Mahone

That was your first mistake, IMO :) With outlook, you normally have an option of keeping all e-mail/contacts on the mail server, so if you lose your local copy, you can always get it back off the server. This has to be setup of course before it'll take effect. If you use an e-mail address from your ISP, then change ISPs, you have little hope of retaining that e-mail address. It's the same as people using a work e-mail address for personal stuff... they might get a surprise one day when the unexpected happens and they no longer have access to it without warning.

If you need a mail client, there is always the windows live mail application (you will need to download it), which is the successor of outlook express, although for the average domestic user there is usually no need for anything other than web based mail. There is also Mozilla Thunderbird, made by the same people that bring you firefox: Thunderbird - Software made to make email easier

Different environment - clearly in the environment you work in, things have to be explicitly marked before they can be thrown away, which is fine. Although to a certain extent that is true in the place I worked at when that scenario occurred (I wouldn't expect them to throw a random sheet of paper away for instance unless marked as rubbish), if something really does look like it's rubbish but definitely isn't, and the world would come to a sudden end if it was thrown away, or a computer was unplugged, I'd expect it to be marked clearly as "do not throw away", "do not touch" or "do not unplug". In that particular place, all the computers shut down nightly automatically, so they'd have had to let us know in IT if they wanted to use it for something throughout the holidays as well.

Try calling him instead, or better yet, ask his councillors or secretary. I prefer to text or e-mail as I'm so busy during the day that I forget the full details of phone conversations so it's nice to have the logs to refer back to. But an SMS message and e-mail are equally easy to ignore when you're busy - not necessarily on purpose, but I know bishops are usually overwhelmed with the amount of people trying to get in contact with them (work life and church), and some questions/messages have to be considered low priority with everything else going on and they end up getting forgotten. If it's a question his councillors/secretary can answer, try them as a first point of contact - a lot of people forget these guys exist. If not, phone him - it's less easy for him to put off and then forget.

No because clearly he is doing it all for them :)

Indeed. I saw it when it was first broadcast on TV. The IT crowd is closer to reality than you might want to believe, in terms of both the actions (and reactions) of the IT department staff and the general staff they support.

Oh I've got loads of these from personal experience in my days of IT desktop support in a previous workplace many moons ago : - Got a call about a printer not working. Arrive at their office 5 mins later, to find a mug of hot coffee sitting on top of the printer, and the kettle sitting next to it. The same kettle they had just unplugged the printer for, in order to free up a socket to plug the kettle in. - Reports of a computer not working at the other end of the building. I get there and find the staff member shouting at me that the computer is once again not working, and won't switch on. I inform her that she has indeed pressed the power button on the monitor, but neglected to do the same with the base unit. - Several phone calls about none of the computers working in a few rooms within the same zone of the building, none of them will power on. As we'd had several calls in quick succession about this, I request one of the staff members try plugging a nearby electronic device in (e.g. a fan). It didn't work. I put them through to the estates department and suggested they inform them of a power cut to that zone. - Took me a good five minutes to resolve this one. A staff member was tidying their desk, and suddenly their computer starts randomly typing in characters of its own accord. I get the call and take a look, this kind of behaviour usually suggests something sitting on the keyboard, but there wasn't, and even after disconnecting the keyboard, the issue continued. I rebooted, checked for any obvious virus infections, nothing. I then removed each of 6 or 7 USB cables in turn, and after removing one, it stopped. I traced this cable to a bluetooth sensor hidden beneath a pile of paper. I took a quick look around the office, and found a box with piles of books in. Beneath these books was a second, wireless keyboard, still switched on. The staff member had two keyboards (don't ask), one wired and one wireless. As he was tidying, he decided to get rid of the wireless one and place it in the box, then piled books on top. - During the christmas shutdown, the cleaners go through the entire building, taking advantage of the fact that it's empty. They unplug a lot of the computers to plug their hoover in. Once everyone returned to work, we'd get support requests for up to a week regarding computers not powering up - the worst part is, no-one believes you when you suggest its unplugged. - Speaking of cleaners, one evening they managed to get into our server room - long story. Anyway, they proceeded with their usual method of unplugging the first plug they come across in order to power their hoover. Of course, it just so happened that this plug powered our file server for over 200 remote users, which didn't have a redundant power supply at that time (again, long story). That was a long evening... - I was doing some work for a primary school and they had a computer with an erratic cursor moving across the screen of its own accord. Thinking someone had remote access to their computer, they called me to take a look. After convincing them they had not been hacked, I looked for the actual cause and found a young girl leaning on the smartboard in the corner of the room. The projector was not switched on, so nothing was visible on the smartboard, but the smartboard itself was still active and connected to the computer, and was essentially acting as a second mouse as she pressed against the surface. - The same school as above, I had an e-mail about a computer not working properly, and making funny noises. I cracked open the case, to find one of the school kids had poured almost an entire bucket full of sand in through the vent on top of the case, from the sand box conveniently located next to it.

Charming. I hope that's not true. I just got married, less than a year ago. Like anything on the autistic spectrum, there are varying degrees of aspergers, some more severe than others. One of the positives of aspergers is that it's high functioning - whilst it makes our life difficult because we don't have a lot of the social instincts that come naturally to most people, we can and do learn them intellectually - it doesn't always make sense to us (because it was a learned behaviour, not an instinct), but we do it anyway as it's the only way we can fit in. Your marriage likely wasn't helped by the fact that he wasn't diagnosed until afterwards. He will have spent his life up until that point wondering what was wrong with him. Once he knows why he has the difficulties that he does, he will learn over time how to work around them.

