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4176

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 06:16 PM »

If you just want to have an off chance that you'll be able to watch Shrek 2 in 50 years time, tape it off the TV and stick it in the back of a cupboard somewhere, and hope you'll be able to pick up a working VCR from an antique shop in half a century.

- legal under UK copyright law, by the way   Wink

Actually technically not. It is legal to video stuff from TV to watch it at a time other than its broadcast time. Strictly it isn't legal to keep that copy in perpetuity to watch whenever you want or to archive it. That is what purchased VHS and DVD is currently for. Not that any one in the UK takes any notice of such regulations.

4177

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 04:48 PM »

Defragmenting individual files or just groups of files rather than whole discs. That is moving a single file or group of files on your hard disc so that the data is stored in a single contiguous block.

There are free tools out there to do that (see SysInternals) but with a defragmenter such as PerfectDisc which organises your files on the basis of how often they change even defragmenting a whole disc effectively becomes only defragmenting a few files over a period of time as the files that don't change are blocked together. This effectively means that incremental backups will be larger than if you didn't defrag but the increase in size won't be huge or counter productive.

4178

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 04:43 PM »

When you own something, it belongs to you free and clear and cannot be taken away. Furthermore, when you own something, you no longer have to pay for it. Neither of these are true for land.

Can you think of anything where it is true - apart from picking fruit at the roadside

I have just been watching "500 Nations" (history of Native North Americans before, during and after the struggle with colonisation). Interestingly one of the issues they genuinely couldn't get to grips with, and caused real conflict, was land ownership. Much like the Australian Aborigines they view people belonging to the land and not the land belonging to people.

I actually find this a much more pleasing (and thoroughly sensible) view which binds peoples together rather than allowing for conflict of land rights. Given the geological time scale of our planet and the insignificant periods of history and potential future of the human species it makes land ownership complete nonsense!

4179

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 01:52 PM »

LOL - I had a whole collection of photos stored on Microsoft Servers (they don't get much bigger than that) - when they were all wiped (because of a 'server issue') all I got was a "Sorry we haven't any backups and cannot restore your data".

Online storage - yeah right.

4180

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 07:36 AM »

While other people like things like FARR and Launchy, I prefer doing it this way.

How do you remember what all those icons are? I get confused enough with the ones in my system tray (currently 31 - yes I know I should get rid of about 25 of them)!

4181

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 03:53 AM »

WAH - they are SERIOUSLY SCARY toolbars - no wonder you hide them!

4182

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 04, 2007, 03:49 AM »

LOL

But seriously - inkjet (or even laser) printout will be usable in 500 years time? Inkjet photos don't last 5-10 years without degradation, and that is with the best ink technology available. And who is to say there will be scanners in 500 years time?

People used to worry that film and TV archives (such as the BBC) would not stand the test of time because of the unstable media and the march of technology - and it is true that many programmes have been lost by neglect, accidentally or deliberately. But there are still some brilliant examples of programming surviving a hundred years later where the original technology is not in use. Granted it depends on a dedicated bunch of people meticulously maintaining, rebuilding or building new alternatives to the old technology but it happens.

I bet you in 100 years time there will be companies specialising in retrieving data from redundant technologies that we use today - which will be practically all of them (including paper).

4183

General Software Discussion / Re: Back up files with a printer and scanner

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 03, 2007, 06:33 PM »

All I keep thinking: Blank DVDs are cheap.  Printer supplies are expensive.

-Ralf Maximus (October 02, 2007, 02:22 PM)

That's what I was thinking too - I reckon that a single sheet (500Kb) would cost more than a blank CD which holds more than 1000 pages or even a blank DVD+R which would hold nearly 9000 pages (and a hell of a lot quicker).

If you have a Lexmark printer you could probably run to a dual layer disc for the same price!

Quick calculation - I think that if I backed up all my data this way it would cost more than my computer system - and take about 3 metres of shelf space!

4184

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 03, 2007, 04:43 PM »

Mine too - but in British law it is meaningless. The United Kingdom is based on a Constitutional Monarchy and the British people are subject to the Crown (ie. we are all literally owned by the Crown in serfdom).

It is also one of the reasons why it is not possible to take out a civil action against the Queen (or indeed the Armed Forces in the execution of their duty since they are her representatives) and why UK parliament cannot act without written consent from the Monarch.

