Recent Posts

1751

Living Room / Re: Anyone using Nuance's 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' or equivalent?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 24, 2010, 06:47 AM »

Thanks - that's helpful.

1752

Living Room / Re: Anyone using Nuance's 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' or equivalent?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 24, 2010, 05:12 AM »

A few questions:

• Anyone know how the license works? Is it activated to only one computer or can you install on desktop and laptop? They introduced activation to one computer with OmniPage a wehile back which is when I dropped the purchased version and started using the latest free version supplied with printers!
• Can more than one person use the software or is the training specific to a single voice?
• Can you use multiple languages?
• If you have a bluetooth headset can you just buy the home or premium version or do you need a version with specific support for bluetooth?

I have to say Nuance's website has always been truly awful - it seems to be designed to be deliberately confusing and in the past I have found you can order the same products at different prices depending on which page you look at! They seem to work on the basis of acquiring established titles (OmniPage is another one they bought from TextBridge) and then hiking the prices.

1753

Living Room / Re: London at 80 megapixels!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 21, 2010, 04:45 AM »

Wonderful quality photo and great viewing software but looking at it reminds me why I never ever want to live in a town again - let alone a large city.

Once criticism - perspective is a bit off/uncorrected.

1754

General Software Discussion / Re: Please recommend a good "shopping cart" website widget

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 16, 2010, 02:05 PM »

Somewhat bizarrely the restriction "strictly personal usage" seems odd on a package specifically designed for small businesses???

1755

Living Room / Re: How do I test router vs. Internet connection?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 07, 2010, 11:03 AM »

Two ways to see if it is the router or the ADSL line:

1) Borrow another router and see how well that works

2) Take your router to someone else's house where you know their connection working well

In both cases make sure to back up the setting and then reconfigure it for the connection and see if it works.

1756

General Software Discussion / Re: SMF or phpBB... that is the question?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 07, 2010, 03:55 AM »

There are lots of formats of 20 years ago that aren't easily transferable any more - at least not without resorting to programming skills and the hacker skills necessary to decode the old format. As for internet consistency over a long period I think that is highly unlikely. My personal belief (admittedly cynical) is that the internet as we know it won't even exist in 50 years time - there are many governments and multinationals who want to kill off the open nature of the internet and I suspect that despite strong opposition they will probably succeed in shutting down the current system and forcing a locked in proprietary format. We are already seeing this starting with themove to cloud computing - largely free t the moment but also mostly proprietary formats. Once they have a lot of people locked in watch the free services die and the prices ramp up - also the proprietary nature of a lot of what is going on behind secure connections will start to become the backbone of the internet and servers will begin to be optimised for those services not general internet usage.

If you want to use an online system like SMF or phpBB then you will need to be good at SQL coding to extract stuff in the distant future.

I wouldn't rely on import/export functions being readily available - and certainly not for transferring stuff from one platform to another if your chosen project dies.

Personally I suspect that phpBB is likely to be better supported when it comes to exporting to another forum - but that is only on my experience with the lack of integration options available for SMF.

1757

General Software Discussion / Re: SMF or phpBB... that is the question?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 06, 2010, 06:28 PM »

Do you honestly think any of these technologies will still be viable in 10 years time - let alone 50 years?

Think back 50 years - what was computer technology and the internet like in 1960 ?

Change is still accelerating so what is it going to be like in 2060 ?

1758

Living Room / Re: if proxy connection works - who is blocking me: my ISP or the server?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 05, 2010, 02:30 PM »

Well. Hooray for that...

without doing anything at all, I am now able to connect to the Head in the Clouds server once more.

Seems the world wide web weather has stopped blowing my little boat away from the shores of the HITC island.

-nudone (November 05, 2010, 12:04 PM)

Glad it is now working but it doesn't help understand what is going on - the only thing you can say is it was nothing to do with your network or PC !!! Try asking your ISP why it has suddenly started working again.

1759

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me come up with a Windows XP-->Windows 7 transition strategy.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 03, 2010, 01:12 PM »

True and VMWare or VirtualBox are quicker. The nice bit of XP Mode the the way it integrates easily.

1760

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me come up with a Windows XP-->Windows 7 transition strategy.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 03, 2010, 10:05 AM »

You beat me to it -Windows 7 XP Mode is an easy way to keep some XP apps (though don't expect to run games or graphically intensive applications in XP Mode as it will be slow and it uses an emulated graphic card so not ideal). Originally XP Mode was only available on Hyper-V (or AMD-V) CPU supported systems but Microsoft has sensibly dropped this restriction and now you can use it on any system with sufficient memory.

You do have to use Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate (if you have XP Pro you can upgrade) so although the XP image comes without paying for a license it isn't exactly free,

1761

Living Room / Re: What the heck has happened to Google search?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2010, 04:56 AM »

I have swapped to Blekko for a trial period - looks promising and hopefully they can resist the onslaught.

I suppose the test will come in months to come when the 'hand picked' nature of the websites included in results start to be manipulated to get higher ratings, then we shall see if the hand picking is revisited regularly.

1762

Living Room / Re: Ideas for christmas geek presents

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 31, 2010, 07:15 AM »

That's the same one - but they use DHL or UPS tracked services to overseas destinations so the shipping will probably be considerably more than the product plus import duties/taxes on the total price (inc shipping) for UK deliveries. Shame 'cos I think they are cool.

1763

Living Room / Re: Ideas for christmas geek presents

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 31, 2010, 05:12 AM »

Thanks - this is fun.

