Recent Posts

4951

Living Room / Re: I'm Going to HELL! Please feel sorry for me... :(

« Last post by 4wd on November 09, 2009, 10:00 PM »

I most certainly won't be looking forward to funnel webs though... Yikes! Spiders just creep me out entirely!

-Renegade (November 09, 2009, 08:03 PM)

You're lucky then, funnel webs are predominant in Sydney.

We just have snakes, redbacks, european wasps, more european wasps (come and take the bl**dy things back you b*ggers!), etc down here in Melbourne, (as well as some excellent four-wheel driving).

As for beaches, the Mornington peninsula both bay and ocean side.  Or travel a little further east to Ninety Mile beach/Gippsland Lakes or west down the great Ocean Road to Apollo Bay, etc, etc.

Regarding internet, basically you're screwed - welcome to the real world.

Although when you get here and have a place go to Whirlpool and use their plan finder to find an ISP but whatever you do, DO NOT choose BigPongd.

EDIT: Oh yeah, regarding the spiders please don't hurt the Huntsman^w spider if you find him in your house, just pick him up on a broom or something and stick him outside.  They're not poisonous and do a good job wandering around eating insects although they do get rather large so you might be surprised by one staring down at you while sitting on the toilet.

You'll also get the shock of your life when you flip down the sun visor in the car and have one drop in your lap 

4952

Living Room / Re: How would you improve a standard PC keyboard?

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2009, 11:19 PM »

I'm also very into a block of programmable keys similar to the numpad but with no functionality other than what you assign them, and a small LCD display just for convenience functions (like when using fullscreen apps etc). Something similar to the relatively well known Logitech G15 that's not ugly would be nice.

-Ehtyar (November 08, 2009, 10:57 PM)

Well, you could save up your pennies and get the Optimus Maximus.  Has it seen the light of day yet?  Apparently shipping....crap, now I want one.

Also, why the *frack* have peripheral manufacturers still not made a mouse with a wheel that supports side scrolling *as-well-as* non-retarded right-click?

Not sure what you mean but Logitech, (for one), make mice where the scroll wheel also does sideways scrolling by tilting it left or right, also A4Tech made mice with 2 scroll wheels for vertical and horizontal.

And my mouse switches to sideways if whatever is on screen fits vertically and not horizontally.

It might be worth little test to get a key mapping utility to make it behave instead like an Enter key and see how that would work out. I may just do that.

-mwb1100 (November 08, 2009, 08:51 PM)

Attached is an archive containing the required remapping for a plain US keyboard as well as an undo file.

4953

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2009, 11:05 PM »

The easiest way to explain mounting an image is probably just to say it's virtually the same as mounting a CD/DVD image in any of the virtual CD/DVD drivers, (eg. DaemonTools, Alcohol, VirtualCD, etc).

About the only difference is that with mounting a backup image the drive letter is assigned on-the-fly.

4954

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Discover new places with Plarker

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2009, 04:58 PM »

Is there a problem with the site?

I just keep getting site not found.

4955

Living Room / Re: OPENOFFICEMOUSE

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2009, 04:30 PM »

Nah the MMO mouse already exists. It's called the Razer Naga

-p3lb0x (November 08, 2009, 12:16 PM)

Ugh! The buttons are positioned too far back, my thumb would end up in a permanent hook if I tried using that thing.  Plus at only 200"/s tracking speed it's too slow for serious gaming.

I'm much more interested in the Sentinel Advance which has 6m/s tracking so I can do a 180 in <1.058493728ns and has headlights for dust particle avoidance on my mousing surface.

I wonder if I could play videos on the OLED while gaming....hhmmmm....

4956

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 45-09

« Last post by 4wd on November 08, 2009, 04:45 AM »

4. I didn't really mean for you to include my acronym in your post....sheesh, now everyone will think I'm just some uncouth aussie yob...........oh wait......

4957

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by 4wd on November 07, 2009, 05:06 PM »

As my lawyer advised me, I can't recall.

-MilesAhead (November 07, 2009, 12:12 PM)

Ahhh, the Political Defense

4958

General Software Discussion / Re: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

« Last post by 4wd on November 06, 2009, 07:51 PM »

MS disables it in desktop editions because of any possible driver compatibility problems, (and you have to admit there are a lot of drivers that really shouldn't have seen the light of day).

Taken from Wikipedia^w and paraphrased on MSDN:

Very basically, each process is still limited to 4GB because of the 32bit addresses, but the OS can use a processor control register to map that 4GB space above the 4GB. So process "A" might have it's 4GB virtual address space start in physical ram at 8GB, process "B" at 12GB, etc.

That implies that software doesn't specifically have to be written to use memory above 4GB, just be coded to be PAE friendly, (eg. various ramdisk drivers - this is probably a bad example but I'm sure f0dder will tell me if it is ), because the CPU will take care of where that process will run.

