rvalkass

When I visit the address you have given I get a Wordpress blog, albeit without any theme applied to it, just plain text. This shows that your domainis working, but as jlhaslip has said, domains can take up to 2 days to travel around the web and for all the servers to update and agree. If after a couple of days you still can't access your site with that domain then something has gone wrong with your ISP updating its DNS.

I've been thinking about that, and have tried a few things to combat it. Generating random colours was one option, but that can occasionally lead to one or two characters being a bit difficult to read. Another option was applying a filter across the image. I didn't know these existed until I started looking through the GD library's functions. Putting the following code just before the imagepng($img_handle); line creates a sort of jagged-blur effect across the image: imagefilter($img_handle, IMG_FILTER_SMOOTH, 0.1);It does sacrifice human readability a bit, generating images like this: Adjusting the number 0.1 creates some different levels of the effect. I've tried running edge detection on the original images, and it proved quite reliable at picking the characters out. Random colours made life a bit more difficult, but this was the best way to beat edge detection, as now it picks edges up all over the image. With pixel maps for each character I think it would still be quite easy for someone to decipher it, but it's still an added layer. I'll keep adjusting it and see what I can come up with.

OK, I recently had the need to create a PHP CAPTCHA system for a friend, and I am sharing this as a tutorial with the good people here at Xisto. I am sure you have all seen a CAPTCHA before (although you may not have known what it was called). They are the little codes you often have to enter when you register with a site, to make sure you are a person and not an automated script. Some common examples look something like this: My system doesn't really do anything as fancy, but I think that it is slightly more readable that some of those that get generated. Everyone wants to see the final product before they start, so here are a few examples of what this script generates: OK, lets get started. Open up your favourite text/code editor (Kate, Notepad, Dreamweaver...) and you're ready. First, we need to tell the browser what we are going to ouput at the end of this, seeing as it won't be standard HTML. <?phpHeader ("(anti-spam-(anti-spam-(anti-spam-content-type:))) image/png"); Simple enough. We are creating an image. Its a PNG. Now we need some randomness in our process. I have used 2 random numbers here, one as a string to be encoded with MD5, and the other will be used to cut our 32 character MD5 output into a 8 character code. $enc_num = rand(0, 9999); //This number will be encrypted$key_num = rand(0, 24); //This is used to choose which bit of our string to use in the image Our first number is anywhere between 0 and 9999. It doesn't really matter what the range is, its just used to give MD5 something to encrypt. Our second number has to be specifically in the range of 0 to 24. Why? MD5 creates a 32 character string, of which we only need 8 characters. To add some extra randomness, this number chooses our starting character. It can't go above 24 (32-8) or we get less than 8 characters. So, to generate our string: $hash_string = substr(md5($enc_num), $key_num, 8); Now we can start on the actual image. Here is where you get some customisation. If you look at my example above, I have used 3 background images which I premade for my script to use. You can use as many or as few as you like, just add the file names to this array, and add that to your code so far. Make sure they are in the PNG format! My array looks like this (with the images in the same directory as the script): $bgs = array("lipsum.png", "fibres.png", "rainbow.png"); Designing the backgrounds with an image editor allows you to make sure that the text will be readable on them. All of mine allow the text to be easily seen to a human, but not so easily to a computer. Now of course, we need to pick one of these images to use as the basis for our CAPTCHA. There is a useful function called array_rand which will select one item from an array at random. Bingo! $background = array_rand($bgs, 1); The GD library (available with all good hosts, such as Xisto) allows us to create images to output, and we will use this now. First, we create an image from a premade PNG background with this oh-so-inventively named function: $img_handle = imagecreatefrompng($bgs[$background]); Next, we set the text colour and size. I have used a white colour as it shows up well on all of my backgrounds. Try changing the values if white doesn't look good for you. $text_colour = imagecolorallocate($img_handle, 255, 255, 255);$font_size = 5; I've also done some fancy central alignment on the text, despite the fact all my images have the same dimensions It allows for expansion, and you can design images to fit your site design. $size_array = getimagesize($bgs[$background]);$img_w = $size_array[0];$img_h = $size_array[1]; That simply gets the width and height of the background in pixels. Now we do some maths to find where the top left of the text should go, compensating for the width of the text. $horiz = round(($img_w/2)-((strlen($hash_string)*imagefontwidth(5))/2), 1);$vert = round(($img_h/2)-(imagefontheight($font_size)/2)); Lastly, we plug all this together. We add the text to the image, display it to the browser, then destroy the temporary file. imagestring($img_handle, $font_size, $horiz, $vert, $hash_string, $text_colour);imagepng($img_handle);imagedestroy($img_handle);?> If you have any problems then feel free to ask away and I'll do my best. In the future I may add the functionality for a PHP-generated background, random colours, custom fonts, and to apply some warping to the text. My aim is to still keep it readable though. I carried out a (very un-scientific) test using my scanner's OCR software and that was unable to read the text. I am sure that if someone was determined and bothered enough then they would be able to break it, but it adds that little extra layer of protection to prevent people submitting things over and over, or computers being used to creat hundreds of messages, accounts... I have also attached the completed source code and my images here too. Feel free to use them, and if you do it would be nice to see how you are using it. Also, feel free to offer improvements and suggestions.

