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6476

General Software Discussion / MS AntiSpyware gets a big update

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 06, 2006, 02:54 AM »

Haven't tried it yet but version 2 is now available (now called Windows Defender).

Scott Finnie's newsletter gives it a good review here: http://www.scotsnews...er.com/78.htm#60secs

The rest of this newsletter was quite interesting too (mostly Windows Vista related)

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Living Room / Re: Planet Earth starts tonight

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 06, 2006, 02:48 AM »

As far as I can tell it was sponsored not only by the BBC but a number of other broadcasters from around the globe. Doubtless it will get a wide airing. If not I'm sure it will be released on DVD

By the way the best TV series on a similar subject ever made was Earth Story by Aubrey Manning. It was made by the BBC but the rights were acquired by a US company. Now it is available on DVD. If you are interested they are selling it at a knock down price $899.99 (for the 8 episodes).

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Living Room / Re: The Simpsons come to life - humans act out the opening

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 05, 2006, 03:17 PM »

i couldn't find the continuity error

-mouser (March 05, 2006, 05:11 AM)

Have a look at the driver positions in the vehicles ...

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Living Room / Planet Earth starts tonight

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 05, 2006, 04:06 AM »

In the UK this evening is the start of a new 11 part TV series "Planet Earth" which looks amazing.

I'm sure this is going to be franchised around the world so hopefully everyone will get a chance to see it but to whet your appetite check out the BBC website here: http://www.bbc.co.uk...grammes/planetearth/

Have a look at the Planet Earth Explorer which has some amazing clips from the programmes.

There is a sequence filmed in Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico (being a caver I am really looking forward to this). Apparently it took the BBC 2 years to get permission to film there - it isn't possible to imagine the problems they must have had getting all the equipment in place!! Check under Geology clips at http://www.bbc.co.uk...anetearth/realmedia/

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Living Room / Re: Why flickr is cool - yawning cats made my cat a star

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 05, 2006, 03:51 AM »

Just to add to the humour - today's Garfield made me chuckle ...

see http://news.yahoo.co.../cx_ga_uc/ga20060305

my cats are exactly like that!

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Living Room / Re: The Simpsons come to life - humans act out the opening

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 05, 2006, 03:49 AM »

How good is that ... wow !!!

By the way (for US readers) don't believe everything you read in the Sun - most people in the UK who buy it are incapable of reading or writing their own name (and still speak in grunts).

Did you notice a continuity error in the film?

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Living Room / Re: Well that's a landing!!

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

Shame the van doesn't have a Red Cross on the side - he could head straight to hospital.

What a looney ...

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Living Room / Re: Why flickr is cool - yawning cats made my cat a star

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2006, 04:04 AM »

Brilliant and hilarious ...

I must really be a closet cat as it had me yawning along with them ...

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Living Room / Microsoft redesigns the iPod packaging (not really) ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2006, 03:31 AM »

This spoof apparently orginates in Redmond ...

See http://youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k (video)

You may have seen this one before but it still creases me up ...

Coroporate America at its most understated http://youtube.com/watch?v=RW2BdMv33cE

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 01, 2006, 04:33 AM »

Interesting site here http://www.virusbtn.com/index

You have to register to read the reports but they have a huge number of AV products that have been tested.

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 27, 2006, 06:10 PM »

Symantec Free virus check (and free firewall test) at

http://security.syma...gid=ie&venid=sym

Unfortunately they don't seem to keep that URL consistently but you can usually find it from the Home and Home Business homepage:

http://www.symantec....omeoffice/index.html

Look at the panel "Top Things to do" on the right.

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 27, 2006, 12:26 PM »

Reading the BitDefender website it seems the free version doesn't have active protection?? It is a passive system where you can scan your system. They don't recommend the free version for systems connected to the internet via broadband. This seems a serious limitiation to its use.

The free version of AntiVir doesn't scan POP3 emails - again a bit of a limitation since a lot of viruses etc. arrive via email. They do a shareware version (cheap) that does scan POP3 and some of the cash (25%) is donated to charity. Maybe this should be added to the commercial list too.

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 27, 2006, 05:15 AM »

As far as the "list as many as possible" idea well that wouldn't really be a "whats the best" then now would it!    This section is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all programs available in a category, but rather a clear, concise and organized view at only the "cream of the crop".  Think "if I were stranded on a deserted island, what would I bring" -- only of course this time we are talking software and not pocket knives and twine.

-LuckMan212 (February 27, 2006, 02:45 AM)

Sorry - didn't spot the section it was in Mea Culpa ...

Maybe this thread could generate an AV comparative review which could then be copied to the main review area and then edited down to the best of in here ? That way people will know which have been considered and what their relative strengths and shortcomings are.

Personally if I see a bald - 'this is the best' and it is something I am not using it doesn't really make me consider if I should change - if I can see where it scores over my current package I will look twice and start thinking about it.

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What's the Best? / Re: Anti-Virus Package

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 27, 2006, 02:34 AM »

Don't forget the Symantec also do a free online scan.

Thanks for that list it is really useful. Out of curiosity what does "BN rating" mean and where do the values come from and the other details for products you haven't used?

Re. you last para - I think ranking programs is a good idea (so long as it is objective) but I think it is worth building a list of as many as possible - not reducing to a minimal 'best of' list.

