Recent Posts

1851

General Software Discussion / Re: multiple replaces

« Last post by Shades on March 18, 2012, 08:53 AM »

See if this piece of freeware (inforapid.com) fulfills your need. As far as I know it works on Windows 7 despite its age. 

1852

Older DC Contests and Challenges / Re: "Unconventional Encryption Challenge"

« Last post by Shades on March 18, 2012, 08:39 AM »

Come to think of it, is it not so that the software that implements the scheme as proposed by TaoPhoenix has to know which kind of scheme is has to work with code-wise?

Thus clearing up the whole obfuscation part for one who knows where to look/reverse-engineer? It sounds silly to me to have the software 'bruteforce' its way through the possible encryption techniques, as it would make using this software unbearable slow and very CPU/GPU resource hungry.   

1853

General Software Discussion / Re: how to build a website in my pc and then upload it to a hosting?

« Last post by Shades on March 18, 2012, 08:18 AM »

To my knowledge there are no desktop versions of CMS packages. Not really need to either.

Assuming you run Windows, goto www.apachefriends.de and download their XAMPP tool. Unpack it anywhere on your system, run the setup.bat and you have a working PHP, MySQL, Apache combo (if you already have one or more of these tools installed on your system, you should consider de-installing them if that is possible as these can occupy ports).

Download the latest (stable) version of your preferred CMS and extract it in the 'htdocs' folder inside XAMPP. Open your browser and use the URL: http://localhost/<name of your favorite CMS> and follow the instructions on the screen to install the CMS.

When that is done, you have a web development environment that will run one or more CMS'es without any problem. You can copy/move all adjustments you made to a host without too much trouble. Your host will require some changes though, as you will have to comply with their security rules. If you already know these rules beforehand you can adjust the XAMPP tool to include these. That way the copying of the website you created on your local PC to the host will be a lot less work.

The above is not complicated but I would advise to get into the habit of using a version control system like Git, Mercurial, SVN etc. for your website(s) as well. At first that is more work, but it will save your behind on more than one occasion. Besides that, it will make you look a lot more professional, so any fee you may collect will increase as well.

Do get familiar the online control panel, it sometimes can help you getting a task done quickly (depending on the type and version of the control panel).  

1854

Living Room / Re: Censoring Internet Porn?

« Last post by Shades on March 17, 2012, 07:30 AM »

The Dutch solution is better...Prostitution is regarded as a profession, so the tax man can have his thing too 

Don't let the smiley fool you, the profession part is really true. Ah well, the Dutch stance on pot is already known around the world.

1855

Living Room / Re: Britannica - would you buy it on (say) Kindle or Nook?

« Last post by Shades on March 17, 2012, 07:13 AM »

Hmm... I can see it now...Encyclopedia Britannica - available in Standard Western, Mideastern, Muslim, Socialist, Christian Conservative, and North Korean editions - with more to follow...

-40hz (March 15, 2012, 12:10 PM)

All versions come on DVD, except the Christian conservative and the North Korean ones.
The Christian conservative one can fit on a CD, only 6000 years have to be covered...
The North Korean one could fit on a floppy, as their previous leader invented and created everything (according to their state press and TV). 

1856

Older DC Contests and Challenges / Re: "Unconventional Encryption Challenge"

« Last post by Shades on March 17, 2012, 06:51 AM »

On a personal level you have picked my interest (in wanting to know how your scheme works, not breaking it).

On a professional level it is likely not that interesting as any method other than the default ones are very hard to sell to (mediocre) management that just want to buy some extra protection for their site/LAN/whatever.

1857

Living Room / Re: Auslogics promoting false speed tester?

« Last post by Shades on March 17, 2012, 06:41 AM »

Increasing TCP packet size will make things download/upload faster. Microsoft is (very) conservative with setting the packet size so the lowest common denominator could still have a stable and reliable connection. If you have professional grade LAN hardware and good cabling, packet size can make quite a difference.

However, with internet connections there are a lot more "points of failure" possible and you will have to find out with trial and (a lot of) error to find the ideal packet size. Generally speaking, more speed means you have to sacrifice stability. For most (including me) this is way more headache than it is worth and personally I place this kind of software in the same corner as registry cleaners. Useless for anyone except your PC repair shop.

Sorry to be so blunt but if one wants more speed, pony up the cash to buy a better connection from your (current) ISP. After that buy hardware that supports jumbo packets (for a better LAN experience).

1858

General Software Discussion / Re: How to become Admin' for real?

« Last post by Shades on March 16, 2012, 05:09 PM »

@4wd:
Crap, my comment was made without that the system specs (from where did you those?)

