Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

You could be having packets being dropped between you and the host. Open up a terminal and ping the domain.

i was able to get it pretty fast so i think it is something on your end (either comcast or your setup)
i dunno if comcast still caps people's bandwidth? have you tried the ol' turn off router, turn back on litany?

No packet loss coming back when I pinged the domains.

Everything else I download has been absolutely fine, I mean just now I downloaded another podcast that was twice the size of TAL and it was done in about 45 seconds.

if you have a wireless setup, the QOS might be messed up? Also, if you got it already, I'm going to remove it for fear of Sarah Vowell showing up at my doorstep with a billy club.

Go ahead and take it down, thanks, I wouldn't wish her on you.

this might be a long shot but type this in a terminal and see if it downloads faster that way:

curl -O http://audio.soundopinions.org/podcasts/sooppodshow356.mp3

Started out decent, but within about 30 seconds it was estimating 11 hours to finish.

Oh well, thanks for the suggestions, I'm giving up for tonight. This is giving me a headache. I keep hoping it'll magically clear up the next day, but after 2 weeks I don't think that is likely.

crossposted from the RSS thread I bumped a little while ago

http://i47.tinypic.com/2v277n6.jpg

The way Firefox handles RSS feeds, as folders full of links to the constantly updating list of stories, is perfect for me. In almost every other respect, I've started to loathe Firefox. Is there ANY way to get Safari or Chrome to do this, either via a setting I haven't figured out or a plug-in or extension?

Never used it, but try Foxish for Chrome?

Haven't tried it, but this seems to do it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-live-links/hcamnijgggppihioleoenjmlnakejdph?hl=en

"you can set up REAL bookmark folders with REAL bookmarks a-la REAL Firefox Live Bookmarks."
For REALs

Thanks -- I think that might be the one.

I need some help with Windows 8: I've just updated to it, and I tried both Avira's and Avast's free antivirus software, but they both kept crashing Windows, because apparently they aren't fully compatible with 8 yet. The Avast homepage suggested a patch to fix the problem, but that didn't help, the crashes continued... So I uninstalled it, and at the moment I'm using Windows 8's own anti-virus/anti-malware application, Windows Defender. Are there any free antivirus software that would be absolutely compatible with Windows 8, or should I just trust Windows Defender is good enough at protecting my computer?

I've found AVG to work well. I still use Windows 7, but it is supposed to be compatible with 8.

I dunno, after Avira and Avast I googled info on other software, and I found comments where people say AVG kept crashing Windows too.

you should be fairly ok as long as you don't download anything, and sequester the stuff you do download. there's no guarantees though.

Everything crashes Windows

I never had any crashing problems with Windows 7, so I guess the problem is that antivirus companies haven't yet managed to adjust their products well enough to Windows 8, and/or that Windows 8 simply isn't very good at working with third-party applications. Most of the other apps on my computer have continued to work fine, though, without any need to update or patch them, so I guess it's more of a case of the former. I wonder how long it'll take them to make their antivirus software fully compatible with 8? (I guess they aren't in a terrible hurry to fix problems in product they give out for free...)

Why did the BBC news page just shrink in Chrome? Not in any other browser, and fiddling with Chrome's settings via 'zoom' doesn't help (just makes the font bigger on the settings page :/)

why can i suddenly not save textedit files? it's TEXTEDIT, nothing ever goes wrong in textedit, there's nothing TO go wrong. anyway i open up my macbook and start working on some documents and they are fine and then for absolutely no reason and out of nowhere suddenly it won't let me save as i work - no explanation, just a box that says this file cannot be saved. and then autosave goes a bit nuts yelling at me that it can't work and the problem needs to be resolved.

this has happened before intermittently but i've always managed to get it working again, but this weekend it KEEPS HAPPENING even when the problem seems to go away for a while. i've tried repairing permissions and deleting the "autosave information" folders in my library and it keeps coming back and i NEED IT TO NOT DO THIS and HELP PLEASE

Finally going to have to buy a new computer ... have been thinking about it for a while but my computer crashed yesterday and wouldn't start without a system recovery (meaning I've lost everything on it).

Any recommendations?

My (fairly random) budget was £500. But I can go up without too much stress if need be.

Want to be able to email, write documents, store some (but not loads) of music and compile/burn CDs.

I'm thinking of also buying a camera so I'll want to be able to do some photo stuff but not really sure what.

Would prefer not a laptop. Had a potter around PC World and there seemed to be some okay computers around £350-£500 but couldn't really distinguish between them. Bonus points for neatness/compactness but not essential.

Any ideas?

did you already do the system recovery? your data could still be retrievable if you boot from a CD.

I've already done the system recovery (admittedly, in a slight panic).

i dunno if a mac mini is under £500, but i would get that in lieu of thinking about the tons of PC options out there,
or I might just get a new hard drive instead, if the machine is otherwise OK.

Thanks Philip.

The machine is seven or so years old - it's slow, noisy and has been throwing up error messages for a while.

Quite a few people have been suggesting getting a Mac - I used to be "brand loyal" but moved over to a PC after my last Mac froze on a daily basis.

Anyone know if any PCs have a function similar to Apple's "Time Machine" - which, if I'm understanding this - automatically backs up your computer contents?

OH god help me ILX I am going totally crazy here in Kyrgyz Republic using a WiFi connection from my hotel on a MacBook Pro using Safari. I can surf the web- sorta- as in I can see cnn.com, ILX (duh), and various google queries work, but . . . .

