shadowx

i do agree it is a complex matter but we can see that countries not involved in wars do not suffer from terrorism, or should i say that the terrorism isnt aimed at the citizens of that country. And also there has never been terrorism on this scale untill this war against the east begun. And i agree it is very difficult to tell right from wrong, infact, there is no right or wrong, it is a matter of opinion, which is what is meant by "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter." to one man they are terrorists but to another they are like soldiers in a war against oppression. and in this case i think of them as freedom fighters, although i strongly disagree with their methods! And i disagree with you TypoMage, terrorism isnt stupid, it is however in my opinion very bad as many innocent people die and many lives are ruined. But the terrorists are sending a message, a message that they wont sit back and watch THEIR lives being ruined and their countries invaded by us, the western invaders. I see that youre from the USA, im from the UK so when we saw "us" atleast we me the same! But think of it the other way around, you and your familly and friends are happilly sitting in the garden sunbathing or in the pool or whatever when suddenly a fighter jet screams over head and bombs the town/city near you, killing hundreds and wrecking many lives, possibly killings friends and familly or even you, This is what was happening in iraq and such other places where the usa and Uk have declared war. Wouldnt you want to strike back? send a message to the leaders saying "stop bombing us or we'll bomb you" or sit and watch more bombs drop? The terrorists are taking the first option, and rightly so, in a way they are the ones trying to stop this war but obviously its a vicious cycle where we get bombed and bomb them so they bomb us and we bomb them again etc.... the point of terrorism is to spread terror, but the point of this terror is usually to prove a political point about them disagreeing with someone else. obviously they should not kill or hurt innocent people but nor should our troops, they are simply terrorists too, but they are organised terrorists called an "army". but armies do not torture innocent people...

Aww I can get VERY nervous when im talking to someone i like too, i have a friend for about 3 years now and i REALLY like her, i tend to say i love her, and i still get nervous talking to her, its perfectly normal!I tend to cope with it by hiding it by being more open and upfront than i actually feel. When im nervous i tend to tell jokes to break the ice, sometimes works, sometimes doesnt but thats a risk i take! So i think you should talk casually like has been said already. At first, next time you seem him, smile at him or if hes close by catch his eye and jus say hi, or as i speak "y'aright?" But thats my common-ness showing through Then the next day say the same and if hes alone and looks bored jus say something like "cor cheer up it might never happen" and smile, he'll laugh/smile too and there ya go, broke the ice! And from then on itll be alot easier to talk to him hopefully and then go and ask him if he wants a coffee, or a drink or anything! and dont be afraid to strut ya stuff as they say! if youve got it flaunt it! As much as you girls think us guys are perverts we really do like things like nice eyes and i havent yet found a girl who hasnt got nice eyes so make sure you make eye contact (can be hard i know!) and a nice smile too, show some teeth, he wont get scared i promise! It crinkles your eyes up and makes all girls look good! But also dont give it all to him! Us guys normally like a little bit of a chase! Were like dogs! Leave the toy there and we'll ignore it, throw and we'll chase it! And take what you can from the surroundings, like you said youre new so ask him something like, "do you know anywhere to met anyone nice? Im new, free and single *little laugh* and if youre lucky i mite take you with me if i find somewhere nice *smile*" (God i plan things too much!) But dont be scared to show youre shy, he might think its cute! And it wont turn him away, and if he compliments you no matter how much you blush dont say hes wrong! Just smile and say thanks, youll make him feel good that way One more thing that helped me is the girl i mentioned i used to think of her as like a queen, way way above me but shes not, as much as i think shes perfect i know shes no better than me and she makes mistakes just like i do. And the same is true for you and this guy, if you think someone is higher than you its very hard to not be shy but hes not above you! And if all else fails think of him naked hehe thatll give you a cheesy grin to show him!!! hold your head high and use your girly charms I would say good luck but you dont need it anyway!! go get him!

