Recent Posts

5051

Living Room / Re: FBI ALERT SCAM - Malware or Virus ?

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 12:36 PM »

I missed your earlier post about SpeedMaxPc:

I've no idea who SpeedMaxPc are but I wouldnt trust them an inch!!
Even if they arent trying to scam you in any way (and they may well be trying to scam you), their methods can be dangerous for your computer.

BTW   SpeedMaxPc's Tech-support page was 'Off-Line' yesterday and also today ... so maybe it's just another scam too.  Hopefully it's just because of the USA Holiday Weekend (MLK).

-crabby3 (January 21, 2013, 10:50 AM)

maybe you were just checking but please dont try and get help from them...

I know you can't believe everything you see or read on the web ... but I thought Windows Help & Support could be trusted.     Not so!  

-crabby3 (January 20, 2013, 11:48 AM)

Note: that's got nothing to do with Microsoft !!


One last point - you've probably taken this into account but I say *in case*: you gotta be very careful using system restore after having had a virus - that you dont reintroduce anything. One of the things I did was to turn it off completely and then on again - in order to delete any restore points that might have been infected.

5052

General Software Discussion / Re: Lastpass

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 12:18 PM »

Daleus - likewise, I have a couple of hundred logins saved. I imported many from Roboform, many defunct now, and duplicates and/or variations, but there's no sign of Lastpass removing any. Which makes your problem sound like a bug, maybe(?)

5053

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 10:44 AM »

thanks deo, doesnt look like the original is there..

Following up on the heart shape:
http://missourifolkl...n.edu/outhouses.html

The simplest explanation is that the cutout was one of several simple icons used for ornament: ornamentation of the necessary is a means of assuring oneself that things have gone beyond the level of mere necessity and subsistence. In Germany, a heart-shaped cutout is more traditional -- the usage is clearly visual euphemism, i.e., putting a pleasant symbol on something intrinsically unpleasant. In this Polish example, the heart-tradition seems to have opened an associative pathway to another series, based on playing-cards ...

(The plug & socket could be from anywhere between Spain and Russia I think.)

5054

General Software Discussion / Re: It's about ... an interesting Win8 view (video)

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 08:10 AM »

Here you go - also, could we keep the discussion of that piece of manure in one thread? :-)

-f0dder (January 21, 2013, 07:52 AM)

Sounds good to me - maybe someone could merge this?

5055

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 07:28 AM »

around here, old outhouses/toilets usually had a heart shape cut in the door (I have *no* idea why...)
I dont suppose you've any idea of it's origin Stephen?

-tomos (January 21, 2013, 06:51 AM)

That's an easy to answer question...light and ventilation.

-app103 (January 21, 2013, 07:08 AM)

but the heart shape... I guess it's sort of like spraying air-freshener after


PS I meant the origin of the image (but was curious about the use of a heart shape too!) - will edit previous post.

5056

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 06:51 AM »

That is adorable!  

-app103 (January 20, 2013, 04:45 PM)

yes it is

around here, old outhouses/toilets usually had a heart shape cut in the door (I have *no* idea why...)
I dont suppose you've any idea of the origin of the image Stephen?

5057

General Software Discussion / Re: It's about ... an interesting Win8 view (video)

« Last post by tomos on January 21, 2013, 06:38 AM »

That's been posted before in one of those win 8 threads here, but I aint going looking for it ;-)

I'm starting to think that a lot of the problems people are having with windows 8 are bugs. I know I *keep* getting the charms bar popping up to the extent that it makes the OS unusable (presuming I want to stay sane as well). This doesnt seem to be happening to everyone, but it if it happens to me it's still a bug as far as I'm concerned. Maybe a lot of these problems are hardware/driver related. And the way all that 'stuff' interacts with the new gestures.

5058

Living Room / Re: FBI ALERT SCAM - Malware or Virus ?

« Last post by tomos on January 20, 2013, 01:44 PM »

Did I get help removing the virus?  If you mean tech-support... no.  I'm a computer novice, at-best, but was able to access a friends computer (novice also) and print 22 pages listing several ways to fix this issue.

