k_nitin_r

There are lots of people out there with questionable ethics, but I assumed that the kind of thing is more common in the third world. In India, a large portion of the population is poor and the folks here go as far as trying to claim a benefit twice by raising duplicate claims. There are information systems in place that keep such activity in check, but that does not keep people from trying. There is an agency that was appointed by the state for collecting payment on electricity bills and they get nothing from people who pay on time. When somebody pays a couple of days before the last day through another state appointed agency, they go around claiming that the bill has not been paid. In the rare case that one does not have a copy of the paid receipt, the folks take away electrical wiring, fuses, light bulbs, and whatever they can get their hands on to salvage in the name of bill collection. They do not really put the proceeds of the sale into the bill payment but instead fill their own pockets and claim that they had no part in the missing electrical equipment.Beyond the bill collection, there are individuals who are appointed by the state to replace burnt electrical meters and these folk demand a higher amount than what is due for the electrical meter. They pocket the different and never provide receipts so they manage to get away with it.If you spend about a month in India, you will have a diary filled with such instances of crossing paths with folks with questionable morals. The three-wheeled taxi (autorickshaw) drivers are no less in their less-than-ideal behavior. They have their meters tampered with so the meter displays a higher fare than what is actually due. The government decided to implement electronic meters and has the meter itself sealed to prevent the drivers from messing with the mechanical contraption by replacing it with an electrical contraption, but that does not stop them from resorting to other practices for filling their pockets. If there is any way for these folks to dupe customers out of cash, they will resort to it.I am not sure of how income tax is reported in India but typically people working for firms have the firms make the income tax payments for them. It takes the burden off the individual and is perhaps how it should be in the rest of the world where income is taxed. Ideally, things should be the way that they are in the United Arab Emirates - they have absolutely no income taxes and most people find it hard to believe their ears when I first tell them about it, so I have to tell them again, "There are absolutely no income taxes in the United Arab Emirates". It is what makes Dubai such an attractive place for most, or at least that is what attracted them to the place in the past. Then, the economic recession struck and things took a downward spiral. It still is a good place to live but harder to find employment if you have nothing out of the ordinary to offer to the firms, which seems fair.

Perhaps the reason why they call it the MacBook Air is now apparent to you - it blows Air around with a fan most of the time :-)What you can do to make sure that you have some quiet time to spend watching a movie is to move to a cooler environment. Have the air conditioning running at its max and if you can adjust the air vents of your air conditioning, have it facing the computer (or place the computer to some place where there is a direct flow of air from the vents of the air conditioning).I doubt the fan would run faster when you have the computer raised. I imagine what must be happening is that when the laptop is close to a surface, such as a desk, the laptop sits so low that the fan noise is insulated from you and when you raise the laptop, the fan noise becomes louder because you lose that noise insulation.I have a Lenovo Thinkpad and the problem with these laptops is that the fan runs just barely. It doesn't cool the computer enough and so when I use it in hot environment, it has a thermal shutdown event, which basically means that it is overheating and it powers itself down to prevent any damage. A thermal shutdown occurs at a very high temperature - over ninety degrees centigrade, which is under two hundred degrees on the fahrenheit scale.

Some kids do not learn to speak as early as other kids, but if you are very concerned, you should take your kid to a speech therapist just so you can keep your peace of mind from having an expert opinion on the subject. You should continue speaking to your kid and at some point, he will learn to ask for the things that he wants or to call out to you. The differences in development rates between children can be observed in just about any part of the world so just because your kid has not spoken to you yet should not make you think something is out of the ordinary.

To the average person, a proxy is of no use unless they want to get around some kind of censorship. For example, when a national level proxy has been implemented, the only purpose that a proxy serves for an average user is to get around the censorship. In some cases, proxies are used to get an additional layer of anonymity but most users do not go as far as to use a proxy server for anonymity unless they are engaging in something illegal. Within organizations, proxy servers are used to block content so employees can use a proxy to get around the corporate proxy server and access the content that they want to get to.Using proxy servers is a security risk because when you are using them, all of your data passes through their servers. They can do just about anything with your data, such as sell your personally identifying information, usage habits, credit information, email and social network passwords, or even your credit card numbers. They can also include advertising within regular web pages. Think of the Google.com search engine with an advertisement in place of the Google logo - proxy servers can do that to have you watch or click on an advertisement so that they can earn revenue while providing you with free services. Some proxy services charge you a subscription fee to provide you with access to their services but with proxy servers often being blocked, you would have no idea if you can still access their services after having used it for several months.

