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k_nitin_r

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Posts posted by k_nitin_r


  1. Jessica,You have to use a video format conversion program. I would recommend using the Xilisoft video converter. It is quite reasonably priced and is easy to use. For video conversion, you would want to have a computer system with a really good processor because the rendering can take a long long time. Each second of video contains several frames and they are 'compressed' such that within each frame, repetitions and minor differences between pixel groups are encoded to occupy very less space on your hard disk drive, flash drive, compact disc, or DVD. Apart from compression within a frame, compression also occurs between frames to save only the differences that occur between two frames to the file. These help reduce file size considerably so irrespective of whether you are downloading a video file from the Internet, watching it online on YouTube, or playing it from a BluRay disc drive, very little data is transferred for considerably large amounts of color and pixel data. Now, this compression, albeit a good thing takes immense amounts of computation when you consider the number of pixels on a screen. A video that plays at 640x480 resolution has over three hundred thousand pixels to store color information for and each pixel has its three colour components for red, green, and blue. When you take it on a per-frame basis, video conversion involves obtaining the red, green, and blue color values for each of the pixels of the video and re-encoding the data to another video file compression format. If you are encoding BluRay video, which is usually of a very high resolution compared to video CDs from back in the day, you are processing more data than you can write down in a notebook in the form of binary represented with octal digits (or maybe even hexadecimal digits?).


  2. Seat belts can increase or decrease the damage that an accident can cause. Perhaps seat belts are not as crucial for the driver as it is for the passengers because the driver can prepare himself or herself for an accident but a passenger may be unaware that an accident is going to occur and therefore would hit the windshield or the glass on the side.Seat belts are quite narrow and this could cause some of the injury. Perhaps if cars were fitted with a harness-like seat belt like the racing vehicles do, the force would be distributed across a wider area than regular seat belts and would exert less pressure.If we were to stop using seat belts entirely, we would be relying a great deal on air bags and those are just as dangerous. Airbags have caused fractures in the past and are meant to prevent the occupants of a vehicle from hitting anything in the interiors of the vehicle. Seat belts and air bags serve the same purpose and are meant to protect the passengers of the vehicle in the same manner but they do so differently. An airbag deployment can be hazardous if there are any interior fittings within the vehicle that can obstruct the inflation of the air bag. Any such object placed close to an airbag deployment point would turn into a projectile weapon and would seriously main or kill the passenger in the event of an accident. The accident itself may not affect the occupants but airbags most certainly can.When a vehicle catches fire and the driver and his or her passengers are wearing seat belts, they have to get out as quickly as they can. Taking off their seat belts adds to the time they are within the vehicle and if they take too long, the seat belts can melt and fuse to their clothes and skin, trapping them within the vehicle. If you have tried going at a seat belt with a pair of scissors or with a swiss army knife, you probably know how long it takes to get out of the seat belts if the release mechanism fails to function. When the release mechanism of the seat belt does not operate, the driver and his or her passenger are essentially tied to their seats and cannot get out. Seat belts also tighten or loosen so if the seat belts neither loosen nor do their release mechanisms function after an accident that causes the fuel tank to rupture and the leaking fuel to ignite, the results would be very catastrophic.I doubt people would fly out of their seats if their vehicle was rear ended. On the contrary, they would be pushed further into their seats and if they were not using the head rests of the seats, they would even suffer from whiplash or injuries to their shoulders and back. If there was a full frontal collision when both vehicles are moving at high speeds, the driver and passengers would definitely fly out of their seats if they were not wearing seat belts and the front passengers do stand a real danger of going through the windshield.


