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Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

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Having installed a *ahem* borrowed copy of XP and then using a crack to activate it, I thought everything was going smoothly. That was until I installed Service Pack 1 and then Windows started saying I had to activate it AGAIN!

So I downloaded another crack, ran it and now when I switch my PC on, it goes through the normal DOS setup but just as it is about to reach the Windows screen, it just resets and goes through the DOS bit again. This also happens when I try to go via Safe Mode.

So am I totally buggered here? Is there hope or should I start saving my pennies for an official version of XP? Or even worse a new computer? Should I go to Microsoft confession and start repenting? Dear Bill Gates, I am sorry for what I have done, Amen. etc. etc.

― a nonny mouse (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 06:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

Linux.

― Autumn Almanac (Autumn Almanac), Friday, 7 May 2004 06:56 (9 years ago) Permalink

yes yes, other than that?

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 06:56 (9 years ago) Permalink

ah well, i guess my cover was as conspicuous as a see-through cotton shawl on a windy day. still - need answers quick! my eye sight is returning to normal! i got twelve hours sleep last night from not staying up till all hours on ilx! this can't be healthy!

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 07:18 (9 years ago) Permalink

Only option really is to wind back to before SP1. Download Knoppix or Damn Small Linux to acces files and back them up befor trying though.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 7 May 2004 07:23 (9 years ago) Permalink

Actually whilst we're on the subject of boring computer questions, can anyone recommend the best defragmentation tool for Multi Terrabytevolumes under windows, please?

― Ed (dali), Friday, 7 May 2004 07:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

Only option really is to wind back to before SP1. Download Knoppix or Damn Small Linux to acces files and back them up befor trying though.

Lost me already! How do I wind back to pre-SP1? Especially without a running windows system? What are Knoppix and DS Linux (was that a joke name or does it really exist?)

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 07:35 (9 years ago) Permalink

Knoppix is, basically, Linux-on-a-CD. Means you can run Linux on your machine without having to install it.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 7 May 2004 09:12 (9 years ago) Permalink

Oooh! Expensive?

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 09:38 (9 years ago) Permalink

Find a bulk copy of XP, or an extremely early version that came out on Ms[hitty]DN. While they require keys they don't require web registration.
Down side is you'll spend all day downloading fixes and service packs.
Then another whole day trying to find the settings you need.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Friday, 7 May 2004 10:01 (9 years ago) Permalink

> Oooh! Expensive?

knoppix? nope, free as a bird. 700M download though (knoppix.org) hence ed's suggestion of Damn Small (which is only(!) 50M from here: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ )

andy

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 7 May 2004 10:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

:-) THANKS!

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 11:05 (9 years ago) Permalink

If you hadn't already installed XP, I'd just say, stick with W2K.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Friday, 7 May 2004 11:08 (9 years ago) Permalink

Really? You're the first to have ever suggested that. Sadly I was forced to go to XP since I had the shitty shitty Windows ME which lived up to it's name. Microsoft should just provide a free upgrade for ME users in compensation for having diddled them about.

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 7 May 2004 11:10 (9 years ago) Permalink

my processor is too hot. it's an athlon 2600.
it reaches 60 degrees and i have loads of kooky fans and shit.
help?

― g-kit (g-kit), Friday, 7 May 2004 12:03 (9 years ago) Permalink

My computer is a bastard and refuses to defragment, has been fucked up since I upgraded IE and I keep getting 'o no you sent a virus you mean person!' return-emails despite the fact that Norton says it's clean and hate it hate it HATE IT.

I don't really want advice, I just wanted to vent.

― cis (cis), Friday, 7 May 2004 12:18 (9 years ago) Permalink

my computer wouldn't defrag either. it crashed as soon as it started. i converted the drive from FAT32 to NTFS, ran CHKDSK, tried again, and boom! it defragged with ease. in like 4 hours.

now help with my CPU thing.

― g-kit (g-kit), Friday, 7 May 2004 12:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

> my processor is too hot. it's an athlon 2600. it reaches 60 degrees

www.dabs.com AMD Athlon XP 2600+ specs say:
> Max Operating Temperature 85 °C

so 60'C seems ok. various overclocker websites have suggested better cooling systems though. and make sure the thermal compound between the chip and the heatsink is spread evenly.

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 7 May 2004 12:36 (9 years ago) Permalink

yeah, 60deg is ok, but most people don't get anywhere near that. i don't get what the problem is. system temps are also hitting 50degrees. i have three case fans. i'm currently OCing to 2.2ghz, but i'm scared to go any higher because i have such high temps at stock voltage. it's... odd.

― g-kit (g-kit), Friday, 7 May 2004 12:48 (9 years ago) Permalink

I've got a free months trial of AOL (yes yes.. but i'm moving house in a month and getting broadband) and everytime i get disconnected my computer reboots. It's not the worm that was going round.

― don (don), Friday, 7 May 2004 16:12 (9 years ago) Permalink

Ack! OK, so last night something went totally wrong with my iBook. I'm not even sure what -- there was a spinning cursor for a while, then the screen froze and lines went across it (almost like what used to happen my logic board fried every few weeks -- I have that era of iBook). Now when I restart it the monitor stays dim (although if I point-n-click blindly enough, I am usually able to log into my account) (I have my iBook set up to have different accounts).

So I have no clue what's wrong, but thanks to AppleCare I'm not too worried. What I am worried, though, is that it will take a week or so to set up, and there are some files I'd like to have during that time (like, say, my resume!). Is there any way to use my roommate's iBook to access my iBook's harddrive? (I don't think I had "allow networked login" set up, grrrr.)

Thanks!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 8 May 2004 15:49 (9 years ago) Permalink

yeah! use a firewire cable. shut down your ibook and restart it, while holding down "t" on the keyboard.

then attach a fw cable to both your computers and your hard drive will appear on roomie's desktop. don't forget to eject it before you shut down though! (shut down your computer by pressing the power button)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 8 May 2004 15:52 (9 years ago) Permalink

Also I tried hooking up a PC monitor using the doohickey but it complained that it wasn't getting any signal. Is this perhaps a clue? It was very annoying anyways since I figured, I'm able to log in, maybe it's just ("just") the monitor. But maybe it's some video display card? That might be easier to solve. But first things first.


xpost Sweet! I thought there was a way! OK, hopefully she'll get home soon.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 8 May 2004 15:54 (9 years ago) Permalink

yeah, it's proven very useful for me on many an occasion!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 8 May 2004 15:57 (9 years ago) Permalink

I´m getting the following error while trying to get into soulseek. It appears to be working for other people. I´m on a friend´s computer and I´m desperate for some new music. Assistance would be monumentally appreciated.

"could not find server address. If your internet connection is up, this might be a problém with your name resolution service. please try again later"

― hmmm (hmmm), Sunday, 9 May 2004 11:14 (9 years ago) Permalink

Should be "could not resolve server address". oops

― hmmm (hmmm), Sunday, 9 May 2004 11:43 (9 years ago) Permalink

sorted now. just down loaded new version.

― hmmm (hmmm), Sunday, 9 May 2004 12:28 (9 years ago) Permalink

apples be breaking down so much!

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 9 May 2004 12:57 (9 years ago) Permalink

break it up break it up break down

― ken c (ken c), Sunday, 9 May 2004 13:40 (9 years ago) Permalink

Hey Sean, remember at Henry's Hunan you said that if I had a special Airport [thing] that came with all the newest Macs, I wouldn't need a really expensive official Apple Airport [thing], and that I could actually get wireless internet with an ugly but inexpensive [thing]? Well...what were you talking about again?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 19:50 (9 years ago) Permalink

Ah. Okay. Basically Airport is Apple's name for WiFi or 802.11 wireless networking, so it should be completely compatible with WiFi solutions that are available from other manufacturers like Linksys or D-Link or whatever. If you wanted to set up a wireless home network but you can find an access point or Cable/DSL wireless router available for less money than the Airport base station, don't feel that you have to buy the pretty Apple-branded version.

Airport Extreme is the new version of Airport, and it's the same as 802.11g (from what I can tell). The Airport Extreme base station is $199 - 249 depending on whether you get the modem and antenna port; since you can get other 802.11g routers for as low as $100, you may want to check that shit out instead.

If you've got the basic version of Airport (ie no Extreme) then you probably have 802.11b on your notebook, so getting the Extreme or 11g version of the wireless router won't be all that important unless you're planning to upgrade your notebook down the road. Since cable and DSL connections are already slower than even the 802.11b (basic Airport) setup, you're not going to be gaining anything by overspending here. And getting an 802.11b router may be a bit cheaper than 11g...but probably not by much.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:33 (9 years ago) Permalink

ok...and why would I want the Airport modem and antenna thing? I don't really get what those are for.

thanks, btw!

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

I don't know whether this link will work but here's a cheaper and probably rock-solid option:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001D3K8A/qid=1084397463/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1_etk-electronics/103-9923206-1101432?v=glance&s=electronics&n=172282

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:38 (9 years ago) Permalink

This isn't a question, but I succeeded in not only networking my new powerbook to my old PC (only took me 1.5 hours to get it going) BUT also got slsk/nicotine running on the same new powerbook. Whoot! Who's your daddy?

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:39 (9 years ago) Permalink

Sean, what if I already have a router? Aren't there little "bridge" doo-dahs that are, like, half that price?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 20:59 (9 years ago) Permalink

What you need, my friend, is an access point...but unfortunately they're nearly as much as the full-on wireless routers. The good thing with an access point is you just plug it into your router and away you go. (Well, yeah, configure your WEP settings so bastards don't break into your network, etc.)

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:03 (9 years ago) Permalink

Amazon sez the Linksys 11g access point is $80, and the 11b access point is $60:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00007KDVJ/qid=1084399427/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl23/103-9923206-1101432?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005854B/qid=1084399475/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl23/103-9923206-1101432?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:04 (9 years ago) Permalink

Do you know if you have a router? What are the telltale signs?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:10 (9 years ago) Permalink

Well, for one thing you're being routed.

I saw a D-Link access point (b, not g) at my local supermarket for $40 (after rebate) or maybe it was $30?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:19 (9 years ago) Permalink

what?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:27 (9 years ago) Permalink

I know!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:44 (9 years ago) Permalink

What?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:48 (9 years ago) Permalink

I know!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:49 (9 years ago) Permalink

Typical configuration on the way in from the net:

The Internet <--> cable or DSL modem <--> optional: router <--> your computer

If you're plugging your computer directly into your modem, you don't have a router. If you have a box with multiple Ethernet ports on it between your modem and your computer, you probably have a router.

The new DSL/cable broadband sharing routers are great because it logs onto the net for you (especially if you have DSL connection that requires PPPoE authentication, because it means you don't have to use that dumb and unreliable software client that DSL providers stick you with) and then uses network address translation to change your IP #s in your inner network. This means that people can't waltz directly into your computer from the outside world, they have to hack a bit first (this one is especially true if you're on a cable modem connection, where a direct connection of your computer into your modem might well result in your computer showing up in the networks of other people plugged into cable modems in your neighborhood).

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 22:37 (9 years ago) Permalink

I do not have a router.

When I try and unpack dmg files of games and stuff, I get a failure message that says "invalid checksum". What does that mean?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 13 May 2004 01:01 (9 years ago) Permalink

no wait, they are img files.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, 13 May 2004 01:01 (9 years ago) Permalink

The nice thing about the sirport is that it can act as a firewall, router and a print server for your whole wired and unwired network. There are still other products that do t all this for cheaper but none of them look like a UFO.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 13 May 2004 10:26 (9 years ago) Permalink

That's the great thing about Apple products though: pretty basic parts put into a case designed to look like a white shiny mushroom = profit blitzkrieg.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:22 (9 years ago) Permalink

By the way, "invalid checksum" probably means the file was corrupted somewhere along the way, and that error message is telling you that the error checking mechanism built into the to decompression application is telling you that not all the numbers are adding up. If the decompressed files seem fine, don't worry about it.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:24 (9 years ago) Permalink

'That's the great thing about Apple products though: pretty basic parts put into a case designed to look like a white shiny mushroom = profit blitzkrieg.'

Plus out of the box, 'It just works' functionality.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:00 (9 years ago) Permalink

Except when it doesn't. ;)

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:10 (9 years ago) Permalink

Specifically with the Airport Extreme base station, anyhow, a lot of users were claiming that it requires regular restarts. I know that's something that a lot of non-Apple wireless devices also require, too; I just think that the legendary Apple "it just works" thing is definitely much less true today than it used to be.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:13 (9 years ago) Permalink

No experience of 802.11, but bluetooth was a charm beyond belief. There are plenty of minor irritants in OS X, line not being able to restrict swap file size.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 13 May 2004 14:53 (9 years ago) Permalink

I have a boring computer question! I have a brand new Powerbook with lots of free memory and a cable modem...so why is Safari soooooooooooooooooooo sloooooooow?

― Antmusic78 (Antmusic78), Friday, 14 May 2004 12:54 (9 years ago) Permalink

Repair your permissions! (Use Disk Utility.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 14 May 2004 16:10 (9 years ago) Permalink

Hmmm...I was just going to say, I'm also having this problem. Switched to Firefox and it's still ridiculously slow.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 02:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

I was hoping this would be you!

Sadly you've denied me the pleasure of giving you useless advice.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

I have. How?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:34 (8 years ago) Permalink

Because I already gave the proper advice! Otherwise I would have told you to slip a little cocaine into the keyboard or something.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

Because I have seen your haircut, and I know you have access to cocaine.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

Are you okay?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

Oh I see, that was a joke at my haircut's expense? You're saying I have a "cocaine haircut"?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

That only someone so self-deluded that they were probably on cocaine would have a haircut like the one on my head?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

Is that what you're saying?

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

Because really I'm very sober and humble, I'm just afraid of going bald.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay, well I'm pleased that's settled.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:41 (8 years ago) Permalink

And posted to ILX for posterity.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:41 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay, now I have a novel to get back to. Good night.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

Enjoy "Less Than Zero"!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 04:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

My start menu (win98se) is wreaking havoc! Whenever I access it for programs, documents or bookmarks, it freezes explorer+taskbar, though whatever other apps I have running are not interrupted. Even if I avoid using the start menu in a session, when I shut down, I'm given the "Program not yet shut down -- End/Wait" prompt. I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary on the program manager, and I've run a virus scan twice: nothing up.

But the most troubling thing is that Zonealarm has alerted me that Explorer and WMPlayer is trying to access the internet, and once, some program called abetterinternet.com or somesuch tried to connect to the internet, too. I'll have to run adaware/spyware blaster, but what in heck is going on??

― Leee's a Simpson (Leee), Friday, 28 May 2004 20:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

It was "The Black Dahlia", Chris.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 28 May 2004 20:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

For OS X general maintenance, I highly recommend this article:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/11/21/maintenance.html

― Girolamo Savonarola, Friday, 28 May 2004 22:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

ooohhh a better internet!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 28 May 2004 22:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

Bah on you Macists, answer my question!

― Leee's a Simpson (Leee), Friday, 28 May 2004 22:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

I give you Bellucci pubic hair and this is my thanks?

― Girolamo Savonarola, Friday, 28 May 2004 23:00 (8 years ago) Permalink

I'm on a computer whose resolution is poopy so I couldn't make it out.

― Leee's a Simpson (Leee), Friday, 28 May 2004 23:02 (8 years ago) Permalink

Well, you know, you're not on a Mac, so...

― Girolamo Savonarola, Friday, 28 May 2004 23:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

Spyware. Here's more info:
http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/library/abetterinternet/index.phtml

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Saturday, 29 May 2004 00:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

I just did a fairly thorough search for that particular spyware. Nothing turned up in AdAware, and I only found one key in the registry that matched the string, though it was in a different place specified. Didn't turn up at all in the Add/Remove Programs, searched for the dll and exe files, nothing.

However, I noticed that Windows Media Player is running in the background, which seems to be in middle of things. Is it usually supposed to do that?

― eeeLastica (Leee), Saturday, 29 May 2004 05:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

I want to save myself some boring data entry. I want to find a way of automating entries of share prices from the yahoo finance website into an Excel spreadsheet.

For each example, I would like to enter the Last Trade value into a certain cell in Excel. This has to be done once a week at the end of the week. There is an example here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ate.

The html code for each Last Trade value seems to be the same i.e. for this example:

<td class="yfnc_tablehead1" width="48%">Last Trade:</td><td class="yfnc_tabledata1"><big><b>17.43</b></big></td>

all of the yahoo finance web pages I need to input data from also have the same kind of format i.e. the URL mentioned above with just the code at the end (after the equals sign) changing. Also, the spreadsheet entry will involve entering the Last trade value into columns B through to BE each week, and for each of these columns the contents of row 2 corresponds to the value after the equals sign in the URL.

Please help!

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 07:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

perl

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 12:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

um, that's not too helpful but then you are using excel 8)

i'd write a script that used wget or curl to get the html pages, sucked out and chopped up the relevant line using perl or sed or grep, wrote the output as comma separated file which i could then import into excel. how you'd do this using windows is left as an exercise for the reader. (cygwin? activestate perl?)

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 12:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

koogs, otm!

― Be sure to Loop! Loop, Loop, Loop. (ex machina), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 12:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

mark

wrote a little something in php (because it's portable and easy enough to install) and sent it to your hotmail account. don't know how useful it'll be as i've no idea what formats excel will import but it should make it a little easier.

andy

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 14:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

hi andy,
thanks for that - will look out for it.

cheers.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 14:21 (8 years ago) Permalink

How to simulate rolls of a die using the windows calculator?

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 09:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

just search roll playing on versiontracker, you should turn up any number of dice simulators.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 09:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

I'm asking because maybe I have an idea for an ilx game. It would be too much trouble to ask everyone to download and install a program so I'm looking for a way most users could do this easily, like, to generate random numbers between 0 - 9: 3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6,5,4...
Or between 10 and 99: 31, 41, 59,...
Or between 100 and 999: 314, 159, 265 etc
I figure windows is the most popular os around here, so I'm searching for a way to do this with it's scientific calculator, or I guess it could be doable via the command prompt.

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 09:58 (8 years ago) Permalink

how about using javascript? everybody has a browser available to them and it gets around the tricky platform specific stuff...

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 11:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yes, Sebastien - don't do anything you need to install. Many people are on office compute setups that block any installations.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 11:13 (8 years ago) Permalink

well i think that's seb's point

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 12:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

Ah right, sorry. I was kind of bigging up the javascript idea I think, without really reading properly.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 13:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

I'm trying to render a wav file from a mix I made in Acid Pro 3. I do this all the time but this time it's saying "Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low" and crashing out. This never used to happen, so why now? I tried doing it with a much smaller Acid file and it happened again. WTF?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 June 2004 06:50 (8 years ago) Permalink

this seems to coincide with having downloaded a recnet windows update i think

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 June 2004 06:55 (8 years ago) Permalink

mr latin, is that a disk space problem?

mark, i had another thought about your thing last night. instead of lots of individual pages can't you set up a yahoo portfolio that contains all the prices for the companies you're interested in? this would just mean downloading one page (let their database do the collating of info) but would mean the parsing of the file to extract the price you wanted is a bit more complicated. or maybe there are too many companies.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 3 June 2004 07:33 (8 years ago) Permalink

well, I was running low on disk space and I think that's when the initial problem occured. However since then I have freed up a good two gig of space on both of my hard drives so it shouldn't be so bad should it?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 June 2004 09:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

have you rebooted? the virtual memory is actually disk space and if the disk space was full it may have impinged on your swap space (although theat depends on the sytem you're running). so reboot and / or kill off some processes and see if it improves (there should be a tool - top on linux f'rinstance, task manager on windows - that'll tell you what's using what space)

(ah, windows update probably means you're running windows.
My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Virtual Memory is where you change it on win2k systems. typically this should be about twice your RAM. we have a 3G partition here at work that we use for nothing but the page file)

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 3 June 2004 12:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

yes i rebooted. I'm totally unsure how much RAM I have but when I went to that screen the initial was "2" and the max was "2". This sounds wrong non?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 June 2004 12:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

yup that sounds wrong, should be three times your RAM at least.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 3 June 2004 12:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

without wanting to sound like a total spaz, but how do i know for sure what my RAM is. When my computer boots up, it says a really low number but I have been assured that it is a lot more than this and that there is a reason why it gives out this low number on the login readout.

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 June 2004 14:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

right click on my computer click properties. It will tell you there.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 3 June 2004 14:33 (8 years ago) Permalink

Everytime I startup my computer, my wireless connection (which I admit I leach off of a neighbor) doesn't work until I go into Properties>Support>Repair. Meanwhile, I can connect to other wireless networks around (at a coffee shop or from the school across the street) without issue. Any thoughts?

― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 3 June 2004 15:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

uh, is 128mb of ram normal?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 3 June 2004 17:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

it is less than average, but ram size isn't everything.

― mark p (Mark P), Thursday, 3 June 2004 17:28 (8 years ago) Permalink

Can I ask:
I have a 5 year old iMac running OS9.2.1. Flashing ? indicates problem finding startup disk. Do the double startup, no success. Zap the Pram, no success.
Startup iMac from system install CD-Rom. (and even try system - restore, which is hopeless). It appears to boot, BUT, then when the CD icon comes up, the cursor icon disappears, so that I can't click on the intall disk to start.
All the USB cables etc are fine. Any ideas?

I think my hardware is fucked somehow. I've got another computer (that I'm writing this on) but would love to get back into it to retrieve info etc. (300 rare Wu-tang songs!)

Thanks to anyone kind and clever.

― paulhw (paulhw), Thursday, 3 June 2004 20:00 (8 years ago) Permalink

Sounds like a dodgy disk or disk controller. Open it up check the connections inside. See if you can borrow a copy of disk warrior from somewhere. Boot up with the disk warrior disk with all periferals unplugged bar keyboard and mouse. Try repairing the disk with diskwarrior. It may be completelyfucked though.

― Ed (dali), Friday, 4 June 2004 05:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

paulh if it is the hardware and not the disc, you could theoretically save your data by removing the hard drive and placing it in an OK machine. Some tech stores should be able to do this for you as well.

― 57 7th (calstars), Friday, 4 June 2004 15:31 (8 years ago) Permalink


This may sound a little bit odd, but without my doing anything that I know of, the font size in IE just keeps getting bigger and bigger (and bigger) every few days, to the point of becoming a considerable irritation. Anyone any suggestions?

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 13:13 (8 years ago) Permalink


Oh dearie me, forget I ever said that...

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 13:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

this is driving me nuts. I have a dell machine with a firewire card installed. I just bought a lacie 160GB firewire drive. It works fine, except when I plug in my ipod to the other firewire port, at which time, the drive ummounts. Sometimes it unmounts completely and disappears, sometimes it appears to remain there, and I can click through the directories, but not see any files; sometimes it comes back if I turn it on and off, but most of the time I have to reboot, and windows does a disk check, and all is well. Lacie support have been no help. I suspect this has something to do with windows' driver and assigning drive numbers to the ipod and the drive. Has anyone else experience this? (I'm using WindowsXP. All drivers appear to be up to date). Everytime I want to add anything to my ipod now requires at least one reboot which kind of kills the convenience.

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 17:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

One thought; does the LaCie drive have another firewire port on the back, and if so, what happens when you chain the iPod through it instead of plugging it into the Dell?

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 17:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

I tried that thinking that would solve the problem, but it kept happening. well, it reassigned different drive letters to things at that point (the drive had been I, the Ipod J; then when I chained them, the iPod became I, the drive J, and the drive dismounted itself).

The drive works fine on my Mac at work, so I don't think it's a problem with the drive itself. It must be a windows problem. It's just odd that I can't seem to find anyone else who has had this issue.

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 18:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

Have you tried doing a hard assign on the drive so that it's like N: or P: drive or something like that? Just to get it away from all of the other drives. Windows can be a real pain with assignment of drive letters, especially if a device keeps trying to reclaim the same letter every time you plug it in. Moving the hard drive up the alphabet will at least keep it safe if the iPod's being pushy. (or vice versa)

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 18:31 (8 years ago) Permalink

If you don't know how to do that, it's in Disk Management; I think with both Win2K and WinXP you go to the control panel, select Administrative Tools, double-click "computer management" icon, then look for the "disk management" option on the left-hand-side. When you click on it, all of the attached disks should pop up. If you have your external drive attached, it should appear there, and you can right-click the drive and reassign the drive letter using the "change drive letter and paths" option.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 18:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

cool, I will try that out when I get home. thanks!

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 19:00 (8 years ago) Permalink

Help! I have been getting error messages saying either a common control component is not correctly registered, or one of its dependencies is missing or invalid. It's happening when i try to complete installing a new prog.
I have an awful suspicion that some essential regsistry thing might have been taken away by my anti-virus programme when it 'repaired' a worm it found.
Any ideas on how I might be able to correct this ?

― donna (donna), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 19:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

My eMac, running OS 10.2.8, occasionally (twice, I think - both in the last month or so) suddenly flips to a blue screen and the login screen. I log in again and all seems fine. I supposed I would lose unsaved work if I ever did any work.

Should I be worried? Is this a bad sign of something? I repair permissions and run MacJanitor regularly.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 8 June 2004 23:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

okay, my firewire drive doesn't show up in disk management for some reason. Only my internal drives, my cd-rom, and internal zip drive show up. it does show up under disk drives in the device manager though, but I can't seem to assign drive letters there.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 00:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

That's very strange...if its not showing up in your disk management, it shouldn't be showing up on your My Computer. But: when it's not showing up in the disk management section, IS it showing up under My Computer? (and don't forget to scroll down on the disk management window wither, if there's a scroll bar there...it may be hidden at the bottom.)

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 00:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

yep! could this have something to do with the removable storage part of Computer Management? The libraries directory under Removable Storage has entries for my zip and my CD/DVD drive, but nothing for this drive. Maybe I need to add a library for this drive? If so, shouldn't the driver do this or something? One thing that is odd is that if I check the properties of the drive, it says Device Type: disk drives, Manufacturer: (standard disk drives), location: LUN 0 . The (standard disk drives) thing makes me think that XP is not recognizing the correct driver or something.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 00:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

If you're using an external hard drive, it should be a pretty standard controller; Windows XP understands pretty much all of them and just says "yep, that's an external hard drive" and makes it work. I can't imagine LaCie's controller would require any special drivers to make it behave, though I have been surprised by such things before.

Just to be clear, you DON'T have the iPod plugged in at the same time while you're doing this, right? If you do, unplug dat shit, reboot and then try this all again.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

no, it isn't plugged in. I'm am somewhat at a loss.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

Perhaps this is France's revenge against the English-speaking world!

Seriously, though, I don't have any clue why it would be doing that either. You could try updating the driver (both using the windows driver update using the properties of the drive, and by going to LaCie).

Also, another clarification on the Disk Management: use the bottom window, not the top window. The top window, if I remember correctly, only lists drives that are okay. If that LaCie is having difficulties, you'll have to locate it on the bottom half of the window, and it may be grey'd out.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

yeah, it's not listed under there (in the bottom pane). I'm going to have to call lacie, I think; their online email support returned a mail a week later saying that my request had been received, then I never heard another word.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

haha, i rebooted and then it showed up in there. motherfucker. plugging the ipod in doesn't seem to unmount it now that I reassigned it drive letter Z. Hope this keeps working! thanks sean.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

Rebooting solves everything.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

(oh i wish it was really that easy anyhow)

Glad it's working now!

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 01:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

Just a thought, postfacto. What's the drive formatted as and on which machine did you format it?

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 05:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay, riddle me this - Hotmail wasn't working properly for ages. I'd get as far as the Inbox but then clicking on a message it would give me the "Page Cannot Be Found" bullshit. Now I have GMail and it's telling me I don't have cookies enabled.
In IE6, I go to Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, and set to Accept All Cookies.

Same story. This is very very very frustrating and I'm about to hurl my PC out the window. If someone has any ideas, they could save me hundreds of pounds worth of damage and a cold night in my bedroom. Thanks!

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 16:33 (8 years ago) Permalink

http://www.mozilla.org/

FIREFOX

― Jon Williams!!!!! (ROFFLE!@!@!@) (ex machina), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 16:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

I WANT INSTANT RESULTS GOD DAMN IT!

This has been going on since I reloaded Windows XP. I really need to check my emails, please help! Pretty please?

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 16:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

have you tried from another user account on the machine?

― Jon Williams!!!!! (ROFFLE!@!@!@) (ex machina), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 16:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

well, it won't let me see hotmail or gmail. the accounts work dandy on other pcs.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 16:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

no no no no! i mean another log into another local user account on the same machine and then try

― Jon Williams!!!!! (ROFFLE!@!@!@) (ex machina), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 17:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

i don't think I do... what's a foolproof way to check? my friend reinstalled Windows for me.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 17:15 (8 years ago) Permalink

nope. that didn't do anything.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 22:52 (8 years ago) Permalink

my guess is crapware probably fucked IE over

― Jon Williams!!!!! (ROFFLE!@!@!@) (ex machina), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 23:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

crapware? I am running Adaware and Zonealarm but i disabled them both along with Google toolbar. When my friend reinstalled Windows, he left the old faulty version on the computer too because he was worried that deleting it might arse up the computer. I bet this is why. I am using XP Professional. The original is Home edition. It asks me which i want to use when i first switch on.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 23:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

I deleted my cookies and it worked. Don't panic! Nobody panic!

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 00:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

Here's one for Linux fans,

http://www.dynebolic.org/

I've downloaded this image and it boots fine on my laptop/other PCs

If I create a mount point /mnt/net and run

mount -t smbfs -o username=,password= //192.168.0.5/sharename /mnt/net

I get an error wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.0.5/sharename, or too many mounted file systems

The same commmand to the same share works fine on my Fedora box.

I can ping the ip address fine and web appears to work.

If I run modprobe smbfs it exits with no error, so I'm assumng the smbfs module is loaded okay.

I'm a linux newbie, any ideas?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 11:49 (8 years ago) Permalink

mount -t smbfs -o username=,password= //192.168.0.5/sharename /mnt/net

I get an error wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on //192.168.0.5/sharename, or too many mounted file systems

Just remind me why Linux is better than Windows again?

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 11:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

do you have smbfs loaded in the kernel? does the command "dmesg" say anything related to this

― Shake Your Halo Down! (ex machina), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 11:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

It's all about the geek.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 11:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

> do you have smbfs loaded in the kernel?

use 'lsmod' to see loaded modules. (/sbin/lsmod)

> Just remind me why Linux is better than Windows again?

do you know the history of the samba project mark? it's a) interesting and b) a good example of why linux is 'better' than windows.

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

smbfs: mount_data version 1919251317 is not supported

This does not sound good.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

hmm, my bet is that dynebolic is crap

― Shake Your Halo Down! (ex machina), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:05 (8 years ago) Permalink

its listed at the top of the lsmod command output

module Size Used by
smbfs 36920 0

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

I know yet it sounds nice.

Freej etc preloaded all on a bootable cd.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

i had awful trouble with dynebolic, albeit an earlier version. so much so that i wrote 'shoddy' on the cdr.

anyway:
http://www.myjavaserver.com/exec/.Gdm5KtpKLwzNf2CZvwBFfNjLDwyZnxzT9vB1j3BM1JBPfwBMuwBVHwp0f2y
seems to say that more samba software is required

and this http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/2003-June/041463.html says that there's just a symlink missing

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 12:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

Hmm mount.smbfs does not appear to be in the /sbin or usr/bin folders.

Maybe Dynebolic is shite, are there any other boot cds designed for media work like this?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:03 (8 years ago) Permalink

dyne:bolic is RASTA software released free under the GNU General Public License.
This software is about Digital Resistance ina babylon world which tries to control and make a business out of the way we communicate, we share our interests, informations and knowledge.
The roots of the Rastafari movement are in resistance to slavery: this software is one step in the larger struggle for Redemption and Freedom from proprietary and closed-source software.
Much blessings in Jah luv to all those who resist. Selah.

― Shake Your Halo Down! (ex machina), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

dude

― Shake Your Halo Down! (ex machina), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

Thats great and all, but the samba support seems to be borked.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:31 (8 years ago) Permalink

Rastas don't like to Samba

― Shake Your Halo Down! (ex machina), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:34 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay so the lesson learned is don't get your Linux from the Rastas.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

http://dynebolic.dyne.org/index.php?show=workshop

HAHAHAHHAHA

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

Speaking of Windows, is there a way to turn a folder into a CD disk image using Win98? Hmmmm?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yes use Nero to burn but use the "image writer" rather than a CDRW.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

Hm! Cleverish!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 14:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

> Maybe Dynebolic is shite, are there any other boot cds designed for media work like this?

list of distros and packages here: http://linux-sound.org/distro.html
* AGNULA a GNU/Linux audio and multimedia distribution
* APODIO is an "...audio computer on a live CD bootable distribution"
* AudioSlack audio packages for Slackware users, from Luke Yelavich, inspired by PlanetCCRMA
* Demudi the Debian Multimedia Distribution (merged with AGNULA)
* Dynebolic a GNU/Linux distribution "... shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and teachers"
* LAW is the Linux Audio Workstation distro from Jacob Robbins
* Linux Music Apps CD a great collection from John Littler
* Low-latency RPMs packages from Udo Jocher that include a 2.4.18 kernel patched for low-latency and preemptive operation
* Medialinux at OSL a Knoppix-based Linux distribution focused on multimedia
* Planet CCRMA At Home RPM packages of the Linux sound and music software used at CCRMA, thanks to Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano
* Thac's RPMs For Mandrake includes a large collection of Linux music and sound packages
* Turn-Key Linux Audio a new Linux audio distro from Kevin Ernste at the Eastman Computer Music Center

but none of the ones i had a look at had freej.

(i've been reading the dynebolic pages and other people do have samba working, albeit in older versions. maybe they just forgot a couple of files. should be easy enough to copy them over from somewhere else (famous last words...). try 'locate smbfs' see if that can find it.)

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 15:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

(morphix has a multimedia add-on planned which does include freej but it's a work in progress.)

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 15:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

FIREFOX PROBLEM!

I tried d/ling the Google toolbar for the new version of FF (0.9) for XP, and there were some reported issues re: getting the damn thing to work - you had to close your browser after d/ling, then deactivate the extension, close AGAIN, activate it, close AGAIN, and then it would be available the next time you opened FF.

Stupid me, I inadvertently downloaded the Google toolbar extension in such a way that I ended up with TWO instances of it in my List Of Extensions, and when I shut down the browser & restarted, a little dialog box called INSTALLING DOWNLOADED EXTENSION (or something like that) popped up. And now I can't get Firefox to open! I click on the wee li'l icon, & that stupid little box shows up, and I can't do dick.

I tried uninstalling / reinstalling - no go. I can reinstall 0.8 just fine, but when I reinstally 0.9, I get the same booshit. I imagine I have to seek out whatever the hell's in my profile directory referring to the Google toolbar. I checked out where the extensions are located in the Mozilla directory, but the files / directories are named something like {9dka-doiw822-adakjj}. Help?

ALSO: where the hell can I snag a copy of Doom II? My sis wants me to burn a copy for my nephew's 6th birthday.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 23 June 2004 16:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

i tried dynebolics 1.3 this morning and mount -t smbfs seemed to be ok (although other issues meant i couldn't actually see the shares on my win2k box). the other alternative is, of course, to share a dynebolics drive and then copy things there. there were useful looking options in the network menu.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 24 June 2004 08:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay I just found LinNeighbourhood on Dynebolic and I can see the PC I want to copy files from but when I scan the machine non of the shares show up even if I scan with the Administrator account.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 24 June 2004 09:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

is this a workgroup thing? i have just spotted a Dynebolic workgroup entry under Microsoft Windows Network but don't know if i can access anything in it (and the PC i was using to try dynebolic is now doing its day job as the development database server so...)

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 24 June 2004 10:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah Dybebolic starts a samba share under the workgroup Dynebolic with a computer name Dynebolic<first 6 chars of the MAC> I can't access it from WinXP, it asks for a username and password and i've no idea what to put.

