Rydra

I'm mostly responsible for a vb forum eve online corp, but it's a mess. Vbulletin v4. Person A held the hosting/ftp, now no longer with us, but occasionally contactable. Person B bought Vb and signed up to it with his personal email, mega fail and now mostly AFK. Me left to administer the forums as the only person vaguely techie that's still active. Person B reappeared, ninja'd in some updates, and broke every skin and addon in the process. I've lost smilies! Now they've gone again. Can't get support without vb account, cant download updates to skins/addons without it, cant apply them without the access to either ftp and the vb account. Used to use phpbb. It had less community stuff and features, but I found it was a cleaner easier system to manage. I've found vbulletin a bit bloated, and some things like moderation priviledges are difficult to manage. But it has greater potential.

I don't mind what data is collected generally, as long as I am consulted properly first, and given the opportunity to say no to it. ON the 1,295th page of a contract for one line which is so vague they might as well talk about being the meaning of life, is NOT a suitable place to point it out, and T&C's are getting stupid now. You have to be a legal expert to read/understand half of them. That is the key issue here, all other services such as this you either have to opt in to it, or you can turn it off. This gives you no such choice, and it has been stored in an unsecure manner. It should be encrypted, and ideally shouldn't be backed up again without consent. For example, how many schools have no given ipads/itouch/iphones to some staff? Say these devices are now brought back to the school, resynchronized/backed up to a central place.... You now have an unencrypted list of where the staff have been for their holidays, probably their home, their relatives address, the route they walk their dog each night etc, sitting on your server. YOU (or your data protection officer) are now responsible for the safety of that data.... But how can you be responsible for something you did not know existed? Personally I turn off most location services unless I want them, and the GPS is almost always turned off. I generally don't need sat nav when driving the 2 miles from work to home!

I have used Kaspersky for some 3-4 years now, and I have to say i really like it. It's versatility in what it can do is what impresses me. It has so many customiseable options for it, and the best point for me has been Kaspersky support. I've rung up kaspersky about the most silly of things, some of it not even related to their AV, and the first person i've spoken to has known what I'm talking about, and fixed the problem immediately. I've also reported new strains of viruses before, sent them the info while on the phone to them, and then had an email back within 1-2 hours saying "push out an update now" and they've uploaded the new virus definitions worldwide with the new strain. I've had a couple of niggly troubles with kaspersky, they've had some bugs, but they've always either advised a workaround as a temporary fix, or fixed the problem for us. Password protection options for enabling/disabling features, ability to control what different groups/users can/cannot access, multiple update sources, migration tools for the admin kit, network scanning and agent systems for tracking machines with/without AV or missing updates.... Had Sophos here before, and it didn't update properly, it could be switched off with one button click, it didn't pickup the most basic of viruses, it slowed the machines down heavily, and the admin kit borked and couldn't recover it. I've also tried symantec suite, and that didn't have the customisability, was even worse for machine resource hogging, and the server version of it could be uninstalled with a single click without even a reboot! Newer versions are better I have no doubt and come with the new features, but over the years kaspersky has proved the best allround AV package.

I've been in eve since 2004; and I tried high sec freighter ganking for the first time ever only about 3 months ago Haven't done it for a while now, too much pod killing people stupid enough to come to the home system of 1200 pvp'ers to buy something 5% under the local market prices (which I put up there in the first place).

We've killed more of them than we've lost! Those hurt a bit but every single one was replaced within a few weeks, and the guy who ran that whelp fleet left with his band of merry men a month or so ago. They are now pets of pets of pets of pets somewhere in the south. Oh, and say hi to Deus XI from Brimmie for me He's an old old friend, and he's as much of a noob now as he was 5 years ago!

Love that old pic.... But the curve is a lot better than it used to be. What gets many people, coming from the likes of WoW/Lotro and other MMO's, is the brutality of it; wheither your in a 5m frigate or a 50billion isk ship, when you die you get more than just a bit of a repair bill and a long trip back to where you were.... There's no "In combat res". The cold hard reality of life, is very evident in eve. People will kill you for a thrill, and befriend you if they think there's more thrills to be got by being your friend, at least for now.