  3. theconman,By building your own computer, you have the ability to decide what components go into the making of your computer system. Some people prefer an assembled computer because it is cheaper, as they can cut back on the features that they do not require, whereas other people use assembled computers because they have components that would not otherwise be available in a mainstream computer sold of retailer shelves.To start with, an assembled computer system consists of a case. The case can be anything from a wooden box that you make from a slab of wood, a saw, and some nails, to a crafted aluminium case with LEDs. It does not really matter which way you go as long as you have the mounts for the motherboard of your choice and can fit a power supply unit and, optionally one or more cooling fans for the case. Considering that hot air rises and air with a lower temperature would be situated toward the bottom of the case, you can look for a case that either has fans that draws in cold air from the bottom of the case and lets out hot air from the top rear of the case, or you can look for a case that lets you fit the additional cooling fans yourself. Proper airflow is essential for high performance computer workstations that are used for gaming or high end graphics and video editing. The horizontal cases have an advantage over the tower cases in heat dissipation because when the components are located at the bottom of the case, the components can be cooled with the air at a lower temperature from the bottom of the case while the air at a higher temperature rises to the top of the case and is extracted by the case fan or, in some cases, by the fan of the power supply unit. In mainstream computers, only two cooling fans are present within the computer system - one is used to draw air from the heat sink of the processor while the other fan is located within the power supply and serves the dual functions of cooling the parts of the power supply unit and extracting hot air out of the computer case. This minimizes power consumption and reduces noise considerably because cooling fans are the primary source of noise from a computer system.Then, comes the heart of the computer, the processor. You can get processors that are built cheap by reducing the amount of cache on the processor, such as the Intel Celeron processor. While these are cheap, they are also limited in their processing power by the limited cache because instructions are often executed in the processor faster than they can be fetched or sent back from the bus, which carries data to and from the processor as well as to and from the other components and peripheral devices of the computer system. There are processors built for low power consumption from Via/Cyrix (Cyrix was a popular manufacturer for desktop processors back in the day and it was later acquired by Via. Via continues to manufacturer low-priced processors for desktop and notebook computer systems) and Transmeta (Transmeta was popular for building low-power processors, especially those for mobile computer systems. Novafora itself winded up its business operations). Intel's Xeon line of computer processors are built for server application and feature a large amount of cache. They are also used in high end workstations such as those used for computer graphics and video editing. They reduce the rendering time for conversion of video formats and improve the computer's responsiveness when altering large graphics files. Among mainstream processors offered by Intel today, the Intel Core i7 is the flagship desktop processor and is also used in high end workstations. The Intel Core i3 is the entry level processor and the Intel Core i5 offers a higher performance for those on a budget. The price difference between an Intel Core i3 and an Intel Core i5 is roughly sixty dollars so you might as well shell out the extra cash to invest in an Intel Core i5 processor to take advantage of the turbo boost, which automatically increases the clock speed of the processor when certain conditions are met. AMD processors offer better value at the expense of performance.The memory of the computer system is largely standardized across all mainstream computers, with servers incorporating memory with error checking and control. In other words, you can get a memory stick for any modern desktop and can expect it to work with a modern motherboard for building your computer system. If you are building a computer system with an old motherboard, you have to ensure that the memory types match but for the most part it is not really worth the effort to build a computer system out of old components because of the rather low prices of computer components today. As a general rule of thumb, get at least 2GB of memory for your computer unless you plan on using it as a router or a web server with a text-based console for administration. You can use a portion of your memory for your graphics adapter if your motherboard and the integrated video graphics adapter supports it but ideally you are better off getting a video graphics adapter that has its own dedicated memory because it takes longer for the video graphics adapter to access the main system memory of your computer system than for it to access its on-board memory.The motherboard of your system is like a platform upon which you build everything. You have to pick a motherboard that can work with the processor you choose and for the amount of memory that you want to include so, in essence, it is central to the design of your computer system. Look for a motherboard with as many memory slots and USB ports as you can afford because it makes the computer system easier to upgrade. Also, getting multiple memory sticks of a lower capacity is cheaper than getting a single memory stick of the capacity of all of the memory sticks combined. For example, you can get four memory sticks of one gigabyte each instead of a single memory stick of four gigabytes because of a lower price but this does mean that when you do decide to upgrade the memory, you will have to take off the old memory sticks and will not be able to use them because of a shortage of memory slots. Some motherboards support dual channel memory access and would either require you to install memory sticks in pairs, with some motherboards even requiring you to install three memory sticks of a kind for triple-channel access, and other motherboards providing you with the option of running in dual-channel memory access mode if the memory sticks are identical and falling over to single-channel memory access when a single memory stick is present or the two memory sticks are not identical, and other low end built-for-economy motherboards offering only single-channel memory access. Depending on your needs and budget, you can decide to get a motherboard that just meets the requirements for your computer system and can be replaced whenever your needs exceed the capabilities of the computer system or meets your future requirements and can be easily upgraded when you have the budget and the need for more components or higher end components. Some motherboards feature on-board audio and graphic support but if you want a computer system purpose-built for graphics and video editing or for audio production, you can get a motherboard without those features or can get a motherboard with the features on-board but disable them if you do not need them.My description above is for a computer system on which you plan to run Windows. You can also build a computer exclusively for running a Linux or Unix based operating system or perhaps even a specialy operating system by using a processor that does not use the x86/x86-64 instruction set. For example, the ARM processor, which is used by most smart phone devices, personal digital assistants, and high end calculators, can be used to run a Linux based desktop or notebook system, with some cheaper low-end notebook computers employing the ARM processor and powering a Linux based distribution. You may be able to find one of these computers at a store near you. The ARM processors are much more energy efficient than mainstream x86 computer processors owing to the research and development focused on reducing the power consumption and heat envelope because of their application in embedded and mobile computing systems. They are also much cheaper than mainstream computers making them ideal for netbook applications if you do not need to run Windows (or can run Windows application through WINE emulation or through computer virtualization software that can emulate an x86 processor on a Linux or Unix based operating system).If you do decide to buy a computer off the retailer shelves, you may want to consider an all-in-one design because of the space savings. These computers are either integrated into a monitor or within the keyboard. Although they offer limited upgradeability, they are more economical because of the cost savings for the manufacturers to reduce casings and through a shared use of power supply units and chassis, and a reduced need for cabling. Some all-in-one computer systems also include a touch screen and they often have a large computer screen for display. Often the primary reason for people to choose an all-in-one computer over a laptop/notebook or a netbook system is the large screen or the touch-screen.You do not really have to know how to put together the components of your computer when deciding to get an assembled computer system. Most computer stores will do it for you if you buy the parts for them without charging you for the assembly service and can even offer you discounts if you buy all of the parts for your computer system from them. They would have the advantage of bulk orders and receiving discounts from manufacturers as well as having the shipping costs spread over a larger number of units when compared to having to order the components of your choice from eBay.While you are looking for computers, I do suggest that you take a look at factory outlets from Dell and Lenovo because they offer huge discounts on some of their merchandise either because of cosmetic defects such as scratches that occured during handling or because of selling store-returns and computers that were returned under warranty and repaired.