Its a fairly heartwarming story in a way!I think the old addage "love is blind" is so appropriate. I belive that you love a person because of their soul, (im fairly spiritual!) and deep down it doesnt matter about religion because in my opinion and belief, religion is simply a faith and a deep routed belief and love of a "god" and/or "goddess" And in my opinion, no matter what belive in it doesnt matter, its the belief that counts. So my point is, the fact that she is a catholic, as much as your mind says "humm im not so sure" your heart is sayig "she makes me laugh, and warms me up inside..." And that comes from deep inside her and she could be a catholic or muslim etc and her soul would not change. I would also not usually go for a catholic but then i couldnt say that i definately wouldnt because love is simply acceptance of someone else and obviously the liking of them (obviously "liking" doesnt cover the word "love" but you get the point!) so aslong as she accepts you for who you are, loves you for who you are and you can easily get along and possibly live together, that fact shouldnt matter atall!And i think its really sweet that you cried and miss her, it shows that you could/do really love her and she could be the one. Nationality, beliefs, studies, hobbies etc... are simply a skin that a person wears, the soul is the important part, and as long as you can accept those things there is no reason why you cant love her. and the important thing is not to tell yourself youre not allowed to love her because of any of those things but to let your heart decide wether you do or not, and if you do love her then you two could really get it together and if you dont then you can stay good friends. Its a win-win situation!Good luck with it all and i wouldnt worry too much about any of it! I understand about not wanting someone, im at that stage now, why do i need anyone?! But if someone this special comes along you cant let them walk by!What makes you think you cant deal with this alone? and what cant you deal with?

Thank you <_<I can vouch for Avast and say it is in my opinion alongside norton in its effectiveness as an antivirus but possibly a lot easier for beginners, and of course, FREE! Its very simple to use with just two buttons to do a full system scan whereas norton can take abit longer to work out. I also think its a lot lighter on the computer so it wont cause any lagging problems on slower PC's And it also can filter traffic from the internet acting as a firewall to help protect from anything getting in. But you should probably also use a seperate firewall, and like sportytalk said ive also heard ZoneAlarms is very good, i slightly remember using it on an old Windows 98 system and it seemed fine to me!And yes the firewall in XP isnt bad, i wouldnt trust it with my life but as you said everything helps! And theres nothing wrong with it but i would prefer to have something like macafee or zonealarms instead!Thanks for the contributions! Keep 'em coming!

Hi everyone, Before i start this isnt just a rante but also i want this to be a decent discussion with view points from different people. If you want to rant about either of the above people feel free! but also back yourself up! So: Last year as you all probably know london was attacked by terrorists, many people died and it caused a lot of problems in general, and most people probably also know of the recent threats to security out many british airports in the UK and possibly abroad, im not sure about abroad though. Now id like to ask what everyone thinks the reasons for these attacks and threats are? As you mightve guessed i personally believe that Blair and Bush (they arent worthy of their "president" and "prime minister" titles in my opinion) are one hundred percent to blame. Yes Blair, 100%! And youre friend Bushy! the blood of hundreds drips from your hands. And my reason is simple: the war on the middle east, not iraq, or afghanistan the whole of the middle east and i belive it is heading for the entire eastern world. Why are they so bent or world domination? Bush cant even come up for a reason! I mean the guy who has his finger on a big red button that determines the fate on the entire worlds population doesnt even know why he would push the button! There is something VERY wrong with that. And then Blair has wrecked the UK, now i have no problem with people from other nationalities, but what i do have a problem with is the fact that a few terrorist who HIJACKED a plane in one UK airport (cant remember which!) are allowed to stay in the UK because "its against their human rights to send them back from whence they came" What the ****?!?!?! I dont care if their country kills them, you dont hijack planes, its wrong, i dont care what happens if you get sent home its wrong so deal with whatever youre gonna get! But, back on topic! After wrecking this country he folows his little friend bush over to the eastern world and wrecks a couple more countries. I think its slightly strange that every country targeted so far is in the east, they are weaker in military terms but have a lot of economical benefit such as oil and cheap labour, coincidence? Yeh right! They are both bullies and have to stick together because they cant fight alone, and as is happening the prey are becoming the predator. Remember how no matter how big someone was if they picked on the wrong guy they got a smack from all his mates? Well Blair and bush go strolling into the east and then wonder why the trade center was attacked, the london transport system was attacked and they find bottle bombs aimed at planes to be flying over the USA. Ill tell you why blair and bush, because like the rest of the world the terrorists hae had enough. I agree with the terrorists motives, i definately do not agree with their methods, but as the sayin goes, "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" And i say power to the freedom fighters. Definately do not kill people or cause such problems and sadness but yes, stand for your pointm dont back down and let the world know, and if any "extremists" read this (which i doubt but anything is possible on the internet!) then i say good on you for standing up for your cause, but please stop killing! But overall them two are the root of all the violence aimed at the USA and UK and to be honest if the white house and the PM's house were attacked tomorrow I'd shrug it off, So long as innocent people arent harmed it really wouldnt bother me one little bit, i know it might upset a lot of people if that did happen but its the lesser of two evils, if they dont stop attackking the east they will carry on this war, its already been started in my opinion and only they can stop it. Now idlike to say i am definately not saying go attack the PM or his bum buddie bush but its just a scenario! So dont do it! But you get my point. So what does everyone else think? Like ive said i think the terrorism is completely their fault for attacking the eastern countries of course they are going to strike back, they shouldnt strike back against innocents but yes they should strike back in some way. And like i said i dont agree with the bombings or threats atall i simply agree with the motive to let blair and bush know that enough is enough, i belive the july bombings last year were a warning, if those bombs were meant to kill they wouldve been alot bigger and full of shrapnel, so take head blair, stop the war! Before more bood is on your hands. And i also dont think anyone should attack blair or bush but like i said i wouldnt care if it did happen. the world would be alot quieter. Please reply and let me know your opinions ad if you disagree dont jus say "youre wrong" tell me why you think i am wrong! This could be an intresting thread with any luck!