-crabby3 (January 20, 2013, 12:48 PM)

mine required about 15 different steps using 7 different apps - we didnt find anything more after step #8 or so, and most of the steps at the end were precautions to help avoid recurrence (e.g. disabling java).

Changing to Classic theme will speed Vista up - you can make the classic theme look a lot better than it's default if you make the grey background very light and mess around with titlebar colours.

RE checking what starts with windows, there's a few apps out there that show you what does:
    Autoruns (free)
    WinPatrol (the Plus version will give you info about apps - I'm not sure about the free version)
    Codestuff Starter (free)

I hate doing that on laptops cause they always have so much 'stuff' starting up and you've got to look up a lot of them to see if they're important (be careful here too! I mean dont just stop everything or your pc might not work any more...). Maybe it's just as bad on PC's with pre-installed OS, I dont know any more (thankfully).

5059

Living Room / Re: The Free Videos Thread

« Last post by tomos on January 20, 2013, 01:19 PM »

I'm very familiar with some of the people in there, and you might be a bit overly cynical there. G. E. Griffin is well known as is Peter Schiff. There's a historian in there as well, but, I won't try to convince you. This is just a tidbit and there's a lot more to know.

-Renegade (January 20, 2013, 10:20 AM)

it gave me a much better understanding of that POV. I was suprised at the end though when I saw all the gold/silver connections - in any world one would have to query that ;-)

The point that you can do something on a personal level (choose to buy gold their recommendation - but there are other ideas out there) - anyways, that seemed like a good point to me. This system could keep going for a long time yet. Changes will not come from the top. Changes will only come from people choosing something else at a grass-roots level; or the system collapsing - or from both.

I might understand your fractional reserve banking stuff better after that introduction.

5060

Living Room / Re: FBI ALERT SCAM - Malware or Virus ?

« Last post by tomos on January 20, 2013, 11:44 AM »

search for a free PC tune-up

-crabby3 (January 20, 2013, 09:58 AM)

dont! (seriously, most of those are scams too...).
Although, I guess that's what CCleaner does - clear out a lot of stuff which might speed things up a bit.

I have just finished (with a lot of help) cleaning a pc of a trojan that sounds like it could be something similar (was it demanding money?). Note that CCleaner (which was part of the cleanup process) broke the browser install (Opera). Worth it, will probably be ok if I uninstall & reinstall, but point being that cleaning can be a little risky too :-)

Did you get help removing the virus?
There's forums out there that concentrate on helping clear that kind of thing (the only one I know though is in German http://www.trojaner-board.de).

Re speeding up your pc, there's a few things you could do -
    check the programmes that start with windows is a big one (but can require a bit of research).
    Defragment maybe.
    Which OS are you running? Changing to classic theme can help a lot.

Other's more expert than I will hopefully make more concrete recommendations

5061

Living Room / Re: The Free Videos Thread

« Last post by tomos on January 20, 2013, 09:58 AM »

End of the Road: How Money Became Worthless[/b]

http://www.youtube.c...ture=player_embedded

Heartily recommended for anyone that is curious about the topic or looking to learn more.

-Renegade (January 20, 2013, 07:20 AM)

... you need to get a bit more cynical Renegade
It's a video advising us as individuals to buy gold - and made by (for?) a bunch of people who just happen to sell gold and silver (did you watch past the credits?).

Something a bit more in-depth would be nice. A bit of real investigative journalism maybe. It is well made, and seems to have some good points, but I do get tired of these promotional type videos where it's their word against the word of the people in that video over there where they say something completely different and they all believe so fervently...

5062

Living Room / Re: MEGA Almost Online - Misses Deadline

« Last post by tomos on January 20, 2013, 04:39 AM »

Mega can go fuck itself....

When a developer force shows you this, which is an obvious lie...I have no time for it.

-Stephen66515 (January 20, 2013, 03:25 AM)

just out of curiousity: was your browser uptodate?
(or are they really saying any other browser is crap!?)

Google seem to be spending a lot of money promoting Chrome.
I've come across a couple of apps lately that wanted to install chrome (could Java RT have been one of them I cant remember...)

5063

Living Room / Re: I am now the proud owner of my very own NANY mug :D

« Last post by tomos on January 19, 2013, 09:56 AM »

Here's a picture of both my mugs.

