rpgsearcherz

Actually if they were to overwithdraw you would be charged fees from Paypal(legal action) as well as your bank. As far as I know, it may also go on your credit record.I wasn't taking that into consideration when I made my post before, as it has never happened to me. But it is another possibility.Are you guys sure that you can not get donations without a bank account though? The more I think about it, they may allow you to do it via credit card. Credit cards are also more secure. As for withdrawals, you would do it through the account itself, or from a debit card, but if I remember correctly the debit card is only available with a bank account on file.

Well you brought up asking them if it's blacklisted or not, and it wasn't blacklisted to begin with. The blacklisting seems to have come from my multiple calls(around 30 - each speaking to different people) about the issue. Not to mention their corporate line could not justify why it was blacklisted either, pushing me more into thinking it was for no reason other than as harassment.As for not putting people through to supervisors, I have never seen another company that did that, so I find it hard to believe that it would be a company policy. What is the point of a supervisor if they give no input to any situations or anything? They are supposed to be the go-to people when you are still needing assistance.Note : I did not ask everyone for their supervisor, it was just one person. So whether the others would have denied as well or not, I can not say.

Yeah, my two main reasons for trying out SMF over phpBB are that SMF has automatic "SEO" you can enable, whereas phpBB doesn't. I never could figure out how to get phpBB seo'd either, without adding new php pages that just read all the topics.As for the other reason, it was about the themes. Don't get me wrong, phpBB has awesome themes, but just like you I had issues with getting everything customized. I know how to install the themes and all, but then when you want to add a new item, like a chat box ,you must edit each one...This is hard if you have ~15-20 themes. Not to mention you come out with bugs that are very bothersome, and it causes a headache in the end.I haven't tried to add anything new to SMF, but to confirm, all add-ons will work on every theme without having to manually edit them?

Yeah, I have my Paypal linked to my bank. They won't ever withdraw unless you ask them to(when you pay someone).If you wanted, you could also link it to a bank account that you never use, assuming that you have one like that.Now, although I've never had issues with them withdrawing from my account without permission, as always there is that potential risk.As far as I know, every donation method there is requires a bank account though, as technically what they are giving you is a payment, therefore whatever company you are using wants to have the confidence that if you fall through on your services, the person who paid you can do a chargeback. And yes, sadly this also happens with donations sometimes.Just like with any other business setting, think about it as a "risk vs. potential" situation, and decide what you want to do from there.

Most people have Windows operating systems, yes, but lately I've been seeing a lot more people with Apple laptops, and with what I'm understanding, most servers(like web hosts) use Linux as their system of choice.Really, if people will quit being lazy and try out something new(Linux), Microsoft could be destroyed. The issue is that it doesn't seem to be happening at all, and the chances of it happening are very low.People are just afraid of change, and Microsoft is able to capitalize on that fear.

HP really is reliable. Out of every company I've bought things from, they have been the best. I guess I'm kind of biased towards them because of how they will deal with issues not even related to anything they did, or PC parts that they installed.I guess you can really relate them to places like Wal-Mart, where no matter what happens to your item, as long as you return it within 30 days or whatever, they will allow either a refund or exchange. They lose money on that specific transaction, but at the same time they gain your loyalty, thereby giving them more of your money over time. Which, in essence, is why Wal-Mart is as big as it is now. I would gladly go there before anywhere else, solely because I know that if I have issues, I won't have to fight with anyone to get a refund/exchange.

