k_nitin_r

Hi!It's been a while since I've been to this thread, but I have been looking at what I can do with my old (Maruti) Suzuki Esteem 2004 Di. It has a 1.5-litre Peugeot TUD5 engine but it probably only has about 57 horsepower, a mere pittance compared to the diesel engines available today, and can go 14 kilometres to the litre on the highway at about 100 kilometres per hour. The gearbox is best suited for travel at 70 kilometres per hour because the engine rotations per minute goes up to 3,000 right at 100 kilometres per hour. At about 120 kilometres per hour, I see the fuel economy drop to single figures (modern day diesel vehicles such as the Suzuki Swift, which comes with a 1.3-litre Fiat multijet diesel engine, has a rated fuel efficiency of 21 kilometres to the litre on the highway), and if I go over 140 kilometres per hour, I am pretty much red-lining it so fuel economy should not even be something to think about at those speeds - the ability of the engine to take to 5,000 rotations per minute is more of a concern.In case you are wondering, the car is totally stock and was built during the time when Indian highways were dual carriage roads so speeds of over 80 kilometres per hour were uncommon. Now, most of the national highways in India are funded through tolls and are maintained better so the roads do enable travel of up to 120 kilometres per hour, though the official speed limits are posted as 100 kilometres per hour.I sometimes wonder why some cars seem to have running problems if they have not been run in a while. The Suzuki Esteem does not particularly like being left sitting on blocks (or jacks, for that matter), and seems to develop what feels like an engine mis-fire for the first fifteen minutes or so of starting it up. It isn't a worn out glowplug because that feels different and needs more cranking in the morning, but it could possibly be a faulty glow plug in some of the cylinders (I am assuming that each cylinder has an independent glow plug - it is a 4-cylinder engine). Different mechanics have a different take on what the problem could be so I definitely think that they are guessing. One mechanic suggests that it is an engine timing issue while another suggests having the fuel pump looked at. The car has probably done 110,000 kilometres but it is hard to tell for sure because I did lend the car out for about a year and the odometer only has 5-digits to tell you how much it has done so as soon as the car goes beyond 99,999 kilometres or 199,999 kilometres, the odometer rolls back to reading 00,000 kilometres (zero kilometres).Anyway, I hope to keep the car for as long as it runs and trade it in for a newer vehicle. The Suzuki Ritz diesel and the Suzuki Swift diesel are on their way out as the designs have been around for a while, but the Suzuki Ritz does seem to be more practical than most hatchbacks with a 40-60 split folding seats to accomodate more luggage. The Suzuki Esteem has a complete folding rear seat so if you have no rear seat passengers, you do get more boot space but if you do have a passenger, you have to set your luggage onto the seats (good luck cleaning up the seats after you have removed the luggage!).

This year has seen some interesting news headlines, and its still only February. One of the articles I have read on Forbes.com is that General Motors is the world top auto manufacturer in terms of automobile sales. After three years of losing its crown to Toyota, General Motors had to deal with a huge debt, which it managed to reduce through bankruptcy.Toyota's problems with brakes and 'sticky' accelerators probably had a large part of play in General Motors' success and in the business world, that isn't anything you can hold against General Motors because it could have happened to any of the big three. There are crash reports of crash testing dummies getting severed in test reports against Chery and some other manufacturers, but they still keep going and have loyal buyers who perceive the cost advantage as their key selling point.

Hi!An RSS feed is like an XML representation of the articles on a website. You can have an entire news website represented as a set of XML items containing the title, the date (and possibly even the time), and the content of the news item. Pretty much ever major website that deals with content in a chronological form would have an RSS feed. You can find news feeds on BBC, Blogspot and WordPress offer RSS feeds for their blogs and for blog comments too (I can't really think of who would want to subscribe to the blog comments RSS feed, but perhaps it would be used by the authors of the blog more than any of the visitors assuming that they use mobile devices that can't browse the other interfaces that the content management system provides to access and approve the comments).