-p3lb0x (January 19, 2013, 09:43 AM)

what's the one on the left there p3lb0x ?
(looks like Cody coming back from combat or something)

5064

General Software Discussion / Re: free web storage service that offers the biggest amount of data?

« Last post by tomos on January 19, 2013, 06:33 AM »

Kim Dotcom’s "Mega" will give us 50GB of free cloud storage: http://kim.com

-Giampy (January 18, 2013, 11:23 AM)

this website doesnt even open for me

-kalos (January 19, 2013, 02:59 AM)

it's being launched today so maybe too busy cause of that.
It opened for me yesterday - but not today...

5065

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the most advanced pdf editor?

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 04:56 PM »

my main reason for not having done so yet is, that I haven't checked out what Illustrator really is, so I don't know what I am missing...

-Curt (January 17, 2013, 04:12 PM)

it's actually a vector drawing programme
I have CS4 installed here, I'll try it out with a couple of PDFs. Even if it is good, the CS2 version wouldnt be able to cope with more recent PDF versions, so it probably isnt worth installing (for that).

5066

General Software Discussion / Re: New cross-platform Vector app [looking for your support]

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 02:36 PM »

^ Ah well ...

5067

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

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 12:59 PM »

cyberdiva - thanks. The thing is my access via Chrome or IE is fast, it seems only Waterfox is having difficulty. I thought I also tried Firefox but now when I try to launch Firefox Waterfox takes over and I don't seem to be able to run Firefox alongside it. But otherwise my internet access is fine.

I really wonder if I messed something up by running CCleaner and not shutting Waterfox down. CCleaner usually forces browsers to be closed down to clear the cache, so I'm even surprised it was able to run with Waterfox open.

-dr_andus (January 17, 2013, 12:13 PM)

try a system restore?

5068

Screenshot Captor / Re: problem resizing caption box / object

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 11:56 AM »

I asked about Adding / Resizing caption box, not resizing text box.

-cathie28 (January 17, 2013, 10:28 AM)

Sorry,
the devil is in the details as they say, and I missed that one !
And I resized the canvas instead of 'expand canvas'

I think mouser is needed for the problems you're encountering.

5069

General Software Discussion / Re: which is the most advanced pdf editor?

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 11:49 AM »

Thanks Curt for the Scribus update and testing. In fairness it's not designed as an editor of files created by others.
But then that's the problem with the PDF format in general - it's simply not designed to be re-edited at all.

Have you tried Illustrator as an editor as Renegade suggests? (or anything else from the 'suite')

5070

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

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 10:11 AM »

Waterfox is 16.01 and FF is 16.02

-MilesAhead (October 30, 2012, 05:57 PM)

Waterfox is still 16.01, but Firefox is now 18.
Should I worry for the future of Waterfox?
 

-Curt (January 17, 2013, 09:23 AM)

sure that's only a couple of minor updates behind ;-)


(seriously though, I dont know)

5071

General Software Discussion / Re: paste an image below another image in MS Paint of Win7?

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 08:11 AM »

Well spotted Skwire, I had presumed the second example...

5072

General Software Discussion / Re: paste an image below another image in MS Paint of Win7?

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 07:43 AM »

I dont think it can be done in mspaint.

5073

Screenshot Captor / Re: problem resizing caption box / object

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 06:33 AM »

I've never used resize canvas before.
I found it fine (but I am used to dialogues like this from image editors).

The dialogue (Edit>Resize / Ctrl+G)
Resize was already selected here, I changed the background colour and added '15' (pixels I guess) on all sides:



and the result:

5074

Screenshot Captor / Re: problem resizing caption box / object

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 06:25 AM »

hi cathie28,
I find editing unintuitive:
see the top icon in the screenshot below (it's of the lower part of the toolbar on the right-side of the window).
NOTE that sometimes it has a red 'O' overlaid on the arrow, sometimes not (I'm not sure what the difference is). That button will get you into edit mode - in edit mode I can edit text, etc. (double-click) and resize a text box in all directions (single-click, then drag corners).

5075

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by tomos on January 17, 2013, 06:10 AM »

nice dialogue going on here