Using music to study helps in staying focused. I'm assuming you mean some quiet soothing music or perhaps some instrumental music. If you have music with words, you would be more focused on the lyrics of the song than on the study material so that's something that you do not want to listen to. However, a lot of people I know can listen to just about any kind of music and can study, so whatever I have stated may only apply to me. Ever mind is different, so your views may be further divergent.

Hi Ramron!It's good to have you joining us here at Xisto. We are a happening group that talks about all kinds of stuff, except work. Oh, wait, I guess somebody did talk about work too. So much for that thought.I'll bet you are here for the free web hosting. Although the web hosting here is free, you have to earn the hosting credits by posting to the forum. The longer your post, the more credits that you get through the forum. You can then use your accumulated credits to order a web hosting package from the Xisto - Support and Billing Site. You have to register on the Xisto - Support and Billing Site with the same username that you used to register on Xisto to get all of your posting credits to count. The script that calculates posting credits will also give you credit for posts that you made before you signed up at Xisto - Support and Billing, so even if you did not sign up yet, you have nothing to worry about.There are lots of friendly folks here at Xisto and the most active among the folk are Mr.Dee and SheepDog. Ritu is one of the newer members on the forum and she has caught up with the rest - see her post count! Opaque is the administrator and gets quite a bit of help from Velma, both of who you will see around on the forum a lot. There are some other moderators who have been with Xisto back in the day when the forum was called Trap 17. They do not come to the forum very often but when they do, they have something insightful to say citing something from the good old days (while the rest of us try to reflect on how it applies to the good new days).If you ever have any questions about anything on the forum, Velma is the one who you should approach, but pretty much all of us here on the forum are willing to help in any way that we can so feel free to post a new thread and you'll get some responses to it in a jiffy.

Your recipe for masala thanda or lassi seems to be far more exquisite than mine. I simply add one part of yoghurt blended with one part of water, then add some salt and pepper, along with some finely chopped green chillies after removing their seeds (create a slit along the side of the chilli and get all the seeds out with a knife), and coriander leaves. I typically use the Catch 11 chaat masala but I haven't used it with lassi yet.Lassi goes well with khichdi, which is a preparation made with steamed rice. Anything with yoghurt/curd is considered good for the summers - you can have lassi/thanda, or yoghurt/curd mixed with chipped rice (it may sound unusual, but it tastes rather nice when prepared with the right kind of spices).

The Cloud is a buzz work for something that has been around in the past as application hosting providers. This is different from software as a service providers because the providers are in control of your data and you can only get your information out of their systems if they design their systems for exporting of data or if they can provide you with support, usually for a fee. A hosted desktop is pretty much the same as a desktop in the cloud, but you still do need a physical desktop to be able to use the virtual hosted desktop. That's perhaps the one thing that keeps people from wanting to get a hosted desktop - they have to get one to use the other, but when they already have one then why would they need the other? I do use hosted desktops but only for computing resources to be available for long running applications or for software that is too expensive to license and run on my computer. Think of it as a library for software where I can perform my work and export the output, the data, the image, or the video that is produced as a result of my work on the hosted desktop and never have to pay for software that I intend to use about once a year for a couple of hours. If I am using an application that requires stable Internet connectivity and I am connected to the Internet through a mobile broadband Internet connection, I would use a hosted desktop solution.For people who do not have their own computers, they can get a hosted desktop that they can connect to from any Internet Cafe or from a borrowed computer and have all of their data stored on the hosted desktop for easy access. It beats having to carry around a flash drive and forgetting to take it with you when you leave. It's the same deal as carrying a compact disc or DVD disc with you except that the flash drive is much less fragile and more compact so it is easier to carry with you and stow away in your bag or in your car.In regard to the comparison between using a hosted desktop and renting a car, you have a lot to do to clean up a car and make sure everything works as it should and it looks spotlessly clean before the next customer walks in to pick up the car. However, for a hosted desktop, all you need to do is restore an older snapshot of a desktop if the user complains of a problem with a system, or perhaps even switch to an older backup. It takes much less time than it sounds if all is set up the way it should be. A physical desktop may need to have its hard disk drive swapped out if it has been rented and while the computer is out on rent, the previous hard disk drive can be restored to the state that it should be in for the next customer to rent out the computer system. I believe running a series of tests on a computer is easier than running a series of tests of a car because a majority of the computer test can be automated - perhaps all you need to do is make sure that the mouse, keyboard, and screen work and the rest can be automated. Cleaning of a car takes much longer than physically cleaning all of the fingerprints off a computer. In either case, offline or online, a desktop rental is much easier to manage than renting out pretty much everything else if you have a consultant to do the initial setup for you.

