MathGuy2

Even if we do exist, what's the point? If there isn't life after death, why worry about life before death? What does anything matter? If there is life after death, what do we care about that life? From all I've been taught in church, when we die we stay in heaven forever. What's the point of that? Why should we even care to stay in heaven - what will we do there? If we don't exist, what are the effects of anything we do? If there isn't life after death, why should we bother to save people's lives? If there is, why should we bother to save the lives of good people? If its citizens are going to heaven anyway, why does the Vatican need a defensive military force? What difference does it make whether or not we exist? What would we be able to use to define our existence? If there were a big switch in the sky labeled "Existence/Imagination", what would be the effects of pushing it?

To bypass any moderate-level block system, via Windows: [list=1] [*]Open a command prompt, via Start|Run|"command" or Start|Programs|Accessories|Command Prompt. [*]Type nslookup [url]www.website.com[/url] (or ping [url]www.website.com[/url] if nslookup gives Bad Command or Filename). [*]Find the line that says Address: 209.123.85.4 or Pinging [url]www.website.com[/url] [209.123.85.4]... and write down (or remember the number). [*]Access the site (type everything) [url]http://209.123.85.4:80/,[/url] or generally [url]http://x.x.x.x:80/.[/url] That should work. If that fails: [*]Search google for "free public proxy server" or the like, unless that search is blocked, in which case the word "pr0xy" can be substituted. If you can't find one: [*]If you can, download a proxy server to your home machine, and leave it on during school time. Find your own IP address (x.x.x.x) using winipcfg or ipconfig at the DOS prompt, depending on version. Leave it on and dialed-out (or otherwise connected) during the schoolday. Theoretically. (This is not a recommended option.) [*]Either way, with the IP of a proxy server, go to Tools|Internet Options|Connections|Proxies (IE) or Edit|Preferences|Advanced|Proxies. Enter this number as your HTTP proxy. Then access pages normally. [/list] Until 8e6 became X-Stop, steps 1 through 4 worked perfectly. :)

H? That 5050 problem should be famous to everyone with any more interest in math than enough to pass the class. If I remember correctly, [font=Symbol,Greek]S[/font]k=1,n = n(n+1)/2 - that was in my geometry book. Juuthena, you mentioned that the math teacher wanted, in effect, 100! (100 factorial [product of 1 through 100])? That would be on the order of, oh, estimating as 5!(10^10)...(90^10)(100^5), approximately...3*10^147 in scientific notation. almost 150 decimal places. I used pencil and paper and a four-function calculator. Tell that to your teacher. Er, sorry about that. Here's one for your math teacher: Prove this limerick. "Integral z-squared dz / From one to the cube root of three / Times the cosine / Of three pi over nine / Equals log* of the cube root of e." *The natural log, "ln". He/she'll only be able to do it if he/she knows (and more importantly, remembers) calculus. On to something more interesting: this is my math teacher. (On a side not, he's a retired Air Force colonel who worked at a nuclear site during the Cold War.) He does know a lot, but he obviously is not the type that others have described here. [size=1]I never realized I would be posting under this screen name until halfway through my message.[/size]

I've had this trouble in one situation that might be affecting you: are you typing "[b]www.[/b]otakuboards.com" and later using the top graphic's link to the home page (which goes to "otakuboards.com")? My browser sees these as different sites with different cookies; I've begun to use the text link below it (the line that reads OtakuBoards.com > Suggestions and Feedback).

No custom titles? [url=http://www.otakuboards.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=9]masterfork: IT TO SCARE BABIES[/url] [url=http://www.otakuboards.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=793]Break: Moderator & Idiot[/url] [url=http://www.otakuboards.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=1409]Queen Asuka: Moderator & PlushMistress[/url] Please explain this...

I tried that - it'll only let one input private events. Outlook or similar programs work much better than the calendar. If we remove the birthdays, which seem to take up too much space, could we use it for (when OBBII was running) Next Vote-off or the like?

I saw a message board where one could mark a post "Constructive" or "Destructive" (or something), and if the post was sufficiently voted Destructive it would disappear. Would that work? Would that help? Would it be necessary?