i hate cheese! unless is melted, or burger cheese, or cheese strings, or those little triangles of it, or if its the niice red/orange cheese, or the cheese on pizza, thats nice, probably because its melted but other than that i dont like cheese!And how do you PLAY cheese? sounds kinda crazy!

Ahh ok thanks, i think ill put it on my website then! Feel free to drop by at any time though! hint hint!Thanks for the advice

This is the rule i need clarifying, I have joined a game where by giving out a link to people andthem clicking on it i will get soldiers and gold (kingsofchaos.com if thats any use). If i posted this link in a no-credit forum and clearly told readers what it does is this in violation of this or any other rules? This was the only rule i fond that might be relevant. My plan was to make a thread where people playing this game could exchange clicks on their links and therefore advance in the game. Is this allowed? thanx

in the nicest way possible, you are a moron and to be honest im suprised youre still here incited racial hatred.but assuming you are still here, lets discuss what youre saying.Now i agree some eastern nations are fighting....but what are/were american and the UK doing just a months back? ahh yes, fighting, and we are the so called western world. Now if the eastern world should die for fighting, and the western world have been fighting then we too should die, uh-oh now theres no-one left, and undoubtedly there would be peace but YOU are also dead. The end methinks?

Howdy all!This is going to be a basic guide to computer security for home users including the use of applications and common sense Its not foolproof but no security is and if ive missed anything then add it in!First is first, understand the threats.Some people, understandably, think that adware, spyware, worms and virusses are the same and this can lead to bad security so first we have to know what each is and what they do. Adware is basically a small program that sits on your computer and brings adverts to you usually as popups in a web browser, they are very very annoying but usually a low risk threat as they normally do nothing but give you adverts.Spyware is a program that spies on you and your computer, you might think so what? but a lot of the time they send detailed logs of anything you do to the maker of the program and this will almost always have usernames and passwords to email accounts, website accounts and sometimes to banking accounts and even contain credit card details, obviously thats not good!Worms are a little like earthworms, well except they travel through computer networks and they contain a "warhead" if you like which is usually another program which will get saved onto your computer, then the worm will carry on its merry way through the network saving this program to everything it finds, the program wuill probably be a virus, spyware or adware so these worms can do a lot of damage to a network! and they dont need a person telling them what to do, they already know what to do!A virus is similar to a biological virus that attacks an animal by invading and hijacking its cells. A computer virus will get onto a computer and once there it will find a program you already have, possibly an internet browser, once found the virus inserts itself into the programmed code of the browser and whenever that internet browser is used the virus will also start, the virus cannot start on its own so it needs to "infect" another program. They are capable of basically anything, including creating any of the above programs and taking control of the computer and deleting data. Of course the programs i mentioned can always come together, eg you could have a worm that saves a virus to a computer containing adware and spyware!Now we know what these things are we can hopefully try to stop them getting onto our computers.There are a lot of programs on the market saying they will make you safe, which in most cases they will do but the thing to understand is every day, probably every hour a new virus is created, we might never hear about it because it might not do much damage but that doesnt mean its not there ready to hit you and the reason i mention this is that unlike humans computers cant actually think, the way that a program like norton anti-virus works is by comparison. Every day or few days it gets sent a big list and it will look at every program and compare it to this list, now the question is, if the list is sent at 10am and a new virus is made at 11am what happens? Well the anti virus checks this virus but doesnt find it on the list so lets it through and thats where the problem starts. The only way you can do anything about this is by making sure you update your AntiVirus and other security programs as soon as possible every time. It might sound difficult but its really not, no matter what program you use there will be an option of how long to wait before updating and you should set this to the shortest time possible to make sure you are as safe as you can be. The most basic programs any computer should have are a firewall and antivirus, many programs are a combination of both, which is usefull and easy to manage. You can also get anti-spyware and anti-adware which of course combat adware and spyware, again some programs do include these also. Some people might think that by having just a firewall they are safe, but they arent, a firewall can only TRY to stop something entering the computer, once its in, the firewall is usless and not a single firewall will stop