Recent Posts

1801

Living Room / Re: Am I the only one who finds the new Apps-based world boring?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 03, 2010, 09:57 AM »

Just got a Blackberry Bold 9700 and like it a lot. It's great for out and about but I am not going to invest a lot of money or time and energy in Blackberry apps as it is far too fiddly to be any use for more than quickly responding to an email. I did download a training app (in the hopes of being inspired to get fit) that links up with the GPS - so ideal for my chose task of hill walking. It is also nice to have a decent music player (that isn't an iPod) that I can use via Blue Tooth in the car via the radio and have it auto mute when I get a call (it can also link to my car GPS and mute music to allow directions to be heard - though I haven't worked out how to get that working yet). Really all this is 'toy' stuff though and of only marginal real value.

I don't like many online apps - they are too slow and limited and I really don't want my stuff out there in the cloud - I don't trust companies to look after my data (esp. Microsoft as I got well and truly burned by them in the past when they lost a server and didn't have a backup!) not to mention potential security issues.

To do anything truly productive I want desktop apps - for me the way to go, out and about, is a netbook with a proper OS and applications and VPN to my desktop (just got a Samsung NS210 and it is really nice to use - esp. as i added extra memory, Win 7 Professional and Office 2010 Pro Plus).

IMHO smartphone apps are only really suitable for picking up mail and making a quick response if you have to - and other apps are useful for opening the odd document but who would really want to use a Blackberry or iPhone as a wordprocessor?

1802

Developer's Corner / Re: Check Gmail using C#

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 01, 2010, 02:31 AM »

If you use labels and filters in your GMail account you will need to use IMAP to access all of your mail. POP will only grab things that are labelled 'inbox'.

1803

General Software Discussion / Re: Outpost <7 being abandoned

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 30, 2010, 06:03 PM »

just use a free AV and Windows firewall behind a NAT router.

-Carol Haynes (September 30, 2010, 04:59 PM)

"Firewall software" is snakeoil. Independent of who developed it.

-Tuxman (September 30, 2010, 05:04 PM)

Agreed (I think) 

1804

General Software Discussion / Re: Outpost <7 being abandoned

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 30, 2010, 04:59 PM »

Why would anyone run out of date security software (unless the new one is too full of bugs)? For once Agnitum are right - but then why does anyone bother ... just use a free AV and Windows firewall behind a NAT router.

1805

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - Jiggle Mouse

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 28, 2010, 04:59 PM »

Wow - is that a record ... multiple solutions within 22 minutes.

You guys are stars 

1806

Post New Requests Here / DONE+ - Jiggle Mouse

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 28, 2010, 04:23 PM »

A friend has a laptop that has been set up by a stupid systems admin at work so that after 4 pm if the computer is idle it just shuts down.

Unfortunately he has used a policy editor or something similar to enforce this and it is driving her nuts.

What I need is a little tray app the waits until the computer has been idle for a couple of minutes and then simulates jiggling the mouse a bit randonly (say every minute or two) to ensure the computer keeps awake and thinks someone is using it.

It sholdn't do anything when the computer is in use.

I could probably do this with AHK if I had time to sit down and think about it but work is mad at the moment!

Anyone any ideas?

Cheers

1807

Developer's Corner / Re: Why computer programs should not be patentable -- in easy-to-understand terms

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 26, 2010, 04:35 PM »

It's a bit like saying you shouldn't patent anything because it is exactly the same as lots of other things.

Actually I agree that the patents system we have now is broken (and so is copyright). Trouble is there are too many vested interests to ever get it fixed.

Example - Beethoven's music as first published is still copyright because the publishers can renew the copyright ad nauseam. Technically the music isn't copyright but the printed edition is - not sure how that works, presumably it is the page layout and the mistakes that crept in that sustain the copyright claim.

The recent example of Facebook trying to claim book was a trademark belonging to them shows the ludicrous nature of it all.

I'm surprised that Apple hasn't patented the letter i yet - maybe someone should and then sue Apple for gazzillions (oops that should be gazzllons - don't want to nfrnge).

1808

Living Room / Re: Would someone mind recommending a good laser printer?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 26, 2010, 04:40 AM »

I'd go with Mouser's recommendation - as I said I don't really use lasers myself (though I should) - maybe I will look too.

1809

Living Room / Re: Would someone mind recommending a good laser printer?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 25, 2010, 12:37 PM »

Low end models are made by Canon
Midrange models are made by Lexmark
High-end models are made by Xerox

-Stoic Joker (September 25, 2010, 08:22 AM)

I know it isn't relevant to this thread but ... don't know about lasers but this is definitely the wrong order for inkjets. For me the order (for inkjets) is:

Lexmark - cheap to buy but crap quality and extremely expensive to run (lousy software) (and most of 'Dell' printers seem to be Lexmark rebranded - which is why they can give them away for almost nothing). Their drivers have little to recommend them either.