I can't get Gmail to load - like, at all- as in, I never get to see the page where I could enter my account info- I just search for it and nothing ever loads

I can't get my university employer email server site to load (J0hns H0pkins Un1versity)

I can't get Facebook to load

BUT I CAN STILL USE THE WEB. What. The. Fuck. I am assured that, unlike China where I have been for the past eleven days, there is no government censorship or firewalls or other monkeying around with web use. So it's not something external. Is it my computer? Some kind of network setting? Some kind of browser setting? Some Flash issue? I have already resent DNS settings in Network Preferences as per the suggestions of some forums. I haven't seen my inbox in three days and while yeah I am on sabbatical it's still a big no- no in my line of work to have no way to see my inbox, let alone wanting to be in touch with my bf while I am clear across the world in Central Asia, etc.

Help me ILX! You're my only hope!

You mentioned resetting dns, but have you tried changing it to someone else? Google (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) or opendns (208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220) might help. I've defo had similar problems as a result of crappy isp dns servers before..

(Or, could it be related to crappy hotel wifi having problems with ssl..?)

anyone have any truck with eyetracking software? Specifically, Tobii software? I've got a boring question about calibration.

so the Dell Inspiron 17R that we bought last winter abruptly died last night - won't load Windows 8. Don't have the Windows 8 install disc (I don't think they gave us one, either that or we lost it). When you turn it on you get the Dell logo and then nothing. F12 takes me to the boot menu, but since I don't have anything else to boot the system from that doesn't matter. Already ran the diagnostics and there's nothing wrong with the hardware. any ideas? I imagine I'll be spending most of tonight on the phone with Dell customer service...

I'm trying to print a single page pdf but my printer keeps doing it in thin strips over six or seven pages. What's going on?

When that happens to us, it is because we have a label printer as default that has narrow page widths

oddly it was set to envelope, which I've never used before, but it's doing the same on A4 setting. Print preview looks fine and it knows it's only supposed to be printing one page, so...

are you printing from web browser or acrobat?

it's doing the same thing both in browser and in acrobat.

hmm... That's a puzzler. Does it do this on other documents or just this one?

everything else is fine! it's a printable ticket from ticketmaster so i figure they're to blame. i guess i'll go to the gig with a wad of paper (barcodes luckily intact) and be angry if there's any trouble.

Oh if that's all I'd just take a screenshot and print that

erm, I did that and I'm having the same problem. I'm so confused. This makes no sense. The image is cursed :'(.

i've heard legends of printers refusing to print money through some counterfeit prevention scheme but tickets?

I'm having the Mail/Mavericks problem, so I've ditched Mail and am trying out Postbox. I want to get both my gmail and my university email through Postbox, but it's telling me I can only use one outgoing SMTP server unless I'm an 'advanced user'! I have both set up, but the university one isn't working. Do any Postbox users know how to associate an outgoing SMTP server with a particular email account?

Perhaps not so boring, but: is there some image editing program that lets me apply a "random" set of filters based on some input parameters?

i think you can create scripts in gimp to do this.

Different question: I have a very old (and basically obsolete) backup image of my HDD on an external drive, lots of XML and VHD files. If I don't want these anymore, can I just go ahead and delete them?

Oops! Never mind, didn't realize that Windows' backup utility can do it for me.

Mac help needed please!

I've upgraded to Mavericks and am having problems with OpenOffice, which I use instead of any Microsoft products. Documents and spreadsheets open with invisible text, and line numbers in spreadsheets are pushed so far left that they're almost out of the window. If I select all and change font, everything shows up, but this is no way to run a war. Everything should be able to display properly on open.

Switching to a Test User account with no modifications, docs and spreadsheets look fine, so it's some customization I've done in my main account that is gumming things up. My question is, is there a quick and easy way to ID the difference between Users that is causing the problem?

I uninstalled Flash from a MacBook Air (Mavericks) because I suspected it of causing problems (long story). When I try to install it again I get: 'hdiutil attach failed - no mountable file systems'. Lots of people on the Adobe forums have written about this problem. Some of them solved it by getting rid of a specific thumb drive file, but I don't have that. The others have not received answers beyond 'you might have a corrupt dmg'. But I've now downloaded a lot of dmgs, all give the same result. Maybe something is preventing them downloading properly, but what? Or perhaps they're intact but something is missing from my Adobe files? It's possible that I butchered the Flash files somehow while trying to uninstall Flash in the first place :(

Over the last 6-7 months my computer fan has been going in super-overdrive mode, and lately it's been doing it pretty much all the time. I downloaded several applications to monitor the temperature and it looks like the core temperature bounces between 70C and 100C (when it gets to 80+ is when the fan starts going crazy). Is it just me or could this not possibly be accurate? My computer is not running any differently, I leave it on all day and it is always at this temperature according to these programs. I kinda feel like if this were true the computer would be emitting more heat, or would've crashed and burned spectacularly long ago. All it seems to be doing is making the fan go crazy. Any ideas??

Have you checked the task manager to make sure programs aren't running in the background and overclocking you comp? If not, run the task manager

It could be as simple as dust in your fan, in which case you need to get a spray from Newegg or Amazon or something and blast that stuff out.

It could also be your motherboard is going out. Which is not good. I would try to blast it out first though.