I do understand what you mean, although it's doubtful enough people are affected for it to warrant a board specifically targeted towards LDS members with aspergers. There are a number of more generic resources online however, including forums, for those with aspergers, which I find useful sometimes. That said, I always found church by far the most difficult aspect of my life to get through (especially in my teens) because of the constant focus on social interaction that we find so emotionally exhausting.

Actually £2000. That's $3214

I saw this in passing, I thought it was pretty funny for halloween: BBC News - Milton Keynes cows could be moved after skeleton vandalism.

Unlike paid positions of authority, LDS.net moderators obviously don't apply for the job, they are chosen by Pam. I'm pretty sure Pam would be less likely to pick someone that actually wanted that authority directly (I know I don't), and in my experience those that don't want power over other people are more likely to be those that have been bullied in the past.

Yeah, I've never liked the nickname to be honest. I always refer to it by it's full name. Maybe that's due to my aspergers

Yep *sticks hand up*

I did get bullied to a certain extent, because I was much taller than the others. Lets put it this way, there are 5 years in high schools in the UK (12-16) and I was the second tallest person in the school in my first year, and the tallest person in the school by my second year, including all the teachers. While height is a benefit in real life, in high school most things that make you stand out from the crowd are not good things. I remember sitting alone in the school library early in the morning before school started, playing with one of the computers we had in there, when I saw the silhouette of the head of IT through the fogged glass in the doors. As I definitely wasn't supposed to be in there (no-one was allowed in before school started), I hid behind one of the book cabinets just as he walked in. He was introducing the school to a new teacher, and as he was showing her the computers, he said "you need to watch out for that fat kid, Ian, and the lanky kid that hangs around with him, James, they will destroy every computer we have if given the chance". Referring to one of my high school friends and myself. I thought it was amusing at the time

Right now, 1. My wife finally returning home next month and 2. Thoughts of christmas. Not because of christmas per se, but because of the two weeks holiday that comes with it in my workplace.

Are you sure she was 1. killed and 2. shot in the head? I found a recent story online that has striking similarities to the scenario you mention. Girl shot while drunkenly trespassing could serve time

There is a strong difference between a country forcing/strongly encouraging someone to their lands, and a person voluntarily going there. I don't really think your analogy is similar in any way to Abu Hamza. This is the law in the UK regarding the removal of citizenship: As he is also a citizen of Egypt, he would not be stateless at the time of removal of British citizenship. This means we can strip him of his British Citizenship. It doesn't mean Egypt won't also do the same thing afterwards. What happens to him after that is not our problem.

I suspect that the charges are different - merely technicalities. In reality, it's for the same thing. From Wikipedia: Yes, it's known as denaturalization. I believe Australia tried to do it with Julian Assange, not sure if they ever did. It's ultimately subject to local laws. I know the US are also having difficultly getting rid of the members of Guantanamo Bay - I think they had to pay off a number of countries to take them. Even so, whether they are allowed to refuse to take him or not is irrelevant. They can still do so if they choose, and what option does the US have then? Shove him into a drone, fly it over Egypt and drop him? Lol.

One thing I would say is that you can use almost any old computer out of the back cupboard for smoothwall providing its in working order. Smoothwall express was designed for low budget setups, and it doesn't use a lot of system resources. In a previous workplace we had a couple of smaller buildings across the city in addition to the main building. We needed to connect the three networks via VPN, but all of our IT budget was spent on the main building. So we took a couple of old Dell GX260's out of the "to trash" pile, installed smoothwall express on both and set them up in the two smaller buildings as the firewall/VPN connectivity to the main building. It was like that for over four years until we got rid of both of the smaller buildings. Low budget, but working well :)

Not a lot you can do about this unless you lock down each device and/or implement filtering on the mobile service provider level In the UK most mobile internet providers have filtering switched on by default. You can opt out providing you have a credit card, which you need to be 18 to have...

I've been using smoothwall express (Smoothwall.org) as my home firewall for around 3 years now. It's free, and comes with loads of free modules/addons including the dans guardian web filter module. It requires a basic knowledge of networking to be able to set up, and requires you to dedicate a computer as the smoothwall box, but it works really well. We used to use their corporate (paid for) version at work, and although we swapped it out with a cisco ASA last year, we never had any issues with smoothwall. The free version doesn't have official support, but does have a community forum that are are always helpful. Not entirely true. DNS works in a hierarchy system, starting at the operating system level (e.g. windows). If the DNS settings on the operating system are not pointing at the router, then the open dns settings on the router are useless. Try it. Point your windows DNS settings on your home computer at 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4 (googles DNS servers).

Well, there are various reasons. I don't really know much about the case but to my knowledge, he has been in prison in the UK since 2004 not just to appeal his extradition to America, but also because he was convicted in our courts of essentially the same charges. Now that he has served his sentence, the US is trying him all over again in their courts. Plus the website he ran was hosted in Connecticut, so that's a technicality which the US used to get him extradited. I'm still not sure what will happen when he is released (he can't be executed as part of the extradition agreement, as the European Union considers this to be inhumane treatment and won't allow extraditions to countries that threaten this). I'm pretty sure the UK will not take him back, and it's likely his native Egypt won't either. This is part of the reason that I'm glad he has been exported, he is no longer our problem and no longer costing our taxpayers any money lol.

American residents, welcome this man to your country: BBC News - Abu Hamza extradition: US court hears terror suspects Mr Hamza has been wanted by the US since 2004 for a number of terrorism related reasons (running a jihadist website etc.), and he has been in a British prison for just as long while it took eight years for all his appeals against extradition to go through the British and European courts. They all failed of course, and he was finally frog marched onto a military plane on Friday and we are finally rid of him :) Goodness knows what will happen if he ever gets released though - it's not like the UK or any other country will take him back.

In the UK they have been able to serve from 18 for a little while now. I don't know if this was a trial phase in a small area before rolling it out globally.