Recent Posts

1551

General Software Discussion / Re: wont boot normally!

« Last post by Shades on October 01, 2013, 06:58 AM »

It is always a good idea to reconnect every plug inside your PC case once in a while, especially when your case was physically moved or when experiencing sudden strange problems like this.

I have here a 2TB SATA 3 hard disk , that I had to remove from my server, because it made the system unbearably slow. None of the hard disks in that system would reach SATA 1 speeds. Neither Windows or S.M.A.R.T reports errors on it and I cannot even use it stand-alone. And it did this after only 3 month's of use. The replacement I got, did the same after 1.5 months.

Do you have another HD lying around that you can spool back one or both OS's back onto it and see if that is your problem?

Since I have been living here I do not trust the whole "slim-line" of Seagate hard disks anymore, or their hard disks between 501GB and 0.99TB or HD's between 1.01TB and 2.99TB. Seagate really doesn't sell their A-grade stuff here in the South Americas.

1552

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by Shades on September 29, 2013, 06:20 PM »

^ ??!?!??!?!!??!!?

What a crappy lyrics! Come to think of it, they should share what they have been ingesting with everyone who wants to make sense of this clip...

1553

Screenshot Captor / Re: CPU use

« Last post by Shades on September 29, 2013, 11:21 AM »

Take a look with Process Monitor (it is from the same makers as Process Explorer) and filter out anything that is not related to the process you are monitoring. Very easy, take one glancing look at the filter rules that are by default there and you know how to add the rule you need.

1554

Living Room / Re: VPN Gate - Univ. of Tsukuba launches Academic Experimental [Crowd] Project.

« Last post by Shades on September 29, 2013, 11:08 AM »

A lot of that info is being sent by the browser when it asks for the data from the webserver that hosts the webpage you are visiting.

You can change that by altering the user agent info from the browser.

Besides this, for the TCP/IP protocol to function properly the location of where you have been and where your packets need to go is included. This is by design, because your packets have to be re-routed if a section of the internet network would be unavailable. This way you can trust the information that is sent to arrive at the destination, no matter what.

As your packages arrive at the destination, the destination still has the information of where you have been.

As you might have heard, the IPv4 range of IP addresses have been divided up all over the world and have practically ran out. There are only a handful of organizations that do the dividing of IP addresses and each of these organizations is responsible for a defined section of the globe. When asked, these organizations freely give out the general global location for any of the IP numbers in their care (WHOIS).

It is quite easy to deduce where you are physically located with this info, especially when one would fill a database of their own with the results of these WHOIS requests. Because all addresses are almost given out, there is little chance of an error anymore.

1555

Living Room / Re: VPN Gate - Univ. of Tsukuba launches Academic Experimental [Crowd] Project.

« Last post by Shades on September 27, 2013, 08:22 AM »

RIPE is the organization responsible for handing out IP numbers in Europe and allow you to search through their database.

80.62.64.193

Search results
% This is the RIPE Database query service.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/...terms-conditions.pdf

% Information related to '80.82.64.0 - 80.82.64.255'

                                           

inetnum:        80.82.64.0 - 80.82.64.255
netname:        NL-ECATEL
descr:          AS29073, Ecatel LTD
country:        NL
admin-c:        EL25-RIPE
tech-c:         EL25-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         ECATEL-MNT
mnt-lower:      ECATEL-MNT
mnt-routes:     ECATEL-MNT
changed:        [email protected] 20100919
source:         RIPE



role:           Ecatel LTD
address:        P.O.Box  19533
address:        2521 CA The Hague
address:        Netherlands
abuse-mailbox:  [email protected]
remarks:        ----------------------------------------------------
remarks:        ECATEL LTD
remarks:        Dedicated and Co-location hosting services
remarks:        ----------------------------------------------------
remarks:        for abuse complaints : [email protected]
remarks:        for any other questions : [email protected]
remarks:        ----------------------------------------------------
e-mail:         [email protected]
admin-c:        EL25-RIPE
tech-c:         EL25-RIPE
nic-hdl:        EL25-RIPE
mnt-by:         ECATEL-MNT
changed:        [email protected] 20130201
source:         RIPE



% Information related to '80.82.64.0/24AS29073'

                                           

route:          80.82.64.0/24
descr:          AS29073 Route object
origin:         AS29073
mnt-by:         ECATEL-MNT
changed:        [email protected] 20100919
source:         RIPE

% This query was served by the RIPE Database Query Service version 1.69 (WHOIS3)

This looks like a postal box company and although that kind of company can be legit, it usually isn't.