Hi!It's good to know that there's another Java programmer among us. There are very few people around here who work with Java, with most people choosing to go with C, C++, C# .NET, or PHP. I have worked with C, C++, C#, Visual Basic .NET, and PHP, but I find something strangely unique to Java in that it can run on almost any platform just as we are attempting to do with web technologies, HTML 5, and Javascript. Adobe has done it quite successfully with Flash, but with the decision by Apple to drop support for Adobe Flash, things have taken a turn for them and people are moving away from Adobe Flash and toward HTML 5 with Javascript, which is a more open standard because it is not controlled by any single firm, unlike the case with Adobe's Flash.Java has had a huge controvery around it. If you recall, the Apache Foundation had developed the Harmony project and wanted to have a license to the technology compatibility kit, initially from Sun Microsystems and later, after the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by the Oracle Corporation, from Oracle. However, after it failed to get the license terms it needed for the Apache Harmony project to provide an unrestricted access to the users of the Apache Harmony project. The inavailability of the desired license terms for the technology compatibility kit led the Apache's resignation from the Java Community Process and created doubt in the minds of many about the openness of Java as a platform.HTML 5 and Javascript do not have a single organization controlling them therefore it is a logical choice for the future of platform independent applications.In either case, Java applications are not going away anytime soon so if you ever want to have a discussion over the various Java APIs and applications, feel free to start up a thread in the programming sub forum.

Today I had Kellogg’s “Special” corn flakes for breakfast. It isn’t the one with the picture of a chicken on the box, but the one with a red ‘K’ and a bowl of corn flakes and wheat. The box also mentions that it is ninety eight percent fat free. Let me take a step back and say that it isn’t really corn flakes but instead it is wheat flakes that looks exactly the same as corn flakes but is instead made of wheat. I don’t know how that makes it healthier, but apparently it is one way to reduce fat content. The next question that comes to mind is that when Kellogg’s claims that the box of wheat flakes is ninety eight percent fat free, the cereal contains primarily carbohydrates and fibre. When you eat more fibre, you get that full feeling without consuming too many calories. Carbohydrates are what give you energy for your body to use in the short term but what you need to realize is that when you consume more carbohydrates that your body is able to use up, your body converts the carbohydrates into fat so even if you are not eating food that is rich in fat, your body converts the carbohydrates into fat. The idea with most diet plans is to make fibre comprise a large portion of your food intake so you do not go hungry and you consume less fat and carbohydrate in the process. It means that the sugar-frosted Kellogg’s cornflakes are a definite no-no when on a dieting plan. A challenge with most diets is to ensure that you are also getting the right amount of protein because if you do not consume enough protein, you would not have much muscle build-up. When you are on a diet, you have a good chance of avoiding fat – that is something you want to do because fat takes longer to burn down that carbohydrate. Think of the case where you light a single thin strand of thread and when you light a bunch of threads spun together. The single thin strand of thread burns with the flame reaching almost instantly at the other end of it whereas when you use a bunch of threads, the flame takes more time to get from one end to the other, in a fashion almost similar to that of a match stick. Taking this analogy and applying this to better our understanding of what differentiates carbohydrates from fats, think of carbohydrates as a single strand of thread and fats as a whole bunch of threads put together. You can also think of fat as a more concentrated form of energy so if you were to consume the same amount of fat in weight as a certain amount of carbohydrate, you would have to work harder to get through all of the calories that you take in the form of fat.When I finished a bowl of Kellogg’s special wheat flakes (I have not heard of anyone refer to a cereal as wheat flakes, but if there are corn flakes and there are bran flakes, there certainly must be a need for the term wheat flakes, unless bran flakes refers to the wheat flakes that I had for breakfast), I did have a feeling of full-ness but at the same time I did notice that I had something that was rather sweet, so I presume the box of Kellogg’s special cereal contained some sugar too. Sugar isn’t fat, but it is a whole lot of carbohydrate that the body can turn into fat and so it is going to take me a whole lot of work to ensure that I do not put on a few extra pounds around the sides.