To answer the question about software and all... Here's how it works.In terms of how we *feel*, if we own a key, downloading off a torrent should be fine. We also feel that uploading it to ourself is fine. In all actuality, this isn't the case at all.For a recent example, look at Warhammer Online. We were forced to download the client at a rate of a whopping 30 kb/s or so from the Fileplanet servers. A few people decided to make a torrent for the client(You couldn't even run it without a legitimate username and password, so there was no chance of anyone hacking it or anything) and they got banned for it. Why? Because they allowed people to use that instead of Fileplanet.In terms of games, even if you copy your legitimate PS2/Xbox/Xbox 360/etc. game and have your system modchipped, you're breaking the law. Their laws say that it doesn't matter how much you paid, because what you paid for was *that key* and *that disc*. Even borrowing a friends' disc for a game you have a key for is illegal.As to whether I agree with the rules and laws or not...I don't. I feel that if you paid for a key, the game is just on an easy to use format. It's ridiculous to say that you are not allowed to find another median to get the media from.But that's the way it is.

Really there is one positive thing that I can say about Dell. They have pretty nice gaming systems for low prices. You can get a decent laptop that can play up-to-date games from them for a lot less than their competitiors(HP, Acer, etc.). But that's laptops. In terms of desktops, it's best to just build your own.

I'm testing out SMF now. So far, it seems better than phpBB3. I don't know if it's just that it's different, or that it's really better to me, but I seem to like it more.As for my CMS choice, my host just got back up last night so I'm re-adding Joomla now. We'll see how it goes. Before, I had issues really figuring out how to customize it.

Honestly, it depends on how good you are at proofreading your own work, as well as what kind of writing you are speaking about doing.I've landed many different interviews for various positions for writing in online magazines(some big, some small), but I also have a steady portfolio of work that I have done in the past. Sadly, at that point I was taking classes in school full-time, so decided that writing all the time would not be the most efficient idea.If you plan on writing for a living, rather than just for a small paycheck, I would suggest working on your grammar skills. For example, the period goes inside the quotation marks, and the hyphen doesn't make any sense where you put it. Use a comma in its place.Companies that you put applications in to will often be very critical when they are reading your work, because they are putting their company reputation on the line by accepting you.

With Diskeeper, it seems to slow down over time though. At least with the boot-up of the PC. Have you experienced that yet?Maybe it's just me, .

Will, are you sure that your issue wasn't resolved by itself?Much like the post by serverph says, it should have recalculated itself.I was down by quite a bit as well, and came back a few hours later and found that I was zeroe'd out but had a deposit already. Since then, I haven't noticed any issues.

I use whatever number they give me at the time(I call using a cell phone anyways, so there is no long distance). I could see where that would be an issue for some people, though.I think what's even worse for people who have to call long distance is that there is usually a long wait line too(I've had waits at other places for hours before, and still not gotten any help from the customer service representative).

I've messed around with some different combinations myself, and came up with a conclusion that attempting to mix the CMS and forums may not be the most efficient method. Instead, I have been finding it easier to just add a normal link to the forums(using html box or just adding a new link "Forums") and putting them in an easy to remember location(such as domain.com/forums). This keeps you from needing a bridge, or any other changes to your forums and/or site.As for the dual login, I have found that a lot of people who visit the site don't use the forums anyways, so it wasn't a big issue.This is just the case for me, and may or may not be a good choice in your situation as well.

Lol, reading these really amazes me. They put so much work into getting these to work on people, but then again, if they ask for $1 mil in advance and you put your life on the line to get it, they still made $1 mil without doing anything but tricking someone into sending it to them.If they ask a lot less more people will fall for it. If people weren't so gullible then you would never get those emails again.I got quite a few from people to wanted to "buy" my laptop on Craigslist for the price + $5000 and wanted to send a "money order" from Nigeria. Yet I guarantee at least a thousand people fall for that trick.

Okay, thank you for letting me know. It's definitely a blocked IP then. As of right now I am still getting nothing. When I ping the address I always get 100% packet loss, and when I try to visit it I am getting a "Internet Explorer Cannot Display" message. I've tried it using the following formats... xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx(ip address) http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Same issue every time. I'll put it in on a ticket.

I used Google Adsense at one time for my site, but it was more of a guild website than anything(We had ~150 people visiting daily, but it was the same ones..). Never got any clicks on any ads, so made like 1 cent over a 5 day period, lol.So really, how much you make will depend on how many people are visiting, how many actually click on your links, etc.