everything (unless you tell it not to let anything in of course but then you cant use the internet or a network!) And some people think a good anti-virus will keep them safe but it cannot stop anything entering the computer, it can only find it once its in and has probably done damage and again it probably wont find EVERY adware/spyware/virus there is. So you can see the problem and probably you can see the best solution is to have both, An antivirus including anti-spyware and anti-adware and also a firewall and keep them all updated to the max!Prevention and cure are only two thirds of this tutorial though because at some point something will get in and do damage, its a certainty, how much damage might vary from your home page changing to your computer not starting up atall. When something like that happens you have to have a plan.The best plan is to have several backups, not just one. you should make one shortly after you get the machine, then another once you have installed all the applications you want and then every few months. In windows XP there is the handy "system restore" which has saved me a lot of hassle but it doesnt always work so you cant rely on it especialy if the computer is really damamge and does not start up. So you should always have backups on removable disks, nowadays a DVD is the best solution as cds could take up at the least 3Cds possibly up to 7 or 8 if you have a lot of games or music on the computer. The dvds should all be labbelled according to the date they were done and stored safely. But before you whack a DVD in and copy your hard drive to it you must know that this wont work. You will need the installation disks of the operating system you have installed for re-installing the operating system and a small program to load the backups onto the computer. There are several programs that will do this including Norton ghost and several freeware equivalents for unix/linux windows and i presume, mac. They will usually come on a disk and this disk will boot your computer into a special mode where you can easilly use the backup disks, and it will guide you through this process. the most important thing is to continually save all work and special data onto 2 or 3 DIFFERENT disks, such as a flash disk the hard drive and a CD/DVD this will make it very hard for you to loose it. but also remember that if you do have any virusses etc.. on your computer these will be backed up also so you should do a full system wide anti-virus anti-adware and anti-spyware scan before the backup to minimise this threat.Always remember at some point you will get one of these programs but its definately not the end of the world as everyone gets it and as a home user you have less to worry about, simply follow the steps and you shouldnt be too badly affected, but spare a thought for network technicians dealing with 500 computers all being attacked at the same time! Poor fellows! Happy computing!

I dont actually use opera but i use firefox so i know the problems that you can have when not using IE when it comes to flash (sometimes) the first thing to try is to make sure that your opera has the latest version of flash player and all other avaliable media plugins installed and working fine, if you find one missing or broken addit or replace it.I dont know what compatability is like between opera and flash and general website media so i cant be specific, sorry. Try it in another browser like firefox even if you dont use it just to see if its opera or the fact that only IE will show it correctly (EXTREMELY unlikely but possible!) but like i said im not an opera user only really firefox and IE for website testing.

Id say theres a reasonable demand but i think the problem is, how do you get known? With computer science you could be a technician at a school or something and just go to them and say "hey you guys want a technician?" and keep going untill someone says yes but as a webdesigner you cant. I think if you can get yourself known then you can earn a stable living providing you can get seen above the rest, i think tis a good area to go into as there arent many professional webdesigners around in comparison to other techy jobs.

others can correct me if im wrong but i belie .bat files (Batch files) are just a collection of commands that run in DOS on windows so technically theyre not written in any programing language as they arent a program as such just commands for another program.And i dont think there is a way of stopping the black box coming up becuase the black box is MS-DOS which is what takes the instructions you write into the batch file and does whatever they tell it to do.As for what it can do i dont think its very much, its usually used for recovering a computer if everything goes wrong and you can use DOS and batch files to try and fix things because they dont need windows to load to work also i use them to shutdown faster sometimes just one line of commands can shutdown my computer a lot quicker than the usual way.they can be used for things like telnet and other DOS applications and for checking network configurations and things like that but overall batch files are only really usefull for technicians and techie minded computer users rather than for a general home user who wants to do office work or play games, they are usefull for things ive already mentioned though. I think you can find a list of the uses and commands by searching for MS-DOS commands in googleBut like i said i might be wrong so others please correct me but i think im right!