Looking at the peering "partners", I see some from Eastern Europe/former Russian states. That does not inspire trust. The original intent of peering was that you place another network card in your server at the backbone and connect it with another server at the backbone to the benefit of the users requiring the services that are being hosted on these servers.

However this can also be misused and that seems more and more the case.

1556

Living Room / Re: VPN Gate - Univ. of Tsukuba launches Academic Experimental [Crowd] Project.

« Last post by Shades on September 26, 2013, 11:02 PM »

Amsterdam is home of AIX (Amsterdam Internet Exchange) and can be considered one of the fastest backbones of the internet. It was the fastest when I was working at an internet company, many, many moons ago. As far as I know, today it shares that crown with one university in GB and the city-ring around Frankfurt, Germany.

So it doesn't surprise me that any rerouted traffic ends up going through Amsterdam. Holland is also one of the countries with the highest underground cable density in the world. Only some Asian countries outmatch Holland in network capacity and prices for internet connections.Lots of US sites (and I assume other countries now as well) reroute traffic (for Europe, EurAsia, Middle East, Africa) through AIX, because Holland does it better/cheaper or just cheaper, while having excellent up-time and not so strict laws regarding content. Lets just say that Amsterdam has two red light districts...and the virtual one is a lot nastier than the physical one.

Ok, more on-topic again. A big part of all the traffic flowing through AIX consist is SPAM and whatever is being generated by viruses and malware all over the world, hence some software treats traffic coming from the Dutch backbone with a suspicious eye.

The ISP handling your traffic appears to be registered under the German flag (hence the GmbH in their name). The name EcaTel LTD doesn't ring a bell, their website gives me the impression that they manage networking hardware/servers. Likely the ISP leases their equipment.

Landlines always have preference over the lines that float in water...as "fishing trawlers" break those cables from time to time    Landlines also have more capacity, which in most cases means that your traffic can arrive faster on it's destination traveling over the whole world than through the shortest distance cable. So, at first glance, nothing too strange is going on.

However, feel free to correct me as I am not up-to-date anymore with this stuff.

[off-topic]
Working for that internet company was really fun. About 15 years ago the main office of that company was located about 150 kilometers away from the AIX and it was already possible to burn CD's directly (at top speed) on my local PC from our servers in the AIX. Lots of Debian images passed over that line, I can tell you that.
[/off-topic]

1557

General Software Discussion / Re: Why 24-bit/192kHz music files make no sense - and may be bad for you!

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2013, 06:16 PM »

Years ago I heard (or read, I don't remember) a story from a 70-80 rock band (Slade/Suede or something) that went into the studio, did the recording and then checked how it sounded on a average car stereo. They would rerecord if their music didn't sound according to their standards of 'good'.

Subjective I know, but they would go out of their way to make it sound as best as possible on the average Joe car stereo. And when Average Joe would come to their concert, they could blow him away with the onstage performance.

I always thought it to be very considerate of that band.

1558

Living Room / Re: send many emails

« Last post by Shades on September 23, 2013, 06:51 PM »

Yes, besides restriction policies from your ISP there are independent organizations who do track rogue mail servers that send out messages at a rate they consider suspicious. Twice it happened to me that I got a warning from one of those organizations.

They send a message that you should check any computer in your LAN (if you have one) for viruses and when you're done with that you can use a link to apply for relieving the email-ban. If it happens again within the probation, more severe actions will be taken.

