Recent Posts

2726

Coding Snacks / Re: WebCam Detector

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2013, 03:42 AM »

As I said, I don't have a webcam so I don't know if this is relevant.

When I ran it, it did appear in the tray ... kind of ...



Should there be an icon associated with it?

The only indication I get that it's there is if I right-click on the blank spot, then I get the menu.

OK, a bit more testing ...

I tried Check Status and I've got some good news and some bad news 

First the good news: the icon appeared

And the bad news:



I don't have a webcam

Oh yeah, Win7HP x64, (more info: there are no Imaging Devices listed under Device Manager but I do have a analog TV card I use for tape transfer, ie. it's a video capture device).

Works OK on my WinXP Pro x86 and WHS2011 x64 machines, (except for the part of actually connecting a webcam).

Hmm, I wonder if it's time I reinstalled Windows?

2727

Coding Snacks / Re: WebCam Detector

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2013, 12:46 AM »

Well, I don't actually have a webcam but that's good right ? ... it should complain ...

What I got was this:



So I guess it worked   

2728

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Folder Properties Auto-Update....

« Last post by 4wd on November 16, 2013, 12:35 AM »

New version.

2729

Living Room / Re: Adblock Plus Letting Ads By

« Last post by 4wd on November 15, 2013, 07:10 PM »

It refuses to AdBlock the pic of Andreas Katsulas. (About midway in the page.)

When was I not aware that certain random pics were not able to be AdBlocked?!

-TaoPhoenix (November 15, 2013, 11:42 AM)

They're not random ... you have a whitelist in effect.

Go to the page you mention, on the AdBlock icon select Open blockable items and you'll get the following:



Right click on the filter and select Edit filter in effect ...



Reload the page and you'll find you can now block it and any other image from upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ :

2730

Post New Requests Here / Re: Anti-Wikipedia-Beg methods?

« Last post by 4wd on November 14, 2013, 09:00 PM »

I don't know if you can block DIV elements in AdBlock but here's the one you want according to Inspector, (Menu->Web Developer->Inspector):

2731

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by 4wd on November 13, 2013, 01:30 AM »

Pale Moon Commander for those that like to have a bit more, (and easier), control over their Pale Moon/Firefox options.



From the developer's website:

There be dragons here!

Using Pale Moon Commander to change advanced preferences is potentially dangerous and can leave your browser profile in a potentially unusable state. If you don't know what a setting is for, don't touch it. A number of the preferences made accessible through the add-on can prevent proper operation of the browser.

Because all the add-on does is change preferences, you can, at all times, reset the preferences by starting Pale Moon with the SHIFT key depressed, and selecting "Reset preferences to Pale Moon defaults". Of course this will also reset any other modified preferences you may have.

Use of this add-on is at all times at your own risk. I do not give warranty or guarantees, and it is provided "as-is" although I've done my best to make sure it works as-intended.

2732

Living Room / Re: WARNING! - installing Internet Explorer 11 may necessitate Firefox re-install.

« Last post by 4wd on November 13, 2013, 01:13 AM »

While not Firefox specifically, the upgrade worked fine here on two Win7HP x64 machines running either Pale Moon x86 or x64.

2733

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2013, 08:13 PM »

@ Mouser- IIRC Backblaze uses pretty much nothing but consumer grade hardware in their storage PODs ...

-40hz (November 12, 2013, 06:46 PM)

No need to recall, it's mentioned in the article:

It’s worth noting that Backblaze uses normal, consumer-level drives — the kind of drives with 12- or 36-month warranties.

 

2734

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2013, 06:33 PM »

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying -- are you saying that you think consumer drives might be expected to die faster than the backblaze drives, or?

-mouser (November 12, 2013, 05:56 PM)

They use consumer drives in a climate controlled environment - their usage scenario is completely different from a normal consumer.

Theirs are constantly spinning 24/7, as they mention - a normal consumer turns off their computer when they're finished, they turn it on when they want to use it.

Power on/off causes components to expand and contract, (resistors, PCBs, etc), as they start at close to ambient temperature and heat up as time goes on.  This movement while extremely small can be enough to stress either the solder joints or the components themselves - something a constantly on device isn't subjected to.

You also have Inrush current^w when a device is turned on - if you look at the manufacturers data for HDDs, Startup current is higher than what's required to keep it spinning - this current, while used predominantly by the motor and its associated components, could possibly affect other components that aren't rated to keep handling such transient surges.

Evening things out though is the comparison of the time BackBlazes HDDs spend spinning, (24/7), and the time a normal consumers HDD is spinning, (eg. 6-18 hours per day, 5-7 days per week, etc).

All I'm saying is that until someone does a comparable study of consumer drives and how they're generally meant to be used then saying they may or may not last longer is a bit pointless.

The only thing you can say about a HDD, (and any storage device), is that it will fail at some point ... and that's what you plan for.

