nolan
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Everything posted by nolan
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Increase Your Internet Speed X2 [easy Edition]
nolan replied to Ash-Bash's topic in General Discussion
The problem with the speed test is that you're trying to benchmark your own bandwidth (which is more lilely than not variable based upon load) against the variable bandwidth of another server whose capacity you aren't even fully aware of. So basically you're benchmarking between two fluctuating mile markers. That might be okay if you're just looking for a quick, no-consequence estimate, but doesn't serve much of a professional purpose. -
They don't have to be explicitly declared in the document to be created (that is, the elements can be created through Javascript). Additionally, Javascript includes share a namespace, meaning that include A gets to use the methods of include B and so forth. You can look through the bulletin boards include files if you want to see how anything related to it is created. The source for the main Gmail interface (since you mentioned it before) can be accessed via https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http://mail.google.com/mail/&scc=1<mpl=googlemail&emr=1. You didn't mention any of my other points. As a general note to thread viewers, you can see what the W3C HTML 5 draft has to say about iframes (not deprecated) here: http://w3c.github.io/html/
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[1] Quatrux: Do yourself a favor and take a look at the script powering the shoutbox: http://forums.xisto.com/jscripts/shoutbox/shoutbox.js. While you're at it, bring up a 'Find' dialog box and type in iframe. If you'd like, you can do the same thing for the Gmail source. Case in point: What you said is inaccurate, and could have been verified in a couple of seconds if you wanted to double-check for yourself, rather than simply trying to shoot what I said down ineffectively and without any prompt to do so. [2] As another correction so that future viewers don't get misled: you -cannot- always use CSS to accomplish the same things you can accomplish with iframes. For example, you cannot create an upload form using css that doesn't redirect away from the current page without relying on Flash/Java/etc if you don't want to use frames/objects. You can use AJAX+CSS to accomplish some of the things an iframe can, but not all of them (efficiently, at least), although that also relies on the viewer having Javascript enabled. For your other point, it is true that iframe contents are not indexed by search engines, although this is only if another direct link is not provided to the same url elsewhere on the site. This usually doesn't matter due to the fact that it's very rare that you want the content indexed (e.g., if the iframe is a chat box, an upload form, or a data aggregator). If you do want it to be indexed, chances are high that it can act as a stand-alone webpage and should be linked to directly elsewhere. Also, for your point about text browsers, alternative solutions (when includes aren't an option) work just as badly or worse. Try loading up an AJAX-intensive website in a text browser and see what happens. [3] Using iframes is -not- a bad practice unless they are used for the wrong reasons. As I've mentioned, you -cannot- always achieve the same results through other methods. When using them, you -should- consider accessibility issues and you -should- consider better alternatives, -if- possible, although that is not always the case.
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BuffaloHelp is correct. A couple of other things worth noting are that an e-mail interface is not an inherent part of an SMS gateway (with the exception of SMSC gateways). I cannot think of a single example where an e-mail interface has not been provided, however, whether because of its inclusion within the mainstream software powering SMS gateways or due simply to convention. In the case of an e-mailed message, the SMS gateway is functioning essentially the same, with the sole difference that its interpretation of the input is adjusted to parse the appropriate information from a mail message (again, with a couple of exceptions). The output remains unchanged. On another note, there are middleware providers of SMS solutions. These are still SMS gateways, but they allow you to utilize their gateway to add SMS/MMS functionality to your programs via APIs. I can't think of any that are completely free, though. (Well, I can recall one, but its daily limits were incredibly low. I can try to snoop out the address if you'd like.)