Hey all, just wondering if anyone can check to see if it's my IP blocking access or not.I got my activation email about 7 hours ago, along with the google domains information/activation, so I'm assuming the site/domain should be up.When I ping the website address(http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) it does resolve to the IP I was given, so I know the domain works. Yet, even using the IP directly, I am unable to load up the website itself, nor cpanel.Just wondering if it's not completely set up, or if I'm blocked for whatever reason.Thanks in advance!The site address is http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

From a psychological point of view, if he did it once he's capable of doing it again.ESPECIALLY if he was on medication when it happened, that is even more of a sign that it's obviously not helping him.In terms of his physical age and using that as a determination as to what his punishment should be, it's not a good method. It may not be his fault, no, but at the same time he has showed that he lacks the control over his own behaviors, thereby endangering others not only in the present, but in the future as well.

My only real new years resolution is to do much better in school.I've finally pretty much decided what I want to do with my life(Forensic Psychologist) and so I need to work hard at achieving that goal. In the past, I've been slacking on it quite a bit.Really, I don't pay attention to new years resolutions, but maybe this time it will be different!And good luck with yours.

That's a good point, but what I usually do is install Windows(fresh) and keep up with the speed of opening stuff, and then I do the installation of OpenOffice, whatever games I play, Nero, and other programs, and then re-do it again.Maybe one day we won't even need to defrag again since the systems will automatically place files in the best spots, .

Well the most annoying part about it is that Dell is the *only* company that has this "protection" policy. Their justification makes no sense whatsoever, either, as I could use a forensic search to get information and then it's all okay? That means you can steal used laptops and still get the support, which is where my issue is.As for the second laptop, I didn't plan on ever needing support on it anyways. It has/had all of the restore discs, fully sealed still(the ones from the upgraded warrantee), but they were for Vista, not XP.After this whole issue I started doing a lot more research into the issue to figure out what was wrong, and did resolve it, but it still doesn't change the fact that it shouldn't have been such a big deal in the first place. I just hate(d) Vista.The laptop itself has been flawless aside from the XP issue(of which most laptops won't even work on XP to begin with, so I still feel quite lucky with that).And by far the most annoying part of the situation was the refusal to forward me to a supervisor. At the time I was too irritated to get the person's name that I was speaking to, but a couple people I talked to right after I got off the phone notified me that I should have gotten his employee ID and sent a postal letter to Dell about it.And about learning from it, like you said...I did learn from it. I learned that Dell is by far the hardest company to work with, and to take my business to one that isn't so picky about where you get items from.

I am using PerfectDisk right now, but...It just really doesn't seem to be that good overall. It's very fast - doing 170 GB's in about an hour, but at the same time it just doesn't seem to really be speeding up the PC.I'm used to XP as well, so does Vista possibly have better file management, in terms of placement?It seems like the most logical reason as to why XP is boosted by so much, yet Vista isn't.

Ah, thanks a lot for that clarification.And you're right : I've never done water cooling before. I always thought that the point of them was to rid yourself of the excessive noise/fans.About the higher fail rate, I understand what you mean now. I've had drives that lasted for 8+ years now. But then again, I had a 250 GB drive from a PC I bought a couple years ago that failed in under 8 months.Thanks again all, for the clarification on all of this stuff. I really am learning a lot from you(as a community) and I feel that my questions can help others who are afraid to ask, or just forget to ask, about things they do not understand.Expect to see other questions from me as well, . I'm always full of curiosity!