sheepdog,I read about the incident on a tech news website. They did post the video too, which I didn't look at yet. The incident is probably another side to watching what you say on FaceBook. FaceBook is a social medium and people using it should adhere to the same standards that journalists do when they have news articles published in a newspaper or magazine. Not everyone can take on the responsibility of making sure that whatever they say does not offend anybody or wrongfully target somebody.Having a laptop taken away and shot is perhaps an extreme - they could have given away the laptop to a charity organization or something, but it conveys the point in a rather expensive way. A laptop, however, is something that kids these days use for their education too so depriving them of something that they need to study is not a solution to the problem of kids posting stuff online. Perhaps getting an Internet blocking software to prevent them from accessing certain websites would help.

sheepdog,The problem with farming in India is that the workers have got construction jobs that pay better than farming jobs so farmers have either got to match the pay rate of construction jobs, which is hard to do, or switch to a different business. Some large-scale farmers are able to bear the higher salary expenses but other people have simply sold their farms and decided farming isn't for them any more.Having said that, I still see farms with crops on both sides of the highway that I drive past every month so when folks say that they've stopped farming or that farming is not profitable, it does not seem to be the case at all - the plants and trees are still out there.The folks who grow up in cities cannot really head to the farms - they simply cannot adapt to working in the heat and after being couch potatoes all their lives, they can't take the hard manual labor. The older folk who decided to head back to their roots did manage to take to farming at least on a small scale.

When I speak of research, I am referring to scientific research.There are different kinds of research, which makes it hard to define research as such. When research is performed to help in decision-making by addressing practical problems, it is referred to as applied research. Applied research can be further categorized into action research when the research targets a problem in the researcher's immediate work environment.Despite the differences in the types of research, research essentially involves two things - collection of data and the interpretation of data. Unless you see an interpretation of collected data, it isn't research.Looking up information to teach oneself something that already exists is not research. Research has to lead to new knowledge and not simply state something that already exists. If a study compares the data from two different time periods or it simply compares two different data samples, it isn't research because there is no interpretation of the data. For example, if I were to state that the rainfall this year is higher than the rainfall last year, that is not research.Performing research requires the definition of a research problem. The research problem can be found through existing literature, problems occuring around the researcher, and problems identified by professional journals and experts. The research problem is often stated as a complete sentence, defines the scope of the research study, defines the area of the research study, avoids making assumptions about the findings, does not attempt to prove a particular alternative, and is not a simple yes-or-no question.A research study involving the collection of data will have the researcher ask himself or herself about the size of the sample to be obtained, if it is not possible to study the entire target population defined by the study, the method to be used to obtain a sample, the means of collecting information, the analysis methods, and a way to maintain the confidentiality of the collected data or to prevent misuse of the collected data. This last question is perhaps more related to the ethical practices of the scientific community than to the research itself but it is important nonetheless.

The link to the S3 Amazon server seems to be broken, but the SpaceRat image seems to tell you how one can work around an actual problem to get to the end result.Science is about making statements that are verifiably true so any marketing statements that people might make are not science. Comic strips often can use logic in a way that it seems right when you think about it but there is usually a logical fallacy somewhere in there. If one can verify that sound is transmitted slower through one material than another, that is a scientific statement. If one moves a solid object with no elasticity and by virtue of the transfer of energy from one end to another calls it a transfer of energy faster than the speed of sound, one has to determine what aspect of the transfer is being considered faster. If the same rod were tied to a bell at one end, it would seem that one has transported sound at a speed faster than known before. Through logic deduction, it is possible to say that x leads to y, and y leads to z, therefore x must lead to z, but this is not always true and cannot be treated as true unless proven through science.

Greetings, Lisly!I see you have yet to post your second post to the forum (your post counter shows that you have made exactly "1 posts", though it could be incorrect if it does not account for the posts made to the no-post-count sub forums). Mr.Dee and SheepDog have the question, "What professional?", on reading your statement about you attending school right now to become a professional. I should have had that question too, but I didn't. I simply assumed that you are trying to become a graphic designer or an advertising professional after looking at that digital signage link in your signature, but then realised after reading the posts by Mr.Dee and SheepDog that it was just my assumption and did not necessarily have to be the case.You have already been introduced to three of the regulars of the forum on this thread, Mr.Dee, Sheepdog, and Nanna. I pop in and pop out on the forum depending on the stuff that is going on in my life at the time from work to class and family.BTW, there were forum signature contests on the forum in the past so if you would like to look at some rather cool signature images, check out the thread. Mr.Dee's signature will probably make you want to create and put up a signature image too :-)

Hi Ajeesh!It's been a while since we've heard from you on the forum. I believe the last of your posts were sometime in the first week of January? It's been a whole month and we are looking to hear more from you. And perhaps you can tell us about Ayurvedic preparations to cure the ailments that folks on the forum experience ever so often.And I'd also like to know how work on your online Ayurvedic magazine has been coming along. If you ever need a hand with setting it up, do feel free to holler and I would be more than willing to help out, just as any of the other active members of the forum would.Hope to hear more from you in the not too distance future.