2735

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by 4wd on November 12, 2013, 05:51 PM »

It’s also worth mentioning that Backblaze’s drives are spinning constantly — these failure rates are for drives that are turned on 24/7. Your home computer probably isn’t powered up 24/7, and thus the drives may last longer.

It's nice that they mention it but saying your drives may last longer is a little misleading, IMHO.

Until someone comes up with some data that actually relates to consumer drives and the way they are generally intended to be used then I would have expected the failure rate for them to be slightly higher with the power on/off cycling that a normal consumer computer goes through.

2736

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Folder Properties Auto-Update....

« Last post by 4wd on November 11, 2013, 09:03 PM »

Deleted [old interim version]

2737

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

« Last post by 4wd on November 11, 2013, 12:11 AM »

From GEOsoft's AutoIt site:


A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her faithful aged poodle named Cuddles, along for the company.

One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, Cuddles discovers that she's lost. Wandering about, she notices a young leopard heading rapidly in her direction with the intention of having lunch.

The old poodle thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep trouble now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, she immediately settles down to chew on the bones with her back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the old poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That old poodle nearly had me!"

Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard.

So off he goes, but the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.

The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!"

Now, the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with her back to her attackers, pretending she hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old poodle says: "Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"

Moral of this story..

Don't mess with old farts...age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill! Bull**** and brilliance only come with age and experience!

2738

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking For Realtime Graphical Folder Size Monitor w/ User-Configurable Updates

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2013, 09:19 PM »

There's also WizTree, while not as graphical as SpaceSniffer makes up for it by being ridiculously fast.

2739

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Folder Properties Auto-Update....

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2013, 09:11 PM »

Occasionally (repeat OCCASIONALLY) FolMon will freeze up, and stop counting the new files as they are added to the folder being monitored.

-nkormanik (November 10, 2013, 07:30 PM)

Wonder if it's still related to displaying the latest file in the statusbar  

I could put an option in the ini file to (en|dis)able it later, after I've got the other things working, and you can test it.

Addendum: It's kind of turning into a rewrite from scratch since I've found some routines on the AutoIt forums that let me do things I couldn't before, (eg. change the statusbar background colour).



Script has tripled in size as a result but the executable is still the same size ... go figure 

2740

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Folder Properties Auto-Update....

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2013, 04:39 PM »

Unfortunately, I am not getting flawless performance.  FolMon only and constantly shows "28" while the mouse-hover-over-folder keeps updating continuously.

-CodeTRUCKER (November 10, 2013, 10:24 AM)

Will FolMon display the same as the Windows' hover-mouse-over-folder function?  Will it show all MBs/GBs included in the folder and subfolders?

Currently it's not recursive, as that wasn't its original intention, but it can be with the change of a parameter.

I'll make it an option, however I'm not sure what kind of impact it'll have on its resource usage - hopefully not too much since it's just asking the system for the same info you get with the mouse-over, (I think).

I might have to tweak the filesystem notification to take the sub-directories into account also, (for the statusbar update).

Addendum:

A few notes:

• I'll change the size field so it scales the number, eg. KB, MB, and GB
• Making it recursive will slow down it's update interval, which is currently fixed at 1000ms - you get the same thing when Windows has to parse a large filetree for statistics.
• I'll add a slider to set update interval, (1-60 seconds), however note that this is an interval between the termination of one scan to the start of the next - eg. if the scan takes 15 seconds to complete and the update interval is set to 45 seconds then the effective update interval, (time between GUI updates), is 60 seconds.
• Statusbar will currently only display the last file created in the initial path - I can fix that later by monitoring all filesystem changes rather than just the initial folder, (though I do wonder what kind of impact that will incur), or I can just disable the statusbar for recursive monitoring.

Hopefully I can do this in a day or two, possibly something like this:

2741

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking For Realtime Graphical Folder Size Monitor w/ User-Configurable Updates

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2013, 09:23 AM »

If it didn't need to be graphical:
https://www.donation....msg291198#msg291198

I could probably add an option to keep the window on top.

BTW, "realtime" and "user-defined" seem a bit mutually exclusive to me 

2742

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you delete accounts you did not sign up for?

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2013, 08:57 AM »

I'm confused there - are you blaming gmail as well?
If they dont "count an address with a period as different from one without", surely they wouldnt allow the variations to be created as separate addresses in the first place?

-tomos (November 10, 2013, 07:06 AM)

Google don't allow an email to be created that is the same as one that already exists that has periods ... that's not what I said.

I said it was the result of someone signing up to a service using an email that was a non-period variation of one of mine.

The fact that Google doesn't allow creation of the variation implies to me that the person did it deliberately or they're too stupid to wonder why they either don't receive any emails from the service or can't log back in using their real email address, (in the case of an honest typo, eg. fred.burk - in which case they've probably created another account with their correct email address and left me receiving spam).

Probably half of all the spam I receive is because Google choose to think fred.nurk == frednurk

I know that in the RFC they can do this but since they, (Google), are the cause of me receiving this crap they should allow me the option of turning it off rather than having to either create filters or put up with it.