What that would imply I don't know, as that never happened to me.

Only the legit mailing-letter companies/organizations have permission to send large sets of mail fast. but also they are continuously scrutinized (if they have too many clients that send spam)

1559

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Shades on September 21, 2013, 01:45 PM »

To be honest, I never was a big fan of software that has to create an index, robbing a computer of resources by having a service running in the background that often at inconvenient times start to do its indexing.

Quite some time ago IBM and Yahoo! offered their OmniFind search engine software for free with a (rather generous) limited data set size, exceeding that limit and payment would be required. At the time I had a spare PC lying around so I tried it.

It still runs, it is a set-and-forget solution that indexes all kinds of document types at timed intervals using a separate PC. For on-the-fly searching files and/or their content on my desktop PC I use BareGrep, as I find it's speed very good. For the rest I trust on the search engine.

Now I know that the search engine has been discontinued, but until now I didn't see the need to change it or look for an alternative. However, you might be lucky to find the executable and the manual somewhere on the interweb.

If you are interested in a similar solution, look at this DonationCoder thread for an alternative.

1560

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on September 21, 2013, 01:10 PM »

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - A story about an interview between an US writer and a Pakistan rebel in Pakistan. Two opposite sides and each has their merit. Two hours of conversation, flashbacks (going back to the 9/11 event) and hardly any action...but I found it to be anything but boring.

1561

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on September 19, 2013, 11:09 PM »

This is the end - This one is best enjoyed with either liquid or smoke. Not one bit serious, way over the top and lots of cameyo's. Near the end some body parts are thrown around that you probably should not show to children. But it is a fun ride, if you like the humor of Seth Rogen, that is...and you are not easy religiously offended.

1562

General Software Discussion / Re: Resident search inside eml files and thoses from Thunderbird

« Last post by Shades on September 13, 2013, 09:05 PM »

Sorry, I had no time to respond earlier.  The version of MailStore I use is: 4.2.1.6501 (came out early 2011) and at the time I found the portable version easily.

If you want I can PM the archive I created from that software package (it's around 8MByte) as I am not sure if attaching that package to this post is legit.

1563

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on September 12, 2013, 09:36 PM »

Once upon a time lived a beautiful Queen with large breasts.

Nick the Dragon Slayer obsessed over the Queen for this reason.
He knew that the penalty for his desire would be death should he try
to touch them, but he had to try.

One day Nick revealed his secret desire to his colleague, Horatio
the Physician, the King's chief doctor.. Horatio thought about this and
said that he could arrange for Nick to more than satisfy his desire, but
it would cost him 1000 gold coins to arrange it.

Without pause Nick readily agreed to the scheme.

The next day, Horatio made a batch of itching powder and poured a
little bit into the Queen's bra while she bathed.

Soon after she dressed, the itching commenced and grew intense.

Upon being summoned to the Royal Chambers to address this incident, Horatio informed the King and Queen that only a special saliva, if applied for four hours, would cure this type of itch, and that tests had shown that only the saliva of Nick would work as the antidote to cure the itch.

The King, eager to help his Queen, quickly summoned Nick to their
chambers.. Horatio then slipped Nick the antidote for the itching
powder, which he put into his mouth, and for the next four hours,
Nick worked passionately on the Queen's large and magnificent breasts.

The Queen's itching was eventually relieved, and Nick left satisfied and hailed as a hero.

Upon returning to his chamber, Nick found Horatio demanding his
payment of 1000 gold coins. With his obsession now satisfied, Nick couldn't
have cared less knowing that Horatio could never report this matter to
the King and with a laugh told him to get lost.

The next day, Horatio slipped a massive dose of the same itching
powder into the King's underwear. The King immediately summoned Nick.

The moral of the story - Pay your bloody bills !!!

1564

General Software Discussion / Re: typing in web browser makes it freeze

« Last post by Shades on September 12, 2013, 09:06 PM »

Sounds more and more like a DesktopHeap problem. Chrome opens quite a lot processes in the background, even when there is only a few sites/tabs open.