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World's Ugliest Website I believe I have found it
nolan replied to BooZker's topic in Websites and Web Designing
To begin, I'm a designer, so that naturally affects the way that I look at things. That being said, I consider at least half of the websites I come across to be ugly. I consider them so for a number of reasons, but the typical reasons are: the design was cluttered, the arrangement/navigation made little sense, the site required excessive viewer interaction to find what they need, there were too many animations, there were excessively bold or otherwise poor color choices, or there was a lack of consideration for accessibility.STILL, however, I have to acknowledge the old saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". What looks good to me won't necessarily look that great to you, and vice-versa. Chances are that the person who designed the website you mentioned thought it wasn't that ugly, or else they probably wouldn't have made it look the way they did. (That or they simply didn't care.) -
I'm going to have to second this. For many languages (and compared to other free translation services), Google translate performs exceptionally well. There was a time a few years back when I used Babel fish's free translation services and I can remember typing a sentence in, translating it to another language, and then translating the result back to the original language and seeing something with a completely different meaning. With Google I (personally) have not encountered this problem to any considerable degree.
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Personally, I enjoy the mountains theme. I'm often inclined to use natural themes. Some of the more abstract themes just make my eyes hurt after looking at them for too long.Prior to using the mountains theme (before it was available) I used an oriental theme of some sort that depicted a cartoon fox and his garden. I liked it because it wasn't overly bold and the colors meshed well with each other.In the end, I can live with just about any theme where the colors compliment each other and the elements aren't obsessively bold.
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Hello. To begin, I've made more than enough posts to become hosted. I'm not interested in having another hosting account (I pay for my hosting), but we'll disregard that as a logical fallacy. When it comes to correcting inaccuracies that could mislead others, yes, I feel a drive to do so. As for contributing "lesser informed views", my view is accurate and testable. You, on the other hand, have contributed absolutely nothing of consequence in your post. True "fledglings" are those who do not yet have their own ideas to contribute. Moving along, you eluded to me being corrected. Please demonstrate what precisely that correction is (for the benefit of thread viewers) and provide evidence supporting the "correction". (That's what should be done when arguing a point, after all.) Finally, as to you believing your level of technical knowledge exceeds my own, that's highly debatable, although I truly couldn't care less. I did not claim to know more than you or anyone; I merely made an (accurate) correction to a statement that could dissuade new developers from making use of a technology that is perfectly valid to use and widely adopted by established organizations. I've also provided a list of organizations to back up that statement. I hope that helps to clarify any constructs that might have initially evaded your grasp.
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This is incorrect. Scientists do not know (beyond hypotheses) the placement of black holes. It is true, however, that objects in space are in constant motion. Additionally, in many scientific communities it is believed that black holes reside at the center of many galaxies, but there is no evidence that our world is growing either closer or farther away from the physical center of our galaxy. To get back on point for the original question, it's not far-fetched to believe they exist. If you're looking for scientific proof, there are many even more practical theories that are as yet still theories and not law. In the end, time will tell, but I'd say it's a safe bet.
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Hi, You mentioned my name below but I'm not sure that this is a response to what I said, as it seems more like a general statement. I don't disagree that PHP is the most widely available language in terms of web host availability. I hesitate to say "most popular" for any language due to the fact that "popular" is relational to perspective. If you're referring to popularity by volume of use by all web developers, yes, I'd say PHP is the most popular. If you're referring to popularity amongst professional developers only, the picture might change. If you're referring to popularity by actual web app usage, again, it would be an entirely different story. That's not considering popularity amongst specific development communities/niches, either. As for the point about performance, again I don't disagree, although this is compensated for through scalability. The thing you then have to consider is how much money you want to soak into hardware resources to maintain an app in one language versus another (that is, would you rather have 6 computers scaling a Language X app or 3 scaling a Language Y app, all else equal). Once more, though, everything is relative. Someone might know, for example, that Lift outperforms Django and Ruby on Rails in terms of web framework speed, but does that mean they'll necessarily choose the faster framework? No. And in this case, for good reason (the Lift documentation is horrible). The ease-of-use, general functionality, and other aspects of a language also play a vital role in driving these decisions. It all goes back to the point I'd mentioned in my post: all languages have their own advantages/disadvantages.
