Recent Posts

5701

Living Room / Re: Recommendations for good external hard drive solutions?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 22, 2006, 09:55 AM »

Jargon Buster:

ATA - Advanced Technology Attachment. A disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the disk drive itself.
PATA = Parallel ATA
SATA = Serial ATA

SATA and PATA are more recent developments of the old starndard ATA devices.

Most ATA hard disk drives come with various information eg. ATA66, ATA100 etc. basically the higher the number the faster the interface. They also come with a couple of basic specs such as 7200 RPM and 8.5ms. The RPM is the speed the discs rotate (generally faster is quicker) and the ms value is the average seek time for the device to move from track to track (the smaller the number the better).

They are basically all ATA drives but with different forms of controller integrated.

IDE = Integrated/Intelligent Drive Electronics. It is an ATA specification and the most common disk interface for hard drives, CD-ROM drives, etc.

SCSI = Small Computer Systems Interface, a high-speed communications protocol that allows and disk drives (and many other devies) to communicate with each other.

IDE/ATA drives are usually found in most PCs because they are cheap and easy to use. IDE and ATA are often used interchangeably.

SCSI interfaces and drives are found in more demanding environments because they are generally faster and more flexible in the way they can be set up.

For lots more definitions goto google and sent eg. define:SCSI  etc. in the search box.

5702

Living Room / Re: What do you do at Donation Coder?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 22, 2006, 07:15 AM »

Talk too much

5703

Living Room / UK university offers first hacking degree

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2006, 11:42 AM »

UK university offers first hacking degree

Abertay to launch BSc (Hons) in Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures
Clement James, vnunet.com 21 Jun 2006

Abertay University in Dundee will launch the UK's first 'ethical hacking' course in September in a bid to train more white hat hackers to fight the growing threat of cyber-crime.

See http://www.vnunet.co...rsity-offers-hacking for the full story.

It's not a spoof either ... see

http://www.abertay.a...;CID=363&Key=002

for course details

5704

Backup Guide / Re: Restoring data to a larger system drive

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2006, 10:29 AM »

Acronis probably isn't gold certified because they keep releasing new versions with loads of bugs (little more than betas at release).

Not sure if PM can resize Linux partitions (it is probably a little old for the newer formats anyway).

Acronis DiskDirector actually runs from Linux (on the bootable CD version) so I'd be surprised if it can't deal with Linux partitions.

What file systems does Acronis Disk Director Suite support?

Acronis Disk Director Suite supports all the most widely used file systems for PCs:

    * FAT16/FAT32 (file allocation table) — is used in DOS and Windows and supported by almost every operating system
    * NTFS (Windows NT file system) ) — has been introduced in Windows NT and is used by Windows NT/2000/XP/2003
    * Ext2 — is used by Linux operating systems
    * Ext3 — is the next generation of the Ext2 file system
    * LinuxSwap — is used for Linux swap partitions
    * ReiserFS — one of the most secure file system that is used on data servers

from http://www.acronis.c...iskdirector/faq.html

5705

Backup Guide / Re: Restoring data to a larger system drive

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2006, 09:01 AM »

I have found Acronis email response can be a bit hit and miss - they don't always read the question until you respnd with a snotty comment. Like Mouser I have not had any problems restoring to larger partitions.

Worst scenario restore to a partition the same size and then use Partition Magic to resize it.

5706

Official Announcements / Re: Cody's Haiku Mug

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2006, 07:44 AM »

LOL

Here is an image I made (a number of years ago now) of my friend Bob ... he wasn't particuarly amused ... can't think why ...

Bob

5707

Living Room / Re: Broken Windows Theory ... off into a RiscOS ramble ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 21, 2006, 06:22 AM »

Check out http://www.redsquirr....uk/redsquirrel.html for RiscOS if you are interested (a freeware emulator for Windows which is kind of neat - I haven't tried it yet).

Sorry Duff link

You will need to find original Acorn ROM images to use the emulator - try here: http://www.tribbeck....computers/romimages/ and read the emulator docs to find out which ROM versions work.

There is still a lot of stuff going on for RiscOS for hardened enthusiasts - I still feel guilty I sold out to Doze !!

Here are some more links if anyone is interested:

RiscOS Org http://www.riscos.org.uk
Commercial Products http://www.riscos.com/
Commercial Emulators: http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk

Another free emulator: http://b-em.bbcmicro...ulator/download.html
And another: http://arcem.sourceforge.net/

An Acorn fan site with lots of info: http://acorn.revivalteam.de/
And another: http://www.drobe.co.uk/

Actually I have found researching this quite therapeutic!!

