Rael IAK

I believe that this debate pretty well centers around the fact that different groups of people have different definitions for the word "research". k_nitin_r's statement "Pretty much a large part of the world has no real idea what research is." tells me that he's noticed that not all people share his definition of the word. I don't necessarily agree with his conclusion though. Having a MSc, I think I can speak for what qualifies as research in the natural sciences. As part of my education, I also took a number of psychology courses so I know something about research in the social sciences as well. Finally, as a person who's been around for half a century, I think I have a pretty good idea of what the everyday use of the word research implies. k_nitin_r is defining research in a manner close to how a natural scientist would define it. All that is missing from his description is a reference to controlled experiments. In it's simplest form, a controlled experiment involves having 2 groups of identical individuals. Each group is exposed to conditions which are also identical except for one factor such as temperature, nutritional value of food, concentration of a chemical catalyst, etc. Since everything else was identical, any subsequent difference in the 2 groups can safely be said to have been caused by whatever factor was different. When enough other scientists repeat the same experiment enough times and get the same results, a particular theory becomes generally accepted. In the areas of psychology, sociology, political science and the other social sciences, research is routinely attempted in a manner similar to that of the natural sciences. Social scientists face a rather difficult problem however. It is generally not possible to conduct a controlled experiment. To do a study on the effects of the environment on human development without the results being clouded by differences in genetic makeup would involve separating identical twins at birth and then completely controlling their lives. In other words, social scientists attempting to do a controlled experiment will likely be tried and convicted of committing atrocities against mankind. As a result, their efforts to collect information usually consist of doing interviews, questionnaires, etc. One of the problems here is that the data collected is subjective. This topic is a perfect example. If I put together a questionnaire entitled "What is your opinion of research into Area X of human knowledge?", both k_nitin_r and webishqitar would be happy to give me answers but they would not be answering exactly the same question. Generally, I will not know that though. One of the underlying assumptions is that all the test subjects have the same definitions for all of the words used in the questions presented to them. Based on my personal experiences, this is often not the case and it's also nearly impossible to determine how often it actually happens. I often hear people who are not involved in either the natural or social sciences saying that they did research. I assume they are talking about something similar to what webishqiptar describes. It is basically about somebody (the researcher) having a question and using an organized and methodical approach to collecting information to help answer the question (the research). I personally don't have a problem with calling any of these 3 approaches to collecting information "research". They are all different, yes, but not completely different. They all start with a question and turn into an organized way of finding an answer. How "true" the answer needs to be will depend on the question being asked. In my mind, I am happy to call them all different forms of research. Let's say Objective, Subjective and Informal Research respectively. I am in total agreement with k_nitin_r that some things called research are not close to being objective research but I'm not prepared to label one as "right" and the rest as "wrong". They are all valid approaches to gathering information under certain circumstances.

I'm still pretty well new to Linux but from everything I've heard installing another Linux distro on your hard drive should work ok (assuming you have the hard drive space).One thing I know from personal experience as well as warnings from Debian, if you want a dual boot system, install the non-Linux operating systems FIRST. My Windows XP recently crashed so I erased and reinstalled it only to find I had lost access to Debian Lenny (my Linux partition). Partition Magic tells me my Linux partition is full which I know it's not close to being so when I get some time I need to reinstall that as well.So if you try installing another Linux distro and things don't work out and you have to reinstall everything, make sure you do the Windows installation 1st.Using a virtual machine as Quatrux suggested might be a good way to go initially to see how you like OpenSuse. My personal experiences with Live CDs is that they are OK for giving you a feel for what a distro looks like and how the desktop environment works but they don't have enough functionality to tell you if it's a "keeper".Good luck. I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence here but if you are going to mess with your hard drive remember to make backups of all your data files before doing so. I still forget on occasion :angel:

I am also a relatively new Linux user. I started using it about a year ago off a Live CD. After trying a few and doing some research, I decided to go with Debian and the LXDE desktop. Which version, or distro, you choose is largely a matter of what you want to do with it.1) If you just want an operating system that is "ready to go" out of the box, much like Windows is, Ubuntu (or one of it's variations) or PCLinux are good choices.2) If you want to know your OS inside out and tinker with it then something like Gentoo would be more to your liking as has already been pointed out. If you are not much of a computer "geek" then you should prepare yourself for a fairly long learning curve though.3) if you are like me and a "middle of the road" guy then you should look at something like Debian or Fedora.The particular reasons I picked Debian was mostly;1) It's reliability. It's a very conservative project. They are slow to release new versions compared to say, Ubuntu. Their philosophy is to get the bugs out before they release it as "stable". Don't expect the latest release to have cutting edge software but it is safe to assume that it's bulletproof.2) It has the largest number of pre-compiled and tested application packages around right now at about 23,000.Before a recent Windows crash/reinstall that resulted in my master boot record and or the Linux boot loader getting scrambled, I was using a dual boot set-up as well. I think it makes perfect sense to use your computer effectively while you are getting comfortable with Linux. Personally, my goal is to switch to Linux as my only operating system.Hope this was of some help.