Dynebolic also comes with LinNeighbourhood a Linux app with a GUI like Network Neighbourhood I can see the Windows PC in there but not any of the shares.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 24 June 2004 10:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

http://dyne.org/~jaromil/dynebolic-man/html/dynebolic-x114.en.html

"The Samba filesharing daemon is running on your dyne:bolic: everything contained in the /home/shared directory is accessible (read and write) as a shared folder on the network you are connected, without any password protection - the share is called 'dyne:bolic casbah'."

/etc/samba is viewable here:
http://cvs.dyne.org/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/initrd_tree/etc/samba/

/etc/samba/smb.conf has the share as 'public'

/etc/samba/smbusers:
root = administrator admin
nobody = guest pcguest smbguest

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 24 June 2004 10:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay so when I get the connect to Dynebolic0007e9 dialog box on XP and it prompts for a username/password what do I put in?

I'm a total linux newb.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 24 June 2004 11:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

i'm *guessing* one of 'guest' 'pcguest' or 'smbguest' and no password.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 24 June 2004 11:49 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah I tried that non of them work...

This is sooooo frustrating

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 24 June 2004 11:55 (8 years ago) Permalink

am out of suggestions and can't look into it any more as i can't reboot the database server whilst other people are here. will give it another go tonight / tomorrow. i will try changing the workgroup to match the pc workgroup (which is defined somewhere in /etc/samba and restarting samba 'service smbd restart' (or something)). there's also nothing to stop me adding more samba users and defining passwords for them (er, 'man samba').

and there's always ftp 8)

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 24 June 2004 12:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

(why can't I stay away from this thread? Andy's posts are like some kind of keyhole into a fantastical new world, like in those Philip Pullman books)

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 24 June 2004 12:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

so, i did this at home last night during the football

home network doesn't have dhcp server running so i had to give dynebolic box a static ip and after that the shares just appeared in the linneighbourhood box and everything was fine. (open an xterm and 'ping {ipaddress}' to see if it can see the windows box. 'ifconfig' should also give you info about eth0)

work network picked up ip address straight off but i had trouble seeing the shares. i set the proper workgroup in linneighbourhood preferences menu and rescanned and that found the shares, no problem. i may have needed to 'browse as user' though, i can't remember. later attempts to connect to other shares failed, i don't know why. i'll reboot and try again after lunch.

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 25 June 2004 12:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
can anyone point me towards an os x program / itunes ad on that lets me change mp3 fiel names to artist-tile.mp3 format? my slsk favorites folder is a mess.

― :|, Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

can anyone point me towards a decent external HD (for Mac) for less than, say, $180?

― AdamL :') (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:00 (8 years ago) Permalink

I have a LaCie which is excellent though, it was a 200 gb for $200, IIRC from Amazon.

― dean? (deangulberry), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:03 (8 years ago) Permalink

I hate my lacie drive (see above; I am still having the same problem). it works fine on my mac though. it seems to be a windows driver problem (and their windows driver software is broken, and has been for weeks). Their support is spectacularly nonresponsive.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

What's the difference between a good external HD and a bad one? Likelihood of failing?

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:05 (8 years ago) Permalink

yes. I wouldn't trust some no-name brand of HD with 200 GB of stuff. If you've ever had a drive fail, you'll understand. Also, some drives have different features. Is there any reason why an external firewire drive should also need AC? NO. My lacie does though. And it has a power switch. So it sucks power all the time unless I turn it off, even when the computer is shut down. This is dumb.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

I enjoy mine!

― dean? (deangulberry), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

Are there stats on different manufacturers' fail rates or does one have to go by anecdotal reputation?

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:10 (8 years ago) Permalink

Damn. They have 1 TB and 1.6 TB models.

― dean? (deangulberry), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

cnet reviews are still okay indicators of people's opinions of drives. I bought the one I bought even though people didn't recommend it for exactly the reasons that now irritate me.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 21:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

What?? I have a 2 yr old eMac and want to get an Airport card for it. The Apple site says the only eMacs compatible with Airport Extreme are models with USB 2.0 or ATI Graphics, neither of which I think I have. For other eMacs it says to use the original Airport card. Fine.

But they don't seem to sell them anymore! This is surely ridiculous? Some resellers (like Jigsaw) still seem to be, but they cost more than the Extreme ones. Is this because they've been discontinued? Why on earth would Apple do that?

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 9 August 2004 18:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

OK, a search reveals they have indeed been discontinued. How moronic. I'll try to get one from Jigsaw before they sell out.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 9 August 2004 18:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, is it possible to use a non-Apple wireless card in an Apple machine? Specifically in my case, under the keyboard of a G3 iBook? It looks like a standard Cardbus slot but I have no idea if it really is. Surely this is a common question.

― Paul Eater (eater), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 14:41 (8 years ago) Permalink

i think it is

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 14:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

Our PowerBook has stopped taking cds into the cd drive. You can push the cd in, but it doesn't grab it and suck it in like it's supposed to. I can hear it whirring and trying to do something, but to no avail. Is there any chance this isn't a hardware problem that I'm going to have to get some computer tech guy to fix for us?

― St. Nicholas (Nick A.), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 14:50 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, is it possible to use a non-Apple wireless card in an Apple machine? Specifically in my case, under the keyboard of a G3 iBook? It looks like a standard Cardbus slot but I have no idea if it really is. Surely this is a common question.

Yes it is but for an eMac you'd need a usb one

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 14:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

When I was looking around on Mac Rumors boards someone recommened the Aria Extreme card, but the site says it will only work with G3 Powerbooks, not iBooks, I'm afraid.

I ordered my Airport card from Jigsaw24 today. They still had some.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 15:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

Ok, external firewire -- anyone know the deal on enclosures that let you pop an IDE disk in?

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 15:05 (8 years ago) Permalink

Lots more about it here. It seems that the decision to stop selling Airport cards may have been forced on Apple by one of their suppliers.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 15:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

crap, why can't i find one with two firewire ports?

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 15:15 (8 years ago) Permalink

http://store.yahoo.com/justdeals/tt5350fb.html

hmmm these look good.... maybe I'll get two

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 15:19 (8 years ago) Permalink

ok, it looks like the following external thingees have two firewire ports:

Bytecc ME-320F
Speeze Cooler 3.5" USB 2.0 / IEEE1394 External Drive Enclosure, Model "FI320"

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 15:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

Anyone ever have a problem with a powerbook waking from sleep and losing the wireless connection totally? I can see the network, and the signal strength is very good, but I cannot see any pages on the web or download email. Any ideas? thanks

― Mario&Yuko, Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:13 (8 years ago) Permalink

when does the internet work again? on reboot?

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:14 (8 years ago) Permalink

No, not even on reboot. Or sleep.

― Mario&Yuko, Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:21 (8 years ago) Permalink

so, how are you on the internet?

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

I'm at work...the problem is at home.
I tried 'renewing the DHCP lease' whatever that means, in Network Prefs. The connection comes from a Belkin wireless router which works fine with my PC.

― Mario&Yuko, Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

i think the BELKIN is the problem here

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

fuckabelkin

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

yeah, normally when your hard drive goes to sleep you'll lose your network connection, and it can confuse a wireless router. simply recycle the router (unplug the power for 30 seconds and then turn it back on) and it will work on. in the future, have the "put hard drive to sleep after [] minutes" setting off).

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:34 (8 years ago) Permalink

swtich to linksys or an airport express. belkin is a shit router.

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

It got great reviews in the current Mac User. I was going to buy one.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

i have had zero problems with my belkin. not a one.

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 18:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

Savastore are doing the Belkin wireless router with integrated ADSL modem for £57 inc. VAT, which is about £40 less than the Netgear equivalent. My slow crawl to broadband will continue next month.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 10 August 2004 18:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

Ooh - so I got my Airport card and installed it. I'm not going to be able to afford the ADSL connection and router till next month, but just tried to turn the Airport card on for fun, and it detects a network! Just called 'belkin54g'. Don't know where it's coming from.

Can I use this to get fast internet access somehow? How?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

connect to it and see if it works!

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

most idiots don't secure their wireless networks, let this be a lesson to you when you set up your own!

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

or not set yours up -- free internet

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

#202477 +(2405)- [X]

(Mootar) morons.
(Mootar) these people who live in my apartment complex are connected to my wireless
(Mootar) they must think they're super-cool hackers by breaking into my completely unsecure network
(Mootar) unfortunatly, the connection works both ways
(Mootar) long story short, they now have loads of horse porn on their computer

― g-kit (g-kit), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

Does it work, Nick?

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

i think it would be funny to scam people stealing my internet by logging all their passwords, instant messages, email, etc.

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

I don't understand what to do in order to use it for high-speed access, though. I mean, under my Airport menu bar thing, it has 'belkin54g' ticked, but other than that, it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It's not in my Finder or anything, not that I want to look at their files or anything.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

our linksys wireless router is being a pain in the arse, I'm fearing for ever connecting to broadband

― Porkpie (porkpie), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

1) uh, use the internet connect wizard to connect to their wireless connection
2) you are on the internet
3) profit

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:49 (8 years ago) Permalink

i have a toshiba laptop and sometimes i connect to the internet using lynskeys but other times it doesnt connect. i use the connect wizard, why does it switch back and forth like this?

― kephm, Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

why does nobody listen to me?
HORSE PR0N!!!11

― g-kit (g-kit), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

i think we live in different apartments

― kephm, Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

Ah, OK. I went to Internet Connect and changed it from 'Internal modem' to 'Airport'. Then I tried accessing the internet. Didn't seem to connect to anything. I guess that means no free lunch, then. Does this mean they have no internet connection on their wireless network, that they lock out unauthorised users, or that I needed to change some other setting? The signal strength meter was only about a third full, if that makes any difference.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

I'm sure Apple's help has a troubleshooting guide.

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 13:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

You're right. This was a somewhat frivolous request for help borne of excitement at magical things happening somewhere in my street.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

alba, sometimes just moving rooms makes a difference with the connection.

― kephm, Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

you should check if you actually got an IP address, etc via DHCP

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

Oh, it's not a laptop so I can't be bothered moving it.

Sorry Jon, I don't know what that means.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

Oh - hang on, I underestimate myself.

Under Network Preferences, I discover I do indeed have an Airport IP address that is different to the one from my dialup connection.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:10 (8 years ago) Permalink

It says "169.254.123.104 (Self-assigned)"

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

self assigned = your computer tried to generate one that could feasibly work but most likely won't

try to setup airport to get a DHCP address and then bring it up again

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:13 (8 years ago) Permalink

How do I do that? Sorry to be useless - feel free to give up on me if you want.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:15 (8 years ago) Permalink

(copied from ILM)

Ha, I've got a laptop question for anyone kind enough to help out. I got my editing studio set up last night with my PC laptop (Cubase, Reason, external hard drive, no problems).
However, I've got some studio monitors with XLR and 1/4" outs and no cable. Do I just need to get an adapter to plug them into the 1/8" headphone jack of my laptop, and is this the best way to do things? I wasn't going to buy an external sound card because I'm just planning on doing editing, not recording, on this setup. I just want to make sure the 1/8" laptop connection will be okay for quality/power.

I'm computer-retarded btw.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

xpost to airport question -- are you in OS X?

http://web.mit.edu/is/services/network/dhcp/wireless/macos10.3.html

has a bit telling you how to set it to DHCP

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

Mario&Yuko (and maybe Alba too) -- try going to Active Network Ports in the Network preferences and disabling, applying, then reenabling, the wireless connection.

― Paul Eater (eater), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:19 (8 years ago) Permalink

I went through all that, Jon. All the setting were already as dictated (I'm on 10.2.8 rather than 10.3, but it all looked the same). I moved Airport above Internal Modem in the list of Network Port Configurations too.

When I open Internet Connect and switch to Airport, I get 'Status: Status not available' at the bottom, instead of the 'Connected to blah blah', send/receive bars and IP address reading that I get with Internal Modem.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:28 (8 years ago) Permalink

ALBA. hello.

what EXACTLY happens when you click on belkin54g from the pulldown airport menu?

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:34 (8 years ago) Permalink

because it's either supposed to tell you you have to enter a password, automatically connect you, or tell you that you tried to join a restricted network.

there should be no other configuring necessary.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

cutty, I think there's no DHCP server so it "guesses" an ip after it joins the network

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 14:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

cutty - nothing happens as such. I'm not sure what you mean by 'click on' though. I mean, as I say, belkin54g has a tick next to it.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 15:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

disconnect it and reconnect

― Red Panda Sanskrit (ex machina), Thursday, 12 August 2004 15:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, I've done that. I mean if I *did* want to look at what was on the belin54g network's servers, how would I even do that. If I go to Finder, it's not there, and if I choose 'Connect to server' there it searches without finding anything.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 15:23 (8 years ago) Permalink

Holy shit - it suddenly works. What was that horsepr0n thing again?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

This is so freaky. 50 kb/s and I've paid nothing. Err.. how likely is it that the owner of this wi-fi network is going to find out and do something bad to me?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:14 (8 years ago) Permalink

haha, maybe I should turn mine on and see what happens.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:21 (8 years ago) Permalink

What shall I do? What's a good internet radio station?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

just enjoy your free internet.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

your on a desktop, so the joy of internetting in bed is not an option.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:52 (8 years ago) Permalink

YOU'RE.

― cutty (mcutt), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:52 (8 years ago) Permalink

The joy of wetting the bed is still a possibility though.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 12 August 2004 22:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

OK, so our broadband coonection finally seems to be working, however, we've got a linksys wireless router and a linksys card, only about twenty metres apart with no real big walls in the way either, and the best signal I can get is 3 bars out of ten on my b'band monitor :o(

downloads are running at only about 2.3 kbps, which is bleeding slower than when I was on dial-up. Anyone got any ideas (apart from running a cable the length of the house)

― Porkpie (porkpie), Sunday, 15 August 2004 10:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

are you sure you are successfully connecting to your router as opposed to someone elses nearby? that would explain the poor signal.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

things you should do to your wireless router:

1. change the name from "linksys" or "netgear"
2. turn off SSID broadcast
3. enable WEP
4. enable MAC filtering
5. password protect router from generic ADMIN password

if you have a WRT54G you can install better firmware from sveasoft.com which will boost your signal, give you bandwidth management options, and a multitude of other cool shit.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

cool, thanks Cutty, it's definitely ours, I just moved the pooter out of the cupboard and bosted the signal to 5 bars and am getting a better download now, much better in fact.

― Porkpie (porkpie), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

and now a dumb set of questions - that stuff you tell me to do, (changing password and changing name apart, I can see why to do that) what does it do/why is it beneficial?

― Porkpie (porkpie), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

porkpie, do you live in a densely populated area? basically these are precautions against someone else hopping on your network, stealing bandwidth, and generally being capable of doing BAD THINGS to your computer/network/etc if they really wanted to.

― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 15 August 2004 11:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

My free wireless internet seems to be very intermittent. The network is always there, with decent enough signal strength, but half the time I get stuck on that DHCP self-assigned IP address shit. I googled the problem and it seems to be quite common, even when one isn't robbing someone else's connection, which makes me a bit worries about this whole wireless thing when I actually get my own ADSL next month.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 15 August 2004 12:12 (8 years ago) Permalink

Cutty, we are yes, but I can't trace any other servers/routers. What is WEP for instance and the ssid? The router set-up says to be careful over switching these.

The speeds are cracking at the moment, which is good, we just have to leave the box out of the cupboard.

― Vicky (Vicky), Sunday, 15 August 2004 12:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
I have a cable modem connection, yet when I share files via slsk or AIM, etc., the transfer speeds are incredibly slow. What am I doing wrong?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Sunday, 29 August 2004 21:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

help this man out

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 29 August 2004 21:14 (8 years ago) Permalink

help me to help YOU!

― adam. (nordicskilla), Sunday, 29 August 2004 21:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

is the download speed slow too, or just your upload speed? I vaguely remember that they capped upload speeds when I had a cable modem (different ISP).

― kyle (akmonday), Sunday, 29 August 2004 23:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

kind of both.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Sunday, 29 August 2004 23:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

bump

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 14:41 (8 years ago) Permalink

Hard to say without looking but some ideas:

1) your firewall (if you have one) may be interfering
2) their firewall (if they have one) may be interfering
3) their connection speed (if they have one) may be much much slower, especially if they are on 56k, isdn, or DSL. (DSL upload speed is usually much slower than download)
4) HA HA YOU EFFED IT UP

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Monday, 30 August 2004 14:55 (8 years ago) Permalink

My firewall is definitely switched off.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 15:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

There's also the possibility that your provider may have throttled down speeds for specific types of data to prevent people in your area from suffering for your downloading. If you're just getting this problem using a P2P program, it's a possibility.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

Actually, it happend when I send files though AIM as well.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:23 (8 years ago) Permalink

Actually, it happens when I send files though AIM as well.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

There's your problem - it's uploading all the data packets twice over.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

You know what my boring computer problem is? That the Sims 2 isn't coming out on Mac!!!!!

― Homosexual II (Homosexual II), Monday, 30 August 2004 20:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

What kind of connection to the Internet do you have? Are you using a modem or a router?

― bert (bert), Monday, 30 August 2004 21:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

You know what my boring computer problem is? That the Sims 2 isn't coming out on Mac!!!!!

Incorrect. It IS coming out for the Mac.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 30 August 2004 22:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

To answer Bert-I am using an external cable modem.

I have a new one now, an oldie but goodie - why do I only get, at most, 2.5 hours of battery time from my powerbook battery when it is fully charged?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 2 September 2004 00:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

Reduce the number of extensions and control panels that load by using an extension manager program.

What does this mean?

― adam. (nordicskilla), Thursday, 2 September 2004 01:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

Argh.

Bluetooth on new superduper powerbook 15" (running panther) no longer works - says no bluetooth hardware attached, which is odd, cos it was built in.

Any ideas?

― Dave B (daveb), Friday, 3 September 2004 14:00 (8 years ago) Permalink

Well, here's a boring question for you, and it's work-related, so that's bonus boringness. I have to send an email to about 3500 people from my Microsoft Outlook work account. However, I was dumb enough to point out that maybe the reason we were getting so many undelivered returned emails last time we did that was that we were sending them out in batches of like 400 emails or something. So now, I have to send them out in batches of no more than 20 email addresses at a time. This, of course, means that I will be sending 175 seperate emails, copying the same message in to each one. Is there an easier way to do this, preferably in Microsoft Outlook?
Note: I'm not spamming people, these are all people who have registered on our website for more information.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:43 (8 years ago) Permalink

That doesn't sound like a reason why you'd be getting undelievered, returned e-mails, though. A list of 3500 e-mails is going to have a bunch of people who are no longer at that e-mail -- I don't know what the typical rate is, but I wouldn't be surprised if you got 70 back that didn't work (1 in 50). The trick is going through the returned e-mails, figuring out if they didn't go through because of full mailboxes or because of nonexistant mailboxes (typos, closed work accounts, etc.) and deleting those (or marking those "do not send") in your list.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:50 (8 years ago) Permalink

yeah, sending them out in batches shouldn't make a difference

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

You don't think a spam filter will take out emails that were sent to like 300 addresses at a time?

These email addresses were all taken from people who registered in the past two months, so hopefully they should be pretty up-to-date. There might be some fake ones in there though.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

i think no more than any mass email

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

(i'm not sure if spam filters even "bounce" emails, don't they just file them away separately or delete them?)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:55 (8 years ago) Permalink

But where is the line where it becomes a "mass email"? 10 addresses? 20? 50? 100?

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

I have a new one now, an oldie but goodie - why do I only get, at most, 2.5 hours of battery time from my powerbook battery when it is fully charged?

Batteries become less effective over time. Li Ion and Li Polymer are generally about 50% less effective after 2 years and pretty much dead after three.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 14:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

n/a, you should phone your ISP and ask em. These sort of policies vary from one ISP to an other. Maybe they sell a "bulk email service" or can assist you with their "web mail" or another mail software that might be better than outlook to do this job.

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:03 (8 years ago) Permalink

Well I emailed our tech guy hoping that they can set up an autoreply email to anyone who registers, but he's pretty useless.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

Nick, you should be "bcc"-ing the messages, so all your members (or whatever) don't get all the other members' e-mail addresses. If it's bcc'd, there's no way for the other computers to know that you're sending it out to 3500 people, because that information is stripped before it gets to the other computer (or at least, it better be).

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:19 (8 years ago) Permalink

Oh, OK, I have been bcc'ing it, so that's interesting. Hmmm. So theoretically I shouldn't have any problem with spam filters then.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

probably just defunct addresses then!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 15:23 (8 years ago) Permalink

when I try to access my maxtor portable drive I got a message asking me to format it as if it was new but there was around 180 gig of data in it.

I remember there was some files in it that looked corrupted after I used it with a windows me so I think that was it.

I think I'll ask a data recovery guy to look at it this afternoon. Even if they can't do anything it turns out I'm pretty zen about it all.
It would be sweet if I could spare myself that (between 200 and 500$)expense , anyone got a tip by any chance, diagnostic tool or ?

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 16:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

Thanks for everyone's help, BTW. I told my boss that some "friends" had said that the number of people I was sending the email to shouldn't cause the returned emails if I'm BCC'ing the names, and she had me email our useless tech guy and ask him, so hopefully he'll concur and I can go back to sending them to 300 people at a time.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 17:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

(i'm not sure if spam filters even "bounce" emails, don't they just file them away separately or delete them?)

Some do bounce them at the server - it depends how they're configured. Some servers will bounce mail that has nothing in the To: field, because of spammers using the BCC: field to send an email to hundreds of addresses at once (as described above).

At my last job, we had a (legit) mailing list with a couple of thousand addresses on it, and would receive a couple of hundred bounces on each run, from out-of-date addresses, full mailboxes, and so on. To send, though, we used a simple Perl script I wrote to generate a separate email for each recipient and pause a few seconds between each one; it avoided overloading our mailserver.

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 20:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

Plus if you're clever like Caitlin, you can have people's names in the database and you can send out e-mails that say "Dear Nick" in them. And you can use the "to:" field, thus avoiding the "bcc blockers". It's dreamy!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 7 September 2004 21:08 (8 years ago) Permalink

Sebastien, Diskwarrior or drive 10 may well be your friend here. Diskwarrior has saved my main disk on more than one occasion.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 09:55 (8 years ago) Permalink

I owe a big "THANK YOU" to everyone who replied to my question. I did a test this morning. I sent an email to 100 recipients. I got 7 undelivered returns. So I resent the email to each of those 7 people individually, and they bounced back again, proving that the problem is with the addresses, not the way I'm sending them. I took this to my boss, and now I can send the emails in large batches again, saving me huge loads of time, which I can spend on ILX. EVERYONE WINS, HOORAH!

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 18:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

did your boss give you a big kiss on the forehead?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 19:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

No, she didn't really give a shit.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 19:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

at least she didn't give a shit on your forehead!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 8 September 2004 19:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

Why is my (Windows) computer showing some apostrophes/single quotes as blocks? For instance this - ’ - appears as a speckled square, and this - ”- as a black square. Does everyone else see this in this post at least? Meanwhile, the apostrophe in slocki's post immediately above is fine.


― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Thursday, 9 September 2004 19:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay, the very writing of the problem cleared my mind, and IE was set to the wrong language as seemed immediately obvious.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Thursday, 9 September 2004 19:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

I have an important question.

I am filling in a LOT of application forms at the moment (just under 60) - a great majority of them come in .pdf form. of course this means that I have to print these off and fill them in by hand instead of my usual cut & paste technique. is there any way that I can 'edit' .pdf files i.e. so I can fill these forms in electronically?

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 16:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

you will save at least a small part of my life.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 16:41 (8 years ago) Permalink

You could scrounge up a copy of Acrobat, maybe.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 11 September 2004 16:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, you need the full (paid for) Acrobat to do this, not the (free) reader.

― Alba (Alba), Saturday, 11 September 2004 16:52 (8 years ago) Permalink

A quick Google search lists some programs that claim to be able to edit pdf files. Another possibility would be to find a program that can convert pdf's to another format, like a Word document and do your editing through that.

― Stan Fields (Stan Fields), Saturday, 11 September 2004 17:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

I need a hoonja doonja.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:05 (8 years ago) Permalink

Okay, at the beginning of this week my Firefox browser just stopped working. Seriously. It will open a window, but not connect to any site. It's not even trying, I'll put in a url or a bookmark and NOTHING HAPPENS. WTF?

― Jordan (Jordan), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:12 (8 years ago) Permalink

: /

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

All that said, PDF files are kind of annoying to deal with in the way that you're hoping to. It might be easier to just print them out like you've been doing.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

dude 60!!! hand-written! examples of teamwork and overcoming adversity! : / !!!

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:39 (8 years ago) Permalink

'dude 60' should be someone's new name.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

OK, just type them out in word and cut and paste using scissors and glue!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

You could get a stamp made.

I have no idea why you are filling out 60 application forms. That seems like a poor strategy to me. Concentrate on maybe a dozen that you really want, and are best suited to. But that do I know?

― Alba (Alba), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

I am only saying 60 to sound cool.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

it'll end up being around 20.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

Despite his whining, cozen really really likes filling out forms.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

it's the thing I'm good at.

― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:47 (8 years ago) Permalink

some of these might allow you to do what you need. the pdf-to-doc converters are pretty much all shareware, but might work for a couple days or something.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

The formatting is likely to go all screwy and the employers will go humph.

― Alba (Alba), Saturday, 11 September 2004 18:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

I have a question.

I have a Photoshop file I'm making on this printerless computer. Some of the layers use the type tool. If I take it to print on another Photoshop-equipped computer that doesn't have the font I have used installed, will it still be OK?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:30 (8 years ago) Permalink

Also, why is it that in Photohop, if I zoom in on the text, it looks all... fuzzy (don't know the technical name for this), rather than neat and vectory, like if I do it in Word or QuarkXpress? I mean, it's still editable text - I haven't converted it to being a pixellated layer or whatever. Is it going to print fuzzy too?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

Check yr text antialias/aliasing settings.

― why do old people and old users of ILX such bastardos (deangulberry), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

Yeah - there's an icon for that that I'd toggled between. If I turn anti-aliasing off then it just looks spidery and even worse.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 16 September 2004 19:15 (8 years ago) Permalink

if you flatten the image it will print fine.
otherwise the other verison of photoshop wil have to use another font if it does not have yours. this can mess things up. if you don't want to flatten it you could also bring your font with you and install it on the other machine. or simply render the type layer (you won't be able to edit the copy after that tho).

― dysøn (dyson), Thursday, 16 September 2004 19:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

Thanks - it was all OK.

I didn't flatten it and it was OK - it just came up with a message saying that the text on that layer wouldn't be editable, as the font wasn't installed. I ended up switching it to another font on that machine anyway, because the of the second problem, which turned out to be that because I had started from an image that I'd got off the web, with low resolution - this low-res of course affected everything else that I added to it. D'oh!

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 16 September 2004 21:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

something totally insane just happened to my powerbook!

i set it to dial on internet connect and left it for a second... when i came back the screen was all black and full of scrolling text, talking about some sort of "switchback error"! i restarted and things seem fine but WTF?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 20 September 2004 16:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

kernel panic maybe?

― Free the Bee (ex machina), Monday, 20 September 2004 16:15 (8 years ago) Permalink

My kernel panics have been more low-key affairs; just a shaded screen with some code on it. No scrolling or black screens. They happened when I plugged in a digital camera via a USB port to the computer. I guess os x didn't know what it was and crashed...

― 57 7th (calstars), Monday, 20 September 2004 16:50 (8 years ago) Permalink

i think it was a kernel panic!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 20 September 2004 23:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

OK, apparently I have the bloodhound exploit.6 virus on my home pc. Norton doesn't recognize it and cannot delete or quarantine it. Im trying to run panda softwares pandascan to check for it but it won't run. It tells me active x is not working or installing. How the fuck do i get active x to work?

― Velveteen Bingo (Chris V), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

Have you found the key under the sword in the dungeon yet?

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 11:55 (8 years ago) Permalink

One way to get around font issues in Photoshop is to select Layer | Type | Convert To Shape - this will turn the text into vector graphics. You still won't be able to edit it - BUT, you will be able to resize the image keeping the text sharp.

Another workaround is to save the file as a PDF and print from the other machine using Acrobat Reader or similar program. DO NOT open the file in Photoshop or you will be forced to rasterise it (Making the text a bitmap graphic rather than a vector).

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Tuesday, 21 September 2004 12:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
I thought I had posted this somewhere, but I guess not. I have a cheap HP desktop printer, with a color cartridge and a black ink cartridge. The color cartridge is out of everything but red, so if I try to print a picture or whatever, it just comes out in shades of red. This isn't a problem, since I mainly just print out stuff for my own use. HOWEVER, I also need to print out my resume. My resume was created using the Microsoft Word resume wizard, and it has lines under the various categories (education, experience, etc.). This lines print out as pink for some reason, even though the rest of the text is in black. If I change my print options to grayscale, it's the same thing, pink lines on my resume. I can't just take out the color cartridge because the printer doesn't like not having a cartridge in there and won't work without it. And I can't figure out how to take the lines off of my resume: they're not underlines, they don't seem to be images, I don't know what they are. Ideas on how to either a) get the lines to print in black ink instead of pink, or b) erase the lines from my resume?

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:23 (8 years ago) Permalink

Maybe copy it and paste it into Notepad or whatever plain ASCII program you have, then back into Word, then reformat without the lines?

― Smokin' funk by the boxes (kenan), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

You could also try saving it in RTF format or maybe an earlier Word format and reopening it that way. If you're lucky you might be able to lose the pink lines without losing all of the other formatting.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

But the lines aren't pink or even in color on the screen, so I'm not sure why they're even printing out pink?

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

Most likely whatever color they are on the screen has some red in it, but since all the other colors are out, only the pink is showing up.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

Pink can be nice.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:57 (8 years ago) Permalink

But then why do the lines look black on the screen? And why doesn't grayscale print mode work either? ARGH!

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 11 October 2004 20:05 (8 years ago) Permalink

They could be a very dark brown perhaps? I don't know why the grayscale option doesn't work. Sometimes there's an option that says Use Black Ink only or something, try looking at all the Printer properties tabs.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 11 October 2004 20:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

Does anyone have any ideas for: rescuing an NTFS disk partition that's so corrupt that most tools barely recognise it as an NTFS partition any more?

― caitlin (caitlin), Monday, 11 October 2004 20:26 (8 years ago) Permalink

If you haven't tried it already http://www.download.com/GetDataBack-Data-Recovery/3000-2094-10294180.html sounds like its good. Good luck!

― Stan Fields (Stan Fields), Monday, 11 October 2004 22:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
Does anyone know how to make Excel count in video timecode? I want to add up a whole load of numbers formatted

hh:mm:ss:ff

to get something to the nearest hour

for those that don't know ff is frames and for PAL there are 25 frames per second.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 28 October 2004 11:31 (8 years ago) Permalink

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/timecode_spreadsheet.html

best i can find

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 28 October 2004 11:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

I found that already, it doesn't help unfortunately.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 28 October 2004 11:53 (8 years ago) Permalink

Sorry it doesnt look possible without VBA coding, if i had time i'd try and knock something up.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 28 October 2004 11:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

Maybe there's some way using that 25 is a factor of 100 and doing a calculation on 100's of seconds

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 28 October 2004 12:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

I'm actually really not bother about the frames bit. It parsing hh:mm:ss:ff, that's the problem.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 28 October 2004 13:34 (8 years ago) Permalink

So I finally bought an external hard drive to house all my mp3s. Set it up last night, and after a few hours, my entire collection was copied to the new drive. Then I deleted the originals to free up space on my computer.

The problem now is that iTunes doesn't know what happened to the mp3s. If I try to play something, it says "The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" If I click yes, I can show it that's on the new hard drive. And then it'll play.

But is there a way to avoid doing this for every individual song on my computer?

― jaymc (jaymc), Sunday, 31 October 2004 18:32 (8 years ago) Permalink

Never mind -- figured it out!!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 1 November 2004 01:46 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
Yesterday, out of the blue, my laptop started making a clicking/whirring noise from the vicinity of my hard drive. It sounded like the computer equivalent of a car that wouldn't start (except my computer was already on at the time). After a few minutes of this, the Blue Screen of Death came up, so I restarted the computer and it started giving me "hard drive not located" errors, so of course Windows wouldn't start. After several repeat attempts, it did restart properly, so I rebooted and ran a full diagnostics test, which didn't find any errors at all. After four hours of normal operation, the clicking came back and the computer died again -- "hard drive not located".

I got the idea that perhaps something had overheated, so I turned the computer off for forty minutes, and restarted it again. Since then, everything's worked fine, although I haven't been doing any kind of serious work with my computer.

Dell is sending me a new hard drive (I'm under warranty) ... so it'll be a pain in the ass to reinstall everything, but whatever. Now, assuming that the overheating is the problem, will it be solved with a new hard drive? What's stopping the next hard drive from overheating too? I removed the hard drive and examined it -- nothing appeared scratched or damaged at all. Is the real problem something else?

Your opinions would be appreciated!

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 3 December 2004 03:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

Do you know what brand the drive is?

― Leeeter van den Hoogenband (Leee), Friday, 3 December 2004 03:33 (8 years ago) Permalink

my purchase order says it's a "Ultra ATA 40 GB"

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 3 December 2004 03:54 (8 years ago) Permalink

it sounds like your cooling fan is broken.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:07 (8 years ago) Permalink

Except that the fan was tested during the diagnostic check (along with everything else) and it passed.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:09 (8 years ago) Permalink

are you going to trust a broken hard drive? ; )

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:11 (8 years ago) Permalink

Exactly -- I don't trust it now. But I do want to be sure that the hard drive is the full extent of the problem, and not the fan or something else. I've only had the computer for nine months and I have had virtually no problems with it. It seems strange to me that the hard drive would suddenly implode.

Mechanical parts (such as fans or motors) -- those are the sorts of things which break down at a moment's notice.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:15 (8 years ago) Permalink

Hard drives are moving parts, and more likely to break IMO than a fan. It sounds to me like something doesn't work right above a certain temperature, but that doesn't mean the temperature itself is the problem. It may start to fail at lower temperatures as it wears down more.

When you replace it try to clean out any dust from vents, etc. (Or from anywhere.)

― wetmink (wetmink), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
ok so my dad gave me this 256mb usb key & i deleted everything on it but os x seems to think that there's only ~70mb available! what's up with that

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:04 (8 years ago) Permalink

reformat it then

― svend (svend), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:16 (8 years ago) Permalink

in disk utility?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

I wish my dad gave me stuff like that!

― .adam (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:18 (8 years ago) Permalink

he got a new one and i was hinting around!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:20 (8 years ago) Permalink

Does anyone know of a good encryption system (for email and attachments) that works across windows and mac os x and integrates nicely with common mail tools?

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:36 (8 years ago) Permalink

no

― LSD, called the aristocrat (ex machina), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

Actually, there should be plenty of gpg front ends

like:

http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/English.lproj/GPGMail.html

― LSD, called the aristocrat (ex machina), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:40 (8 years ago) Permalink

I wish my dad gave me stuff like that!

yes, so much nicer than the routine beatings fathers usually hand out

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 17:44 (8 years ago) Permalink

is this the newset borin computer questions thread?

my housemate has told me about this after her mum read bout it in the paper, but she doesnt know anythiong about computers

is it a scam? how could it work?

― ambrose (ambrose), Sunday, 16 January 2005 15:19 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
I've been having trouble with my b!tt0rr3nt client, Azureus (and s1sk too, I bet) with closed ports, I'm always NATed. Since I'm on a school network, I can't really figure out what ports to forward to. (However, ports were openable w/ Azureus either before I upgraded to the new version of that or of Java Runtime Environment 1.5.) Yet, I notice that I'm able to set up most connections with other programs like mIRC. My question: can/should I check what ports mIRC is using and put it into Azureus?

― Leeeter van den Hoogenband (Leee), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 20:01 (8 years ago) Permalink

I just fitted a wireless network card to the pci slot in my computer. Ever since, it has been acting up and now it isn't really working at all.

