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8376
Living Room / Re: I need advice: which laptop to buy?
« Last post by 40hz on January 17, 2011, 06:52 AM »

None of the laptops I saw being advertised over the last months came with a SSD drive, would I need to have this one custom-built? Or is there something out there that's a fit?

Any pointers or feedback welcome!
-brotherS (January 17, 2011, 06:26 AM)

You should be able to install one yourself fairly easily depending on the laptop you get. The usual way most people do it is to is to purchase a caddy adapter that holds the SSD. With this arrangement, the SSD replaces the optical drive. Since you want to watch DVDs. that's not going to be a workable solution for you.
 
However, you can also replace the HD with an SSD if you can't find a laptop that comes with one. The procedure is straightforward provided the contents of your harddrive don't exceed the capacity of your SSD. If they do, you will need to do some file pruning and bakup before you can switch over.

Here's the steps:

  • image the laptop's harddrive
  • remove the HD
  • install the SSD
  • copy back the harddrive image to the SSD

That's it!

If it's a new machine, and it ships with a system recovery/reinstallation DVD (or let's you make one) the project gets even easier. In this case there's nothing to backup or clone because you haven't used the PC yet. In this case:

  • remove theHD
  • install the SSD
  • install the factory OS and applications from the OEM recovery DVD

Get yourself an external enclosure for the HD and you can put it to use as a backup device.

Some companies offer kits that contain everything (external enclosure for the old harddrive, cloning software, etc.) that you'll need to do this easily. But they add expense to an already expensive component, so it may not be worth it to you to buy a complete kit. You don't really need it. It just makes things more convenient.

There's a video that shows the process using a Kensington SSD laptop replacement kit. Watch it here. There's probably better how-to videos up on YouTube.

Luck! :Thmbsup:

8377
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: That NANY badge
« Last post by 40hz on January 16, 2011, 08:41 PM »
I was thinking that the number of times you participated in NANY might be considered more important than which year it happened in. Maybe what you could try is to provide two badges. One to indicate you participated either in any NANY - or possibly just the most recent. The second badge could then have a changeable numeric element to acknowledge the times someone's participated. Doing it this way eliminates the need for a multiple badges to show the same thing.

As long as there's a "Hall of Fame" of Honor Roll type page with the names and the years of participation, anybody who wanted could just look it up if they were that interested.

But again, I don't think it's so important what year somebody did NANY. IMO what's important  is the fact someone did it at all. And additional distinction comes from how many times the effort was repeated.

Just thinking out loud.
8378
Living Room / Re: Miss America Hates Wikileaks, Might Be An Idiot =D
« Last post by 40hz on January 16, 2011, 08:05 PM »
Pleased to learn she's interested in pursuing a career in politics. I'm sure I'll sleep better nights knowing that. :)
8379
Living Room / Re: Forum / Thread Etiquette
« Last post by 40hz on January 16, 2011, 02:57 PM »
Also known as a "bozo filter."

IMO not a generally good idea.  :)
8380
General Software Discussion / Re: Word Processor OS
« Last post by 40hz on January 16, 2011, 02:31 PM »
+2! :-*

Fan-freekin'-tastic!

4wd, you da man!  :Thmbsup:


8381
DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Strangeness in posting...
« Last post by 40hz on January 16, 2011, 02:22 PM »
@Mouser - Sleep-posting? Intriguing idea + great descriptive term. Is that your own?
8382
General Software Discussion / Re: Let's try to create our own suite for internet security.
« Last post by 40hz on January 16, 2011, 08:49 AM »
For this discussion, do we also want to consider boundary defense measures?

There are several free (or mostly free) products available for download that can provide a major boost to security and network performance over the consumer grade (Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, et al.) router/switch combos most people use.

I'm thinking of the community editions of products like:


None of these products are difficult to work with. Maybe they'e not suited for absolute beginners - but none of them should pose much challenge to a moderately experienced PC user. Nice browser-based front ends too. No need to keep a keyboard or monitor attached once they're set up.

Just to give you some idea :


clearos-small.png    Untangle.gif

All of the above have community editions that are free for the download. Most are licensed under some flavor of GPL. However, if you're going to use them in a business setting, please be sure to double-check the EULAs. Some of these products may also include supplemental software that is not under GPL. In most cases, free personal use is permitted.

Since these are dedicated 'security appliance' applications you'll need something to run them on. All can be loaded on relatively low-end PCs. You could build a bespoke mini-PC, or use almost any old desktop or laptop you haven't gotten around to recycling.

Take that 'old box,' throw in a second NIC, run the installer, and you're ready to go.  :Thmbsup:

Cool tools.  8)

-----------------
@SB- If not in this thread, maybe we could start a second one?
8383
DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Problems with attaching an attachment to a post...
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 05:13 PM »
yes i wonder.. did you attach an image to the post you lost?
-mouser (January 15, 2011, 01:54 PM)

Originally no. All text plus several pasted URLs. The disappearing act happened after I had been editing for a while. When I finally went to save - poof! Which was odd because I hit preview several times and that worked just fine.
8384
Living Room / Re: What Do You Think About ANONYMOUS?
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 04:31 PM »
Dunno. To my way of thinking, Anonymous seems to want their cake and eat it too.  "Let's be revolutionaries - but not stick our necks out too far in the process."

Might work if the world were as virtual as some people wish it were.

FWIW I have yet to learn of any revolution or seismIc social change that took place without a clearly named individual being identified with the cause and leading it. People follow another person into battle. The cause may generate the buzz that sets the stage and bring about a critical mass.  But AFAIK it always an individual that serves as the catalyst for action. So whether it's Alexander, Khan, Buddah, Christ, Spartacus, George Washington, Ayotollah Kohmeni, Gorbechev - or even Stalin or Hitler - people look for names to follow. And truth be told, for someone willing to serve as a human sacrifice should push truly come to shove. (Note: it usually does.)