The point was: A 32bit OS can address more than the physical limitation of 2^32 if the OS chooses to, (barring hardware limitations).  Thus it's an arbitrary limit imposed by the designer of the OS, eg. MS.

EDIT: Dang it! f0dder beat me again!

4959

General Software Discussion / Re: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

« Last post by 4wd on November 06, 2009, 05:43 PM »

Arbitrary 3.xGB limit? It's a limit of 32 bit processors, not windows....

-Josh (November 06, 2009, 05:42 PM)

Is that why the 32bit versions of Win2003 and Win2008 server can use the full 4GB?

And since when has a Phenom II, Athlon 64, etc, etc been a 32bit processor.

Memory Limits for Windows releases:

Win 2003
Win 2008

4960

General Software Discussion / Re: Any XP users switching to Windows 7 yet?

« Last post by 4wd on November 06, 2009, 05:38 PM »

I'll be sticking with XP because it just works for what I want to do.  Plus, I don't know if they've improved it yet but when I tried W7, trying to get it to accept that my XP machine was on the local network was an absolute PITA if it decided it wasn't a 'HomeGroup'.

Right now, about the only thing that would make me consider upgrading is an absolute ripper of a game that required DX10+ and I don't see that happening anytime in the next year or two.

And I'd really like to know that why, (with 4GB+ PCs becoming more prevalent), the dimwits at MS don't remove the arbitrary 3.xGB limit in the 32bit versions.

4961

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by 4wd on November 06, 2009, 12:26 AM »

Just tried PBRFE10, (I have Hard Disk Manager Suite 2009):

Backup is a little slow, (Best Compression), I suspect this is because it's trying to compress already compressed files, (png, MPEG4, etc), on the partition I tried.
Verified by doing the same backup without compression - it did it in less than half the time.
Unfortunately there's nowhere where you can filter files to not compress.

Backup file mounted and unmounted without a problem but even if you can't, you can browse through the contents within PBRFE10 and export files to another drive.

Restore from within XP went without a hitch and was approx. 30%-40% faster than the, (Best Compression), backup operation.

So I created a Recovery Media on a spare Flash drive and booted from that and was pleasantly surprised when all my HDDs were listed, (AMD 780G with SATA in AHCI mode), something Acronis usually failed to do without having to find the latest filters.  A restore using the previously created uncompressed image took 1 minute longer than it did creating it under XP, (6.5 minutes).

Having an extension *.pfm is pretty much a non-event AFAIAC because that's what 'Open With' is for, (there are other extensions which clash, eg. *.nfo, you only have to go to The File Extension Source and pick a letter).
The extension PFM is also used by:
PFM     Printer Font Metrics (Adobe Systems Incorporated)
PFM    Portable Float Map Graphics Data

The docs say it mounts as FAT32 but for a 20 or 40 GB image I imagine that's no problem.

-MilesAhead (November 05, 2009, 05:38 PM)

The drive information on my mounted backup shows it as NTFS.  I don't see how or why they would bother with an on-the-fly NTFS->FAT32 conversion just for working with a mounted image.

4962

Living Room / Re: Do you need to know more about who is tracking and online privacy?

« Last post by 4wd on November 05, 2009, 12:03 AM »

You need to remove the last '-' from the link so it'll work.

4963

General Software Discussion / Re: Paragon Drive Backup+Recovery 10 Free - good full drive imaging tool

« Last post by 4wd on November 04, 2009, 09:50 PM »

For one thing the paid version gets you WinPE.

-MilesAhead (November 04, 2009, 07:14 PM)

Paragon also include WinPE media with some versions of their programs:

Drive Backup 9 Pro  (currently same price as Personal)
System Backup 2010
Hard Disk Manager Suite 2009

Possibly others, didn't check everything they sell.

4964

What's the Best? / Re: Video conversion: What's the best (freeware or shareware)?

« Last post by 4wd on November 02, 2009, 12:47 AM »

I'm pretty happy with my Philips dvp 5990.  For the price I can't complain.  The main things on my wishlist are:

-MilesAhead (October 27, 2009, 09:42 PM)

Have you checked for alternative firmwares at DivXpert Firmwares ?

4965

Living Room / Re: For the person who has everything - an € 800 Mouse

« Last post by 4wd on October 28, 2009, 08:57 PM »

Christ, it looks like a bottle opener, and is almost as ugly as B&O design... 

-f0dder (October 28, 2009, 02:52 AM)

Actually, I was thinking it could double as a paper clip.

4966

General Software Discussion / Re: Minefield(Firefox) 3.7Pre seems to work

« Last post by 4wd on October 27, 2009, 09:52 AM »

There probably is in "about:config" but I've had the Nightly Tester Tools installed for so long that I wouldn't know.

NTT adds a button to the Addon window that lets you override all compatibility checking for addons and themes.

4967

General Software Discussion / Re: Minefield(Firefox) 3.7Pre seems to work

« Last post by 4wd on October 26, 2009, 10:02 PM »

Just installed over my Portable version and all extensions work after version override.