Soon after I fitted the card and got everything working so that I was on the internet the computer turned itself off - no warnings, just 'clunk' and it was off. Up on restarting it, it got stuck in a loop of getting to the point where the blue XP 'welcome' screen appears and then restarting again and again and again from the same point. after a while it started up fine and said it had recorvered from a serious error. Everything worked noramlly until I shut it down. when I started it up again, it got stuck in the same loop.

This happened a few times until last night when it restarted, got through all the dos stuff and now keeps hanging prior to the Windows XP screen (with the orange blobs scrolling left to right to make it look like it is loading).

I'm guessing this is pretty serious but is there anything I can do to sort this out other than taking it in to be repaired?

― hmmm (hmmm), Wednesday, 2 March 2005 09:14 (8 years ago) Permalink

Have you removed the card and tried booting up without it? It could be a seriously fucked wireless card?

Have you tried booting into saafe mode?

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 2 March 2005 09:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

This is a question about Iptables rules for passive FTP access

How do I allow established FTP connections the ports needed for passive FTP access without allowing everyone access to those ports?

Or am I going about this the wrong way?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 3 March 2005 12:38 (8 years ago) Permalink

I tried taking the card out last night to no avail.

I haven't tried the safe mode option. Assuming I can get it to start in safe mode, what should I be doing to make it better?

― hmmm (hmmm), Thursday, 3 March 2005 14:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

If you can go back to a restore point that would be good. Failing that removing the Wifi drivers would be a good point or failing that reinstalling XP from scratch.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 3 March 2005 14:58 (8 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
Computer WTF for this week...

CD Burners. I have an internal burner and an external burner. Neither is working.. But it seems to be Windows Xp that's the problem (surprise surprise.)

Here're the symptoms:
-Internal writer - when looking in Explorer (file browser) at the supposedly blank media in the drive, it shows a folder from a CD I burned about 4 months ago.

-When I put a CDR in the external burner, Explorer shows the contents of the last CD that was in the drive.

So I can't write a Cd because Windows (via Nero or Burn at Once) thinks the CD in the drive is not blank. But I keep putting new CDRs in, and they all seem to have the contents of the last successful read. (If I put a different audio CD in the drive, then Explorer shows its contents for every blank CDR I put in.)

I have tried rebooting, reinstalling the drives, restore points, ....

Any other ideas why it's doing this and/or how to fix it?

― dave225 (Dave225), Monday, 18 April 2005 00:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

Did you try hitting update driver in device manager. Sometimes that can sort out a wrinkle.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 18 April 2005 04:51 (8 years ago) Permalink

fucking ridiculous problem. Ok, I've downloaded some files to my external drive w/ slsk. but navigating to the directory: they aren't there. refresh. not there. go back to slsk. select my "finished" file, choose "open file." it opens up in winamp. file info: I can see the path to the file, it's right there: f:\unsorted\albumname\path_to_file.mp3. the track is playing. It IS there! go back to explorer to find it: nope, nothing there! refresh a hundred times. Not there. Search entire computer. Not there.

Copy that path into the location bar of Internet Explorer (which is just another way of dealing with windows explorer), truncate the file name so it's just the path: f:\unsorted\albumname\ There are all the files. go up a directory: can't find the directory albumname.

WHAT THE FUCK????

try searching for "windows xp files hidden not showing up" and you get the standard bullshit about viewing hidden system files which isn't what I'm trying to do.

I'm worried this might be a drive problem. It also doesn't seem to be consistent. For instance, it happened to some stuff I downloaded two days ago, but not yesterday, but it happened today. No rhyme or reason.

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 29 April 2005 00:56 (8 years ago) Permalink

Run a scandisk on the drive.

Is it formatted NTFS or FAT32?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Friday, 29 April 2005 07:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

ntfs

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 29 April 2005 12:06 (8 years ago) Permalink

I've got one.

I'm at my mom's house and her computer runs S L O W. It's windows 98, and she has never run the defragging program as far as I can tell, nor done a system cleanup. So I decided to defragment it, left it defragmenting overnight, and it is still only partway done. It will work on it for a short while, then a message comes up that says "new drive information: restarting" or something similar, and it has to go through the whole reading-the-driver thing again, working through already-defragged areas, then each time only defragging a few more lines before starting the process over. I've got it paused right now.

Things I have done to try to make it go faster and not restart:
stopped norton utilities from running in the background
shut off the screen saver
shut off the monitor's (and anything else's) idle auto-shut-off
deleted cookies and any spyware I found (i.e. ran the disk cleanup thing)
I even unplugged the phone cord (we are on dialup) even though I know that should do nothing.

Anyway, I'm an idiot about these things, and if anything else is running in the background, and updating the files every few minutes to cause this restarting, I don't know how to find it. And I don't want the total defragging to take, like, DAYS at this rate. So, help please?

― sgs (sgs), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:29 (8 years ago) Permalink

boot into dos

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

then what

― sgs (sgs), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

or fuck it... hit f8 when starting up and try safemode...?

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

I used to have a w98 computer and it never defragged properly - did exactly the same as you describe. Never did work it out. I know that's no use to you but it might be a regular bug.

― beanz (beanz), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:58 (8 years ago) Permalink

kyle, this is just a shot in the dark but I've noticed this happening from time to time, and it wasn't what I thought it was.

If you have tons of directories/files, go to the directory you're losing the files/directories in, choose the "view" option from the menu bar on top of the window, go to "arrange icons by..." and then choose "name". I'm willing to bet if the directory is there, it's just not in the right alphabetical location, or is maybe off to the side of the window or something. It seems like a stupid answer to the question, but I've been burned by this multiple times.

As for the Win98 defragging issue, beanz OTM: the Win98 defragger fucking sucks, because if anything is running in the background at all, it messes with the defrag. Give up before you tear your hair out.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Friday, 29 April 2005 15:31 (8 years ago) Permalink

sean, no, I've done all that, they just aren't there. or they are there, they just aren't showing up. I started running checkdisk on it this morning and it found a lot of weird "missing" files; it's a 200GB drive though so it was going to take a while, so I just left it running and came to work. maybe when I get home I'll have some idea what the hell was up with it.

― kyle (akmonday), Friday, 29 April 2005 15:59 (8 years ago) Permalink

your computer has a good sense of humor!

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:14 (8 years ago) Permalink

Oh, oh, wait, 200GB drive? How is it connected to your system? And is it connected as a single partition, or is it set up in smaller partitions?

If you're connecting it to your system with an IDE cable straight to the motherboard, you may be running into an issue with the system not seeing all of the files, if you've gone over about 137 gigabytes...sometimes the controller on the motherboard isn't set up for drives over that size. After that amount of data, performance might get flaky. (If the drive is pre-formatted before you put it into the system, Windows will probably report 200GB but may not know what to do with the last 63 or so gigs, reliably, when it's writing to the drive.)

If it's a serial ATA drive or an external drive, this doesn't apply.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

(I should note that many new systems have mobo connectors that can handle the larger drives. I'm just noting this, if you added the drive yourself to an older system.)

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Friday, 29 April 2005 16:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

thanks for the words of wisdom y'all. I don't mind letting it run and take its sweet time, but if my mom bugs me about it again I may tear my hair out, at which point I'll give up.

― sgs (sgs), Friday, 29 April 2005 17:25 (8 years ago) Permalink

sgs: you have to make sure that absolutely *nothing* else is running at the same time as defragmentation. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to get a list of running tasks and shut down as much as you can without killing the system entirely.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 29 April 2005 18:45 (8 years ago) Permalink

(if it automatically starts things like, say, Find Fast at startup, that will wreck your chances of defragmenting successfully. Check the Startup folder on the Start menu to see some of the things that are being started automatically and aren't necessarily visible on screen)

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 29 April 2005 18:48 (8 years ago) Permalink

now,

I have a SMART failure thing detection thing on my hard disc, after the BIOS screen, before windows begins to start up.

I was backing-up everything to reformat the drive and reinstall windows, anyway. I did so, hoping the detection thing would just go away but it has not.

is a failure inevitable? is there no way to fix/stop it? should I just replace the disc straight away? the only reason I have not already got a new disc is that it is a laptop and a new 80Gb drive will be almost £100.

thanks.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 1 May 2005 10:17 (8 years ago) Permalink

Could be a year could be tommorow, get Everest Home

http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?lang=en

That will give you SMART information, is your laptop still in warranty?

but 1st off make sure any irreplacable docs are backed up ASAP.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 1 May 2005 10:24 (8 years ago) Permalink

installed that, it says--

05 / Reallocated Sector Count / 50 / 1 / 1 / 1022 / Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is being predicted

any idea what this means?


I have everything backed-up to an external disc and, also, to DVDs.

it is just under a year into its two year warranty.

problem is...I have a ton of work, at the moment and up until june, and cannot risk sudden problems or waiting for "repairs". I wish I could just buy a new disc and they would compensate me.

thank you.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 1 May 2005 10:35 (8 years ago) Permalink

Heavens! reallocated sectors are critical they're the modern equivalent of "bad blocks" if this means anything to you, you should replace the disk, as soon as possible.

Depending on your warranty type they will probably want the whole laptop back, and if you replace the disk yourself you could invalidate your current warranty in someway (breaking a sticker or something)

Give them a call and ask them what the warranty procedure involves for a knackered HDD.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 1 May 2005 10:41 (8 years ago) Permalink

: (

I have had the warning for about four or five days, now, but it is still running fine, at the moment.

I had hoped there would be a way to just format and completely and reset any probs.

oh, well!

thanks, again.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 1 May 2005 11:27 (8 years ago) Permalink

If the bad blocks are increasing eventually the disk will become unusable.

It's a good idea to get it sorted whilst the laptop is in the warranty period.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 1 May 2005 12:22 (8 years ago) Permalink

yeah...

I cannot afford to send it away, for repairs, though.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 1 May 2005 12:37 (8 years ago) Permalink

How big is the current disk? How much space is used?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 1 May 2005 13:42 (8 years ago) Permalink

I have an 80Gb drive, in my laptop.

I have, just recently, formatted and reinstalled windows--the only space used is by windows and a couple of applications and drivers--I have no files on it, now.

so, say, less than 3Gb used.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 1 May 2005 14:13 (8 years ago) Permalink

4 weeks pass...
Earlier this morning, I scanned a document and converted it into a .doc file on a Mac, but now that I'm looking at it on my PC, there are these empty box characters peppered throughout the document now. In fact, every line after the first word, instead of a space separating the first two words, there's this box. And I've checked all the Word entities for special characters (like ^p and ^l), and this box is none of them. How can I get rid of these things automatically, without manually going through each one?

― Leeeee (Leee), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

And I can't copy/paste this box to do a replace all.

― Leeeee (Leee), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

can you save it as plain text, then re-open it? bit drastic, but should work ...

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ah yes, thanks. I actually saved it as html so that most of the formatting was retained. Ta for the idea!

― Leeeee (Leee), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:56 (7 years ago) Permalink

I posted a problem I had on another thread but it's a bit different now. I'd installed the master drive from my old PC by mistake, NOW I have the correct drive added as a slave to the pre-installed master but a drive letter has not been assigned to this second HD in Windows. I am using GetDataBack to try and recover the data from the drive, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas why Windows couldn't assign a drive letter despite the Device Manager saying the drive was working fine.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 23:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

is it partitioned and formatted?

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 00:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

You're on XP, right? Try opening Disk Manager to see if that can recognise it at all; and, if it can, to assign a drive letter to it.

(go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management - Disk Manager is in the tree under the Storage node)

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 05:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

It's not partitioned (afaik) or formatted. I'll try your suggestion tonight thanks Caitlin.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 08:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

It must be both partitioned (even if it only has a single partition) and formatted if it already has data on it. Whatever you try, do *not* repartition or reformat, because this will delete all your data.

(unless you use a non-destructive partitioning program like Partition Magic, of course)

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

I tried UI Tweak but it didn't pick up on the second drive either. As it stands, my DVD ROM is D and the external Maxtor HD I have is E. So I'm hoping I can assign G to the slave drive and then USB devices (Archos jukebox) after that.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does it show up in disk management?

Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management

If it does, you should be able to assign a drive letter to it here. I don't follow why you would need to use a special program to recover data from the disk... It should still be there.

― KeefW (kmw), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

This is assuming some form of NT of course...

― KeefW (kmw), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm looking for a quick and easy way of doing the following in the terminal window:

I need to compare two folders and delete from the first folder everything that also exists in the second folder. I can't find a flag in rsync for doing this it's not really what it's for. Any ideas anyone?

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

when you say 'also exists' do you mean 'is the same as' or 'has the same name as'?

cd to second folder
find . -printf "rm -i /firstfolder/%P\n"

pipe this to a file then run the file (can do this in one go but i always check the output just in case). will delete everything in first folder that has the same name as that in the second folder

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

might wann stick a -type f in there as well or it'll try and delete directories too (and fail)

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

ls folder1 > f1
ls folder2 > f2
comm -1 -2 f1 f2

will give you a list of common(ly named) files

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:56 (7 years ago) Permalink

perfect, thanks

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 09:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

Steve, the only thought that comes to mind is that the second disk you've just added as a slave isn't in the right format. Could you confirm what operating system you had on it and what operating system you're currently using?

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 12:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

another (slight) possibility is that the other ide locations (ie primary slave, secondary slave) aren't set to 'auto' in the bios but are disabled for some reason.

in any case, i would recommend getting into the bios settings at bootup and see if the computer sees the drive on that level, before even getting into windows

also are the jumpers on the drives set correctly for their positions on the ide channels? (is the slave drive set to slave or auto)

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 14:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

another quick question. Using rsync is it possible to have rsync synchronise files across a series of directories into one directory without recreating the directory structure in the recipient directory.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think you'd have to build a list of directories using find then call rsync once for each source directory.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

OK. How do I turn a list of commands into a shell script? this is something I'm going to need to do regularly is there a good website on this sort of thing?

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

Well, the straightforward way is to:

1) write the list of commands in a file
2) put this at the top:


#!/bin/bash

or, more generically, "#!" followed by the path to the shell you want to use.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

don't know anything about rsync that man rsync wouldn't tell you. but couldn't you run rsync for each of the source directories with the same destination directory? (do you really want to do this? you're effectively throwing location information away)

(-d stops rsync recursing)

xpost

> How do I turn a list of commands into a shell script?

you don't need to, really. just

sh file_full_of_commands

btw chmod +x file_full_of_commands makes it executable

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:34 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, yes, I forgot you have to add executable permission to the file

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

find root_directory -type d -exec rsync_command_here \;

does the copying with no intermediate file.
the {} token in rsync command will expand to the found directory.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm consolidating a load of stuff by file name which is in a load of different directories and volumes into 4 new directories on a single volume. eg everything begining with 'a' in directories 'x,y,z' now need to be in directory 'A'

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't follow why you would need to use a special program to recover data from the disk...

I lost the data by converting the disk from Dynamic to Basic - I had it all backed up though so no problem. Have assigned a letter to it and will be using it purely for sharing media. Thanks to Caitlin and Keef for the help here.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

so, still no ideas on why I can't get "add remove programs" to populate? I'm wondering if it has something to do with the not quite legal version of f0t0sh0p i installed

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does anyone know how to make a symlink invisible to the Finder is OS X.

― DAEREST V1CE MAGAZINE!!!!! (ex machina), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does the Finder support the standard way of creating hidden files on Unix: start the filename with a dot?

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 06:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

symlinks are visible to the finder and yes, dot prefixes do hide files in OS X, my home dir would be a nightmare if it didn't.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 07:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

My generic optical mouse (or any othe mouse for that matter) ain't working. The cursor is 'frozen' in the centre of the screen, even when I restart it is frozen at the login screen. Using Win XP.

Any ideas?

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 June 2005 08:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

Keyboard is working ok, btw.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 June 2005 08:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

Is it USB?

Unplug the mouse, login and plug it in again.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Monday, 20 June 2005 09:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

Is it USB?

No PS/2, tried unplugging it but Cursor remains frozen in middle of screen.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 June 2005 11:18 (7 years ago) Permalink

ok I got my new hard drive (160GB lacie porsche) (which, incidentally, snores like a tractor). I was just wondering - I copied the music from my itunes music library over to the first partition and made that directory my itunes music library but now when I open itunes all the songs have exclamations to the left of them, which means they're 'missing', but when I click on them it's fine, they're there and they play. thing is it's annoying because I can't skip between the tracks, using the arrow keys, like what I usually do.

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 20:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

that hard drive was the bane of my existence. nice case design (visually), but I had so many problems with it; randomly unmounting, crappy suppport, their driver update software didn't work/was out of date. I got rid of it and got a maxtor instead.

I have also had to relearn the harsh lesson that the solution to almost all windows problems is to reinstall the OS.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

oh yeah now you tell me!

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm on a mac, maybe it'll be a bit more robust on here.

can I chain my ipod through the back of the lacie via the second firewire port?

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

I re-installed XP today after my broadband died, and HEY PRESTO! it's all fine now. I'm sure that Gates in his infinite wisdom didn't intedn us to sit infront of a blue screen with a yellow bar on it for hours while the computer tries to do something it shouldn't need to do.

― Come Back Johnny B (Johnney B), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

c/n, what I would have done if I were you would be to have changed the default folder where I stored music in iTunes to a new folder on my new H/D (under 'options' or something - I don't have iTunes in front of me now) and then choose 'consolidate library' and have iTunes transfer the files for me, hopefully avoiding exlamation marks.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:12 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, that's what I did with my daughter's iTunes library when we got her the Mini.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

: /

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

You can't change the iPod on the LaCie: the firewire port is the wrong type, as I found out :(

As for the exclamation marks, what you need to do is "touch" all the songs in the library so that iTunes checks them out. There's an applescript to do it, but I can't find it from work. I'm sure I've got it at home, so give me a yell if you need it. What might also work is "consolidate library" from the Advanced menu, even though it has nothing to actually move.

If all that fails, select all the songs in the library (Apple-A) then get info (Apple-I). Put "Stet is topp" or something in the comment box, and click OK. Then wait. And wait. It'll go through each track in the lib, and should hopefully sort it out.

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

s/change/chain

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

The past two days my laptop has been making the same clicking/munching noises that barry describes up above on dec. 4th. It isn't under warranty (it's a 5-year-old Dell), so far I've been able to reboot it and it will function for a short while before the clicking begins, but now it seems as though hard drive failure is imminent. I'm wondering what was the result of barry's reinstallation? THe fan on mine has also never seemed to work properly, and the computer developed so many problems within about 9 months of owning it that I have sort of been expecting it to fail for a long time, but wonder now if there's anything I can do to postpone the failure a little longer. I have a lot of work on it, and can't afford to get a new one (or to use Mark's like I'm doing today).

― sgs (sgs), Thursday, 30 June 2005 08:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

It does sound rather like the hard disk is about to fail. Is there any way you can get your data off the laptop so that you have a second copy?

(do yours or Mark's computer have networking? If all else fails, you can connect two computers together using a "null modem" cable and make a copy of your files that way. A null modem cable plugs into the serial port of each computer and should only get a few quid; but check what connectors your computers have before you get one, because serial port connectors can be either 9-pin or 25-pin.)

― Tech Support Droid (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 June 2005 08:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think we have networking capability--at least, we can network our printers and are hooked up via the same broadband connection--although this is probably something different than what you mean. I'll investigate the null modem cable option. In the meantime I'm not turning mine on again. It seems to start clicking when asking it to do something broadband-related, although really that's probably just coincidence.

I've got most of the important stuff (eg latest thesis draft) backed up via emailed copies, although at this point I know there are misc. documents still on there that I refer to maybe once a month and haven't backed up, also lots of photos, and I should really transfer everything if possible. Fingers crossed it will turn on again long enough to transfer everything. It will pain me to lose photoshop though. (The CD for it is somewhere in storage in the US.)

― sgs (sgs), Thursday, 30 June 2005 09:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

My Atari 1040ste caught fire last night. I'm not sure if anyone can help out w/this, really.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 30 June 2005 09:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

Null modems are SLOOOW you won't want to backup alot of data through it, if you can share printers you should be able to share files.

Follow the guide from microsoft and get your files over ASAP and then stop creating new files on your laptop.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304040

The hardisk will die at some point in the future, so you will need to buy and fit/have fitted a replacement hdd, if I was doing this I would buy a new disk now and using adapters on a standard PC ghost (make an exact copy, using Norton Ghost) your old drive onto the new one while it was still working this would be seamless, you may find a computer shop willing to do this for you. If not you'll need to resinstall Windows and all your applications onto your new HDD.

Pash, pour water on it.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 30 June 2005 09:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

I already did. I'm typing this from hospital.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 30 June 2005 09:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

I can't afford a new hdd unfortunately--this has happened at a time where I have literally no money. I may not be able to try to transfer the files to Mark's computer until this weekend, or if I'm feeling brave I'll try it tonight on my own, though I'm notoriously inept with this kind of thing.

― sgs (sgs), Thursday, 30 June 2005 09:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

how do i make spotlight index .nfo and .log files?

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Tuesday, 5 July 2005 21:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

I know my airport base station has a 56k modem but - does it have a DSL/broadband modem built-in? and it works as a router too, right?

― jeffrey (johnson), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 19:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

the apple base station? nope, no modem. from what i understand it's basically a very stylish-looking router.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 19:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

The modem is usually specific to yr provider.

― Jon, remind me again why you haven't drowned in your own vomit (ex machina), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 19:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

Not if it's DSL, cable modem yes, DSL no.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 20:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

ADSL
XDSL
ETC


The point is that most people don't have a single internet connection in their house. So they need something that can give ethernet, which everything speaks.

― Jon, remind me again why you haven't drowned in your own vomit (ex machina), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 20:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm not sure I understand Jon's post. I know it's wrong, but also I don't understand it.

(Ed is right here. Quibbling about different varieties of ?DSL is neither here nor there, because your average off-the-shelf DSL modem supports all of them. The hard part is finding out what settings your ISP hasn't told you)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 14 July 2005 06:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

iPhoto crisis: (Mac question)

I hate iPhoto, sorry but it sucks. anyway, I have got myself into a right pickle. i was trying to show my dad flickr and see if i could upload some of his photos onto it. anyway hes got 3000 or so photos in his iPhoto Library, and iPhoto was being difficult, and seemed to have crashed, so I used Force Quit. the one that says "you may lose any unsaved data".

so the next day i get a phone call and it turns out that all his photos hvae "disappeared". when i next am home, i look high and low for the missing photos but cant find em. not in the trash, not in any hidden folders or something. all thats left is photos left in other folders outside fo the iPhoto Library folder.

so what does this mean? iPhoto ate my photos? where coudl they have gone? what happens to data when it just is "lost"? is there any hope of using data recovery software to get it back? it seems hard to get such software for the mac, and i wasnt sure whether it would work. is there anything i can do?

im not sure how much more detail i can give, especailly as i am not using that computer at the moment.

thanks in advance for saving me from my dads wrath!

― ambrose (ambrose), Saturday, 16 July 2005 17:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

ugh. i get angered all over again every time i hear a mac horror story. i cant believe theyre allowed to sell those things. i dont have an answer for you except maybe yr dad backed up those photos on a cd or something?

also: windows has a neat little feature where you can restore the machine back to a certain date. like the day before all the photos disappeared. im not sure if mac has something similiar.

― sunny successor (he hates my guts, we had a fight) (katharine), Saturday, 16 July 2005 18:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does iphoto store its files in folders that are hidden from the Finder? Have you tried running, say, a command-line find? If you just try something like

find / -name '*.jpg' | less

it should list every .jpg file on the entire system. You'll have a lot of trawling to do to find any of the ones that you're looking for, but if they're still on your computer they'll be somewhere in the list.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 16 July 2005 18:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

(correction to myself: every .jpg in directories that you have at least r-x permissions on)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 16 July 2005 18:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

What I meant is that some people have cable, some people have DSL, some people have something else, etc.

― OLD SPICE® CHEMTRAILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ex machina), Saturday, 16 July 2005 19:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

"Total Disaster, your Library is toast

If the worst possible thing has happened and iPhoto either won't open your library or there are photos missing, they are probably still in the library, stored by year, month and day. Navigate through the various folders and copy them back out. When you copy a photo out of the database, use option-drag to make a new copy so that the original is left behind. All of the metadata is history at this point, but you at least have your photos. If the photos are actually not there, then there has been some serious disk issue that you should address immediately."

http://girr.org/mac_stuff/photos.html

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Saturday, 16 July 2005 19:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm guessing that's the situation with your dad's photos. It shouldn't have erased your dad's photos (unless you're having other HD issues?).

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Saturday, 16 July 2005 19:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

I wonder if iPhoto runs into the same problems as iTunes when you near their limits - people have talked about iTunes slowdowns and problems when they cap 10k songs, it's possible iPhoto runs into the same problems at several thousand photos. (In which case, upping the RAM seems to help a lot)

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Saturday, 16 July 2005 19:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

A vaguely related problem. Just got a new 200gb external firewire drive for my mac. Moved all my libraries over to it fine. Except for... now, when I use soulseeX, which has never caused me problems before, when I download files, a folder is created on the external disk (named after the person I'm d/ling from) but no file appears, even when it says the d/l has finished. Searching for these phantom finished d/ls yields no results either... Any ideas?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Saturday, 16 July 2005 21:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

also: windows has a neat little feature where you can restore the machine back to a certain date. like the day before all the photos disappeared. im not sure if mac has something similiar.

Restore points don't get your data back they just roll back the system software to a point before you installed that dodgy driver or piece of spyware. You have to set them manually as well, it's not a backup.

As for Ambrose's problem, not sure what to suggest as far as recovering the photos which should be in the iPhoto Library. As for the slowdown, it's a known problem, especially on older systems, due to on the fly thumbnail creation.

Some tips on speeding up iPhoto.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030204061957714
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050212014121749&query=iphoto+speed

― Ed (dali), Saturday, 16 July 2005 21:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, and everyone should make backups.

― Ed (dali), Saturday, 16 July 2005 21:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

The modem is usually specific to yr provider.

This implies you might need a specific BRAND or something of DSL (or dialup or cable) modem with yr ISP which just isnt right. Not for dialup or DSL anyway. The exception being ADSL vs DSL2 - DSL2 does need a DSL modem capable of it and older ones wont be.

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 17 July 2005 06:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think Jon meant "you need a different modem if you're on *DSL or cable or something else". But, you're right, that wasn't how I understood it at first either.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Sunday, 17 July 2005 06:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm getting GTA: San Andreas for my PC. However, I don't think my current set-up will be able to handle it (Far Cry and MoH: Pacific Assault have major graphics glitches and/or don't work).

Current set-up:
AMD Athlon Processor 1.14 ghz.
256mb of RAM.
Radeon 7200 graphics card 64mb

What should I upgrade in order for GTA: SA to work well on my pc? Which should I made priority? I've seen 256mb graphics cards ranging from £55 to £150 on Amazon, am I an idiot or are these similar products?

The min spec for GTA:SA is 1GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon or equivalent, RAM: 256 MB RAM, Video Memory: 64 MB VRAM and the recommended spec is Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP or equivalent, RAM: 384 MB RAM, Video Memory: 128 MB VRAM.

Also, how easy is it to upgrade these three elements? Would I be best taking it to a proper pc shop to get sorted or can it be done at home with ease?

― Affectian (Affectian), Sunday, 17 July 2005 10:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

Upgrading is easy so long as your existing motherboard can accept the new parts, and so long as your PC's internal layout is relatively sane. It should just be a case of "unplug old part, plug in new part", plus installing the drivers for the graphics card.

If you have to upgrade the motherboard too, you're essentially looking at stripping down and rebuilding the entire machine. It's usually less work to buy a new computer and put your old hard disk in it.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Sunday, 17 July 2005 10:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

Affectian your whole PC is weak for gaming, you'll need a new mobo/ram/videocard/cpu really otherwise you're just wasting cash.

Take a look at these guides

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200506.ars/2

The budget box but with 1GB of RAM is a nice machine, keep in mind that budget means budget gaming here, the video card isn't the best around but it will run GTA:SA very nicely at 1024x768, but as the system is PCI-E you can slot in what video card you want later on or even a better one now depending on how much you want to spend.

based on this incredibly handy list:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/67909965/m/844003222631

BEar in mind the videocards at the top of that list are able to run Battlefield 2 at very high resolutions and quality settings.

You could keep your current HDD and optical drives, you might want a new case/power supply though modern systems tend to use a bit more juice than older ones and run a bit warmer so a few case fans are needed.

Really how powerful a videocard you need is based on what resolution you need which depends on the monitor you use.

Bear in mind minimum specs are the minimum to just get the game running they never really give any guide to a spec for a smooth gaming experience, the recomended specs are where you should be looking.

Don't buy from a local computer shop, unless you are supplying the parts list and they offer a reasonable quote for the work/parts.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 17 July 2005 11:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

Thanks for the advice FP & JP, I was after a new flatscreen monitor anyhow so I'll just go for a whole new machine from Dell (or can anyone recommend somewhere better?).

― Affectian (Affectian), Sunday, 17 July 2005 16:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

uk or us? Dells are just fine but if you wanted to you could get something a little more game oriented, or AMD based which would give you a little more bang per buck.

― Ed (dali), Sunday, 17 July 2005 16:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

When I was looking at PCs, Velocity Micro looked like they had a good price-to-quality ratio - http://www.velocitymicro.com/

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Sunday, 17 July 2005 17:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

Wow they are way pricey....

Seriously 3200+ and 6600GT with no monitor for 1500USD is too much

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 17 July 2005 17:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

You guys are obtuse

― OLD SPICE® CHEMTRAILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ex machina), Sunday, 17 July 2005 17:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah? Yeah? Well you're reflex.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 17 July 2005 19:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

So? (insert ILXor of choice here) is acute poster.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Sunday, 17 July 2005 19:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

in the BatInTheBogs thread they redirect a tiny dragon picture to a HUGE one pointing out bandwidth hogging. what, really, is the point of this, surely using a much bigger picture is counter productive? (yes, squid caching and all but still)

also, does anyone use mkisofs much? am having trouble with options - it's turning '=' signs in filenames (yes, i know...) to '_'s and generally being a pain. am using cygwin mkisofs, source is win2k, destination is linux. don't need subdirectories but filenames are at least 26 characters long and need to be preserved.

(mkisofs -J -l -R -iso-level 3 resulted in a disk full of files i could list but not access)

(google gives lots of links to manpages full of all possible options but there's too much of a wood / trees thing going on there)

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 13:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

what, really, is the point of this

To annoy.

I don't use mkisofs much, but I've just skimmed the manpage: have you tried the option -relaxed-filenames

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 14:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

To annoy.

Yeah they don't care about the bandwidth really it's the principle or something.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 14:46 (7 years ago) Permalink

i think the -iso-level 3 thing was extraneous (it was only in there because i remember a similar checkbox in k3b). have tried it without (and without writing an entire 650M image) and the resultant .iso mounts ok using -o loop and files are readable.

am writing a script to cobble together 650M of files from a directory (there are hundreds, roughly 4M each but not constant), md5sum them, mkisofs them and write them to cd because the alternative is using windows gui 'tools'. next problem, adding filesizes together...

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 15:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

You can do arithmetic in Bash with the "arithmetic expansion", $(( ... )):


$sum=$(( $a + $b ))

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Tuesday, 19 July 2005 17:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

I have a really stupid question about a really stupid thing. I'm using windows XP and I somehow clicked the wrong place and the taskbar is now along the right edge (vertically) of the screen, instead of at the bottom where it used to be. I can't figure out how to get it back to where it was... and Fuck you, Microsoft.

― geyser muffler and a quarter (Dave225), Thursday, 21 July 2005 13:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

drag it back. you seem to have to select unused space around the star button in order to do this but it's easy enough.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 21 July 2005 14:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

All i can do is make it wider. It won't drag down, which is what would seem like to logical thing to do...

― geyser muffler and a quarter (Dave225), Thursday, 21 July 2005 14:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

OK, now I got it. Fuck that shit.

― geyser muffler and a quarter (Dave225), Thursday, 21 July 2005 14:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

Okay, this has bugged me for years.
Windows XP: sometimes when I hover my mouse over the clock in the lower right hand corner a tooltip tells me the date, but sometimes not.
What are the conditions under which it does or doesn't appear?

Computers are supposed to be deteministic dammit!

― mei (mei), Thursday, 21 July 2005 14:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

Well you can rely on Windows XP to crash for sure!

― OLD SPICE® CHEMTRAILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ex machina), Thursday, 21 July 2005 14:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

prompt> cat a
size=0
s=10
size=$(( $size + $s ))
echo $size

prompt> sh a
+ 0 + 10 ╪

um. worked fine in real bash, gave the above rubbish in cygwin bash. am using size=`eval $size + $s` instead. the thing i thought i'd have trouble with was extracting the filesize but stat -c "%s" filename to the rescue.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 21 July 2005 16:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

3 weeks pass...
This isn't actually a "problem" but a friend is curious and I am as well:

Is there any way to change the attribution line in replies in Mail? So that instead of saying "On 10 Aug 2005, at 11:20 pm, John Doe wrote:" it says something a little more lively? My googling has turned up nothing, but googling for "Mail" is a most unrewarding exercise.

I used to be able to do this in Eudora with a little plug-in. I kinda miss Eudora, but I've made the change and I'm going to stick with it for a while longer.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 11 August 2005 16:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

my ipod is doing this, which I have never heard of before:

when I turn it on all that comes up on the screen is a folder with a little exclamation mark beside it, similar to the low battery sign

I have had a little look around on google and people are registering the same complaint but no-one has provided satisfactory solution

in the past whenever my ipod has failed in its many novel ways it has normally rectified itself by just being left alone

perhaps that'll work this time but in the meanwhile, any suggestions?

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 07:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

What iPod do you have?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 07:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

3rd generation

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 07:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/index.shtml

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 07:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

amazing

thanks

I'd never seen that before

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 08:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

I have a Powerbook problem, which I may have just found the answer too, but I want to run it by the computer people on ILX. About a week ago, the Powerbook froze up and I restarted it. When it came back up and I tried to get online, my password and member ID had been erased. I reentered them and tried to connect but it kept saying my info was wrong and wouldn't connect me. I went through a bunch of shit with the provider (including paying $1.95 a minute for tech support) and I still can't connect.
Anyway, this morning I was trying to burn some photos onto a CD so I could erase them from the hard drive and free up some space. When I put the blank CD in, it pulls up the little menu asking me what program I want to open. When I pick Finder, it ejects the CD and says it can't burn a CD because "the startup disc is full." When I do anything else (open iTunes, ignore, whatever), it doesn't eject the disc but also doesn't show it in Finder or on the desktop or anything, it just acts like there isn't a disc there.
According to the Mac help website, the problem seems to be that the "/tmp symbolic link" got erased somehow. This could definitely cause the CD burning problem above and can also fuck with the PPP info. Does this make sense as the source of the problem with you all computer people? I won't be able to try it until tonight.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 12:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

/tmp is a symlink on OSX? A symlink to where?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 13:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't know, I'm just going based on what Mac help says. I have no idea what I'm saying.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 13:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

/private/tmp

― I'm Hi, Jared Fogle (ex machina), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 13:25 (7 years ago) Permalink

OK so it is definitely the hard drive that is playing up

I'll try disconnecting it and re-connecting it

I'm not sure it'll do any good, can I buy replacement hard drives relatively cheap?

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 16:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

For an iPod? Uh, do you have AppleCare on it?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 23 August 2005 16:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

This is completely doing my head in and I hope someone can help. How do I get XP to save my folder settings forever, and not just for a few hours before reverting back to the bollocks ones that came with it?

I want every folder on the drive to have bitrate/duration/date modified/type/size and nothing more (most of my folders are mp3s so these are the best settings for me), and I've spent an age setting these up, choosing 'apply to all folders' and 'apply this template to all subfolders' but after a short while I lose them.