Okay, while I go through my experiences with Dell, I'm going to have to hold back on saying anything extremely derogatory. To start off with, I'm just going to say that I will never do business with them again, regardless as to what kind of deals they have going on. I'm not even sure if "freebies" from them would be worth getting at this point. There are two different issues that I went through with them, so I will go ahead and detail them separately. These are marked "Issue A" and "Issue B." ----------Issue A---------- This was the first time that I ever had to contact Dell for support about an issue before. This was regarding a laptop, the Dell M140 I think was the model name, but I am unsure on that. I bought this laptop online from someone off of a gaming site, used. When it came in, this particular laptop would not work with the buttons on the front(easy media control or something? More or less you can have the laptop up and push the DvD button for example, and it will load up the DvD player without actually booting up Windows). Researching this issue online myself, as I usually do, I came up with the conclusion that I needed the drivers, which I could find nowhere. So this is when I contacted Dell support. Now I always go for online support first, as you don't have to deal with the accents of the representatives(again, this is not to be rude, it's the same as someone from the US speaking to someone from Great Britain. The way of speaking is significantly different). During my chat with support, I found out that the previous user had wiped the HDD clean, and I would need a real restore disc, as there was no way to reinstall those specific drivers. So I asked how I could go about getting them. "Your laptop is under our lenghtened warrantee" they said. Which is awesome, is it not? Until you find out that you must transfer the said warrantee into your name! What information is required for that? Pretty much all of the previous owner's information. So I explain how I got the laptop, and that I could supply some, but not all, of the information to them. They denied this, based on the assumption that if you do not know everything about the previous owner, you must have stolen it. *Great* way to look at your potential customers! I've never seen a company that I liked this much after our first run-in with each other. Now I'm stuck with a laptop that does not fully work, with a full warrantee(upgraded even), but can't do anything to fix the issue. At this point, I use my elite explorative skills on the laptop's hard drive(since it is now mine) and start pulling up deleted files. Voila! A document the previous owner had on it that had all of his personal information on it. But could this be the correct information? I contact Dell's support again, and this time even explain all of the work I had to go through, as well as where I got the information from, and gave it to them. At this point they transfer the warrantee over into my name(I'll explain my issue with this after). With the warrantee in my name, they now send me a full set of every restore disc for the system, absolutely free. There were discs for Windows, drivers, all of the programs, etc. I think there were 5 in all. I boot up the laptop with the restore discs, get everything running, and there we go: Everything works as it should! At this point, I'm happy because it works, so I fail to realize how much work it really took for me to get to where I was. ----------/Issue A---------- Okay, this is the start of my frustration. In case you did not notice near the end where I actually pulled the information from: I got it from the hard drive on the laptop that they pretty much said must have been stolen. Now if you look at that from the sheep's perspective(the general buyer) you will find that it's a great policy. This protects you from having your laptop stolen by anyone and still getting support(which was the other funny part...If I stole it, do you really think I'm stupid enough to go give them the serials to the laptop, which include the mac address for the hardware(with wifi) so that they can trace it? Come on.). But on the other hand, I got the information off the laptop. Let's assume that I did steal the laptop from whoever it was. Now I'm searching the drive for the information, and it comes up. Especially with me allowing them that information, they should have denied it. Now they are breaking their own rules, are they not? If they caved after I did my scan of the system, why not just allow me to transfer it in the first place? So anyways, off to my unresolved issue, Issue B. ----------Issue B---------- Now this issue is a more recent one. This is regarding a laptop that I purchased off someone using Craigslist. This was a local transaction, yes, but two things happened: 1)I did not get his information at that time because neither of us had a pen/paper with us and I forgot that...Yeah, we could use the laptop to type it up real quick. Not to mention I was in a hurry at the time. 2)I guessed that there was no warrantee left anyways. I really wouldn't need his information if there was no warrantee. I get the laptop home, and after a while ran into an issue with sound drivers. This was when I was 100% against Vista. So I tried to find the drivers with no luck. At this point, I contact online support, asking them for help. "Sure I'll help!" they claim, but it was everything but "help." In case you have not contacted