Sdrawkcab

That's only for each machine though. Steam will allow you to login to multiple machines and will store a seperate cookie on each one. The hardware profile, in this case, is used to prevent malware from stealing the cookie and using it to authenticate another machine (rather than stealing the password to the account and using that to login elsewhere). The only time I've ever had something like this happen to me was when I used Tor at a previous job to get around the work firewall and buy something from Amazon. Because the login appeared to come from a totally different geographical location, the bank cancelled my card. I've never had an issue using multiple PCs within the same country though.

Your MAC address will never even make it onto the internet. It's best if you think of MAC addressing as a way for the network to know what device to direct your messages to next. So the frame (chunk of data) leaving your PC has your network card as the source MAC and your router as the destination MAC. When it reaches your router, the router changes the frame so that it has the router as the source MAC and the next-hop device (probably another router) as the destination. By the time the data reaches its intended target, the MAC addresses on the frame will have been changed multiple times. I would imagine they store a cookie on your machine to identify you primarily, and then use things like time zone/location to back that up. Steam uses a cookie method where it places an encrypted cookie containing a hardware profile of the PC on your machine to identify you after you enter the email verificaion code. I think that's to stop people stealing your cookie and using it to authenticate their own session on the steam store though, I don't think they prevent you from logging in on another machine as long as you enter the correct code from the email verification.

I'm not saying that the article overall was wrong, just the guy from Scan when he was talking about MAC addresses being used for identification. Though equally I don't see why they'd use hardware as a means of identifying someone online. I have a load of devices I use to access the internet and I've never had my card stopped due to purchases I've made from them. Location/time zone I can understand, but not IP address or hardware because they both have potential to change dramatically without warning. I think this article was mostly borne out of the BBC guy being low on ideas for articles, and the SCAN guy getting his technical explanation spectacularly incorrect.

Would it? Isn't the MAC address changed on each hop? So the frame leaving his PC would have the MAC from his NIC as the source address (and the MAC of the interface at the router as the destination), but when the router forwards the frame to the next-hop the source would be changed to the router MAC. But hey that guy from SCAN is probaly just trying to sound "technical" so he's picked an address type that most people don't really know about. MAC addresses sound big and scary because they're PERMANENT and because most people won't actually know (or ever need to know) what they're used for. I feel especially annoyed because I only passed my CCNA Part 1 exam yesterday so I know it's wrong, to the point where I tried to track the author down on twitter to correct him!

No, I'm advocating (as Localzuk already said) not punishing children for the behaviour of their parents. I'm advocating trying to make things better by giving people opportunities they wouldn't already have. I'm advocating actually trying to make a difference instead of taking the close-minded, depressing, Ayn-Rand-alike view that everyone should just look out for themselves. "If someone falls on the path, who gives a crap hey? Let 'em die with the rest of the scum." Besides which, how can you possibly know the circumstances which lead to someone being a single parent? Or are you saying that if the family unit doesn't stay together, they deserve hardship? The fact that nobody wants to admit is that there is more than enough to go around, especially now. We just seem to be obsessed with this idea of entitlement based on your position. That's a whole other argument though.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Are you really genuinely saying that single parent families should get less child benefits? Do you really believe that raising a child costs less if there's only one parent? And if that is what you believe, my final question is 'are you totally mad?'

Why is it that whenever you critisize this current government, everyone assumes you're a labour supporter? Every argument from the "tory" people on this forum boils down to "WELL LABOUR WERE MUCH WORSE MAN!!!!!!" and I'm sick of it. I think all politicians are universally terrible and only out for their own ends, I'm just criticising the party in power. Tory/right-wing/this-government-aint-so-bad people: How about you actually respond to the points raised in the arguments instead of finger pointing at the previous establishment? Whatever you might think Labour did, they aren't in power now. Playing the blame game isn't going to solve anything, and nor are ol' Georgies current policies. The sooner we can agree on that the sooner we'll see a proper alternative presented (like maybe getting companies like Vodafone to pay their tax? naaaaaaaah)

It's not just music you've bought, any music you upload can be downloaded. You get two downloads via the website itself, but you can download any track an infinite number of times if you use the Music Manager program. I've been using it since it was available in the US, and I have to say it is brilliant. Even when the servers were based in the US I never had any trouble streaming music over wifi or 3G. The only slightly irritating thing is that the app itself is pretty big (20mb+ for me!) and fills up the storage space on my old HTC Desire pretty quickly. If you have a phone which is even a tiny bit newer than mine you won't have any problems, though.

This is the bike I am riding right now and I can confirm that it is very nice for the money you pay. The only downside is that the saddle is essentially a flat piece of plastic and provides no padding whatsoever, but that's easy to replace. Oh and it has cable disk brakes (rather than hydraulic) which apparently some people turn their noses up at? I've never had a problem with them though.