I've googled for answers but to no avail, I've d/ld this TweakUI program that promised to mend it. It didn't. You guys are my only hope to stop me yelling FUCKS SAKE every 3 hours or so.

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 25 August 2005 10:46 (7 years ago) Permalink

FUCK. So I lost all my music. Or, I can't find it. It was on an external drive, formatted Windows NTFS; lately it had been acting weird, a few corrupted files, so I ran chkdsk a few times, this never fixed those files, but did tell me I had a bunch of unreadable sectors. Okay. Well I decided to run Norton Disk Doctor on it; same thing, didn't fix errors. Ran chksks again. It did something to the "indexes". Now, there are ony like seven directories in my music folder where there had been, well, hundreds. Drive still appears to be almost full, so I'm sure they're there, but whatever is on the drive that says they're there seems to be gone, if you know what I mean. Norton is fucking uselss. Running chkdsk again hung on "checking file indexes" or whatever all day at 55% done.

HELP!

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 00:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

trying to copy my music library directory to another drive tells me it can't read from the directory

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 00:37 (7 years ago) Permalink

i think fucking chkdsk /f ruined it, frankly.

fuck you windows, and also fuck you Maxtor drives!

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 31 August 2005 00:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

OK I think I know what my problem is

but I'm coming in here for you lot to confirm it

and I'm not in a good mood so don't be a twat

OK

I have just had DSL installed

I bought a hayes ADSL ethernet modem

I had been trying to run it via airport but that didn't work

so I tried the direct connection via ethernet and that didn't work

I thought I should switch to the PC and maybe see if I can configure the modem via that route and get in on the mac through the back door

I switched to the PC

I set it all up and got on the internet for a little while

the POWER & ADSL lights have been on, steady for the duration

whereas the LAN led blinks intermittently and stays off more than it blinks

this leads me to believe the problem is either in 1. the ethernet cable or the ethernet socket

so I am going to return the modem - can anyone recommend a half-decent mac-compatible (i.e. with fkn decent mac documentation) ADSL modem I can use, preferably in conjunction with airport?


PS I am only on the internet now via the PC using the shitty USB speedtouch modem that demon gave me, which crashes my mac each time I use it

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 9 September 2005 21:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

"I got on the internet for a little while" and then it said "LAN connectivity is intermittent or weak, please try repair" by which I take it it means the ethernet connection from PC to shitty fkn modem

not in a good mood at all

: /

― cozen (Cozen), Friday, 9 September 2005 21:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

Getting my Belkin wireless router to work wasn't too much trouble at all, cozen.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 9 September 2005 22:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, but hang on – you only need the modem bit of it, as you already have an Airport. Sorry.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 9 September 2005 22:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

The Linksys ones are great and should work fine with yr Airport base station. They won't have Mac-specific instructions, but you configure them through a browser anyway.

Are you sure it isn't just the cable?

― stet (stet), Friday, 9 September 2005 22:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

OK I think I know what my problem is

but I'm coming in here for you lot to confirm it

and I'm not in a good mood so don't be a twat

Ungrateful!

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 9 September 2005 22:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

it could be just the cable but I have faith in cables

I hate those modems that you configure through browsers : /

I'll try another cable then

if that doesn't work I'll return it and try a linksys, ta stet

markelby, please

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 September 2005 05:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

I might even go the belkin way

airport can be such a fanny

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 September 2005 05:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

Any external ADSL modem that supports Ethernet should be fully Mac-compatible.

*Most* ethernet hardware that doesn't have separate link and activity lamps will have a lamp that stays on for "link up, idle" and blinks rapidly for "link active". Slow blinking sounds like an error indication.

If you can, test it with the shortest cable you have that has moulded-on plugs - that's your best bet for cable-reliability.

(I've just spent three days sorting out the Ethernet cabling to an office. On all the cables, the link claims to be up but magically fails to transmit packets - but only when the cable is fitted in the last 5m or so of duct. If you pull it out, leave the cables dangling out of the wall in the next corridor and test it then, it works FINE. I hate hardware problems.)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 10 September 2005 06:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

GOD FUCKING DAMNIT what the fuck? So I bought a new external hard drive, a seagate this time. recovered what files I could from my other corrupt drive. Reformated old corrupt drive. Works fine now. Suddenly: bam, can't write to my new drive for no reason. Run Noron Disk Doctor on it. EVERYTHING IS NOW GONE. Although I'm sure the data is still there (it says there's 70GB on the disk), I can't see anything, it created some "recycled" directory, and removed the name of the drive. What the hell?

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 10 September 2005 15:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

RECYCLED is the real name of the Windows trashcan. Normally, the real RECYCLED directory is hidden; clearly Norton has done something to unhide it.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 10 September 2005 16:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

I fucking hate Norton. Oddly looking in the directory, there are no files (they aren't hidden, either); outside of the directory, no files. Something keeps happening to my file indexes, I think, and so the OS can't read the index to see what files are there. This happened last time as well, which is how I lost my last drive and 113GB of music (see above). I'm not sure what's doing it, but it's either slsk or azureus, I suspect.

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 10 September 2005 16:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm not an expert on either of those problems, but I'm suspicious whether either would be accessing the disk at a level liable to cause that sort of corruption. That sort of FS structure should be maintained solely by the OS, and the only other programs that modify the FS at that level should be disk repair tools.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 10 September 2005 16:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

Guh. Problems = programs.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 10 September 2005 16:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm going to guess that it's actually the disk repair tools that are fucking this. maybe they're reading partial files downloaded by bittorrent or slsk as corrupt, and trying to repair them, and in so doing, somehow modifying the file indexes? the sad thing is that I know the files are still there, I just can't seem to retrieve them. Also, when did Norton programs become so terrible? They're so stripped down for idiots/

― kyle (akmonday), Saturday, 10 September 2005 17:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

I fixed my problem

thanks for the linksys tip stet

: )

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 September 2005 17:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

Did you work out what the problem was in the end?

(I'm intrigued)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 10 September 2005 17:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

well

I think it was the ethernet link

whether it was the hayes box or the cable

I don't know

I just replaced it with the linksys

and voila

I found messing about with computers, at that level, very stressful though

god knows how IT techs. cope

― cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 10 September 2005 18:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ever since I installed iTunes 5 and the new QT my iBook isn't recognizing FW harddrives! Including my iPod. I don't think it's related to the installations but...

Anyway, is there any utility to check my FW ports? Or somesuch?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 11 September 2005 21:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

Do they show up in System Profiler? (In OS X, choose About This Mac from apple menu, then click "More info" or look in Utilities folder)

― stet (stet), Sunday, 11 September 2005 22:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

It just says "Firewire Bus:" and then nothing.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 11 September 2005 23:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

boo. do they show up if you start up from the installer CD? (Boot from it, then open disk utility from the Installer menu. Connect a FW HD and see if it shows up)

― stet (stet), Sunday, 11 September 2005 23:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

Good idea! I'll try that in the morning.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 12 September 2005 05:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm having speed issues on my ADSL

how do I best

1. test the speeds I'm getting

&

2. fix it so it's faster, because I know my speeds are too slow

(I was downloading tricky's mix on ILM earlier and only getting speeds of 5/6 kbps, when I'm on 2meg broadband)

?

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 18:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

1. Use the speed test here.

2. God, I wish I knew. There are all sorts of voodoo things you can do with packet sizes and the like, but they have a negligble effect from what I can tell. If you're only get 5k/s on the speedtest tho, it's probably time to call yr provider

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 18:18 (7 years ago) Permalink

1.

downstream 280 Kbps (35.0 KB/sec) 302 Kbps (inc. overheads)
upstream 211 Kbps (26.4 KB/sec) 227 Kbps (inc. overheads)

rubbish!

I am phoning my provider

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 18:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

(Zapping the PRAM turned out to be the answer for me.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 18:34 (7 years ago) Permalink

wow: does the PRAM still have any useful purpose in OS X?! i thot it was just a relic.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 21:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

if anything, it's got even *more* stuff in it now.

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 21:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

well bugger. me. wot like?

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 07:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

Steve Jobs' babies, obv.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 07:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think the PRAM contains all sorts of magic settings for OpenFirmware to use for bootstrapping the kernel.

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 08:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

see, this suggests there's nowt exciting in there at all. i'm really intrigued as to what setting was causing casuistry's problems.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 12:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

this is pretty much the best source of info for OF on mac page http://www.netneurotic.de/mac/openfirmware.html

if you boot into openfirmware and enter "printenv" that shows you all the stuff in there. LOTS of little things, and some of them do control how the booting progresses

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 12:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

-- ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ has it right. PRAM's packed with Open Firmware bits -- basically all the settings that must stay the same regardless of what disk you boot from, plus hardware configuration stuff, boot device etc etc. Also, you used about.com? eugh.

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 16:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

It has essentially all the BIOS information on the PC and then some!

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 16:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've had to send my Powerbook off to the menders cos:

- I got the Tiger 'let's fail to recognise the lower memory slot' problem.

- I got the Tiger 'let's fail to wake the display from sleep when the lid has been closed.

- I got the Tiger 'let's have a kernal trap when we turn Airport on/off'.

PRAM zapped and reset, PMU reset, RAM tested and still the problem remains. Think it might be a dodgy airport connection, but it's a grade A pain whatever it is.

― Dave B (daveb), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 18:12 (7 years ago) Permalink

yea, sounds like a faulty bus

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 18:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

sorry to be such a fkn computer remedial. I'm trying to forward the ports on my airport base station for soulseek (2234, 2240 &c.) but my ISP says I am on a dynamic IP address. the port forwarding I believe can only go on if I'm on a static IP. is there a way to set tht up, despite my ISP's advice? airport only allows you to forward to 10.0.1.x addresses. I'm currently on a 192.168.1.x address - using DCHP. I'm loathe to get into using "DHCP with manual" which is what I presume I need to use cos it would mean having to a. go in re-configure my network settins b. my airport settings and c. my modem settings which all seem finely balanced at the moment like some fkn annoying jenga of sloth.

:*/

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

is airport running the DHCP server?

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

uh haha I don't know jon. I got this setup:

wall jack -> linksys ADSL modem -> airport

network settings: TCP/IP using DCHP
modem settings: PPPoA (even though it should be PPPoE? or even bridged?)
airport settings: configure TCP/IP using ethernet using DHCP

I guess the ISP is running the DHCP server?

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

can you tell what IP(s) the airport box thinks it has?

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

It doesn't matter if your ISP gives you a dynamic or static IP for this. What you need to do is set your laptop (assuming that's the one you want to slsk) to a static IP, and have the airport forward from to that. So, set the DHCP to manual in Network pref pane, then use Airport Admin Util to forward the slks ports to the newly-static laptop IP.

Er, did that make sense?

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:56 (7 years ago) Permalink

You can probably configure your airport's DHCP to always give that computer the same IP also...

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

haha ok I'll give it a try

the modem keeps hanging too but that's a separate (really fkn annoying) issue

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

hey thanks fr the help people

I think I know what's going on but I have one last (for now) question

I'm running a wireless network through airport: one mac, one PC

the mac is always on, but the PC goes on and off

I've no evidence (I've not tested) but I think the PC being rebooted / re-initialised is causing the modem to hang - and my connection is lost

is this possible?

and also if this was the case, shouldn't the modem just reconnect to the adsl (I have a linksys modem set to "keep alive", with a redial period I've now changed to 3mins instead of the prev. 1min) since the mac is still on?

― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 15 September 2005 16:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

I was messing around with the processes in the Task Manager and trying to quit out of them to free up some memory so that I can edit some video. But after I restarted, I noticed that the little arrow in my system tray that lets me expand the tray to see 'hidden' tray icons has disappeared. Does anyone know what program it is that manages this function?

― Leeeeeeeee (Leee), Monday, 19 September 2005 23:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

try right-clicking on yr taskbar, select properties, un-check 'hide inactive items', hit 'apply', then re-check 'hide inactive items', hit okay

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 00:34 (7 years ago) Permalink

any ideas about this - seems very strange, and seemingly no luck on google

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7035
Date: 9/5/2005
Time: 4:53:49 PM
User: MUSIC\RH
Computer: MUSIC
Description:
The soylentgreen service was successfully sent a start control.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Friday, 23 September 2005 03:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've no evidence (I've not tested) but I think the PC being rebooted / re-initialised is causing the modem to hang - and my connection is lost

is this possible?

I don't know if it's possible, but it used to happen to me all the time.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 23 September 2005 04:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

ooh:

― Ed (dali), Friday, 23 September 2005 04:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

oops, not there

― Ed (dali), Friday, 23 September 2005 04:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

bueller?

soylentgreen service ?!?

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Friday, 23 September 2005 14:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

So Juulia gave us DVD-Rs with the Divx files for the first season of Lost. But I can't get them to play on our Powerbook. When I put the discs in, I get a message that says there are no files on the disc that OSX recognizes, do I want to eject or ignore? I installed two different DIVX player things, but still nothing happens. Is the problem that she's using a Dell and we have a Powerbook?

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 26 September 2005 14:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

TELL ME WHAT FILES YOU DO SEE I IMAGINE YOU HAVE TO INSTALL VIDEOLAN BYE

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Monday, 26 September 2005 16:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't see ANY files, because OSX doesn't see any files on the discs, so it makes me either eject it, or ignore it (which doesn't let me access the disc at all). I know the files are on there because they are the same discs that we used to watch Lost at Julia's house.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 26 September 2005 16:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't see ANY files, because OSX doesn't see any files on the discs, so it makes me either eject it, or ignore it (which doesn't let me access the disc at all). I know the files are on there because they are the same discs that we used to watch Lost at Julia's house.

I suspect that the DVD-Rs were burned in a non-standard format that's only readable on the original PC. I ran into this once with some CD-Rs of mp3s. The way to double-check is to load the discs on a third computer and see what happens.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 26 September 2005 20:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

This is a terrible fucking emergency!

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, 26 September 2005 22:15 (7 years ago) Permalink

hello
I got myself super win pe http://www.stv.ee/~butax/winpe.htm
via some torrent,
now I have an iso of like 1.63 Gigs

could someone tell me what should I burn on a cd, I want to make a boot disc.

― ez does it, Friday, 30 September 2005 19:15 (7 years ago) Permalink

So apparently the torrent I'm dling of the lastest Lost has a sound sync issue and this guy has posted a fix as a small .rar file here:

http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3392849

How do I use this file to fix the avi file?

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 6 October 2005 09:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

I am trying to open an excel file which

it was opened by mistake in word and now it keeps saying '[file name].xls: file format not valid'

is there any way I can either import from word or export to excel

or any other way I can fix this problem and open my spreadsheet?

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

You've tried opening it from excel rather than just double-clicking, right? You could try saving it in word as a doc (do 'save as...' not 'save') and then open from excel and it might retain the formatting

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:49 (7 years ago) Permalink

or right click the file > open with

― l;kjgds, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm guessing he's tried that and that the problem is that it's titled an .xls file but is actually a Word file. So maybe try changing the suffix to .doc?

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

(I mean, it was originally an Excel file, but someone's opened it and saved it in Word, somehow overwriting the original with a Word version but retaining the file extention .xls, thus confusing Office)

Well, that's all I can think of, anyway.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:56 (7 years ago) Permalink

tried opening it from excel, and double-clicking

changed suffic to .doc but don't know why:

tried opening again in excel '[file name].doc: file format not valid'

obviously

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

You tried opening the .doc version from Word too, yes?

In which case, I give up. I've no idea what you've done to your file.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

Well that's me fresh outta ideas
Except - do you have open office or anything like that?

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

can't do it I'm afraid, you'll have to copy & paste

― Ste (Fuzzy), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

copy & paste ugh

thank god it's not my file

it opens in word

both of the files, the .xls and .doc

but copy & paste... : /

oh well thanks for the ride!

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 08:12 (7 years ago) Permalink

is there any website that can be used to track what other websites are linking to particular articles, essays, and other websites?

I want to be able to copy and paste a link into some sort of link search engine and find blog entries, etc. on such

I don't think google can do this can it?

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, I didn't realise you could open it up in Word OK. No wonder you thought my idea was bad.

When you select the spreadsheety table in Word and then try 'Paste Special' in Excel, does it give you a variety of options?

x-post. yes, Google can do this, hang on a sec.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=link%3Awww.freakytrigger.co.uk&meta=

for example.

You use the link: operator then the web address you're interested in. I always think Google is a bit stingy on results.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

It'll only offer you to post as text or a Word doc (and some other useless choices)

― Ste (Fuzzy), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

yes that's very stingy : /

thanks for the help with the .xls but we've given up on it

opening it in word originally lost 90% of the original document, so any recovery work was essentially futile by then

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

The same link: thing works at Yahoo! too, though you have to make sure to add the http:// before the address you're interested in there.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.freakytrigger.co.uk&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

Far more hits, perhaps because it also finds sites that link to pages deeper into FT than the level you specify too?

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.freakytrigger.co.uk&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

yes the Yahoo one seems to be a lot better, i just tried my own sites on the Google version and it didn't pick up anything at all.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 12:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

hi there, before i give up on slsk for good, i wonder if, havign tried to understand how the magical internet works a bit, i might be able to describe my problem a bit better.

basically, slsk has stopping downloading/uploading anything in my queue. searches dont return anything. this started when i was on cable with NTL. I clicked the test router configuration thing in options, and it told me that the router wasnt configured properly and advised me to go to a port forwading FAQ page.

so, as far i as know, i didnt have a router really, just an external cable modem. anyway, now im on a wi-fi network, and i get the same thing, but again i dont have a router, so what is the problem? as far as i can tell, i have:

a computer (doh)

― ambrose (ambrose), Sunday, 16 October 2005 21:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

wtf

should read:
a computer (doh)

― ambrose (ambrose), Sunday, 16 October 2005 21:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

!!!!

a computer (doh) < PCI network card < Apple airport base station < Webstar cable modem < hole in the wall to the rest of the magic

so, none of this is a router, right? whats not configured then? someone on one of these weird ghostly tech forums mentioned that the modem should do port forwarding automatically. someone else mentioned that it must be a software related problem, or a firewall or ISP blocking the port. but this is a situation where midway through using 1 ISP it kinda stopped working, then using another (now on telewest) it still doesnt work.

argh i feel so stupid and i know its only to evilly steal music so who gives a fuck but i want to download dj supreme and strike u sure do etc. what is happening? any port in a storm, so any help is welcome! thanx!

― ambrose (ambrose), Sunday, 16 October 2005 21:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

apple airport base station is your router, ambrose, and I find it a bugger to configure port forwarding for things like slsk and azureus (used for torrents)... so much so I just gave up...

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 16 October 2005 21:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

if you go to portforwarding.com (or something like that, just pump the phrase into google) it has a section on configuring your airport... it is pretty simple really but also quite difficult (!!! sorry I know tht's a bit cryptic and useless)

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 16 October 2005 21:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

thanks cozen

god i am so dumb. 5 year olds understand this shit, and 2 degrees havent equipped me with the knowhow to work this stuff out.

i have to follow the lines along flowcharts etc.

when i read, i mouth the words to myself*


*ok this is only true when reading foreign stuff.

― ambrose (ambrose), Sunday, 16 October 2005 22:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

oh yeah i have seen that bit, but that gives instructions for runnning a mac on an airport base station. im running a pc on airport :S

― ambrose (ambrose), Sunday, 16 October 2005 22:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

wish I could help you dude but as I say I coudn't even help myself!!

who is the network uh 'admin'? is it someone on a mac? maybe they can access the airport and set it up according to the website

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 16 October 2005 22:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
Okay so recently I got fed up with computer flakiness and formatted c, which I use for basically everything except storage and a few apps (which're on d), and reinstalled windows. Everything works really smoothly now and most of the flakiness is ironed out, except:

1) If I stay connected to the internet for more than five or so minutes, the whole computer crashes and locks. This occurs even if I just leave the connection sitting there ignored, but not if I'm careful to disconnect before it happens and then reconnect later each time I connect, coming to an aggregrate time of way over five minutes. I've tried it with a different ISP and the same thing happens.

2) If I try and install my soundcard, the computer locks, kaput.

Is there any hope at this point that this is anything other than a hardware problem? And if so what bit do I need to replace?

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 3 November 2005 03:12 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh yeah, this is internet connecting via dial-up with a standardish 56k internal (with an enumerator thingie), plausibly I should have mentioned that.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 3 November 2005 03:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

things never to say to your next-door neighbours, #1 in a series of #1:

"guys, i can connect to your wireless network from my flat. do you want me to set up the security on your router?"

at least, don't say this unless you're willing to spend an hour on a sunday afternoon tooling around helplessly after you manage to FUCK THEIR ROUTER COMPLETELY so nobody can connect to it AT ALL. shit.

luckily i managed to a) fix it and b) make it secure. and c) set up an iBook and a flaky-as-fuck vaio to connect to it. given i know arse all about windows PCs, i consider this a grate triumph.

still. bah, computers, etc.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Sunday, 13 November 2005 18:15 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm so glad I don't live southside.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 13 November 2005 18:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

you're in denial, that's all.

next week we're having a bring-your-own-laptop party at syxties. complete with candles.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Sunday, 13 November 2005 18:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

Right.

So this weekend I'm throwing a party in a pub. I want to plug my laptop into their projector and run a PowerPoint thing we've made, on a loop all evening. So far, so simple - just buy the appropriate lead and all's well, right?

But.

The projector is bolted to the (very high) ceiling and completely non-accessible. And it's permanently plumbed into a VCR on a different floor, with all the relevant leads (just SCART, as far as I can see)actually painted into the fittings, if you see what I mean.

My question:

If I only have access to the end of a SCART lead which is currently plugged into the aforementioned VCR, can I "simply" create a lead which has a monitor plug at one end and a "male" SCART plug at the other?

Or do I absolutely have to somehow access the monitor socket on the projector?

We're fucked without the projection...

HELP!

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 21 November 2005 09:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

so, to recap.

my laptop has this socket:

so i need lead with a plug that will fit in to that socket at one end, and in to this -

- at the other.

yes, I mean *into* this as opposed to, er, just *being* this - as I said, i have no other way of attaching anything to the projector.

the key quesion here is of compatibility: are laptops SCART compatible, in principle?

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 21 November 2005 09:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

bump...

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 21 November 2005 10:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

forlorn bump.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 21 November 2005 11:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does your laptop also have an s-video out?

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Monday, 21 November 2005 12:34 (7 years ago) Permalink

no :-( just an rgb.

i'm hoping there's such thing as an rgb-to-scart converter, then i'm sorted.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 21 November 2005 12:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

Looks like you are out of luck:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136811&page=1&pp=15
http://www.idiots.org.uk/vga_rgb_scart/

Sorry :(

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Monday, 21 November 2005 13:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

how to build vga to scart converter:

http://www.nexusuk.org/projects/vga2scart/circuit

One you can buy:

http://www.macwarehouse.co.uk/catalogue/item/STARMK10?speedtrapid=mwfroogle&lead=mwfroogle

― Ed (dali), Monday, 21 November 2005 13:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

I know connecting s-video to SCART is straightforward. I mean I've done it myself with a cheap adaptor from Argos of all places.
So is there no such thing as a VGA to s-video convertor?

I've not done any research, so y'know take with grain of salt kind of thing.

xpost

― Greig (treefell), Monday, 21 November 2005 13:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

the thing above is also a vga to s-video converter.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 21 November 2005 13:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

ok, i'm getting a bit lost in acronyms now!

what's vga?

(i only need this once, for a one-off event, so i'm not splashing out over 50 quid. thanks anyway, ed)

in fact, i've discovered that a simpler solution would be to convert my ppt presentation to vhs, so that's probably what i'll do. but for that, i still need some way to connect my laptop to a vcr! gaaaah.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 21 November 2005 13:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

Can anyone recommend good DVD/MPEG-2 to DivX/3ivX transcoding software for Windows?

― Ed (dali), Monday, 21 November 2005 19:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've got a requirement to do this for work. SMP support would be good. Low cost also good.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 21 November 2005 19:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

NEW QUESTION: My Mac clone is languishing at home for want of a systems disk; apparently something got corrupted and needs to be re-written but I haven't hit on the right generation of OS yet. OS 8 was too old and 9.2 too new, so now it's time to experiment -- does anyone in the States have an 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, or 9.1 universal systems disk you wouldn't mind loaning out?

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 21 November 2005 20:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

bump

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 15:37 (7 years ago) Permalink

ed: i use mencoder on linux which works a treat. the windows port didn't do as expected this morning when i tried it (using lavc ffmpeg4 encoder just crashed out, didn't try it with anything else). i'm sure there are a million other mpg-avi encoders out there, mencoder is just the one i know.

here's a bunch that i haven't used:
http://www.videohelp.com/convert#4;13
this looks promising:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=259841
as does this:
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1271288#1271288

(if only because the mention libraries i recognise - tmpgenc and ffmpeg respectively).

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 16:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

I pay a guy to update a website. The most time consuming part is the photos. We take the photos using a pretty expensive top quality digital camera. It doesn't have options for 600dpi or anything, it's just set to take them at top quality which I think is 8 megapixels. It results in jpegs which are about 3mb each.

So we send these photos to our website guy each month. He scales the pics down each time, to about 13kb so they're usable for a website.

The first time, the photos all went up fine. The second time, all fine again. The third time, we checked the pics on the site and they were real crappy. All blocky and ugly. I mailed him and asked why. He said it was because we were taking the pictures at 72dpi. Either that, or when we were taking them off the camera, the program we used was converting them to 72dpi. Thing is, we don't use a program to take them off the camera, we just drag them off. And the settings on the camera haven't been changed ever, they're all taken at the best quality.

Plus, saying that we take them at 72dpi doesn't make sense because surely this would make the jpegs much smaller than 3mb?

So, I'm confused. Is it the camera at fault? The website admin guy says that pictures can still be taken at 72dpi and be of a large file size, but this doesn't make sense. These photos can be printed on an A3 sheet of paper and still be great quality so saying they only have 72 dots per inch sounds mighty wrong.

We sent the most recent batch of photos over and he said that when he opens them, they're 72dpi again.

Here's one of the pics: http://s49.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2BGUVE28MVREY2VZ9FOJ1DZF33

Does anyone have an explanation for what might have happened here?

― Affectian (Affectian), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 17:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

he's an idiot? that picture looks fine - it's 2000x3000 pixels and will scale down nicely (resolution doesn't matter here - the target for websites is about 72dpi anyway)

> The third time, we checked the pics on the site and they were real crappy. All blocky and ugly

this sounds like either a compression problem ie they are too compressed or like he has them one size and is forcing them via img height and width in the code to be a different size.

http://home.clara.net/koogy/photos/01s.JPG = same image resized to 300x450 (75dpi, jpeg quality = 50%, filesize = 21K, done using gimp) (50% is quite low)

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 18:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

Thanks Koogs, I thought as much. Thing is, the guy's having a huge sulk at me for daring to doubt his website mastery. But that's a whole other thread...

Thanks again for clearing that up.

― Affectian (Affectian), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 19:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

Laurel, I have an 8.5 disc. It's out on loan but I can get it back this weekend.

― Paul Eater (eater), Wednesday, 23 November 2005 02:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

Resizing without resampling? That's what it sounds like. But why would the problem only crop up the third time?

― M. V. (M.V.), Wednesday, 23 November 2005 03:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Why, on my iBook, is VLC's maximum volume three times louder than QuickTime's, with no distortion, even playing the same movie file? Is there some behind-the-scenes hack to let everything have as much volume range as VLC?

― Paul Eater (eater), Monday, 28 November 2005 15:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ed, if you don't have the answer, email me at stevienixed@gmail.com and I'll forward it to a few people I know and ask them.

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Monday, 28 November 2005 15:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

Whoah, Paul, somehow I never saw your post above. Thank you thank you thank you -- have you got it back yet? I'll email.

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 28 November 2005 15:29 (7 years ago) Permalink

"An error occurred while evaluating custom action attribute "null" with value "null": A null expression string may not be passed to the expression evaluator (null)"

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 14:20 (7 years ago) Permalink

That's a great error message!

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 14:28 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
(we need one of these threads for programming problems i think. and general algorithm talk)

ok, Java. i have a list of things (for a particle system), only some of which are currently active. i've currently got them in an array and everytime i want to draw them i go through the entire array and draw the ones where the state is ALIVE. when i need another particle i go through the array until i find one that is DEAD and re-initialise that. this strikes me as bad and i'd rather have a list of ALIVE elements and a list of DEAD elements and swapt things between the lists as the state changes. in C (i am a lot more comfortable with C) i'd malloc a bunch of space and modify pointers as required. what happens in Java? can i change pointers? can i switch things between lists (Vectors? Arrays? what) without having to recreate them? will the vm be continually deallocating and reallocating memory? how fast will it be?

(can i just say in advance: threadkilla! thanks)

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 27 January 2006 17:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

The VM will take care of memory (likely quite inefficiently). You could probably do the pointer-style stuff with the two lists, but I imagine this would be hideously inefficient when done in Java.

I would consider using a linked list rather than an array (you could even store the linked list in state order, hence dead ones could always be at the front of the list, so you'll get O(1) performance on re-initialising dead particles).

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 27 January 2006 18:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

cheers. i will probably do more with ALIVE particles (moving them, drawing them, collision detection etc) so they are best at the front.

if i use an ArrayList can i add ALIVE things to the front and DEAD things to the end? i guess so (array is fixed size (at the mo). i never need information about DEAD things so i can delete them without worrying). if i add things or delete them will that bollocks up the indexing for the rest of the list i'm iterating over? i remember vaguely having to make a copy of something because i couldn't modify it whilst iterating over it. (maybe that was j2me only.)

in C you had to write all this stuff yourself (until glib came along) but at least you then knew how it worked 8)

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 27 January 2006 18:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

I believe the ArrayList has add(Object, index) so you could easily prepend items. Adding and deleting will change indicies, but you could store the particle in a wrapper class i.e. 


class ParticleWrapper {
    int id;
    Particle p;
}

with a unique id.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 27 January 2006 18:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

that's not quite what i meant by bollocksing up the indexes. i'm not really bothered about which particle i'm dealing with, they are all the same.

if i'm trundling through a list, processing the alive ones, and get to element 4 and decide it's now dead (due to aging or collision or whatever) so i mark it as such and move it to the end. but what is element 5 now? is it what used to be element 5 before i deleted #4 or is it what used to be element 6 because everything's moved up to fill the gap?

i think i need to write some tests...

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 27 January 2006 19:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

Everything moves up I believe.

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 27 January 2006 19:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

cheers tissp. will post results on monday.

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 27 January 2006 19:14 (7 years ago) Permalink

3 weeks pass...
Ok this is very boring and no doubt very simple but I've googled and googled and googled to no avail: how do you partition C: drive?

I've got a 300gb C: drive (Windows XP, 1gb ram, 2.21ghz) and foolishly chose not to partition it when I first set up my PC. Now the hard drive is about half full and running r e a l slowly, so I guess I need to partition it. But how do I do it without wiping everything off my pc and starting again from scratch? Do I have to download a new program or can XP do it quickly and easily? (sorry for sounding like a st00pid newbie moron)

― Melissa. (melissamelissa), Friday, 17 February 2006 13:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

hmmk i think this is what i need to do as well, so ill join in the clamour for an answer

ed is this what i need to do?!?!

― ambrose (ambrose), Friday, 17 February 2006 13:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't know of a free tool that can do this but Partition Magic was always the recommended thing to buy if you didn't want to lose your data. I dunno if this has changed in the recent past (they were bought out by symantec, i seem to remember)

― Greig (treefell), Friday, 17 February 2006 13:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

yes Partition Magic is the tool I use as well, I'm pretty sure it's still the leader in this field.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 17 February 2006 13:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

Defrangment not partition is the way to go in this situation (although partitioning on install is not a bad strategy). After defragging set the swap file size so it is not variable. That will stop the swap file from getting fragmented.

Right click on my computer
choose properties
select the advanced tab
Click on the performance 'Settings' Button
Click on the Advnanced tab
Click on the virtual memory change button
select custom size
Set the inital size and the maximum size to the same value, minimum 1.5 times installed RAM, maximum 3 times installed RAM

― Ed (dali), Friday, 17 February 2006 13:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does anyone know how to get Evolution (the Mail/Groupware client) to see outlook public folders over an Exchange connection?

― Ed (dali), Friday, 17 February 2006 16:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ok, bit of a nightmare problem here. We got a bunch of photos of last night at Big Sexy Land and we've just stuck the memory card reader into the pc and ALL the photos have disappeared. What we see are dozens of folders all named things like '_&.%_&.%_&.%_&.%'. When we double click on any of the folders we get an error message saying 'the file or volume is incorrect' or '.... refers to a location that is unavailable' or similar. It won't let us drag any of these folders off the card and onto the pc.

The memory card is inserted properly and we've tried a different card and that works fine. We've put the card back in the camera and it says 'no pictures', but we took another picture and it said '1 out of 60' so that suggests there are pictures still on there. It recognises any new pictures we take, but not the old ones.

Probably grasping at withered straws here but does anyone have a magical solution for making these pictures come back to life? It's seriously important as there were a lot of vital shots for people on there. The camera is a Canon EOS350D (similar to yours Ed, I do believe) if that's any help. Has anyone had this happen before even?

― Affectian (Affectian), Sunday, 19 February 2006 22:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

i'm rebumping this thread to remind myself i'm going to need VBA/Excel help later. anyone qualified?

― nervous (cochere), Sunday, 19 February 2006 23:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

Affection - there are plenty of programs designed for recovering photos off corrupted memory cards. They usually have a free trial version that shows you what you could restore if you bought them. I can't recommend any in particular (maybe someone else can?) but have do a search on download.com for a PC or versiontracker.com for a Mac (can't remember which you use) for "photo recovery" and you'll get plenty of options.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 19 February 2006 23:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

Albo, thank you. Didn't even know those programs existed and doubted very much that they'd work. But they do! Annoyingly, all the photos have PICTURE RETRIEVER slashed across them - until I pay $24.99. Emule is on the case right now, and will hopefully save me the cash. Thanks again.

― Affectian (Affectian), Monday, 20 February 2006 21:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

I have just acquired MSN, but to use it is says I have to disable my Norton firewall?, which is something I'm not too comfortable doing. So my boring question is: does anyone here know a way round this, so that I can use MSN with Norton firewall fully operational?

― Jase, Saturday, 25 February 2006 14:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

Not to worry - just worked it out!

― Jase, Saturday, 25 February 2006 15:20 (7 years ago) Permalink

Does anyone know of a good online guide to updating a website in Dreamweaver? I've been paying a guy £30 a month to update a website but I've decided to take it on myself, and I want to get my head round Dreamweaver myself.

I've got the username, password and ftp details. I'm getting hold of Fireworks (for the photos) and Cuteftp to upload the photos to the ftp server. But I'm clueless as to where to begin with actually sticking this stuff up on the site.

I guess it's all there in the help file but there's so much to wade through I thought I'd try here first. Is it a simple task? (I only need to add some text to a few pages and upload some more photos to a gallery). Can anyone give a quick idiots guide on how to begin?

― Affectian (Affectian), Monday, 27 February 2006 23:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

is it just a gallery type page? if so then it may just be as simple as uploading the file to the right place and the web software will detect the new files and display them with everything else (like flickr does).

failing that you'll have to modify the html to include links to the new pictures.

do you have a url we could look at, to investigate a bit?

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 28 February 2006 10:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

Hi Koogs, thanks for helping. It's a bit trickier than that though - I have to set up a new section for these photos and create a thumbnail pic, etc. The main thing I need to do is add the February bit to http://www.clubclique.co.uk/gallery.htm but I'll also need to change some of the text on 'News' and 'Music'. Would you say it's too difficult for a complete newcomer to work out?

― Affectian (Affectian), Tuesday, 28 February 2006 14:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

(oops, was out at lunch)

well, the next two pictures will be easy enough to add as there are already spaces for them in the table (look for [td width="90"]@nbsp;[/td]* and replace the @nbsp; with a modified copy of the line above). after that you'll need a new table row which is a bit harder (but again just a modified copy of code that's already there).

