Recent Posts

1501

Living Room / Re: The law is for YOUR protection. Honest!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 26, 2011, 11:58 AM »

One of my pet rants - shame I can't drum any support for a UK takeover and real democracy ... here are the steps:

• Disband the monarchy
• Disband the House of Lords
• Pass a law making political parties illegal
• Pass a law that only people who have lived in a constituency for 5 years as their sole residence can stand to be elected
• Have a general election based on local 'village sized' constituencies - the winners elect an "MP" for their district for parliament.
• MPs elect cabinet members, cabinet members elect a PM from the cabinet
• MPs and cabinet members have the right to remove any (including the PM) by a majority no confidence vote
• Local district representatives have the right to remove their 'MP' by simple majority voting
• Local people have the right to remove their local representative by simple majority vote

The advantage is that the local people would each know their constituency representative. Districts would be small enough so that the MP is known to all the local reps. and MPs would know all the potential cabinet members.

OK it wouldn't be perfect but it would be a genuinely representative government of the people based only on the performance and reputation of the politicians at each level and would remove patronage and business interests as the deciding factor at all levels.

The same would work in the US - just substitute Presidency for monarchy, Senate for the House of Lords, and President for Prime Minister.

1502

Living Room / Re: The law is for YOUR protection. Honest!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 26, 2011, 08:38 AM »

The law (in any country I know of including the UK and US) has NEVER been to protect people - otherwise it wouldn't be so biased towards the rich, businesses, governments, lawyers and royalty.

Did you know that a commoner (legal term applies to anyone who hasn't been ennobled - also known as arse licker or rich bastard) in the UK cannot sue the Royal family - even if the Royal Family were to commit blatantly obvious crimes (which they have done many times in the past) and that Royal prerogative extends to all sorts of areas of government. I am not sure but I assume that prerogative also applies in crown colonies (such as Australia and Canada). One example all the land STOLEN from the people cannot be returned to the people because now it belongs to "individuals" (also known as banks, estates etc.)

Hell in the UK children have to be taught about 'citizenship' in schools - it is now a compulsory subject - but NO ONE in the UK is a CITIZEN - we are all SUBJECTS of the crown (if you are from the UK and don't believe me look in your Passport). Citizenship classes in schools should consist of a one line statement on day one of school "there is no such thing as a UK citizen"! There done, now lets get on with speaking the Queen's English.

Any we live in a democracy ... since when? The UK is still a 'serfdom' - the US is just the country of 'I've got a bigger gun than you' even if that gone is now metaphorical (money).

1503

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 25, 2011, 05:37 AM »

A cheaper solution (A-PDF) twice featured at Bitsdujour.
http://www.flipbuild.../flip-pdf/index.html

-Bionic71 (June 24, 2011, 04:37 PM)

That looks much nicer and seems to be more customisable.

1504

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 24, 2011, 03:00 PM »

I like it but it doesn't seem to be registered on my system (still has a get license key link).

There is a license key in a folder in the applications folder but it rejects it if you try to register the app.

Not sure I could find $380 dollars worth of use for it - seems a bit on the basic side. Now if it had a fast text search feature that could be very useful.

1505

Living Room / Re: Do it yourself dropbox

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 22, 2011, 12:18 PM »

I like the little shoot apple game they have put up if you make a suggestion.

1506

General Software Discussion / Re: When your word processor begins openly mocking you, it's time to call it a day

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2011, 07:10 PM »

I still use WordPerfect and Quattro Pro to boot.

-longrun (June 21, 2011, 07:02 PM)

Really which system do they boot?

1507

General Software Discussion / Re: When your word processor begins openly mocking you, it's time to call it a day

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2011, 02:52 PM »

I used to love Wordstar - WordPerfect was pretentious!

1508

General Software Discussion / Re: When your word processor begins openly mocking you, it's time to call it a day

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2011, 10:00 AM »

Best approach to Word is to turn off all the automated stuff - then just do what you want, when you want. For example I don't like it that when you start a line with a number it automatically assumes you are starting a list. Just turn that feature off and you can format lists the way you want without Word second guessing you. Same with recognising dates automatically and reformatting them.

1509

General Software Discussion / Re: When your word processor begins openly mocking you, it's time to call it a day

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2011, 07:37 PM »

I have to say I like Word 2010 ... sorry.

Having said that it does sometimes feel like you are playing Portal .... maybe that's why I like it 

1510

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2011, 07:46 AM »

Ah there is nothing like the 'just use it' nature of the Mac.