@leegraceHello Lee!Welcome to the Xisto community! We have a really helpful group of people who frequent the forum here and if you ever want to talk about the what's-what in television series and movies, feel free to start a thread about it.Speaking of TV series, I watched "How I Met Your Mother" recently and it was a whole lot of fun. I would, of course, pick the lead character, Ted Moseby, as my favorite but coming a close second is Barney Stinson. Ted Moseby is an architect who is looking for 'the one', his bride-to-be, and meets a lot of people along the way. He does eventually find the girl of his dreams because in the TV series, he talks to his kids in the future and tells them how he met their mother. Of course, it isn't a simple tale - it goes right from when he met Robin, another character on the TV series who works as a news anchor, but just when you think Robin was the one and Ted and Robin are finally together, Ted reveals that he has just told them about how he met their 'aunt Robin' so you know right from the start that it is not going to work out between Ted and Robin although the idea of them getting together does come up a second time in the series (the first time was in the first episode) so that pretty much ends the suspense right there. You do find a pretty good build-up of the suspense because Ted does mention about parts of the tale when he caught a glimpse of his wife's foot at one point and about being in her apartment when dating her roommate but you do not really get to see who it is.Anyway, apart from watching TV series, I do quite a bit of freelance development and consulting too so if you want any help with setting up your website, just let out a holler and I'll see what I can do for you to help you out. There's the PHP programming forum that I frequent, but I do some Java development for hosting application on the Google cloud, which isn't the nicest of things right now but that could change soon with the introduction of the Google Cloud SQL (currently not in general availability but it is available to a bunch of beta testers to try it out). Google's cloud hosting is supposed to be pricey compared to the others out there though.Some of the forum regulars, Mr.Dee and Nanna have already introduced themselves so I won't mention them. Other forum regulars include sheepdog, also a pet owner like nanna; velma, pretty much the most active moderator on the forum right now; and Quatrux, who is active when I am not and inactive when I am not - you just might suspect that we are the same person with a secret double-identity if you ponder over it for longer than you shouldAnyway, I'll look forward to hearing more from you over the next couple of days and will hope post #2 comes from you soon.@hen5522Henry, it would be great if you could post a separate thread to the Introductions forum so we can get to know more about you. I've always wondered what goes into airing TV shows right from the start, the production, to when they are 'programmed' into the schedule. Looking forward to more from you soon.

@andyoumeHello and welcome to Xisto. I haven't been on the forum for a while so I missed your introduction thread so I thought it is better to be late in welcoming you to the forum than to have never replied to your introduction thread at all, right? So here goes.I'm Nitin Reddy, a freelance software developer, web designer, and blogger. I do quite a bit of PHP development so if you have any questions about PHP, feel free to drop in a post to the PHP programming thread of this forum and I or one of the other PHP programming enthusiasts on the forum will post a reply to you. You can follow the link in my post signature to get to my personal website. Before you ask, let me tell you that my personal website is hosted using the service provided by Xisto / Xisto - Web Hosting through the credits provided by Xisto and its sibling forum (though most of my credits did come from Xisto).You will probably here a lot from the forum regulars: nanna, who has already replied to this thread; mrdee, who manages at least a couple of web sites; sheepdog, who uses a website (or perhaps multiple websites, I can't tell for sure) for promoting her business; velma, who is perhaps the most active moderator on the forum right now; Quatrux, who posts to the forum often but I don't really know much about.@olgawaineIt would be great if you can start your own thread in the introductions sub-forum - it would only be fair for us to get to know you better and having your own thread in the introductions forum would help a lot.