My machine, an advent 7096, only cost me ?500 and i know its not top end nor is it a 'gaming'machine but it has 1gb of RAM and a mobile AMD Smepron processor so it is darn good for playing games, ive also got a widescreen which i would suggest for games because its just bigger ! I would say at the very least 1GB of RAM, i had 512MB before and it was useless, i play unreal torunament 2004 and i couldnt play many of the maps because they were big and i had to play in low detail with poor sound quality and no special effects but now i can play in high quality mode of everything, i also think its down to the CPU as an AMD is better for gamingin my opinion whereas an intel is better for office work and such. And i agree with already said try to avoid bult in graphics and if possible a graphics card with its own RAM as that way it wont need to steal RAM from the main RAM chips although if you have plenty of RAM about 1.5-2GB you would easily be able to use a shared graphics card. Definately look for an AMD proccessor though for gaming! And if you do get a laptop try to make sure it has good ventilation as a lot of gaming will heat it up quite alot, i normally let mine rest if im taking a break ill put it into standby even for a few minutes to let it cool down.Good luck hunting and let us know if you do get one!

Have you tried as said disabling all firewalls and antivurises as i also think it could be due to the media player attemtping to download something such as song information, liscenses etcetera and as said the firewall and antivirus could be scannig it using up CPU power. Also if you havent already definately try dsconnecting the phoe line from the router as this will show you wether its the internet or the router and from there you could find a solution, ive never experiened anything like this from my usb adsl modem or my router, what make is the router? and do you connect using a network connection like ethernet or WLAN or by a usb or serial cable? Im thinking if its using a usb, serial or other similar cable it could use up more otherboard and cpu power possibly affecting the performance but if you connect using a network connection it shouldnt affect the pu or motherboard as much.

When i was on work experience at a university we did test both VMWare (VMW) and Virtual PC (VPC), the first problem came with VPC as usual with microsoft they have to be awkward so we couldnt load or run VPC onto an XP Home machine it had to be Pro, a small problem for a large university with unused licenses floating around but a huge problem for a simple home user who doesnt have ?80 to spend on software.So VMW was running on a host of xp home and VPC was hosted on XP pro, sorted. The guest was to be the current vista beta (yes I know basing ANYTHING on beta software isnt foolproof), we used the same version on each machine, to install we used a CD emulator to install the ISO we downloaded. The overall goal was to get Vista to run stable and fast and obviously usable and if posible to get Aero to run (Aero is the coolest GUI i have ever seen! check it out!) We knew the hardware was capable of Aero and Vista is the only OS capable of it so we thought there would be no problems, well, there were. Both machines had issues with the drivers for the hardware so thats probably an issue with the vista beta, but on VMW we was able to slightly fix the problem and get a slightly higher colour depth and resolution than on VPC so that was probably due to the differences betwen VPC and VMW. Aside from that was speed, there was a huge, and i mean huge difference in responsiveness, stability and overall speed. VMW ran the vista beta like any other OS, smoothly, stable and responsive with only a few minor lags that you would expect from beta software whereas VPC running vista was almost unusable, it took around 10 minutes to load the OS and from then on it was unstable, extremely unresponsive with several crashes where i had to use task manager to manually end the proccess as it crashed so often and just generally bad. So overall I say that in comparison VMW is the only choice, it doesnt need any fussy software requirements or any fusst installations, just simply and quick and effective, unfortunately i havent got to try either with a publicly released OS but you can see the differences, they could be due to the fact that vista is so heavy on resources but when VPC or VMW were minimised there wasnt any noticeable differences on the host so i would still say it was due to issues with VPC so avoid VPC!