* i've changed the triangle brackets to [ and ] here and the ampersand to an @ because otherwise the ilx software will throw a wobbly. you should keep them as they were)

the actually gallery pages (the next one will be gallery13.html) can just be modified copies of the pages that already exist, updated for new pictures. ditto the http://www.clubclique.co.uk/gallery_pages_jan06/11.htm type pages. none of this is difficult as long as you're ok with editing files and uploading.

i once wrote something (www.koogy.clara.co.uk/page74/) that had a clever javascript main page and which just let you modify a simple secondary script (http://www.koogy.clara.co.uk/page74/routes.js) and upload that day's image and it'd regenerate itself on the fly. might be an idea for your site.

> Would you say it's too difficult for a complete newcomer to work out?

the tables can be messy if you nest them (yours look ok). look into simple table stuff. and, like i say, as long as you're ok with editing files and uploading then it's fine. the ftp client will typically work just like a file manager. try downloading a copy of what's already there and modifying it locally. point the browser at the local copy and edit it until it looks ok. if it messes up just download it again. rinse, repeat.

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 28 February 2006 15:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

Koogs, thank you very very much. I managed to get a friend to talk me through it step by step but your advice helped me understand it pretty much before that. Sussing out all this was made all the sweeter by aforementioned guy repeatedly saying 'ahh you'll not be able to do it, it's very tricky... just give me a tenner now and it'll all be fine...' - well IN YOUR FACE condescending guy! And thanks Koogs!

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 2 March 2006 00:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

cool. i did have a quick look at it last night and it is the usual dreamweaver mess of tables (triple nested, some with only a single row and single cell = pointless) but just copy and modify what's already there and it'll be fine.

what you could do is change the a:active colour so that links don't disappear when you click on them 8)

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 2 March 2006 09:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

How do I get my phonebook off my mobile phone onto my work PC. I have paired the laptop and phone no problem but what can I use instead of the Mac iSync and Address Book to copy store and manipulate my phone numbers?

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 2 March 2006 12:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

I've got a Toshiba Satellite Pro 2100 laptop, it's kinda old, bought in 2003 but does most things pretty well. I recently upgraded the ram from 256mb to 512mb. It has two slots for ram cards, one has a 512mb card in and the other slot is empty. Today I bought another 512mb card and put it into the spare slot but when I turned the laptop back on it just went BEEEEP BEEEEP BEEEP and the screen stayed black.

I went back to the shop and the shop guy told me that all it means is that the BIOS needs updating, an easy enough job. I've just tried to update the BIOS now and it says 'You do not need to update BIOS'. So now I'm stumped. Have I wasted £40 on a useless bit of plastic or can I sort it out so my laptop can have 1gb of ram? Is a laptop from 2003 likely to be capable of managing 1gb of ram?

― Affectian (Affectian), Monday, 13 March 2006 22:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

Sounds like a memory incompatability or bad stick. Try moving the stick to the other slot and see if it boots normally. The limit for your system is 1024mb, so this shouldn't be a problem. If this fails, exchange the RAM for another similar stick wherever you purchased it.

― ng-unit, Tuesday, 14 March 2006 04:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

so I can't read my secondary hard drive that has thousands of mp3s on it. should I pay for data recovery, or is there something else I can do?

― Sym Sym (sym), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 06:14 (7 years ago) Permalink

Try running a disk scan on it first. Start -> Run -> type "cmd" (no quotes) -> type "cd f:" (no quotes, and the "f" refers to the drive letter -- if it normally mounts as something else, "d" or "g" or whatever, use that) -> type "chkdsk /r" (no quotes) -> type "y" for yes -> reboot

You may not be able to get that far, in which case you could run a hard drive recovery utility to harvest the data. I can't think of any good ones that are free, but they may reveal themselves to you after a google search.

― ng-unit, Tuesday, 14 March 2006 12:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

Xpost x 2, thanks ng-unit. Just emailed Toshiba and found out that my laptop can't cope with more than 512mb of ram. Wish I knew this before splurging £40 on a useless bit of plastic. Ngh. (thanks for the advice though).

Sym Sym, not sure if a hard drive works the same way but I had a memory card full of photos that became corrupt. I downloaded PHOTORECOVERY 3.07 and it retrieved them all no probs. This probably wouldn't work for you but it's worth a try - try Emule for a 'demo' version..

How useful are these data recovery services? Can these people do things that average computer user cannot?

― Affectian (Affectian), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 12:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

There are two levels of data recovery. One involves removing the hard drive from your computer, putting it in an enclosure (or connecting it straight to a computer) and basically treating it as the equivalent of a USB device. The idea is that if the file system is fucked and you're booting into a clean copy of Windows, you can view it as an additional drive and copy the files over easily. Encolsures run about $25 at Comp USA/Micro Center, or you could take it to a repair shop who will charge you whatever the hourly rate is for labor (maybe $80) to copy the files.

The other is when there's physical damage to the drive (i.e. it makes horrible sounds and won't appear in the BIOS as a bootable device). Then you can send it to a company like Drive Savers and prepare to spend $600-1700 for recovery. Even if they can not recover files, you're out the $$$. They do have capabilities that the standard user or your company's tech guy don't, in that they can scrape the data off layer-by-layer and reconstitute it into something usable. Sometimes. I would never recommend this option unless you seriously can not live w/o what you have on your computer.

― ng-unit, Tuesday, 14 March 2006 13:25 (7 years ago) Permalink

any guess on how many hours it would take for the repair people to copy 16 gb of music? i'm pretty sure my stuff is recoverable, but I need to figure out if it's worth paying for.

― Sym Sym (sym), Tuesday, 14 March 2006 17:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

I am trying to wireless up Sgs's laptop. I have stuck a wireless card in it and installed the drivers; at least, the machine now recognises both the card and the fact that there is a wireless network in the vicinity.

However, it can't actually access it. When I try and set it up, it gets stuck on "renewing IP address" and fails to connect to it. Anything I can do to make it connect to our wireless network successfully?

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 17 March 2006 11:36 (7 years ago) Permalink

when you say 'set up' where exactly are you?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 17 March 2006 11:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

When I try and set it up, it gets stuck on "renewing IP address" and fails to connect to it

That means it's trying to find a DHCP server, and can't. Giving it a static IP address on the same subnet will work, but if you're trying to use a DHCP server it might cause clashes in the future.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 17 March 2006 11:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

(I'm assuming it can actually connect to the wireless network itself)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 17 March 2006 11:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

see i wouldn't have known that anyway

quickie - is there a way in WinXP to minimise all windows with one click, like you can in win98?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 17 March 2006 12:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

Windows Key + D

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Friday, 17 March 2006 12:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

I send a mailout every month for this clubnight I run. I use Gmail but it takes a fair while having to click on each name in turn, and you can only send 100 at a time and 500 in one day. It's taking a few hours to sort out. Can anyone suggest a better way of doing it? Is there a program that I can stick all these email addresses in and it'll do it quickly and easily?

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 23 March 2006 19:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

If I need to do that - and I used to in previous jobs - I find a computer with a decent command shell and a command-line mail-sending program; that makes it very easy to do.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

I don't think my pc could handle that, it's a basic laptop. I was thinking more of a program I could download and use with my gmail as the return address. Someone just mentioned a listbot or mailshot program, do you or anyone know the best place to start with them?

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 23 March 2006 20:13 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm sorry, I don't know of any myself. There are a *lot*, though, most of them optimised for dodgy purposes.

I could probably write you a command-line one myself - but you'd have to install Perl on your laptop.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 24 March 2006 08:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

(and you'd need to make sure you knew a few details about your ISP's outgoing mailserver, too)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 24 March 2006 08:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

(and it's still only a "probably" - I don't want to get you overexcited here)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 24 March 2006 08:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

see i wouldn't have known that anyway

quickie - is there a way in WinXP to minimise all windows with one click, like you can in win98?

-- Ste

or if you want "like Windows 98" right click on the taskbar, and turn quick launch on. That "show desktop" button will be in there. (or right-click > show desktop, even quicker).

― file under cozy techno (fandango), Friday, 24 March 2006 08:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

hi my three-year-old iBook G3 has just started fucking up. It freezes and the screen blinks after about 10 mins of use, then it seems to turn on but nothing is visible on the screen. any thoughts? is this gonna ruin it forever???

― Barnaby (Barnaby), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 10:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

MY WOES
laptop #1: purchased jan 03, works fine till april 05, when windows crashes and becomes corrupted somehow, meaning laptop will no longer restart. i am flying to LA on business this day and need laptop.

purchase laptop #2 later that day, april 05. intend to get laptop #1 fixed, but PC World cover tell me that due to it being a software problem, it is not their problem. i work out that if i reinstall windows, i get laptop working perhaps, but also lose 4 years of writing on laptop HD which i have cleverly yet to back up on External HD.

april 06, power socket on laptop #2 is seriously unreliable - making a connection is a tricky business of tweaking and twitching, and sometimes it feels like the only way to keep power going/battery juiced is to physically hold cable plug in place. this is not good.

i can get laptop #2 fixed under PC World Cover, if i could find paperwork, but will be without laptop for abt 3 days i guess, which is NOT GOOD (tho i have backed up laptop #2 HD on external HD). a friend has offered to try and get files off laptop #1 and put on external HD, but #1 it is a friend, so i don't want to pressurise them into doing it, and #2, i don't know if its possible. if it did work, i could theoretically 'fix' laptop#1 and operate it while #2 is being fixed.

argh. woe. and it is, of course, all my lazy ass's fault. but is there any way of feeding laptop #2 electricity via some source other than the power cable/socket?

as you may have guessed, i know not much about computers.

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 11:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'd pressurise that friend if I were you. If they get the files off the first HD, all's well. If the laptop gets fixed, you've got a spare to use whilst the second is off being fixed.

Don't PC World do 'while you wait' repairs, or something?

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 12:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

i popped in this morning to pick up the external hard drive to find lots of peeps arguing over that very fact. i'm just assuming that they suck so hard that it won't be a reasonable option.

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 12:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'd pressurise that friend if I were you. If they get the files off the first HD, all's well.

so this does sound do-able, then?

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 12:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Sure try a linux live cd for computer #1.

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

― svend (svend), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 12:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

all of a sudden, I can't send out attachments, through any of my webmail programs. what the hell? could this be a norton antivirus or windows firewall thing? when I try I wind up getting a javascript alert that says "document contains to data".

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 12:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

er, very strange, it seems to be ONLY a zip of mp3s that cannot be sent. .zips of everything else are fine, as are other documents.

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

thank you svend! and james too!

― i am not a nugget (stevie), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:18 (7 years ago) Permalink

anyone tried the hardware based firewall Stingray ST-100? http://www.stingrayinc.com/products.htm

― rory@, Tuesday, 4 April 2006 19:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

I wonder if my wireless router already give me the same protection.

if it would be safer in some ways, how would I plug it: between the modem and the wireless router?

― rory@, Tuesday, 4 April 2006 19:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

how would I plug it: between the modem and the wireless router?

Yes.

I wonder if my wireless router already give me the same protection.

Yes.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 05:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

(probably)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 05:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

Is it possible to set environment variables on a remote machine as part of the ssh command when logging in? In other words, I have a script that extracts my VPN IP address on my laptop, and I'd like to automatically have $DISPLAY set to this address when ssh'ing into remote machines, so I can view xterms etc from the laptop.

I was thinking something along the lines of

alias ssh="ssh username@remote-machine 'setenv DISPLAY `~/get_vpn_ip.sh`; xterm &'"

...but that doesn't seem to work.

Any ideas?

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 10:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

doesn't ssh -X work?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 10:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

(the -X option does some monkeying around with $DISPLAY in your remote session particularly to sort this sort of thing out)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 10:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

O RLY? I will check it out.

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 10:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

Aha, this doesn't work because ssh is picking up the wrong IP address (the non-VPN one). So I need to manually pass it the VPN IP.

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 11:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ah, no, sorry, ssh -X does work, but the job dispatcher doesn't respect it so I get no forwarding from the job cluster to the login machine (it's kinda convoluted how it all works). Bugger.

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 11:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

Anyway, for a more generic solution to the original question: what you could do is modify your .bashrc (or equivalent) on the remote machine so that it sets up the environment properly if you're logging in via ssh. Check for the presence of one of the ssh-specific variables such as $SSH_CONNECTION and behave appropriately.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 11:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Alternatively, another way to pass environment variables is to do this:

ssh -X user@host "VARIABLE_THERE=\"$VARIABLE_HERE\" bash -il"

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 11:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

i dont understand computers:(

i have a mac. i also have a linksys nslu2, and a lacie external drive. the linksys has formatted the lacie to ext3, and i mount the drive remotely and it appears as a locally connected drive. so, for, all good.

the thing is, i want to be able to do this in the terminal window. but it wont do it. something about an 'unknown or special file system'. what should i do, in the terminal to be able to mount this? (yes, i know i could just do it in finder, but i want to know why this wont work).

is it something to do with hfs and ext3? i dont know much about this, and ive tried to work it out, but i dont really get it

― terry lennox. (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 17:25 (7 years ago) Permalink

If you're mounting it as a remote drive, connected through the Linksys box, the fact that it's formatted as ext3 shouldn't make any difference. That only matters if you've connected it directly to your mac.

Try running the mount command from the terminal, without any options at all, when the drive is mounted in the Finder. That should just list all mounted drives, and their filesystem types, which should be a clue as to what options you need to pass to the mount command to mount it manually.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

tangent: let's say i got a new (windows) computer and am installing a bunch of stuff. several of these programs require reboots. do i have to reboot each time or can i wait and reboot once after installing everything?

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:29 (7 years ago) Permalink

ssh -X is so cute... like we actually want to run X11 apps? :D

― Ichigo (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

You seem to be forgetting that not every computer in the world is the one on your desk.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

You seem to be forgetting that X11 is awful.

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:46 (7 years ago) Permalink

mount command gives me

//WORKGROUP;music@LACIE/MUSIC on /Volumes/WORKGROUP;LACIE (nodev, nosuid, mounted by charltonlido)

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

And my alternative choice is...?

(xpost)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

I have not had much luck with cmdline disk stuff in OSX -- see man(8) diskutil

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

xpost

why do you need remote gui appz

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm not very familiar with that on OS X either. However, if you read the documentation for the mount command ("man mount"), you should hopefully be able to use the information it's given you to assemble a usable mount command line.

However, the bit I'd be expecting that I can't see there is the most important bit: the filesystem type. On the other hand, the UNC-style hostname format makes me think it might be connecting using SMB (the Windows filesharing protocol).

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

tangent: let's say i got a new (windows) computer and am installing a bunch of stuff. several of these programs require reboots. do i have to reboot each time or can i wait and reboot once after installing everything?

Unless there is some dependency between the programs (like one has to be installed before you can install the other) then I think it's fine to wait and reboot after installing everything.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

John, mainframe/terminal is coming back as the thin client. We are testing thin clients with a view to replacing windows boxen. X11 serves it's purpose.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 18:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

John, mainframe/terminal is coming back as the thin client. We are testing thin clients with a view to replacing windows boxen. X11 serves it's purpose.

1) "Jon"
2) Are you a CS department in 1989?

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:00 (7 years ago) Permalink

why do you need remote gui appz

So your point isn't that X11 apps are rubbish - it's that we shouldn't be using GUI apps remotely at all? Why not? You may as well say: why use a GUI at all? You might not have noticed, but running remote GUI apps is one of the fundamental points of X's design.

Unless there is some dependency between the programs (like one has to be installed before you can install the other) then I think it's fine to wait and reboot after installing everything.

Yes, I often do this; it's nearly always fine.

(one thing I hate: installer programs that force a reboot and make it very hard to stop it happening. Logitech, particularly, have a habit of doing this)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

WHY DO YOU NEED *REMOTE* GUI APPS?

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

i seem to be asking for help at the wrong time:/ is this mounting thing being a problem, a darwin thing? i should be able to mount a drive more easily than this shouldn't i?

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:12 (7 years ago) Permalink

It can't be a Darwin problem if the Finder has mounted the drive in such a way that it shows up from the command line.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

is it a small brain problem? :(

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:20 (7 years ago) Permalink

Nah, it's just that the mount command must need some obscure option setting. Most likely, you need to tell it what protocol to use to talk to the LaCie box.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

WHY DO YOU NEED *REMOTE* GUI APPS?

Again, why do you need ANY GUI apps?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

porn

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

so, ok, if i abandon this idea, how do i automount?

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

oh for fucks sake, it wont let me switch to root, because it doesnt like my password.

maybe i should take up some kind of outdoor pursuit instead, like tennis

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:31 (7 years ago) Permalink

so, ok, if i abandon this idea, how do i automount?

Sorry, I can't help you on that one.

porn

Good point.

A friend of mine kept a roll of "ASCII"-art porn in his desk drawer for thirty years. It was a telex print test file that a telex engineer had given him just after he'd started, when he was a teenager.

(it wasn't actually ASCII art, because Telexes - ones on the British telex system, anyway - weren't ASCII; they used 5-bit Baudot code)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

wow :D

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

Gareth, ask the question at macosxhints.com you will get an authoratitive answer.

Running gui apps remotely (through x11, citrix or whatever) has the potential to reduce our software licencing costs significantly. We only need 1 licence of loads of infrequently used but important apps to support all the users who need to use them. Plus we can concentrate all of the computing power in one place, office desktops are over specced for the use they are put to. We reckon we can service our productivity needs with two dual xeon servers, we need more power we upgrade or add to the servers, not to the desks.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

Interesting.... I would think that Citrix or rdesktop or vnc would be better than X11 for that.

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

They're still mechanisms for running graphical apps remotely, which you said was completely unnecessary.

There are an awful lot of graphical programs - mostly Windows ones - that I have to control remotely; to avoid going through to the server room, or to avoid a 50-mile drive. I wish there was a more flexible way to control remote applications on Windows, rather than using one of those entire-desktop mechanisms.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 19:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

yes it appears to be smb/cifs, whatever that is

i'll ask it on that machints site tomorrow, i had thought this mounting business would be easy, i have to admit.

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 21:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

its strange though, i had forgotten how computers can make a feeling of anger, at own inability, to do a simple thing

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 21:04 (7 years ago) Permalink

i think i would like to throw the computer on the floor

perhaps, it would be better if i went to bed

― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 21:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

I have no need for forwarding X11 GUI apps, I just need a console, but the stupid job despatch system insists on giving you back an xterm, hence the need to forward :(

(many xposts)

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 21:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

it appears to be smb/cifs, whatever that is

It's the Windows filesharing protocol.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 04:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

They're still mechanisms for running graphical apps remotely, which you said was completely unnecessary.

EXCEPT IF YOU USE STUPID APPS

X11 is a bitch

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Thursday, 6 April 2006 05:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yes, well. ALL software is shit in one way or another.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 05:29 (7 years ago) Permalink

except perl

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Thursday, 6 April 2006 05:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh no, perl is shit in lots of ways too. But it has enough good points to make up for it.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

they just told me to use diskutil:/

thing is, if i mount my mp3 player, like this

diskutil mount /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/JUKEBOX

it works fine, but the same syntax for the lacie, doesnt

diskutil mount //WORKGROUP;music@LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/WORKGROUP;LACIE

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

or

diskutil mount //WORKGROUP;music@LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

its all this workgroup business, that seems to be confusing things, well, confusing me

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

See, I'd expect you to have to pass the workgroup/username information as a separate option.

I take it that the hostname is "LACIE", the workgroup/domain is "WORKGROUP" and the username is "music". In that case, if we were talking the Linux version of mount, the command would be:

mount -t smbfs -o "username=WORKGROUP/music" //LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

well, nearly!

i try this

$ mount -t smbfs //LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

it asks me for a password, which i give, then it gives me

mount_smbfs: mount error: /Volumes/MUSIC: syserr = Resource busy

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:46 (7 years ago) Permalink

also, it asks me for a password, but not a username, and there are multiple usernames for this drive

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

Ah.

Try putting -o "username=[...]" after the -t smbfs option.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 06:58 (7 years ago) Permalink

no, i tried that, doesnt like it

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 07:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

option not supported

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 07:03 (7 years ago) Permalink

Bah.

Does 'man mount' have a section for smb/cifs-specific options? Is there a separate 'smbmount' command with its own manual page?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 07:09 (7 years ago) Permalink

it...works!

i have to make the directory first, it seems. is this really right?

so, it goes

mkdir /Volumes/MUSIC

mount -t smbfs //LACIE/MUSIC /Volumes/MUSIC

and it mounts:)

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 09:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

i have to make the directory first, it seems. is this really right?

Yes. You only have to do it once, of course.

If you put files in the directory when the remote disk isn't mounted, they will be inaccessible when it is.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 09:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

oh i see, the drive was never there in the first place!

though, how come, i didnt need to do this for the archos mp3 player?

and, why did i have to use diskutil mount for the archos, and just plain ol' mount for the lacie?

― charltonlido (gareth), Thursday, 6 April 2006 09:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

The mp3 player presents itself to the system as a type of disk. The lacie box doesn't - it is visible as a computer with shared folders.

I don't know why one needs diskutil, but it's probably because of the access permissions on the device node (the "/dev/disk1s1" file)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 11:11 (7 years ago) Permalink

Also if you want a command with a semi colon in it to execute you have to escape or quote it.

I don't know why one needs diskutil, but it's probably because of the access permissions on the device node (the "/dev/disk1s1" file)

BECUZ OS X DOESN'T USE FSTAB

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Thursday, 6 April 2006 14:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

That's irrelevant.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 14:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

(mount doesn't use fstab at all anyway if you specify both the device and mountpoint, so neither of those commands would face fstab-related issues.)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 6 April 2006 14:51 (7 years ago) Permalink

Hey all,

I'm using Sarah's laptop to post this as I seem to have a pretty sever problem with mine. When I boot up, the internet works for a couple of minutes at a snail's pace before crunching to a halt. The wireless connection seems fine; Sarah's PC works okay, and even mine says the connection is excellent. So why are AIM, firefox, MSN and IE all having the same problem? Literally after a minute or two, they just don't connect any more.

The troubleshooting sections are useless because, as far as I know, no settings or whatever have been changed. My only possible thought is hat I knocked the (closed) laptop off the table onto the carpet a couple of days ago, though it *has* worked fine since then.

So what could be wrong with these browsers, crawling for a very short while before dying? Help desperately sought!

― Mark C on sgs's machine (sgs), Thursday, 6 April 2006 20:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Gah. It's not even working for a short while now. I hate this - it's so much more evil when you can't put your finger on the problem.

― Mark gain (sgs), Thursday, 6 April 2006 20:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

maybe your computer has been hijacked and all the bandwidth is being used for nefarious purposes?

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 April 2006 20:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

Maybe... but my virus/spyware thingy should be able to tell, right? And the connection doesn't show lots of packets being sent or received - just static, unmoving nothingness.

― sgs (sgs), Thursday, 6 April 2006 20:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

If you open up task manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC) and look at the networking tab, you'll see what activity is going on. Is the CPU going crazy too? Is it just internet access that's slow or is everything else slow too?

― KeefW (kmw), Thursday, 6 April 2006 21:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

Hey Keith! No, nothing is going mental.

Hmm - I have accessed a neighbour's unsecured wireless network and IT WORKS. That's interesting. I am going to try going back to mine...

― Mark (sgs), Thursday, 6 April 2006 21:06 (7 years ago) Permalink

Hi Mark,

What a kind neighbour. To be honest, your problem sounds like mine, but what's puzzling is that your computer works. What model is the wireless router and what's the ISP? That's my problem (one of them; it's not clear which).

― KeefW (kmw), Thursday, 6 April 2006 21:08 (7 years ago) Permalink

okay, now that one has disconnected (but it's strength is low so...) and I am reconnected to mine, but again, no actual internet and no action at all in that "networking" tab in the task manager.

Oh god, I don't know the wireless router model - it's in the bedroom and Sarah is asleep. However, as you can tell this (i.e. her) PC works just fine, so I'm not sure it can be the router's or the ISP's fault!

― Mark (sgs), Thursday, 6 April 2006 21:10 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, it's certainly very odd. Can't think of anything else obvious off the top of my head, but I'll give it some thought. Maybe Deano will have an idea.

― KeefW (kmw), Thursday, 6 April 2006 21:14 (7 years ago) Permalink

Every now and again a few bytes of internet wil get through, which is even weirder. The whole thing seems screwed!

I also notice Sarah's PC, while working okay, isn't exactly fast tonight. Could there be any connection?

― Mark (sgs), Thursday, 6 April 2006 22:02 (7 years ago) Permalink

(mount doesn't use fstab at all anyway if you specify both the device and mountpoint, so neither of those commands would face fstab-related issues.)

The full set of options used by an invocation of mount is determined by
first extracting the options for the file system from the fstab table,
then applying any options specified by the -o argument, and finally
applying a -r or -w option, when present.

― LOL PWNED (ex machina), Thursday, 6 April 2006 22:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Anyway, apple just wanted to put all the disk/volume management shit in a single command i wager

― LOL PWNED (ex machina), Thursday, 6 April 2006 22:16 (7 years ago) Permalink

Could be, but I still think it's likely to be because of the device node permissions too.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 7 April 2006 05:29 (7 years ago) Permalink

(deano doesn't do wireless and / or broadband, he is a wired, dialup kinda guy. or any versions of windows past 98 for that matter. he is firmly stuck in the mid 90s.)

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 7 April 2006 06:40 (7 years ago) Permalink

BECUZ OS X DOESN'T USE FSTAB

oh! i was just coming to ask about this! so, instead of using fstab to automount, how should i do it?

― charltonlido (gareth), Friday, 7 April 2006 12:35 (7 years ago) Permalink

oh for fucks sake, it wont let me switch to root, because it doesnt like my password.

sudo bash.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 7 April 2006 13:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

charlton I'm sure macosxhints.com has some info. You can also put shortcuts to network volumes in startup items...

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Friday, 7 April 2006 15:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

Still confused Mark, but if the PC's exhibiting problems, then the router/ISP thing might have something to do with it. I have a Netgear DG834GT that UK Online forced me to buy and certainly it or them is my problem. They haven't replied to my email of a week ago yet. It does exhibit similar symptoms to you, but on both my machines equally.

Never mind Deano: I'll bear that in mind if I have any X.25 issues in future. In the mid '90s weren't you firmly rooted in the mid '80s?

― KeefW (kmw), Friday, 7 April 2006 16:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

Thanks Keith - your posts were like manna in my hour of need last night. I'll try it out again this evening and if iut's still screwed I'll try reinstalling, rebooting, just turning shit on and off and seeing what happens.

Down in London soon, by any chance?

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 7 April 2006 16:32 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm having similar probs with my WinME desktop (all right, stop laughing) connecting to my Wanadoo Livebox (I said ENOUGH!) with a the little Belkin 802.11g USB thing I bought a few months back.

Sony VAIO WinXP laptop happily communicates with the Livebox using its internal WLAN (no need for the supplied Wanadoo USB dongle) and the desktop did have broadband when wired into the Livebox with the supplied ethernet cable. But now the desktop is upstairs (where it will stay) and wireless connection for both is required.

Desktop plus Belkin adaptor worked OK into the next-door neighbour's unsecured network at the old house, so I know it works in principle. Livebox shows up in the AP list but when I attempt to set up a profile with the 128-bit WEP key and then connect to it just sort of sits there, with a little red cross next to it.

Might go back to trying the Wanadoo USB dongle with the desktop (which didn't work before)...

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Friday, 7 April 2006 16:38 (7 years ago) Permalink

Thim sent me a text the other week asking about visits - up here and down there, but then the bugger didn't reply to my answer! I will need to "rattle his cage". I'll actually be at ATP this year for a friend's thirtieth so I might be in London for one night only or something like that... I'll certainly let people know.

128 bit key eh Mike? You must have something worth stealing!

― KeefW (kmw), Friday, 7 April 2006 17:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

my dell inspiron 6000 has been having some wireless issues. the speed has slowed to the point that i can't even send anything via ysi anymore, it takes forever and eventually just goes to the ol "cannot find server" page. interestingly, my download rate doesn't seem to have slowed much if at all.

and i've been trying to send an MP3 file for the past ten minute via yahoo, it's still trying to attach it...

my wireless speed is 11.0 Mbps

― gear (gear), Friday, 7 April 2006 19:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

128 bit key eh Mike? You must have something worth stealing!

What's more I now know the 26-character hex string off by heart as I've typed it in so many times...

HOWEVER, as this post verifies, it's now working. I gave up on the Belkin adapter (I'll sell it on eBay or something) and gave the Inventel adapter that came with the Livebox another go. No good at first until I manually reinstalled the drivers for it off the CD-ROM; still no good until I uninstalled all the Belkin crap and rebooted. Now all is well and we have broadband upstairs and down...

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Friday, 7 April 2006 21:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

just had a disk die on me, oh noes. luckily it was 8G of random linux distro scratch disk and not anything important (i hope). am off to spend the rest of the weekend backing things up... if anyone else has samsung drives from, er, the previous century i suggest you do the same 8)

(yes keith, i will be backing things up to floppies, 8" floppies)

> my wireless speed is 11.0 Mbps

48,000 here.

― koogs (koogs), Saturday, 8 April 2006 13:42 (7 years ago) Permalink

(oh, the annoying thing is that two weeks ago i went and bought a hard disk cradle from maplins so i could finally install disk #3 in the other box. now i have one spare...)

― koogs (koogs), Saturday, 8 April 2006 13:44 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm having similar probs with my WinME desktop (all right, stop laughing) connecting to my Wanadoo Livebox (I said ENOUGH!) with a the little Belkin 802.11g USB thing I bought a few months back.

Does this computer have USB2.0 or 1.0 slots, or a mix of both, or something?

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Saturday, 8 April 2006 14:37 (7 years ago) Permalink

Andy... Andy... Deano... 8" floppies are a spot new aren't they? They're in the space shuttle. I'd hoped you'd have gone for the classic S/370 reel-to-reel tape system; the type I'm having amazing difficulty locating a picture of, despite their ubiquity in the background of '70s films.

It should fit into one of these: http://www.corestore.org/370168-1.jpg

Keith Emerson's very own computer. From the days when IBM could teach Apple a thing or two about 2001-style aesthetics, although Apple didn't exist I suppose.

― KeefW (kmw), Saturday, 8 April 2006 16:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

About five years back, the analytical department at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh still had lots of 8" floppies kicking around too; but nothing to read them on that still worked.

I'd hoped you'd have gone for the classic S/370 reel-to-reel tape system

Here's an even older one, from an IBM 705:


― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Saturday, 8 April 2006 16:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

yeah, i do have two 8" floppies at home but have never seen a drive that'll read them (i think they are 370K or something). we did have a open-reel tape reader and those 5-platter 250M 12" diameter disk drives though, used them all the time. never seen a core store either but could still draw you a diagram of how they work... (http://davidguy.brinkster.net/computer/016.html)

new question, how do i write a profanity filter? i need to check a stream of words against a lexicon of rudity but how do i do it so as not to annoy the good people of scunthorpe by blocking references to their no-doubt lovely town? (um, have a whitelist and a blacklist, check the incoming message a word at a time against both, full word check against whitelist, accept if matches, substring search all the rude words in the current text word, reject if matches?) how do i stop people f u c k i n g about with spaces? or using pretty average words to describe rude things (ie 'your mother blows goats')? interesting. (java btw, not my choice)

― koogs (koogs), Monday, 10 April 2006 13:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

I dunno how you'd go about writing a good one, without spending a significant amount of time on it. Noticing fucking around with spaces is easy enough I guess, with regular expressions, but phraseology is probably very tricky and would either need a huge amount of time programming well-known rude phrases, or a big list of rude words and training with a Hopfield net. Could be an interesting few weeks. You'd probably root out most of it with a fairly simple Regex matching thing, though.

If it were me, I'd not be wanting to write this, but buy one in. Though, I've just had a look on the usual places and can't find one off hand, at least not one that's not tightly-bound to something else (message board software, typically). What bad design.

― KeefW (kmw), Monday, 10 April 2006 16:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

not to annoy the good people of scunthorpe by blocking references to their no-doubt lovely town?

I can tell you've never been ;-)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 10 April 2006 16:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

it'll end up being as specced above with a whitelist and a blacklist without any kind of semantic checking. as a final test i might remove all the non-alphabetics and check it again for rudeness, that'll be enough. (have just got test article to use, 'who the f*ck are the art1c m0nkeys' complete with made up p3t3 d0h3r7y quotes. somebody had fun... ('mutha' and 'fuckin' is the extent of their cunning. oh, and 'Shitake', nothing the current design won't handle)

― koogs (koogs), Monday, 10 April 2006 16:50 (7 years ago) Permalink

Tracer gave me some good advice on another thread, but has anyone had any experience with a whirring clicking unhappy sound, frequent freezings, and difficulty turning off and back on--after freezings? Using a Mac powerbook here. Problems seem most acute when using iTunes (I've been on the internet for about an hour and it hasn't froze--which is good for the past couple of days.

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:14 (7 years ago) Permalink

my unprofessional diagnosis is that it's fucked, and you should take it to the nearest repair shop quick-smart.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

Mary you should see how much space you have free on your hard drive, too. If it's less than 10% free, that is almost certainly your problem.

Also, how much RAM do you have?

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:30 (7 years ago) Permalink

I would agree with Simon, I think your hard drive is nearing the end of its life. I would make sure you back up important data ASAP. Sorry for this to be bad news, but mechanical noises like this are typically serious hardware problems.

― KeefW (kmw), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

bump?

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 22:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

Hi! I had to let it sleep for a while because it was refusing to run. I think the problem is stemming from the iTunes--it was fine for an hour while I was just on the Internet, but the minute I went into iTunes, it started to malfunction. I downloaded the new version of iTunes, but that didn't help. I'm doing a dorky school project which involves filling in a lot of the information tags for the songs, and I don't think Mac is happy.

I have 10GB of space left and 512 RAM and this past week is the first time I've had these types of problems. I fear you naysaying diagnoticians are right. The only okay part is that it is still under apple care, but such a pain to lose all my data. (I'm not really sure how to back up everything--I don't have an external hard drive.) Okay, I'm gonna stay out of iTunes for awhile and see if it can survive enough to do the Dublin Core part of the project. Thanks everyone. The weird thing is when OSX dies it doesn't even give you a clue, besides the whirring and not working, that is. When my black powerbook died at least it had the decency to let me know its days were numbered, with little messages.

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 10 April 2006 23:01 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, if you've got AppleCare that's the way to go. Not sure the best way to back up w/o an external drive, but you could start by burning your Documents folder to CD (or maybe you'd want to start with Music... the "M" section, specifically) .. if you can make DVDs then even better.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 23:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

Heh, I can't make DVDs (I'm sure you're not surprised.) There is a new development. Our power just went out and we tried to flick the switch and the lights came on for a moment and then turned off, then I unplugged my computer and the lights came on and stayed on. Poltergeist inside Mac?

― Mary (Mary), Tuesday, 11 April 2006 00:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

Disk Utility has something that can usually detect a drive going dodgy... it should be listed as "SMART status" for the drive or some such thing.

Get a cheapo external firewire drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner (freeware) to clone your machine to it weekly. It uses an rsyncish thing so it runs in like 20 minutes usually once its initialized. If your drive dies, you can boot off the fw drive until you replace the laptop drive. This saved my ass once.

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Tuesday, 11 April 2006 00:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

How do I make my own font? Is there a program I can download where I can scan in individual characters (in my own handwriting) to create a full font? If I use this on a website, am I likely to have any problems will it - will people be able to see the text ok?

Also, is there an audio equivalent to Youtube? A place where I can link to low-quality soundfiles that are hosted by that site (apart from myspace - unless there's a way of embedding a myspace songfile into a normal webpage)?

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 13 April 2006 21:17 (7 years ago) Permalink

Making a font is hard.

― Fight the Real Enemy -- Tasti D-Lite (ex machina), Thursday, 13 April 2006 21:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

There are quite a few handwriting->font programs.