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Hi again, Iframes are used all over the place for advanced and semi-advanced web apps. At the top of my head, Gmail and Google Wave both use iframes, not to mention this bulletin board (the shoutbox is an iframe). In some places, Yahoo uses iframes, Bing uses them in image results (I believe Google does, too). Amazon and eBay use iframes... The list goes on and on. In short, you do know of a lot of places out there that use iframes, sometimes it's just not apparent/significant that they do
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Increase Your Internet Speed X2 [easy Edition]
nolan replied to Ash-Bash's topic in General Discussion
Your network connection (or another part of your network) would have to be horribly misconfigured for it to reduce your potential bandwidth by half. In reality, this isn't likely to be the case. Even default configurations are reasonably well-suited to provide high throughput/overall throughput. And if it were true that a substantial population of users were suffering from a 50% speed reduction, Internet providers would either receive a lot more complaints about falsely advertised bandwidth ratings or would have to essentially double the throughput speed they advertise to offset the loss due to typical configurations.Small to moderate increases, on the other hand (say, of the 1-20% variety), could be possible through minor tweaking, although you would want to make sure you understand the settings you are adjusting before modifying them (e.g., they could be set lower than their maximum value intentionally to assist with error checking, etc.). -
if (you_want_to_learn_php) { try { /* reading the manual */ } } The documentation for just about any language is a really good place to start trying to learn the language. You can find the PHP manual here: http://php.net/manual/en/. It includes a quick getting started tutorial, as well. The Tizag tutorials are also nice. They're available at tizag.com.
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PHP is a very useful language. It's highly available (probably the most readily available of interpreted languages offered by web hosts), easy to learn, has a nice lineup of language methods, is scalable, has intuitive (built-in) database access methods, and (in my opinion, anyway), is incredibly easy to learn.On the down side, the PHP namespace is somewhat cluttered, although most people who try to attack the language exaggerate this issue, due to the fact that many of the method names aren't names you'd naturally come up with, unless they're there to serve the same purpose. Additionally, PHP is not entirely object oriented (types are not objects), unlike with other languages such as Ruby. (Being able to do things like array.each { code } is much more efficient than creating a for or while loop to iterate through an array.)Most popular languages are good languages to develop with, as well as a few unpopular ones. Each language has its own advantages and disadvantages. Don't bother following hype because it changes all the time, and no matter what language you end up using, there'll be people dead set on trying to explain to you how awful your language choice was. Just ignore them. People don't make amazing web apps (or any other kind of app) by arguing about which language is better and for what reason. Review a little bit, find a language that suits you, use it, and get things done.
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I'm not sure you read my post thoroughly. iframes are a type of framing (hence "inline frames", their name). Too many people disassociate iframes and frames from one another, when in fact they rely on many of the same underlying functions of a browser and are both considered members of the frame family. iframes are still very much in use, and are in fact used more frequently today than in the past. In addition, and as I mentioned, iframes are not deprecated in the HTML 5 spec as they are for XHTML, so they're going to be perfectly valid for the future.
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Frames are history now? That's funny, because the very forum you're posting this message on uses frames. (Notice the shoutbox?) Not only that, but the HTML 5 specifications expand the functionality of iframes (see: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/). Frames are not history, nor are they inherently bad for every use case. Several large websites utilize iframes (inline frames) for different purposes, and a lot of powerful web apps rely on frames to achieve offline app-like capabilities that it would be either inefficient or unintelligent to attempt with other techniques. In some cases, however, iframes can be replaced with objects (with some distinctions). You can look at what the W3C specifications say about the differences for more info. HTML files embedded as objects tend to be less cross-browser compatible, however. No matter which way you go you have compatibility/accessibility issues to consider.
