ClareJonsson

I personally don't find anything wrong with being bi, gay or straight. It's simply a preference that doesn't hurt anyone. I mean you don't hassle anyone if they like brussel sprouts and you hate the taste of them do you? In my books it's exactly the same as that, someone's personal preference. And if it doesn't conform to your personal preferences, then so what? It's their life and not yours, give people a break and stop fueling hate campaigns. Talking of the Bible, doesn't it say to love thy neighbour? I think people who quote the bible and use it to fuel hate is just an excuse. The bible should be taken as a guide and not literally. In all honesty, people who are part of the hate groups probably have low moral fibre, and crap lives. They have to make others feel sad in order to give themselves a little boost. Seeing others happier than themselves must really really annoy them. They should pop down to Lives R Us and get one of their own, and stop dictating everyone else's.

On a girls night out once we went to a club and I met the drop dead gorgeous guy serving at the bar. He was really friendly and when I asked if he had a girlfriend he said no. YIPPEEEE! Unfortunately the rest of my friends knew something I didn't, I should have picked up on the giggling as later he confessed that his other half was sitting next to me. He was gay and his boyfriend was there all the time watching me make a complete idiot of myself. To top it all my friends knew exactly what had been going on and I have never lived that one down. #-o

One of the better firewals I have used is Comodo. Much better than zone alarm.

Is your monitor a TFT, if so, when it blanks can you see a dark image? If this is the case then it is likely a board in the monitor called the inverter is failing. Inverters are probably the most common section of today's monitors to fail.

Try rolling back XP to one of the restore points dated before the spyware got onto your system.

The last two posts were correct, and it's actually better to have a PSU watt rating as high as you can afford. The PSU will not supply more watts than the components in your PC requires, the watt rating is how much it can supply in total. A 400 Watt PSU won't be permanently supplying 400 watts, it will be able to supply up to 400 watts. What is bad if your PSU is under rated, i.e. if all the components in your PC requires a total of 400 watts and you only have a 350 watt PSU, then the PSU will be strained and eventually burn out. Another misconception is that buying a PSU rated at 500 watts uses up more electricity than one rated at 400 watts, both PSUs in the same PC will use up the same amount of current as it's the components in your PC that use the juice not the PSU, the PSU only supplies what the components require. Hope all that made sense :).

I am afraid you're gonna be a little bit disappointed. It's not possible to 100% remove the vocals from a piece of music, what you end up with is pretty horrible with lots of artifacts, especially that horrible watery effect.

I too am an IT expert and I have just taken a look at the code on that website. It's just a silly page that attempts to trick you into downloading the spyware/virus/software by using scare tactics. That "oh so clever" scanning of your system on the main screen is a hoax, it's just simple javascript doing nothing more than altering the progress bar and reporting fake infections. The things that are dangerous are the pop up boxes, clicking the wrong option there could initiate a download, but anyone with half a brain wouldn't be silly enough to do that. There's millions of websites just like this all over the net, this one is nothing special. Some of them try and sell you their legitimate software by using this scare tactic technique, most are really spyware (Obviously), but not many are viruses as there's not much money in viruses. I noticed you stated that the site really does infect your PC with a virus, can you back that up by telling us which virus that is?

We supply Dragon Naturally Speaking and any sound card from about 10 years ago (onwards) should be fine. The main requirements is that you have a microphone input, and just about every basic PC sound card has one. Chris is 100% correct, an original sound blaster 16 is the most basic of sound cards you could get. Anything you will have these days will be miles better. kalphiteman4: We use belarc too, but here's something you may also be interested in: Aida32! Aida32 will even report hardware that doesn't have drivers loaded as it interrogates the hardware's firmware, instead of relying on driver info, and it will give you the link to the relevant drivers download page (Very good for finding out hardware make and model without having to open the system)! Plus it runs stand alone without the need for installation. And just like Belarc, it's free :) .

I have noticed from time to time that my browser (Firefox) blocks popups while I am on the Tip It forums which probably comes from one or more of the adverts on the site. I am wondering if one of these popups uses a re-director and that is what's happening with you. Do you have a popup blocker installed?

