What is FlyakiteOSX?
FlyakiteOSX is a transformation pack. It will transform the look of an ordinary Windows XP+ system to resemble the look of Mac OS X. The installer simply automates the process of replacing critical system files, setting registry tweaks, and installing extras such as cursors, sounds, visual styles, etc. FlyakiteOSX DOES NOT contain any spyware or ad-ware of any kind. All files needed for FlyakiteOSX are stored in the Windows directory in a folder named ‘FlyakiteOSX’ that is hidden by default. All registry values for FlyakiteOSX are written to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FlyakiteOSX.
Well it’s finally happened My IP Ban on Valve Software’s Steam Forums has finally been removed, and this has taken how long for a ban that should never have been.
I first realized my Internet Service Provider’s IP had been banned on the Steam Forums on the 27 of August 2005 but it may have well been banned long before that and it’s only today that I have check to see if I had been un-banned or not because I still hadn’t received any reply from the webmaster of the Steam Forums or anybody else at Valve Software including Gabe Newell who I also emailed in the hope to get this solved quick and easy!
Let’s do the maths to get a better understanding on how long four (4) months is:
From and including: Saturday, August 27, 2005
To, but not including: Tuesday, December 27, 2005
4 months be converted to one of these units:
122 days
10,540,800 seconds
175,680 minutes
2,928 hours
17 weeks (rounded down)
A very long time if you ask me for a ban which I must say again was never suppose to happen especially has I emailed Valve on several occasions, I guess I have to be grateful that I’m now unbanned but it still worries me why I still haven’t received an email from Gabe Newell or anybody else in the Valve Department, I guess I was wrong in thinking that Valve wasn’t like other companies and that they actually care about their fans, hmmm I think I might write to them one last time but this time it will be via post and not email just in case they never did get my emails or maybe even better yet I might just phone them to express my concerns!
Anyway I’ll have a think about it and update you at a later date if anything happens, for now here’s a copy of all my emails sent to Valve Software!
From: Darren Straight
To: gaben@valvesoftware.com
Date: Nov 19, 2005 11:04 AM
Subject: Complaint for Gabe Newell at Valve SoftwareDear Gabe Newell,
Once again I am emailing you for I have still had no reply from either yourself or anybody else at Valve, though I pretty much believe I’m at a position were it should be you emailing me not anybody else.
I’m also pretty much sure that I don’t need to explain my problem to yourselves again as I’ve already sent this to you before and also to ( webmaster@steampowerd.com)
But because I still want this problem solved, what I have done is attached all the prior emails I have sent to you and the webmaster of the steam forums.
I’m not sure how you are going to fix my Ip ban problem and/or if you are going to compensate me for my wasted time that.
But I would like to assure you that if you don’t take action soon that I’m sure the Search Engine bots on the net wont take long too get the word out even more than it already is.
Yours truly,
Darren Straight———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Darren Straight
Date: Oct 27, 2005 10:42 PM
Subject: IP Ban problem since the 27 of August 2005.
To: gaben@valvesoftware.comDear Gabe Newell,
My name is Darren Straight and I’m emailing you about a great concern I have on how Steampowerd.com is managed, sure maybe I should not be emailing you and that I should be emailing the correct department for that site but the trouble is I have!
And I’m feed up of waiting for a reply that I sent ages ago, to be more precise I’ve been waiting for a reply since the 27 of August 2005 and in my books to wait two months and still receive no reply means something just isn’t right, don’t you agree.
Let me give you a quick explanation of my problem as I’ve also attached my original emails with this one, basically my ISP IP has been banned from the steam forums for 2 months now, the message I get is the following:
vBulletin Message
Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here ( webmaster@steampowerd.com)
So I’ve sent webmaster@steampowerd.com an email twice but still no reply.
My current IP details are as follows:
Internet IP Address 82.31.27.80 ( Dynamic DNS)
client-82-31-27-80-brnt.adsl.tesco.net
62.253.64.12 (ISP IP, the IP that you have banned)Also here is my steam account name, not that it has any relevance to the forums but it may help:
darrenstraightAlso let it be know that I WAS a very loyal fan of your company “Valve Software” but now I’m not so sure if I want to be a fan of Valve, not after all this, in-fact I have actually not been playing Half-Life 2 or any other Valve game for all this time that also applies to Modding and Mapping, just think about it, 2 months without mapping at all!
Deep down I know that I want to start mapping again because I’m afraid that if I don’t my mapping skills will go down hill, they probably have already as I haven’t been keeping up to date on anything Valve or Mapping related.
