AMLinington

Anyone read Richard Morgan's Takashi Kovacs series? I'm up for anything that hardlines the intertubes directly into my brain. A smartwig sounds like it would be some sort of neural transmission net you wear on your head. I'd doubt it would be the full on 'fake hair' kind...

Yeah. Kids have a tendency to pick up on anything and make fun of it from physical disabilities to birthmarks, speech impediments and odd or rude-sounding surnames. The best way to deal with it is to ignore it - they do it for the reaction. The more you react the more 'kudos' they get from their peers. You'll find that kids will rarely make fun of you if they are on their own - it is always done with an audience. A teacher I once knew had a great put down. I vividly remember walking down a staircase with a group of girls who were taking the mickey out of him without realising he was literally right behind them. They reached the bottom of the stairs and paused at which point he negotiated his way past and said 'It's alright, everyone gets my name wrong.' You could have cooked eggs on their cheeks. When I was teaching I found the best way to get around these issues is to turn them into a joke. Take the power away from the student by being in control of the funny. If you own the joke, the power to embarrass or humiliate you is gone.

Why not use text to speech software and read it aloud and have the software transcribe it. All you'd need to do then is punctuate. You could employ a proof reader for that.

Pretty much anything designed for use around boats or horses is going to be good although I have a pair of Hunters with the adjustable calf strap as Wellies are never wide enough for my fat calves and I adore them - not sure what you mean when you say they aren't what they used to be?

Awesome, thanks. I reckon this is a project for the new year!

Is it really bad that this thread is making me itch to design a home security system via Rasp Pi linked up to a CCTV cam (I'm still sore about my stolen Hanging Basket)?

Is it worth undoing a few screws to see if there is a loose bit somewhere? If it's useless anyway it can't hurt...

I buy a LOT of fabric on Ebay for my various cosplay endeavours and have never had an issue. I always prefer to buy from businesses rather than individual sellers and other than fabric, I never pay more than £50 for something. @fiza You could relist it with photos and full details of the fault - someone with more expertise in Cross trainers might be able to fix it or get a spare part. If you are up front in the listing and people know what they are getting, you might at least get a bit of money back for it.

Noted. Although I've come into this thread late, it is worth explaining a bit about that Sophos thing. Essentially, every time the client machine makes a request, Sophos intercepts the request and sends a request of its own upstream to Sophos to check that the request is 'safe' before it is passed along to the Default Gateway or Proxy. This effectively doubles or triples the number of requests made which can have a serious impact on box performance. Annoyingly Sophos won't actually TELL you what it's doing either. I had a case recently where a web page wouldn't load properly and we tried everything we could think of until I noticed the Sophos application on the client machine. We turned it off and immediately the site worked like a charm. Sophos is probably one of our biggest headaches simply because it doesn't pop up a little 'Sophos is protecting you from the big bad' so there is no way of knowing whether it is your web filter or Sophos that is interfering with a site. Additionally, Sophos will not support authentication requests so if you are running NTLM, requests will fail unless you add the Software Updates category to your auth exceptions. Out of curiosity, if you were to look in our knowledgebase for an article about this issue, how would you search for it? What search terms would you use?

Indeed. The quote from WBAC was a joke - I got £900 for the Vectra in the end.

I had a similar experience when I listed my Vectra on Autotrader - so many timewasters! People emailing me asking for complex and convoluted payment mechanisms and wanting to 'send a friend' to collect the car. I even specified 'Cash on collection' in the Ad. In the end I had 2 genuine queries - the first never turned up to our arranged viewing and I text him to find out if he was still interested and he said 'no, sorry, were you waiting for me?' (well DUH!) and the second ended up buying it. It was a nightmare though. I can see why people would prefer to use 'webuyanycar.com' even if you do only get 50% of the cars value! I'm a prolific ebayer though - it is excellent for my crafting. We're not all charlatans although many sellers are. Personally I will not buy any electrical goods on ebay. Too much hassle. I don't use ebay for anything over £50.

I've been fairly vocal on these forums about my feelings re: the values of vocational qualifications and the hands-on experience you get as a result. It is good to see that these things are out there and I genuinely believe that in some industries, these are infinitely more valuable than on-paper qualifications. Hopefully employers will begin to realise this.

I saw this too and thought it was very sad, although no-one actually knows why he was all the way out there in the remote parts of Utah in the first place. It is a terrible way to go but is a cautionary tale against taking trips to or via remote areas without a) letting people know where you're going and b) having some sort of contingency for contacting the emergency services - in the US especially as there are plenty of remote and scarcely trafficked places. For a small amount of money you can buy emergency beacons - I know there are ones for people on boats but I'm sure they do land-based ones too and if you know you are going to be somewhere remote, it makes sense to have such a thing.