I totally agree with what you are saying in your post, but I would like to add another viewpoint to this thread for considering an alternate viewpoint. If you look at the first bolt of lightning before the tree-like effect, you will see a flash of lightning that has been slowed down to about one-fourth of its playback speed. Now, the spread of lightning along the tree-like path looks like it may have been slowed down to one-sixteenth of its playback speed but just when that is occurring, you see another small lightning bolt close to the base (top) of where the tree-like lightning bolt originates, so you can actually tell that the tree-like spread of the lightning is slower than one would assume - too slow to be a regular bolt of lightning. Lightning does not normally travel so slowly before it reaches the ground therefore it seems like something that was made up, something that was not real. I'm not saying that it is a fake, but I am just taking an alternative viewpoint for the sake of understanding that what we see isn't a regular lightning bolt. Perhaps there was something interfering with the flow of electricity to the ground. Perhaps it was a camera defect, which caused the image sensor to pick up bits of earlier images. There are about three or four more alternate theories that I can come up with, but unless we see the phenomenon of particular interest in that it can have real world applications, I doubt we would see further research as to why the lightning bolt branched out into a tree at a very slow pace rather than simply striking the ground as a simple regular lightning bolt.

People have their information stolen on the Internet and that constitutes a loss of privacy too. Some people are careful enough to not put up anything publicly accessible on the Internet. However, they should be careful enough to protect their authentication credentials for any private information about themselves that is stored on the Internet too. For example, consider the case of a typical user with a GMail account containing messages from his or her bank containing a bank account number, and a password recovery email for online banking. A scammer can create a page that looks almost identical to the GMail login page and can collect the username and password of the unsuspecting user. To cover the tracks further, the scammer can even get the user's web browser to redirect to the actual GMail website after having collected the username and password, further making it difficult for the user to tell that his or her information has been stolen until it is too late. The user does find out much later after the bank account has missing funds and it is traced much much later after the incident has occurred and the bank refuses any responsibility over the incident because it was reported to the bank by the user long after the incident occurred.Banking information only affects a user financially (though there is the emotional effect that results from the financial loss), but when confidential emails and photographs reach somebody who decides to misuse the information, much more can be lost.People have to be careful with the way they handle personal information about themselves. When they access private information on the Internet, they have to make sure that the website they are entering their authentication credentials onto is actually the website that they think it is - a look at the URL in the address bar of the web browser will reveal if it really is the actual website. Using the HTTPS protocol for login rather than the HTTP protocol is another means of ensuring that the information being sent cannot be stolen easily. The authentication information is typically encrypted by most large websites such as GMail, Yahoo! Mail, eBay, Paypal, and other such websites. Some websites that do not use HTTPS encryption should be avoided when accessing information from a public or wireless network.Another means of ensuring that you are entering the information on a trusted website is to use a two-factor or out-of-band authentication. Yahoo! Mail enables you to create a privacy seal such that when you do attempt to log in, an image of your choosing appears to indicate that the web page you are accessing does actually come from Yahoo!, though there is no guarantee that the web page has not been altered in any way. It does provide some degree of protection. Often, banking websites provide you with a password as well as a device that changes a time-sensitive pass code to enter when you have to be authenticated. Other websites would probably send you an SMS message with a confirmation code to ensure that you are the one who has initiated a particular transaction. It provides an additional layer of security because a scammer trying to use your account has to know more than just your password to gain access to your account and misuse your information.Passwords and other means of accessing private information should be changed frequently or at regular intervals. Passwords should not be easily guessable, such as using one's own first name or date of birth. Passwords should ideally consist of alphabets, numbers, and even some symbols. Passwords should not be written down, but if they are, they should be stored in a safe place and not in proximity to the computer.Photographs posted on the Internet often remain for a long long time. Perhaps a presidential candidate a few decades in the future would have his or her photographs as a kid accessible on the Internet, along with photographs of his or her room. Something as simple as a picture taken in a messy room can be detrimental to one's career because it can convey the message that one is disorganized and erratic in his or her work behavior. Employers today often request employees for their social media passwords, which FaceBook has stated is a violation of its policies, but that does not stop employers from gaining access to information posted online by either getting employees' passwords or getting them to provide access to an application that gathers information from their accounts. The FaceBook API comes with an agreement that employers would be in violation of if they store the information collected from employees' FaceBook profile accounts, however it is hard for FaceBook to tell when the information has been copied so it is up to the users to act as the guardians of the information and ensure that the information they have posted to social media websites does not fall into the wrong hands.