That sounds like pretty much what I want to happen really so its all good! I havent checked my bios settings yet mainly out of laziness but as its a new machine i figure the bios should supprt booting on the usb so it should work. Thanx

Yeh that helps alot, the main worry was windows trying to boot linux but if it cant even see linux then that wont be a problem so thats good news, I should imagine that the bot loader in linux will be able to bot linux from the external if i do what i said before or maybe there is a way to set one partition as the boot partition. Thanks

Hi all!! (rather happy got a new laptop so bear with my hyponess!)So I have my new laptop (advent 7096 incase anyone is wondering ) And my dad said he will buy my an external hard drive for my birthday (this saturday!) And i do like linux and before i had a dual boot system with a choice of windows and a linux distro, but this has only a 40gb hard drive and with about 8.5-9 used up by windows already i fear that using this with a boot selector and partitioned could cause me to run out of room so my solution is to have linux on the external hard drive and windows on the internal.But my question is this:what happens if i plug the usb external hard drive into my windows system while windows is running? Because i will almost certainly use the external HD to store my college work and other college items (definately not games! ) and they will be probably windows based as the college system is based on windows, sorry this seems a little confusing i think but what im saying is, is it possible to have linux nstalled on a partition on the external HD and store windows documents (eg word docs) on it and still be able to access them from a windows machine?I have a fear that when i plug the external HD in the windows system will try to find an autorun executable and then try to boot linux causin problems of having two operating systems fighting over one set of resources, so will the windows system do this or will it just show me the files and do nothing more?Also im fairly sure that to boot into linux on the external HD it would be simple as to plug it in before i turn the machine on and then set the option in the BIOs to boot rom the USB and therefore into linux, is this the case?I jus dont want to have a meltdown of windows fighting linux, though could be fun to watch if it wasnt on my machine !!Farewell!

hi everyone!Well this one is a pain in the backside, I was half way through installing phpBB2 and got an error message for my database not being reachable then i realised i had my domain login password instead of my database login password so changed that and ran the install again and got a blank page, thought it was strange but my bro wanted to go online so had to give up for a while, tried to access my forum as a user and got redirected to the install page again went through it then saw that i needed to manually create the database for the forum so i tried to open phpmyadmin crom cpanel and was given a wrong user/pass error message...which is strange to say the least because it didnt give me a chance to login...which i found rather usefull..*not!*so how can i sort that out?! gah! silly computer *smash smash* Ouch the computer hurted me

ahh rite! On that note i shall leave the smf forum as its a royal pain the backside with silly little things like that! I shall find another free forum to use methinks Thanks for the input both of you! Saves me messing with it to make it work

for the font issue you could set it up to use several fonts incase one or two do not work, to do this you can use CSS in an external css file simply put p {font-family : veranda, Comic sans ms, times new roman} What this does is says "right anything between the <P> tags has to have a font of veranda...uhoh i cant use veranda ill try comic, uhoh i cant use that either, better try Times new roman, aha! i can use that" and so the font uses times new roman incase anyone doesnt know you simply put the following into the head of the HTML <link rel=stylesheet type=text/css href="location/filename.CSS"> in my opinion the best and easiest way to ensure a smooth font system for everyone

hello!first of all im not sure if the fantastico problems should be posted here but i guess they can be as im a hosted member in need of support ;)i installed the simple machines forum about 2 or 3 days ago and set the admin name and password during the install steps, once it was installed i followed the link to login as the admin and sort it all out properly but it gave me another login screen ("index.php?action=login2") i belive for those who also have the simple machines forum. And on this screen just about the username feild it said "you should fill in a username" so im guessing it hasnt realised that i did give a username! argh! What im thinking might be an issue is that i installed it on the subdomaib writings.site.trap17.com and that subdomain instead of having a seperate FTP account simply redirects to a folder on my website so it goes to site.trap17.com/writings could that cause a problem? if i know that is the problem i shall make another ftp account but untill im sure id rather not!thanx for any help and advice

