Recent Posts

1176

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: $380 PDF to Flash [page flip] for free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 07, 2011, 04:49 AM »

I don't like this strategy at all.

-Bionic71 (December 07, 2011, 04:38 AM)

ditto

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Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 07, 2011, 04:22 AM »

Its an interesting choice of acquisition though - I would have though that one of the areas that the Kindle really isn't good at is children's books - simply because the technology doesn't have a large enough screen or colour for pictures.

1178

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: $380 PDF to Flash [page flip] for free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 07, 2011, 03:49 AM »

Or FlipPDF that I mentioned earlier at $99 as copy - and having bought it it is more customisable as far as I can see. They also do a pro version which is more expensive at $299 but allows you to embed buttons and javascript links, add Falsh and SWF files and sound.

Comparison at:

http://www.flipbuild...p-pdf-pro/index.html

It is also regularly updated. Confusingly this website is an offshoot of A-PDF and all support and emails seem to come from that site. FlipPDF used to be sold on that site but has now been forked to its own website (although it sill links from the old site too and the download file name is still a-pdf-pt.exe (showing its origins).

I have to say the odd time I have had a question has got an email response within hours - usually the same day, which is not bad given time zone differences.

1179

Living Room / Re: Rootkits on mobile devices ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 03, 2011, 06:17 PM »

True - but the data is logged in full on the device - which is itself a security concern if the device is lost, stolen or hacked.

Plus no one knows which data or the extent of the data that is actually being transmitted!

The other question that arises is - if the information isn't being transmitted to someone what is the point of collecting and storing it?

1180

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 03, 2011, 05:48 AM »

Knowing Amazon they will probably just say the Swiss can't have Kindles - so they nip into Austria, buy a Kindle and head for home.

1181

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 02, 2011, 05:49 PM »

The Swiss just don't like an argument so long as it doesn't affect their bottom line

Let's all move to Switzerland - nice scenery, good food, lots of skiing and download what you like ... actually if I lived there I would probably never go near a computer - no time with all the other great things to do LOL

1182

Living Room / Re: Rootkits on mobile devices ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 01, 2011, 07:59 PM »

Banks don't apparently care much about security at all - a couple of years ago my bank called me on a Saturday afternoon to query a potential fruadulant card transaction.

Fair enough you might say but the conversation went something like this:

Caller: Hello this is HSBC fraud team querying unusal activity on your account
Me: Really - OK
Caller: Can you please confirm your credit card number
Me: Why don't you know who you are calling?
Caller: You need to confirm you are the card holder. Please confirm your card number
Me: How do I know you are HSBC - you could be anyone

and so it went on for about 20 minutes.

In the end I hung up and called the fraud department directly and thoroughly enjoyed yelling at them about the warnings they constantly distribute about phishing scams!

I don't know whether I had anything to do with it but their whole approach is now different with this kind of call.

1183

Living Room / Re: Rootkits on mobile devices ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 01, 2011, 07:00 PM »

  of course I am - have a drink on me and smile.

Actually one of the really scary things is that a lot of the banks are now making apps for accessing your accounts - what are the security implications if all your user names and passwords are being captured and sent to god knows who?

Oh well stress no tis only money ... 

1184

Living Room / Re: Rootkits on mobile devices ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 01, 2011, 06:14 PM »

And another article:

http://www.zdnet.com...son/1697?tag=nl.e589

It appears that only Windows Phones are immune at the moment but then there is MS Telemetry installed on those that do the same thing - but at least you can turn it off.

1185

Living Room / Re: Rootkits on mobile devices ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 01, 2011, 03:01 PM »

No buggz on the Windows phones however... (hehe) ...Yeah us!

-Stoic Joker (December 01, 2011, 02:59 PM)

yet ...

1186

Living Room / Rootkits on mobile devices ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 01, 2011, 01:04 PM »

Not sure if this applies outside the US but in the US ...

http://www.zdnet.com...es/16708?tag=nl.e539

Carrier IQ installed on numerous mobile devices includes a full keylogger!

This is somewhat worrying because even if your provider doesn't currently subscribe to this abomination how do you prevent carriers pushing this to your phone or tablet if/when they decide to use something similar?

Further information for the European members (in particular France and the UK)

A spokesperson for Vodafone has come back to us to say that it does not use Carrier IQ in any of its businesses, and does not use any other software like it, and it adheres strictly to privacy regulations in the jurisdictions where it operates.

France Telecom has also told us the same, noting that regardless of whether Carrier IQ has been loaded on to any of the devices on its network, Orange does not validate it, or any diagnostic services similar to it, so it and other related services do not work.

see: http://moconews.net/...verizon-say-no-dice/

1187

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy Remote access to another PC?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 01, 2011, 03:38 AM »

I love the return policy at the bottom - if it doesn't work properly you can return it for a refund less 20% - ie. $700 !!).

So you buy a USB cable that doesn't work and only pay $700 plus two lots of p&p for the privilege. Sounds like a bargain to me.

