Recent Posts

351

Living Room / Samsung hard drives - don't buy them unless you like subliminal mental torture

« Last post by nudone on August 13, 2011, 04:53 AM »

For years I've stuck with Samsung hard drives, bought several (still using them), recommended them to people and believed you couldn't go wrong with a Samsung.

Not so. I bought a 1TB Samsung drive a couple of weeks ago and now feel like I cannot take listening to it's annoying "hum" any longer.

The drive produces a low humming sound that whirs in and out every few seconds. It's like it has been carefully designed to create the most annoying almost subliminal noise a human can hear. It's driving me insane.

I wouldn't have bothered mentioning this but I've found I'm not the only one with this complaint. There are several posts online about this very same annoying hum - all from Samsung drives.

Samsung's response? "It's normal behaviour." How strange that this is "normal" and yet all my previous Samsung drives are perfectly quiet - even the ones that are of identical size to the new annoying drive. Does Samsung consider the older quiet drives "abnormal" perhaps.

I've tried repositioning the drive, placing it on foam padding, placing it at different angles - nothing matters. The Samsung Hard Drive Tool doesn't help either - the "accoustic" settings make zero difference to the noise.

Honestly, I'm just amazed. Samsung have clearly changed their drive manufacturing process and it stinks.

So, that's it. I used to champion the Samsung Hard Drive. Now, I'll never buy another one and I'll be sure to tell everyone else to never buy one either.

Samsung, I absolutely hate you.

352

Living Room / Re: UK Riots: Have you been affected?

« Last post by nudone on August 12, 2011, 11:02 AM »

I think we all know the answer but don't want to say it. It's called "Carousel". (hint: from Logan's Run.) Oh, you may think it's a bit radical, maybe a little extreme. But we'll all be begging for it to a be a reality by the middle of this century. 

353

Living Room / Re: xkcd - password truth

« Last post by nudone on August 11, 2011, 07:24 AM »

Anyone have any thoughts on how safe Roboform is (or other password managers too).

I mean, if they are really, REALLY, safe then I'll stop being too concerned. Of course, I understand it's their business so they are SURE to be safe - aren't they. Aren't they? 

354

Living Room / Re: UK Riots: Have you been affected?

« Last post by nudone on August 10, 2011, 10:23 AM »

History repeats itself (no surprise there, humans are pretty dumb after all), this article sums things up quite well: http://neweconomics....1780s-all-over-again

Talk about rebels without a cause.

355

Living Room / xkcd - password truth

« Last post by nudone on August 10, 2011, 02:26 AM »

This password epiphany seems to be popping up in several news articles recently. Here's xkcd's take on it.

http://xkcd.com/936/

356

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... opinions/reviews of IDEs & Editors for Web code

« Last post by nudone on August 09, 2011, 03:39 AM »

I use a combination of Dreamweaver and Notepad++ too, and avoid using the common IDEs because of the common complaints.

One suggestions I saw elsewhere was to try one of the JetBrains solutions: http://www.jetbrains.com/index.html

Either WebStorm or PhpStorm. They were recommended as faster alternatives to the more popular IDEs. None of the JetBrains stuff is free but they do seem quite nice.

I know it will take me a while to move away from what I'm used to (Dreamweaver and Notepad++), so I really can't say if something like WebStorm is the answer.

357

Living Room / Re: Facebook v Shagbook in Trademark Battle

« Last post by nudone on August 08, 2011, 11:26 AM »

They should've just called it faceshag instead.

-f0dder (August 08, 2011, 10:10 AM)

heheheh.  spot on.

358

General Software Discussion / Re: What is Mozilla trying to do?

« Last post by nudone on August 07, 2011, 10:36 AM »

Not been my experience with FF5 - I have GMail open all the time and never had a single lockup, in fact whenever I open FF5 it opens 6 tabs including gmail, hotmail, facebook and DC and I have had no issues at all.