The concern over privacy is hard to understand considering that people volunteer their information over social networking websites and other websites that collect personal information. People want to be the voice of their opinions yet they condemn the practice of collecting personal information - if they did not want to have their names, email addresses, and any other information about themselves available online, they should have thought it through before handing it over to the websites that collect the information.There are some people who are paranoid, or should I say careful, enough to not put any information about themselves online. There are others who use pseudonyms that they stick to online. However, people who know them may put up information about them so even for the people who know how to cover their tracks, there's the risk of somebody else putting up their information, such as photographs of them on FaceBook or Flickr, mentions about them in a blog post along with an email address or other contact information, or perhaps even a photograph of something that can be used to get a home address (for example, a license plate number on a vehicle). It is therefore right to say that the Internet has been one way to put privacy behind the right to information.(Note: I edited my post to get rid of the HTML tags that the post editor surprisingly added into my message)

The lightning bolt in the animation seems to be too 'artistic' to be realistic. It may have been real, but having never seen a lightning bolt of the kind, it is hard to believe. On a pitch dark night, a lightning bolt seems so bright that it is almost blinding. The idea of comparing the speeds of sound transmission and that of light probably originated from the observation that we see lightning before we even hear thunder - you may have seen something similar in movies that have the audio and the video out of synchronization. At events of celebration, we have fireworks yet we stay indoors and rarely look at nature's own fireworks - lightning! Sometimes, we see lightning even when there is no rain so that is something that seems out of the ordinary because we always have rain whenever there are dark and heavy clouds up in the sky and we see lightning in the distance accompanied by wind and the loud crashing sound of thunder.Lightning occurs because of a difference in electrical charges between the clouds and the ground. I guess I have to read more about how the charges form and why the electrical breakdown of the air between the clouds and the ground occurs instead of a lightning striking through nearby metal objects, because logically speaking that is the path of least resistance and as we know it, electricity flows more readily through the path of least resistance with very little of the electricity flowing through paths of higher resistance. Perhaps the breakdown of the electrical properties of air when a lightning just begins causes an erratic path for the electrical breakdown of the air to continue as a chain reaction, but it might as well have been the heat from the initial electrical breakdown that causes the adjacent air to have an electrical breakdown in turn causing a chain reaction till the lightning bolt is seen hitting the ground.I have once had my television go boom because of lightning hitting the antenna cable. It sounded like glass shattering but when I looked around, I didn't see anything broken anywhere. It is only much later that I realised it was the television. Ever since, I got a surge protector for the antenna cable and later switched to using a digital receiver with a shielded cable leading to a directional dish mounted on a wall. I have not had any surge damaging equipment because of lightning striking an overhead electrical cable or a telephone line and I often wonder why - the electrical cables are more likely to get hit, seeing how they are constantly alternating between positive and negative charges. When the electrical line has a charge opposite to that of the clouds, it ought to be increasing the possibility of lightning, but we haven't had any lightning striking the electrical cables yet. The telephone cables are shielded with plastic covering but they are hanging along trees and short poles and are just as likely to get hit by lightning, by the path-of-least-resistance theory.By the way, for the folks out there who think that all of the electricity should flow through the path of least resistance, let me present you with an example. Think of a stream of water, perhaps in a river. Now, imagine that there is a rock somewhere close to the river bank but with enough space between the rock and the river bank so as not to stop the flow of the water completely. Now, with the flow of the water, leaves, branches of trees, algae, fungi, and other matter gets accumulated between the rock and the river bank creating a kind of a blockage. However, this blockage does not completely stop the water from flowing - you would still see some flow through the leaves and other debris that is reducing the flow of the water within the small gap. The phenomenon is exactly the same when examined in the flow of electricity - the electricity flows in a greater quantity along the path of lower resistance but there still is some flow of electricity along the paths of higher resistance. There may be a threshold beyond which the electricity flow along the paths of higher resistance ceases completely because of the greatness of the resistance and such a case can be observed when you notice that some gaps are not air tight but they are water tight. I believe an umbrella has material treated with a chemical substance to reduce the gaps to such an extent that the gaps permit the flow of air but not the flow of water, possibly a case that is analogous to the manner in which the plastic shielding on cables prevents the flow of electricity even when two wires that are shielded with plastic are connected to the opposite terminals of a battery are placed over each other.