Try http://www.fontifier.com/

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 13 April 2006 22:22 (7 years ago) Permalink

Thanks for that, it looks pretty much perfect though I'm concerned that the text might not show up to site-visitors who don't have that font.

What about if we embedded the text into the page as an image file? (Sorry if I'm using silly terminology here, I'm new to this). It'd mean the text couldn't be copied but it'd show up fine wouldn't it?

Also, has anyone ever registered a website in the Cook Islands? I know, I know, it's terribly childish. It's for a friend, honest. A site I found stated 30 euros for activation and 344 euros (!) for 2 years hosting. This seems ridiculous.

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 13 April 2006 22:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, if people don't have your font installed (which they won't) then they won't see it if you specify it in HTML. If you really want everyone to see it in your font you'll have to just save the text you type as an image file - a gif is a gif is a gif. I think gif is better than jpeg for clean lines but I might be wrong on that. But if you're doing it as an image file then there might be not much point turning it into a font in the first place. You might as well just write what you want and scan it in. But maybe you want to use it standardised over and over.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 13 April 2006 22:39 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, and it's easier to use if there's a lot of text. Thanks for the help with that.

― Affectian (Affectian), Thursday, 13 April 2006 22:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think gif is better than jpeg for clean lines but I might be wrong on that.

You're right there. If you want an image of some text, or a line drawing, you probably want either .gif or .png, not jpeg.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 14 April 2006 08:19 (7 years ago) Permalink

i require a gentle poke in the right direction, any help gratefully recieved-->

i want to set up a shared resource ftp site, whereby people can email files to me to be automatically uploaded to certain folders on the webspace, based on certain words or codes in the subject line or filename.

Is this possible?

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Thursday, 20 April 2006 17:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

Yes, if you pay me $300

― JW (ex machina), Thursday, 20 April 2006 17:24 (7 years ago) Permalink

is it possible to do it without paying you $300?

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Thursday, 20 April 2006 18:49 (7 years ago) Permalink

you could pay me $900

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 20 April 2006 18:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

If you learn to program. xpost

― JW (ex machina), Thursday, 20 April 2006 18:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

aw man, i was hoping there'd be a magical checkbox in outlook or something.

(would it be a big job? i know a computer dood who owes me, but only a small favour)

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Thursday, 20 April 2006 18:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

depends

― JW (ex machina), Thursday, 20 April 2006 18:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

on what, his skills?

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Thursday, 20 April 2006 19:05 (7 years ago) Permalink

scripting ftp uploads isn't difficult, at least not on unix (use curl commandline or the libraries for your script language of choice). parsing values out of mail headers also isn't difficult, on unix. putting it together securely and so that it doesn't break when someone decides to email you video is another thing. using windows and outlook, well, that'll be $1000.

another question. database data. how do you keep decent copies of the data in your databases under versioned source control (svn here)? we used to mysqldump the data out to text files, one or more per table, and stick these in cvs (mysqldump writes data out as sql inserts so re-inserting it is a doddle). but then we moved to Oracle. we also have, much to my chagrin, binary data in the various tables (images, which start off as files anyway, ffs).

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 21 April 2006 09:52 (7 years ago) Permalink

If you use a binary diffing algorithm between versions of the files, is there a reasonably small diff? Subversion IIRC has a good binary diff but you won't be able to see the diff in the same way.

― JW (ex machina), Friday, 21 April 2006 10:23 (7 years ago) Permalink

'versions of the files'? what do you mean? the image files? (they are only stored as database entries, the actual files are elsewhere.) the raw db files?

the problem isn't really the binary nature of the data. the binary stuff makes it more difficult but the main problem is just getting db info into and out of svn the same way you would with code. it strikes me as an obvious thing to want to do but i can't find much in the way of solutions (googling 'svn database' gets you the wrong stuff). we've written our own scripts 3 or 4 times now over the years and are fed up of wheel reinvention.

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 21 April 2006 10:43 (7 years ago) Permalink

Oh, I misread, what you were saying! (not even 8am here) I thought you meant that the DB dumps were some mysterious binary format.

re: paragraph 2. It doesn't seem like THAT huge of a task.

― JW (ex machina), Friday, 21 April 2006 10:47 (7 years ago) Permalink

rather than getting them to e-mail you attachments and work out how to divvy them out to folders, i'd set up an anon FTP "drop box" (i.e. one you can't see in but can upload to) for ppl to upload stuff to, and use agreed prefixes in the file name to redistribute. that would be a doddle to write - poll folder, move files into place (poss renaming). tho that does depend on ppl being able to use simple FTP. or with a little more work use an "upload" web form

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Friday, 21 April 2006 10:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

Andy,

I've never heard anyone ask for this before but you could try using DBUnit, which is really an application for extracting data (as XML) and reloading it into a database to clear it back to a known state prior to running unit tests; however, it would probably work for what you need it to do.

http://dbunit.sourceforge.net/

It's quite clever in that it looks at RI constraints and extracts in the right order so that you can reload without dropping relationships.

― KeefW (kmw), Friday, 21 April 2006 13:49 (7 years ago) Permalink

new question: I frequently have problems DLing streaming media on winXP with media player 10. It works better on certain sites than other, but is generally flaky and never works 100% of the time.

I've messed around with my internet security settings as well as the MP "network" settings for streaming media, and while sometimes i get something to work, it's never consistent. also, I do have windows firewall working.

I'll click the DL button on a given webpage, MP will open up, but then i'll get an "unable to open file" popup. what gives? what could this problem be, and how do i go about fixing it?

I want to be able to consistently DL ABBA's video of the day, dammit!

― AaronK (AaronK), Friday, 21 April 2006 14:07 (7 years ago) Permalink

ah, mr W. apparently that was what he was looking into this morning when the discussion came up and he says it looks quite handy (and being java / ant based it slips right into what we are doing). cheers.

(why, when i cut and paste from firefox into outlook does it paste my buffer as an attachment rather than just pasting the text straight into the email? think it might be a character set thing but it's most annoying.)

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 21 April 2006 14:26 (7 years ago) Permalink

um, i have a file: link on a page but firefox is refusing to show me the target when i click on it.

it works ok as a file: link from a html document stored locally (even though the file: link goes to a box elsewhere on the network), it doesn't work when same link in the same html document is served up over http from a third box (our wiki). why? seems to be a firefox specific feature because it's fine in IE.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 27 April 2006 14:45 (7 years ago) Permalink

security.

― JW (ex machina), Thursday, 27 April 2006 14:48 (7 years ago) Permalink

What a great security feature!

I wonder if Firefox's security could be improved by not letting you browse the web. Or Microsoft could 'beef up' their security by not letting you boot into Windows...

I might try an experiment soon. Given that I've suffered from two, insignificant viruses in the last 26 years, during which I've been running a virus killer/firewall etc. for say 18 months, I might just turn all the security features off and see if anything bad happens. I suspect it won't.

― KeefW (kmw), Friday, 28 April 2006 06:59 (7 years ago) Permalink

a colleague came in on tuesday and said that his sister had accidently plugged her laptop into the internet with no firewall and only SP1. said it was overrun by the end of the day.

those file: links always used to work - there are older links in the wiki that i'd been using fine (for firefox there needed to be 5 /s after the http: for some reason). they have stopped, i guess since the upgrade to FF1.5

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 28 April 2006 07:21 (7 years ago) Permalink

I think you're the only person I know that's had bad stuff done to by a virus, when you sent me an email on Friday 13th, 1997 or so to ask why a computer at work had broken!

― KeefW (kmw), Friday, 28 April 2006 09:55 (7 years ago) Permalink

my lsptop seems to have DIED! oh noes! ok so the screen has been cracked for ages but the actual computer worked fine. recently the screen's been going a bit woozy brighter-darker-brighter-darker but i thought it was to do with the power lead because it also sometimes thinks it's on battery power when the power lead is actually plugged in (this is v recent development, like a couple of weeks). last time i used it (thurs night) it was woozy but working. last night i switched it on EXCEPT I DIDN'T! help! it made a noise like click-click-click like it was TRYING to switch on but it couldn't. nothing appeared on the screen, but the three little green lights (one next to a battery sign, one a power sign, the other i can't remember) lit up.

what can i try plz? even working for teh corporate devil i STILL has no £££.

― emskatwork, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:33 (7 years ago) Permalink

can you plug it into an external monitor? my first thought is that the screen has finally popped its clogs.

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:41 (7 years ago) Permalink

i thought that too - my housemate has my old monitor but i dunno where! the strange noise is a bit of a worry too though..

― emskatwork, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:57 (7 years ago) Permalink

The click could be the sound of the hard drive struggling to turn on...

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 10:53 (7 years ago) Permalink

In other words, I think emsk's problem is more likely to be a bad power supply. Is this a Dell laptop by any chance?

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 10:54 (7 years ago) Permalink

I'm half expecting this to sink to the bottom of the page without trace, but its worth a try:

My printer no longer spools the paper into it properly, it doesn't get far enough into the printer for the printing to actually take place. It keeps telling me there's a paper jam when I pull the paper out, but it doesn't register that until after its already tried to print (i.e. I'm pretty sure there isn't a scrap of paper stuck in it) ---anyway, the point is, this has all happened since I tried to print some camera pics for the first time (didn't work, crappy Lexmark shite) and I haven't been able to print anything since. I'm wondering if there is any residue or chemical on some photo paper (probably the cheap sort) that might get onto the spool and stop it working... It does only appear to have stopped working on one side - might be a coincidence.

yeah, so... maybe you can help me, maybe you can't..

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Thursday, 11 May 2006 20:27 (7 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
is there any way to recover emptied trash in OSX? unlike the PC world, there seem to be a dearth of "undelete" type programs for macs.

― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Monday, 12 June 2006 01:27 (6 years ago) Permalink

Norton Utilities has Unerase in it.

― svend (svend), Monday, 12 June 2006 02:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

YSI?

― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Monday, 12 June 2006 03:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

totally unrelated, but saves starting a whole new thread - what's the website that helps fill in passwords if i want to read teh paper?

― Jena (JenaP), Monday, 12 June 2006 04:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

bugmenot.com

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 12 June 2006 04:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

thx!

― Jena (JenaP), Monday, 12 June 2006 04:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

but 403 :(

― Jena (JenaP), Monday, 12 June 2006 04:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

hmm, it seems to be working for me.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 12 June 2006 04:54 (6 years ago) Permalink

finally works in opera, but not in safari - thanks again Forest Pines!

― Jena (JenaP), Monday, 12 June 2006 04:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok so poor henry is still not working. i took him to a repair shop where we established that the problem is definitely not the power supply (or not the actual lead, anyway, what's inside might be a different matter) but to find out anything beyond that would have cost me £55, and that might just be for them to say "sorry, you are FUCKED. ha ha ha!" someone had told me the flashing lights on the front (that usually indicate if you're running off mains or battery power and if your battery's about to die) were a service code or error code and all i had to do was figure out what it meant, then it would be sortable without taking it to a repair shop where they would charge me £100 for 20 minutes' work. so i looked around the interweb and on the dell site (it is dell yes, an inspiron 1150) and did find some stuff about error codes, but nothing that seemed to match up to what my laptop's doing. there's a troubleshooting thing on the dell site and i went through all the steps there (try this, unplug that, take out the battery, take out the hard drive, wait 7 minutes, hop around the computer widdershins singing the national anthem) and none of it worked. there was some stuff about error codes but they were referring to the leds for the caps lock, number lock etc which are at the top right of the keyboard (which are totally inactive on mine), not the ones that are on the front.

if anyone can help me solve this i will do you a big favour in return! i don't know what but if it's in my power i will do it. paint a room in your house. proofread your 1000 page stream-of-consciousness novel. carry something heavy up a hill. feed your cat.

if not has anyone ever used these guys? - www.millteccomputers.co.uk - they have something called a bronze service (which seems to differ from silver and gold in that it takes a week rather than 72 or 24 hours) which costs £65, which i can pay if it means i get a working laptop back at the end.

― emsk ( emsk), Monday, 12 June 2006 07:20 (6 years ago) Permalink

...teach you to fix punctures on your bike? fix your punctures for you?

clear up after your party?

― emsk ( emsk), Monday, 12 June 2006 10:59 (6 years ago) Permalink

No no, I get it. I wouldn't be a lot of use even if I did have the internet is the thing, and I won't have it for ages anyway. I mean, I can follow directions on help sites, but it sounds like you've tried a fair bit of that.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 12 June 2006 11:05 (6 years ago) Permalink

That sounds nasty, It might be the power distribution board which only a proper service engineer can replace. It's likely to cost over an above the £65 though. I can help with data rescue, but the laptop sounds fucked.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 12 June 2006 11:17 (6 years ago) Permalink

:_(

how much? ish? *steels self*

― emsk ( emsk), Monday, 12 June 2006 14:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

You could end up paying a couple of hundred I reckon.

I can rescue you enough bits from the dump pile at work to make you a desktop. What apps do you need to run?

― Ed (dali), Monday, 12 June 2006 14:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

I HAVE A QUESTION!

what are people using to tag and organise their digiphotos? Picasa seems to be surprisingly crappy. i know it's free and all, but really...

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Monday, 12 June 2006 21:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

adobe bridge is great for professional use, i think.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 12 June 2006 22:11 (6 years ago) Permalink

I installed Adobe Photoshop Album (which seems perfect and easy to use).

Now i just need to decide what sort of tags are sensible to use. People in the shot, place taken and year for starters...

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Tuesday, 13 June 2006 15:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

Okay ILX, help me from tossing my laptop out the computer. Anyone know Excel?

I have a file with three sets of scores that are from 3-15. I would like to highlight any score that is more than 4 points from the other scores to get a list of ones that deviate highly.

I have gotten as far as knowing that I need to do Conditional Formatting and select Formula, but I cannot for the life of me get a formula that works. The ranges of the scores are C3:C300, D3:D300, and E3:E300.

Can anyone help puhleaze???

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:25 (6 years ago) Permalink

Why is Excel designed to only be used by people with engineering degrees? Eff you Bill Gates. I'm glad you're stepping down!!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:39 (6 years ago) Permalink

Hint: people with engineering degrees don't use excel

― lord pooperton (ex machina), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:44 (6 years ago) Permalink

Dammit I thought you were going to tell me how to set this up. Yeah, but if I did have an engineering degree I could figure out how to create a super simple formula.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:45 (6 years ago) Permalink

aaron w, have you tried conditional formatting? i use it on a "scorecard" that measures different performance measures at our facilities.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:46 (6 years ago) Permalink

aaron w, obviously i have a reading comprehension problem.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:50 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok, you're looking to highlight any score that is more than 4 points from the other scores. what other scores? what are the baseline scores? i'm not sure what you're comparing.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

Thanks in advance for the help.

So, there are three sets of scores, and I'd like to highlight any that are +/- 4 points away from the other scores... Kind of a real basic standard deviation analysis.

Here's as far as I have got, but I have a feeling I'm a long way off. For the C2:C300 range, I am using...

=NOT(D2:D300+3)OR(D2:D300-3)OR(E2:E300+3)OR(E2:E300-3)

Of course this doesn't work.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

I went with 3 instead of 4 away, but hopefully you get the drift.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 18:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

yeah i'm trying and can get it work in a single cell but it logic takes a step out the fucking window when i try to apply it to a range of cells. more as it develops.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:16 (6 years ago) Permalink

Thanks for your help. I'm still playing around with it as well. Of course, with all the time I've spent on this I could've just manually gone through all the scores. Blurgh!!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:20 (6 years ago) Permalink

this isn't even my stuff but i know i've done this before but it was so long ago i forget. i don't think i used a formula, i think i used cell value is equal to/does not equal but whatever. this is pissing me off and i have to figure it out.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

Well at least I've ruined two people's days.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:30 (6 years ago) Permalink

i can get it to work on a single cell but it won't let me do a range. when i use the format painter to copy the formatting it applys the formatting of the original range. so wile for cell C3 i have for condition one cell value is not between =$D$3-3 and +D$3+3 (then i have it set to format it with a bright green cell fill) then condition 2 cell value is not between =$E$3-3 and =$e$3+3 it will work in c3. but when i use the format painter to apply the formatting to cells c3:c9 it still uses D3 and E3 in the formatting.

fuck this i need a goddamn drink. 52 minutes til quitting time, i can be in a bar in 90 minutes.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:38 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oh don't waste any more time with it! Thanks for your help, and please do go have a drink!!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

when/if you figure it out post it here!

wait a minute, why don't i just go into that damn scorecard and see how i did it?

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:47 (6 years ago) Permalink

actually the scorecard isn't much help as i'm comparing facility scores to a set criteria. that's why i was able to use the format painter last time.

good luck.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yeah I'm giving up. Cheers!

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 16 June 2006 19:54 (6 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
You still looking to do this? I can probably help.....

I've also made some Excel animation which you might be interested in.

― ZOT! (davidcorp), Wednesday, 5 July 2006 11:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

― james madison duff (duff), Friday, 21 July 2006 06:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

Don't use PowerMax -- those assholes sold me a refurb disguised as a new computer. I had to wipe the HD and reinstall the OS because they hadn't done it yet and they didn't know what "Valued Customer"'s password was.

― Whitman Mayonnaise (Rock Hardy), Friday, 21 July 2006 12:28 (6 years ago) Permalink

wow, that's pretty bad!

― Machibuse '80 (ex machina), Friday, 21 July 2006 12:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

And I have 8 months of warranty left instead of a year because it starts when it was ORIGINALLY sold.

― Whitman Mayonnaise (Rock Hardy), Friday, 21 July 2006 12:37 (6 years ago) Permalink

the fuck is a usb music controller doing in startupitems?

― TOMBOT (TOMBOT), Friday, 21 July 2006 12:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

Can anybody advise me on the fake security alerts that have appeared in my winXP system tray? Adaware and Search&Destroy have failed to acknowledge them and googling brings up some false advise pointing to dodgy malware.

Anyone?

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Friday, 21 July 2006 12:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

Are they Spyfalcon?

― M. V. (M.V.), Friday, 21 July 2006 23:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

They're not the ones that say you may be using a non-legitimate copy of Windows, are they?

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Friday, 21 July 2006 23:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

Just got an Acer Aspire 5014WLMi laptop. Having a problem with audio playback through the dvd drive. Audio's fine from hard drive i.e mp3's, wmv, games etc but play an audio cd or movie dvd it's distorted and 'clicks' (though picture is fine in dvd). Have upated drivers for the sound card (Realtek AC97) and codecs for windows media player to no avail. The drive is a TSSTcorp TS-L532A DVDRW, couldn't find drivers for this.

Don't know if it's a hardware or software problem, girl I bought it from said she think it started after she installed nero media and windvd, which i've uninstalled. Pity she didn't mention it in her lising, grrr.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:11 (6 years ago) Permalink

um, might have seen something similar on linux box at home - sound card was ok playing back 44.1khz samples (ie cds and mp3s) but didn't like 48khz samples (dvds). maybe try to find some 48khz samples from somewhere (rip the audio from a dvd?) and see if it's that. see if there's a way of setting sample rate of card? dunno.

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

VLC can force the sample rate to an arbitary value.

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:47 (6 years ago) Permalink

(Well, it up/downsamples, but you know what I mean)

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

I've noticed lately that my PC has problems playing audio from the hard disk when the DVD drive is being accessed - it skips terribly.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:49 (6 years ago) Permalink

Are they on the same IDE channel by any chance?

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Wednesday, 26 July 2006 11:50 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok, quick work question.

web front ends to oracle? anybody know a good one? do they even exist? boss wants something that'll generate forms from the table definitions to allow people to browse (across tables, picking up details based on ids etc) AND insert data. i've already used the phrase 'moon on a stick' in my response but said i'd look for one. Access forms (that we'd have to write ourselves) is the only thing i can come up with and that's pushing the definition of what he wants. cheers.

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Friday, 28 July 2006 11:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

is there any way to recover emptied trash in OSX? unlike the PC world, there seem to be a dearth of "undelete" type programs for macs.

-- renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vfoz...), June 12th, 2006 3:27 AM. (vahid) (link)

way late on this one, but we successfully used this a few days ago:

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

― toby (tsg20), Friday, 28 July 2006 12:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

Andy,

I dunno much about it myself, but Oracle HTML DB exists, though it's more of a programming tool, if you know what I mean. Some of the people at my work use it, though I discourage it. I wouldn't use it; I'd use ASP.NET or JSF; something a bit more mainstream, you know. It's possible though it has some wizards for producing simple stuff like you're looking for.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/application_express/index.html

Looks like it's had a rebrand. Oh joy.

― KeefW (kmw), Friday, 28 July 2006 17:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

Whenever my Win XP laptop open dialogue box opens up (like in Winamp or when I'm uploading something through Firefox), all the files are sorted by SIZE. I want them to be sorted by filename, but I've tried restoring defaults and applying a certain style to all folders -- neither of which worked. Help?

― c('°c) (Leee), Monday, 31 July 2006 00:01 (6 years ago) Permalink

Are they on the same IDE channel by any chance?

No - the DVD drive is IDE, the hard disk SATA, on different controllers. This is why I'm puzzled.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 31 July 2006 05:22 (6 years ago) Permalink

ha. ok keith. yes, i had seen apex, sat through the little demo thing they have there. looks impressive but it appears to be for excel spreadsheets to web pages rather than databases (doesn't seem to be any support for normalised tables for instance. ours is actually 140+ tables with squillions of foreign keys etc. not all of it needs to be available though, just the core). cheers.

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Monday, 31 July 2006 08:12 (6 years ago) Permalink

How do I set up a wireless network for file sharing across my two wireless pc's? I've got a broadband wireless router (Netgear DG834G), both pc's can access the internet but I'm lost as to how I get them to 'talk' to each other. Anyone care to help a simpleton in this respect?

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 31 July 2006 14:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

Make sure they are in the same IP range (on a PC, open the command prompt found in the Accessories and type ipconfigreturn). The first three sets of IP numbers will probably match and the fourth set should differ.

Open Explorer and right-click on the drive or folder you want to share. Click Sharing and Security (or it may just say Sharing). Click the New Share button near the bottom of the form. Give it a share name (like C, or C_Drive to be fancy). Click the Permissions button and give Everyone Full Control. Okay everything.

From the other computer, search for Computer or People from Explorer. Use the name of the computer you set the share on. It should show up in the search results and when you click on it, you should see the new share. Double-click on it. If a Username and Password form pops up, log in with the name and password of a user set up on the shared computer. It should let you in to the drive/folder.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 31 July 2006 14:46 (6 years ago) Permalink

You also need to check if File and Print Sharing is installed on the network connection. Go to the desktop, right-click on My Network places and click Properties. If File and Printer Sharing isn't in the list on the General tab, install it.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 31 July 2006 14:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

OK, done steps one and two, the IP addresses are in the same range, as you suggested. When I try to find the first (desktop) computer from the second (laptop) it can only find itself even when leaving the search box blank.

Second prob, have right clicked on My Network Places and clicked properties, but I can't see a general tab. I see the Wireless Network Connection icon and underneaths two wizards 'New connection' and 'network setup'.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:13 (6 years ago) Permalink

Whenever my Win XP laptop open dialogue box opens up (like in Winamp or when I'm uploading something through Firefox), all the files are sorted by SIZE. I want them to be sorted by filename, but I've tried restoring defaults and applying a certain style to all folders -- neither of which worked. Help?

Sort by filename, View->Folder Options->Apply to All Folders

(or something like that)

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

Sorry, I just reread and noticed you already done this! Apologies. In this case, maybe the registry is broken?

― steal compass, drive north, disappear (tissp), Monday, 31 July 2006 15:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yay, got it sussed, though I'm not sure how. Put the IP addresses into my firewall and it worked ok. Cheers bud.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:06 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oops, File/Printer sharing stuff is on the properties of the connection, after you open the properties of the My Network stuff. Glad it's sorted, either way.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:14 (6 years ago) Permalink

I'm trying to do a form in ColdFusion to get people to register for an event and then be taken to PayPal to pay for it. They fill out their name and address details, then click a button to add it to their paypal cart. They then continue shopping, by which I mean they return to the previous window.

Now, when they click the link to add to the cart, it first checks the form for validation errors, then assuming they're all done and dusted, then it whips you off to Paypal. I want to do two other things at this point though.

Firstly, I want to send an email to them at the same time as they add to the basket, so they have a provisional registration. The paypal button action takes you to paypal, not a page where I can generate a message using CFMail. So, how can I get the button action to do this?

Secondly, some people will pay for more than one person, so having added their details and themselves to the cart, when they return to that page to enter more people. It'd be good if I could find a way to process the adding to the cart through to paypal, send and email, then clear the form ready for the next entry.

Any help appreciated!

― Dave B (daveb), Thursday, 3 August 2006 11:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
Ok, I am using Windows XP at work. I had a server mapped to one of my drives which disconnects when I log out so I had to remap it in Internet Explorer each time I logged in. It is the crucial one wit most of my work on it. Even if the "recoonect at logon" box is checked it still doesn't reconnect, at least not *most* of the time.

I got fed up with this so I wrote a batch file to run at start-up which automatically maps the server to drive y: using the net use command. Trouble is, every so often the drive does stay connected and so I get system error 85 which says that the batch file is trying to map to a drive already in use.

Can you put an if/then type statement (or something equivalent) in a batch file that says that if (server) is not connected to drive y: then map it, otherwise do nothing?

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 19 August 2006 07:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

If you use the /persistent:no switch on net use, then it won't reconnect at logon. Ensure that you've got the drive disconnected via Explorer.

Alernatively, you can use IF constructs in batch files, but I don't know if you can use it to check whether a drive exists or not; other than forcing an error and checking for the error, but it's probably not worth the effort, in this instance, just call:

net use /delete

before you map it. It might fail, but it doesn't really matter; it just ensures that it has been disconnected. You'd probably want to do this anyway, because it's possible the drive might have been (for whatever reason) mapped to somewhere other than where you want it.

― KeefW (kmw), Saturday, 19 August 2006 18:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

my computer stopped booting yesteday, from a SATA drive. I bought a new SATA drive, still wasn't seeing it when I tried reinstalling Windows.

I found an old IDE drive and booted fine from that, reinstalled Windows XP and patched it. Suddenly it could see the old SATA drive again via Windows.

What's happening?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 21 August 2006 07:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

i just installed fedora 5 on my laptop, and im trying to get the apache working. this is what happens when i try to start the service

/sbin/service httpd configtest
Syntax OK
/sbin/service httpd start
Starting httpd: [FAILED]

― -- (688), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 19:05 (6 years ago) Permalink

I just started it by:

/usr/sbin/apachectl start

For which you'll need to be root.

Which seemed to work fine. I don't know how you're trying to start it, and I don't know much about Apache, but the above worked.

― KeefW (kmw), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 19:16 (6 years ago) Permalink

what K said. Also tail /var/log/httpd/error_log (path may vary) to see what it sa

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 19:43 (6 years ago) Permalink

tail /var/log/httpd/error_log gives me

[::]:80
(13)Permission denied: make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:8443
(13)Permission denied: make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:8443
no listening sockets available, shutting down
Unable to open logs

― -- (688), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 19:49 (6 years ago) Permalink

what Listen and ServerName directives have you got in /etc/http/httpd.conf?

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 20:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

er /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 20:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

Do you have another web server running on port 8443? This is sometimes used as a local test version of port 443, which is the SSL port.

It looks as though it's trying to bind to 8443 but failing, because another process is bound to that port.

― KeefW (kmw), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 20:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

ive gone home now, i'll try again tomorrow

― -- (688), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:32 (6 years ago) Permalink

quick mac question: best browser? safari and firefox are nice but eat all my RAM, i'm using camino but the lack of bells and whistles is disturbing, and opera looks cheap :(

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

What's yr hardware/OS/RAM? I use 98% Firefox, 2% Safari, but I've got RAM out the wazoo.

― Danny Aioli (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:40 (6 years ago) Permalink

it's a core duo mac mini, 10.4.7, 512mb (i know this should be a gig but i can't be arsed to go back to the store)

i bought it as a curiosity but it's taken over my life :(

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:45 (6 years ago) Permalink

Opera is the fastest, for a lower end Mac at least. But you'll have to spend an evening making it not look like shit.

I love the Opera browser!

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:45 (6 years ago) Permalink

opera irritates me because i cannot stick a 'history' button on its toolbar which i feel demonstrates how awful my life is

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:50 (6 years ago) Permalink

Ha. Shiira is another one you could try.

Speed tests you may find useful.

Another thing to try is turning off caching, if you've got a fast connection but less RAM and processing power.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

(As for history in Opera, well you can certainly get to it by doing shift-command-H, and you can make the BACK button have little pulldown menu arrow next to it that will at least give access to that window's history)

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 21:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

ha as i have an intel mac M$ (i said M$! i'm so cool) don't have compatible version of IE with which to give me viruses, keyloggers etc

i had a bash at shiira but it felt a bit LOL japan especially as one of the inbuilt links is to a page called something like HAPPY FUN KERNEL DEVELOPMENT TEAM LAUGH TIME

i liked the opera bittorrent thing esp as i was trying to download v for vendetta downloading linux distros

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

Transmission is the neatest little RAM-light bittorrent client for a mac, but oink and uknova both block its use because it reports ratio data wrongly or something.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:03 (6 years ago) Permalink

ooh also: VLC won't work and i don't want to region lock my DVD drive. is there any way round this?

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:10 (6 years ago) Permalink

Why doesn't VLC work?

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:11 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oh right, the Intel thing.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:12 (6 years ago) Permalink

VLC is a universal binary now.

― milo z (mlp), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:13 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oh yeah - check it out. Seems to be separate downloads for PowerPC and Intel, rather than Universal Binary, but yeah.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

Safari is by far the fastest on the intel macs, but is even better with adblock etc from pimpmysafari.com -- and also with this you can get full-screen mode (including no menu bar) in any cocoa app.

VLC works OK on this intel mac, though I've noticed it doesn't always work if you double-click on a file. You have to launch it first, then open the file. There's no way around region-locking the drive, unless you never use DVD Player.

Torrents: Acquisition has torrent support, but Azureus is still the best. If you can run it on its own Mac, cos it's a beast.

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:16 (6 years ago) Permalink

nah i mean VLC loads and stuff, it just won't play region 1 discs (specifically this one i got the other day) on my region 2 drive. i can't even rip the disc and remove the region shit

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:17 (6 years ago) Permalink

I'm running Azureus RIGHT NOW. I think it being so slow to start up makes one think it's more of a beast than it is. I mean, right now it's taking up 45MB of RAM and 5% of my 700MHz CPU. Considering that sodding MAIL is using 30MB, that's not too bad.

x-post. That's weird. VLC is usually fine for playing any region's discs.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:19 (6 years ago) Permalink

i would never have strayed from safari if it weren't for the fact it seems to want 150mb to look at ile, i think it might be a bug doubtless to be fixed in the £100 leopard...still i can forgive, its not IE

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:20 (6 years ago) Permalink

Fuckers

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:22 (6 years ago) Permalink

What's the easiest, quickest and simplest way to make an animated gif? I want 5 or 6 images, each about 40kb, to flick to the next one with a gap of 3 seconds between.

― Affectian (Affectian), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

Also, is anyone else on here using that new BThub for broadband? I am having an absolute nightmare with it - it won't let me in to open ports, I can't get wireless working on my secondary pc, Soulseek works for about 10 seconds before cutting out, it cuts out about twice every hour, and so on. Can someone recommend a comprehensive ISP message board out there where I can ask about this type of thing?

― Affectian (Affectian), Tuesday, 22 August 2006 22:26 (6 years ago) Permalink

what Listen and ServerName directives have you got in /etc/httpd/httpd.conf?

um, i dont have /etc/httpd/httpd.conf!

ls /etc/httpd
alias build conf conf.d logs modules run

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 08:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

sorry, my mistake, you mean /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ...just looking now

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 08:47 (6 years ago) Permalink

those http conf files change their name with every linux distribution. is annoying. what linux needs is a registry... 8)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 08:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

listen directive is just

Listen 80

rest is commented out. servername directive is all commented out

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 08:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

if the 8443 socket is still a problem and you don't need ssl you can probably just disable it - comment out the LoadModule line for ssl_module. (where this is depends on your distribution, might be httpd.conf, might be somewhere else (mine's in mods-available/ssl.conf (ubuntu)))

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 09:16 (6 years ago) Permalink

It looks as though it's trying to bind to 8443 but failing, because another process is bound to that port.

is the correct answer! i think

/etc/init.d/thttpd stop
Stopping thttpd: [ OK ]
[root@localhost html]# /sbin/service httpd start
Starting httpd: [ OK ]

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 09:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

im not sure how this thttpd got started up, but there it (was)

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 09:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

comrade computer nerds! can you get female -> male DVI adapters?

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 09:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

oh, thttp is 'tiny httpd' another httpd server, probably installed by default. you'll need to disable it or it'll start up again next time you reboot (again, how you do this is distro specific. i think fedora 5 has a gui tool to let you define services but i usually just add / remove things to /etc/rc?.d. add apache whilst you're there.)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 10:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

so i finally got my laptop looked at (for free, hurrah) and the conclusion is that liquid has got in it and the motherboard's fucked. argh. what to do? bruv suggests getting a £100 one off ebay then taking the functioning bits - processor? memory? um as you can tell i have no idea what i'm talking about - out of the busted one and putting them in the new one. is this a)feasible b)a good idea?

― emsk ( emsk), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 11:22 (6 years ago) Permalink

im back on the windows partition for a bit, so cant look, but...

/etc/rc?.d.

i have rc1.d through rc6.d ...which should i be adding to? i didnt look at the gui bit for that, would prefer to use command line, as is better to try learn more that way

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 11:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

The default runlevel is defined in /etc/inittab

Look for a line in that file that looks something like:

id:3:initdefault:

- which means that the default level is 3, so look in /etc/rc3.d/

The contents of those folders will all just be links back to files in /etc/init.d/

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 11:35 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok, so ls /etc/rc5.d/

gives me a whole bunch of stuff, including...

S85thttpd

so, do i just rm this? and, if i add apache in, how, exactly would i do that?

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 12:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

yes. it might also be in rc3.d though (init level 3 is multi-user, init level 5 is multi-user with xwindows running, generally, it could be in both).

ls -lR /etc/rc?.d is your friend. you will see what fp is talking about, the files will all be links to the main copy in /etc/init.d.

just rm the thttp links in the rc?.d directories that you don't want.

to add apache just create a new link to apache to replace the one you've just deleted:
ln -s /etc/init.d/(apachefilename) /etc/rc5.d/S85(apachefilename)

(the S85 means 'Start' and an ordering (because sometimes things have to be running before other things will run). there may be K versions of the files as well, these are shutdown (K for Kill) scripts)

this is why redhat provides a tool 8)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 12:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

This is why I prefer Gentoo!

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 12:38 (6 years ago) Permalink

(i've disabled all the network related services at home to speed up boot time and because it's a standalone box 99% of the time. i have one script that'll start everything if i need it. oddly, network has to be up to debug php cgi programs.)

(gentoo uses a different system, doesn't it? not sure i bothered even adding the networky stuff on my gentoo box let alone configured it)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 12:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

It does. The start/stop scripts are still kept in /etc/init.d, but they're not ordinary shell scripts, and the numeric runlevels are mapped to named ones - "single", "nonetwork" and "default". They still use a symlink tree, under /etc/runlevels/[level], but there is a command-line script to handle the linking. Dependancies and ordering are handled automatically, whether the links are added manually or not.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 13:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

thanks, duders, i did that, and it...works! apache starts at boot.

probably back in 5 mins with my next problem;)

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 13:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

how is linux on the laptop going? am trying to find a cheap one with decent nvidia graphics chipset but not having much luck. lenovo have one for about £1000, vaios go for about the same (not sure i'm keen on Sony tbh). about half that would be nice.