-Carol Haynes (August 07, 2011, 08:33 AM)

Probably something on my machine - but the problem isn't having several tabs open, it's having more than one FF5 browser window open. I've had it lock up using two different Windows 7 setups. The other "browser in a browser" problem I mentioned also happens when using more than one FF window. Just seems like the FF team have only been testing on single window users.

The button problem is a bit of an exaggeration. I just find it not as nice to look at as on FF3.5 - mainly because of the transparency behind the buttons (no, I'm not going to disable transparency on Win7 just so FF5+ looks okay). Also, I do have about 30 buttons visible in the top area, which was fine when they were against a solid background.

I've also seen FF5 rendering pages incorrectly, just slight 1 or 2 pixel problems (not a problem on FF3.5).

359

General Software Discussion / Re: What is Mozilla trying to do?

« Last post by nudone on August 05, 2011, 11:33 PM »

I've had to go back to ff 3.5 too. Ff5 is terrible; locks up using gmail and two browser windows open, can't position buttons on the taskbars without large empty areas wasted, can hardly see some of the buttons anyway, seen it do weird browser inside a browser window things.

I always liked ff because you could arrange the buttons and toolbars to maximise the space available. Now ff is just another clone of opera (or whichever browser started that top left menu rubbish). If firebug worked okay on other browsers I think I'd just drop ff completely - I really am so very disappointed with it.

360

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: Gridmove showcased on hak5

« Last post by nudone on August 02, 2011, 05:00 PM »

Cool. Gridmove still offers more than similar apps (I think), I thought something might have bettered it by now. I'm still waiting fo Microsoft to build it into the os, maybe they'll do it for windows 10 - and finally include dialogmove too.

You know what might be nice now that it's so easy to do - video interviews of the unsung heroes behind the little utils we can't live without. Or has this been done, like five years ago.

361

Living Room / Re: I was wrong - again! (cheap monitor theory invalid)

« Last post by nudone on July 30, 2011, 10:59 AM »

That's very interesting - but I've resolved the issue by putting in another graphics card that wouldn't be of any use otherwise.

Mouser, when you say timing, are you referring to the refresh frequency? If so, that's something I always check along with the native resolution.

I think what I pointed out above is old news to be honest. I remember reading stuff about why DVI was superior over VGA a few years back - and have seen the inferior image quality on VGA connections several times before, which were always resolved by plugging in a DVI connection (if the possible).

I'm sure there will be others on the forum that can explain the differences. One very obvious and important difference that I noticed after swapping the connection to DVI was that the monitor "settings" were nolonger available via the monitors own control menu - they are disabled because they simply aren't required anymore; the DVI signal doesn't require all the adjustments necessary when using a VGA signal.

(Again, I should have realised something was odd when I first saw all the weird options available on the budget monitor. Things I've never seen before because I've not used a VGA connetion before on an LCD monitor.)

362

Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Poland

« Last post by nudone on July 30, 2011, 09:22 AM »

Heheheh. Marvellous. Nice to see BC making new Smurf friends. That's got to be a first.

363

Living Room / I was wrong - again! (cheap monitor theory invalid)

« Last post by nudone on July 30, 2011, 09:19 AM »

A few month back I bought a cheap Samsung 24" monitor. This was for a secondary machine that I only occasionally need to use (off premises). After a few days I realised the screen was hurting my eyes within a short period of use. More investigation made it obvious that the text on the screen was slightly blurred in the center of the monitor.

I immediately concluded that this was due to it being a budget priced monitor and enjoyed telling everyone (that would listen) that budget monitors where evil - even to the point that they should be given a health warning, or simply banned from sale.

I've now discovered this isn't the case - and, also realised that my memory must be failing otherwise I wouldn't have come to this wrong conclusion.


The simple fact is that it isn't the monitor that is evil, it's the GRAPHICS CARD.