Ritu,I've been wondering if you know whether home schooling is a possibility in India. I know many other countries have home schooling as an option for children, but I believe one of the documents that has to be presented for admission into another school is a transfer certificate from the previous school, when mentions what grade level the student was in or has completed at the time of the transfer. I also believe that transfers are not possible between different school boards except at the end of the year. The difference between the time at which different boards end is perhaps something that can be a bit of a problem, though most schools are more than willing to let the student catch up after joining in the middle of a school year.Home schooling is a great way to ensure that students in India get to learn about liberal art subjects. There is not enough emphasis in the Indian education system on art, except when the students take up a bachelor's degree in art. When students do not know what to expect from a course, why would they want to opt for a degree program in that subject? Public schools in India do not seem to teach much about the Indian culture. The most I have seen is in the Hindi and History courses at schools, but that is very limited. Little is mentioned about social norms and practices, about spiritual philosophies, and about the country side.I believe that creating a more diverse set of subjects earlier in the education path would ensure that students get to know what they want to pursue rather than simply take up the options that others before them have taken. Simply because the neighbour's kid went on to become a successful engineer does not mean that your own kid has to take up engineering to develop a successful career. He or she can become just as adept at his or her trade and demonstrate just as much success.Our education system also does not seem to embrace diversity - we see very few people who return to universities and colleges for an advanced degree if they have been able to make do with the degree that they have earned. It may have been because they do not see a need for it and there is little that they can do with an advanced degree at the work place. Also, there are limited opportunities for those with a research degree to really make a difference because the social norm in India is to finish college as quickly as one can and get employed within just about any multi national corporation that is willing to pay big bucks for them.Social interaction in schools and colleges in India is pretty much limited to dealing with peers and often a hostile environment is present in these institutions of learning, which goes on to affect the culture of the individuals that go through these institutions for an education. Ethics and politeness aren't something that are taught within our education system and you will see that the average person does not exhibit these qualities as the people from a few centuries ago did - the difference between the two ages is that the earlier age had a focus on philosophy as well as on professional trade whereas the current age focuses entirely on professional education for academic achievement. I believe we may be able to bring about a change in our education system by introducing the study of ethical case studies earlier on in the education system, as a continuity for the Moral Science courses, to create a sense of values within the individuals who do decide to take to a newer curriculum.Although home schooling would appear to be the best choice for some parents, not all parents are well-equipped with the knowledge to impart to a child. I am not saying that the teachers of today have all that it takes, but there is a system that can be moulded to ensure that the teachers are trained in newer subjects and that the schools are prepared to impart the values, skills, and knowledge that the student needs in order to gain an expertise over the basic concepts, a familiarity with concepts of intermediate difficulty, and an awareness of certain concepts that are too advanced to include within the educational curriculum.

Dinosaurs went extinct before we came into being so it is hard to understand how they lived or if they even existed. If you look at the way a detective examines a crime scene and determines what may have happened without having been there at the time of the crime, you can imagine what scientists and researchers do to study dinosaurs. Whenever fossils are collected, scientists and researchers attempt to connect their new findings with findings of the past. They try to fit everything together as pieces of a puzzle. When you get a set of bones, you cannot necessarily fit them together as they were intended. To understand how the bones fit together, existing fossils are compared and based on the evolution theory, scientists determine how the parts should fit together. For example, think of the eyes of all species living today. Based on most of the species that we know, we can tell that almost all species have two eyes located horizontally adjacent to each other, barring a few exceptions.It is hard to think of ourselves as a part of an evolution that started off from the ocean. We do not have the ability to breathe underwater. We do not have reptilian scales like birds do on their feet. Because we are so different from the fish and water-dwelling unicellular microbes that were supposedly the common point of almost all species, it is hard to imagine that the two could be somehow related. All of the species (or at least almost all of the species) of plants that contain chlorophyll are known to use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into glucose and oxygen. Therefore based on the knowledge that we have of existing plants, we can determine that just about any other plant fossil that we find containing chlorophyll was a producer of oxygen (and a consumer too, when they do not have access to light, water, or carbon dioxide).

darko,An alternative to posting a link to your topic is to send a link to a moderator as a private message. It keeps your content private so only you and the moderator get to see the message and all your conversations are kept private. In the end, you do get to have your message sent across when your post gets approved.I would have wanted it to be automated, but then again, I have a long wishlist that would take us all ages to implement :-)

Hi!I believe the MyCENTs earnings did go up recently, or maybe the script is running more frequently than it did a few months ago. I do agree that there the MyCENTs are harder to come by than several years ago, which I believe may be the result of lower advertising revenue - back in the day, advertising rates were much higher than they are right now.I believe making a few postings every day can still get you a dollar every day, but if you are in need of more hosting packages than you are able to earn in MyCENTs, you might be able to get some help by partnering with one of the other members of the forum and creating a site together.