Personally I was a long time user of Norton and got really sick of the bloat. I now use NOD32 (and have for a couple of years) and am generally very pleased. There have been a few false positives during that time and I can't find any way to exclude items from manual scans. I also found having advanced heuristics enabled had a big impact on my system - and opening zipped files became ridiculously slow. All in all I am pleased with NOD32 but my main criticism is that if it has the best heuristic detection methods it needs to be useable. I have also recently found a conflict with "Spyware Doctor" and NODs MS Outlook email scanner plugin - the plugin doesn't load properly when Syware Doctor is running in the background.

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Living Room / Re: Climate-change research project by the BBC & Oxford Uni needs lots of help

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 27, 2006, 02:24 AM »

Well done - how many more spots can we add ?

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Living Room / Re: Climate-change research project by the BBC & Oxford Uni needs lots of help

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 26, 2006, 06:36 PM »

Stunned silence on this one ...

Anyone giving it a go? If nothing else you get an interesting screen saver (which isn't an essential part of the project software).

If you are worried about it using up clock cycles it does - but that's the point. I haven't noticed it affecting other applications or system speed at all since installing it, and you can suspend or exit the program if you need to run time critical apps (just right click on the tray icon).

Currently there are 104000 participants world wide - it would be good to bump up that number even more.

To whet you appetite here is the world distribution map of participants as of now:



It is nice to see the UK submerged completely - probably the series of related BBC TV programs shown recently - some of which have been really fascinating.

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Living Room / Re: xp dual boot raid 0 insanity cool down

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 26, 2006, 04:55 AM »

Need more traffic...protestant post;....

-Rover (February 26, 2006, 12:40 AM)

Eh? Keeping taking the happy pills ...

This is what happens when you get more traffic ...

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Living Room / Re: xp dual boot raid 0 insanity cool down

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 25, 2006, 06:26 PM »

on a more sensible and serious note...

now i've got dual booting up and running - is this going to create weird problems with things like system restore and drive indexing?

-nudone (February 19, 2006, 09:41 AM)

Shouldn't do.

What you can do is in each version of Windows disable restore on the other installation drive (leave it enabled on the current system drive). Personally I would disable it on all but the system drive in each case.

Indexing? Do you keep that running - it is the one service I always switch off immediately after install. It is resource hungry (clock cycles and disk space) and doesn't seem to acheive a lot. If you must use it then again disable it on the other installation drives within the management console. There isn't much point in indexing drive E when you are running windows from drive C.

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Developer's Corner / Open Source ANS Forth Complier (Win32Forth) ... was Lisp IDE

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 25, 2006, 05:58 AM »

Anyone interested in experimenting with Forth (a really fun way to confuse yourself ) then there is an excellent implementation of Win32Forth (an ANS compat Forth) at SourceForge with further information available at Forth.org.

It includes a project manager, form designer (to create window layouts) and two integrated sorce editors both of which allow you to compile code directly. You decide which source editor to associate with the compiler during installation. SciEdit looks more useful (after less than 5 minutes of fiddling) but both look pretty good. WinEd allows you to run the Forth interpreted within an editor pane, SCiEdit loads the interpreter into a separate window.

It also comes with documentation and a number of sample programs to get you started. The Forth.org link also has pointers to further documentation, history and tutorials.

If you've never experienced the esoteric world of Forth now is your chance 

Additional: Official site at http://www.win32forth.org/

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Developer's Corner / Re: Lisp IDE

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 24, 2006, 06:49 AM »

If you want the ready built binaries for EMACS for Windows they can be downloaded here http://ftp.gnu.org/p...-fullbin-i386.tar.gz

To Install unpack the archive to the location you want (without spaces in the pathname) (eg. C:\). It creates its own folder. Then in the folder look in the bin folder and double click addpm.exe

The instructions in the readme files are really unclear!!

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Developer's Corner / Re: Lisp IDE

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 24, 2006, 06:18 AM »

Note the link on the emacs page to "Emacs Lisp Intro" is broken - the correct link is http://www.gnu.org/s...cs/emacs-lisp-intro/

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Developer's Corner / Re: Lisp IDE .... Forth, C++ and Basic too

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 24, 2006, 05:26 AM »

By the way - FWIW I typed LISP IDE into Google ... http://www.google.co...yGB&q=Lisp%20IDE

Having got curious (and nostaligic) here is a list of free Forth compilers and IDEs ... http://tatooine.fort...1/fciwin2.html#Forth

There are also Basic and C++ compilers listed on the same page

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Developer's Corner / Re: Lisp IDE

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 24, 2006, 05:25 AM »

You could also try http://www.ufasoft.com/lisp/ (also see http://www.programme...oad.asp?FileID=32407)

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Developer's Corner / Re: Lisp IDE

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 24, 2006, 04:07 AM »

I haven't tried it but here is a free Lisp IDE http://www.lispworks...pworks.html#personal

Gosh this is a blast from the past - I learned Lisp over 20 years ago ... (and now remember nothing!)

How about Forth - that was a lovely language to confuse the plebs with

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Living Room / Re: OK - lets het to know each other a bit ... who are you, what do you do, where do you come from?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 24, 2006, 02:59 AM »

Welcome Harrie