Topics

151

Living Room / Now MPAA want the burden of proof removed in litigation!

« on: June 24, 2008, 10:20 AM »

Alarming argument - seems one judge thinks they may have a point!

See the full article at http://www.vnunet.co...f-piracy-needed-mpaa

152

Living Room / Anyone know of webmail that will filter and forward?

« on: June 19, 2008, 08:16 AM »

I have email delivered from a webform to a single email address.

There are fields in the form that will allow me to filter the messages by using rules and forward them on to the appropriate person.

Does anyone have any idea of a reliable web based mail system that can do this automatically without me doing it through my own computer?

It is easy enough to do this with a POP client such as Outlook but I don't want to have a computer running 24/7 just to filter emails.

153

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / First website for a client

« on: June 19, 2008, 08:03 AM »

I have just set up my first website for a client (albeit on a voluntary basis).

It is a UK charity that supports the only school for the blind in The Gambia.

I figured it is an opportunity to develop a website for someone else and that involves working with others and to a deadline (not something I am good at). It has taken about two and half days in total to get it to this point - but half a day was spent on editing the links page - which needs some serious organising to make it useful!

A lot of the contact basis for the website is local friends who are involved and do things like deliver minibuses to the school (yes they drove from the UK to The Gambia across Europe and half of Africa - including the Sahara)!

Note the actual content is as supplied by the client but the site design and page graphics are mine. I know some pages need some extra 'interest' in the form of graphics. The news page is a work in progress - I will add a breadcrumb trail to archive stuff so that the page becomes a manageable length.

For now here is is - warts and all www.friendsofgovi.org.uk

What do people think? Constructive criticism is welcome.

154

Living Room / Free PhotoShop book

« on: June 02, 2008, 06:32 AM »

Direct from the publishers website you can get "The PhotoShop Anthology: 100 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques" for free.

Just click on the link and enter a valid email address and they will send you a download link for the full PDF version of the book in both print quality and a lower res quality.

The only difference to the print edition is that the book is linked to a competition to win a MacBook and it has a small banner across the bottom of each page.

The book is targeted at Photoshop CS2 but the introduction says it should work with all versions.

I have been subscribed to SitePoints mailing list for a few years now (and bought a number of their excellent books) and haven't had problems with spam from them - however in this instance I would suggest using a throwaway email address as there are links to third party companies that I haven't previously dealt with and the the offer is obviously linked to a marketing campaign.

Here is the full email offer I received including the accress link:

Our entire Photoshop Book is FREE to download for 14 days!

You've downloaded PDF sample chapters of SitePoint's books in the past, so I thought you'd be thrilled to discover that for the next 14 days you can download the full 278 page PDF version of "The Photoshop Anthology" (usually $29.95) for FREE!

Here's your link to snap up a free copy:

http://www.sitepoint.com/launch/f948f3

There's no catch. This is no "special offer." It's purely a FREE giveaway of this incredible book.

Grab your copy today before our servers go into meltdown!

All the best,

Shayne Tilley
sitepoint.com

155

General Software Discussion / Warning - AVG 8 problems with install/uninstall/upgrade

« on: June 01, 2008, 07:31 AM »

Just spent a couple of hours trying to sort out a computer for a client/friend after he upgraded from AVG 7.5 Free to AVG 8 Free.

Not sure what caused the problems (he also has ZoneAlarm Free version installed and I suspect there may be a compatability issue there) but AVG 8 Free did attempt to uninstall the older version and install the new version. Trouble was it completely killed his internet connection.

What is worse is that AVG 8 refused to uninstall fully. The uninstaller ran and said it had completed but each network device in the device manager had an AVG miniport device installed with AVG 8 and it didn't uninstall them properly. Manually removing them was not possible as the device manager said they were required to allow the system to boot properly.

The only way I could get a running system going again was to use System Restore to restore back to the point where AVG 8 was installed. The problem now was that AVG7.5 was also partially restored in a half uninstalled/damaged state and the uninstaller wouldn't run because it was damaged. Add to that I couldn't find AVG7.5 as a download anywhere - even though many sites said they had it they actually had version 8.01 instead.

I was just considering backing up and attempting a manual uninstall of the remaider of AVG7.5 (not something I relished without some instructions) when I luckily remembered I still had an old copy of 7.5 on my own hard disk so I ran the installer and used the uninstall option to remove the old version completely.

All in all an expensive nightmare for my friend who really hadn't got a clue how to sort out a system that was left in a total mess - and there was no apparent help or support for this situation on the AVG website.