When you say that the screen on your Acer laptop does not display anything, do you mean to say that you did nothing at all and the screen does not show an image? The first thing you ought to do is make sure that the computer isn't simply in sleep mode and trying to get it to wake up does not get the screen to turn on. Hold the power button of your laptop computer depressed for about 8 seconds till all of the LED indicators turn off, except perhaps the LED indicator for the power and the LED indicator for the charging of the battery. After that is done, push the power button as you normally would for turning on the laptop and see if that helps in any way. If you see the computer booting up, then you can rule out problems with the computer hardware itself because usually that is where the problem shows up if the screen is no longer working. If your screen stops working at the point where Windows is supposed to start, you may have a problem with the display drivers or with the display settings. Sometimes, when you set the resolution of your display to a setting higher than what is supported by your hardware, the display does not display the image - although in some cases, Intel does implement virtual scrolling to display the image for a part of the screen and the screen then scrolls to show you the section of the screen where the mouse cursor is at. Some people like the virtual scrolling feature while most people do not and therefore you do not find most computers today using virtual scrolling. If the problem is indeed with the display drivers or with the display settings, try starting up your computer with Microsoft Windows running in safe mode. You can press F8 right after the computer bootup messages or the manufacturer logo appears and select the option to boot up Windows in safe mode using the text based menu that appears. If you did not get the menu to display, you probably did not press F8 quickly enough and so you have to restart the computer, and press F8, to get to the text menu. If all goes well, Windows should start up in safe mode and you should be able to change your settings back, if it was a problem with the display settings, or install a new display driver, if the display driver was faulty. If there is a problem with Windows itself, there is little that you can do other than using a Windows CD or the operating system restoration CD that was provided by your computer vendor when you first bought the computer to attempt a recovery or a restore of Windows.If your computer screen seems completely dead, you might want to try checking if there is a loose connection somewhere. Most laptops are easy to open up while some involve more complex detaching procedures, so if you can find a technical service manual for opening up your computer and have confidence in your skills in working with computer hardware, you can give it a go and check for any loose connections. If all else fails, the only option you have is to find a replacement display panel, which can cost you a whole lot if you go to the computer vendor's authorized service centers or you can have a go at independent repair stores where they have generic laptop displays - these laptop displays may or may not be the same size as your original display, but they usually have a 'frame' to fit a smaller and cheaper display into your laptop to get it working.

Do you mean to say that a cheap computer mouse caused the scrolling? Or do you mean something like the KDE interface where Firefox will hop up and down when you click on it while it is loading? Or do you perhaps mean that the cursor (the mouse pointer) was moving up and down? The problem is commonly associated with optical computer mice when used on highly reflective surfaces. When you try to use an optical computer mouse on a glass tabletop, you would have a really hard time and if you have a mirror, you would probably not be able to use the mouse at all. Considering how computer mice with trackballs are no longer out there for the most part, I am assuming that you have an optical mouse and not a traditional trackball-based mouse. If you try placing a A4 sized piece of white paper on the surface of the table, you may be able to get the computer mouse working as you want it to, rather than as it wants to :-) Give it a try and post your observations to this forum thread so we know what the underlying problem was and why the cheap computer mouse caused the erratic behavior.

I do not know if it is possible for an independent developer to create a text based massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) because not too many people would be interested for the following reasons.Firstly, most kids these days want something that is realistic. Think graphics. Think 3D characters. Sure, you can put a story into a text based game, but I am not too sure of how many people would play it.Secondly, you have to consider that text based massively multiplayer have been done and is very passe. Do you remember Mafia Wars? Yes, that was a text based massively multiplayer online role playing game. There are Mafia Wars clones out there too, from those replicating the exact same concept to those applying the same gaming engine to a different theme, such as Vampires.If you do want to implement a text based massively multiplayer online role playing game, your best bet would be to take a legacy game that already exists and has its copyright expired so you can build upon the story line and hope to draw some of the old fans. Either that, or find a theme that you can build upon by getting the necessary permissions from the people with the rights to a character or a theme and go with it.Just because a game is a text based massively multiplayer online role playing game does not mean that you cannot have pictures - or does it? It depends on how you define text-based because you can have a game running over text messaging on cellular networks, or you can have an Adobe Flash game running over the web or on Android tablets displaying pictures while the rest of the interaction is solely text based.

