Joedetic

Well Dos_Box has done the official Christmas message. May I be allowed to offer an alternative Christmas message? Hopefully I can speak on behalf of everyone on EduGeek saying; Thank you Dos_Box! You have created and overseen something that is truly awesome and, for another year, grows ever stronger, even more popular and arguably, most importantly, more helpful! I hope that you and your family have a peaceful and relaxing Christmas and a well deserved break over the new year. (Thanks to the other staff, admins, mods and dev team working on Secondus too )

WMP would play it (IIRC) and so does VLC....both of which I have installed.

I ended up at midnight mass so I've missed it....recordings it is

I'm going to be in the pub for a bit but i'm going to start listening live when i get back (which won't be too late 'cause of mates going to mass) and catch up on the bits i miss after i've listened to the live bit. I'll be posting later no doubt

I must admit, it is a toss up between the Podcast and the pub at the moment. If I don't hear from mates RE: Pub then I'll be listening

The Bull Ring was packed on Friday...God knows what it was like on Sunday! New street was crazily packed too. Bloody stupid...if 1/2 the population of Brum discovered Amazon then it would have been a hell of a lot less congested! Mind you...all the chavs aimlessly wondering around...I doubt it.

I had the Scientologists come to the door at my house asking whether I wanted to hear their message from God or Xenu or whoever it is they have...obviously, being a good Catholic, I told them where to stick their rip-off nonsense religion. They then proceeded to ask whether there was anyone else in my house who wanted to hear their message...my response, "I seriously doubt it." They didn't like that and left. I wasn't going to lie to them! The ones that came to my mum's house and woke me up apologised and just left. Best ones yet! Whilst I recognise other people's right to a religion of their choice and I tend not to challenge that, I also respect my own right to a religion and the freedom to have that choice in my OWN house away from other people trying to cram their opinions down my throat.

@Andrew_C..that's why it says Christmas Eve EVE I wish I could have done the shopping online, that was the origional plan, but people don't offer me any ideas as to what they want. All the suggestions I come up with get rejected as lame so I had to take them out shopping and just buy what they wanted Presents for myself are a different matter...but you can't buy piercings online

I'm assuming you've got ADSL from your message. I don't know whether you're familiar with the OSI model or not but by the sounds of it a good place to start is layer 1, the physical layer. Try swapping your micro filter on the modem/router with a new one and if that doesn't work try a different cable (although if it's a result of power surges I doubt the cable is the problem). If it's interrupting the landline a guess might suggest a problem with the micro filter. Someone else might be able to offer a deeper insight into the problem than me.

I did the last bit of my shopping today. A can opener of all things. And a 12" steak and cheese with gherkins and mayonnaise from subways for me I seem to have spent more on presents for myself this year for some odd reason.

Hopefully, in time, they'll get used to the merger and virgin will sort themselves out. Their network can't support the load so in my humble opinion, they don't really have the right to go offering 20meg. But of course, as they were discussing on the gadget show the other night, there's the issue of wording...they have their lovely get out clause of "up to 20meg." They should consider a wording change.

Arial or Trebuchet depending on what the document is for.

Tut tut webman. I see you're filling in for Jake?

My virgin was out last night and didn't come back on until about 9AM. When my broadband was supplied by Blueyonder it was fine...since the move to Virgin it's been getting slower and slower and throttling speed and it's just rediculous now. If I would afford to get a BT line installed at my house (my one at uni) I'd have ADSL because it's just rediculous now. I'm meant to be on 20meg, and whilst I don't expect anywhere near that, I expect better than what I get on my mother's 2meg line!

I can second Geoff with the Cisco qualifications. I'm currently doing a sort of addendum to CCNA called FNS (Fundamentals of Network Security) that teaches you all sorts of stuff from IOS firewalls, PIX stuff, IDS, IPS and lots and lots of other things. Also the VoIP route. If you go down the Cisco path for that and use the skinny protocol and CME or CUCM they'll have you call it IP Telephony (VoIP is different...or so we've had it drummed into us on the IPT course) but it is well worth getting to know something like that as you never know when your company might turn round to the IT/IS department and ask who knows something about IPT and can suggest who they should put the new phone system out to tender with. From a personal point of view, actual networking can be more fun than server and desktop support anyway, you get right down to the switching and routing and with the IPT choosing which codec is best suited to your WAN link etc. All good fun and great experience developing the technical mind. (*justifies degree to himself*)

Lol. I get a sudden urge to play the Bill Bailey rendition of the magic roundabout song.

It's a little Alice in Wonderland saying the grass is painted surely. (I think that's the right Disney remake I'm thinking of...where the playing cards are painting apples on the trees or something crazy like that.)

If you've got no money on you then it's a good idea. It's all coming down to a similar principal of single-sign-in in my opinion. Pay for everything the same way. I don't see SMS being the way to pay personally.

Well, there would be some integration with GSM networks, or probably these days the third gen networks, to dock the price of the coke or sandwich or whatever off your phone bill. It's been done before where you txted the vending machine with a code and it dropped the food out. It didn't take off though.

There has been a small problem with it under linux so my mate tells me (I've not had a chance to test it out myself yet as my laptop is ever so slightly boned and needs a reinstall ). He says that videos are cutting out and giving some message about streaming. Isolated case maybe? We'll have to wait and see. But it is good news that they are considering the alternative OS's. When I was at LugRadio Live earlier this year one of the iPlayer team was there. He came under some pretty heavy fire...poor guy.

Billing for items from vending machines, as has already been said. It could be used in companies for inventory. There's lots of applications in any system that uses identification and logging etc. I personally see more applications within industry than I do in everyday you-and-me-joe-public use. It's a neat idea though!

I was wondering this the other day. Maybe he's gone off to find himself another place on the internet where his woman-loving-ways are appreciated differently to here on EduGeek.

I found annoyances in FreeBSD to begin with but learnt to love it quite quickly. It's an adjustment, but it does you good to go out of your comfort zone once in a while.

Don't become an accountant or a lawyer. What you might like to consider is getting some experience from an engineering aspect as opposed to network management. What people are saying about it not paying well and being thankless. The pay is bad because they're coming from an educational ICT point of view...the pay can be better in industry if you find the right company and you have a specialism that they require for example Netware, Active directory or maybe a network security specialist and they're concerned with intrusion detection/prevention or something. Being a thankless job. Well that's just the way the world is these days. Grumpy end-users wanting everything done last week and the way they asked not the proper way.

Whilst previously I would have suggested that you use Ubuntu, because it is good, it's there, it works and is easy to get running quickly. I favour Debian based when it comes to Linux. But for servers I tend to shy away from Linux altogether now. FreeBSD. See the light.