Update: Unfortunately the link to ROM Images appears to work but the files are not actually ROM images (they are far too small) ... I haven't been able to track down a link yet!

Update 2: RISCO 3.11 ROMs can be downloaded here and seem to work with Squirrel http://www.strafom.f...bbc/ROM/RISCOS31.ZIP

PPS: In my search I found the BBC Emulator - gost this brings back memories (just install and run it - works great). http://www.mikebuk.d...om/beebem/index.html

5708

Living Room / Re: Unix-Haters Handbook

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 08:08 PM »

X has had its share of $5,000 toilet seats—like Sun’s Open Look clock
tool, which gobbles up 1.4 megabytes of real memory! If you sacrificed all
the RAM from 22 Commodore 64s to clock tool, it still wouldn’t have
enough to tell you the time. Even the vanilla X11R4 “xclock” utility consumes
656K to run. And X’s memory usage is increasing.

Ha ha ha ... how much does Vista require just to install ???

Actually I just checked my WinXP box and winlogon uses nearl 4Mb of memory alone!

The MS Alarm Clock Plugin for WMP uses over 2Mb of memory when running with no alarms set (and that isn't even a clock!).

5709

Living Room / Re: So THIS is what the Titanic looked like going down?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 06:13 PM »

I think you're hearing some mis-information.  Ships have already been sunk of the FL cost and reefs are flourishing.  What?  You thought they sent them down with have a tank of fuel or somehting?

-Rover (June 20, 2006, 04:58 PM)

No I was quoting the problems described by my local ship building firm on the problems of removing toxic waste from ships when decommissioning them. They recon that it is almost impossible - even if you remove all the engines and fuel tanks.

Here are a few relevant links:

http://news.bbc.co.u.../england/3377417.stm (esp the table at the bottom)

http://www.greencons...id=I033-1142108-148A

Yet even the U.S., which is not a signatory to the Convention, considered four decommissioned navy vessels as waste in 2003

http://www.time.com/...3155,1151751,00.html

http://www.edie.net/...s_story.asp?id=10029

5710

Living Room / Re: So THIS is what the Titanic looked like going down?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 04:02 PM »

The cost should be bourne in the country of origin to dismantle them properly - preferably in the shipyards where they were built that are crying out for work (if they haven't already gone bust). Ain't gonna happen though - governments haven't got the guts to put up taxes to decommission Navy ships and the private sector does what the private sector always does - hit and run.

My personal opinion is this it is intolerable the waythings are at the moment - most are simply sent to poor countries where there is little regrad for human rights to be trashed and pollute their environment.

5711

Living Room / Re: So THIS is what the Titanic looked like going down?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 11:33 AM »

You gatta be kidding - the amount of pollution (oil and toxic chemicals) in that wreck are hardly conducive to a healthy reef growing on it!

As for dismantling ... one of the biggest problems countrys are having with old ships is what to do with them to dispose of them. It is frowned upon now to send these ships to Bangladesh where people dismantle them by hand on the beach in atrocious conditions for little more than slave wages and it is certainly not cost effective or politically expedient to get them dismantled in the west.

There is a huge issue at the moment in the UK because years ago the US sent some ex US Navy ships to Teeside to be dismantled - there has been huge opposition locally and nationally (by almost everyone except the contractors and the government) because the issues of toxic waste and ecological damage are enormous. They are still sitting rotting away off the NE coast of England and the dispute shows no sign of being resolved.

The US government need ways to dispose of clapped out ships - believe me there is nothing altruistic in what they are doing - a few tons of dynamite are a hell of a lot cheaper than sending these halfway round the world to be scrapped.

5712

Living Room / Re: So THIS is what the Titanic looked like going down?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 09:35 AM »

Sorry - am I the only one that thinks this is just another example of gross polution of the environment for the sake of cheap disposal of a ship?

5713

Living Room / Re: Intresting Links

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 09:29 AM »

I liked the 'cancel anything' post - I have had problems in the past - the solution I have found is to put the request in writing and send it via a signed for delivery with a date you wish to terminate the contract. Then simply cancel all the payment methods from the appropriate date! At least that way they have to contact you (and pay for the call) if they want to try to retain your custom - and you have the option of hanging up!

5714

Living Room / Re: Atomic Computer — gimme, gimme, gimme!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 08:37 AM »

I suppose the wrong question is 'why?' ... fun project though. Seems to have required a huge amount of dedication.

Wonder how he managed to persuade all those manufacturers to provide freebies? What do they get out of it?

5715

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is so much software cracked?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 04:35 AM »

I'll let someone else Troll for Norway (sorry couldn't resist) ...