  4. Mahesh,I have been posting on Xisto as well as Asta Host and have not been receiving the MyCENT emails so I cannot tell which is sending me the MyCENTs but I do know that at least one of the two forums is crediting my account for the posts that I make. You can keep the rest of us posted about what has been happening to the MyCENTs for your postings. I have not been tracking my MyCENTs statistics and I rely entirely on the MyCENT emails and the balance displayed on the Xisto - Support and Billing website to tell when my account has been credited. In the absence of MyCENT emails, I have no clue as to which posts were accounted for because I posted both to Xisto and to Asta Host.The toolbar isn't Meebo - Meebo is a web instant messaging application. I'll look up Wibya to see if I can find the toolbar, not that I have any intention of using it.I have not hopped onto the Android bandwagon yet. It's still all Apple and Nokia-Symbian for me. Nokia has just about abandoned the Symbian platform in favor of Microsoft's Windows for Mobile. With Steve Jobs' passing, the future of Apple's platform seems uncertain. I don't really know which the right platform would be for a tablet or smartphone purchase, but Samsung seems to be pushing forward with the Galaxy and some pretty heavy marketing.The new Invision Power Board forum does take longer when posting messages with the Ajax loading bar. It is supposed to run quicker because there is less data being passed back and forth. I imagine there must be CPU overhead because a WordPress based blog I created for a client that I ran was pretty slow because the server CPU was maxed out in handling all of the requests that the server would get, and it is not even a Reddit or Digg front page kind of site but rather simply a website with about half a dozen concurrent visitors.


  5. StarScream,I am guessing that you used a newer version of PHP when using XAMPP and have the Windows Uniform server running an older version of PHP. When switching to a newer version of PHP, the warnings that appear can be disabled but, ideally, you want to know when you are using deprecated features of the programming language and should be avoiding them. A lot of old PHP code that small organizations use generate warnings and the small organizations do not have the resources to have their software patched to avoid the warnings and they may not have the ability to configure PHP to hide the warnings so the organizations use an older version of PHP. With more organizations sticking to older versions of PHP comes more web hosting firms that continue to offer web hosting on older PHP platforms and that holds back the entire PHP web development community.Eclipse and NetBeans are the two most popular free and open-source integrated development environments for PHP. You should not really bother about setting up a low memory footprint development environment because it would not make much of a difference to the application that you build - when you deploy it on a production environment, there is no need to have an integrated development environment setup. Most integrated development environments are memory hogs. Consider Eclipse, NetBeans, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server Administration Studio, Oracle SQL Developer, and Oracle Data Integrator. Minimizing the memory footprint for an integrated development environment is not really a priority for most software vendors and few developers actually demand it - they invest heavily in their development machines so do not see a need for pushing vendors to reduce memory usage and instead demand more features.If you do not have a system capable of running an integrated development environment, you can still use text editors. On Windows, you can use Notepad++, EditPlus, or TextPad. On Linux, you can use gVim, vi, emacs, gEdit, or NEdit.The LAMPP server itself does not consume as much of the system resources as most enterprise grade application servers but if you are still short on resources, you can use FastHTTPd or nginx instead of Apache. You should be able to run a web server with even 64MB of RAM, provided that you disable the graphical interface of the operating system.