It you're applying for a job and want to appear more professional, then I would suggest the following: For Viruses and Spam: Sophos Sweep - it's just about the industry standard that a lot of other software get their data from, but be warned, it's quite expensive. They also do site licences for larger organisations such as the University I am a technician at. Firewall: Well the windows firewall is okay, but more professionally you would obviously be using a dedicated firewall between the PCs and the Net, usually something on a separate computer or a dedicated piece of hardware, both of which act like a gateway to the outside world and has full control and logging of incoming and outgoing packets. It doesn't do any harm to have Windows Defender installed either, and this comes preinstalled if you have Vista anyway. The other good thing about the above (Not including the dedicated firewall or hardware firewall) is that you have full control via group policies in the active directory on your domain. And all can be deployed via a service like SMS. I am assuming of course the job your going for is something technical?

I suppose I could add stars, after all it is a night scene :)

Every object was made from scratch, it took a looong time :) I have added a fence too: I'm not sure what I'm going to do next, any requests?

OK, the rope has been sorted and I have made some curtains for the window, added some plants and another outside light:

Another little update, various things added and refined here. I haven't sorted the rope out yet though:

Thanks for the comment, yes you're right about the rope, I haven't applied any textures to that yet, I was going to leave that for a while... With the house you are correct, there is no detail yet. It's a basic box with a window and door. I wanted to put it there to show the new land object which was not present in the previous image. I want to add things like rafters, a sign, chimney, window outline and bricks outside...

Nope, Not said anything about a castle, I said a town, but a castle GREAT idea! I haven't finished this yet, it's going to be an on going visual project, which you all can see the development. As I add more stuff, I will post it! Addition: If you need help with AOI, let me know. Have you followed the hourglass tutorial yet?

You wait til it's finished, I will have my character standing on the dock :)

Here's the second render, this one has a house object on the land, a very basic house with no detail as yet. And I have tidied up some other textures and added a flame for the candle in the main light source (Lamp):

When it's finished it will have a town behind it and the candle will have a glowing flame. I just got tired tonight but thought I would show you the scene as it is so far :)

I decided to make a complete scene using Art of illusion, I have started with a basic Dock, here's the very first render:

What I do is change my desktop resolution to 800x600 and maximize the RS window. I have even written a little application that changes back and forth from my TFT's optimum resolution (1280x1024) and 800x600 so I don't have to go through all the silly screen options every time. If anyone wants this application, let me know. It's nothing fancy, literally just a couple of buttons. I also use the downloadable RS version so I don't have all the navigation controls in the window. I find this is easier than pressing F11 before I log in.

Not for an ipod no, but maybe foir a lifetime supply of clothes and chocolate :D

Windows Firewall does NOT perform exactly as other firewalls. It blocks anonymous incoming requests ONLY , just like everyones so called "router firewall". Neither of which stop programs running on your computer from sending information OUTWARD. Do your research before posting. And like Mercifull, I have never experienced slowdowns caused by Norton, McAfee, or any other protection suite. People just like to have a scape goat and they point fingers since they aren't qualified to actually find what really is causing the problem. Granted the firewall doesn't popup every-time a new program attempts to open an outgoing port, but then you got antispyware to sort out anything you don't want accessing the net. If you really want a firewall with all the bells and whistles, then try Comodo Personal Firewall, which is also free. Sorry if this sounded like a topic bash, but I really have had that much trouble with Norton's. We have a LOT of PCs go through our hands. I was only giving my advice on the experience of my team of which there are 8 technicians in our section in a busy University. I will avoid this topic now if you like, because of my anti norton bias :|

You're not going to like this, but I wouldn't let Norton's Internet security anywhere near my PC. Uninstall it and use something else instead, there's lots of free software available that does a much better job and doesn't impact on system performance like Norton's does. Use the following instead: 1 Enable the Windows Firewall, there's nothing wrong with the built in firewall as it does exactly the same thing that any other firewall does. If you're not happy with that, use Zone Alarm. 2. Use Avast for virus Protection, only ever use one virus protection software at any one time. 3. For spyware detection and protection, I would install the following: Windows Defender, Ad-Aware free & Spybot.