5716

Living Room / Re: Gene Wilder with Steve Ballmer as Frankenstein (videomix)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 04:33 AM »

Love it - that is really cool. I especially love Steve Ballmer tap dancing

5717

Living Room / Re: Broken Windows Theory

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 20, 2006, 04:26 AM »

A little company named Acorn (now famed for is ARM Risc chips) had this sussed in the 80s when they brought out RiscOS which was entirely modular. There was a core OS (4Mb if I remember correctly) in ROM (the chips could be replaced easily for upgrades but they were rarely necessary. This meant it was blisteringly fast, very compact and incredibly stable. Everything else was added via modules and these were provided by Acorn and/or 3rd party vendors.

I suppose some would say that the modules were aking to DLL packages but the installation and maintenance program was simplicity - when a package required a particular module there was a one line OS command to check to see if a recent enough version was installed, if it wasn't the package simply replaced the module with the correct version. There was only ever one copy of the module installed (no DLL hell) and used by all packages that required those functions.

It was even dead simple to write your own packages as they had an IDE for various languages (including C, Fortran and Pascal) but also had an interpreted procedure based Basic built in (as part of the 4Mb ROM) which allowed users to easily and quickly code programs that used the graphical interface - so much so that many developers used Basic (it was fast enough). Also the Risc architecture meant that learning to code in assembler was very quick and easy (there were only about 25 primitives to learn!).

Ironically the RiscOS machine I had is sitting in a box in the loft ... but it could access the internet, desktop publishing (software written by the people who write Xara), the original version of Xara (ArtWorks), MIDI studio type work, used a version of scalable Fonts that pre-empted TTF by years ...

Ho hum - back to the world of reality - how could such a small company compete with the grandeur that was Windows 2 (remember that!).

Actually when Windows95 was released it was widely commented how much MS had lifted from RiscOS !!

5718

Living Room / Re: OISV - Organization of Independent Software Vendors

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 07:08 PM »

Actually the sign up asks a lot of questions about your business so I guess if you aren't a business they may decide not to let you sign up.

5719

General Software Discussion / Re: ReactOS

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:58 PM »

Windows ME - Monstrous Experience - actually I think ReactOS is probably more functional than Win ME - at least I din't manage to crash it more than once.

Seriously, I think it will be quite some time before ReactOS is at a point where it begins to be useful and if they make the look and feel as close to Windows as they appear to be I think MS will hound them. At the mo they seem to be going for as near identical as they can get - Lindows got shot down just for having a name that vaguely resembled Windows. To have a complete clone is likely to cause a full blown response if it ever gets to be any sort of threat.

5720

Living Room / Re: Up and coming photosharing site

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:54 PM »

Welcome Florian ... looking like it is going to be very useful. I really like the way you can tag parts of an image with a label ... cool. The interface looks really simple and uncluttered too.

5721

Living Room / Re: My graphics card went out on my PC

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:47 PM »

Bad news - good luck with the claim

5722

Living Room / Re: OISV - Organization of Independent Software Vendors

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:46 PM »

Slightly bizarre really - anyone can sign up (as far as I can see ... not that I followed the links but it didn't say don't bother unless ....) so it isn't exactly private.

Why publish short extracts from some articles on the home page with a link to read the rest when you then can't without signing up.

I am not in principle against the idea of a private website but if you are going to put a public front on the website it should actually acheive something for the public. Obviously private issues can be discussed behind closed doors but I would guess the front page articles as shown now aren't particularly in need of privacy ???

5723

General Software Discussion / Re: ReactOS

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:42 PM »

Actually ReactOS doesn't do a lot except look a bit like Windows 98. Whenever you try and actually do something it doesn't work!

Pretty much like Windows 98 then

5724

General Software Discussion / Re: ReactOS

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:23 PM »

Interesting idea. Not sure about MS's reaction though.

Having said that Wine for Linux has existed for a long time and really aims to do similar things.

(actually I have just downloaded the VMWare ready to go machine and it is Wine !)

5725

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is so much software cracked?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 19, 2006, 06:10 PM »

My advice if you want to find somewhere in the world to settle that has a brilliant environment and a good attitude to life is move to Canada preferably away from the big cities!! My parents live in Ontario and I am always stunned by the people I meet when I go there - open, friendly, straight forward (to the point of being blunt - I guess like Yorkshiremen ) and incredibly helpful.

The other place I would really rate is New Zealand - I have had many friends over the years from NZ and always felt jealous when they returned home. One day before I get too physically useless I want to head over there - re-establish old friendships and chuck my self into a gorge on the end of a bit of elastic. Any country whose nation sport if bungee has to be cool !

You might like http://www.rip-off.co.uk/ or check out the links here http://www.google.co...ountryUK%7CcountryGB