LavaFox for the theme here.

4968

General Software Discussion / Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows

« Last post by 4wd on October 25, 2009, 08:26 PM »

I find that utorrent not only lacks some features I love, but it also has much less respect for the connection settings I set, in some conditions causing poor internet performance, and even crashing routers despite extremely limiting connection settings (100 connections global max).

-Kamel (October 25, 2009, 07:54 PM)

µTorrent also did that on my router but it's not just the number of connections that is the problem - it's also how fast they're made.

My router was resetting every few hours using µTorrent no matter what connection limit I used until I changed two Advanced values - since then, not one µTorrent related router reset.

bt.connect_speed = 8
net.max_halfopen = 4

All of which is mentioned in the TroubleShooting section here.

+1 for µTorrent.  It runs 24/7 here but TBH, it's speed isn't that important to me since my main source of material is newsgroups.

4969

General Software Discussion / Re: Putting All My (Legally Obtained) Music Online

« Last post by 4wd on October 24, 2009, 02:25 PM »

@josh
I'm looking into using Jinzora on one of my servers. The problem is that it becomes one more application that I have to administer. I'd rather use a web service and not have to deal with the sysadmin part.

-tinjaw (October 24, 2009, 09:58 AM)

Has been mentioned before in a thread here, HFS running on one of your servers - minimal resources and easily administered.

HFS running the Thunderchicken of Glory, it has integrated player app, (audio/video), so it'll work with any browser:

4970

Living Room / Re: You have a computer backup plan.. but does it work?

« Last post by 4wd on October 23, 2009, 09:59 PM »

I'm thinking the power down landing zone bit might not work as designed if the thing is running flat?

-MilesAhead (October 23, 2009, 01:05 PM)

The Quick Install Guide shows the drive being mounted horizontally.

If anything, mounting it vertically would be more likely to affect any power down landing as being mounted horizontally the actuator always requires the same effort to 'park'.  Whereas vertically, it either has to move up or down hill as it were, requiring more or less effort to move.

All in all, it really doesn't matter whether it's vertical or horizontal as, AFAIK, all current desktop/enterprise drives are designed with both types of mounting in mind.

Where it could possibly be an issue is where the drive is mounted at an oblique angle, in which case bearing load would probably come into play.

EDIT: Considering that probably 90% of desktops/towers use horizontal mounting, they'd probably be cutting their own throat, (income-wise), if they specified a vertical only mounting, (the Caviar Black is designed for Desktop not Enterprise environments).

4971

Living Room / Re: You have a computer backup plan.. but does it work?

« Last post by 4wd on October 22, 2009, 07:13 AM »

With the prevalence of motherboards these days that routinely have an eSATA port, I'd expand on the external USB HDD by saying an external USB HDD WITH an eSATA port.

The cases are cheap enough if you want to roll your own, eg. CoolerMaster Xcraft series I've found are very reliable and work with all motherboards I've tried whereas the Vantec Nexstar seems to be rather picky about what chipsets it will work with.

And the time saved in multi-GB transfers is significant.

4972

Living Room / Re: I am looking for the best DIY/Barebones Laptop......

« Last post by 4wd on October 21, 2009, 04:58 AM »

Try http://www.dabs.com/...d-pdas,laptops/11105 - you just click the bits you want to narrow down the selection.

-Carol Haynes (October 21, 2009, 03:45 AM)

Thanks Carol, misses out on some brands, (MSI, Benq, etc - for screen sizes I know they produce), but at least it's a start 

4973

General Software Discussion / Re: RAMdisk on XP 32bit - brainstorming!

« Last post by 4wd on October 21, 2009, 01:31 AM »

Just thought I'd add to this thread for those that were interested.

VSuite Ramdisk now supports Windows 2000 to Windows 7 in 32/64 bit flavours.

Supported OS

Windows 2000, Windows XP (32-/64-bit), Windows 2003 (32-bit/64-bit), Windows Vista (32-/64-bit), Windows 2008 (32-/64-bit), Windows 7 (32-/64-bit)

note: Free Edition only supports Windows 2000/XP(32-bit)/2003(32-bit)

Note though, that the 64bit versions cost a little more than the 32bit versions.

4974

Living Room / Re: RAM & Virtualisation

« Last post by 4wd on October 21, 2009, 01:15 AM »

See way back here when we had an enlightening discussion about the various RAM drive software available.

As for assigning it to a virtual OS, I think the only way is to create a RAM drive, copy the HDD image of the virtual OS to it and then run it but it will still steal whatever RAM it uses from XP, ie. anything less than the 3.5GB boundary.

4975

Living Room / Re: Reporting myself to a moderator

« Last post by 4wd on October 21, 2009, 01:08 AM »

Couldn't you just edit everything out of the message and replace it with:



or



Personally, I think this would be better as just deleting posts disrupts the flow of the thread, (considering how many here seem to have no life and can respond to a post quicker than you could reach for a delete button ).