1859

General Software Discussion / Re: How to become Admin' for real?

« Last post by Shades on March 15, 2012, 04:00 PM »

"No room for more" means either that there are no more (SATA) connectors on your mainboard, your PC case has no room to fit another disk or your power supply cannot handle the load of an extra hard disk anymore.

My money would be on the first option.

However, it is possible to buy a drive with the biggest capacity your budget allows. Download freeware (Paragorn, HDClone etc.) to transfer the complete content of one of your current drives to the new one. Disconnect the drive that you don't want to copy and connect the new drive in its place. Boot from the media created by the freeware and verify you copy correctly(!!!) and then initiate the copy.

After that is finished, which can take quite some time (depending on a lot of speed factors (SATA controller, amount of content etc.)), disconnect the original drive and reconnect the previously disconnected drive. You should notice a small speed increase as the new hard disk will be (slightly) faster than the drive it replaced. When you open the drive management software from Windows you will notice that there is a lot of room left to make (a) new partition(s) or expand the one(s) you already have.

"Rinse-and-repeat" for the other 500GB drive and your PC should be able to store 6 TB of data if your budget allows you to buy 2 3TB drives, of course.

The above procedure is quite simple but do it with a clear mind, because you can seriously mess up if you do one step wrong. Relatively easy procedures makes a mind wander/complacent and that is the moment Murphy is waiting on to strike your data dead cold.   

1860

General Software Discussion / Re: build website

« Last post by Shades on March 15, 2012, 06:54 AM »

Hey...at least such a setup is easy to backup. 

 

1861

General Software Discussion / Re: How to become Admin' for real?

« Last post by Shades on March 12, 2012, 06:09 PM »

By enabling the Administrator account in Windows 7?

Easy enough to do, but that still does not comply with what you want to become.

Home-Groups are enabled by default and you will find that leaving it will work in your benefit. See what Fred Langa writes about that on the 'Windows Secrets' website (pressed for time, so no link).

Symbolic links are your other problem. These can make your life a lot easier and harder at the same time. Easier when you know why and when you should be using those, and harder when you don't.

1862

Living Room / Re: Notable Spam...

« Last post by Shades on March 10, 2012, 11:03 AM »

@cranioscopical:
You can't faIl us now...

1863

Living Room / Basejumping+

« Last post by Shades on March 08, 2012, 06:03 AM »

Wow, amazing jump and amazing camerawork. Some bodyparts of steel are definitely required for this one:

1864

DC Gamer Club / Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator - Free!

« Last post by Shades on March 08, 2012, 05:29 AM »

Well, there is a rather nice (and free) one for space vessels called: 'Battleships Forever'. 

1865

Living Room / Re: Big corps and how difficult they make it to help their customers

« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2012, 05:15 AM »

Bean-counters rule the world nowadays. And those people think that (on-line) customer support is an expenditure without (directly) identifying returns and the more support you give the more it costs.

1866

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by Shades on March 06, 2012, 01:58 PM »

PMS would be better...?

After reading that I could not help but imagine how Linus would react when he would be a woman, the same age but with PMS...how verbally violent would the rants become? 

All this because of a lingering joke in my mind:
What is the difference between and attack dog and a woman with PMS?
Lipstick...

Sorry, my mind jumps strangely sometimes.
[/offtopic]

Wifi should be accessible, I agree. Timezones or time itself, that's an whole other beast. especially if the laptop can access (more or less) critical systems at home base. Everybody really underestimates the consequences of the ability to change time/timezones. Thinking about timezones outside the US for a moment...DST is already nasty, add to that the fact that the US uses the solstices (astronomical calendar) for that, while the rest of the world uses the meteorological calendar. 

I can tell you that here in Paraguay no Windows PC can reliably update their clock, because Windows practically always selects the wrong time. Nasty for backup procedures and essential systems (like traffic computers, banks, etc.) who actually have to legal obligation to correctly account for time. I believe the US is very generous by allowing a 200 milliseconds gap. Europe allows only for 10 milliseconds.

Time is not time as you think it is. And as operating systems have to adhere to the strictest denominator, I can actually applaud the decision to put time settings outside the (normal) users control.

Actually, come to think of it...Wifi (or any kind of network access) is also leaning a lot on time, is it not?

1867

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... several diagnostic tools

« Last post by Shades on February 28, 2012, 05:23 PM »

Tell me about it!

But the beast that is Oracle requires some strange manipulations to run right...sometimes. Over time I have created quite some Oracle databases (9i, 10g and 11g) using the Oracle tools intended to create databases. But in Windows 2008 R2 these sometimes do not deliver the intended result. Oracle uses a listener that handles the access to their database. but sometimes the listener is not able to make contact with the database, giving you all kinds of error messages that imply you need to pay (top dollar) for Oracle technicians to fix.