My advice would be to avoid AVG 8 Free like the plague - especially if you are using security apps from other developers. If you do want to try AVG 8 then unistall AVG 7.5 first and make sure you either have a backup image (or at least System Restore running) at the ready for retreat if there is a problem.

I installed AVAST for him which seems to work fine (though you do have to disable one feature because of an issue with Zone Alarm - it is described during installation but not in language that will make sense to the average user).

156

Living Room / What to do when you receive bootleg videos?

« on: May 14, 2008, 06:27 PM »

I placed an order on UK eBay for a set of 3 hard to find VHS videos for a TV series. The series has never been released on DVD and the VHS tapes have been out of print for over 10 years and so they can be quite hard to find. Considering their age I paid a fairly high price but figured rarity value made them worth it to me.

The videos arrived and looked fine but I had some issues playing them. The first two tapes had sound that was either muffled or interrupted every couple of minutes by a couple of seconds of buzzing. The third tape cut off before the end of the final episode (and was definitely at the end of the tape as I could see the clear leadout tape). All three tapes had 'soft', slightly blown images but I figured that could be age related. The seller had a 100% positive rating (and a high number of transactions) so I wasn't especially worried about authenticity.

I began to worry when I looked at other items the seller had listed and found more copies of this rare series. Also a buyer had reported they had received bootleg VHS tapes since my purchase. I was even more worried when I got a friendly reply offering to replace the tapes.

How could the seller possibly have multiple sets of this rare collection?

Looking at the inlay covers (out of the case plastic) it is obvious that they are reasonable scanned versions of the originals but the paper stock is definitely wrong and the printing has slight banding (not visible without removing the inlay sheets and looking closely), which suggests an inkjet printer. The labels on the tapes themselves have a fuzzy quality the Paramount labels don't usually have.

Not really sure what to do now. I have demanded a refund and that if the seller wants the tapes back they can add to the refund sufficient payment to cover the return costs.

I don't like being a grass but should I be reporting this to eBay? If the seller is making a lot of money doing this should I also be reporting it elsewhere? Or should I simply put it down to experience, assuming I get a refund (which I will via PayPal if necessary) ?

What do people think?

157

Living Room / 10 Dirty Little Secrets

« on: May 08, 2008, 03:56 AM »

I quite enjoyed this article: http://blogs.techrep...com.com/hiner/?p=546

158

Living Room / Useful MD3 / SHA1 / CRC-32 checking utility.

« on: May 05, 2008, 08:26 AM »

Go to : http://www.beeblebrox.org/hashtab/

HasTab adds a tab in file properties in Windows Explorer where it calculates various Hash values for the file. It also has a compare field so that you can paste the published hash value and check they match.

Neat little util.

For example:

159

Living Room / Fred Langa bows our (and bikes off in to the wide blue yonder ...)

« on: May 01, 2008, 04:19 AM »

Fred has decided to retire. Read his last column here

Thanks Fred - I for one will miss you!

160

Living Room / My New website ...

« on: April 25, 2008, 02:45 PM »

My new website is up ... check it out and let me know what you think.

See:

A bit of background - I live in very rural sheep country in the North of England. Most of my clients are going to be locals in the area so I wanted to kee the site pretty simple and a bit 'naive' or even a bit 'folksy' with some humour as I am not trying to pretend to be a high powered international conglomerate. (There is someone in a neighbouring village who describes his one man band as 'international' and the web site makes it sound as though he is running MS or Google rather than from his home - I don't think that helps around here).

Any way constructive criticism welcome (be kind  !) ... I had to get something up and running. I plan to change the Products and Services pages into a more branched structure with more detail on specific ideas I have but I thought this would serve to get me off the ground.

161

General Software Discussion / Xara Xtreme 4 and Pro 4 released

« on: April 24, 2008, 04:37 PM »

OK I know what I said last time round (about never trusting Xara again) but I think this upgrade is interesting, with some great new features. They are doing special upgrade prices from v3.2 to v4 only until 2nd May.

If you want to see some of the new features check out the videos at: http://xara.com/uk/p...reme/tutorials-demos

Look at the "An introduction to Xtreme 4" video (first one in the list).

The commentary is a bit stilted (or downright annoying) but the visual demo is really impressive.

I haven't had time to play with it yet but it looks a really good upgrade and I have to say I am revising my view of Xara - they seem to be hanging in there with a great product and not giving in to the Magix takeover machine that bought them out. I think we all feared that Xara as an identity would disappear in the merger but they seem to be going from strength to strength and the new version looks really good. As far as I can tell the Xara brand is still being run pretty much independently from Hertfordshire in the UK - presumably the Magix link allowed for a different market outlet under a different brand name.