I've just plugged my EIZO (crystal clear image) monitor into the secondary computer I mentioned above. And the exact same problem has happened with the blurry text.


Now, maybe I'm still jumping to conclusions; there are three possible causes as I see it:

1) It's the graphics card - an onboard intel thing.

2) It's the VGA connection (Yes, I know, maybe I should have thought about that being the cause before - as I said, my memory is going, I know I've seen similar poor signal coming from VGA before).

3) It's the operating system (though, I have reconfigured cleartype and enabled/disabled it several times without any improvement).


The onboard card only has VGA out (which is then going to DVI on the EIZO) so I'm going to stick another card in with DVI connections - which I expect will make everything work perfectly.


So, I just wanted to say, to anyone out there still using VGA connections (even to an LCD), you may like to consider upgrading your graphics card. There really is a dramatic difference in quality, well, blurred text isn't fun to read even if it's almost imperceptible.

364

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR and Indexing Option - Feedback Requested

« Last post by nudone on July 28, 2011, 01:33 AM »

I am fairly certain this project got pushed to the wayside. Mouser has, yet again, mousered his own software and promises made to other users. DAMN YOU MOUSER! DAMN YOU!

-Josh (July 27, 2011, 07:02 AM)

Heheheheh.  

365

General Software Discussion / Re: Plugging Adrive

« Last post by nudone on July 26, 2011, 02:55 PM »

Cool, transferring large files across the web (i.e. not from my machine) sounds pretty darn useful. Going to give it a try.

366

Living Room / Re: BoingBoing Update on Bitcoin Alternatives

« Last post by nudone on July 25, 2011, 02:24 PM »

I think you understand perfectly. I think we had a video posted on the site somewhere that explained things very well. If not, I'll try and find it. Anyway, this video was an epiphany to me; i think it predicted the recent banking catastrophe but more alarmingly it described how the whole financial system was built on a complete lie from the very beginning. In short, the system was constructed by creating money out of thin air, money that never existed and would never exist. And they justified it by giving it the name Inflation. We've been conned ever since.

367

Living Room / Re: BoingBoing Update on Bitcoin Alternatives

« Last post by nudone on July 25, 2011, 01:05 PM »

I think that's become common knowledge over the past couple of years.

368

Living Room / Re: Dumb backup method - lost several years of notes

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 09:17 AM »

Oh well. The Surfulater backup was 3 years old. So, not that useful really.

I'll just accept I need to start creating new notes to replace what's lost. And back them up properly.

369

Living Room / Re: Dumb backup method - lost several years of notes

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 09:01 AM »

Ouch. I do believe all this accidental deletion of backups shows that it's a good idea to have several backups of the same stuff - on different drives and at different locations.

It also seems like a good idea to include several versions of the backups. Then when you believe you are doing the right thing by deleting something that's superfluous, you can always recover an older version of it that you were keeping safe when you realise you've deleted the wrong thing.



Anyway, it is my super lucky day.

I have found a backup of a backup of a backup on an old IDE drive that I'd store things on just for the hell of it. Which means I can get some of the Surfulator data back. I'm just not sure how recent this backup will be. If it's only a month old I'm very lucky indeed.

370

Living Room / Re: A M A Z I N G ! - I got a total refund without any questions asked.

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 08:49 AM »

Heheheh. I know. I really ought to be more optimistic instead of jumping to all the wrong conclusions.

Oh well, I love everyone and everything and the universe is a nice place again - until I start building the new machine in a few days from now.

371

Living Room / Re: Dumb backup method - lost several years of notes

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 07:23 AM »

Yeah, thought it would be futile trying to recover the RAID 0 drive. Maybe the dumb thing I did was split this RAID 0 drive up into 3 partitions and that's why I just forgot about where things where kept and whether they were safely backed up.

I will give the undelete a go. Maybe it will be my lucky day...