Glad you are having fun - but try posting some of this onto a Mac forum and I bet you will get some strange comments 

1511

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2011, 07:03 AM »

Networks do not work. They do not let you seek reasonably. Any kind of media content over a network is a complete failure. Seeking should take the time it takes to click, and not the time it takes to buffer 300 MB over a 20 Mbps connection that really only delivers a max of 10 Mbps, but practically only ever achieves 700 kbps, but can realistically be expected to get 100 kbps if all goes well.

-Renegade (June 19, 2011, 12:12 AM)

Actually not quite true - I subscribe to the DIgital Concert Hall (basically all of the concerts from the Berlin Philharmonic) and that works great. You watch either using you browser on your computer or I watch it on my Sony Bravia TV. The streaming content works really well on this site so some people can get it right.

It's a shame, because the film looks good, and I'd certainly be up for buying a copy if I could do it reasonably. I guess that's too much to ask.

-Renegade (June 19, 2011, 12:12 AM)

You can - buy a DVD and then you can flog it on eBay afterwards!

Going back to earlier points my biggest concern is not with DRM per se, it is the restrictive nature of the DRM.

For example I like to borrow,lend and sell books. There is absolutely no reason why devices like Kindle can't have a lend and sell feature - like a physical books these books would only be in one place - ie. if you lend it to someone it is temporarily attached to their account and suspended from yours, if you sell it you transfer it to another account. It sems ridiculous that Amazon of all companies have a product that doesn't allow you to sell things when their whole business encourages people to sell unwanted items online.

Presumably the publishers have enforced this restriction but companies as big as Amazon should simply say if you want your book on our device this is the way it is going to be - especially now it is an established device. This would go a long way to making me feel more comfortable and in control of my library.

They should also make it a term of their original contact that if the publisher withdraws a book or it is withdrawn from the Kindle library for other reasons then people who purchased it are either not affected by the change or are given a non-DRM copy. There is absolutely no excuse for a system where you content is deleted - even if you are reimbursed for the cost.

All this goes for software too. Why can't systems like Valve's Steam and EA Games Origin have built in lend functions. Actually this would boost their sales because if it is a game someone likes they will buy a copy - especially if it is a co-op game they want to play with the lender. I just bought a copy of Portal 2 for a friend but I would have been a lot happier if he could have played it first and said "yes I like that"! (By the way Portal 2 is already less that half price on Amazon - at least in the UK).

Finally I don't mind activation on software but they should do it right. Why can't manufacturers include deactivate as an option and save all the hassles of having to contact them to get something to activate again. OK there will be occasions you will need to contact them because you can't deactivate the current copy (such as a computer dying or a dead hard disk) but these should be the exception rather than the norm.

Adobe got it right - you can install Photoshop on as many computers as you like but you can only use it on two without having to deactivate a copy and activate another copy. This means you can be as flexible as you need to be, and if you want someone else to use the software you can given them temporary access to the software by deactivating the copy on your computer.

Xara have got it wrong big time - they now allow only 3 activations on a product and lock it to a single machine - after that you have to buy another copy (at least in theory). This is ridiculous for software that costs nearly £300 and I am sure they will lose customers as a result - especially as they have become difficult to contact.

1512

Living Room / Re: Strange USB device Code 43 error - solved - hope it helps

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2011, 06:37 AM »

Yes and tried looking for drivers manually (of course it is impossible to find any!). I even deleted the all of the USB controllers and allowed the whole USB set to reinstall on reboot.

I can't fathom what has happened to the CMOS settings to cause this but one thing I did find searching the internet is that it is a common problem on Windows Xp, Vista and 7 and is no respecter of device manufacturer or the architecture you are using!!!!

1513

Living Room / Strange USB device Code 43 error - solved - hope it helps

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 18, 2011, 05:37 PM »

I had a very strange problem today - I inserted an SD camera card and nothing happened except that there was a logged error in the System Events about a faulty disk controller.

Looking in Device manager there was an unknown USB device that had been disabled by Windows (Code 43) to stop further damage to my system.

I rarely use the card slots so I don't know when this error appeared but I have had a couple of freezes recently and wonder if this was the cause.

Searching the web I found non-working internal card readers (connected to a 7 pin USB header) seem to often spontaneously stop working with a Code 43 error and I couldn't find a solution. One case a Dell engineer had visited someone and swapped the part but still couldn't get it to work and eventually gave up with a 'hardware fault'.

Well at least for me I have solved the issue by taking the CMOS battery out for 5 minutes and then resetting the BIOS back to system defaults. When the computer started again there were 4 non working "mobile devices" listed (with the error cannot start device) but the unknown USB device had disappeared and been replaced with a "USB Mass Storage" device. Rebooting again and it is all back to normal.

I have no idea what has happened - maybe it was a system freeze that caused the problem or maybe the device caused the freeze.