Liked the binary clock idea so had a look in the UK - this one is even cooler:



from Gadgets.co.uk

Unfortunately it is no longer available and would have been too expensive. Actually they have a number of fun clocks (just type clock in the gift finder on the left and binary turns up a couple of binary watches). I particularly like the R2D2 projection clock

1764

Living Room / Ideas for christmas geek presents

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 30, 2010, 12:06 PM »

I have been trying to think what the moderately geeky person would like for christmas:

There is the inevitable USB Mug Warmer:



but I also saw the USB Mouse Mat Hand Warmer:



and how about a Mouse Phone?



Anyone got any other ideas? My main criteria are computer related and cheap stocking fillers (not expensive gadgets).

1765

Living Room / Re: win 7 laptop can't connect to xp desktop via wifi

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 30, 2010, 04:04 AM »

Why should using the ISPs DNS make any difference to a local network setup?

1766

Living Room / Re: win 7 laptop can't connect to xp desktop via wifi

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 29, 2010, 05:54 PM »

Have your tried simply disabling all the firewalls? Seems the most likely problem.

1767

Living Room / Re: win 7 laptop can't connect to xp desktop via wifi

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 29, 2010, 04:09 AM »

If it is purely a Wifi issue I'd guess it is a firewall problem as they often treat each interface separately.

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Living Room / Re: win 7 laptop can't connect to xp desktop via wifi

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 28, 2010, 06:31 PM »

Does XP have proper sharing or simple sharing enabled? Look in Control Panel / Folder Options / View  it is the last item - untick it.

You then need to set up the sharing of folders manually on XP. I find this far less flaky than simple sharing which can be a bit hit and miss (even worse sharing with Vista). A vaild user on XP is "Everyone" so if it is a home network and you aren't sharing confidential info (!!) set the sharing permission for Everyone to Full control and it should pop up for all network users without any user profile restrictions.

Are you sure the workgroup names are the same? The default on all versions of Windows is "Workgroup" except for XP when, for some reason, MS changed it to "MSHOME".

Also try turning off your firewall on the laptop and other computers briefly and see if it works - if it does there is your problem.

1769

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me come up with a Windows XP-->Windows 7 transition strategy.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2010, 07:21 PM »

FWIW- if you install Windows 7 anywhere it assumes it is on drive C: (Vista does this too - unlike windows xp which allocates new drive letters.) Drive letters are actually allocated in the registry so Windows XP will see the new install with an odd drive letter but if you boot into Windows 7 it will be on drive C: and XP will be on an odd drive - just for the duration of that session.

Set up the dual boot on a separate partition and they will both boot to drive c:

The other alternative is to do the following:

Find a Vista disk that can upgrade your Windows XP but you don't need to activate it.

Once you have Vista upgrade to Windows 7.

These upgrades aren't ideal but there is no quick way to go from XP to 7 - basically if you don't use an upgrade path you will need to reistall all of your software.

NB: One gotcha ... Windows 7 will install its 'boot' stuff on the active partition so if Windows XP is your current system partition the boot stuff will be installed there so once you are ready to make the big change you will need to clear everything off this partition except the boot stuff and then resize it and resize the Windows 7 partition to reclaim the space.

1770

Living Room / Re: Hidden Taxes... ever considered these?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 19, 2010, 05:29 PM »

What do people without a computer do?

1771

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Easeus PM PRO giveaway

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 19, 2010, 04:39 AM »

Thanks for the heads up - I'll take a look

1772

Developer's Corner / Re: Programming Ennui, Anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 15, 2010, 01:06 PM »

• Writers Block
  
• Procrastination
  
• Lack of Inspiration
  
• Distraction By Another Project

-Stephen66515 (October 14, 2010, 09:48 PM)

Sounds pretty much like LIFE to me ... never mind programming! 

1773

General Software Discussion / Re: EditPad Pro 7-BETA

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 14, 2010, 01:18 PM »

RegEx Magic is worth a look if you are, like me, clueless and can't be bothered to learn RegEx. I have had copies of Buddy and Magic for a long time but I find Buddy still requires you to know about what you are doing more.

My problem is that I use RegEx so rarely that every time I need to use it I have to start from scratch. RegEx Magic is designed to let you make RegEx expressions without learning RegEx itslef - which suits me.

If you haven't tried RegEx Magic download the trial and give it a whirl.

1774

Living Room / Re: I have a very hard announcement to make

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 14, 2010, 09:49 AM »

LOL - I'm on that road for many reasons ... 

1775

Living Room / Re: I have a very hard announcement to make

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 14, 2010, 03:47 AM »

Sorry to hear of your frustration and pain.

Don't think that you are alone (or even unusual). I think most people have dreams that aren't fulfilled and suffer from similar feelings at times in their in their life - I know I certainly have.

I spent many many years teaching and loved it but then found myself unemployed or only partially employed after moving to another part of the UK. I spent years trying to get back into teaching and holding on to that dream but actually the act of letting go of the dream allowed me to push on new doors - I spent 5 years working as an Outdoor Ed instructor which I thoroughly enjoyed (until the wet and cold and low pay made me decide to move on again) and now I am running my own small business. If someone had told me 15 years ago what to expect over the last 10 years I would have thought they were mad but actually letting go of the original idea was that catalyst that let other things happen.

For now leave the IDE forget about programming and look for new things that can inspire you = earning a living is important but it is only a part of life - make sure you have other things that bring happiness and enthusisam.

Last you don't have to be a programmer to enjoy and be a part of these forums (I haven't written a program in over 10 years though I am still full of intentions) - so don't be a stranger!