IIRC it was $49 to upgrade 3.2Pro to 4Pro but thanks to DC members it cost me $26 as I still had some commission from when I used to display an affiliate link in my signature. (Thanks to those who bought in the past).

Tell us what you think - I think the new quick photo manipulation and the text wrapping are really neat - and the CSS HTML website WYSIWYG editor looks awesome (why am I learning DreamWeaver when it can be that simple!).

Affiliate Notice

I don't intend to add an affiliate link to my signature again but I have given a link below. Note I am only an affiliate because I really like their software and I am definitely not into the hard sell on this. Judge for yourself. I removed the affiliate link after they were bought by Magix and the version 3.2 upgrade debacle (search for the long thread on that) but now that there has been time for the merger to settle down and things to get back to normal I think I was probably a bit premature to judge.

If anyone wants to place an order for the new versions (or any Xara software) my new business website will be up and running soon and I hope to have a page on Xara stuff by the end of the weekend. It would help my new business startup if you use the affliate link on there to place the order. No pressure though! It isn't there yet but check out www.dalescomputerservices.com over the next few days.

If you can't wait that long you can use:

Click here:

to place an order. OK you won't get a discount but I will get a bit of commission. 

Remember if you place an order you can download the software immediately but the disc versions and muanuals take a while to arrive (the usual rule of thumb seems to be that the software is RTMed a couple of weeks after they announce the new version and then they let it run for a while so that any bugs can be ironed out before the discs are produced). Having said that the download versions in the past have always been pretty solid and well beta tested prior to release so there shouldn't be any nasty surprises and they work fine so the disc isn't really needed any time soon.

162

Living Room / MOVED: A nice creative challenge and a near perfect 1 task website: blipfoto.com

« on: April 17, 2008, 09:36 AM »

This topic has been moved to Mini-Reviews by Members.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13075.0

163

Living Room / Use illegal Vista - go legal - make a profit !

« on: April 15, 2008, 06:47 PM »

I found this slightly amusing as a way to save money if you want to buy Vista ...

So a full copy of Vista Ultimate can cost you less than the upgrade price????


See the full article and discussion at: http://blogs.zdnet.c...=427&tag=nl.e589

164

Living Room / Two Mysterious folders

« on: April 09, 2008, 10:30 AM »

I have two folders on one of my partitions which look as though they have been generated by Windows Update at some point.

I can't delete either of them (even using unlocker to delete them at boot time).

Anyone got any idea what they are and how to get rid of them?

The folders consist of a folder in the root directory which is totally numerical. Inside that there is a folder called 'update' which is inaccessible and says it has a size of 0 bytes.

The two top level folders are:

2ba8be635012972efbcd7831
56b279a56e198578bd546dca2c7ed3

If anyone has these anywhere on their system can you look in the update folder and see what the update was!!

This is typical of sloppy MS - they splatter updates on every drive and partition (whatever seems to randomly take their fancy at the time). In this case the folders can't actually be any use because they have placed them on a removable drive and nothing seems to cease functioning when the drive is switched off!

165

Living Room / Odd Windows XP installation problem WRT boot options

« on: April 03, 2008, 09:04 PM »

Having just reinstalled Windows XP and go a nice stable system I have just discovered that there is an odd configuration problem ...

Before reinstalling the orginal disc had three primary partitions:

C: Windows (Active boot partition)
D: Data
E: Data

During the reinstall I used the tool in Windows setup to delete the Windows partition, create a new formatted partition for the new installed version.

All went well and everything works fine EXCEPT the partition table is now:

C: Extended Partition containing 1 Logical Partition (Windows)
D: Data (now the active partition)
E: Data

The problem is that Windows setup has put ntldr and boot.ini etc on the D: partition

The trouble is that MSCONFIG no longer has any boot.ini options and also if I want to reformat D: at any time I can't.

I can convert the C: partition to an Active Primary partition easily enough but how do I get all the boot related stuff onto drive C: and working properly?

Anyone got any ideas? TIA

166

Living Room / How to install a driver in XP Setup without a floppy drive ???

« on: April 02, 2008, 01:41 PM »

I am trying to get rid of Vista on my Notebook computer and install XP instead.

The trouble is that booting from the setup CD gets to a point where it says there are no hard drives present.

I have downloaded a floppy based driver for the Notebook motherboard which you are supposed to use as an 'F6' driver disc during setup.