Hi!I don't really think we have folks on the forum who make flip books yet :-) It would be great if you can share the 'animation' that you have created using the corners of the notebooks. I've tried making animations like that back in the day and it took lots and lots and lots of patience to draw each frame over and over again. If I had a miniature copier with erasable ink, I would probably have used it at the time :-) That's probably an idea to suggest to the kids' toy manufacturing firms to build because it does not really have much commercial value other than for parents to buy them for their kids while we manage to get the availability of the product for our own hobbyist purposes.2D animation is pretty much the same as 3D animation except that you make your animation with an extra dimension for depth perception. As long as you can think in terms of a coordinate system in 2D, getting into 3D is remarkably easy. I am speaking from a purely programming perspective because I know that there is different software for different kinds of animation so if you are looking at creating animation and short films rather than performing animation for computer games, you would be using animation software rather than writing computer software code.If you would like to discuss music, feel free to post to the forum. You would be surprised at the number of alternative music fans you would come across on the Internet. BTW, have you heard of the song "Informer" (Alliki Boom Boom Down) by Snow?When my nephew watches cartoons, I watch them too. When the cartoons are dubbed from English into other languages, they seem rather unusual. It's almost like those martial art films that dubbed into English. I read the slogan "Always win; even if lose." on a blog just yesterday and here it is as I read it on this forum again. I play lots of computer games, with my current ones being Flat Out, Diablo II, and Angry Birds. Angry Birds is a kind of a puzzle and while it is fun to play at first, it becomes impossibly difficult at later stages. I would say that if you do manage to get past the later stages of the game, it is pure luck or just chance from trying over and over and over again. Flat Out is lots of fun. It's a car race with a career mode, like most other games today, where you accumulate cash, watch your savings grow, buy a car, get after-market car accessories and performance parts for it, and race! You can ram the car into those of other racers, you get nitro for performing stunts, and you can wreck other cars to rack up that cash in a rather extra-quick way. Diablo II is like a strategy game except that you do not get to build units or develop a city and instead focus on exploration. The game is fun and you can play it as a multi player game too, if you have nothing better to do. Finding the quest is a bit of a challenge without some help from the online walk throughs so you might want to keep a browser window open on another computer or on your smart phone or tablet so when you do get totally lost in the game, you can search online and figure out the way you are supposed to go. I think the map changes if you play as different characters in the game but it is fun to try out the different characters because each of them have unique abilities. The level bosses are really hard to kill and will take some patience and skill - the level bosses strike out your minions in just one blow and will then come after you, which is when you see your health meter drop rapidly unless you are good at the game and can work you way by summoning more minions, using rejuvenation and health potions, and levelling up on the right set of unique abilities and skill points for your character.I guess my post is getting really long so I will end here. I look forward to seeing more of you on the forum.

"Bringing home the troops" has been used as a hook in election campaigns and while it is pitched as something that ought to be a victory, it isn't. There are heroes who went out there because they were recruited but there were others who were criminals acting in hatred against the civilians who they were supposed to defend. Many of those criminals have been sentenced but they did cause irreparable damage to what the nation stands for, the values of compassion and caring that it represents, and the freedom and human rights that it defends.I don't mean to take the limelight away from the heroes but I simply mean to state that the folks who acted in hatred or in greed showed immense disrespect for the heroes by wearing the same uniforms and acting under the same authority.

Hi!I totally understand your reluctance to take to the steering wheel and I am just the same when I travel to a different place. Sure, there is the international driving permit, but the rules vary by the country and I would probably have to get through a driving institute to learn the rules before I can drive.Having said that, I still am more comfortable driving because it means a lack of fear of having my pocket picked. Sure, it may not be common in other parts of the world, but in UAE and in India, pick-pocketing is rather common. I would love to ride a folding bicycle instead of driving a car to get around the parking problem because I can simply fold the cycle, get it into a back-pack and head off to where there is no road. When traveling at night, there is no substitute to the safety of a vehicle with doors and windows. As soon as the car pulls through the gates, it is like being away from the cruelties of the world and I can step out again. It's better to be safe than to be a statistic, right?When going along a highway, getting to drive your own vehicle is nice because it feels like you are leaving all the dust and dirt out the window with the windows rolled up. I haven't been able to get around much with the windows down due to the temperature and when the weather is good enough to roll down the windows, the 'cross-winds' when driving with the windows open keeps me from doing so. Having said that, getting the window open to pay for toll and asking for directions is something that I do quite a bit of.Taking a taxi to get around during the day does seem more convenient when taxis are available and you don't have to go a long way. However, in many cities, such as in Dubai, getting a taxi during the peak hour is almost impossible. You might as well get yourself a compact hatchback or micro car with a sub-1-litre engine to use for that one particular time that you want to get around.BTW, I've been wondering if parking two micro cars in one parking spot would mean that the two drivers have to pay for two cars rather than just one or that they can simply get one ticket and park both cars in the parking spot. I wonder if it would be any different if the second car was hooked up to the first car for towing.