Here is an article (abstract - I couldn't get the whole article) ...

http://www.informawo...nt=a713658853~db=all

It is also interesting (if that is the right word) that no one in the UK owns land. You can own a freehold but that doesn't mean you actually own the land - ultimately it all belongs to the Crown and if a nutter came to the throne we could all be disenfranchised.

Here is an easy read description of the current UK constitutional situation:

http://www.art-scien...nt/constitution.html

And the government has the temerity to make the teaching of Citizenship compulsory in schools (ROFL hysterically).

Up the revolution - oops most countries have done that!

4185

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 03, 2007, 10:45 AM »

These are some pretty shocking data. I just hope there will be a brighter futue.

-KenR (October 02, 2007, 04:22 PM)

well, to have a brighter future tomorrow you have to light a candle today...

-gjehle (October 03, 2007, 08:21 AM)

And I know where I'd like to light it !

4186

General Software Discussion / Re: alternatives to partition magic/paragon?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 03, 2007, 05:59 AM »

Yep - I knew about that reg key

Does any one know a way to move the whole user profile to a different partition,

eg. move C:\Documents and Settings\Carol and everything in it (including the user profile files etc)

to D:\

-Carol Haynes (October 02, 2007, 03:12 PM)

1. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236621 (Windows 2000 & 2003) and an article based on this KB but adapted to work for Windows XP @ http://www.dennislaz...ocumentsandsettings/

2. Another guide... Storing Windows profiles on a different partition

BTW, here's a great portal to search for KB articles

-PhilB66 (October 02, 2007, 10:55 PM)

Thanks that's really useful.

I tried a number of things a couple of years back but never got profile moved to another partition.

My original plan (though it requires a full reinstall so I can't see me trying it again any time soon) was to set up my system so that Windows is installed to partition C: but so that each of the following are on their own individual partitions (* on separate hard disks):

*Pagefil.sys
*Temp folder (including browser caches etc)
*Software scratch folders
\Program Files
\Documents and settings (including My Documents etc. for each user)

This would separate out all the clutter and allow for a small lean "System" partition with all the sprawl neatly contained in its own places which are easy to defrag and backup.

4187

General Software Discussion / Re: alternatives to partition magic/paragon?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 03:12 PM »

Yep - I knew about that reg key

Does any one know a way to move the whole user profile to a different partition,

eg. move C:\Documents and Settings\Carol and everything in it (including the user profile files etc)

to D:\

4188

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an E-Mail Client which can be run on an USB Stick

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 11:54 AM »

(Better explain to Carol, BATPOWER_UK was FidoNet echomail.  FidoNet was an amateur version of the internet from the days before the public had access.  Echomail is the equivalent of Usenet/Newsgroups.  None of it was anything to do with "The Bat".)

-npopuk (October 02, 2007, 11:50 AM)

Sorry I was responding to the paragraph immediately before my post which referred to TheBat!

4189

General Software Discussion / Re: alternatives to partition magic/paragon?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 09:59 AM »

You could always have a small fixed size pagefile just to keep naught apps happy. On the settings page it suggests an absolute minimum size of 2Mb - but I'd guess you could donate 100Mb without missing much.

4190

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 09:53 AM »

Nah - a Chad was a little guy looking over a wall - all you can see are is fingers wrapped over the wall and the top half of his head (usually bald apart from a few stray hairs). Like this:There is usually a motto of the form; "Wot no ..."



There is usually a motto of the form; "Wot no ... ?"

I just thought looking at your beautiful image of the Earth there should a Chad peeping over the horizon saying something humerous ...

"Wot no aliens?"

Anyone else go any ideas .... maybe we should have a competition!

4191

General Software Discussion / Re: alternatives to partition magic/paragon?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 07:42 AM »

"Paged Pool" doesn't mean it uses pagefile memory - it's kernel mode memory that can be paged out to disk (as opposed to memory from the nonpaged pools). Here's quoting the "explain" box from perfmon.msc (a really useful tool - start->run, performon.msc, <enter>).