Unfortunately I haven't got a floppy drive on the Notebook and when I get to the stage where it asks for the driver disc I just get 'can't find a floppy drive'.

Anyone any idea how to supply a driver to windows setup without a floppy drive (I have tried using a CDROM with the driver but that doesn't work)?

167

Living Room / Anyone registered with www.thebox.bz ?

« on: March 28, 2008, 10:02 AM »

Just wondered if anyone is registered with www.thebox.bz as they are only accepting registration by invitation.

If anyone is registered could they send me an invite by PM ?

Cheers

168

General Software Discussion / MailStore Home 2.5.1 released with lots of improvements

« on: March 16, 2008, 03:46 PM »

Those clever people at MailStore have released an update. See http://www.mailstore.../mailstore-home.aspx for download details and changelog.

Some of the nice things they have added are:

• Support for Outlook MAPI accounts (so now you can archive your GoogleMail)
• The ability to exclude folders from archiving
• Email viewing is now rendered via Windows Live - which means you can see properly formatted HTML without resorting to another app (there is an option in each view window to show graphics so they display as text until you say otherwise).

Good stuff - and it is free! Don't forget it works with lots of mail clients (not just Outlook).

169

Living Room / Anyone any idea how to make an IP appear to be in another country?

« on: February 25, 2008, 06:56 AM »

I want to watch some US TV shows that only allow access from US IPs (and I'd guess similarly some ex-UK people might like to watch some BBC/Channel 4 stuff which only responds to UK IPs).

Anyone know of an effective way of making your IP address appear to be in a different country?

I have tried 'Hid-IP-Browser' which is a paid service to do precisely this and it uses proxy servers all over the world so that you access services via a valid IP address in that country - unfortunately the proxies they use are all pretty slow and low bandwidth and consequently you can browse pages but they are too slow for broadband streaming content - and some actively block streaming content.

Anyone any other ideas or good services that offer this kind of facility?

170

Living Room / USB Keyboard not available during windows boot sequence

« on: February 25, 2008, 06:37 AM »

I 'upgraded' my keyboard a while ago from a normal AT style keyboard to a USB type.

It all works fine with one exception: if I need to use boot time utilities I can't use my keyboard.

When my system boots from scratch the keyboard is recognised by the BIOS and works fine to select an OS etc. or use BIOS utilities. However, once Windows starts to boot (the animated progress bar stage) the keyboard lights go out again and don't come back on until the 'Loading Personal settings' notice appears. This means that I can't use the keyboard when I use CHKDSK or PerfectDisk etc. as boot time utilities. It doesn't generally matter but if I am faced with a press a key to continue prompt I can't without connecting my old AT keyboard and rebooting again!

Anyone any ideas why the USB keyboard doesn't respond during the boot sequence and any way to fix it?

171

General Software Discussion / Another System Explorer

« on: February 22, 2008, 04:47 AM »

TechRepublic/ZDNet today suggested a useful utility from http://systemexplorer.mistergroup.org/ called System Explorer.

It does a lot of things similar to apps like ShellEx and Process Explorer but has a few I haven't seen before.

• You can access services (and start stop etc) from a single tab.
• It has a history button that logs what your system is doing and you can take snapshots
• A list of open files and which apps has them open
• A list of network connections and related apps etc.
• An uninstaller with extra options

Here is a sample screenshot:



Small download and worth a look.

By the way it doesn't need installing just download and double click - options are store in an ini file in the same folder as the app.

172

Living Room / Internet Explorer doesn't report it is running on Windows ???

« on: February 13, 2008, 12:48 PM »

I am using BBC iPlayer which loads in Internet Explorer by default.

The BBC only allow TV programmes to be downloaded to Windows based machines because it uses DRM protected WMV files.

Up until yesterday I had no problems but now every time I load the page to download a show it says:



whereas it should say



At the moment I can use Firefox to access the page but the BBC library module use IE by default (which can't be changed so I have to load the page manually in Firefox) and I am curious as to why IE should suddenly start reporting that I am not using a Windows system ???

As far as I can tell I haven't done anything to change the settings for IE. In fact I have restored them all to default and reset Temp files and unneeded cookies etc.

173

Living Room / Looking for web based or book based help on Windows / Linux servers

« on: January 28, 2008, 09:52 AM »

In the dim and distant past I did a lot of user support/training work and also installed minicomputer systems, standalone computers and wired networks in educational institutions.

In recent years I have struggled to find work as a teacher (partly because of where I live) and so recently I started looking to set up my own company providing Home User and Small business support locally. This has partly been in response to numerous local contacts who have encouraged me after helping them to sort out their computer problems.

