Neil

That's the problem with fighhing terrorists. Hamas deliberately target civillians, it's them that don't give a shit. Equally, they evidently don't give a shit if Palestinian civillians are killed. Hamas were repeatedly warned by Israel and Egypt that the continuation of rocketing at the border would lead to an Isreali backlash. They chose to ignore those warnings, so it is them who are accountable.

People seem to forget the fact that terrorism ultimately works. This is all going to go exactly the same way 2006 Lebanon War went. Hezbollah are still there and Hamas will still be there when this latest incursion by Israel finishes. All Israel will be left with is even even fewer friends on the international stage and a lot of blood on their hands. If they aren't careful, maybe even a few of their politicians and generals might get pulled up for war crimes.

There is simply no military solution to this problem. Whether they like it or not, both sides are going to have start talking to one another if they ever want this to end. All they are doing just now is slowing destroying each other.

I think it's estimated that 1 in 6 of high street stores will have gone bust by the end of this year. So plenty more still to go.

Any language issues?

Dubrovnik or some of the islands were appealing to me.

Though I just spotted a pretty sweet deal on a week in Sicily. The Godfather theme is running through my head now.

I can second Dubrovnik (check my Flickr site if you want to see photos) and if you make it there then definitely try and pop over to see some of the islands (Mljet is amazing).

I don't remember there being any real language issues. Most of the younger folks speak reasonably good English and German is also understood a fair bit as well (Dubrovnik seems to be popular with the Germans). I tried to learn a bit of Croatian before I went but like the other Slavic languages I quickly gave up!

And so, once again, it's that time of year. Another year soon comes to end - doesn't it seem to be getting quicker as time goes on?

Anyway, I'm already on the mulled wine and so on behalf of all the staff I wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

I think it means you've been given rep by someone who isn't able to give rep. With the rep system how much you can give someone depends on how much you have. I have a grey one from Cloud from a couple of days ago because he gave me positive rep and he only has about 7 points himself, I think you need 10 at least before you can give to or subtract from someone else.

Correct. If it's grey then they have attempted to leave negative or positive reputation but don't have enough reputation points themselves in order for it to actually count. This is in place to stop people just registering a new account and then trying to dish out reputation.

Of course, the best way to discourage ticket touts is not to buy any tickets from them regardless of where they advertise. The fact is that people will (even if they know the true ticket value) pay well over the odds for something they really want to see and so as long as this continues then touts will always exist. They are simply exploiting people who are more than happy to be parted with their cash.

Sorry guys, I'm not going to wait to be contacted by a third party this time. I don't mind people linking to the news article (hence why I'm not deleting the thread this time) but I don't want to risk this decending into more potential slander.

I'm happy enough with the touts just being named and shamed as they are just now to be honest. Although if people would like an explicit rule about this set in place then I don't mind doing this, even though I don't think there is really that many touts on here.

I'm not keen to set yet another forum's posts to be all manually moderated as there is already enough posts getting moderated on as it stands (it's bad enough people usually have to wait up to a day for their gig posts to appear for example). And I really don't have the spare time to go off and check ticket prices every time someone posts tickets for sale.

Yup, I'm a wannabe first time buyer, but I'm joining everyone else and playing the waiting game now. I think property prices still have a long way to fall.

In the mean time though I've lost a considerable amount in my share portfolio (although it is starting to slowly recover now), my savings are now pretty pointless with interest rates as they are and so I've trying to take my ISAs and things and move them into something more lucrative. Offshore savings accounts is my current thinking with the pound slowly becoming worthless. I'm really starting to resent savers like me with no debt being hit like this because of the stupidity of people and banks in consuming all this credit. Grrr.

Speaking of the pound, as this web site is hosted in the US then my web hosting bill has increased to the tune of around 75 a month due to the pound falling so much against the dollar.

Which is a bit of a bind, especially when the applicants have this habit of discovering they need some vital form or other completed yesterday & I'm one of the only two folk in the building with a full copy of Acrobat (& no, we don't lend-out copies!)

You can type onto PDFs just fine using Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is completely free). Assuming the PDFs haven't been protected by their author(s).

If you're opening the PDF up in Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is free) and it won't let you type on the document (because you can type onto PDFs using Reader) then the PDF has been protected and made read-only by the author. So there is no way of being able to type on the document short of taking a screen capture of each page and then typing over the top of them or, as already suggested, printing it out and then scanning it back in.

It's not the kinda thing I'm going into on a public forum, but I have my reasons.

Then I'm afraid if you want this thread removed you'll have to contact me privately and explain those reasons.

Disagree. Thomas Newman gets my vote.

Sounds like Keane is off:

BBC SPORT | Football | My Club | Sunderland | Keane and Sunderland part company

Why? (genuine curiosity, not looking to spark anything off here)

I'd like to know this as well because it isn't getting removed without justification.

"Snap up this bargain while you still can. The RRP is 100,000,000 so you'd be foolish not invest while it's this cheap. "

The Wasteland was General Discussion without all the sub-forums, and therefore (in my opinion just, obviously), much much better.

Not going to happen.

As an aside, does anyone know any good tattooists in Glasgow? I've been recommended Tribe, but any other recommendations would be appreciated.

I suspect these two sites might already be on your hit list but I usually have a look at them for all banking comparisons:

Fool.co.uk - Compare Loans, Find a Secured or Unsecured Loan

Cheap Loans: How to get your lowest possible rate...

You're a nutter for wanting to take out a loan in the first place though. Hasn't anyone learned anything in recent months!? If you can't/won't save up money to pay for the tickets in advance then you'd be better getting a credit card with a low APR and then paying it off ASAP. It'll be cheaper and more flexible than a loan.

or, if your into flash (which every web designer should be these days) you could do something a bit more like these, LoveMyFlash / Flash Layouts

There is nothing wrong with using a little bit of Flash here and there, but making your web site's whole layout based on Flash is very bad idea IMHO. Flash might be popular but you shouldn't assume people have the Flash plug-in installed nor should you force them to install it in order to access your web site. Some people can't use Flash in their environment (some workplaces restrict what you can install for example) and some devices don't support Flash at all (the iPhone being a good example).

I also give you:

MySpace.com - N*E*R*D - Virginia Beach, Virginia - Alternative / Hip Hop / Rock - www.myspace.com/nerdofficial

Yeah, a much better example. I remember the Jimmy Eat World MySpace page being better but it looks a bit worse now for some reason.

I might be off my head here, but why dont you, instead of doing website design for bands, do custom myspace design for bands? I know, Im crazy...

Not crazy at all. Plenty of people make money from that either by selling their design services in exactly that way or by developing software that aids the MySpace page design process (I'm sure you've all seen the "MySpace page designed by such and such software" stamped over various pages).

And the argument that you can only customise MySpace pages so much is losing weight now. Some MySpace pages look very professional and entirely unlike the rest of MySpace:

MySpace.com - Jimmy Eat World - Mesa, ARIZONA - Rock / Alternative - www.myspace.com/jimmyeatworld

Neil, any pointers on setting up Wordpress? I've got a site up and running but it's just getting it to work the way I want I'm having trouble with. Blog posts, fine with that, but it's the other pages etc...

It should be pretty straightforward. You can see from the admin pages that you can create new "Pages" which you can then put content in either just as would a blog post or raw HTML if you want it to do something specific. You can even embed PHP code if you want it to do something clever. It's then a case of linking to those pages from within the site which you can do by customising the theme you are using in the Design area of the admin pages.

Okay, maybe not. It's one hell of a scary looking squid though:

Alien-like Squid Filmed at Ultra-Deep Oil-Drilling Site