Now all I have to do is write a rude letter to Gigabyte and ask why they placed the CMOS battery and CMOS clear jumper under the PCIe cards (between the device slots and the back plate) which meant removing graphics and sound cards just to change the battery!!

Hope this helps someone in the future.

1514

DC Gamer Club / Re: Terraria

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 17, 2011, 02:49 AM »

Shades it sounds like something is using a .net4 file when you are trying to update and it is locked. Try making sure you exit all applications (including anything in the system tray) and disable any AV.

Also try downloading the installer form MS and doing it manually - sometimes the Windows Update version gets damaged and if it is a cached version it will never work!

If that doesn't work try running MSCONFIG and disable all Startup items and all non-MS services so that you get as near to a clean Windows startup environment as possible. Note some security software doesn't like you doing this so it may be best to leave any such software allowed to run and disable it before trying to install again.

1515

General Software Discussion / Re: Avira - chases Uniblue affiliate scareware $

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 15, 2011, 12:45 PM »

Given that Avira sell themselves as a business product aimed at competent users (because of the aggressive false positive issue) they are shooting their business in the foot.

Best free solution (IMHO) now is AVAST.

1516

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 15, 2011, 12:39 PM »

So some forms of copy protection are DRM, as I see it. For example having to use a serial number to activate a software programme is obviously not DRM, whereas an executable that is linked at purchase to a "machine ID" is DRM (and I would call that copy protection). Have I got that right?

-johnk (June 15, 2011, 07:35 AM)

Grey area IMHO - someone like Adobe who lock software to you machine but allow you to unlock it I don't really consider DRM. Microsoft lock it and then don't let you unlock but they are fairly liberal if you need to call them (unless it is an OEM copy which is specifically licensed to one new machine and heavily discounted because of it).

If book publishers said to me: Hardback £25, Paperback £10, eBook (without DRM) £10, eBook (with DRM) £1 I might be convinced. WHat usually happens is Hardback £25, Paperback £10, eBook £12 or similar on Amazon. Often paperbacks are cheaper than the eBooks (and the same is more often than not  true for physical CD and MP3s - especially on iTunes where DRMed downloads are usually more expensive than the more flexible CD equivalent).

1517

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 14, 2011, 08:44 PM »

I still don't see an alternative for ebook authors. How do you generate a reliable income stream for ebook authors without some form of DRM

-johnk (June 14, 2011, 08:17 PM)

Take one example - the publisher SitePoint.They seem to do pretty well selling print and electronic books in simpel PDF format (as well as electronic courses etc). Some of their content is really rather expensive.

Can you torrent the files: yes, can you give a copy to your friend: yes

Should you: no

No bother the company is still selling out of print runs on new books and the big retailers are still stocking and selling their books.

The eBooks are simply labelled with the name of the owner of the book on each page (which would be pretty trivial to remove) but nevertheless the model seems to work for them.

copy protection falls under the banner of DRM

-johnk (June 14, 2011, 08:17 PM)

No it doesn't - I can give away my CDs, DVDs and BluRay disks or lend the to a friend or sell them on eBay and the other person can use them as normal. DRM doesn't allow you to do anything with YOUR property outside the rules imposed by the corporation.

I don't buy DRMed books any more (or music) simply because I have bought books and music in the past (including eBooks from Amazon) that I can no longer read because I have bought a new computer and they have lost the right to activate my content because they no longer sell it or no longer have a contract with the publisher to sell it. Did I get a refund: NO.

DRM is legalised robbery and intimidation aimed at the consumer. The artist still gets ripped off even with DRM and that has always been so even before digital content (ask Queen who made NO money from their first 3 albums or the Osmonds who pretty much went bankrupt in the 80s - both because of corporate greed and exploitation).

I don't know about other parts of the world but in the UK I hate it when I put a DVD I purchased in to play and get 5 minutes of garbage about how piracy funds terrorism, and then another 10 minutes of adverts for chocolate and trailers for other DVDs. As far as I can see the only terrorism is the intellectual terrorism of the RIAA who impose this garbage on legitimate customers when pirates simply strip the crap and watch the film!

1518

Living Room / Re: Why ebooks are bad for you

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 13, 2011, 06:36 PM »

I still buy paper books - that is what most writers sign up for and they get commission on the sale of those books.

Ever since books were first published the possibility of lending to others, giving away your book or pulping it - not to mention public libraries - hasn't stopped all the great authors from making a living out of their craft. In fact printed books are self protecting as they can only be in one place at a time. DRM is bound to be cracked - it is all part of the game now - and sooner or later eBook publishers will realise what the music and film industries are beginning to accept - there is no such thing as uncrackable DRM.