Neon,The Ethernet is a standard that defines the physical and data link characteristics of the connection whereas the Internet works at a higher level and builds upon the Ethernet technologies, among others. What I mean to say that you can get connected to the Internet through an Ethernet network but it does not have to be the only way that you can get connected - you can have a Token Ring network instead of an Ethernet network that hooks up your computer to the Internet. Or think about the way we would get connected to the Internet back in the day - through dial-up modems that worked through the plain old telephone system with no DSL or ISDN wizardry.Ethernet's approach of letting collisions occur and then dealing with is a simplistic way of dealing with a problem that many other comparable technologies have had to deal with. The approach works in small networks, but can be a source of inefficiencies in large networks that have a lot of computing nodes connected on the same network segment. Think of it as a way of getting the message across from participants in a crowd. When the only way for the participants to express themselves is to shout out their messages, that's when you have something comparable to the Ethernet technology. You can have two people shout out their messages at the same time and when that happens, you cannot listen to what either of them was saying so they would both stop yelling and then one of them would convey his or her message again. In other words, Ethernet works like an Ad Hoc network and with extensive checks to make sure that a message is sent again if a collision occurs. As you can imagine, when there are too many participants who have something to say, they would all try to scream and yell at the top of their voices and there would always be more than one participant saying something at the same time and it would be very hard to get exactly one participant to speak at any given time within the session of idea exchange. The same case occurs with computers when you have a lot of computes on the same network segment and all of them have data to be sent - imagine about a hundred computers that are in a video conferencing session and each of the hundred computers has webcam video to be streamed across to all of the other participants - now, that's what you would call a mess!Your statement that computers that plug into DSL models do not use Ethernet may or may not be true. I have a DSL modem that enables me to connect my computer to it through either a USB interface or through an Ethernet interface. I typically use the Ethernet interface because I misplaced the USB cable and do not have the driver CD for the DSL modem any more to connect through the USB interface. I do not need any drivers to use the Ethernet interface so that is what I use all the time. Besides, because the Ethernet interface is so widely supported across Windows, Linux, and just about any other major operating system that is currently being distributed, I know that I can use my DSL modem with any operating system that I can possibly run on my computer, assuming that the operating system is not several decades old, and can still expect everything to work as I expect it to. Oh, and did I mention that my DSL modem comes with only one USB port but with four Ethernet ports? I did use the USB port to connect a really old laptop wither an Ethernet network interface card to the Internet once and the only reason I did use it was because there was no other way to connect the computer to the Internet without having to get out to visit a store and finding a PCMCIA network interface card for something I would only be using for a week or maybe even less because a computer that old simply cannot handle the stuff that web pages contain today (especially the embedded Flash objects and videos), but that is a story for another day and another discussion forum thread.There are different kinds of Ethernet connections too - some Ethernet connections are half-duplex, meaning that data can either be sent or received at any particular time. Oher Ethernet connections are full-duplex, meaning that data can be sent and received at the same time. A full-duplex connection can essentially transfer data at twice the rated speed i.e. if you have a 100Mbps link speed, you will be able to transfer up to 200Mbps of data. However, when I say that the link speed is 100Mbps, that is the speed of the connection for a one-way transfer. The 200Mbps theoretical capacity can only be reached if both computers involved in the connection have data to be sent the other way. For example, if you are downloading a file, you would most likely be using only the one-way link with negligible control data being sent the other way. On the other hand, during a video conferencing session, data is being sent both ways so there you have the possibility of getting closer to using up the 200Mbps of available capacity, assuming that you are using high definition video and high quality audio with insanely high bitrates to provide ultra high clarity, though you would need a screen and speakers capable of providing output of such high qualities.If you would like to understand more about networking protocols, I would recommend that you read a book by Andrew Tannenbaum. He's the same person who developed Minix, the operating system that Linus Torvalds looked at before he grew frustrated with its licensing restrictions and decided to develop Linux. BTW, wasn't Andrew Tannenbaum also the professor who commented that Linux wouldn't really get very far with a monolithic kernel? Sometimes software design and architecture isn't everything.

Velma, I believe I can help out by writing a script to find all the posts that have not yet been approved or deleted i.e. posts that have not yet been reviewed by a moderator. The Invision PowerBoard is written in PHP and I believe my PHP skills are good enough to modify just about any system, or create a plugin, if Invision PowerBoard has a provision for one, so a notification can be sent to moderators.BTW, velma, why doesn't your PMB have the blue Moderator 'tag-line' below your profile picture like the other moderators do?

It is possible to have a canister drop onto your desk. The hospital I found the air transport system at used a basket at the end of the tube to receive the canisters. If you are transporting anything at all that is too fragile to resist the impact of falling into a basket, you can add more cushioning to the basket. I can imagine a Subway sandwich heading to my desk in a canister from a tube of an air transport system - the delivery guy could just hand it off at the front desk of the office and I'll get it sooner than they can take the elevator and walk to my desk. It is possible to 'chain' multiple air transport systems together to deal with a larger number of transmitting/receiving stations too, forming a network of air transport system networks.