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Disproving Mormonism A few facts that disprove the mormon faith
nolan replied to Prox's topic in General Discussion
This post seems to follow the very widespread notion (and fallacy) that it is possible to disprove a religion/ethnicity, whether it be Mormonism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Paganism, or whatever else. The problem is that a religion is an institution, an organization for a body of believers of a particular faith. It's no more possible to disprove religion than it is to disprove Microsoft or Wal-mart. You can attempt to disprove particular notions or ideas within a set of beliefs, but to claim to disprove a religion as a whole is just foolishness. Besides, if one is at all convinced of their own beliefs, they wouldn't care to try to disprove those of another without any overwhelming push to do so. Far too many individuals believe it is their purpose in life to set people straight for their "inferior" notions, when in fact their own beliefs often have just as many unanswered questions, loopholes, or other irrationalities as the one they're attempting to "disprove". -
Where did I learn HTML? Wow, I'm probably going to date myself here compared to all the young'ns, but believe it or not, there was a time when Google hadn't yet leaped into existence and Yahoo! was a relatively small fish. I have trouble even remembering what was popular around the time, but I believe that Excite was a pretty major web portal (it was one of the more obscure ones these days, and excite sounds the most familiar). Directories were still very popular (later replaced in popularity by search engines), and still bore a resemblance to the first web directory created by Tim Berners-Lee. (Tim Berners-Lee is the creator of the Web and also developed the first Web directory, which originally kept track of nearly all websites.) At any rate, I believe I began learning HTML through the limited array of tutorials sites available in different directories of the time. One site in particular stands out to me, and I can remember its design, but the name escapes me.In a way, it was easier to learn various Web-related technologies back then, due to the fact that (most) people didn't feel the need to develop ego complexes over what they knew or were able to do. Arrogant minds make poor teachers, and the world's in no short supply of those right now. Back then, most people were simply fascinated by things.
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What Is Programming Language Of Google Etc.?
nolan replied to itssami's topic in Science and Technology
Google has historically used PHP, and its use can still be seen in some lab projects, so this isn't correct. Note, too, that Google mentions PHP in many of its job descriptions for this same reason. It is true, however, (and as I said in my original post) that Google relies extensively on Python (and Java as well, among other things). I also mentioned in my post that the -creator- of Python is employed at Google, and for trivia points, he's allowed to use 50% of his time to continue developing Python while at work (pretty nice incentive, huh?). Most large technology companies actually understand that different languages have different advantages/disadvantages and don't succumb to fanboism for a particular language. They use what works well for the task, and that's that. -
Occurrences of eczema are more pronounced around this time of year. It's a skin disease that can manifest in several ways, including dryness, itchiness, skin cracking, reddening, etc. As mentioned, using a moisturizer is a good idea, especially one with aloe/vitamin e. Additionally, as strange as it sounds, you should avoid excessive use of soap near the affected area, as it can irritate the skin. Alternatively, you could buy a good moisturizing soap with aloe or other nutrients that can help counter the effect. Reapply moisturizer each time you finish washing the affected area, too. Hope this helps.
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Would You Use Ie Explorer Even If It Wasn't Bundled With Windows?
nolan replied to The Simpleton's topic in The Internet
Referring to "better" browsers is really subjective. Internet Explorer has come a long way over time. Internet Explorer 9 is expected to have full CSS3 (already nearly witnessed in the beta) and HTML 5 support, along with many other improvements, and previous versions have adhered a lot more closely to W3C standards than their predecessors. Not only that, but if you're the kind of person that actually knows that browsers exist other than IE, Firefox, Safari, and perhaps Chrome, Opera, and Konquerer, you know there are a lot of browsers that are much worse than IE. Most people, however, never bother to look beyond the popular few they're already familiar with. Personally, I'm a web designer, so I work with several browsers, from text-based to popular to obscure. Some have neat features that none of the most frequently used browsers have, and some of the browsers that are best known for being "good browsers" have horrible performance in certain areas (typically JS engine performance or resource usage overall). In the end, my recommendation is for people to just find a browser they like and are comfortable with using and to stop dissing (pointlessly) on other browsers. Everyone has their own preferences. What works for you might not bode well with someone else and vice-versa. -
Being born to live in a small cage and be tested on doesn't sound like an ideal life to me. I'm a vegetarian, so I'm naturally against animal testing in most circumstances. For testing cosmetic products it's especially ludicrous. Not only that, but in the majority of cases the reactions experienced by animals won't accurately reflect the reactions a product could inspire in humans, so the testing is never a definitive safeguard against potential ill consequence. Besides, I think there are enough convicted murderers out there that would make good candidates for product testing. How would you like that for an anti-crime campaign: Don't do it or we'll inject random chemicals in you. And aside from them, there are quite a few other people out there who could only stand to benefit from having random experiments performed on them
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It seems to me that Firefox is entering the mobile browsing game fairly late. So many other browser developers either have A. contracts or B. long-standing relationships with mobile platform/device creators. Also, as it's been mentioned before, I would hope the mobile version isn't as resource-intensive as its desktop counterpart, relatively speaking. Personally, I think Firefox developers should just stick to working on improvements to the existing software, especially considering the advances Chrome, Safari, and (gasp) even IE are making.