tl;dr: find a good corp, maybe some friends from somewhere else, and join them, and try a bit of everything as quickly as possible. Once you've spent a couple weeks in the game, got a feel for it, then go out and make some money. You'll find that a lot of older players will happily chuck some free stuff in the way of a new keen player in those early days, so don't burn yourself out grinding like mad in the early days; otherwise you get bored and thinks it's nothing but grind. It can get very time consuming/life consuming, but so do many of the other MMO's out there nowadays. I go back to it's all about balance. You need to put a little effort into getting somewhere initially, but you fall into routines soon enough to keep RL, money making and exploding in line. I heavily recommend Faction warfare (FW) to budding pilots (new and old) looking for either their first taste(s) of blood, or getting back into it after a break; I spent 3+ years floating about in various empire/pirate corps, never really felt at home. FW was a lot of fun, always a fight to be had somewhere at all times of the day from 1v1 to 50-100 man fleet fights. I've never looked back, and having spent time doing the 0.0/sov/super-sized alliance, sometimes I miss the simplicity of undock, fly a few jumps, get a fight, rince and repeat. Last night while gate camping we heard of some pirates messing about in a nearby system, sent some bait over, and hot dropped their 5 ships with 30+ via a titan bridge.... The tears were fun, one guy ranted following us and calling us names for 3 hours. 2 weeks ago a guy moved a freighter through our home system to refuel a pos tower in a wormhole; it died. He then got convo'd, and paid us a ransom, and asked us if he could bring a second freighter through..... That promptly died 20 minutes later. In one night you can go from a roam around looking for some cheap kills, to a 50 man defense fleet, right onto a fun roam with frigs and cheap cruisers. Then come home and play on the market to spend some money, and make some more. A guy you kill today could end up being a sworn enemy in the future, or even your closest teammate, or vice versa!

The PvP in Eve is one of the harshest out thre. You can work for days/months/years to obtain something, and then lose it completely in 30 seconds. And sure, that sucks when it happens. The trick is, and why some of us mad people have played it for 5/6/7 years, is to cause that feeling in others more often than you cause it in yourself. 50% of the game is the people you play with, the other 50% is obtaining a balance; 100% PVP is unsustainable; you need money to buy new ships. All grinding is tedious and boring, and you get nothing for it but more grind. The politics of eve are worth noting too; you either love it or loathe it. Within the game, anything goes that isn't classified as exploiting or abuse. You can scam them, call them names (as long as not racist etc). And this happens at an individual level between two people who just blew eachother up in a random system, or between 2 coalitions of 5-10,000 people. And it's the communities of eve that make it what it is. Dark is by far the best i've ever come across in online gaming, and i've been around a lot of online games over the years! It's an overall experience that no other MMO provides

bm'd for home use! I missed most of house and Big bang theory, need to catch up Anyone know what episodes we're up to on them over here? No interest in the movies, if they are worth watching I'll buy them; I have nearly 500 dvd's already at home, need to buy some new bookcases to store them all! And I'll have the TV series bought for me for my birthday later on so I can watch them again

Both of you most likely know my CEO Mitch Taylor then He's been around the fountain/rkk pile for a long while. Things are fairly quiet atm; NC are play fighting with the Russian Drone regions on the east, Goons, PL and a few others are messing about in Delve/Fountain Querious, and the South couldn't organise a p*ss up in a brewery; that space changes hands every 3-6 months right now if not sooner. Will be interesting to see what happens this year though, there's talk of major changes to Sov/Capitals/jump bridges.

http://go-dl1.eve-files.com/media/corp/mitchtaylor/recruitment2.jpg "Walk in the light and live not in fear, for we are brothers our blood ligates us and holds us to our deeds" * PVP * Pilot welfare scheme * Multi-timezone coverage * Experienced Pilots * Excellent Reputation within community * Strong Industrial Base * Independent The dark is rising, be a part of the new dawn. For more information join the ingame channel dark-rising to gain an insiders view of the corporation. *FORUMS* *KILLBOARD* *Eve-O recruitment thread *

from what I saw a while back, Blackberry have the same systems.

Was this survey taken next to the ice cream section or the wine section?

I've never done "proffessional" wedding photography, but I brought my work camera to a couple of friends weddings a couple years ago, and many of my photo's were better than that of the pro's who they paid for. I took about 400, and had more than 200 useable.

Just to make things more complex, I might be able to get a Canon 350d (father in law is looking to buy a new camera too!) in which case that will cost me about £200, then I would probably splash out and buy all the nice extra's.... I've used the 350d before and found it to be a great camera, but is it better to have an older camera with a choice of lenses, or a newer/better camera body and basic lenses?