Hi Konrad!Welcome to Xisto! It would be nice to see your portfolio of web designs. There are a lot of designers on the forum and I am sure they would like to see your designs too.What's Poland like at this time of the year? I imagine it must be chilling out doors. I sometimes wonder if people can put stuff out in the fire escape instead of using a refrigerator in cold places :-)I use commas a lot too - and nobody tries to correct me because they are occupied with trying to prevent comma under-use rather than comma over-use.I have just one tech blog after going through a series of other blogs and I try to update it often. You can check it out from my forum signature. And, yes, it is hosted using Xisto/Xisto - Web Hosting i.e. using the hosting credits from this posting on this forum (and a few posts on it's other sibling forum).

Hi Casper!The idea of posting messages to the forum to earn web hosting credits has been around for quite a while - Xisto was known as Trap 17 back then.I haven't played MineCraft yet, but there are some gaming community and clan websites being hosted through Xisto / Xisto - Web Hosting (it's where you get to spend your web hosting credits).If your web application takes a lot of CPU time to execute, you probably want to optimize your script or choose a dedicated web hosting package. Xisto does offer a dedicated web hosting package with no limits on the CPU and memory usage of the server that you get. I am not sure if they implement any kind of bandwidth restrictions as I have only used their shared web hosting packages. I have heard of a lot of shared web hosting service providers that deactivate an entire website if the CPU usage gets too high so with ByteHost simply limiting the usage of your website for a minute, it sounds like you are getting a good deal from them.The best part of Xisto / Xisto - Web Hosting is that there are no restrictions placed on the PHP functions that you can use. You can send out email, such as for new user registrations and you can use fopen. However, you shouldn't use the database server for tracking user visits because of the database load.We look forward to hearing more from you on the forums and if you ever need help with some thing, feel free to make a post.

rpgsearcherz,I wanted to ask you about your experience with the Kindle Fire. How is the responsiveness of the user interface? A lot of people have complained about a sluggishness and Amazon has announced that it has released a fix for the issue as an update. Did you install any updates on the Kindle Fire?If you are looking for something light, I would recommend the Sony Reader. It supports pdf and epub formats and those are the two most popular formats out there. Also, the Sony Reader automatically changes the layout of the text when you zoom in so you do not have to constantly scroll from side to side to read a page. Also, the Sony Reader doubles up as an MP3 player; you can also hook it up to the auxiliary input of your car's audio system to take your music with you while on the go.I did have a blog post about the Kindle Fire that I posted some time back and while looking for more information about the Kindle Fire, I found some very negative comments about the usability. However, there are lots of negative remarks about the Aakash tablet, the Ubi Slate 7, and the Apple iPad so all I can say is that there are negative comments everywhere - you have got to experience the product for yourself to be able to really determine if it is the tablet/ebook reader for you.

Hi! I know what you are looking at when you say that the Kindle is an e-book reader and not a tablet, but I do have to tell you something... the Kindle and the Kindle Touch are e-book readers, but the Kindle Fire is a tablet. The Kindle Fire does not have an e-Ink display or the long battery life that the Kindle Touch and the Kindle have. I have a blog post about the Kindle Fire comparing the Kindle Fire to the Apple iPad 2 and the Nook Tablet at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ where you will notice that the Kindle Fire has components that match up to the Nook Tablet for the most part and it is comparable to the iPad 2. The Kindle Touch and the Kindle, however, are e-book readers and match up to the likes of the Sony Reader. Having said that, I would like to add that I prefer e-book readers to tablets because I have my laptop computer to do what a tablet would. If I could justify the cost, I would get a tablet-convertible laptop. My e-book reader is something that I carry with me everywhere and has to come with a battery that can survive a whole day of always-on operation without getting too heavy. my Sony Reader Touch gives me a whole week while the newer Sony Reader Touch gives a month of battery life (unless you are using WiFi).