Or you can use the method suggested by my previous post. That solved my problems on three occasions already. Oracle with older Windows operating systems never gave me these kind of errors.

1868

Developer's Corner / Re: Dealing with UAC in portable tools

« Last post by Shades on February 27, 2012, 12:57 PM »

UAC = Universal Acclaimed Cruelty?

1869

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... several diagnostic tools

« Last post by Shades on February 19, 2012, 12:45 PM »

Actually, the use of a WAMP package solution (Windows, Apache,MySQL, PHP) would be preferable. Previous experiences with XAMPP package make me recommend it heartily.

Free, portable and doesn't even require installation if the archive is extracted in the root folder of a partition. Ideal for a transfer between different systems.

1870

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... several diagnostic tools

« Last post by Shades on February 19, 2012, 12:38 PM »

Till now I encountered a lot of issues with Windows 7 and 2008 R2 when using a web interface to connect to services running on those machines. Lately I found out that it really makes a lot of difference if you start extra services like MySQL, Apache etc. with a user-name that is associated with the service.

When installing MySQL, Apache etc. you notice that extra Windows user groups are created (at least that is the case with Oracle software (which MySQL is now a part of)). Associate your user-name with that group and grant your user-name the 'Log on as service' right.

Initiate/restart the MySQL and/or Apache services with your user-name and suddenly your networking issues disappear.

Really, for anyone who is dabbling with Oracle software (on windows 2008 or higher), use the above method...it will save a lot of time, hair and other kinds of frustration.

1871

General Software Discussion / Re: Zentimo/USB Safely Remove - Are they needed anymore?

« Last post by Shades on February 12, 2012, 07:27 AM »

I'm with Carol on this one. Hardly useful on Windows 7, but on Windows XP it does help. At least it does on my XP PC which entered its 7th year of practically continuous usage (which is quite a feat as it uses nVidea chipset).

A lot of times Windows won't allow me to shutdown/eject the device for whatever (unclear) reason, but after installing the latest Zentimo Give-away-of-the-day version, I do not have that problem anymore at all. In addition, ejecting appears to be a tad faster.

1872

Living Room / Re: Looking for password "scheme" suggestions

« Last post by Shades on January 27, 2012, 05:10 PM »

@40hz:
It could be me, but I have the impression that most of the kids from today only know when "internet doesn't work" and that they (gladly) look to the previous generation to fix the problem they experience.

Besides that, I overheard some conversations between CS students (at a LAN party) how they solve networking issues and I was amazed about the bullcrap that came out of their (Microsoft-orientated) mouths. How they could come to their interpretation of the study material baffles me. Actually one of them is responsible for the IT in his fathers (fancy lawyer) office and already makes more than me. But he asked me to help out setting up the LAN for his LAN party, because he was not able to set it up properly.

It is really 'who you know, not what you know' that gets you ahead over here in these parts of the world.
[/off-topic]

[on-topic]
Personally I use a set of difficult passwords and mix-and-match them how I see fit, adding a random number and/or symbol. No-one that knows me is able to guess or deduce what the (complete) base set of my passwords is and adding mix-and-match....well, good luck! The numbers and/or symbols are there to comply with security definitions.

Not the best of schemes (by far!) but it is one I have no trouble remembering, makes for quite "messy" passwords and soothes my paranoia sufficiently.

And I agree wholeheartedly with the earlier statement which says where your password is stored is just as important as its difficulty.

Hence I trust my mind and ability to not communicate passwords best as those are under my control, while storage on servers isn't.
Besides, there is not much to keep secret and being (happily) without credit card I don't have an on-line access point to my money anyway.

1873

General Software Discussion / Re: Retrieving the name of a nice process killer

« Last post by Shades on January 26, 2012, 03:46 PM »

Process Explorer - freeware from SysInternals and nowadays part of Microsoft
Process Hacker  - open source Process Explorer-like tool which supports more brutal termination of processes
 
Both are portable and as such a welcome addition to a computer tech's software arsenal.

1874

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« Last post by Shades on January 23, 2012, 06:44 AM »

Fond memories indeed...and a titbit of info I didn't know about her.  

1875

General Software Discussion / Re: "Of course you know, this means WAR Gentlemen!" Microsoft makes its move.

« Last post by Shades on January 21, 2012, 01:04 PM »

@40hz:
While reading your posts I could not help but read that you want Microsoft to change its name into Mordorsoft...