Money can't change what you've lost and the impact on your lives. Professional photographers have to have insurance don't they? Is this not something that is covered? We're friends with Tina Allingham and I do the occasional computer-related favour for her (like when she rang in a panic because the School photos were due and her PSU had packed up) and she has loads of backups. She has backups of backups. What's happened to you is terrible. Some people really are charlatans. It makes me so angry that he chose to ignore you instead of confess he's lost your pictures. That's shocking! There are a lot of terrible people in the wedding industry - Pat-a-cake of Wimbourne is one of them - worst cake I've ever tasted. I could have baked and iced something better myself. My sister was beside herself. Edited to add: Talk to Citizens Advice - they will easily point you in the right direction. Maybe phone some of those no-win-no-fee-free-consultation solicitors.

A Singer Fashion Mate sewing Machine and an adjustable dress form.

Offer to do 'data recovery' on the drive - those are precious memories and cannot be recreated. I don't believe for a second the drive is broken. I think you should pursue him through the courts, although demand the broken drive first.

Same here. I have all sorts of gowns from period to fantasy floating around. Looking forward to a party this weekend as I'll be debuting my newest creation!

I stopped reading after 'Lucky Charms' OMG! Need. Although not sure I need enough to brave the gazillion-watt lighting that leaves me with 2nd degree burns and retinal scarring...

Grab a cheap bedsheet from ASDA in King or Super King and several metres of wide ribbon and some safety pins, then, depending on whether you are Male or Female: Male Roman Clothing Female Roman Clothing http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/radical_romans/male/dressing2.jpg Some branches twisted into a horseshoe and pinned in place and some flat strappy sandals from primark (if your feet are small enough try the womens shoe department)

As I said before, I'm all for freedom of expression and expecting content to be censored is arguably not the job of Facebook any more than it is the job of Google, although: Now bear with me as I'm playing devils advocate here... Child Pornography is illegal in this country. The age of consent differs from country to country and there are many countries where 12yos are married off and have babies so the definition of a 'child' globally is a touch loose. HOWEVER, I have NEVER had the horrible misfortune to accidently run into child porn on either Facebook or Google - why is that? Because it is AGAINST THE LAW in this country. The fact that a video of a man having sex with a 12yo is NOT illegal in other countries (although I have no interest in finding out which ones, this is an extreme example to illustrate a point) doesn't have any bearing on the fact that it is blocked by most 'legitimate' websites such as Facebook and Google. Murder is illegal in this country too (although I know there are some countries with less rigid rules on what constitutes murder...Honour killings for example seem to be 'permissible' in certain places). We abolished capital punishment, so arguably videos of capital punishment are against the law too? So why is it that we are fine with censorship when it comes to child porn, but raise merry hell when they stop videos of murder appearing in our feed? The basic concepts are the same - a person doesn't CHOOSE to be murdered or beheaded any more than a child CHOOSES to be defiled, and both acts are equally against the law in this country and in fact Murder results in a longer jail sentence and in some countries (such as many states in the US) execution. A previous poster raises valid questions re: enforcement, although they neglected to consider peer review as a viable option. If ALL content was submitted behind a consent screen and tools given to allow people that CHOOSE to view it the opportunity to rate and tag the video, you would find that the 'tag cloud' for a video ends up considerably representative of the content, and people could choose to block videos with certain 'tags'. OFC this is not foolproof and the variety of tags, spellings and descriptions would be a factor, but there is a complex mathematical concept that I can't remember the name of that basically describes the 'hive mind' output of 'the masses' and how there will be exceptions and 'outfield' responses but the majority of responses will fall within a mean field. Or something. FTR I'm not interested in getting into debates about what does and does not constitute freedom of speech or whether people with children should expect society generally to participate in child protection (although in herd animals, the herd as a whole often acts in the interests of the young, regardless of their parent so in humans we really ought to act as a society, except basic concepts of society are breaking down because we no longer live in interdependent groups) I am merely interested in the actual mechanics of the problem.

I have no opinion on the videos others choose to view, but I would be very very distressed if a beheading, violence or cruelty to animals video appeared in my news feed and IMO it is the responsibility of Facebook not to present this type to content to people that do not wish to view it. The best way to do this is to put that kind of content behind a consent screen. That way the content IS available if a person CHOOSES to view it. It would be nice if there was a setting where you could specify that you do not want violent or explicit content shown on your page.

IIRC, there are a number of owners of luxury cars to whom the parking penalties for parking outside Harrods are mere pocket change when compared to the convenience of parking outside and, additionally, the free security provided by the clamps make it considerably cheaper than risking the vehicle in a public or private car park.

LOL that's brilliant. I'm glad Enzo hasn't worked out how to do that though or he'd drive me potty!

Somewhat ironically, just checked Ebico against my Southern Electric Gas and elec bills and they come out considerably more expensive than Ebico in both Gas and per unit elec prices for me... Interesting.

LOL Unless you work in our Support team who prefer the temperature of the office so cold it makes Siberia look like the Sahara...