So it’s up to you, if this can be dealt quickly and swiftly I will come back, but if you can’t promise me this or that you can’t even reply to my email then I’m afraid you have just lost a great fan, a fan that has supported you for such a long time which is all to be lost to a simply ban!
Yours sincerely,
Darren Straight———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Darren Straight
Date: Sep 16, 2005 12:48 PM
Subject: IP Ban problem since the 27 of August 2005.
To: webmaster@steampowered.comDear Administrator,
For the past week or so I have not been able to access http://www.steampowered.com
The message I get is a normal this page cannot be displayed error.
This means that I can’t access any of Valve’s updates via the Steam page or the Steam Program as that also gets its content from: http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news
For a while I was thinking maybe it’s the site and they are having problems, oh but how wrong was I because after asking a lot of people to check the site I found out that I was the only person who couldn’t access it.
I thought at first that maybe it was my pc but this was highly unlikely considering I know my PC of by heart and I am studying an Honors Degree in Information Technology here in the UK.
But then I realized that on the 27 of August 2005 I had sent you the administrator an email to the following address ” webmaster@steampowered.com” this email was asking you why I was banned from the Steam Forums, I have only just remember about this email because I forgot all about it because it was a while ago now and I hadn’t even received a reply, which I think is not acceptable considering it was a while ago now and I gave you all the information necessary, even an automated email confirming you have received it would have done, but no nothing at all.
From my point of view it looks like you have banned my IP and my ISP IP from the entire Steam Network Site!
I can’t believe that is true as I haven’t done anything to provoke this anyway, but it’s the only logical explanation I can think of for now considering I have tested everything else to try and access the site within my pc.
Let me give you a copy of my IP details; let me remind you this is a Dynamic DNS IP:
Internet IP Address: 82.18.199.153 ( Dynamic DNS)
client-82-18-199-153.brnt.adsl.tesco.net
62.253.64.12 (ISP IP)I am extremely disappointed that this has happened to me considering I am a great fan of the Valve and I am always out on the look out for the newest news and information which I share with as many as possible especially for on my Blog and HL2 Sites.
Now all I ask is that I get a reply from somebody at Valve that can tell me why I haven’t received a reply from my previous email and why I cant access any of the Steam site now when before it was just the Forums that I was banned from for no particular reason and if this problem will be fixed as soon as possible.
But I’m sad to say this as I know you probably are very busy but If in the next few days or so I do not receive a confirmation of you having received and read this email my faith in Valve will be a great less than what it is now.
I and all of your fans love what you have been doing at Valve so please don’t let me and your fans down especially not before the release of Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and the Day of Defeat: Source!
Yours Sincerely,
Darren Straightps. A copy of the previous e-mail sent on the 27 of August 2005 is attached bellow:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Darren Straight
Date: Aug 27, 2005 12:34 AM
Subject: Banned IP Address
To: webmaster@steampowered.comDear Administrator,
I have just tried to access: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/
But in doing so I receive the following message:
vBulletin Message
Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here
My Ip details are as follows:
82.31.31.222
client-82-31-31-222.brnt.adsl.tesco.netBut please be aware that my internet connection is a Dynamic DNS one and that it’s changes each time, I believe that you may have actually blocked this IP: 62.253.64.12 which is instead the Proxy IP Address of my ISP which is what forums normally detect, this I know because I adminstrate various sites my self, so there may be another user which uses the same ISP as me “tescos”
I don’t have a steam forum username but my account for the steam servers is as follows:
darrenstraightHope you can help, if you need any more details please feel free to contact me as I would like this little issue solved so I can once again check the forums and register this time!
Yours sincerely,
Darren Straight
My Video Blog is a sitcom which tells the story of Jack Selby, a loner who records his daily life on a camera leant to him by his seedy boss, Mr. Murdoch. Whilst filming his mundane existence, Jack inadvertently captures a strange and disturbing series of events, leaving a trail of unanswered questions…
Website: http://www.myvideoblog.co.uk
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/myvideoblog/feed
Webmaster: jack@myvideoblog.co.uk (jack selby)
Merry Christmas 2005 Everybody, I hope you get everything you want for Christmas!
Starting from 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by every car will be monitored!
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.
Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.
The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.
By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate “reads” per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.
Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.
Senior police officers have described the surveillance network as possibly the biggest advance in the technology of crime detection and prevention since the introduction of DNA fingerprinting.
But others concerned about civil liberties will be worried that the movements of millions of law-abiding people will soon be routinely recorded and kept on a central computer database for years.