Hi Ajeesh!Welcome to Xisto. We are a fun community of folks who develop and design websites as a hobby, though there are some among us who build websites professionally too (myself included). Xisto provides you with web hosting credits whenever you post to the forum so you have to keep posting to the forum to accumulate hosting credits. When you have enough credits, you can order a web hosting package from the Xisto - Support and Billing website. You have a choice of a Linux-powered or a Windows-powered shared hosting package or the option to select a virtual service or a dedicated server, based on your requirement.Hey, if you would like to discuss about your online magazine, send me a private message or get in touch with me via I.M. and I'll give you whatever input I can.

I would like to mention that the use of a proxy server to circumvent the firewall put in place within many academic institutions is a violation of the terms of service with which they provide you with Internet access. Also, the penalties for using a proxy service with the intention of getting around the restrictions put in place by the IT department of your university can extend to having yourself dropped from all of the courses from that semester to preventing you from taking any more courses from that university. You may want to re-visit your student handbook and the terms and conditions posted on the university website for the use of the Internet access provided by the university.If all you need to do is access to certain content, you may be able to get somebody to email you the content instead of using a proxy server. Using a 3G connection would also help because the terms and conditions with which the university provides access to the Internet are limited to the use of their computers and networking equipment so if you are using your own computer over a 3G Internet connection that you had paid for, you are not usually bound to their terms and conditions. However, the university would have policies against disorderly conduct that you would still have to adhere to so make sure that you are not in violation with any of the rules that have been set by the university.

Just as Turkey is investing in providing tablet computers to schools, an Indian firm has been attempting to provide tablet computers to students at just $50. Sure, it does not have the same specs as an iPad, but it seems to get the job done. It comes with a resistive screen that makes up $10 of the price and an ARM processor. You can read more details about these $50 tablets at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ on the subject of computers within academic institutions, it is necessary to determine what it is that the students will be doing with them. If you want the students to watch videos then a tablet would be just perfect because you can deliver the videos over a wireless local area network and have them played with headphones or earphones. The screen on a tablet is large enough to display some text within the videos as well, unlike the case with smart phones, and gives the students their bang for the buck. There are other applications where the objective is to simply provide the means for students to browse the Internet and learn to use modern-day computing tools in which case a netbook would be better suited for the purpose. To assist students with their learning by providing easy access to computing tools and a quick way to enter data from their experiments, a tablet computer is the preferred choice. When teaching students about rending graphics or editing video, a regular laptop or notebook PC or a desktop computer is called for.I wonder what application the Turkish government wants to put the tablets to use for. As long as they have a clear agenda for what they want to do with the devices, the cost is probably justified.

Let me get this straight. You have known this girl for a long time and when you express your love to her, she turns you down but she keeps talking to you and has a certain kind of attraction toward you.I would say that if you want up to her again, she would turn you down just as she did the first time. This is not because of a fear of commitment or because she swings with a different kind but rather because of social norms. People in all parts of the world and people in all parts of a particular society do not think alike and that is exactly what is at play here. She seems to come from a more conservative culture and for her going against those social norms is something that she is not prepared to do nor should you expect her to try to break out of the norms that have been established over years and years of social interaction. Going against the norms of society is traumatic and to put her through the stress and pain is just wrong.You should just let things be and simply remain good friends because why should you want to ruin something that you have going for you?

Hi!I used XAMPP and Skype, but XAMPP was configured to start up when Windows starts up so it gets to use port 80 before Skype even gets to start up - Skype probably fails silently when it cannot use port 80 because the use of port 80 is not critical to the functionality of Skype. Perhaps people who are installing XAMPP with Skype running would get the problem - after installing XAMPP, when they start Apache with the XAMPP control panel with Skype turned on, XAMPP wouldn't be able to get the port but if they use the XAMPP control panel to select the checkbox to install Apache as a service and then restart the computer, XAMPP's Apache would start up even before the user logs in so Skype isn't even in the picture.The way I run XAMPP is with a different port. I typically use something memorable so I can type it in without having to look up what the port is each time.BTW, it is possible for multiple applications to share a port but that's a tale for another forum discussion thread.