  6. If you want to use your computer for home automation and for setting up a CCTV network, or you want to have a touch screen, you ought to get a desktop because you can easily fit in a PCI Express card into a full-tower case or can get an all-in-one with a rather large touch screen.Barring these needs, a laptop offers pretty much whatever a desktop has to offer and at a lower price point if you do not mind the smaller screen size. Unless you are planning an assembled desktop computer, a laptop computer will cost almost the same even if you were to pick out a desktop with the smallest computer screen (which nowadays is about 21 inches, unless you were to pick out a really low specification which would have an 18 inch or a 19 inch monitor to go with it).From an environmental perspective, a laptop runs more efficiently and has parts that are built to run with lesser electricity. However, from a durability perspective, a desktop computer would last longer and is not something that you would toss into the dumpster after you are done with it so it would be re-used even after it has lived its useful life for you. Some people may argue that this is one of the negative impacts of old desktop computers on the environment because people would still be using old inefficient computers instead of getting newer more energy efficiency computers and electronics. While that may be true, unless the computer is running round the clock, which is unlikely to be the case for many computer users, the cost of building a new computer and processing the waste from an old computer would be much higher on the environment in terms of a carbon footprint when compared to re-using an old computer. If you were to get a computer powered by an Intel Atom processor, you would be using much less electricity than if you were still running on an old computer with an Intel Core 1 processor while still getting comparable computing power (that is debatable but the performance of the two processors would be rather close).When you get a laptop computer, a lot of the components are fixed or soldered onto the mainboard itself or are not user-upgradeable so you would be 'stuck' with whatever you buy with the exception of getting more memory for the computer or upgrading the hard disk drive. However, with a desktop computer, you can change the graphics adapter by swapping in an old dedicated graphics adapter with a newer one, or perhaps even stick with the integrated graphics initially and get a dicrete graphics adapter when you have the budget for it. However, I doubt I would be going down that route right away considering that computer components have got rather cheap and the convenience of using a laptop outweighs the benefits of getting a desktop considering that I frequently move - I mean I shift my location of residence so paying for international shipping and paying for import duties on a desktop computer does not really make much sense considering that laptops can be taken around without any import duties and a laptop is considered a personal item and is not counted as a hand bag.My laptop is in need of replacement and right now I am considering another laptop purchase sometime next year. I may consider holding out till Intel launches their Ivy Bridge processors, which are supposed to be more energy efficient when compared to the current generation of Sandy Bridge processors while offering a twenty percent increase in performance, which does not really seem much when compared to the performance difference between the first generation and second generation of Intel Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors. I am considering a larger screen too simply because I do not want to have to get an external display when I need to multi-task, which I tend to do a lot - I watch a movie while working or need to keep track of my downloads while I post to the forums. A 17 inch screen is pretty much the largest that most laptop manufacturers have to offer (though there are some rare laptops with 19 inch screens too and I image those must be heavy) but I may eventually decide to go with a 15 inch screen if I cannot find laptop cases and other accessories for it.


  7. Velma,I am usually on Xisto most of the time so I do not earn much on Xisto either. I remember a long long time ago when the MyCENT script on Xisto was stopped for upgrading the forum and right after the script was back online, I got credit for all of the posts that were made so I can vouch for the fact that we never lose any of the MyCENTs. I have never had any unaccounted posts and the credit does get added to my account somehow even if it is a bit delayed.The Lo-Fi version of Asta Host is slower for me because of the advertisements that have to load with the website. The full-featured version does not have any advertising while I am logged in so it loads so much quicker. In either case, I doubt I would be using the Lo-Fi version of the website for the most part - I am quite happy with the full-featured version of the website.BTW, whenever I got to Xisto through Google, I would land on pages with a pink theme and they looked rather nice. Do you happen to have a screenshot of that theme or perhaps even a saved web page of it? I only got to it once when I had cleared by browser's cookies and cache. Although it was visually rather appealing, it was hard to figure out how to log in - I found a "full-featured interface" link that I followed to get the login link on the upper right of the website. The Lo-Fi version of Xisto did not really compare to that of the old Lo-Fi interface of Xisto though... if there's some way to get the theme ported to the new version of Invision Power Board, that would be really great.


  8. Mr.Dee,As you are not using a content management system for your website, you do not have the ability to configure your setup to send out updates via RSS. If you are running your website on a template engine, such as Smarty, you may be able to create another template with XML output instead of sending out HTML. This approach is the simplest if your website is currently running on a template engine. You may be able to get an RSS template that you can replace the variables in to get your data through. If you are using custom PHP scripts to power your website, you have to code the scripts to generate XML output yourself. You have to escape the bits of data that would be invalid within the XML so you could use some sort of a filter ( a function through which all of the data is passed so you can substitute the data that is invalid XML). The W3C site may be able to help you with validating the XML that you generate. I'm not sure, but I am guessing that they may have an RSS validation service as well.I would classify this thread under programming rather than under telecommunications because I see telecommunications as the signal processing and transmission of signals through radio waves, light, and other forms of communication, rather than the study of data formats and interoperability of information systems, which I see as more of a programming ordeal.