From what i'd been reading the 600d wasn't really worth the extra money; swivel/tilt screen and a couple of new gadget-features, otherwise it's a 550d.

I've had a soft spot for photography, and I was rather spoilt in having a Canon EOS 350d at my last place I worked, along with a nice secondary lens (I think was a x-300mm one, forget what the lower figure was), and a Speedlite EX580 flash. I've never been able to take photo's like it since with any other compact camera, and that was without the nice IS option you get now. I'm going away at the end of April, and I want a nice new camera to play with. Venue is Cyprus, and occasion is a wedding. Outside of this, I tend to use it for scouting events (so people moving about, sports/activities outside etc.), and will probably do some photography in the school too when i've got it. Now I've got my eye on the Canon 550d, as it seems to be a marked upgrade from the 450d and the 500d for not a great amount more. What I'm stuck for choice on, is what accessories to get with it before I go away. I have a budget in mind of about £800 ish in total. Body only is about £510, and with the kit lens (18-55mm IS) is £575. Kit lens on it's own is £100. There's also the option of getting the body+ 18-135mm IS Lens for £725. The next lens up seems to be the 55-250mm lens, at £160, and I've also spotted suggestions to get the 50mm static lens at £80. The flash, I've seen either the 430EX at about £200 or the 580EX at £370. Frankly I'm stuck for what to buy. I don't think I'll need the flash for my upcoming trip, but it has huge advantages when working with people wearing white! And I can't decide which lenses I want as I want all of them, but cannot afford all right now. Any suggestions from the happy snappers out there?

i read to the point where the author started swearing then lost interest. Wow what an overreaction...

On a serious note, quite a few of the older navy ships have been recomissioned in the Australian navy, and I believe a number again with some of the asian countries. I think India picked up a good few of them. But I suspect we'll see it bought by some private entity with too much money, and it will be made to turn cheap tricks.

I say let the scout association have it! Would make for the most epic scout camp site ever. Period exclamation mark exclamation mark one one one eleven.

I'm having some template colour troubles I can't quite pin down. Using the edugeek package, and have modified the Red theme to my needs. Main article/centre section is fine along with most of the menu's, but the articles/modules places on the left and right sides, the top 50% or so of the background boxes remain white even when I remove all references to #fff,#ffffff and white from all css files in the template folder. Replacing the css files with the ones Nephilim made and linked, I get a uniform background again. I've changed the BG to an obvious colour to highlight the trouble I'm having (blue boxes are my blanking out the school name! ) and below is a copy of the css files. rydra css files with background problem.zip Anyone got an idea what I've broken?! I'll send some virtual hobnobs and manly loving for anyone who can work out where i've been dumb!

Since I'm now based in a classroom, i've found it very helpful to have a set of headphones and some music on my phone when I need to concentrate and not be distracted by the class in operation behind me. But I'm stuck for choice of music to listen to! I listen to most things, my current playlist consisting of: Chumbawamba - The Boy Bands of Won Nightwish - Century Child Amateur Transplants - Fitness to Practice Robbie Williams Greatest Hits CD1+2 Meat Loaf - Hang Cool Teddy Bear Pendulum - Immersion Beautiful South - Painting it Red Billy Connoly - The Pick Of (generally don't listen to this during the day. I laugh too much for use in a classroom!) Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns Daft Punk - Tron Legacy And a few random others from charts over the last 2/3 years. Anyone got any suggestions for other music I might like? Preferably something that I can resist signing along to, i get funny looks while designing a website and failing to make a tune.

I'll happily build anything and would love the idea of a Kit Car one day (when I've got a garage to build it in). But I can't say I have a great feeling or need to dismantle the Microwave, or my 37" Samsung TV, or electric strimmer on arrival. And as yet I have not felt the need to do anything to my Xbox, PS3, Wii, Laptop, or mobile phone..... If it breaks though, the first thing that happens is I poke about the innards to see what's broken

My (highly limited) understanding is that poor quality soil will result in less fruit produced per plant, since the plant has to work twice as hard to produce the fruit, it can't maintain as much of it. Therefore less fruit produced = more expensive to produce same quantity of wine, explaining why the "best" wines etc cost so much!

If only this old addage kept the lawyers away too!