So yes, I am blaming Google also for having to deal with this problem.

And before I forget, I check Account Killer first to see if there is an easy way to delete the account.

http://www.accountkiller.com

Also, the longer that Google-allowed variation of my email address is spread around on sites I never signed up for, the more likely the spam volume will increase - I'm being proactive in dealing with it.

2743

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you delete accounts you did not sign up for?

« Last post by 4wd on November 10, 2013, 05:33 AM »

I've had emails from Spotify, Microsoft, Skype, Steam, and some dating site in the last few months that were the result of some f***tard signing up to those services and using a gmail address the same as one of mine but missing a period within it - eg. fred.nurk(a)gmail.com and the emails are for frednurk(a)gmail.com - all because GMail doesn't count an address with a period as different from one without.

So, for those sites:
1) I click the Forgotten Password link and input the email address, (which will end up in my inbox),
2) log into the site with the new password and proceed to change everything about the account, (address, phone number, CC details, sex, EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING),
3) change the email address to a disposable one using, for example, Mailinator as something I'm not likely to remember past the next 60 minutes, (eg. [email protected]),
4) wait for the confirmation on the mailinator inbox and acknowledge the change of email address if required,
5) log back into the site with my new email address and change the password to something random, wait for confirmation email if necessary.
6) log out.

Unsolicited crap no longer received and one more happy f***tard somewhere on the planet.

This worked for Skype, Steam, Spotify, and the dating site - Microsoft were kind enough to send an email first asking if it was me that joined up to Live and if it wasn't just don't confirm the email to be removed.

I don't see this a morally objectionable since AFAIAC whether by design or stupidity they have caused this to be my problem, I'm just implementing my preferred solution ... and I have absolutely no qualms about doing it.

2744

General Software Discussion / Re: Free FTP storage using my own FTP client??

« Last post by 4wd on November 09, 2013, 05:59 PM »

@4wd thanks for the generous offer.  Skwire already set me up with FTP access.

-MilesAhead (November 09, 2013, 10:29 AM)

No problem.

2745

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

« Last post by 4wd on November 09, 2013, 09:30 AM »

MSFN Forum for a lot of info on unattended Windows installs and general Windows help/discussion.
Reboot Pro for WinPE information and build programs.

Not to mention AutoIt and AutoHotkey.

2746

General Software Discussion / Re: new Site for my Software

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2013, 10:44 PM »

Here's one.  (see attachment in previous post)

-Stoic Joker (November 08, 2013, 11:38 AM)

Hey there, which way ya headin' buddy?

2747

General Software Discussion / Re: Does anyone know how I may remove Trojan Dropper:MSIL/Livate.A ?

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2013, 10:41 PM »

There's also ComboFix which can squash quite a few things ...

-4wd (November 07, 2013, 04:52 PM)

Including your OS if you don't know what you're doing, or get a little too careless when attempting to fix things CF reports but doesn't handle automatically.

-40hz (November 07, 2013, 08:39 PM)

Hence the reference to "if you're going to re-install you might as well"   

2748

General Software Discussion / Re: Free FTP storage using my own FTP client??

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2013, 08:58 PM »

If you don't mind it, I've a VPS with ~48GB out of 50GB that's not being used for anything apart from a couple of websites and a VPN tunnel, (and more bandwidth/month than I can use in three), it's located in LA so you should get decent speeds to it.

I could set up a FTP server with an account for you if you like, (might take me a couple of days to read the instructions ).

EDIT: That was easy - let me know if you want it.  If it's <3.5GB of data I can also rsync to another VPS in the UK for backup.

2749

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2013, 08:39 PM »

An NSA Whiz Designs 4 Fonts to Foil Google's All-Seeing Eye

-Arizona Hot (November 08, 2013, 03:36 PM)

You'd trust something designed by the NSA to foil Google ...

How about something designed by neither of them that foils both of them ?

2750

Living Room / Re: Bought 128gb SSD (cheap) non standard connector - landfill?

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2013, 08:19 PM »

I'd guess that it's a standard (m)SATA data/power connection but munged to be in a proprietary format so that people are forced to return to a Lenovo agent for any, (over-priced), parts/repairs - the same thing Dell used to do, (and maybe still does), to standard ATX PSUs.

Probably the only way to find out what kind of adapter you'll need, (and you'll most likely have to make one), would be to either:

• get the schematics for the U300s, (or at least pinout of the connector),
• find someone that has already done it,
• use a signal analyser to match the wires to the same on a normal SATA device, (for this you'd naturally need a U300s also),
• trace the tracks from the connector on the Lenovo SSD to the components on it and try and match them up with those from a normal SSD, (this should be possible since it most likely uses a standard SSD controller ... unless Lenovo have removed all manufacturer identification from the chips), or
• sell it on ebay for £10 and next time remember to look more closely at the images or ask more questions.