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This isn't entirely accurate. Some servers can be configured to use a pool of CGI processes to pass requests to, meaning a process is not started anew for each request. Furthermore, 'cgi-bin' is just a folder. It can be configured to have any other name and serve the same purpose. -Certain- scripts are traditionally placed inside of the conventional 'cgi-bin' folder in order to use the Common Gateway Interface (what CGI stands for) to communicate with executables on the host system (or, as I've mentioned, pooled processes). Typically, however, it's better to rely on a module to get the work done for you, or to pass instructions using a system API. I hope that clarifies.
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[1] If things were already there, then there was no "nothing" to pop out of. I've pointed this out to you before. Further, to assume "things were already there", but to limit the possibility of things that were "already there" simply to mesh more cooperatively with whatever paradigm you choose to adhere to is, as I've mentioned before, constricting and nearsighted. [2] Again, you've failed to show where I've done so. Not only this, but my entire point was that creationism is not disproved by the other concepts you've referenced, which you've since agreed with on two separate occassions. [4] Which again do not touch on the fundamental concepts of creationism. [5] While you're going on with the "don't" knows that you've criticised mentioning earlier, you might want to throw in that we "don't know" if a "higher creature did it", because as you say, it cannot be "falsified with testable facts". Those are your own words, simply put into perspective. [6] You don't have to be sorry. As for answering to an argument that never existed, it was a valid point that needed no greater introduction than the context it was placed in (the scientific considerations of creationism, that is). [7] Saying one thing and then saying another which has a meaning contrary to your earlier statement is called a contradiction. You can look up the word in your dictionary of choice, if you prefer. The reason for you contradicting yourself is beyond my concern. As I've mentioned before, contradictions are highly frowned upon in any true academic or professional debate, and no one would spare you the time to explain yourself. [8] One providing no substantive arguments to a debate is not only wasting their own time, but the time of those who are participating substantively. Further, since you're so apt at trying to tear concepts down (ineffectively, nonetheless) in less than a minute, try these: 1. How did the concept of evolution itself ever come into being? Hint: without believing in creationism, your answer can only be: "through a series of random particle collisions that resulted in the framework for a complicated, ingrained function within living organisms". I'm sure even you can see the fallacy here. 2. Why should creatures have the desire to reproduce? After all, whether a species continues on or not is of little consequence to the universe. Note, too, that reproduction is not a subordinate function of evolution, but rather, evolution provides subordinate functions for reproduction. You should know that if you've studied evolution. (Your answer? A series of random particle collisions came together to instill in life the will and capacity to multiply.) 3. Why should a creature, arbitrarily created, have an ingrained system for ceasing its own existence (that is, why should death occur)? The constructs of death are embodied in our very genetic makeup, although our bodies are certainly otherwise able to sustain themselves for longer, being carbon-based lifeforms. The body itself, however, follows a natural path of degeneration, beyond the requirements of its material existence. This (as you know) again is not a subset of evolution, and to say that population control is the concern of an arbitrarily created lifeform is an awful stretch. In reality, there is no pinnable reason for death to have ever existed, and as it stands, the very notion is somewhat counterintuitive to the typical nature of evolution. (Your reply? Again, random particle collisions.) In the end, you're either placing an extraordinary amount of faith on arbitrarily colliding particles, or accepting that there might just be something larger than your own existence. For you to claim one is more scientific or intelligent than the other is simple foolishness by any other name.