That site HAS to be a joke

1188

Living Room / Re: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 30, 2011, 03:48 AM »

Presumably contracts are for a certain length of time and not in-perpetuity - what happens when the big six publishers finally realise that Amazon has them in a headlock and they don't renew their contract? Presumably a lot of blank Kindles ????

1189

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Afterfall: Insanity $1(US) Pre-Order Benefits Amnesty International

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 30, 2011, 03:36 AM »

Well that's a relief It isn't just me then.

1190

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy Remote access to another PC?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 30, 2011, 03:28 AM »

FWIW TeamViewer allows the remote desktop to interact with UAC without issue.

1191

Living Room / Re: Dell 4Gb to 16Gb DDR 3 upgrade --- £500

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 29, 2011, 02:53 PM »

Couldn't find registered or unbuffered ECC DDR3-1600 SODIMS on a quick internet search but Crucial do 4 x 4Gb DDR3-1600 non-ECC (the same capacity and spec as Dell as far as I can tell) for under £100 - I can't see why it would need to be ECC - it isn't exceptionally fast memory.

1192

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: New Humble Bundle: Introversion

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 29, 2011, 02:01 PM »

New game added today "Dungeons of Dreadmor".

If you used Steam to install earlier titles just restart Steam to get the new game automatically.

1193

Living Room / Re: Hard drive shortage

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 29, 2011, 01:52 PM »

I have had drives from Seagate, Maxtor and WD go bad - they have all dealt with the issue courteously and professionally.

That isn't really my issue - my problem is that Seagate drives seem to go bad more often. They also have a reputaion for periodically dropping themselves in deep doodoo and releasing whole batches of crap drives - I can think of two models off the top of my head - one that was designed for RAID 0 set ups but actually performed considerably worse in RAID than as single dirves and the other was a bad series of models of the early 1Tb drives that didn't last more than a few weeks or months before dying.

Seagate didn't deal with either of those situations well - what should have been a recall situation turned into a nightmare for many with Seagate being very difficult.

From my perspective I would say that about 50-60% of drives I come across that are dead come from Seagate - maybe they are just more common in mass produced computers but I have only come across a couple of WD drives that have died and they died gracefully with warning.

1194

Living Room / Re: Hard drive shortage

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 29, 2011, 12:38 PM »

Very few issues with WD for me - lots of issues with Seagate drives.

1195

Living Room / Re: Dell 4Gb to 16Gb DDR 3 upgrade --- £500

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 29, 2011, 12:37 PM »

Why do they have to use ECC memory? I have 16Gb in my system which cost under £100 for the lot!

1196

Living Room / Re: Hard drive shortage

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 29, 2011, 02:50 AM »

I think we might finally start seeing the adoption and capacity growth of SSDs as system builders (including large manufacturers) scrabble for he dwindling supply.

Actually it would be a really good thing esp. for portable devices if both device capacity and manufacturing can be increased. With a bit of intelligent marketting we might be seeing the end of the mechanical disk market.

1197

Living Room / Dell 4Gb to 16Gb DDR 3 upgrade --- £500

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 28, 2011, 01:37 PM »

My eyes just popped.

Alienware customisation on Dell's website offers an upgrade from 4Gb of DDR3 memory to 4x4Gb at a the very reasonable cost of £500.

Generously they also offer to upgrade from one model of Core i7 to another for a mere £900.

Are these people on drugs ???

http://www.dell.com/.../p/alienware-m18x/pd

1198

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy Remote access to another PC?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 27, 2011, 07:37 PM »

Forgot to say: Team Viewer supports Windows, Mac and Linux and also Android and iPhone/iPad mobile devices. (All of these are cross platform - so you can provide support to a Mac users from a Windows machine etc.)

1199

General Software Discussion / Re: Easy Remote access to another PC?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 27, 2011, 07:16 PM »

+1 for TeamViewer. Simplicity to set up and once set up you can access remote computers with a single double click.

You can also talk to each other face to face via webcam/microphone if you both have sufficient bandwidth and if you need VPN you can set that up to.

I have found it works pretty well on slow broadband connections (and working in a rural area a lot of my clients have really poor broadband).

You can issue restart requests to the other computer too and reconnect automatically when the computer starts - even to the login page. You can also reboot and reconnect in Safe Mode if required (though I would guess you need a wired connection as Safe Mode with Networking doesn't seem to have support for WiFi).

For personal use this is all free and all connections are encrypted.

Of all the options I tried (and I tried most) this is by far the easiest to set up (as simple as installing any other application without technical mumbo jumbo - you can even talk technophobes through the installation over the phone, connect to their computer and complete the configuration yourself if they need the full application installed, or just use the quick connect download which they simply double click and tell you the user id and password to connect).

Finally you can do presentations for groups of clients (though I haven't tried this) limiting the broadcast information to a single window.

It works flawlessly for me 100% of the time.

I now provide remote support for my customers and bought a copy (even though it is quite expensive for professional use).

The huge added plus over LogMeIn for me is that if you need to uninstall it doesn't leave dregs behind and doesn't seem to conflict with other apps (at least none that I have seen).

1200

Living Room / Re: Hard drive shortage

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 26, 2011, 04:58 PM »

The question I am wondering is when will we see laptop and desktop prices rocket?