Pro-tip: If you watch live TV on a device powered by its own internal battery and NOT connected to an external aerial or mains supply, you do not need a TV license to watch live TV. This was originally for those little hand-held TVs you could buy, but the law applies to laptops and tablets as well.

He's never actually denied the charges though, after he was caught he admitted what he'd done. The question is where he should be tried, not whether or not he should be. He's not actually gotten away with anything, so you should probably be careful when you make statements like that. Honestly Mattx, from lurking here for a while and seeing your posts in the past I expected better of you.

They're ten. I'm pretty glad you aren't in charge of this sort of thing if you think a years community service is an apt punishment for a ten year old child.

It's really not that simple. You may have been able to walk into a job easy peasy, but it's not so easy for others. Don't you make any attempt at all to see things from the POV of other people? Ignorance like this from certain members of this site reminds me why I don't post on here very often.

It's not really fair to say "You are a poor single mother so you don't get to raise your own child". That's what would be wrong.

Yeah you're right, after doing some googling it appears that the keyring auth produces a 6 digit code where the smartphone app produces an 8 digit code. Surely that would mean the smartphone app is technically more secure then?

[PEDANT MODE ENGAGE] This isn't true. The same algorithm is used to generate the key for the hardware authenticator as for the software one. The only difference is the platform it runs on. The hardware auths are better in my opinion because you can't accidentally uninstall them, but that's not the same as being more secure. [/pedant] In all seriousness, you probably fell for a phishing scam and didn't even realise it. Failing that, I know this is obvious but have you run a virus scan? It could be that you have a trojan/keylogger or something. Even if you don't really use the machine on the web, sometimes just visiting a webpage is enough to get an infection.

That's because gambling by chance is illegal in Japan. Instead you get machines like this one which give out tokens instead of cash so they remain within the law. The tokens are then exchanged for toys, all of which have a cash value attached to them much higher than the actual worth of the toy. The winner then "sells" the toy back to the arcade for the cash value, thus neatly sidestepping the gambling law whilst still allowing it to effectively continue. This is all 100% legal. Japanese law is FUN!

I'm not sure, but I have a feeling the caps are only in place at really odd times, like 12pm-6pm or something. I pay for their pro package though, so my bandwidth is unmetered all the time.

This doesn't happen at all with Xilo. They basically assume that you're experienced enough to have tried all the obvious stuff, and go straight to "proper" tech support. That being said, if they pass the issue through to BT and BT find that the fault was with your gear, the amount BT charge Xilo will be passed on to you. This shouldn't really be a problem for you though, as you're probably phoning your ISP as a last resort when nothing else is fixed. That being said, this might be standard practice for all ISPs. I just got stung by it because I replaced a dodgy filter with one which turned out to be broken out of the box.

If it's performance you want, I'd reccomend checking out Xilo.net. I'm currently paying £17.99/month for the 16mb Pro Home package, and the extra cost is definitely worth it. Speedtest.net actually shows me getting 18mb down/1.9mb up even though I'm paying for 2mb less downstream! There are no useage limits, no port forwarding, guaranteed 50:1 contention, free static IP address AND their tech support is really really good. The only downside is that there's no free equipment so you have to buy your own router and set it up, but for a techie person that shouldn't be a problem. I was with Be before, and while they were generally good we did have quite a few intermittent speed issues which the tech support were not very helpful with. I think for the "average" internet user, they're probably your best bet as they're much cheaper. If you're a power user I'd definitely reccomend going with Xilo though.

Foobar2000 is the best music player for Windows by an absolute mile. It's extremely lightweight compared to Winamp or (bleurgh) iTunes, and far more customisable than either. It does most standard stuff like media library/playlists and CD ripping out of the box, but there's also a massive plugin library for other features like iPod control. If you're a remotely technical windows user, I can't understand why you'd use any other player.

It's the Google+ equivalent of "Like". It seems to have sprung up everywhere overnight, I've even seen it in a few places where there are no facebook/twitter buttons too.

As a long time lurker of this forum, might I make a polite suggestion? Disable rep in the non-ICT forums like this one and most of the others under General (such as Gaming). I can see the use of rep in forums like the technical ones, since it's meant to show users who are helpful to others. Most of this forum is just non-work related discussions/jokes though, which means people end up getting neg repped for things like having a slightly different opinion, or liking a different kind of music to someone else. IMO that's not really what the rep system is meant for.

Well, I guess I don't need to watch it now!

They've released a Spring 2011 installable ISO since then, you need to log a case (or I guess get your LA to) and then they'll send you the link to download it.