I haven't been able to find any help doing this in C/C++, but there is a JavaScript work that does it very well, and shows off the sort of methods and logic you will have to apply. The source code is licensed under the Creative Commons. If you understand JS I suggest you read through it and see if you could do something similar for your code.

Using someone elses WiFi without their permission is illegal. If you were paying hundreds of pounds a year for Sky, that doesn't give other people the right to come into your living room and watch it. Internet cafes usually have relatively good protection in the way of their own hardware firewall etc, ut you are not protected from other users actually in the cafe. I have seen people before sit in an Internet cafe and just monitor the traffic for credit card numbers, passwords, whatever.Avoid giving out any identifiable information at all. You are much better off doing that at home, where you have control over the security and know what is happening.

It is unlikely we will get to the stage where we can socialise computers into society any time soon. The way a robot works and the way a human works are different, and I don't think we will see convincing human-like robots for many years to come. However, World leaders are moving closer and closer to adding computer controlled robots and such to their militaries, so I suppose they could be taking over the world with computers And even if robots did become incredibly powerful we have two failsafes: if Microsoft design their OS then they'll last 5 minutes, and we can always pull the plug.

Presumably the problem is that you now don't have any toolbars. Hold shift while Access starts up, which will ignore whatever you have told it to do and will make it start with all the default settings and options. Then you can just flick everything back on and start again normally. If that doesn't work, try hitting Alt + T or something and see if the bar appears. You also have the shortcuts for things like saving (Ctrl + S).

Brilliant work there, street. It sort of has an underwater feel about it, and the lighting effect is excellent. My only comment would be that the render has a slightly jagged edge in quite a few places, which would probably annoy me over time. Try rendering it at a higher resolution or quality, or fiddling with the anti-alias settings.Good luck in creating more pices like this.

Welcome back and good to see you around again. Good luck getting your 30 credits, shouldn't take too long.

.htaccess tends to be quite important, so I'd leave that where it is. Any files within the public_html or public_ftp directories you are safe to delete, but nothing outside of those should be touched. Any of the files and other folders that appear should be left alone, otherwise you can make your hosting fail to work correctly. Various people have done things like that in the past and the results are generally not pretty.

Got a small error with the styles by the looks of it. Using Opera 9.10 the list of Similar Topics at the bottom of each topic is misaligned on the first line of each column. Other than that the upgrade appears to have gone very well. Well done to everyone involved in getting it up and running.

You need over 4 credits to get your account back, and once you have 4 credits you need to wait an hour or two for the script to run and get your hosting back online. If after a few hours it's not back then either post again or PM a mod/admin and see what's happening. Considering the forum upgrade things might not be going as smoothly as usual.

The problem is that n hasn't been set as a standard yet, and unless you buy every single component of your wireless network from one company you will find that most of it won't work at all, or will run at g speed. Check with the two manufacturers and see if the router and card are compatible for n. If not, then they will not work unless both release firmware once a standard is decided, assuming that the hardware can comply with the standards. Otherwise, you are stuck using Belkin stuff.

I use Hotmail, GMail, my Xisto email accounts and a few others. My favourite of the lot is GMail for the simplicity of the interface and features and the ability to store all my mail, archive it, and search it if I need to. I've found loads of useful bits of code and answers to problems by searching through my previous emails. The Ajax interface works quite well, but can occasionally get a bit slow or throw you out and make you log in again, but thats very infrequent. Originally there was a bit of kudos related to having a GMail account, which has now worn off, but you don't really need that as a feature of an email account.The (as far as I'm aware) unique way of displaying emails in a conversation style is also a great help, rather than searching though a list of emails to try and find the related email. I can quickly and easily see all the replies to a message. The spam filter also works a lot better than any other email service I have seen, only getting 1 or 2 spam messages a month in my inbox, and never sending a legitimate message into spam.