  9. AnnyPhp,I have tried using WordPress, Drupal, CakePHP, Code Igniter, and Barebones PHP (there are two different frameworks with the exact same name; I used the one that was present on Cisco routers). Of the lot, Barebones PHP was quick and simple to use. In comparison, Code Igniter came with a lot of features that I did not really need and so did CakePHP. CakePHP has a scaffolding feature that I found rather useful in developing internal business applications and it sped up the development considerably. Code Igniter, on the other hand, excluded the scaffolding feature in newer versions of its software. WordPress and Drupal are content management systems, but you can do a whole lot with a content management system, getting it to host blogs, websites, shopping carts, and even product catalogs.If you are looking for something that you can develop software with and can run on a cheap old Linux box, you should build your PHP scripts with no framework at all to avoid the overhead. If you run WordPress and hold down the F5 key while the website is open in your browser, you will know what I mean. There are lots of people who complain about the CPU usage of WordPress and there's an article you can Google for titled "WordPress: Destroyer of CPUs" (or something along those lines - search without the quotes). To get around the CPU usage, web masters typically setup their WordPress websites to use some form of caching. W3 Total Cache is currently a favorite among web masters and web developers while WP Super Cache is pretty common among blogs that were setup back in the day when WordPress caching was in its infancy. Some people prefer HyperCache too, so the WordPress community is rather fragmented over their choice of caching plugins.If you want to look at software built without a framework, take a look at the Mantis open-source bug tracking system. It uses no framework and does not create much of a CPU processing overhead. The Mantis bug tracking project is still active and there are frequent updates to the software so you might be able to pick up a thing or two as you follow their development on the project.


  10. Hi!I have not had to setup a bilingual website using WordPress yet, but I get what you are hinting at. You can have WordPress setup in two different folders or can have it host two different sub directories with a single installation. However, an alternative is to create each of the pages twice and in separate categories. WordPress has the ability to add a page to multiple categories so even if you are using WordPress categories for your website, you do not have to give up the use of categories to setup a bilingual WordPress website. When the user signs up, you can display a menu for the pages within a specific category so the user only gets the links to the pages that you specify as the category for the language that the user selects. In summary, you would be using a single installation of WordPress, with a single database, but will be creating categories to represent the two different languages. You will then create separate menus for each of the two languages and display the menu for the language selected by the user.The URLs in the address bar may not be what you would like to see but that should not really matter much anyway.You can integrate WordPress with an existing website by specifying the page as a home page, or by adding a link to the page using a custom menu.


  11. Hi!I visited the website today and it seems to be working normally. I guess you got the help you needed.Moving WordPress between different domain names is the hard part because unlike some other content management systems, WordPress generates absolute URLs, even for the CSS stylesheets! There are ways around it by writing up a plugin for turning the absolute URLs into relative URLs through the WordPress API.The URLs that appear in the database often contain the URL of the posts and are absolute URLs as well, though another developer once mentioned that WordPress does not use those URLs but a few plugins do so you've got to check if any of your plugins are pointing to the wrong URL. WordPress has the domain name within URLs in several different places but you should be able to find them all in the SQL scripts that you use to export data from the database.


  12. If you are a newbie at WordPress theme development, you would no doubt have looked at using the_date() in displaying the dates for each of the posts on a blog. The function has the same naming convention as the_title(), the_author(), and the_content(), so it seems like the most logical choice of WordPress API functions to display the date of a post. However, what many new theme developers do not know is that the the_date() function will only display unique dates. What I mean is that when a date is displayed on a post, if the following post has the same date, the the_date() function does not display the date. This may seem weird but that is the way it works. Perhaps somebody who does not want to display the dates over and over again would find this function useful but for the rest of us, we want the dates to be displayed for each and every post, such as in the post metadata that appears below the title of each post or below the article itself. The solution here is to use the get_the_date() function and echo the return value instead of calling the the_date() function.The get_the_date() function can also be substituted with the the_time() function with a date format parameter. The the_time() function can also be used to output the time in addition to the date, so if you are looking for the time of the post too, the the_time() post is what you are looking for.


  13. The upgraded software on Asta Host does look a whole lot better. I spotted a website still running on a slightly customized default theme of the older version of Invision Power Board so I had a chance to compare the two websites. The sidebar menu of the new version of Invision Power Board can be seen on Xisto as it is missing on Asta Host right now, but you may see the Asta Host sidebar coming up sometime soon as features are activated following the upgrade.The coolest features of the new version of Invision Power Board that I have noticed over the past few days are the progress bar that appears on the top of the web page when an operation is in progress, so you do not accidentally close the window before a post gets through, and the ability to set your current status on your profile by clicking on your username on the top bar of the website (the one on the upper left, next to the Sign Out link). You no longer have to go to the profile page or have to type in a much-too-narrow text box limited by the width of the sidebar.