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 13:28 (6 years ago) Permalink

I'd avoid Vaios if I were you. I've never seen one with Linux, but the ones I've seen with Windows on have had enough problems.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 13:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

it seems to be fine, havent got a lot to compare it to. its on a dell latitude (the ones with the flammable batteries)

― -- (688), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 13:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

(ran knoppix on brother's vaio over christmas. no 3d and no sound. and no wireless but i think all of that can be fixed with a bit of messing around. cd drive seemed v flimsy though)

(asus seem to do cheaper (£6xx) nvidia laptops. can't help but think what £600 of improvements to current box would do though. 1TB+ of disk for a start!)

― Koogy Yonderboy (koogs), Wednesday, 23 August 2006 15:38 (6 years ago) Permalink

so, when i restart today, starting the httpd service fails, because:

/sbin/service httpd configtest
httpd: Syntax error on line 170 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load /etc/httpd/modules/mod_access.so into server: /etc/httpd/modules/mod_access.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

this appears to be solved by doing the following

mv /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.bak /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

but, why has this happened?

― -- (688), Thursday, 24 August 2006 13:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

Something - probably one of the Fedora config scripts - has overwritten your httpd.conf with a dodgy one, I assume. If you want to make sure this can't happen, then as root run:

chattr +i /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

If you ever want to edit the file, though, you'll have to turn that protection off first (with chattr -i)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 24 August 2006 13:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

my ebay & gmail were hacked yesterday.
managed to stop the ebay in time but still can't get into the gmail account.
the hacker didnt realise though that my gmail was forwarding copies of everything it received to another gmail account which i CAN access.
anyway the upshot is that i now have an ip address & a name, anybody got any revenge strategies?

― zappi (joni), Thursday, 24 August 2006 13:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

find out who supplies their access and shop em

― stet (stet), Thursday, 24 August 2006 13:35 (6 years ago) Permalink

Mac audio: why is there a massive PC market in sound cards but not a mac equivalent? does the mac sound hardware universally rule?

― The Real DG (D to thee G), Thursday, 24 August 2006 14:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

why would my wireless belkin internet connection just suddenly start cutting out for no apparent reason?

If I restart the computer it comes back on but after about half an hour it just locks out the connection. I've had it for months and not had any problems.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Monday, 4 September 2006 08:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

okay i'll try again

i have a belkin usb adapter to connect to a wireless modem for my broadband.

lately after reinstalling XP and a new hard drive it's connection diminishes rapidly, very randomly, it can stay connected well for hours but sometimes it only lasts minutes. But the strange thing is it doen't seem to be anything to do with my signal, as that still shows strong.

I thought rebooting was fixing it, but it's not now.

is there some sort of driver i'm missing, i've intalled the belkin stuff from the cd as like i did last time. is there another driver for something else i might need updating?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 6 September 2006 07:36 (6 years ago) Permalink

Is your network top of the preferred list? It may well be that after reinstalling XP it picked up another wireless network near you and has stuck this at the top of the list this may drop in and out of sight and you might be hopping to this nework and not getting any network services.

Check in the wireless network tab of the network connection properties.

(also check that your SSID is truly unique)

Also check that you are using the latest drivers for your adapter an that reinstalling hasn't flipped you back to some godawful microsoft compatibility driver.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 6 September 2006 07:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

cheers, i'll check all this out at lunchtime!

― Ste (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 6 September 2006 07:49 (6 years ago) Permalink

Hmmm, the order thing was fine, the drivers seem fine and up to date. No problems with security.

I restarted and its now working okay, perfect in fact. but when will it fall over again?

i noticed another wireless network on my list, Netgear, which had the same channel 11 as me. would this conflict? How do I change the channel?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 6 September 2006 11:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

could be the problem, you need to change it in the router and on the wireless driver advanced properties tab

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 6 September 2006 12:13 (6 years ago) Permalink

Can anyone recommend a good simple program/website to help me make an animated gif (or similar)? I want to make a slideshow of 30 pictures, each around 30kb in size, that runs on a loop. I made a short one with four images using Imageready but despite clicking the ‘loop forever’ box, it runs once then stops.

Is Imageready the best program to use and can anyone advise how to make it loop indefinitely?

Would some sort of slideshow program be better? I can’t find one that doesn’t have ugly logos splashed all over it and pointless buttons – I just want it to be the images and nothing else. I’m willing to pay to get a logo-free version, can anyone help?

― Affectian (Affectian), Wednesday, 13 September 2006 11:25 (6 years ago) Permalink

4 weeks pass...
Yo

so i aksed on the LOST thread (twice!) with no avail. How do i fool a website into thinking i'm from the US (i'm not). i want to be able to watch episodes online that are "only available to US citizens".

There must be a trick, no?

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:17 (6 years ago) Permalink

b i t t o r r e n t

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 16:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

tor

― a name means a lot just by itself (lfam), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 16:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

well, i am torrenting. but streaming live from abc's site would be nicer.

― Slumpman (Slump Man), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 17:36 (6 years ago) Permalink

I need some advice. My internet connection keeps dropping. All I have to do is unplug my ethernet cable from the back of the computer and replug it to get it back going. I've replaced the cable entirely, so I don't think it's a fritz in that. Do you think it's the network card or the router? How hard is it to replace a network card? (mirror-drive-door G4)

― The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 12 October 2006 12:44 (6 years ago) Permalink

None of the above

― roc u like a § (ex machina), Thursday, 12 October 2006 12:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

Okay, what's your diagnosis?

― The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 12 October 2006 12:54 (6 years ago) Permalink

nanoscale gremlins

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 12 October 2006 12:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

dead hookers

― Ste (Fuzzy), Thursday, 12 October 2006 13:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

that is your answer to everything

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 12 October 2006 13:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

could it be out of phase? im not an expert, so im really guessing. possibly the wrong speed selected?

― Ste (Fuzzy), Thursday, 12 October 2006 13:01 (6 years ago) Permalink

Is it just the internet connection that drops, or all network traffic?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 12 October 2006 13:06 (6 years ago) Permalink

Just the internet connection. It happened a few days ago and I could still see my wife's computer on the network.

― The Bearnaise-Stain Bears (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 12 October 2006 13:10 (6 years ago) Permalink

3 months pass...
From yesterday,the bbc newspage - http://news.bbc.co.uk - is looking really bad in firefox (but ok in internet explorer).

Any ideas?

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Sunday, 14 January 2007 21:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

Looks okay for me in Firefox. What is/was the problem? (Screenshot?)

― M. V. (M.V.), Sunday, 14 January 2007 23:47 (6 years ago) Permalink

Don't know if this will work, but:

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Monday, 15 January 2007 00:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

It's displaying the wrong (looks like the serif default) font. Be sure that, in advanced font preferences (under Content), the "allow page to choose its own fonts" option is checked.

― M. V. (M.V.), Monday, 15 January 2007 02:59 (6 years ago) Permalink

Or, it could just be that the browser for some reason failed to download a CSS file. Try clearing your cache and reloading.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 15 January 2007 08:36 (6 years ago) Permalink

Thanks, both. Back to usual display now.

― Bob Six (bobbysix), Monday, 15 January 2007 08:40 (6 years ago) Permalink

Okay, this is an ongoing issue:
Spontaneously, my computer will freeze and I get THIS screen:

This happens about once every two or three days; if I just restart, it loads easily and seemingly without any issues.
I've gone into bios and disabled caching, but then it won't load the OS.
Additional weird thing: occasionally, and often before blue screening, the computer will spontaneously mute.
Other than that, no problems.
Suggestions? What the hell is going on here?

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 00:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329284/en-us

Might be a cooling issue, some guy talks about it here -

http://directron.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=emf&s=476097824&f=286097824&m=8051037411&p=1

― svend (svend), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 01:50 (6 years ago) Permalink

Thanks; I've made a little more room behind the tower to let it breathe and it hasn't happened since.
Let's see if that's the issue.

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Thursday, 18 January 2007 07:40 (6 years ago) Permalink

Okay, here's my question. I have an iBook and use Firefox for web browsing. Lately, when I've accessed ILE and a couple of other websites, my scroll function on the trackpad goes bananas for a few minutes, then calms down again. Using one finger on the trackpad scrolls the whole screen, and I can't move the cursor around the screen at all. Then after a bit it settles down. I know people will say "use a different browser", but I use Firefox for everything else...

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 19 January 2007 09:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

that sounds like the behaviour that happens if you the click middle button - the cursor goes circular and tiny mouse movements scroll the screen in all directions. how do you emulate middle button on your trackpad? (do mac's even have the concept of middle buttons?)

― My Koogy Weighs A Ton (koogs), Friday, 19 January 2007 11:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

If your left hand accidentally resting on the control key?

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Friday, 19 January 2007 11:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

Forks, I was having big cooling issues and I ended up opening up the tower and hoovering out all the dust that had accumulated inside. Worked a treat.

― === temporary username === (Mark C), Friday, 19 January 2007 11:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

Koogs and Tracer, no, it's not either of those things. Macs don't have middle buttons, and my hand behaviour on ILE is the same as elsewhere (MISSUS), plus, in demonstrating to the Mister, I have held all but the one finger way up in the air and it still does it.

I am at a loss.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 19 January 2007 13:16 (6 years ago) Permalink

My advice would be to hook up a mouse, but mainly because I just hate trackpads.

― do i have to draw you a diaphragm (Rock Hardy), Friday, 19 January 2007 14:49 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, you're right. But mouse on lap does not work so well, and I do use my latop on my lap a lot. I suppose I will do what I always do with computers: work around the problem till it's time to upgrade.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 19 January 2007 16:43 (6 years ago) Permalink

See if you go to about:config in Firefox and type in "scroll" to the search box, do any lines turn up in bold?

― stet (stet), Friday, 19 January 2007 16:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

OK question. if you install something on a Mac and you want to uninstall it, do you do anything but throw out the icon?

i feel like that's too simple

― surmounter (rra123), Tuesday, 23 January 2007 15:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

in Excel (windows) is there a way to make paste special >> text the default for paste? like, why would I want info copied from somewhere to have its own fuckass formatting and not the one the xls already has?? unbelievable.

― geoff (gcannon), Thursday, 25 January 2007 00:46 (6 years ago) Permalink

See if you go to about:config in Firefox and type in "scroll" to the search box, do any lines turn up in bold?

Oh, I had no success with this either, but now the whole iBook makes a kind of clicking noise when I type, so I'm guessing I have a hardware problem. Sigh.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Thursday, 25 January 2007 07:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

OK question. if you install something on a Mac and you want to uninstall it, do you do anything but throw out the icon?

Assuming by "the icon" you mean "the application", yes that's really it.

Unless you want to purge the configuration files it created for your user, which is really unnecessary if all that happened was you tried it and didn't like it. Sometimes you need to do this when you want to reinstall the app from a clean slate though. You can do it by searching Library in your home folder for files with the same name as the app (you'll probably find things in Application Support and Preferences), or you can just use, e.g. http://appzapper.com/ (but you'll need to pay $18 for that, which is beyond the means of someone who can't tip without "breaking the bank").

― caek (caek), Thursday, 25 January 2007 09:07 (6 years ago) Permalink

http://reggie.ashworth.googlepages.com/appdelete may be preferable to AppZapper.

― caek (caek), Friday, 26 January 2007 15:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

What's faster, a new Windows 98 based computer, using IE and Winamp, or a new Mac, using Safari and ITunes?

― def zep (calstars), Saturday, 27 January 2007 20:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

Because of its lower coefficient of drag, the Windows 98 based computer would be faster in achieving maximum descent velocity if, as you should, you dropped it from a very high place.

― M. V. (M.V.), Saturday, 27 January 2007 20:40 (6 years ago) Permalink

Ok, I have this recurring problem with my computer. It won't play sounds. Every time I open itunes it shows a message error that says : "audio/video playback may not operate properly".

I checked in control panel stuff and there is no exclamation mark next to anything related to sound. I have found a way to fix it, I uninstall the drivers for audio and restart the computer and it works fine. But, I was wondering if there was any way to fix that, because it is a bit annoying having to restart the comp everytime I wanna listen to music.

― Jibé (Jibé), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

Not really a "problem" but a strange thing - can anyone tell me if there's any "go immediately to standby RIGHT NOW, don't ask yes/no" shortcut keys existing on Windows XP? My computer keeps going into standby mode, I swear it has done this when I haven't even been typing and it's baffling!

It also randomly brings up the calculator!

I've googled for such shortcuts or key combinations I could be unknowingly hitting but nothing has come up.

Do you guys have any idea? I just got a new computer approx 2 weeks ago and have had this problem with the old one AND the new one from the start so I think a virus is out of the question...

― Bhumibol Adulyadej (Lucretia My Reflection), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:13 (6 years ago) Permalink

Shonky electricity?

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:14 (6 years ago) Permalink

Doesn't happen to anyone else in my office but it could be my power point... but that wouldn't explain the calculator pop up??

SO confused!

― Bhumibol Adulyadej (Lucretia My Reflection), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:37 (6 years ago) Permalink

I wondered if there was anything like that thing on linux that tracks the last processes you run? Can't remember what it was called - but if there is a thing for Windows perhaps that might say something that could be decoded to "you are pressing the wrong buttons"?!

― Bhumibol Adulyadej (Lucretia My Reflection), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:38 (6 years ago) Permalink

Is your office desktopped? i.e can you log in anywhere and get your stuff? Because that could have transferred some nefarious software around.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:39 (6 years ago) Permalink

settings->control panel->administrative tools->event viewer will show you if anything untoward happened prior to the shutdown

― ledge (ledge), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 10:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

Sorry Ed nope - I managed to check my email externally once... and I did that from logging in 'here' if you see what I mean. I could, but I haven't.

Ledge - I'll look at that next time it happens - which 'event' is best to check? application/security/system? Or just try all of 'em?

― Bhumibol Adulyadej (Lucretia My Reflection), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 11:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

yeah, just try 'em all.

― ledge (ledge), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 11:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

ARGH it's done it again - nothing! Under security settings it says logon/logoff event, success A but nothing else.

I can only conclude my desk is haunted.

― Bhumibol Adulyadej (Lucretia My Reflection), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 14:50 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yo Sarah,

Daft question, but I take it it's not a laptop running out of batteries. If not, do you have the option set up in Control Panel->Power Options, then 'Power Schemes' tab, to perform a system standby any time other than 'never' (see the bottom drop down).

― KeefW (kmw), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 14:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

a couple of other thoughts:

overheating?

whenever I'm running a game in fullscreen mode, if there's a desktop event, like an irritating freebie virus scanner popping up an "upgrade me now!!!" alert box, then that can cause an uninitiated reboot. I've no idea why so i've just tried to stop such events from happening.

― ledge (ledge), Tuesday, 30 January 2007 14:58 (6 years ago) Permalink

is there a non-rubbish way to

SCAN IN PRINTED TEXT

and have it MAGICALLY CONVERTED

into

TEXT YOU CAN EDIT?

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Friday, 2 February 2007 12:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

Enrique, google 'OCR'

― Ed (dali), Friday, 2 February 2007 12:03 (6 years ago) Permalink

we use Omnipage for OCR I think.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 2 February 2007 13:21 (6 years ago) Permalink

muchos gracias

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Friday, 2 February 2007 13:28 (6 years ago) Permalink

WHERE DO YOU YANKS KEEP YOUR # KEY? Editplus keeps on switching my keyboard to US layout (I assume it's US - @ above the 2 and " above the ') and my hash has been replaced by backslash. Any tips for getting Editplus to switch back also appreciated.

― ledge (ledge), Friday, 2 February 2007 15:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

Shift 3 where we keep our £ key

― Ed (dali), Friday, 2 February 2007 15:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

lovely

― ledge (ledge), Friday, 2 February 2007 15:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

One of my servers will randomly switch virtual terminal sessions (running in the "screen" program over PuTTY) to the american keyboard layout. It is very annoying, when I try to type " and get @ instead, and then can't work out where my | is.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 2 February 2007 16:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

this is not really a computer question but a question about the implementation of iso 8601 in the w3c recommendation for xml schema. it is a very simple question, but i can't make heads or tails of it.

"ISO 8601 describes several formats to define date, times, periods, and recurring dates, with different levels of precision and indetermination. After many discussions, W3C XML Schema selected a subset of these formats and created a primitive datatype for each format that is supported.

The indeterminacy allowed in some of these formats adds a lot of difficulty, especially when comparisons or arithmetic are involved. For instance, it is possible to define a point in time without specifying the time zone, which is then considered undetermined. This undetermined time zone is identical all over the document (and between the schema and the instance documents) and it's not an issue to compare two datetimes without a time zone. The problem arises when you need to compare two points in time, one with a time zone and the other without. The result of this comparison will be undetermined if these values are too close, since one of them may be between -13 hours and +12 hours of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)."

from XML Schema by Eric van der Vlist. why is it a problem specifically for that range? does exactly one time need not to have a time zone? how close do the times need to be? can someone come up with an example illustrating exactly what the problem is? obviously if one time is not timezoned, the comparison will be indeterminate, but i have a feeling he means something else, or that there are other conditions that i'm just not seeing and this has been bugging me for two days and i have no one to ask or the people i ask don't answer so if you could i would love you so ilx thank you

― youn (youn), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 03:25 (6 years ago) Permalink

I think that all that's being said is that if you compare two date/times in a document with no time zones, against a document with time zones (or even in the same document), then if the dates/times are close to each other (i.e. within half a day) then the result is going to be so (potentially) inaccurate for it to be no use to you.

Obviously, if you compare 1st Jan 1963 00:00 with 8th Nov 1997 13:00, then for most purposes, the error caused by not having a time zone is pretty minimal.

It perhaps depends on why you think this is an issue, Youn... Why would it cause you problems? Are you sending documents across time zones?

― KeefW (kmw), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:01 (6 years ago) Permalink

It's only a problem within that range because by "a point in time" he means a date and time.

For example, if you have the timestamp: Feb 7th 2007, 13:00 EST, and the timestamp Feb 7th 2007, 13:00 (with no zone specified), then obviously you can't tell which is earlier (or if they are equal). On the other hand, the timestamp Feb 5th 2007, 13:00 (no zone again) is always going to be earlier than the first one, because the two points are too far apart for specifying the timezone to make any difference.

In the context of XML it's not a problem if neither timestamp has a zone, because all timestamps without zones should behave as if they're all in the same time zone - this is what "this undetermined time zone is identical all over the document" means.

(xpost)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

Firefox has started freezing for about half a second, every 20 seconds or so. I thought I was imagining it first, but it's definitely there. Clues? Updates turned off, no third party extensions running.

― I don't know whether to play the trumpet, read a book or be a lesbian. (aldo_cow, Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:06 (6 years ago) Permalink

Does it only happen when you've got specific sites open?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

No, any of them. Started about a week and a half ago.

It's obviously just a FF problem, since it doesn't affect any other apps and the cursor is still free to move - it just won't change to a finger or whatever at the right time, or register a click immediately, or pause as text input is going in, or whatever I'm trying to to do. It's sounds like it's trying to check something, hence why I turned the other stuff off even though it wasn't causing a problem before.

― I don't know whether to play the trumpet, read a book or be a lesbian. (aldo_cow, Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:13 (6 years ago) Permalink

A PHP problem. Why am I suddenly getting the error

Warning: mysqli_fetch_row() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given

for

$rs = mysqli_query($db, $query);
while ($i = mysqli_fetch_row($rs))
{

... (error given on the whileline)... this was running fine a couple of days ago, and is also identical to error-free code elsewhere.

― ledge (ledge), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:19 (6 years ago) Permalink

oh never mind, the sql query was messed up, i am idiot.

― ledge (ledge), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...
ok, so. i have a maxtor 1gb hard drive. it is formatted to ntfs and has about 450 gigs of stuff on it. i've recently switched to mac, but i can't write anything to this hard drive because it's not formatted as hfs.

my question: is it possible to create a 500 gig partition on the drive in hfs that exists concurrently with the ntfs portion, then move all the stuff from the ntfs disk over, and then wipe out the ntfs portion of the drive completely, thereby converting the entire thing to hfs? or would that be too convenient?

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 10:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

Yes, if you have a copy of Partition Magic to do it with (and a machine that will run Partition Magic to plug the disk into, of course)

― Forest Pines, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 10:59 (6 years ago) Permalink

lol @ "partition magic"

(thanks fp.)

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

actually, wait: google's telling me that partition magic only does fat and ntfs?

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:13 (6 years ago) Permalink

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

bootable linux rescue that comes with qpartd:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php

― koogs, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

i... see.

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:25 (6 years ago) Permalink

I didn't realise gparted could resize NTFS!

Yes, that is a more sensible solution.

― Forest Pines, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:26 (6 years ago) Permalink

resizable partitions = unicorns!!

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

is there a non-unix solution by chance? i am unitarded. (but i do have access to a pc and a mac, if that helps.)

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

so there are definitely no mac apps that can do this right?

― ^@^, Sunday, 4 March 2007 11:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

Do most new PCs have a firewire port or is it something you have to request from the manufacturer? I ask because I'm buying a digital camcorder that I've been told only connects to a pc by firewire. And if anyone can explain the thing with digital camcorders still having to use tape then that'd be great too!

― NI, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:10 (6 years ago) Permalink

there are lots of dvdr, hdd and solid state camcorders available these days. i guess there are tape camcorders for the same reason there are still vcrs.

firewire is common on laptops, not so on desktops. (um, that said, the newer desktops here at work have what look like firewire sockets)

― koogs, Monday, 5 March 2007 06:49 (6 years ago) Permalink

I firewire card is dead cheap anyway. The reason tape still persists for video is that data density is high and disk based solutions are not good at high degrees of shock or movement. The DV codec use don tape is very good and easy to edit after use, DVD based used MPEG-2 IBP which less edit systems can deal with, solid state camcorders are using H.264 and H.263 codecs which are very resource intensive to do anything with.

― Ed, Monday, 5 March 2007 07:32 (6 years ago) Permalink

okay, here we go:

i have a dell inspiron 8500 pc laptop, exactly three years old. today i was out at a free wifi hotspot, using the battery. this is from the era of crappy dell laptop batteries, where if you do any intense computing for even 20 minutes, the battery is gone. so i checked email, browsed, etc. and after twenty or so minutes the little bubble popped up that said low battery. i clicked shutdown, and then closed the laptop, most likely before the computer had completely shut down. a little later i got it plugged in at a cafe, and when i went to turn it on...nothing. or almost mothing. just a blank screen. no windows startup, no DOS action, just blank. I've taken out the battery, plugged and unplugged the computer, made sure the battery is charged, and still, nothing.

so, what do you all think? is there anything i can do? (short of taking it somewhere...i have no money)

i am kind of freaking out.

thank you.

― jergincito, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

A battery three years old is to all intents and purposes a dead battery. Try running it plugged in with the battery removed, i'm not sure if you did from the post above. If not it may be either the power supply or power management unit that is fucked.

― Ed, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

thank you. will try. i didn't know you could plug it in with the battery out.

― jergincito, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:33 (6 years ago) Permalink

Thanks a lot Koogs & Ed. Turned out I did have firewire (confusing how it's also called a DV something) and Ulead did a great job of capturing the footage quickly and painlessly to my pc. Can anyone recommend a better video editing program than Ulead 10? It's great for simple quick jobs but I'd like something with more effects and tools.

― NI, Monday, 5 March 2007 18:46 (6 years ago) Permalink

Very trivial question - when I start up my laptop (Windows XP), RealPlayer automatically opens. I cannot for the life of me find any option in the preferences to stop it doing this. Any thoughts?

― Archel, Monday, 5 March 2007 18:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

I haven't used RealPlayer in a long long time, I installed Real Alternative instead.

You can look here http://www.chipconnection.com/tips.html there are two sections that may help. Removing realplayer from the tray or the next one "Prevent programs from automatically loading when you start Windows" should do it for you.

― svend, Monday, 5 March 2007 19:17 (6 years ago) Permalink

was there a mac os x update recently that might have totally fucked my php.ini? because something did, and it wasn't me.

― akm, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

shouldn't it copy the old one to like php.init.something? IIRC it did that for apache?

― JW, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:12 (6 years ago) Permalink

i don't know, it was using php.ini.default and my regular php.ini file seems to have disappeared, and all the permissions for these things (like pear.php) were changed as well.

― akm, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:16 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok so my computer problems (with a 3.75 year old dell laptop) were so bad my computer completely and utterly died. i will be getting a new computer in about two weeks. what kind should i get? (basically what i require is that it be fairly light and transportable, have a glossy screen, at least 80 gigs of memory, at least 2 hours of battery life, and be able to run both itunes and windows media player. and, um, the internet and a word processor.)

― Maria, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok, here's an easy one: how do i configure a program to automatically load upon startup in tiger?

― ^@^, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 11:58 (6 years ago) Permalink

right click on dock icon, "launch at login" (or something like that)

― tissp, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:06 (6 years ago) Permalink

System Preferences --> Accounts --> (select account you want to configure) --> Login Items

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

ooh tissp's is better

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

thanks dudes.

― ^@^, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:12 (6 years ago) Permalink

Hi hi,

I want to buy an external hard drive to 1) act as a backup/archive of music, pics etc and 2) enable me to transfer large amounts of files between two PCs. Can anyone advise me as to what would be a good value solution at present? I don't have a phenomenal amount of stuff, maybe 40Gb at present, but I'd like it to last a while.

Thanks!

― Mark C, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 15:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

320G for £80 at a dixons near you. (seagate toaster looking thing, usb2, runs very cool)

oh, have gone up in dixons, but here's one:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=14982&&source=Dealtime

― koogs, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 15:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

Mr. Jaq got a 500Gb MyBook for less than $200 last weekend. He hasn't done much with it yet.

― Jaq, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 15:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

Only prob with a MyBook (or at least the one I had) is constant spin up/down for no reason. P!ssed me off in the end; got a 1.6TB NAS. How portable do you need it to be? You may want to try looking at some of the caddied laptop drives out there.

Try here...

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 16:38 (6 years ago) Permalink

I don't need it to be terribly portable - simplicity, reliability and price are the three keys.

― Mark C, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 16:41 (6 years ago) Permalink

A MyBook would still be the cheapest out there, just about. All of them are simple (i.e. plug and pray). Reliability: have had two MyBooks, and only got rid because of annoying spin up/down thing mentioned above. I've had no such problem with my Maxtor external, which is the only one I've kept as an addition to the NAS. Most of your options are pretty much of a muchness, to be honest.

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 16:59 (6 years ago) Permalink

Hm, I need a music drive....

― JW, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:14 (6 years ago) Permalink

As in? For storage on your pc? As an ipod kind of a thing? Personal recs=NAS (Buffalo terastation) for storing flac files (flac=lossless=good). Alternative to that would be the external drives mentioned above. iAudio X5 as a portable ipoddy thing, as long as you RockBox it quicksmart. You can then convert your flac to ogg, and away you go.

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:21 (6 years ago) Permalink

why would you need to rockbox a X5?

― koogs, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:22 (6 years ago) Permalink

Something that can do NAS and usb. Firewire would be nice

― JW, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

I though that the firmware was awful. Like, why play ogg that isn't gapless? Plus the icon based gui didn't do it for me. Personal taste, though, I suppose.

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:25 (6 years ago) Permalink

JW, this was what I got. Raid 5 ends up at 1.2 TB. I thought that would probably keep me in available space for a while. Not sure about usb/firewire with that, though.

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:28 (6 years ago) Permalink


I though that the firmware was awful. Like, why play ogg that isn't gapless? Plus the icon based gui didn't do it for me. Personal taste, though, I suppose.

well, yeah - my m5 does natively 95% of the stuff people rockbox their ipods for anyway (ogg, flac, usb...) so i didn't see a lot of point. (the m5 doesn't have icons, just a list). mine's suffereing from limited battery - after 15 months i get about an hour out of a full charge so i'm looking to buy another, possibly a different make (keep the m5 as a 20G external drive full of mp3s)

the new D2 looks nice though.

― koogs, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

Ooh, I didn't see this thread before buying a Western Digital Essential MyBook (250GB) from Amazon for about £60. (Maplin are doing them for a tenner more but have ceased their cheap Seagate deals for the time being).

I'm wondering if I can use it as a backup device from both a Win XP laptop and a Win ME desktop? Would that involve partitioning? I bought it primarily cos we're rapidly running out of space on the laptop and I want to archive a lot of stuff off, but it would be handy to use it on both machines. Is there a file format issue between XP and ME (FAT32/NTFS)? And backup utilities - I think there's one bundled with XP but I'd need something for the ME machine. How do they work - first = full backup, subsequent = incrementals?

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 8 March 2007 13:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

I have no spin-up/down problems on my MyBook. That sounds like an OS issue rather than a hard drive issue. My OS is Mac OS X 10.4.8. The MyBook is connected over Firewire.

― caek, Thursday, 8 March 2007 13:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

If Steady Mike has a MyBook, then I shall get a MyBook. Thanks for your help everyone - my ignorance as to what spin-up/down means need never be put straight.

― Mark C, Thursday, 8 March 2007 14:17 (6 years ago) Permalink

Jeez, don't go thinking I know what I'm doing! My thought process on this went: are Seagate drives at Maplin still cheap? No, but they're pushing WD drives now. Can I get a WD drive cheaper anywhere else? Yes. Are the reviews generally positive? Yes. Where's my credit card?

I guess I'd have to stick with FAT32 on the MyBook if I wanted to hook it up to the Win ME machine - is this right? It was delivered by someone who thought he was doing us a favour (as there was no one in) by shoving the package through the wire mesh above the locked gate that links the garden passage with the car port, which means it fell about eight feet onto concrete. It may not even work.

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 8 March 2007 14:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

spin down is where the disk stops spinning (because it's not being used and is trying to save energy, which is probably a good thing). the problem comes the next time you want to access it it has to spin up again before it can access the files and this feels lumpy. listen carefully and you can hear it stop and wind up again.

(also, my cd burner would produce coasters if the hdd on the same ide cable span down during burning. took me a while to figure that one out and a simple hdparm command to fix.)

fat32 is fine mike, my seagate is the same and i use it with win98, linux, xp, win2k...

― koogs, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:00 (6 years ago) Permalink

as for mp3player battery, it ran out this morning halfway to work which is about 50 minutes in total with a 12 hour dormant period in the middle. charged it up when i got here and set it playing and it was ok for 3.5 hours, which is enough. but curious. lots of forum posts about using ds-lite batteries as replacements so i might try that. or buy one like mike's.

― koogs, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

Everyone who buys a WD MyBook seems to reformat the bugger to NTFS immediately, but I guess they haven't got flaky 6-y-o PCs with terrible operating systems languishing upstairs. I'll stay fat.

My Samsung thing only recharges in a USB socket, y'know, Koogs.

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oh no! I'll have to reformat the thing? I have two XP PCs, one with home and one with pro I think. I don't want it to be complicated :(

― Mark C, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:19 (6 years ago) Permalink

Well, no, you don't have to. I haven't even taken it out of its static-proof wrapper (with the lovely silica gel sachet - num), so I don't really know, but I think it's FAT32 out of the box. XP & NT support NTFS and FAT32 but the former is probably what yr internal HDD is and NTFS is better cos the N stands for New and New is always better, roight?

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

mark, you don't need to reformat, it'll do as it is. you might lose some functionality like per-user permissions and stuff that ntfs adds but i doubt that'll bother you. - http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63 for details (which doesn't mention the 4G file size limit)

usb socket = ok, mike, i have usb sockets.

― koogs, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:34 (6 years ago) Permalink

I guess I should partition this thing too, eh? One chunk for desktop backup, one for laptop backup. Which means I could then convert/reformat one of the partitions to NTFS (I can imagine the 4GB file limit being a problem one day). I presume I can create unequal partitions? 200/50 split would be good.

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

I got the 500GB MyBook "Premium" (i.e. USB2 + FW400) on Amazon a month or so back for £110. If you're doing video editing it's worth springing for the "Professional", i.e. USB 2 + FW800. Conversely, if you're on Windows and not doing video editing you don't even need the Premium version.

Found mine on Amazon.co.uk, as recommended by my new favorite price comparison site, DoorOne: http://doorone.co.uk/xPF-Western-Digital-Western-Digital-500GB-My-Book-Premium-1C-External-Hard-Drive-USB2-0-Firewire-Retail-kit.

― caek, Thursday, 8 March 2007 15:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

I have two 500G MyBooks if anyone wants to buy them off me.

― peteR, Thursday, 8 March 2007 16:39 (6 years ago) Permalink

my solution to a 3 hr journey home and an mp3 player with a battery life of about an hour = dig the minidisc out of the attic 8)

(actually, i used it friday to record gig and the week before for mp3ing vinyl, has been in pretty constant use for 10 years and still gets 6 hours or so on a single charge)

― koogs, Friday, 9 March 2007 11:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

koogs, I have remembered over the weekend why I was so adamant about rockboxing the X5. I knew there was a proper reason, and it is that there is a file limit of 9999, which on a 60G player (like mine) is not a right lot. OK, so if you like prog rock it's never going to be a problem, as three songs will fill up the entirely of the player, but for anyone else...

― peteR, Monday, 12 March 2007 08:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

Has anyone managed to get flickrfs working with MacFUSE

― Ed, Monday, 12 March 2007 20:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

Ok, here's a question about formatting/partitioning this WD 250GB MyBook what I have bought (and which I've now established does actually work, despite the best efforts of Amazon's delivery courier to break it)...

It comes with a single 232GB FAT32 partition, but converting it to NTFS is a doddle. However, I want to use it as:
(a) a backup device for WinXP laptop (80GB HDD)
(b) a backup device for WinME desktop (40GB HDD)
(c) a place to store video, images and audio that overspill from the laptop

Now, it isn't possible to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB from a WinXP machine. You can create a FAT32 partition larger than this from a WinME machine. So, what should I do? Partition it in FAT32 from the desktop (say, 40/80/112 roughly) and then convert (or reformat) the 80/112 partitions as NTFS on the laptop. Is this feasible?

Presumably that will leave me with a HDD that has three partitions, only one of which is visible from the WinME machine.

I'm still pondering my backup strategy - normal/differential, I guess. But I'd prefer my video/audio/images to be freely available in their own partition rather than tied up in a .bck file. Does that make sense?

― Michael Jones, Monday, 12 March 2007 23:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

That's too many words for me to concentrate on, Mike, but do you need a FAT32 partition at all? If your new machine can see your ME machine (which it ought to be able to), then you could get data from it, rather than trying to put data from the ME machine to the NTFS partition.

― Keith, Monday, 12 March 2007 23:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

Well, my thinking was: I need to partition this MyBook to (at least) keep the laptop and desktop data physically separate (or maybe I don't)? I can't create big enough FAT32 partitions from the XP laptop to store all my data from either machine. I can create NTFS partitions that are as big as the moon but that's no good for the ME desktop (it won't see them). So the only solution seems to be creating greater-than-32GB FAT32 partitions from the ME desktop and then converting one or more of them to NTFS from the XP laptop.

This supposes:
(a) the need to have separate partitions for the two computers
(b) the desirability of using NTFS for backing up XP laptop data

Maybe I don't need to do anything - I just have three big folders on the pre-formatted FAT32 232GB disc: Laptop backups, Desktop backups, Other data. Easy, I guess - but the most efficient use of the HDD?

― Michael Jones, Monday, 12 March 2007 23:45 (6 years ago) Permalink

(I'm going to unplug the MyBook HDD and pop in back in its shiny pouch overnight. Ner-night, everybody).

― Michael Jones, Monday, 12 March 2007 23:51 (6 years ago) Permalink

every time i partition a disk (multiple linux distros) i end up with one partition that's 99% full and another that's barely used. which is a pain. so these days i don't tend to bother with partitioning beyond one for / and one for /home (C:\ and D:\ for windows people). large partitions are painful when fscking but that's what journalled file systems are for.

i wouldn't use ntfs - frankly i don't trust bill gates with my data.

haven't bothered with a generational approach to my backups (it's mostly mp3s that i can always re-rip and anything that needs versioning is kept in cvs / svn anyway), i just run rsync when i remember.