The only reason eBooks can't be used in the same way as paper books is that publishers don't allow it - there is nothing to stop Kindle or any other book reader from removing rights from a book while it is lent to a friend - who temporarily inherits the rights until the book is returned. It is just pure greed on the part of publishing houses - author's only get a tiny, and dwindling, proportion of the book cover price. The only motivation for publishers is greed - that is why eBooks often cost more than printed editions on Amazon even though the publisher overheads are minimal in the eBook world.

The same is happening with all 'products' - if I have a board game and get fed up with it I can give it away, take it to a charity shop or chuck it in the bin. With electronic games my 'investment' is lost when I no longer want to play a game - why can't I sell something I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR?

It is just another example of corporate society and corporate attitudes destroying the rights of individual people in their lust for maximising profit (I won't call us citizens because that implies we have some influence on our politics which we don't). Democracy in all its forms is dead - long live corpocracy!!

1519

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 13, 2011, 07:34 AM »

FWIW, my Asus EeePC 1005HA-P (netbook I bought back in 09 because my then-primary laptop's screen broke off) has all those features, including the "extra ones," built in. And the "clicker" is one button, but does both left and right click.

-wreckedcarzz (June 12, 2011, 07:37 PM)

I don't know how it works on your Asus, but my sister has one from 2008 with some of these features and the gestures are terribly inaccurate and keep triggering stuff you are not doing, I even had to disable them. From what I understand, what Apple did with their touchpad was replace it with something like the iphone surface, so it's a much more accurate and truly multi touch surface which actually does what you want it to do. If you ever have the opportunity, you should try it to see the difference.

-jgpaiva (June 13, 2011, 04:59 AM)

Things change a lot in 3 years

1520

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2011, 02:57 PM »

Actually, that's not true (at least not in the recent macs). The touchpads do pretty much everything that PC laptops do (form "tap to click" to "tap and drag" to drag/select) and wayyyy more (two fingers to scroll, pinch, rotate and if you install BetterTouchTool, you can customize a ton of gestures using several fingers and stuff like that). And all that way more smoothly that I've seen in any PC.

-jgpaiva (June 12, 2011, 02:10 PM)

I obviously haven't used a recent enough Mac - I don't feel like I am missing anything ...

the worst part of all, the worst support community ever: it is totally impossible to find solutions for problems with the OS

-jgpaiva (June 12, 2011, 02:10 PM)

That's because it is a perfect OS that never goes wrong - get with the pack ...

1521

Living Room / Re: RANT: College textbooks - Why are they so *@(!ing expensive?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2011, 05:54 AM »

Its simple economics - the market is tiny, and in the case of technology the books are defunct in a year or two limiting sales further.

What this doesn't explain is why eBooks are pretty much the same price when there are no printing overheads.

Maybe authors should simply start publishing their own books in electronic form only, charge a reasonable price and make a lot more money.

1522

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2011, 05:30 AM »

NIH???

Sounds like what the knights say in the "Holy Grail"

1523

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2011, 05:22 AM »

They disable right click by default .... WTF !!!

One of my pet hates with Macs is the mouse/mousepad. I particularly hate that you can't tap the mousepad to click - my bottom is more ergonomic than that 

1524

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for advice, tips, wisdom: Adding my 1st Mac into the [tech] family...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2011, 04:00 PM »

If all you plan to use is out of date firefox, skype and avoid flash why not buy a new second hand Windows 7 laptop rather than an ancient used Mac?

I am really amazed I am not typing this due to being held at gunpoint: Last night I purchased a used, factory restored, and seemingly well taken care of iBook G4. <insert *gasp* and long pause here>

-wreckedcarzz (June 10, 2011, 01:08 PM)

OK  ............................

Oh and what were you drinking last night?

What I can do when things don't work - login, startup, hard drive failure, any common issues that anyone has seen/experienced that I should look out for... anything helpful

The usual approach is to buy a new one - most Apple enthusiasts vehemently argue that this can never happen (mainly because they buy new kit every three months so it never has long enough to break down)

Any suggestions where to go for parts if things break - I know Apple charges you a bazillion dollars for everything, and on my teenage budget, I can't afford that

Memory: Crucial
Hard Disk: Any HD manufacturer

both are standard bits of kit. Anything else you are stuffed.

Actually you are probably stuffed if you want to do much with faulty memory or hard disk as Apple laptops are notoriously difficult to take apart and probably require specialist tools.

Good luck - enjoy your new toy 

1525

DC Gamer Club / Re: NightSky

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 07, 2011, 07:52 PM »

Easy by comparison to some of the later stuff!

I really like it - but is doing nothing for my language!