Canon - very good quality and inks reasonably priced (esp. if you by a higher spec printer). Software minimalist but works well and is easy to install.

HP - pretty good print quality (not as good as Canon's for the same price) but built quality is nowhere near as good as it used to be and their software is a nightmare. Upgrades are commonly over 400Mb (I have seen a couple that won't even fit on a CD when compressed) and the cause of endless problems. I suppose I shouldn't really complain because they have made me a fair amount of money sorting out driver issues which kill computers and drive users nuts.

Xerox - don't know - haven't used one in 20 years (and that one cost £12,000 then for a 300dpi colour printer - so yes they are expensive!)

My personal prejudices (and experience) means that I would never EVER buy a Lexmark printer again and if someone gave me one for free it would go straight on to eBay without being opened. I have pretty much the same feeling for HP printers these days but I'd guess their laser printers are less hassle than inkjets and cheaper to run.

I have seen loads of B&W Brother lasers around and I am not that impressed with the quality of output on any that I have seen. If you want a cheap wireless laser printer I would suggest Brother but if you want quality you'll probably have to spend a bit to get it.

1810

General Software Discussion / Re: Drupal is f*cked

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 23, 2010, 09:15 PM »

I managed a project to install MCMS for a client - at a time when I knew nothing about MCMS. It all went without a hitch. I was very impressed with the product - and I do not sing Microsoft's praises very often.
See for yourself - the MCMS site is here: Powerco (New Zealand)

-IainB (September 23, 2010, 08:35 PM)

Nice websites - but typical Microsoft product - looks great in Internet Explorer but have you looked at the left menu in Firefox?

1811

Living Room / Re: Hilarious video, for those old enough to appreciate it.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 23, 2010, 09:00 PM »

Hooray for clay tablets and the stylus~! =p

-Renegade (September 23, 2010, 07:10 PM)

Well they have survived thousands of years buried in middle eastern deserts - how long will an iPad last in comparison?

1812

Living Room / Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 07, 2010, 10:10 AM »

OK - I'll bite too:

Urealistic test ('cos 50 miles is pretty pointless on the net):

Manchester UK


More realistic:

San Jose California


Sad:

Perth, Australia
(using the appropriately named Server FastHit!!)

or

Toronto, Canada


Strange that Vancover is quicker to the UK than Toronto:


My main gripe is that upload speeds are totally pants - and there don't seem to be any UK providers that do better (unless someone can point me at one).

1813

Living Room / Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 06, 2010, 03:47 PM »

So it really isn't 20mbit - I get around 900Kb/s download speeds with a 6.7mbit connection.

If you want to test your speed try www.speedtest.net

1814

Living Room / Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 06, 2010, 02:39 PM »

20/2mbit ADSL2+, which is somewhat more than adequate . I pay about $60/mo for this line, which I find to be expensive, but it's normal price here in .dk.

-f0dder (September 06, 2010, 01:25 PM)

Is that the actual speed you get or is that the advertised headline rate?

My headline rate is 20mbit ADSL - in fact I achieve around 6.7mbit where I live (which given my location is actually pretty good - given that people within sight of my house are getting 256kbit download speeds). Upload speed is supposed to be 0.5Mbit but I mostly don't get much more than 0.34-0.38 - which is pretty crap when you are trying to do website work.

1815

Living Room / Re: GDT on Bits du Jour for 50% off

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 04, 2010, 02:24 PM »

Bum - only just noticed this thread and the offer has now gone 

1816

General Software Discussion / Re: Stupid question time, "Any way to *prevent* crapware loading on new box?"

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 03, 2010, 05:08 PM »

If you can find a DVD with Win7 Pro x64, then I'd say just boot from it, do a complete install to the HDD, (wiping what was there, ie. Dell's auto-install), and enter your CD key off the sticker.

That should work perfectly.

-4wd (September 02, 2010, 11:47 PM)

I don't know if things have changed in Windows 7 but certainly in Windows XP and Windows Vista this did not work. The stickers on the box are only to prove you have alicense - the actual keys don't work. They used to in earlier XP days but MS moved away from that because people used to wander around computer shops noting down the keys on the computers out on the shelf!

A better way to do it is to do the crap loaded install and then use a utility to backup the OEM activation status (which is more complex than on a non-OEM install) - then install from a clean windows disk and restore the activation.

1817

General Software Discussion / Re: ComboFix=GREAT rootkit cleaner. (Kaspersky failed me big time).

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 02, 2010, 07:36 PM »

The lesson to learn is that no solution is 100% accurate and it is impossible to make it so.

If you think you can trust any security suite or app to give 100% protection you are deluding yourself. The only 100% solution is to not connect to the internet and never use removable media (and even then it isn't 100% because as we all know there has been a history of some companies sending out preinfected computers!).

The only solution is common sense ---> don't download 'stuff' without knowing what you are getting first ... this applies to webpages as well as active downloads!