  14. Velma,The link from forums.html to index.php may be simply a re-map done through Apache. Some web masters configure Apache to display the .html extension instead of the .php extension becuase they believe that it improves their web site's ranking in search engines. It may no longer be true but some people do it anyway so having the Xisto link changed from forums.html to index.php will not really affect the ranking much. However, the folks managing the web application install and maintenance at Xisto does have to ensure that they deals with the page not found 404 errors that the search engine bot gets when it attempts to connect to the old URL to ensure that it retains the page ranking for the old pages, especially if it has a lot of backlinks pointing to forum.html.I tried accessing the lo-fi version of the website but for me it loads slower than the full-featured version of the website because when I am logged in, the forum does not display any advertisements but the lo-fi version of the website does display image based advertisements and that makes the forum load slower than it does right now. Also the navigation in the lo-fi version requires me to navigate through two levels of the forum categories before I can access the posts so I would much rather use the full-featured version or put together a script that picks up posts from the news feed (I'm assuming that the news feed has also been enabled for the new version of the website).Quatrux,I've seen a lot of posts by you on Xisto in the past and have not seen much of you on Xisto but recently I have seen you more often on Xisto than on Asta Host. I haven't been on Asta Host in ages but I decided to check it out to see what theme they have on there. Also, Velma's post mentioning that the upgrade to the Invision Power Board software was on both forums so that prompted me to take another look. I could not find references to the Xisto website on the Xisto - Web Hosting website so I simply assumed that Xisto was not around any more but with the upgrade, I got the link again and I stand corrected - Asta Host is as active as ever, or perhaps more active than it used to be.BTW, the new logos for Xisto and Asta Host are up! Xisto had a different logo when I checked yesterday but it changed now. Also, I noticed that the logos have a plain-color background unlike the gradient that has been applied to the header bar so it looks a little out of place... it is the kind of thing that happens when you scroll and Windows (the operating system) only refreshes a part of the window (the GUI container).


  15. Alicia,I do not have a Dish Network subscription but with all the negative posts about experiences that people have had with Dish Network, I am probably not someone who would want to take up the service either.There are however a couple of things I do need to mention, in fairness to Dish Network:Firstly, when a receiver has not been returned to Dish Network after the cancellation of the account, Dish Network can legally collect the rental for the receiver. Think of the case when you lease your car to somebody and they return it a month late - you are legally entitled to the rental for the additional month. The same applies to the received from Dish Network as well. By delaying the return of the receiver, the (former) customer causes lost revenue for the firm and is therefore liable to Dish Network. However, the customer has to be informed of how to return the receivers - if the boxes are shipped automatically and the customer receives them, there is an obligation for the customer to send the receivers back. Some posts to this thread indicate that the customers didn't receive the boxes so were unaware of how to send the receivers back.I do not agree with the other practices by Dish Network, such as increasing prices without notifying the customer especially when the customer has cancelled his or her subscription, as mentioned in the first post in this thread by kvonarya (dated 22nd April, 2008).Signing up customers for a contract without informing them about the existence of the contract or that they are bound to the contract is not something Dish Network can legally do because there was no consent between the two parties. The customer should have had an opportunity to refuse the contract or should have had the ability to agree to the contract for the contract to be valid. Refer to the post by iGuest (posted on 23rd March, 2009) for the mention about the two year contract. Also, I would add that deliver firms often obtain customer signatures on PDAs to indicate that they have received goods or the equipment has been setup by a representative of the firm. However, the legality of the use of a signature on a PDA does seem questionable in the event of a law suit because the representative can state anything while obtaining the signature of the customer therefore there is no indication of the terms that the customer agreed to when signing a PDA. When signing a paper, the terms that the customer agrees to are right there on the paper.In cases when a box has been ordered from Dish Network and the customer has not received the box, I would expect Dish Network to provide the customer with an alternative means of sending the receiver - either inform them of an address that the customer can send the receiver to by a courier service, at the customer's expense, or to drive over to the Dish Network office and hand over the receiver. It may also be possible for Dish Network to offer to send across a representative to pick up the receiver, either at the customer's expense or at Dish Network's expense if the customer is not located too far away.I am not sure if Dish Network provides customers with the option of buying the receiver rather than providing them with the receiver for the duration of the service. The network I currently subscribe to has me buying a receiver and I do not have a contract - I can get a month's subscription whenever I come to stay and when I'm away, my subscription lapses and my provider simply turns off the service. I own the receiver so the provider does not require the receiver to be returned so it is less risk for them and more flexibility in terms of subscription for me. I believe it is common practice for the network to ask for their receivers when the service has been cancelled - charging the customer for the receivers without asking them to return them is unethical as well because as far as I know, most agreements only state that the provider owns the receivers and is entitled to ask for them to be returned at any time. The agreement with Dish Network may be different but if those are terms that the customer agreed to (legally, the customer agrees to the provider's terms by signing up if any of the forms say in print that the customer agrees to the provider's terms - he or she either has to ask the provider what the its terms are when subscribing or the provider has to state the terms, either of which would seem acceptable).


