same "time-frame" apply? When would the domain be registered until? I figure I'd might as well ask all of my questions about billing and domain transfers in one place, so I might as well carry on and ask one more that's been niggling at me: Would it be possible to actually have the date when your account will be deducted the amount for whatever hosting plan/domain you have shown as well as the date that it's due by? I could still be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's 2 weeks between the two (give or take a day?), but it'd be useful to know for future reference, as I've found myself wondering about it a couple of times. Sorry for all of the questions, but I guess it'll be useful for anyone else who's interested to have a lot of answers in one place. Thanks in advance!

I'd have to say that the actual design itself looks pretty good. Ignoring the fact that I know nothing about mortgages (although plenty about loans...grrr...) the site has a consistent layout that has a professional edge, although it's just "cluttered" enough (i.e. the fairly large number of adverts and boxes generally scattered about the place) to put me off. I'm not sure exactly what it is that's wrong with it as such, but maybe the fact that the width of the columns, as well as their order, seems to change between pages? I appreciate that each page has different content to show, but perhaps keeping the thinner column to the right, for instance, might make it a little more appealing?Aside from that, I've noticed that some of the pages are HTML Transitional and others are XHTML Transitional. Nothing wrong with that as such (it's hardly going to break your site), but having some sort of consistency in the document types will likely help later on when you're updating certain parts of it. Just a suggestion...Hope this helps!

Aside from the fact that I'm planning on transferring a domain of mine to Xisto at some point, I'm curious as to how the actual process works. $9.99/year for a new domain or a transferred domain implies to me that regardless of which I do, I get a year from scratch with the domain I choose. What's the actual process in transferring a domain, and what sort of information would Xisto need? Currently I'm lacking the earnings to do it, and I haven't got my hosting plan for it sorted yet, but assuming that I intend to get around to it at some point soonish (likely in the next month or so) is there anything I need to do to prepare for it? As my domain's currently with NameCheap (who I have no problems with, by the way, I just quite like the idea of having all my domains and hosting in one place and not actually having to "pay" for it as such), yet hosted as an addon domain to my current hosting plan, what's the order of events that I'd have to go through to get a new hosting plan with this domain (both for a year, naturally)?