Pool Paged Bytes is the size, in bytes, of the paged pool, an area of system memory (physical memory used by the operating system) for objects that can be written to disk when they are not being used

-f0dder (October 02, 2007, 06:26 AM)

Here is mine (OK the CPU is under load - green trace). The thick red trace shows the Page reads/sec. so th Page file is pretty active with 2Gb of RAM on my system. All that is running (apart from a few tray icons no doing much) is a bit of downloading from the web and a DVD recoding in process (which takes up the CPU cyles)

By the way it is PERFMON.MSC

4192

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for an E-Mail Client which can be run on an USB Stick

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 05:31 AM »

I thought all POP clients had a 'leave a copy on the server' option - you usually set it up in the account set up section.

Surely the Bat has that option too?

4193

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 04:44 AM »

Still, let's not forget that in the UK the police cannot even ask people for an ID on the street. So they're not about to walk up to random people and demand access to their USB keys. We are talking about a judge being able to grant a warrant which demands that people decrypt information, within the confines of a police investigation...

-iphigenie (October 02, 2007, 04:13 AM)

Nope - warrants seem to be a thing of the past in the UK. As I understand it the police can ask for anything they like in the course of an investigation. They only have to mention the word terrorism*. If you refuse they would get a court order (presumably after confiscating you and your equipment).

As for no ID cards in the UK have you seen the current proposals for UK ID cards - they make visible tatoos look tame. Iris patterns, fingerprints, credit history all sorts of stuff are likely to be stored on smart cards - and best of all the citizen won't even be able to check that it is correct information - or even necessarily know what is stored or who has access to it. We are also likely to be charge around £100 a pop for the privilege (not that it will be optional).

And don't even mention the proposed national DNA database!

* This is not paranoia - a Labour Party member was ejected from the party conference 2 years ago and taken into custody under the terrorism provisions for having the temerity to shout a single word in the public meeting "NONSENSE" (highly emotive you will agree). And he was in in his eighties! See BBC

4194

General Software Discussion / Re: alternatives to partition magic/paragon?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 04:38 AM »

Imho there isn't much reason to have your pagefile on a separate disk - ideally, it shouldn't be used very much... stuff more RAM in your PC if it is.

-f0dder (October 02, 2007, 03:42 AM)

It's true that if you have lots of memory (2Gb+) then PageFile shouldn't be used much but it is used. Here is my current system:



You can see that all apps still grab at least a small slice of the pagefile - so it may as well be in the fastest place possible.

I suppose if you want it really fast you could put it on a fast Flash Drive!

4195

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 03:35 AM »

OUCH! Innocent until proven guilty? Yikes!

Welcome to 21st Century UK! Notice the police don't have to provide any evidence that you are being obstructive or that the encrypted data contains anything illegal - it is just sufficient to suspect. Eric Arthur Blair* must be sliently chuckling "Told you so" in his grave!

This is becoming the default fall back in the UK - if in doubt you are guilty.

*

Eric Arthur Blair

No relation that I know of - but this is the real name of George Orwell. IMHO he just got the year a little out.

4196

General Software Discussion / Re: alternatives to partition magic/paragon?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 03:28 AM »

Moving your working files (I presume you mean documents) to a separate partition will make your system less defragmented and so a bit quicker and also a bit quicker to run a defrag pass on. The only time moving stuff to a separate hard disc will make a huge difference is if you are dealing with enormous files (such as large RAW images from digital cameras and video files) - most other docs will be happy wherever you put them as there isn't a big overhead accessing them.

If you use software (such as PhotoShop) that uses scratch discs then it is worth have three separate hard discs - one with your system, one with your page file, and the third with a dedicated scratch partition (you could share the scratch partition between multiple apps). That really does make a big difference.

4197

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9 - How to..?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 03:22 AM »

I must sit and play with DOpus more! Thanks

4198

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 02, 2007, 03:16 AM »

Beautiful - but don't you think you need to paint on a Chad (Wot no screensaver!)

4199

Living Room / Re: Whats on your desktop?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 01, 2007, 07:35 PM »

Now that can't be beyond the wit of man! Why don't you put a request in the coding snack section and see if you get any takers?

Or even try a google search - on the first page found these two utilities that may do the trick:

http://lifehacker.co...l-monitor/?view=full

http://www.download....2336_4-10725734.html

4200

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9 - How to..?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 01, 2007, 07:25 PM »

Thanks moerl - I'm blind as a bat as usual 

Hmmm doesn't work for iTunes files.

Strangely it doesn't work for Audible files in my iTunes library - but I have Audible files duplicated in my WMP library and in there I get the bitrates! Odd, they should be the same files