In the last few months I have been cleaning numerous infected computers - all were running 'good' suites which were up to date (where the update still worked!) - MacAfee, Norton, Kaspersky, Avast, AVG, Avira, Panda .... the list goes on (and where free versions are available they don't seem to be any worse than the paid versions at this). Every single person I dealt with was completely unaware of how their computer got infected.

My 2p comments are:

• if in doubt don't download it
• if you must download things get them from reputable sources where they have been virus checked before you download
• if you are reasonably happy at least run the installer through www.virustotal.com before installing it
• use a sandbox or VM (preferably one with easy snapshot restore) to test application before installing them for real
• don't use Internet Explorer or if you must don't install ActiveX addons or BHOs (toolbars etc)
• with other browsers use only well known and thoroughly tested addons and download from safe sources
• if your browser starts popping up windows unexpectedly don't click on any buttons in the windows and don't try to close them - just kill the browser in TaskManager (often the close button is used as a way of installing the thing you are trying to avoid). Immediately do a full system scan with a range of tools.
• keep incremental or differential image backups of your system and at the first hint of trouble roll back to a good state

1818

Living Room / Re: I'm ready for the TV revolution to hit!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2010, 03:08 PM »

It would be nice but I am not sure it will happen - and ironically I am not sure it would be good if it did (at least in the UK).

The big question that hasn't been asked is who will pay to make the content if it is just distributed on demand via ISPs? If it is on a 'pay-per-view' basis then two things will happen - all digital content will quickly shift to torrent sites (even more than they do now) and if you follow the rules TV will become MUCH more expensive to watch.

The problem is that advertisers don't like pay per view and without advertisers commercial channels can't survive (without them watching would be come prohibitively expensive).

The other major problem is that a huge proportion of the population doesn't have adequate broadband to actually do this - and if broadband was upgraded to the point where everyone did have sufficient bandwidth there would be insufficent overall bandwidth for the population (unless technology changes radically).

Actually I think it would be an interesting experiment to have TV companies stop broadcasting and have ondemand paid services. Two outcomes would be likely (IMHO): consumers realise that 99% of TV production is utter tosh and not worth paying for and there would be a renaissance as people discover there are more things to life than watching TV. Alternatively I would be extremely depressed to see mass rioting breaking out because the opposite happened!

Try reading "The Machine Stops" by Saki !

1819

General Software Discussion / Re: Readability - Get rid of the clutter so you can read!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 26, 2010, 03:05 PM »

Brilliant idea (I installed the addon but actually I really like the marklet)

1820

Living Room / Re: Any CPanel Gurus out there?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 21, 2010, 02:48 PM »

Thanks for the feedback.

I just found a .htaccess solution that works:

[Select]

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.parked1.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.parked1.com/$1 [R=301]

Had a bit of a puzzle where to put this in .htaccess but found it worked fine if I put it before SEF rewrites.

1821

Living Room / Re: Any CPanel Gurus out there?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 21, 2010, 12:15 PM »

So something like this:

[Select]

<html>
<head>
  <script type="text/javascript">
       <!--
          if document.domain != "www.parked1.com"
              {
                document.location = "http://www.parked1.com"
              }
       //-->
  </script>
</head>

<body>



</body>
</html>

This would work if I was using HTML but it is a Joomla based website and this would mean placing this in the template and having it test every time a page is requested.

Is there anyway I can set this up in the .htaccess or in CPanel so that it happens automatically?

1822

Living Room / Any CPanel Gurus out there?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 21, 2010, 06:48 AM »

I have a CPanel account with one main domain registered (say main.com) and two parked domains (parked1.com and parked2.com).

I want to set it up so that if anyone puts any of those three domain names into a browser then the parked1.com domain is visited and the URL changed to reflect the correct URL.

Currently if I put any of the domain names into a browser the website displays properly but with the URL I entered not based on parked1.com?

Any ideas how to achieve this?

I have tried domain redirects (both in the Parked domain section, and the Redirects section) but they seem to have no effect. It may be because I have a .htaccess file which may override redirects (but I don't know a lot about .htaccess to change a complex file).

1823

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 20, 2010, 03:53 AM »

I stand by my definition of an upgrade: "I think an upgrade price should be just that - a fixed price to upgrade from one version to the next."

-tomos (August 20, 2010, 03:08 AM)

Fair point but if I were you I'd start saying goodbye to upgrade pricing - where Microsoft go other developers generally follow (look at product activation as a really bad example) and MS is dropping upgrade pricing on flagship products such as Office. What's the betting that Windows 8 won't have upgrade pricing.

A lot of smaller companies feel they have to offer upgrade prices because the big companies do - once they don't feel that pressure I'd guess upgrades either won't exist or will be much less generous.

1824

General Software Discussion / Re: SmartWhoIS GiveAwayOfTheDay License Key.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2010, 03:14 PM »

Useful little tool but doesn't cover all domain registers.

1825

General Software Discussion / Re: SmartWhoIS GiveAwayOfTheDay License Key.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 17, 2010, 01:54 PM »

Useful link - thanks.