― koogs, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:18 (6 years ago) Permalink

The thing that bothers me about having one huge FAT32 partition is that FAT drives are kinda notorious for getting fragmented very easily and becoming a pain in the backside to use. But, then again, I'm not really going to be using the MyBook like that - it'll be a place for laptop/desktop backups (maybe a full one once a month for the former with weekly differentials, a full one for the latter full stop (it's barely used thesedays)) and a huge cache of audio/video/images which I'll just be adding to. The backups will be wiped and replaced every once in a while, so no great danger of fragmentation.

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:27 (6 years ago) Permalink

If you are feeling L33t have a go with MacFUSE posted above which gives you a way of doing read/write on NTFS from OS X.

― Ed, Tuesday, 13 March 2007 10:45 (6 years ago) Permalink

Awesome = Services menu!!

apple+shift+Y = new sticky of selected txt

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 21:55 (6 years ago) Permalink

Youtube problem.

This whole week, I haven't been able to get past the black "Loading video" screen, which had been a problem ever since I upgraded to Peerguardian 2 several months ago. But I've since perm-allowed most of the IPs for YT, and when I go to YT now, I'm not seeing any IPs getting blocked.

I've tried disabling PG2, then turning off my firewall (ZA), I've checked to make sure that Quicktime isn't my default program to handle streaming videos (I tried to check in WMP but I couldn't find anything about streaming; I don't have Realplayer installed either).

The YT help page mentioned an out-of-date Flash player, but I don't think that's my problem since I'm able to see the "Loading video" screen.

I've tried both FF2 and IE7, and YT doesn't work for either.

WinXP SP2 yadda yadda.

― Leee, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 22:15 (6 years ago) Permalink

every time I connect my ipod to my windows xp box I'm unable to eject it normally because it says the files are "in use by another application". everything Ive looked up says this is due to Norton AntiVirus but I have auto-protection turned off and it still happens. the only way I can ever eject it is either via explorer force eject, or just taking it off the usb dongle anyway and forcing it to restart. anyone else experience this?

― akm, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 22:50 (6 years ago) Permalink

you guys have stupid problems

― JW, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 23:43 (6 years ago) Permalink

my problem is stupid but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

― akm, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 23:48 (6 years ago) Permalink

Norton Antivirus doesn't do shit except lag the crap out of your computer.

― JW, Thursday, 15 March 2007 00:14 (6 years ago) Permalink

Uninstall Norton, its a giant turd.

Get AVG Free or something.

― Jarlrmai, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:19 (6 years ago) Permalink

YouTube is flash. video, so QT and WMP are nothing to do with it, try uninstalling Flash and downloading the lated version and installing it.

And be a little easier on your PC, i'd reccomend just using the Windows firewall.

― Jarlrmai, Thursday, 15 March 2007 01:21 (6 years ago) Permalink

Weird, now it works without having monkeyed around with anything.

― Leee, Thursday, 15 March 2007 03:01 (6 years ago) Permalink

Anyone in London got a Macbook Core Duo install Mac OS X install DVD.

― Ed, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 19:25 (6 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...
my pal has a lacie external HD on which he has spilt curry.

he's in london and is not the most computer-literate. the best thing, i think, would be for him to take it to some kind of repair shop cum data-salvaging service.

can any london ILX0rs recommend such a place (the cheaper the better)?

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 30 April 2007 10:27 (6 years ago) Permalink

Did the curry get inside?

― Keith, Monday, 30 April 2007 10:29 (6 years ago) Permalink

i'm assuming so, because he says it ain't working very well.

(i know, i know: this is almost useless information. but i'm in glasgow, and he and his HD are in london.)

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 30 April 2007 12:20 (6 years ago) Permalink

Rubbish! It was you wasn't it? Go on own up!

― the next grozart, Monday, 30 April 2007 13:31 (6 years ago) Permalink

hahahah. no. honest.

anyone?

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 30 April 2007 14:56 (6 years ago) Permalink

http://www.retrodata.co.uk

― stet, Monday, 30 April 2007 14:57 (6 years ago) Permalink

I found PC Heaven (020 7255 2666) in Fitzrovia to be great - v fast, v cheap and v friendly.

― braveclub, Monday, 30 April 2007 15:26 (6 years ago) Permalink

ok, so: i need a script management program for osx -- something that will allow me to organize different documents, tag them with notes and/or certain types of metadata (ie. last read, contact info, etc).

this sort of thing has to be available, but i cannae find anything suitable. any suggestions?

― ^@^, Monday, 30 April 2007 15:40 (6 years ago) Permalink

actually, scratch that -- i don't even really need something that handles the actual documents. i just need a sort of lite database situation that allows me to enter records, tag them, manage and oragnize them. any ideas?

― ^@^, Monday, 30 April 2007 15:52 (6 years ago) Permalink

thanks, stet and braveclub.

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 30 April 2007 18:53 (6 years ago) Permalink

try DevonThink, ^@^. Interface is a bit ugly, but it's smart.

― stet, Monday, 30 April 2007 19:20 (6 years ago) Permalink

DevonThink is predicated on the notion that yr own personal Google is better than the real Google. Unless you think like Devon, it's a huge waste of time and a medium waste of money.

A simple solution is right under yr nose: Spotlight comments. If you get info on a document, you can enter all this metadata into the comments field and it'll be available for each searching in Spotlight. Prefix it with a special tag and that'll help you filter stuff out.

If that's too ghetto for ya, then Excel might be sufficient. If not excel, the Filemaker is the obvious next step up.

― libcrypt, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 03:35 (6 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

the other day i bought a tv card for my pc (the dvb-t plus with built in freeview), installed it v-e-r-y carefully so nothing screwed up and thankfully it works. but now i've just tried to load half-life 2, which worked fine before, and it loads up but when the actual playable bit of the game comes on it lasts a second then my screen goes black and 'no signal' flashes up. even more annoyingly it won't let me restart with ctrl alt del or even the power off button so i have to pull the power cable out of the back.

it's done this a few times, and also with call of duty. is it some clash between tv card and 3d games? i've updated the drivers for my 6600 gt graphics card and still no change. can anyone suggest a solution?

― NI, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 16:54 (5 years ago) Permalink

Does the game work again if you remove the TV card?

― StanM, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 17:02 (5 years ago) Permalink

Sounds like the Card installed a direct show filter which is grabbing the game's output. Not sure how to fix it, though.

― Ed, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 17:03 (5 years ago) Permalink

StanM, I've not tried that yet, I'm loathe to fiddle about in there again. Is it best to try to uninstall the tv card program? If this doesn't work, then I'll remove the card itself.

― NI, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 17:14 (5 years ago) Permalink

Actually, what Ed said sounds more likely. I'd try reinstalling the game to see if that solves the problem. (If it doesn't, check if there's a more recent version of the drivers that came with the TV card?)

― StanM, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 18:14 (5 years ago) Permalink

anyone know why my winamp has suddenly stopped working? it starts up then crashes the moment i try to play music. it's been fine for years up until now.

― creme1, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 18:22 (5 years ago) Permalink

oh man things just got 100x worse. so i uninstalled the tv card program and drivers. reinstalled nvidea drivers, still nothing. opened up my pc and removed the tv card, did all the drivers stuff again. pc still does the same thing - load a 3d game and it lasts half a second then the screen goes blank, a message flickers up saying 'no signal' and i have to pull out the power cable from the back. only this time, i now have no internet either! i click on a page and it doesn't even try to look, just goes straight to 'page not found' (in both ie and firefox). there's no logical reason at all why it should do this, i've not changed anything relating to the internet at all.

so i currently have a hulking pc that can't play games and won't connect to the internet. my laptop is connected wirelessly to the router and that works. anyone have any idea how to solve a) the game issue and b) the internet issue?

i'm thinking of undertaking the sisyphean task of burning everything off my pc and starting again from scratch but i reeeeeeeeally want to avoid that if possible. (tune in tomorrow for a new unexpected world-stopping pc woe)

― NI, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 10:57 (5 years ago) Permalink

Sounds like the game is setting a refresh rate/resolution your monitor doesn't support.

Do you get to the options/menu screen on the game, or does it bail before then?

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 11:46 (5 years ago) Permalink

It goes through the menu screen and onto the main game bit but when I move the mouse it instantly flicks off to the 'no signal' screen. Thing is, these games all worked fine before. I installed a new one and the same happened again. It's worked fine at the 75hz and top res settings before (I've lowered these settings but it makes no difference when I load the game).

Am I damaging my pc by pulling the power cable out at the back? There's no other way of restarting it. I figure I've had to do this about 8 or 9 times in the past 24 hours. Could this explain why the internet has gone down for that pc?

― NI, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 12:50 (5 years ago) Permalink

not really damaging but its not helpful.

What monitor do you have? Is it a CRT (old school tube) or a TFT (funky flat panel).

What video card do you have?

What res/refresh is your desktop at?

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:13 (5 years ago) Permalink

OK, VERY stupid question but I'll ask anyway. My dad ordered a laptop (here) and wants me to ship it to Japan. Is it safe (if I keep it in the original box). I couldn't convince him it was risky, he just wants the god damn laptop.

― nathalie, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:16 (5 years ago) Permalink

Where is here?

I wouldn't reship it, it may get impounded by customs and you'll have to pay import tax or something also it may get trashed,

buy the laptop in Japan... they are cheaper than most places over there anyway.

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:22 (5 years ago) Permalink

My monitor is a TFT flat panel, Acer AL1951. The refresh is set to 75hz and the res is 1280x1024. My video card is a GeForce 6600GT. Games worked fine before I installed the DVB tv card - has the tv card damaged the video card? And it was after removing the tv card that the internet died. (Thanks for helping btw)

― NI, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:34 (5 years ago) Permalink

when you get the game up the next time set to 800x600 and 60hz then load a save.

Have you tried removing the Nvidia forceware and reinstalling them?

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:39 (5 years ago) Permalink

Right. I've looked around a bit for "no signal" and "half life 2" (people have the same problem with Counter Strike, sometimes) and it seems that getting rid of Steam and reinstalling it can solve the problem. (whatever that means - can someone explain what this Steam thing is?)

― StanM, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:41 (5 years ago) Permalink

(I think it could be something like the Windows XP thing where your PC isn't the same configuration anymore so you have to reinstall/reregister or something, but I'm not sure)

― StanM, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:42 (5 years ago) Permalink

Steam is a content distribution system used by Valve to provide downloadable games etc to PC

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:51 (5 years ago) Permalink

So it could be "this unique ID doesn't correspond to the hardware in this PC anymore so I quit" ?

― StanM, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 13:52 (5 years ago) Permalink

Not really, as all 3D games do it, also you would get the warning way before you got to the point where you could load up a save.

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 14:01 (5 years ago) Permalink

Oh fek, import taxes. Shit, didn't think about that. But we did look at the macbooks in Japan. We decided against it: different keyboards (qwerty and also the function keys are different). Hmm

― nathalie, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 15:04 (5 years ago) Permalink

2 months pass...

ok update on my previous posts a couple of months back. i managed to fix the internet issue and i've spent the past few weeks buring date and formatting my whole pc in a bid to fix it.

i've now taken the tv card out - which seems to be the thing that has led to all this. (i tried it once with the tv card still in and now with it taken out and both results in the same thing.)

when my pc boots up a little box opens saying "error: no card found". doesn't say which card but i guess it has something to do with the graphics card. games still do the same thing - load for a bit then completely cuts out, screen goes black, nothing works, not even the power on/off button.

it also seems that something has happened to my ram. i bought my pc with 2gb ram installed but now when i right click on 'my computer' it says:
Computer:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor
3200+
2.01ghz, 1.00gb of ram
physical address extension

so somehow a gb of ram has gone missing! i've opened up my pc and both the ram and graphics cards seem to be installed properly. but when i check 'system information' it says:
total physical memory: 2,048.00mb (which i assume is the correct amount of 2gb ram)
and underneath says:
available physical memory: 763.88mb
total virtual memory: 2.00gb
available virtual memory: 1.96gb

does anyone have any advice on how to check if my graphics card and ram are installed and working ok? or how i can fix this so i can play games on it again and bring this missing gb of ram back?

― NI, Wednesday, 22 August 2007 12:41 (5 years ago) Permalink

3 weeks pass...

I just cleaned my laptop screen with gin - is this a good idea?

― Mark C, Saturday, 15 September 2007 10:02 (5 years ago) Permalink

i tried to set up a server with filezilla and nobody can access it :(

i even opened a port in my firewall and everyting

― poortheatre, Saturday, 15 September 2007 13:35 (5 years ago) Permalink

filezilla's a program for transfering files via ftp, nothing to do with setting up a server.

apache is a webserver if that's what you want (there are many). but setting up a webserver isn't that easy. doing it properly is much harder. setting up an ftp server is probably easier.

gin wouldn't be my first choice.

― koogs, Saturday, 15 September 2007 17:07 (5 years ago) Permalink

there is a server version of filezilla.

http://filezilla-project.org/wiki/index.php/FileZilla_FTP_Server

― Jarlrmai, Saturday, 15 September 2007 18:35 (5 years ago) Permalink

You need to do more than open the port. If you don't have a DMZ host defined, you need to redirect the port as well.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 15 September 2007 19:09 (5 years ago) Permalink

argh. i think i'll just stick to FireFTP.

― poortheatre, Sunday, 16 September 2007 12:48 (5 years ago) Permalink

sometimes when using Windows XP on various computers round the building I try to open a directory from My Computer and instead of going to the directory in question it brings up the dialog box with the 'choose which software to open this file' list and I then have to select Internet Explorer - why?

― Grandpont Genie, Monday, 17 September 2007 10:20 (5 years ago) Permalink

The extension of the file you are opening is not registered to an application.

1. Are you opening a directory and not a file? If so something is very wrong?
2. Are you sure it's IE and not Windows Explorer that you are selecting?

― Jarlrmai, Monday, 17 September 2007 11:58 (5 years ago) Permalink

2 weeks pass...

HAY EWE GUISE I NEEDS HELP

My wife downloads and installs every software update that Apple tells her to, whether she needs it or not. After installing iTunes 7.4.2, the application won't work anymore, at all. The icon bounces in the dock for a second, and then nothing.

We've repaired permissions, thrown away plist files, you name it. I looked on Software Update and there was a Quicktime Compatibility Update there today, so I uninstalled iTunes, installed the Quicktime bit, reinstalled iTunes, and no luck.

Any ideas?

― Rock Hardy, Monday, 1 October 2007 20:08 (5 years ago) Permalink

Anyone?

― Rock Hardy, Monday, 1 October 2007 20:55 (5 years ago) Permalink

I assume you're using tiger?

― dan selzer, Monday, 1 October 2007 21:03 (5 years ago) Permalink

Rename the Music folder in your home directory to something else (e.g. Music-backup) and relaunch. If that works then the problem is somewhere in that folder. Try moving files out one at a time. The problem is probably with "iTunes Library" or "iTunes Library.xml". If it is, you may have to trash them (and lose your playlists and playcounts : ().

If it isn't the problem, rename Music-backup to Music and keep looking!

― caek, Monday, 1 October 2007 21:50 (5 years ago) Permalink

This is on a Mac by the way, right?

― caek, Monday, 1 October 2007 21:50 (5 years ago) Permalink

Look in the logs in Console.app

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Monday, 1 October 2007 22:00 (5 years ago) Permalink

Mac yes, Tiger yes. Renaming the folder didn't help. Looked in the Console logs and nothing is jumping out at me. I tried starting iTunes with various logs open to see if they'd refresh on the fly with the error or crash message, but they don't.

― Rock Hardy, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 13:37 (5 years ago) Permalink

Have you tried installing an older version of iTunes?

― Alba, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 13:38 (5 years ago) Permalink

get a PC.

― koogs, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 13:50 (5 years ago) Permalink

you tried starting it with option held down? think this should force a dialog box asking which library file to use. might get you a fraction further forward.

― grimly fiendish, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 13:52 (5 years ago) Permalink

if they got a pc itunes would be working but nothing else would :)

xpost

― DG, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 14:25 (5 years ago) Permalink

Okay, retreating to an earlier version of iTunes worked. I'm still frustrated that I couldn't figure out the problem, but at least I could back up a few steps and go around the problem. Thanks everybody.

― Rock Hardy, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 14:37 (5 years ago) Permalink

3 months pass...

My computer (pc) plays all media files at the wrong speed. It does so in media player, itunes, and in firefox (e.g. youtube plays at the wrong speed). Everything is being played, by my estimation, about 25% too fast. I have tried updating the relevant drivers but to no avail. Any help with this would be much appreciated.

― boring, Sunday, 27 January 2008 15:51 (5 years ago) Permalink

Lay off the meth?

― Noodle Vague, Sunday, 27 January 2008 15:52 (5 years ago) Permalink

bizzare, does it do it with MP3 or just video?

What hardware do you have and what OS?

― Jarlrmai, Sunday, 27 January 2008 17:02 (5 years ago) Permalink

That's crazy, especially youtube! Have you tried updating Direct X?

― melton mowbray, Sunday, 27 January 2008 17:08 (5 years ago) Permalink

It does it with mp3s and videos. I'll get the hardware specs and post tomorrow. My OS is windows 2000. I did try to update direct X. I'm not 100% sure that I did it effectively.

― boring, Sunday, 27 January 2008 22:17 (5 years ago) Permalink

windows 2000. hmm

do

start->run->dxdiag->okay

what version do you have?

― Jarlrmai, Monday, 28 January 2008 13:26 (5 years ago) Permalink

not a problem as such, but i was wondering if anyone had experience/recommendations for home NAS stuff. I want to plug something into my wireless router as a filestore.

VERY intrigued by http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-NSLU2UK-Storage-Link-Drives/dp/B0002ZDQLI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1201513820&sr=8-1#moreAboutThisProduct which has some weird homebrew scene attached to it.

― Alan, Monday, 28 January 2008 14:40 (5 years ago) Permalink

Looks cool.

If you already have a large USB HDD then it may be worth it.

― Jarlrmai, Monday, 28 January 2008 14:48 (5 years ago) Permalink

indeed. i have a cheap USB2 enclosure or 2 and i can get hold of my own large disks to throw around. the homebrew ppl have even knocked up an http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Applications/ITunesServer for it which made it sound nice.

― Alan, Monday, 28 January 2008 14:55 (5 years ago) Permalink

It runs linux, geeks be hacking.

Looks interesting I was after something like it my self, 2 power plugs though if are hooking up a non laptop drive.

― Jarlrmai, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:01 (5 years ago) Permalink

I've got one of the Buffalo LinkStation NAS boxes. It comes with a built in hard disk (they come in various sizes) and you can attach a couple of external usb disks to the box and they're treated as network shares too.
It runs linux and there's an active homebrew scene.
For example I've got mine running a firefly media server so I can stream my iTunes library to a Roku Soundbridge without ever having to turn on a PC.

― treefell, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:10 (5 years ago) Permalink

cheers. still looking at the buffalo stuff, but i was taken with the flexibility of just plugging in USB enclosures that you could just unplug and cart around if you liked. more bothered about that than data rate or mad plug multiplication. behind my telly

Telly plug
Wii plug
DVD plug
cable set-top box plug
wireless router plug
'media box' plug

if i have to plug in the USB external that's another plug out in the open. i'd rather have 2 more hidden out of view. esp if it does l33t haXoR tricks

― Alan, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:13 (5 years ago) Permalink

Ah, plug proliferation, I keep my wireless router in the same room as the PCs & NAS. I stream the audio over wireless to the Soundbridge attached to my Denon.

― treefell, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:17 (5 years ago) Permalink

that'll be my next trick, some wireless gadget to stream to the stereo

― Alan, Monday, 28 January 2008 15:21 (5 years ago) Permalink

start->run->dxdiag->okay yields version 8.1 (4.08.01.0881)

― boring, Monday, 28 January 2008 17:44 (5 years ago) Permalink

boring, did it ever play stuff at the right speed? in any case, i'd try

start -> run
sfc /scannow

this can take a few hours

― abanana, Monday, 28 January 2008 18:14 (5 years ago) Permalink

The problem is not resolved I'm afraid. Can I quikcly clarify what sfc/scannow will do before I commit my computer to a few hours of it?

― boring, Monday, 28 January 2008 20:23 (5 years ago) Permalink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_File_Checker

It could also be a BIOS issue (maybe the bios thinks the CPU is a different speed? i dunno).

― abanana, Monday, 28 January 2008 21:23 (5 years ago) Permalink

I have updated my DirectX to version 9.0. I'll run the file checker tomorrow and will post with an update. Cheers

― boring, Monday, 28 January 2008 22:01 (5 years ago) Permalink

have you installed any new media players/codec packs recently?

― Jarlrmai, Monday, 28 January 2008 22:20 (5 years ago) Permalink

The only thing I have installed recently is an ID3 tags editor for mp3 files. The problem predates this I'm afraid.

― boring, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 06:25 (5 years ago) Permalink

"boring, did it ever play stuff at the right speed? in any case, i'd try"

It has never player stuff at the right speed I'm afraid. Bascially, I was given it for free so I can't exactly complain. However, it is hampering my ability to listen to internet radio, or hear bits of tracks on boomkat or smallfish, or watch/listen to stuff on ubuweb.

I have tried running the file checker. I'm pleased to report it took much less than a few hours. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have had any effect. I've yet to restart my computer, but have not been prompted to do so.

― boring, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 06:58 (5 years ago) Permalink

The one and only time I've seen this problem it's been down to sound card drivers.

I'm guessing you have on board sound is your PC a homebuilt or a Dell or something?

Upgrading to XP may also solve this.

― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 10:14 (5 years ago) Permalink

If you are hearing internet radio too fast I suggest you leave it running, wait for the lottery results and get $$$.

― Alba, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 11:19 (5 years ago) Permalink

the speeding up sound can happen if the samplerate is set incorrectly and is speeding things up as it resamples.

― tissp, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 11:29 (5 years ago) Permalink

not sure about video though; unless for some reason the vid is being sync'd with the sound....

― tissp, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 11:30 (5 years ago) Permalink

I have no idea what causes boring's problem but when I first got my old Abit NF7 motherboard the onboard sound played at half speed (maybe it was double, I forget). I worried that the entire motherboard was running at the wrong bus speed, which would mean serious problems, but when I put in my old soundcard and used that (which I was going to do anyway) it sounded fine and I didn't have any other trouble with it.

Now I have another Abit motherboard, a UL8, and I can't hibernate the PC because when I reactivate it all sound through either soundcard plays at double speed. I know it's double because the last.fm plugin is always about to kick in (which it does halfway through the playing time) when it runs out of track and never submits.

So, I can't help, but you're not the only one.

― a passing spacecadet, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 11:36 (5 years ago) Permalink

i'm buying that gadget i mentioned upthread BTW. most geeky thing i've done ever. srsly.

― Alan, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 13:50 (5 years ago) Permalink

The Linksys NSLU2 certainly looks interesting. I've been thinking of building myself some kind of Linux-based file server/storage box to sit on my home network for what feels like forever now, but something along those lines could be a much simpler solution. It seems a downside that it only has 2 USB slots though.

― krakow, Tuesday, 29 January 2008 22:05 (5 years ago) Permalink

"If you are hearing internet radio too fast I suggest you leave it running, wait for the lottery results and get $$$."

great idea. Cheers.

― boring, Thursday, 31 January 2008 20:00 (5 years ago) Permalink

the NSLU2 is MAGIC! you need to update the firmware so you can use FAT32 (and NTFS if so minded) and in leopard it just pops up in the sidebar as a shared machine so i guess it advertises the SMBness.

i plugged in my media box and i was able to play avi files directly over the LAN in VLC, and i even had a separate iTunes library backed up on there, so switched iTunes to using that library and it didn't blink.

i am hooked. next trick is to get myself a domain name, get it running LAMP or direct connect or summink l33t like that.

― Alan, Friday, 1 February 2008 10:20 (5 years ago) Permalink

krakow, i bet you could use a hub off it with custom firmware. I have my iTunes library on my NSLU2

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Friday, 1 February 2008 18:22 (5 years ago) Permalink

I do desperately need more space, and external HDDs just aren't cutting it for me.

― krakow, Friday, 1 February 2008 21:36 (5 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

Anyone have any tips on ways to improve streaming video? It's very choppy. I have a mac...I suspect that it may have something to do with my upload speed being too low (~200kbps); is there a way to increase that, or is the answer: get faster internet?

― G00blar, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:20 (5 years ago) Permalink

Will connecting to the wall with a wire, instead of using wireless, help?

― G00blar, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:26 (5 years ago) Permalink

Try pausing yr player for a while, let the streaming come in a bit, then start it. There will be less 'stopping' therefore less irritating.

― Mark G, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:29 (5 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, the pause button doesn't seem to work. Stupid Silverlight.

― G00blar, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:29 (5 years ago) Permalink

Oh, it's 'live' video.

― G00blar, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:29 (5 years ago) Permalink

Anyone know why my Word program has started randomly replacing letters with apostrophes? I type a word like "because" and Word "auto-corrects" it to "bec'use". It's not happening in a consistent way - it just randomly replaces letters.

― Maria :D, Thursday, 27 March 2008 21:53 (5 years ago) Permalink

I'm trying to fill in a job app and it looks perfectly fine in 'normal' mode, but in 'page layout' I lose some of the pages. Any reformatting tips? There aren't any page/section breaks to delete.

― ljubljana, Saturday, 29 March 2008 11:47 (5 years ago) Permalink

OK, the entire thing was formatted as a table, even when it looks like free text. Case closed.

Maria, that sounds bizarre.

― ljubljana, Saturday, 29 March 2008 13:12 (5 years ago) Permalink

Maria, turn off the Autocorrect (from Tools| Autocorrect Options | Replace text as you type in Word 2003). You can also see the entire list of replacements that autocorrect will use in that same dialog and can delete them. If the weird stuff isn't in there, I'd probably remove and reinstall Word (or all of Office).

― Jaq, Saturday, 29 March 2008 14:00 (5 years ago) Permalink

Thanks, Jaq. The strange corrections are not in autocorrect. I'll try reinstalling once I find my disk.

― scott seward, Saturday, 29 March 2008 18:57 (5 years ago) Permalink

That was me, not him.

― Maria :D, Saturday, 29 March 2008 18:58 (5 years ago) Permalink

3 weeks pass...

Dunno if I have a hardware problem on my laptop. When I bought the laptop secondhand, the dvd drive was knacked, so I replaced it with a new drive. Was working ok for a few weeks, burning discs, playing cds/dvds etc but now it won't read or play anything. When I boot up there's a clicking sound from it as if it's looking for a disc.

Using XP, device manager says that it is working properly, but clearly it isn't. Any ideas?

― Billy Dods, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 11:19 (5 years ago) Permalink

XP doesn't know shit. Your drive is rooted.

― Autumn Almanac, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 11:20 (5 years ago) Permalink

Can you boot from a boot CD? This should tell you if XP is borked.

― Autumn Almanac, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 11:21 (5 years ago) Permalink

Dunno, will give it a go this evening, don't have the laptop to hand at the mo.

― Billy Dods, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 11:26 (5 years ago) Permalink

XP tells you a device works if it knows the device is there. Utterly useless feedback. It's like a mechanic seeing your car and saying 'I can see your car, therefore it works'

― Autumn Almanac, Wednesday, 23 April 2008 11:29 (5 years ago) Permalink

1 month passes...

having posted this really bizarre problem importing an audio track from CD on two different macs on the "i hate apple" thread, i realised i should probably have posted it here. but i didn't. anyway: if anyone's got any ideas, fire away.

― grimly fiendish, Sunday, 25 May 2008 15:20 (4 years ago) Permalink

3 weeks pass...

Is there an external switch for wireless on the ThinkPad (R52)? I usually keep my wireless radio off. For some reason, the option to turn it on no longer appears. I tried using Fn+F5, but I get a message about the resource dll being missing, but then in the advanced settings for my wireless connection, it appears that my wireless device is working properly.

― youn, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 11:37 (4 years ago) Permalink

bump

― youn, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 17:42 (4 years ago) Permalink

lol get a mac

― DG, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 17:52 (4 years ago) Permalink

yeah! you can take photos of yrself from a little camera atop the screen!!!!!!!!!!!

― sunny successor, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 17:55 (4 years ago) Permalink

wireless works

― DG, Wednesday, 18 June 2008 21:19 (4 years ago) Permalink

ok so we have a wireless router with a mac wired to it and my laptop connected wirelssly. when i download large pages (ie: wdyll by the middle of a month kind of size) the wireless connection drops out and i have to go upstairs and reset the router. the internet connection for the mac is not affect at all so I know its just a wireless prob. how do i fix it?

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 14:58 (4 years ago) Permalink

Is it a Linksys?

― libcrypt, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 15:45 (4 years ago) Permalink

netgear

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 15:55 (4 years ago) Permalink

Have you tried a wired connection?

― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:08 (4 years ago) Permalink

oops i misread.

― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:08 (4 years ago) Permalink

Do you lose the ability to see the name of the wlan?

― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:09 (4 years ago) Permalink

yes. it disappears off the radar altogether.

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:10 (4 years ago) Permalink

tried newer firmware?

― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:17 (4 years ago) Permalink

no. im kind of scared to because i cant remember how i set it up. i know its set up on the mac. like i cant get an internet connection on the laptop if the mac isnt on. (and weirdly, the xbox can connect when my laptop isnt on?).

anyway, point is if i screw it up were all screwed

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 16:20 (4 years ago) Permalink

The IT guy in me says that you have a bad router. There was a run of Netgear wireless routers from like 2-3 years ago where the wireless bit had massive issues. It's not a blue-box Netgear, is it?

― libcrypt, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:13 (4 years ago) Permalink

no. but i did buy it about 2 years ago and my googling on the subject seems to suggest this very thing. stupid netgear.

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:16 (4 years ago) Permalink

If it keeps up, I think I have a spare 802.11b WAP that I could send you for nothin.

― libcrypt, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:16 (4 years ago) Permalink

woah, really?? that would be great!

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:17 (4 years ago) Permalink

(this has actually been happening since we got the router, the difference now is that i have to walk up stairs to reset it so im suddenly inspired to fix the problem)

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:19 (4 years ago) Permalink

Let me look in my store of crap. I left a WAP on the street last week because I didn't need it, but I tend to hoard computer crap.

― libcrypt, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:19 (4 years ago) Permalink

cool. thanks!

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 17:21 (4 years ago) Permalink

do the firmware update, DO IT.111

― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 19:58 (4 years ago) Permalink

ill TRY

― sunny successor, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 21:30 (4 years ago) Permalink

can someone recommend an NAS RAID storage device? I talked with someone about the Yellow Machine but it's not being manufactured anymore. This is for a studio that needs some kind of file management solution quickly. At least 1TB of storage.

― akm, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 22:28 (4 years ago) Permalink

I hear very good things about the Drobo. RAID without the hassle - just plug it in and it's seen as a single disk. Four bays that you can slot any standard HDs into, mixing and matching sizes if you like. Hot-swap new ones in when drives become full or fail. Up to 16TB theoretical maximum (4TB is the max in each bay).

― Alba, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 22:34 (4 years ago) Permalink

Oh, and DroboShare makes it networkable.

― Alba, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 22:36 (4 years ago) Permalink

that looks pretty cool, but no raid?

― akm, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 22:44 (4 years ago) Permalink

also, usb 2.0 : not so great. but maybe with droboshare it would work better.

― akm, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 22:56 (4 years ago) Permalink

Yeah, ethernet with droboshare.

― Alba, Tuesday, 24 June 2008 22:59 (4 years ago) Permalink

Do you need quick access to the data? Studio makes me think large audio/video files.

― Jarlrmai, Wednesday, 25 June 2008 08:53 (4 years ago) Permalink

yeah it's large audio files. I actually recommended the drobo with droboshare and I think they're going to look into that. their backup system involves shuffing around a bunch of random firewire drives now (some of them internal drives that snap in and out of enclosures). they don't actually "archive" people's stuff there, you're supposed to take it with you, but people like me tend to take a year to finish their albums, so you have up to 40GB of stuff for one project that lasts forever sitting around.

― akm, Wednesday, 25 June 2008 17:38 (4 years ago) Permalink

6 months pass...

i have just got an external usb hard drive, self powered, but my pc fails to boot up if it's plugged in. any suggestions?

it works fine once windows is up and running.

it won't even let me in the bios setup.

― Ant Attack.. (Ste), Thursday, 8 January 2009 12:55 (4 years ago) Permalink

> my pc fails to boot up if it's plugged in. any suggestions?

a man goes to the doctors and says 'my arm hurts when i do this'...

mine does the same, usb drive and a tiny 4g memory stick, so i just pull them out before booting.

― koogs, Thursday, 8 January 2009 13:14 (4 years ago) Permalink

Stupid question probably but: is it possible to get some sort of "hub" that connects to my computer via firewire but has usb inputs?

Basically I want to use usb peripherals, but I think my usb ports are fucked. My firewire port, however, is not.

― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, 8 January 2009 13:22 (4 years ago) Permalink

it won't even let me in the bios setup.

That's the real issue there.

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 16:44 (4 years ago) Permalink

When you can get into the BIOS, change the boot order and disable external devices.

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 16:45 (4 years ago) Permalink

the trouble is, when i can get into the bios - the external drive is disconnected. and thus not listed in the boot order.

― Ant Attack.. (Ste), Thursday, 8 January 2009 17:42 (4 years ago) Permalink

i have been informed that perhaps it's my firmware ? wuh ?

― Ant Attack.. (Ste), Thursday, 8 January 2009 17:42 (4 years ago) Permalink

Is your computer a Lenovo? I ask because I know who people with similar USB problem on Lenovos and there doesn't seem to be a solution.

― james k polk, Thursday, 8 January 2009 18:57 (4 years ago) Permalink

Stupid question probably but: is it possible to get some sort of "hub" that connects to my computer via firewire but has usb inputs?

Basically I want to use usb peripherals, but I think my usb ports are fucked. My firewire port, however, is not.

― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, January 8, 2009 1:22 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― Gorgeous Preppy (G00blar), Thursday, 8 January 2009 19:48 (4 years ago) Permalink

I don't think there's such a beast. Why do you think yr USB ports are fucked?

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:43 (4 years ago) Permalink

Can anyone explain why my Mac does not want to install Flash Player 9+? I've tried so many times and it's just 2 hours 40 minutes of rainbow spinny wheel limbo.

Machine Name: Power Mac G4
Machine Model: PowerMac3,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.9)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 450 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 576 MB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.8f1

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:46 (4 years ago) Permalink

What OS version?

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:49 (4 years ago) Permalink

10.4.10

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:49 (4 years ago) Permalink

ALSO why MS Word wants to check and acknowledge EVERY SINGLE ONE of my 12,000 fonts when I try to open the damn program?

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:51 (4 years ago) Permalink

Open Console and see if any interesting logs are going by.

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:51 (4 years ago) Permalink

Word 2008 is better with the fonts. You are using an earlier Word, yes?

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:51 (4 years ago) Permalink

I don't remember what Word I tried but it was two years ago. I couldn't even get through the Aachens. Will look into Word 2k8.

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:54 (4 years ago) Permalink

I mean, I tried it once and got so hulked out only a very long bike ride could calm me down.

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:55 (4 years ago) Permalink

My computer is old!

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:55 (4 years ago) Permalink

the pterodactyl inside it that writes on the slate screen when you type has probably died

― admin log special guest star (DG), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:57 (4 years ago) Permalink

I seem to recall that Word X was an absolute beast about fonts. 2004 was better, but not great.

― ShamPowWow (libcrypt), Thursday, 8 January 2009 20:58 (4 years ago) Permalink

DO NOT TELL ME I KILLED A PTERODACTYL

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Thursday, 8 January 2009 21:01 (4 years ago) Permalink

Before 2006 they used Pterodons

― Jarlrmai, Thursday, 8 January 2009 21:11 (4 years ago) Permalink

You need a font manager. that is all I know. I read a thread about this somewhere last week.

― james k polk, Thursday, 8 January 2009 21:26 (4 years ago) Permalink

Getting a font manager to fix broken Word behavior is like buying a machine gun to rid yr house of termites.

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