I am quite happy with the idea of supporting individual workstations and access point or peer-2-peer networking but anything to do with server based systems and I am out of date.

Most of the face to face courses you see advertised are silly prices and way out of my range.

Does anyone know of any good websites and/or books that provide a good basic introduction to setting up and maintaining small server based systems that would get me up to speed quickly (both Windows 2003 and Linux would be useful). Ideally I would like it to be as jargon free as possible (or at least explaining the jargon used rather than assuming you already know what they are talking about).

Cheers

174

Living Room / Playing FLV movies - stopped working for some?

« on: December 19, 2007, 05:45 AM »

I have a small library of FLV files I have downloaded from YouTube.

Up until recently they played fine (in VEOH TV) but now all I get is sound.

I have installed FLV Player 2 and some of the videos work fine in that but others just hang with a message "Loading ...." and nothing else.

I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling VEOH without effect, installing the latest version of flash plugins from Adobe, the Community Codecs from community Codec Project - nothing seems to make any difference.

Anyone got any ideas how to make this work again?

175

Living Room / Anyone understand .Net error codes? (all gobbledigook to me)

« on: December 19, 2007, 02:03 AM »

Got a number of these evens in my system log when I was trying to run Seagate's diagnostic tools (Seatools.exe) on my external USB drive. Each time the tools bombed out while starting up and never got to a point where I could actually do any tests (though the drive was recognised).

Error details:

Event Type:   Error
Event Source:   .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting
Event Category:   None
Event ID:   5000
Date:      16/12/2007
Time:      16:35:53
User:      N/A
Computer:   LAIRDSWOOD
Description:
EventType clr20r3, P1 seatoolsforwindows.exe, P2 1.1.0.7, P3 461e8ed4, P4 mscorlib, P5 2.0.0.0, P6 461eee3d, P7 167c, P8 22, P9 system.invalidoperationexception, P10 NIL.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....om/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 63 00 6c 00 72 00 32 00   c.l.r.2.
0008: 30 00 72 00 33 00 2c 00   0.r.3.,.
0010: 20 00 73 00 65 00 61 00    .s.e.a.
0018: 74 00 6f 00 6f 00 6c 00   t.o.o.l.
0020: 73 00 66 00 6f 00 72 00   s.f.o.r.
0028: 77 00 69 00 6e 00 64 00   w.i.n.d.
0030: 6f 00 77 00 73 00 2e 00   o.w.s...
0038: 65 00 78 00 65 00 2c 00   e.x.e.,.
0040: 20 00 31 00 2e 00 31 00    .1...1.
0048: 2e 00 30 00 2e 00 37 00   ..0...7.
0050: 2c 00 20 00 34 00 36 00   ,. .4.6.
0058: 31 00 65 00 38 00 65 00   1.e.8.e.
0060: 64 00 34 00 2c 00 20 00   d.4.,. .
0068: 6d 00 73 00 63 00 6f 00   m.s.c.o.
0070: 72 00 6c 00 69 00 62 00   r.l.i.b.
0078: 2c 00 20 00 32 00 2e 00   ,. .2...
0080: 30 00 2e 00 30 00 2e 00   0...0...
0088: 30 00 2c 00 20 00 34 00   0.,. .4.
0090: 36 00 31 00 65 00 65 00   6.1.e.e.
0098: 65 00 33 00 64 00 2c 00   e.3.d.,.
00a0: 20 00 31 00 36 00 37 00    .1.6.7.
00a8: 63 00 2c 00 20 00 32 00   c.,. .2.
00b0: 32 00 2c 00 20 00 73 00   2.,. .s.
00b8: 79 00 73 00 74 00 65 00   y.s.t.e.
00c0: 6d 00 2e 00 69 00 6e 00   m...i.n.
00c8: 76 00 61 00 6c 00 69 00   v.a.l.i.
00d0: 64 00 6f 00 70 00 65 00   d.o.p.e.
00d8: 72 00 61 00 74 00 69 00   r.a.t.i.
00e0: 6f 00 6e 00 65 00 78 00   o.n.e.x.
00e8: 63 00 65 00 70 00 74 00   c.e.p.t.
00f0: 69 00 6f 00 6e 00 20 00   i.o.n. .
00f8: 4e 00 49 00 4c 00 0d 00   N.I.L...
0100: 0a 00                     ..     

Unfortunately MS offers no further assistance on this error code (what is the point of error codes if there isn't any documentation to help?)