Recent Posts

6376

General Software Discussion / Re: Free VMware Server software

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 28, 2006, 02:13 AM »

The free server stuff was only launched yesterday (according to the email I got) ... the other stuff yes ... but I figured an extra link wouldn't do any harm!

6377

General Software Discussion / Free VMware Server software

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 06:14 PM »

See http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

Also see http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/ for freely downloadable ready built VM 'machines' and a free VMware player.

6378

General Software Discussion / Easy slipstreaming tool ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 05:40 PM »

Saw this in today's Fred Langa Newsletter:

http://www.neowin.ne...php?showtopic=223562

6379

Living Room / Format wars - old news ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 05:39 PM »

Saw this mentioned in Fred Langa's newsletter ... format wars over 19th century wax cylinders ... plus lots of MP3 cylinder transfers to listen to.

Have fun at http://www.tinfoil.com/

6380

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Confirms Highly Critical IE Hole March 23, 2006

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 04:45 PM »

LOL - true - but ... and it is a big but ... I didn't mean no one should program in C/C++ just MS !!

Actually a lot of the 'old time' stuff did have a lot going for it! Just imagine running decent graphics software (the orogonal Xara) and good DTP software on a system with 8Mb of memory and a 120Mb hard disc. (plus it has internet access etc). I still have the machine upstairs and it still works. I also used it as a MIDI control system. The OS was written in machine code and never crashed ... ever!

6381

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 09:45 AM »

It just so happens that that slow download, however, is faster than no download -- and torrents are often the only thing I can find them in.  So it's slow or nothing   Took me over a week to download a 1 gig file.

-allen (March 27, 2006, 05:35 AM)

Reminds me of the pre-BitTorrent era, when it once took me a MONTH to download a 500 MB file... 

-brotherS (March 27, 2006, 05:55 AM)

On GetRight's BT client it eastimated 19 days for me yesterday - and that is using BT and broadband ... not bad eh?

6382

Living Room / Re: Planet Earth starts tonight

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 09:33 AM »

So that people know what we are talking about here are a couple of photos to wet the appetite (thanks to Dave Bunnell, note that they are copyrighted but I have permission to use up to 5 on a non-commercial website).

If you want to see more of Dave's pictures and what he gets up to have a look at his website at http://www.goodearth...ics.com/under_earth/

Click the thumbnails for larger versions:



It is well worth looking at his 'virtual cave' page (link as above) if you want to know more about caves and how they are formed. Note a lot of the terminology is US specific, there are other terms used in other places! For example, Rimstone Pools are called Gour pools in the UK.

6383

Living Room / Re: Planet Earth starts tonight

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 05:31 AM »

I loved the caves epsiode (being a bit of spelunker myself).

Have to say though I was a bit disappointed with the Lechuguilla footage. Don't get me wrong it was great, but given they were the last film crew ever likely to be given permission to film there they really didn't even begin to scratch the surface (so to speak).

I realised they were leaving the best until last but 5 minutes to show by far the largest known cave system in the world, and the most unusual ...

Mind you all power to them getting 500kg of equipment that far underground - most people would struggle to get themselves there

Thankfully I have a large collection of photos to drool over

6384

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 27, 2006, 03:59 AM »

Thanks for that - I have uninstalled Azureus and tried utorrent. That seems to zip along quite nicely and it is SO much less cluttered & minimalistic. Great.

The only problem I had was it kept saying there was insufficient disk space. I presume if you don't set the folders manually it uses the system and user Temp folders (which I have separated from my Doze partition). As soon as I set up proper folders manually it all worked fine.

Reading the FAQs I also notice that Linksys routers seem to have problems with p2p software (especially if links are available for days on end). I wonder if that might be one of my issues?

6385

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 05:42 PM »

Thanks - I have checked my router settings and they seem to work OK.

I don't think there is any throttling going on (most downloads are executed at full speed). Azureus seems to be working at full speed too most of the time, it just seems to go into slower modes every now and again when things stop happening for a while.

I have downloaded BitComet (using Azuureus!) but I think I will hold off trying it for a while while I suss out Azureus again, esp. as I have now configured Firefox & Flashgot to use Auzreus for .torrent files. I may give BitComet a go in my VMWare setup and then make a decision.

I have some major issues with my current setup (regular BSODS) which I can't track down. It may be a memory problem (I added an extra stick of memory a while ago) or it could just be messed up settings as I tried umpteen different firewalls a while back and the BSODS seemed to start as soon as I installed Agnitum's Outpost. The BSODS continued after I uninstalled it too which was a bit worrying. Whatever I am beginning to think the simplest solution is a fresh install of Windows (again!) I really must remember to do a full back up of Windows as it is first installed and updated this time!

6386

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 05:04 PM »

Yep the page appears now.

Actually I have downloaded the latest build of Azureus and am now getting decent speeds (at least some of the time, it seems very variable). Strange 'cos last time I used Azureus I wasn't esp. impressed with the speeds acheived.

I have set it up bith the basic 'beginner' settings, the only change I made in the options was to change maximum number of simultaneous downloads to 0 which seemed to bump up download speeds terrifically.