them before, they start off with asking for your laptop and/or PC's serial number and express registration code(if you want to speed it up). I give them this information. ' I'm now on hold for ~10 minutes while they look up the information and the correct solution for my problem. Now they come back and apologize because the laptop is "not" in my name. At this point I'm thinking "They let me resolve the issue last time, they will this time as well." I explain my situation, and the customer support representative tells me that there is nothing that Dell can do about the issue. I exit the online help, reopen it, and speak to someone else. Now this person is willing to help me fix my issue with not being able to transfer the warrantee. Yet again, this person goes away for a while, comes back, but their resolution is for me to call in to support. They give me the number, I thank them, and we separate. I call up support, wait a while before I actually get put through, and then I explain how I got the laptop, what my issue is(only software based!) and request assistance. The person on the phone says "I'm sorry but we are not allowed to do that. It is against our policy." Wait, so if I scan the HDD they can do it, but if I don't they can't? Does this really make sense? (Note - This previous user never used the laptop aside from playing a game with it, which required no logins or anything, so there were no traces of his identity). Now, with the person I was speaking to, he did what I find to be the most unprofessional thing I have ever experienced(way worse than what has already happened). I did what any other "I want my issue resolved" person would do, and I requested to speak to his supervisor. Without any hesitation in his voice he says, and I remember this part very clearly because it seriously bothered me then and still does today, "I'm sorry sir, I will not do that. He will only give you the same information that I already have." This message ended up almost stunning me. I have never heard someone say "no" to speaking to their superior before. Now I'm honestly not sure if that is against Dell's policy or not, but I would really like to know. More or less we went back and forth with me being more forceful each time with my "I want to speak to your supervisor" message and him always denying it with a "no, he can't help you" response. I did not even bother calling Dell's normal phone line after this, because that pushed me way over the edge. At this point I contacted Corporate. I spent about 30 minutes researching all of their numbers, calling in and being forwarded, until I finally got to where I wanted to be. Someone who can actually *help* me. I speak to this awesome person for a while about the issue, and they assure me that I will be okay and they can manually transfer the warrantee over into my name. I give them the serials for the laptop and everything, and now the person at corporate comes back and lets me know that the serial number of the laptop has been "blacklisted." As to what "blacklisted" means, I'm still not completely sure. I think it means stolen, illegal, etc. I even asked the person what it means, and she stated that she is not at liberty to explain the meaning of it, all that she can do is allow me the information of knowing that it's the status of the serial. At this point I'm thinking "I wonder why..." so I ask her. What is her response? "It doesn't say why it was blacklisted, sir. The person who blacklisted it did not put in a reason." After a while of asking her to remove it then(obviously it was an illegitimate claim) I finally gave up on it. As of today, my issue is still unresolved. ----------/Issue B---------- Now with the second issue, I am coming up with the conclusion that the people at Dell just got tired of me and decided to permanently bar me from being able to get support on the laptop. It wasn't blacklisted before I called, but after many calls it was. Whether that part is true, I'm unsure, but from the best of what I can gather, it seems to be the most solid explanation. Now one thing that I have learned from these two incidents is that Dell is a company I should never do business with again, regardless as to how great their deals are. Their customer service is so horrible, and I wasted so much time on nothing, that I will never give them another chance. What you do with this information is, of course, your own choice. You can deal with them if you feel like it, but I on the other hand never will. As always, feel free to post your own experiences as well. It is a possibility that I just ran into a few very horrible people when I was dealing with the company. As I learned from my Hewlett Packard post, located here : http://forums.xisto.com/topic/63511-hewlett-packardhpcompaq-support-very-helpful-highly-recommended/ , some people have good experiences with companies that others only have bad experiences with. This was my own experience, and in no way reflects everyone else's. The only real way to get a full understanding as to how their support is on a more broad nature than one person is to have others post their issues, praises, etc. as well so that we can come up with a generalized conclusion. Of course, this still would not be a "solid" one, but it is much better than just one view. Thank you very much for reading this. I know it was very long, but hopefully it is helpful to you. If there are any questions, feel free to ask me!