The new national data centre of vehicle movements will form the basis of a sophisticated surveillance tool that lies at the heart of an operation designed to drive criminals off the road.
In the process, the data centre will provide unrivalled opportunities to gather intelligence data on the movements and associations of organised gangs and terrorist suspects whenever they use cars, vans or motorcycles.
The scheme is being orchestrated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and has the full backing of ministers who have sanctioned the spending of £24m this year on equipment.
More than 50 local authorities have signed agreements to allow the police to convert thousands of existing traffic cameras so they can read number plates automatically. The data will then be transmitted to Hendon via a secure police communications network.
Chief constables are also on the verge of brokering agreements with the Highways Agency, supermarkets and petrol station owners to incorporate their own CCTV cameras into the network. In addition to cross-checking each number plate against stolen and suspect vehicles held on the Police National Computer, the national data centre will also check whether each vehicle is lawfully licensed, insured and has a valid MoT test certificate.“Every time you make a car journey already, you’ll be on CCTV somewhere. The difference is that, in future, the car’s index plates will be read as well,” said Frank Whiteley, Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and chairman of the Acpo steering committee on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR).
“What the data centre should be able to tell you is where a vehicle was in the past and where it is now, whether it was or wasn’t at a particular location, and the routes taken to and from those crime scenes. Particularly important are associated vehicles,” Mr Whiteley said.
The term “associated vehicles” means analysing convoys of cars, vans or trucks to see who is driving alongside a vehicle that is already known to be of interest to the police. Criminals, for instance, will drive somewhere in a lawful vehicle, steal a car and then drive back in convoy to commit further crimes “You’re not necessarily interested in the stolen vehicle. You’re interested in what’s moving with the stolen vehicle,” Mr Whiteley explained.
According to a strategy document drawn up by Acpo, the national data centre in Hendon will be at the heart of a surveillance operation that should deny criminals the use of the roads.
“The intention is to create a comprehensive ANPR camera and reader infrastructure across the country to stop displacement of crime from area to area and to allow a comprehensive picture of vehicle movements to be captured,” the Acpo strategy says.
“This development forms the basis of a 24/7 vehicle movement database that will revolutionise arrest, intelligence and crime investigation opportunities on a national basis,” it says.
Mr Whiteley said MI5 will also use the database. “Clearly there are values for this in counter-terrorism,” he said.
“The security services will use it for purposes that I frankly don’t have access to. It’s part of public protection. If the security services did not have access to this, we’d be negligent.”
Source: The Independent
Finally some more news on the Microsoft/Google deal with AOL!
Online search engine Google has confirmed it will invest $1bn to take a 5% stake in Time Warner’s AOL unit as part of a major strategic alliance.
The deal, which follows intense negotiations between the two US internet giants, values the troubled AOL unit at $20bn.The global online advertising partnership will make more of AOL’s content available to Google users.
The agreement shuts out software giant Microsoft from a rumoured AOL tie-up.
“We’re very pleased to build significantly on our special relationship with Google,” said Time Warner chief executive Dick Parsons.
Microsoft threat
Microsoft was also said to have been considering buying a stake in AOL, with a view to integrating its own internet service into the company.
The tie-up between Google and AOL demonstrates Google is prepared to pay heavily to prevent Microsoft from becoming a bigger player in the lucrative internet search sector.
AOL is currently Google’s biggest customer. During the first nine months of the year, it accounted for about $429m, or 10%, of Google’s revenue.
Time Warner has been seeking a partner to boost AOL’s value, which would in turn lift the US media giant’s shares.
The company has seen its share price plunge since its takeover of AOL in 2000 – sinking from highs above $85 to about $18 currently.
AOL founder Steve Case last week backed calls for AOL to be split from Time Warner.
Yahoo had also been in talks with Time Warner but dropped out in November, reportedly because the media giant wanted to retain a majority stake in AOL.
Source: BBC
It looks like they might have finally found the Beagle 2 probe on Mars!
The scientist behind the British Beagle 2 mission to the Red Planet says the craft may have been found in pictures of the Martian surface.
Colin Pillinger says the images suggest the mission very nearly worked, but Beagle somehow failed to contact Earth.
He thinks the craft may have hit the ground too hard – as the atmosphere was thinner than usual because of dust storms in that region of Mars.
This may have damaged onboard instruments, preventing the call home.
The Beagle 2 lead scientist has been painstakingly studying images of the landing site in search of his spacecraft ever since it was lost on Christmas Day two years ago.