I'll have to write to the GetRight Pro authors 'cos as a BitTorrent client it sucks big time!

6387

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 03:38 PM »

Sorry, I was probably doing some maintenance on the server just in the moments you tried. Now it should work: http://www.exe64.com:6969/

-Mark0 (March 26, 2006, 03:33 PM)

Nope still a blank window (in Firefox) and an error in Internet Explorer ??

6388

General Software Discussion / Re: Software Cataloguing App?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 03:34 PM »

we are going to have a collectorz discount in april by the way.
(don't they have a product for cataloging software as well?)

-mouser (March 26, 2006, 02:35 PM)

Can't see one for software (see http://www.collectorz.com/)

6389

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 03:13 PM »

Azureus is my client of choice by the way. I highly recommend it. Another client that has gained popularity extremely quickly and has now established itself as a major "player" among the BT clients out there is uTorrent. Here's another great guide

-moerl (March 26, 2006, 12:32 PM)

Azureus was the first client software I tried and I gave up because of the lousy transfer speeds I was getting.

I am using GetRight now (which can now act as a BT client) but I am getting no better speeds.

I'll try reading some of the pages people have quoted and may give Azureus a second chance.

Apart from the fact that some downloads are only available as BTs I still can't really see any advantage. I am using an ADSL connection which gives me 1Mb download speeds, but like most ISPs upload speeds are much slower (256Kb in my case) which means that anyone wanting to use me as a source is going to get very low download speeds as the speed of connection is never going to be as high as my potential upload speed (esp. as I don't plan not to use my computer for hours on end so that they get a marginally faster connection). OK they can share the sourcing of their download between various computers but I still can't see it being as efficient as a straight download at full speed from a fast server.

6390

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 03:06 PM »

Carol, just to double check, you may try to download a video from my Tracker, here: http://www.exe64.com:6969/

-Mark0 (March 26, 2006, 01:03 PM)

Sorry the link just leads to a blank page ???

6391

Living Room / BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 12:13 PM »

I have to confess my experiences with BitTorrent speeds are very poor. So much so that I stopped bothering for a while.

Today I decided to download a Linux Distro which was available in the form of 5 CD ISOs or a single DVD ISO. The DVD is only available via BitTorrent so I thought I'd try again.

It is so frustrating as I don't seem to be able to get speeds consistently above 10K/sec, and most of the time it is <5K/sec (current estimated download time is >100 hours), whereas when I download the CD ISOs in the normal way I am getting download speeds of 120K/sec and higher.

There seem to be lots of peers available in my list for the DVD download and 23/25 of them have 100% of the file. I have my client set to share files too so I am providing upload as well.

Why do people rate BT technology so highly? Is it just me having this crap experience?

6392

Developer's Corner / Re: math for programmers - nice big blog entry

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 26, 2006, 07:10 AM »

  yes i think so,teachers are pigs,i love math.but they do so :< that i can not get what i want.   

-kanelg (March 26, 2006, 06:01 AM)

Thanks a bunch ... nothing like a nice generalisation eh?

6393

Living Room / Re: substitute computer for the stressed

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 25, 2006, 12:04 PM »

Huh! What happened here?

-Baseman (March 25, 2006, 11:21 AM)

You slapped you're computer too hard ... it rebelled

6394

fSekrit / Re: Progress report etc.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 25, 2006, 10:06 AM »

Hmmm -- the phrase 'walking disaster' comes to mind. At least things can only get better.

I had my credit card details stolen (online) a while back - the first I knew of it was hundreds of pounds debitted from online gambling sites. Luckily the bank believed me!

6395

Living Room / Re: substitute computer for the stressed

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 25, 2006, 07:10 AM »

Now that is really quite satisfying - it should be provided as a desktop link in all Windows Installation.

By the way - don't give up thumping ... it is worth the effort!

6396

General Software Discussion / Re: Beware CentOS the new hack team / Spyware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 25, 2006, 07:06 AM »

LOL - he's write he couldn't make up anything so ridiculous. Makes you wonder what Jerry had acheived in his "22
years in computer systems engineering and operation" - probably bugger all, but almost certainly a lot of confusion!

6397

General Software Discussion / Re: BitmapRip - Bitmap Ripper

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 24, 2006, 09:39 AM »

Right I missed that - useful idea.

6398

Backup Guide / Re: Question re the verification process speed at the beginning of a Genie Backup

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 24, 2006, 09:38 AM »

Great - different AVs have odd properties. I use NOD32 and find it has problems with some archived files - esp. if I have advanced heuristics enabled. Glad you got it sorted - it would explain why others didn't experience it too

6399

General Software Discussion / Re: BitmapRip - Bitmap Ripper

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 24, 2006, 07:02 AM »

Have you PDF Explorer at http://homepage.oniduo.pt/pdfe/ which give as nice graphical interface for extracting the images you want?

6400

Backup Guide / Re: Question re the verification process speed at the beginning of a Genie Backup

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 24, 2006, 06:58 AM »

Let us know when you hear please