DesktopHeap is a tricky beast, and works on a very low level in Windows.

To my knowledge Windows 7 (x64) reserves 20MByte of RAM (per Windows account) to open windows in Windows. And once you hit that limit, no matter how much RAM you have in your PC, no program will open anymore and your computer becomes very (and I mean very!) slow.

At some point in time I tried out how much instances of Excel I could run simultaneously using Windows services on Windows XP. After maxing out the DesktopHeap values for that OS I maxed out at 8 and it took almost an hour to kill each Excel instance. It is frightening how much resources and handles Excel consumes when compared with other Windows applications or even with the other Office applications.

Take a look at this KB article from Microsoft if you want to know more about this.

For Windows XP/2003 (32-bit) Microsoft had a very rudimentary tool available. After a convoluted installation procedure it would show you where "all" that RAM went. XP has only 3MByte of DesktopHeap.

For 64-bit PC's you have to trust a blogger who adjusted the MS software so it works. You will find that link soon enough with Google, I purposely don't link to it.

Oh, before I forget, if you have a multi-core processor you will need to download and install Windows Symbols for Debugging (only 330MByte) to enable the DesktopHeap software to install an unsigned driver that it needs/uses to show you these values.

Which means that you have to reboot your PC and disable the signed driver check when the system is booting. 

Anywayz, when you have successfully gone through all the hoops, this software does help in finding resource hogs, which does make it worthwhile.

Seriously, only do the above if you are up for it and really want to know, else don't even start.

 

 

1565

General Software Discussion / Re: Resident search inside eml files and thoses from Thunderbird

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2013, 11:14 PM »

To search through mail (and attachments) my accounts have collected throughout the years, I use MailStore Home. That particular version is free (and available in portable format on www.portableapps.com).

It finds more concise results to any search query when compared with the search capabilities of Thunderbird, my email client of choice. It also serves as a backup of your mail and it allows you to convert mail to different formats so the messages in MailStore home can be exported to the mail client of your choice.

No affiliation, just a (very) content user.

1566

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2013, 06:30 PM »

R.I.P.D - Action story about undead cops that doesn't take itself too seriously and that makes the movie a lot more entertaining and funny than the recent Hollywood blockbuster "bomb"-ardment over here. Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges do deliver in this one.

1567

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: need help setting up grid with a large display

« Last post by Shades on September 08, 2013, 05:33 PM »

The most helpful hint I can give you is to look for 'GridMove' in the DonationCoder forum. You will get a link to a piece of software with which you can create your desired setup. Searching for that term will also lead to a lot of pages with suggestions on how to use it.

And if all that may fail to get the setup you want, contact DonationCoder member jgpaiva, to my understanding he is the author of GridMove.

1568

Living Room / Re: Making a new page of "DonationCoder's Favorite Web Sites" - suggestions?

« Last post by Shades on September 08, 2013, 11:09 AM »

For wallpapers you could also check: http://thepaperwall.com    Very varied. From what I have seen, practically all wallpapers have a resolution of 1920x1080 or higher. Some categories have a huge amount of wallpapers, computer games, for instance, has over 10.000 of them.

An example (as it is big I have put it behind the spoiler tags):

Spoiler

1569

Living Room / Re: The fun of installing custom router firmware (tomato, dd-wrt) - an introduction

« Last post by Shades on September 06, 2013, 09:11 PM »

The use of bigger and/or directional antennas also makes a difference. Some routers can amplify the power that goes to the antennas. That makes a big difference as well. However, it is not advised as overpowering the unit can lead to dead routers, or at least WiFi-less.

Now that I have taken a look at the device I didn't see any external antenna. Which would mean that there is not really an option to improve the range of the stock antenna's, except power amplification if you are dead set on leaving the router in it's current location.

If you still have the old unit, maybe you could still use as a simple repeater, so you can reach the outer corners of your man-cave/house/mansion/ranch...