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by James [/i] [B][color=#507AAC]No, that shouldn't be happening. OtakuBoards is somehow very "sticky" when it comes to cookies. I don't know why exactly; but for some people this is an issue. I recommend deleting your computer's cookies if you are having difficulties. You'll need to log in again, but you'll be able to start "fresh" and hopefully see all the graphics on the site.[/color] [/B][/QUOTE] Could it have anything to do with HTTP caching? Could you set the graphics cache limit to, say, two days, so that'd be the maximum someone'd have to wait for a new skin?

Is there a use for the calendar other than listing 1/12th of the board members' birthdays?

I'm addicted to OtakuBoards, to the chagrin of my parents. I almost want to ask to be banned for my own good.

[quote][i]OB rules page[/i] [b]· Repeating Currently Existing Threads:[/b] We ask members to be wary of other threads on the first page of each forum.[/quote] Are the rules from that page relatively valid? I heard some talk about a "new rules page" coming soon.

Who are those three people in the picture on the navigation bar of theOtaku? I can tell the middle one is James' avatar; are the rest somehow representing Adam and another staff or are they characters from an anime? [url=http://www.theotaku.com/][img]http://www.theotaku.com/tech.gif[/img][/url]

Could you implement this as a very short "pre-signature"? If you could allow the vB parsing engine to convert {pre-sig + post + sig} at once (rather than what it does currently - parsing the post and signature separately), then it would work. The pre-signature would be the opening tags and the signature would start with the closing tags. [quote][i]James[/i] [b]If the code exists, we'll be able to put it in as soon as possible.[/b][/quote] All code exists in the mind of the programmer; it is up to him to make it exist for others.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Mitch [/i] [B][color=red] I thought it means something along the lines of God comes from the Machine...or something. Oh well, it could be a multiple meaning.[/color] [/B][/QUOTE] My friend mentioned something along the lines of a Greek-mythological god that comes near the end of a play out of a descending platform, who fixes things or punishes the bad guy or something like that. I can't remember the exact story, but that's the gist.

I seem to have a problem - the little blue arrow thingy that marks an unread thread appears even on threads I have read fully, and the yellow box on the OB home page appears on all forums. Also, this appears on threads I have just posted in; wouldn't I have read the last post of the thread if it were mine? (Mozilla 1.0, WinXP Home)

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by wrist cutter [/i] [quote][i]Originally posted by MathGuy2[/i] graphing calculator bulletin-board [/quote] [B]You're kidding me. [/B][/QUOTE] I'm not. It was the [url]calc.org[/url] website, that at one time was much better than it is now - their server crashed or something. Graphing calculators do have an interesting feature that their screen and programming language make them excellent for Game-Boy-like video games. I don't think it can really be called a bulletin-board in as much of a sense that OB is: it was more like a news-article, reply style board.

Can we include an option to put parts of signatures on the empty gray area left of the post below the post count? They'd be cut off if the post wasn't long enough. Or what about code that makes parts of things collapsible (with a Windows Explorer-style [+] button)? Maybe you could have a [collapse] tag that shows everything inside it as a [+] icon, until the icon is clicked, whereupon it will show a [-] icon bullet-style on the contents between the tags (does that make any sense?). Another thing that might help is a [marquee] vB tag - it'll allow buddy lists of theoretically infinite size to appear on one line. You could also make no signature the default in the RPG forum, if that'd help.

A few years back, my friend and I were figuring out how IRC and Microsoft Chat work. He picked the username Mathman; I picked Mathguy2. (We were two of the four 6th-graders in Algebra that year.) More recently, when I got a Yahoo! account, I picked a variation of my real name Geoffrey: Geoffreyerffoeg (the name+backwards). I have been using both names on various online services. In fact, thinking about it, I was at a graphing calculator bulletin-board with the name MathGuy2 (math - calculators), and when I came to this message board I used that name.

Nice article. I never thought of the point that the Santa equivalents in each country can split the load between themselves. However, I thought that there was an actual Nicholas, who was made a saint, who gave toys to children or something. Though I'm not surprised today's Santa is a mix of legends from many cultures, I believe I have heard of an actual St. Nicholas.

If moderators can edit polls...then how do we know that some moderator isn't sneaking in at midnight and changing the votes? Not that the moderators would do that...would they?