Looking at the demo's of Vista that have been shown on TV and that I have seen, even on faster systems it can still get quite jerky if you have a few applications running, which is not a good sign. The restrictions about what you can do with your licence are also annoying when it comes to buying a new PC and transferring it. OK, the graphics are flashy and for once it seems Microsoft have managed to make a somewhat decent operating system. Then again, I can make my newly-Linuxed laptop look like that for the total cost of ?0.00, without all the annoyances of Microsoft. Considering the cost here in the UK, I will not install Vista any time soon on my desktop, because amazingly XP seems to be working just fine, and I can do everything I need to.

Using Courier for the font makes the site look a little outdated, and having the links overflow onto two lines, with the majority of the second line hidden, is not a good idea. Try designing a good looking header image and fixing the links and you will greatly improve the look of the site.

One way many people do this (similar to jlhaslip's suggestion) is to preload the images using Javascript. You can go from very simplying writing some JS to load the image and do nothing with it, to those that are slightly more complicated and can do all sorts of fancy tricks. There are lots available from this quick search. The simplist one is probably this script if you want to quickly try it out. Just remember that if the images have a very large file size then they may still not have loaded by the time they roll over the links. If that is the case then your best bet is to try and get the file size down.

There's two parts to your identity: what you think of yourself, and what other people think of you. Other people pllay a massive role in determining how you behave and who you are. Primary socialisation (what your family teaches you when you're a kid) gives you a basic set of rights and wrongs, good and bad etc. When you really change is in secondary socialisation: school, college, religion, the media etc. Spending time with certain people, reading certain things, watching certain progammes, it all adds up to form who you are. People tend to hang around with people who are very similar to themselves. This means that they will frequently hear their views, opinions, morals, values etc and less frequently hear those that oppose them. Gradually you accept the views of the people you are with and you all agree on them. You may be doing it subconsciously, but it happens.This determines who we are. So far we've found no gene that determines what sort of lifestyle you're going to have, whether you'll be a criminal or anything like that. Nurture wins hands down for me.

You can geat a cheap Cessna two seater from anywhere between ?90,000 and ?125,000 (+VAT) second hand. If you want one new then you'll have to contact a dealer somewhere, they seem reluctant to put prices out on the web.

I have a 1MB connection, and I am running Norton Antivirus, Firewall and a host of other stuff. My brother is sat next to me playing on xBox Live in the middle of a game, and I am running MSN Messenger and a few connections in Gaim. We are also behind a hardware firewall. Using various sites, I have got an average connection speed over the last few minutes of 870KB, which I don't think is that bad. Firewall software does not slow your connection down noticeably now. In the old days of dial-up it made a difference, but now it doesn't really.Take shadowx's suggestions and run as many free tests as you can find and try disabling your firewall and antivirus temporarily to see if there is a high difference. You are probably behind a router, so if you still have a ADSL modem, try using that to connect directly and see if there is a difference. This way you should be able to isolate the problem.

Your design looks very similar to those annoying sites that come up occasionally when you type in a domain that has been bought because it's name is similar to a popular site. There is the possibility this will deter any viewers that arrive at your site.You also provide no information to viewers as to what the site is actually about apart from the title. You have no real 'index' or home page, you are thrown straight into the downloads and links, and unfortunately that makes the site look like it is advertising a paid product and most people will turn away.Finally, a minor problem. The bottom black border moves depending on what browser you use (Opera it is half way up the page, IE puts it to the bottom). However, no matter what, the border always cuts across the middle of the content rather than being forced to the bottom of all the content.

Nice use of the information bar in IE, there. Oh, and I have never seen Javascript used so appropriately and carefully so as to provide useful functionality without annoying the user. The text is so easy to read, and the use of colour is subtle and careful to make the site easy on they eye and tie the whole design together. However, back in the real world, I strongly suggest the use of Netdisaster to repair this site, perhaps the God Almighty setting? Noooo, in IE it breaks out of the Netdisaster frame, and in Opera the site doesn't display right (luckily...)! Only 19 validation errors, certainly not the worst I have seen.

It seems you have a few problems with your domain KuBi. I just tried to get onto the forums and unfortunately I am getting a holding page.

It would amaze you to sit with a room full of people who are not entirely au-fait with the ways of the Internet and hear how many ask if they can really get things for free and these offers are true. Ones that pop up and disguise themselves to look like messages from Windows and dialog boxes are the most annoying and hard to explain how to avoid.

Well I know HSBC don't seem particularly bothered at the moment. I received a new card a few days ago, and it's still a Switch Solo card. My mates are also getting either Solos or Visa Electrons, which, as you say, are pretty much useless. Then again, when I had a Solo card with pictures of CDs all over it, it was nice confusing shopkeepers. They always looked at me with a weird, twisted face implying it was some kind of joke. One of them even bit my card I got even more obscure looks after that.Very few places online will accept Solo and Electron cards, which gets even more annoying. I've virtually abandoned using it.