1570

Non-Windows Software / Re: Remmina - superb remote access client

« Last post by Shades on August 31, 2013, 08:16 AM »

The software on SourceForge is intended for Linux (actually, anything except Windows). But for Windows Remote access clients I think that Terminals (free, accepting donations) is very capable.

1571

Living Room / Re: Baffled: moving memory sticks from one laptop to another halves it

« Last post by Shades on August 24, 2013, 04:19 PM »

Is the memory controller on the host even capable of addressing the amount of memory you put in?

Has the donor 8GByte of RAM soldered on the mainboard and are the the extra RAM slots not filled with 4GByte sticks? So that the donor system came to a total of 16GByte, but that you are just transferring 8GByte of RAM from the donor to the host?

Does the donor memory require more juice than the host can deliver? Are you moving around EEC memory modules?

Take a good look at brand/model,type number from the modules you are moving and take look on the internet for specs (latency, speed, timing settings) and check if the receiving memory controller is able to work with these specs.

Sometimes it really just the combination of RAM sticks that create havoc on a memory controller while working fine separately.

1572

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 24, 2013, 11:04 AM »

Now you see me - This one I really liked. Robin Hood style robbery using magic tricks and a lot of misdirection that make for fine plot twists. And it comes with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.

1573

Living Room / Re: Intel Rapid Storage Technology, hard drive problem.

« Last post by Shades on August 23, 2013, 10:51 PM »

If you still have SATA ports to spare, you could try another one and see if Win7 detects the drive. I had once one controller failing on a mobo. It came with two one for normal drives, one for RAID. Swapping ports did the trick for me at the time.
Then again it also sounds like the BIOS on that PC has problems handling drives of a certain size, making them "invisible".

From experiences with different motherboard manufacturers (but mainly Asus) I can say that most are not too shabby to supply BIOS updates that enhance the support of bigger hard disks, make small fixes etc. for motherboards that are 2 to 3 years old. If you do such a thing, make sure your PC is under power for as long as the updating procedure takes!

I agree with 40hz's comments wholeheartedly and never advise to use RAID in any single user setting. If you want speed, buy faster hard disk(s) and employ a decent backup strategy for the data on the drive(s) if you want your data duplicated.

The amount of time you gain during the time RAID is active on your system, you lose multiple times over when the sh?t hits the fan. And be happy if you yourself are still able to fix it. Expect a boatload of money to migrate from your wallet to the commercial one(s) who (think they) can fix these kinds of mishaps.

The drive management software you'll get when installing Windows 7 sometimes tries to "help" too much, when it detects multiple drives in a computer. That is another impression I got from reading the problem description. I found it very helpful when installing any version of Windows to just connect the drive I want it to boot from, connecting the other drives after installation has finished.

Again, the inkling of time a computer gains by booting up from multiple hard disks running side by side, will get you in lots of misery.

Less is more and the KISS principle are the best guides when installing a PC. At least in my experience.

As example: when installing my main database server at the time (2010/2011), I used a small 250GByte SATA2 hard disk for the OS and the database software itself (on separate partitions). All the database data files are on the SATA3 disks connected the 6GB ports that Asus mobo has. As setups go this is simple, expandable and relatively easy repairable with run-of-the-mill software.





  

1574

Post New Requests Here / Re: Help with 'placing' folder contents -- lots of subfolders, containing 'stuff'

« Last post by Shades on August 21, 2013, 06:52 PM »

Sounds like someone trying to "download the internet" again...

As far as I know there is already software that does something similar...it checks a folder and depending on the content you can set rules of what goes where.

For a open source AHK-based solution, look at Belvedere.

1575

Living Room / Re: Movies or films you've seen lately

« Last post by Shades on August 17, 2013, 01:49 PM »

Pawnshop Chronicles:  that's a weird and somewhat disturbing one for ya! Likely it doesn't score that high, because of some of the weirdness and one scene was quite disturbing (at least to me). The second storyline is rather predictable, but still quite well done. Definitely not for kids!