372

Living Room / Re: Dumb backup method - lost several years of notes

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 06:57 AM »

If I could reach my head with my foot, I'd give myself a thoroughly good kicking. I have been monitoring all important files and folders for years using MirrorFolder and always noticed that "databases" were backed up. Seems I was hallucinating.

I honestly think I've just been too clever and too quick to tidy things up after moving all my hard drives around across all these old and new machines. At some point I've decided to delete a few backup folders thinking they weren't required.

Have I got them stored elsewhere? Good question. I know I've transferred things to other drives occasionally so will start hunting.

Quite honestly. I think I should just stop using the computer until I've worked out a reliable idiot proof backup system. I'm obviously not going to stop making idiotic mistakes in the future so need protecting from myself.

373

Living Room / Dumb backup method - lost several years of notes

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 06:28 AM »

Well, I was having such a good day today (posted elsewhere on the form about receiving a full refund for a pc I had to return), but I've just discovered that I've lost several years of important notes I was recording in Surfulator.

I'm still a bit shocked by this as I *thought* I was backing up the Surfulator database along with everything else I continuously backup with MirrorFolder. Seems at some point I decided to stop backing it up - or, maybe, I've just gone and manually deleted the backup whilst half asleep.

This massive error has only happened because the Surfalator database was on a RAID 0 drive, which died when the machine it was inside died. And I thought I had the database mirrored to another drive - so, yep, I thought I could format the drives in the RAID 0 setup, which I did. Now I've discovered there isn't any mirrored backup.

So, I've lost lots of little technical notes that I referred to on a weekly basis. Probably more stuff than I realise. I'm sure I'll rediscover the most important ones online again - but it will take hours of searching at the very least.

I really thought I'd got this kind of data loss covered. Seems I'm just so dumb I wasn't even monitoring it - the worst kind of backup method you can imagine. Incredible.

374

Living Room / A M A Z I N G ! - I got a total refund without any questions asked.

« Last post by nudone on July 14, 2011, 04:13 AM »

Elsewhere on the forum I'd made a couple of posts related to a new machine I'd ordered because of a lightning strike taking out my previous pc.

I'd got into a flap over the new machine as it refused to cooperate from day one. Windows took several attempts to install (like 8 hours worth of attempts) but, eventually, it did work - for FOUR whole days. After which the machine decided it had never been introduced to the solid state drive that Windows was on; at this point I'd had enough.

I honestly didn't know what to do with the machine after that. My usual approach would be to spend hours/days/weeks attempting to get the machine working perfectly. Thankfully, regular forum members persuaded me to return the machine and ask for a refund.

The UK has "7 Day Distance Selling Regulations" that, usually, allow for online purchases to be sent back within 7 days of delivery. There are caveats to this, one of them being that it doesn't apply to "custom built" items. This is where I thought I'd come unstuck with the return of the "custom built" machine.

I've been planning my argument all week, anticipating that the store would have several reasons for me not to have a refund - I even expected them to blame me for the machine not working (perhaps I'm just paranoid). But, AMAZINGLY, I've just opened my inbox to find that I've been given a complete refund - no questions asked. That's it. Done. End of.

This is even better than having the machine working perfectly from day one as the refund includes the £150 I was charged for them building the defective machine - something I'd not realised when I made the impulse purchase.

I'm going to take a breather before ordering anything else. I seem to regret every impulse buy I make (or maybe that is just selective thinking).



Anyway, thanks to the DC'ers that told me to take the machine back and ask for a refund. Without you, I could easily have been sat here now still trying to get the defective machine working, or aimlessly toing and froing to the store (an hours drive away) trying to get the defective part identified and then replaced.

Oh, by the way, the store is: www.overclockers.co.uk (and I can't say a bad word against them).

375

General Software Discussion / Re: What is Mozilla trying to do?

« Last post by nudone on July 13, 2011, 01:26 PM »

Good point. I didn't think of it like that.

In that case; I do find it very annoying and mindless how this version number boasting has become the norm.