  16. Abhishek,If you are applying to an MBA program, do make sure that you have a strong statement of purpose and get a good GMAT score (assuming that you are applying to a university in the United States).The statement of purpose is where you would highlight aspects of your resume that you think would give you an edge over other applicants. It also conveys your personality to the evaluators because you can express your thoughts, motivations, and feelings and present your circumstances within a statement of purpose. You can draw references to the incident that got you thinking about business administration, instances where you would think out of the box, success that you had in management and business administration, suggestions that you made to organizations either through contests or by writing to them as a concerned customer, taking the initiative to create change for a cause that you support, or even summer internships that changes your perspective about running a business. You can include positive comments and remarks that you get from your employers regarding your time management, resource management, presentation and communication abilities as well as your ability to organize your work and improve your efficiency or the efficiency of your team.Academic institutions are always on the lookout for students who would have an active role within the research community at the university so any research papers that were published in journals would be a definite plus when applying at any academic institution of higher learning.Moving between different fields of study is usually a good thing - you can draw upon your knowledge in both fields and can manage to synthesize your learning from different disciplines.


  17. Velma,I have heard quite a bit about God of War, mostly because the UAE government had banned it and taken it off store shelves in the interest of younger computer gamers. In the UAE, computer game ratings are not really a concern as long as the game does not include sexual references or references to religion. Violence in computer games is tolerated because its influence is much debated. Some people claim that the violence in computer games keeps people from getting violent in real life whereas other people claim that it is the violence in media and computer games that makes children violent.I did get to catch the God of War trailer on YouTube and read the story line on the first two in the God of War computer game series and did find a rather interesting story line to follow. Having played many games along the lines of Doom and Wolfenstein where one has to find his or her way through a maze while shooting computer controlled 'enemies', I look for something new in computer games to keep me hooked. I like the sandbox style gaming in Grand Theft Auto and Mafia, and although I have not really had a chance to try Saint Row yet, I'm pretty sure I will like it as it is in the same genre. The story line plays a part in getting my interest too.


  18. SheepDog,If you would like help with using an image editing software program and are on the lookout for a tutor, I'm available. There is plenty of free software around so you do not have to go out and get yourself commercial software if all you plan to do is edit images occasionally. Paint.NET and Gimp are the two most popular software programs that are free and they even let you keep the source code so if you want something to work differently, you can hire a software programmer and they can alter the software to suit your style of working.Among the popular software out there are the Adobe Photoshop, Adobe FireWorks (formerly known as Macromedia FireWorks), Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and Corel Paint Shop Pro (formerly known as Jasc Paint Shop Pro). You could get copies of these software if you plan to go about creating posters, editing pictures of the puppies that you plan to put up on your website for sale, and doing some image editing stuff as a freelancer.Lots of folks on this forum would be willing to help out with image editing if you do not want to do it yourself, so you could also post a thread and you will most probably get some help with image editing.


  19. Velma,Asta Host sounds like a good place to hang out to pick up some mad techie skills but I guess it is more of a place for people who live with a particular technology day in and day out so I'll probably get started on Xisto.I'm not too particular about getting a new theme for the forum because I kinda like the default that is included with the forum.Mahesh,Remember when we had a toolbar at the bottom of the page consisting of games? The toolbar increased loading time quite a bit.BTW, I used my phone, the Nokia E72, to access Xisto and it didn't quite fit the screen width so I imagine you must be using an iPad or a tablet to access the forums.I haven't compared vBulletin with Invision Power Board but I did have a look at phpBB and bbPress, both of which are free, and bbPress seemed to have a better plugin architecture than phpBB but I imagine phpBB would be quicker than bbPress because of the lack of a plugin architecture.Quatrux,If you are planning on changing something yourself, you should consider using a web monkey script. You can use web monkey to alter the markup of the page and perhaps add some CSS styling to the elements too.