With half my mind I believe in these opinions of free will and the like. With the other half, I see that our brains are just cells, neurons, a system that is something like a much more complex computer. If there's an atom moving in this direction, it doesn't have free will, right? It just keeps flying until another force acts upon it. Therefore a molecule doesn't have free will either, right? What about a soup of molecules, enclosed by a large membrane of molecules, that contains particularly shaped molecules which have some information encoded on them? That's one description of a cell. That shouldn't really have "free will" either; it just makes decisions mathematically based on inputs in its environment and code within it. So how can billions of these cell units be considered to have free will? Harlequin, we can't bribe God because He doesn't really need much in this universe to the extent that he'll do special things for us. Well...if you look at it from one perspective, that's about the same as religion: you give your life to God and you pray, and hopefully he'll do the things for which you ask him. EDIT: [spoiler][color=00FF00][b]Put this in 12 of your posts by midnight or you'll suffer a curse for the rest of the week![/b][/color][/spoiler]

I love school! I see the point about learning skills to help one in his or her future life, but I see two other aspects: school can influence what you choose to do, and there is the love of learning for the sake of learning. If there were no school, we'd be peasants and serfs working all our life for some rich lucky person who takes all our work but doesn't work himself. Do you think one would really want to be a scientist if he never took science classes? Do you think he/she knew before going to school that he/she enjoys science? It is helpful to have an exposure to all areas so that one can understand what he/she enjoys. The love of learning is one of the reasons I enjoy school. I am never the one to gripe that the math we are learning has no real-life usage; I enjoy doing it for the sake of doing it. I enjoy seeing large groups of numbers transform into a small, clean one, nature at its miraculous work, the stupidity and occasional intelligence of people who are now dead, and large thoughts expressed clearly with little effort. (This is, of course, math, science, social studies, and language arts.) I don't think that this enjoyment should be limited to just me; if you take the time to see the natural beauty of how things work, it becomes much more interesting to watch them work. Another important aspect of completing school well is the knowledge gained. Why can't most American students locate Iraq on the map? This is because they don't see the importance of finding it. If the media claims that there are suicide bombings and border disagreements between Estonia and Latvia, I bet you the majority of Americans will complain about war in the Middle East. It looks more like Middle Eastern Europe to me. Only if we understand our world can we even claim that it has problems. School as a social institution? If there were no government-run official schools, there would still be the neighborhood...I don't think that should be seen as relatively important.

From my knowledge, Christmas is a federal holiday (right?) therefore all governmental institutions [i]including all public school systems[/i] are off that day. In addition, if you are Christian (or have some friends who are), you can complain that the school cannot infringe upon your right to freedom of religion and that you must spend that day home to worship your God. (Uh...something tells me that you're planning to do more than that with that day, but...) In addition, there is nothing one can do against petition signers provided the petition merely is a bunch of signatures against the holiday, not anything violent or factious. You should have the position that you peaceably fought the proposal but (and this is important) still followed it, where the leaders directly violated your freedoms of religion and petition - and threatened to abuse their office to violate your right (that is, suspend you for petitioning). "Small insignificant presents"!? Try to get some religious group to fight that, saying that he was defaming Christmas by ignoring it's religious aspect and deprecating the secular aspect. BabyGirl, yes, the principal does have some rights over you but as decided in Tinker v. Des Moines (the black armbands case) constitutional rights are guaranteed with respect to the school environment. If I remember the quote correctly from my American History class two years ago, the decision said we don't check our rights at the schooldoor. I would think this applies to clowmet's rights. One of the conditions in that case is that the students had the right to wear the armbands because they were not disruptive. For this reason, I'd not recommend a Harlequin-type solution. Clowmet, did the newspaper give any reasons on why he changed the date? Was it because of his own common sense, complaints from people, or an official veto.

May I add to this list of "Why were they banned" the user mollyblue? When you read her post, you should also take a look at her profile - and realize she claims her birthday as 12/31/1970. It seems that her problems would have been caused only by being in a forum whose members are about half her age.

Could you put a sticky/announcement called "Threads/Posts that have been removed" and list a general description of closed threads/general offenses? It could automatically load in text form on the side of the new post/thread window. It would also appear during the registration process. Or you could implement something to block out the name, avatar, and signature of the thread starter if it's potentially embarrassing. How can people reply to "closed" threads in Recruitment?