Now, he says, specially processed pictures from the camera on the US space agency’s (Nasa) Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show that it came down in a crater close to the planned landing site.
Life search
The robotic laboratory was designed to search Mars for signs of past or present life. The last contact was an image of Beagle taken by its mothership, the Mars Express orbiter, on 19 December 2003.
The £45m lander was scheduled to put down in a near-equatorial region of the planet known as Isidis Planitia. But despite many attempts to locate it – using overflying spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes – no sign of it, not even any wreckage, has been detected.
Professor Pillinger accepts the sceptics will say Beagle 2 is too small to be seen from space.
And when taken in isolation, each of the “objects” in the crater bowl could be explained by other phenomena. But, he argues, it is unlikely to be mere coincidence that so many unusual features are to be found “within 20m of each other”.
“We’ve had the pessimists round saying ‘we’ve already seen something like that’. But they haven’t seen them all together,” he told the BBC.
Crater bounce
Based on the features found in the crater, members of the Beagle 2 team have reconstructed what might have happened to Beagle as it touched down on the Red Planet.
“There is a lot of disturbance in this crater, particularly a big patch on the north crater wall which we think is the primary impact site,” Professor Pillinger explains.
“There are then other features around the crater consistent with the airbags bouncing around and finally falling down into the middle. Then, when you cut the lace, the airbags fall apart giving three very symmetrical triangles.”
Four roughly circular features to the right of the ‘airbags’ could conceivably be Beagle’s unfolded solar panels.
Professor Pillinger claims the images show Beagle 2 came very close to being the first spacecraft to mount a concerted search for life on the Martian surface.
And so, he says, it would have been common sense for British and European governments to have backed another attempt.
Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, which will photograph Mars in unprecedented detail once it reaches the planet next year, could confirm the tentative identification.
Source: BBC
Not long to go now until WordPress 2.0 Final!
The next release of WordPress is drawing near. Please help us shake out any last remaining bugs by downloading and testing the 2.0 Release Candidate. If all goes well, the Release Candidate will become 2.0 final. We’re almost there. Download, test, and head over to the Beta Forum to let us know if the Release Candidate is ready for prime time.
I have recently been invited to participate in the Windows Live Mobile Beta after agreeing in the MSN Mobile beta to participate in future betas, and well what can I say I’m happy to have been asked to join in with this one especially as I have a lot of ideas I would like too see especially on the Windows Messenger Mobile side of things.
Windows Live Mail beta for Mobile
-
What it is
Windows Live Mail beta for your mobile devices is a fast, clean, and simple e-mail service for your mobile device. The basic idea: it shouldn’t be such a hassle to do mobile e-mailing. You should be able to see the interface clearly and use it easily. Your address book should be available at your fingertips and you should be able to manage your inbox effortlessly.
What you can do with it
• Do the most common e-mail functions simply and quickly on your mobile device
• See more of your message on the screen at once
• Compose e-mail faster with Address Auto Complete
• See both the e-mail subject and the sender’s name with a glance
• Search for a contact in your address book and view full personal details
Windows Live Search beta for Mobile
-
What it is
Windows Live Search beta for mobile devices lets you use your Web-enabled mobile device to search the Web for almost anything you’re looking for, just like on a PC. Search results are formatted to fit on your phone’s itty-bitty screen, so you can actually read them easily (a crazy idea, we know). With Local Search, you can find stuff in a specific location (Chinese restaurants in New York, for instance), and see maps with driving directions and phone numbers you can call with a single click.
What you can do with it
• Search the Web just like you would on a PC
• Save search results to your device
• Use Local Search to find the nearest gas station, the nearest restaurant, the nearest whatever
• See 10 results displayed neatly within your device’s screen
• See business names displayed with phone numbers, address, and approximate distance
• View an easy-to-read map to your destination, and detailed driving directions
• Click on any of the results to be connected instantly to their phone
I had a nice surprise when I woke up today that being that I had finally received some Windows Live Messenger 8 Beta Invites to send to my friends and family, but don’t worry they wont go wasted as it didn’t take me long too decide who too send them too! 
If I get any more and you have replied to this post I may just send you one! 
Anyway here’s the email I got.
Hello!
Thank you for your help in testing the new Windows LiveTM Messenger Beta! You have just received invitations to send to your friends and family!Follow the steps below to send invites:
Go to http://ideas.live.com/, click Beta users sign in here, and then sign in.
Click Windows Live Messenger Beta, and then click the “Invite them to sign up” link on the right side of the page.
Enjoy!The Windows Live Messenger team
MSDiscussion.com (Microsoft Forums)
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