  20. Velma,I must admit that I am at the exact opposite site of the Corel Draw-Illustrator debate from where you are. I have used Adobe Illustrator and have not used Corel Draw. I did try an old version of Corel Draw sometime in 1999 so that does not really count. The vector smoothing in Corel Draw was rather good at the time compared to Adobe Illustrator when creating hand-drawn (or rather cursor-drawn free form drawings) whereas Adobe Illustrator is the tool of choice when primarily working with the pen tool and creating vector graphics as a part of a work flow that involves other Adobe graphics editing tools.You should also try Adobe Fireworks, which became a part of Adobe's offering after Macromedia's acquisition by Adobe. Fireworks is a good alternative to Adobe Illustrator and provides easy access to the gradient tools. I typically build my vector shapes in Adobe Illustrator and color them using Fireworks.


  21. That is a rather interesting problem. Although it may seem that you are sending information at a speed faster than sound, you have to consider that the parts of the rope move a rather small distance whereas sound or light has to travel from one end of the rope to the other. It is similar to comparing the cases of walking over to push a light switch and using a long stick to flip the light switch - in the first case, you are moving from your seat to the light switch whereas in the second case, your hand moves a small distance, as does the stick (assuming that the stick was at the same level as the switch and placed on a table a little distance away from the switch) so you cannot really say that you have travelled much faster in the second case than you did in the first case.To move a length of rope that is a billion miles long, it would take quite a bit of effort. Consider the weight of a box full of clothes. Now consider several such boxes stacked upon one another. One cannot just pull such a long length of rope by hand as it would be physically impossible for a person to do so.


  22. Hi!I'm planning on starting a site about management theories and techniques and selling books. I'm not too sure if there are many takers because most managers end up learning on the job rather than reading about how it is done while, in the process, putting billions of dollars down the drain. Perhaps I might put a twist to it and write about management information systems because most I.T. folk read a lot of articles on the Internet, especially when there is a problem that they want to solve. The free content would be a bait and hopefully they would want to buy some books while they are on the site. I do not expect much money to come in but as long as it can pay for itself and later make enough to hire an author to keep posting to the site.Wow! You have a website to sell puppies? I'd be glad to lend a hand and help you out with the website if you need any work done on it. And perhaps you could have it linked to your cell phone so you can continue with your business while on the go. Have you considered becoming a pet consultant? You could have a Q&A about pets and share your experience with dog breeding.If you would like to go on a vacation, there are plenty of cheap ways to go on a vacation. You could rent a camper and head out to the woods or go across the state borders and cash in on a cheap hotel offer (most of them offer weekend packages). You could also visit family and they would be glad to have you over for the holiday season and you just might find something under the Christmas tree to cheer you up.The idea of getting online has been around for a long long time but it is only recently that people have decided to make their websites a central part of their businesses and as the sole channel of marketing and sales. Some people use websites to attract people to their exhibitions, such as by reaching out to potential customers on FaceBook and Twitter while other people setup FaceBook pages to sell stuff. Either approach seems to work for them, though it takes a bit of experimenting to figure out which approach would work best as it depends on the audience that you are trying to reach and on the product that you are selling.BTW, the Xisto forum has been upgraded and the sidebar for comments is working now. It does take longer than it used to but hey, it's better than something that does not work at all. The forum also displays a progress bar on top of the screen to indicate that it is working and not simply idling away.


  23. The Intel Atom processor does pretty much anything that your laptop processor can. If you take an Intel Core Duo processor from 2006 you can get almost the same performance from an Intel Atom processor. You can play games on it, but do not expect to play the latest and the greatest of games on it. Many netbooks combine the Intel Atom processor with a dedicated graphics processor so the graphics processing is offloaded and the processor can handle pure computational tasks. The graphics processor is best suited for performing matrix copying and matrix transformations so it can beat even the newest of general purpose processors so if you combine an Intel Atom processor with a dedicated graphics processor, you can play some of the games that you would not be able to play on a computer with a new Intel Core i3 processor alone. However, you do have to consider the advancements in the Sandy Bridge platform that Intel has used for manufacturing the second generation of Intel Core i3 processors so that does narrow the performance gap a bit.If you are planning to do some serious gaming, plan for at least an Intel Core i3 processor and if that is beyond your budget, invest in an AMD E450 processor that does go beyond the performance that an Intel Atom processor has to offer but still does not quite compare to the modern day notebook or desktop processor. If I had to decide between getting a computer with an Intel Atom processor, an AMD E450 processor, or an Intel Core i3 processor, I would get the one with the Intel Core i3 processor because it could handle my general purpose requirements with some light to medium gaming. If I was truly serious about gaming, I would have considered the option of getting a second hand computer with an Intel Core i3 or Intel Core i5 processor from the first generation of Core i3/i5 processors and then getting a dedicated graphics processor to manage the graphics. You would be surprised at how low people are willing to sell their old computers when they have to move away, especially if they have desktop computers.

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