Hello 230359 and welcome to the "Slightly Confused Newbies" Club. I, too, am a new member and still attempting to find my way around.At the risk of the blind leading the blind, here is what I think I've figured out.1) You post things on a forum and receive credits. Some of the forums do not "count" but they appear to be clearly marked. When you accumulate enough credits, you will be able to pay for a "month's worth" of hosting with Xisto.2) At some point you need to register with the Billing Department. I believe you can do that from https://support.xisto.com/. When you make an account with them, make sure you use the same e-mail address that you used when you registered for these forums. I've already done this part and the Billing Department seems quite happy to take a credit card as well as "MyCents" points.3) When you have enough MyCents to start an account, go to the bottom of the main forum "navigator" and there is a place to tell the Xisto administrators what you want to put on your proposed site. They have to approve it before you get storage space and bandwidth, it seems. Although I'm pretty well as new as you around here, this is what I'm guessing.If you want to start a site so that the members of your family which are scattered across a continent can communicate with each other, you will probably get approved. If your site's purpose is to promote the ethnic cleansing of some minority, it will probably not get approved, lol.Hope this helps. I hate feeling "lost" as well. Talk to you later.

Like just about everything I've learned since I finished University, I learned what HTML I know from a variety of sources. Primarily books I've grabbed at the local library and the numerous tutorial sites on the web.One site I've found especially useful is http://www.w3schools.com/. It covers the basics of HTML, XML, Javascript and the various server side scripting languages. Many of the tutorials also let you try coding on-line and show you instant results. This is great for people who learn best by doing. I'd recommend to anyone that they at least look at this sight for anything related to programming on the web. I didn't read all 15 pages of posts in this thread so if someone else has already mentioned this site, I apologize.In this day and age, if you are able to learn things reasonably well by reading then there is no good reason (other than for professional accreditation) to take a course in anything (in my opinion).

My biggest concern with sans-serif fonts on a computer monitor is that, while they are "easier on the eyes", they leave certain characters in a rather ambiguous state. Uppercase "I"s and lowercase "L"s are impossible to tell apart. I figure I can guess what is supposed to be what about 95% of the time. The problem I have is with things like URLs, e-mail addresses, passwords and such. As these are strings of characters that are seldom English (or any other language, for that matter), context won't help you much. I suppose that you could put most of your next in sans-serif and then use a serif font in these particular cases but I'm not sure .....What do other people think about this?

I just signed up in these forums and am taking a break from stumbling around aimlessly to introduce myself.I have always thought computers were neat. I bought my 1st one (an Apple II+ clone) around 25 years ago when you were a freak if you owned a PC, lol. I'm hoping to shake the dust off my HTML and javascript knowledge and see what damage I can do :angel: I would like to send up an SOS at this point though. I've never been big on forums and blogging and such so .....Can I position the cursor when I'm typing a post or am I forced to sit on my "Backspace" for a while when I notice a typo 3 sentences back and then re-type everything again? Selecting text and then trying to reformat it with the formatting icons at the top of the window doesn't seem to do much except add a bunch of "Line Breaks". Am I doing something wrong? Is there a post somewhere around here called "Typing posts for ubernewbs", lol?Thanks to anyone who can help,Rael

Hi SinceUrUp (& Ash-Bash, while I'm at it). This is actually my 1st post in these forums. I'll have to go do my own introduction in a couple of minutes, I guess LOL.I, too, have an interest in programming although it's a hobby and I'm a little old to take my 1st computer course ( :angel: ) so I doubt I'll end up doing it "professionally". I may end up picking your brains at some point when I start my website.I'm also bigger on being a sports participant than a spectator. I played both hockey and softball recreationally for around 35 years (I'm Canadian) and quite poorly I might add.Nice to sort of meet both of you. Catch you later and have funRael