hello!Well Im in work experience at the moment from college and im working at a university for two weeks.Im working with the technicians as a computer admin/techie and he starts rambling about virtualization and i had absolutely no idea what he was talking about so he explained.Sometimes you want a server to run more than one service, maybe an application server that serves each station the applications it needs and controls them and it also needs to run an email service. On a large network running both of these services on one server can cause massive lag and huge problems with possibly 50 requests for 5 or 6 different applications and then another 40-50 for emails and then also of course running an internet connection and security things like firewalls. Thats quite a lot for one server and in somewhere like a university where you might have 500-600 computers you could have at any one time 400+ requests for applications and 400 for email so you see the problem. The old solution was to run one server for each and every service, so one for applications and one for email etcetera. When you consider the prices for a decent server to be able to deal with atleast 400 requests and you would need possible 4 or 5 of these for different departments and services it just gets ridiculous. So what do you do?Well you can perform virtualization. This is when you take one machine, eg a server, and create a virtual machine inside this machine. So for a start you have the hardware obviously you cant just create new hardware but that doesnt matter because the virtual machines act like they have their own hardware when in fact they share it. The server is now the host containing the host operating system etcetera. Inside the server is also the guest machine which is the new "virtual machine" This machine is almost like an emulation, it acts like a whole new machine, it is allocated its own RAM which only it can use, the other host machine uses its own ram too so theres no problems with that. They both use the same hard drive, the host machine uses the whole hard drive and guest machine uses a file which inside contains directory information etcetea, similar to an image of a hard drive. When the guest operating system is started it begins using the virtual hard drive file (dont ask me how i have no idea but it does!) and then is uses its allocated RAM for its own use. It also shares all the other hardware of the host machine unless you tell it not of course. so in summary the virtual machine is now litereally that, a virtual machine, it uses exsisting hardware as told to do so by you and it runs as a totally idependant system, on it you can have ANY operating system and software as long as it can be supported by hte hardware, (like dont run vista on 16mb of RAM ) So now instead of having 3 servers you simply by one good server and add two virtual machines thus making 3 machines in total. Now each machine can run its own services, so the host could run applications, the first guest could run email and the second guest machine can run security and other services. So how can YOU do this? well any computer can do it so long as you have good enough hardware, id suggest atleast 512mb RAM then each virtual machine can have 256mb RAM and if you plan on actually using them for working etcetera then atleast 40gb hard drive as it will have atleast two operating systems and sets of applications. Nothing else is really important, just make sure the hardware you use is compatible with the software you plan on using. Then you will need a virtualization software, i have used two on work experience called VMWare (google it, its near the top) and Windows Virtual PC (again google it) Both unfortunately are trial softare but it gives you an idea, i have no doubt that there are free alternatives out there so if you plan on using this for more than about 4 weeks download a free version of pay for one of the above.From what ive seen and used ( VMware on XP home as host and running vista beta 2 as guest, and Windows Virtual PC on XP pro as host and running vista beta 2 as guest) i will definately say use VMWare, Windows Virtual PC does NOT run on XP home which is what a lot of home users use, Also with vista it was so slow and laggy and crashed a few times, not to mention the trouble with drivers and long satart up and shut down times of the guest (vista) although the host (xp PRO ) was very responsive and acted as normal. With VMWare Vista ran alot smother and alot faster and much more usable, it also was much better with the video drivers and i think auto detected them. It was also able to use an ISO image to install vista from where as Virtual PC needed us to download a CD drive emulator. Its an extremely usefull thing if you are a software developer to see how your product runs on different versions of windows or different distro's of linux/unix or even on mac as you can run any operating system as a guest without fear of damaging the system or needing to uninstall anything if all goes to pot, just simply delete the virtual machine using the software. Its also very usefull for server application like i said already. or if working on a shared machine and you want to run another operating system without changing things for other people. downsides: well you need a decent system spec to be able to use both machines at the same time with a reasonable responsiveness and stability. so 512mb RAM and 40gb hard drive. Other than that all is good, if something goes wrong it wont affect both machines and you can easilly just delete the virtual machine and remake it again. I suggest you all to check it out if you like to use windows and linux/unix/mac as it wont damage the windows partitions and if something doesnt work in another operating system you can easilly use that function in the other operating system without restarting.Farewell

*flashes back to bonsaikitten.com fiasco* the dejavu is definately there!i think its a hoax for a few reasons:firstly if we could bio-engineer why waste it on silly little toys? the major governments would have robitic soldiers out in iraq, robotic deep sea divers, servants etc...as far as i know the furthest people have got with bio-engineering is a little AI, voice recognition and such but not a full bio-human.also theyre said to be cheap, if it was THAT good it wouldnt be cheap, if you ask me id say they would be close to half a million to a million pounds/dollars because if they were real bio-humans (whats the real word for that? ...hum...) then the technology would be very advanced and companies are greedy and that equals high price tags.also the picture...its very tacky IMHO which makes me think its not part of a REAL advertising campaign.the interesting thing is though as already said the internet publicity! it is pretty well known to Mr. Google which makes me think...why? methinks its because of blog entries because a lot of the links i found had the word "blog" in the title which makes me think a spammer has been wt work spamming the word "Gen Pet" accorss everything he can find. and like i said it reminds me of bonsai kitten (which i admit i fell for at the start) which was obviously a hoax. thats just my opinion though, i could be wrong i just doubt it