To succeed, every revolution needs its hero - and often its martyrs.

Maybe the Facebook generation will operate differently from the rest of human history when it comes to this. Perhaps this will be a turning point - the first revolution by anonymous proxy.

But I'll hold off on sending champagne and flowers for now.  
8385
DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Problems with attaching an attachment to a post...
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 02:00 PM »
Possibly related to this issue as well?

https://www.donation....msg231057#msg231057

https://www.donation....msg230106#msg230106

One thing I have noticed. If you're using the Quick Reply, then hit preview, then continue editing/writing in the modify message box for long periods of time, there's a very good chance you'll get a server reset notice. It has happened to me often enough that I now do a select all/copy before I posting unless I'm using my own text editor.

Seems to indicate there's a timing issue somewhere with the database or a script. Does a new message entry tombstone out if it says open too long before being committed?

8386
DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Problems with attaching an attachment to a post...
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 01:52 PM »
Possibly related to this issue as well?

https://www.donation....msg231057#msg231057

https://www.donation....msg230106#msg230106

8387
Living Room / Re: What Do You Think About ANONYMOUS?
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 09:05 AM »
Yes. We'll see.   :)

8388
Living Room / Re: What Do You Think About ANONYMOUS?
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 08:37 AM »
I'm curious to see what form their "series of global protests" will take.

8389
DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Problems with attaching an attachment to a post...
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 08:30 AM »
Happens to me regularly since the server switchover.

It may be related to image dimensions on the initial post. Once any dimension gets up over 600 the problem starts cropping up for me. It also doesn't seem to like PNG format if you want to display the image as a thumbnail.

So for now, I try to stick to GIF or JPG and watch the dimensions. That and try again when it happens.

Luck! :)




8390
General Software Discussion / Re: Word Processor OS
« Last post by 40hz on January 15, 2011, 07:11 AM »
It has been abandoned for way more than a year - no support - but a number of users are ("were"; the forum is of course also dying; last post was in Nov. 2010) quite happy with Presto. Sadly, a full key still is $20, but the trial is fair;
-Curt (January 15, 2011, 04:42 AM)

It's been abandoned but they're still selling it? :huh:
-Deozaan (January 15, 2011, 05:02 AM)

Talk about an innovative business model!

I like it!  :Thmbsup: ;D
8391
Activation/License/Language Help / Re: A piece of Sh**
« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2011, 02:16 PM »
doing this to people

Hehehe -- "to", not "for". :D
-Renegade (January 14, 2011, 09:54 AM)

Precisely!
-app103 (January 14, 2011, 02:09 PM)

app103 is a true 'take no prisoners' techno-goddess...  :Thmbsup:

Fear her!  :tellme:


 ;D

8392
Living Room / Re: Should I work for free?
« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2011, 02:06 PM »
I wish I had that chart when I was first starting out.  :tellme:

   I probably wouldn't have been any less stupid. :huh:

      But I certainly would have been far less gullible.  8)

May all your nephew's internships be paid internships.  :Thmbsup:

;D
8393
Activation/License/Language Help / Re: A piece of Sh**
« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2011, 11:08 AM »

I have to give you praise for your patience, because if it were me I'd just reinstall from scratch and set it up the way I like, big ol' scary taskbar on the right and all, and stick one of my wallpapers on her desktop. (I've had no complaints doing this to people yet  ;))
-app103 (January 14, 2011, 09:33 AM)

No praise deserved - for patience or anything else.

It was one of THOSE projects. Y'know... somebody you like asks you to help a person you normally wouldn't want to be stuck in the same room with. "Run away! Run away!" I'm sure you've had your share of those.

Besides, I didn't think it would be wise to presume anything with this particular woman. Very prickly.


 :tellme:
8394
Activation/License/Language Help / Re: A piece of Sh**
« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2011, 06:10 AM »
Wow, took you 43 minutes to write this crap...  :D just kidding.

If you need more of that 'business', I can refer some of my family members and their notebooks.
-PhilB66 (January 14, 2011, 05:15 AM)

Oh! That's because I wrote it, then got occupied for a bit with the (fixed now) laptop, and forgot to send it.  ;D

Note: about a third of the total time (~5 hrs) was spent making backups, pulling a disk image, reboots, browsing the DoCo forums, getting coffee, and other non-interactive stuff. And the desktop that "hours and hours" were supposedly spent on? It's just a theme you can download from the Deviant Art website. What must have taken her "hours and hours" was finding it. There are something like fifty available 3rd-party themes sitting on this PC!
 :-\

-----
re: "Mo' biz"

If you got any more like that, let me give you the number of my most disliked competitor.

I'm a firm believer in sharing the wealth. :Thmbsup:
8395
Activation/License/Language Help / Re: A piece of Sh**
« Last post by 40hz on January 14, 2011, 04:40 AM »
Funny. It's now 4:55am...

I've been dealing with a very irate person's technical issue since about 9:45PM yesterday. She's a self-described 'expert user' who hard-crashed her Thinkpad after messing with things in the registry and system32 folder. Supposedly, this was done at the behest of the notebook manufacturer's phone support people. (Yeah...ok...maybeeeeee...)

Of course that doesn't explain why there's an almost complete copy of her My Documents folder inside her Favorites folder inside her My Documents folder! Plus one more complete copy of the previous mess in a folder named Favorites which is sitting on her desktop. Nor does it explain why the restoration recovery partition seems to be missing half its files. Or why...

The manufacturer recommended she backup her data and then do a full "factory restore" to fix the current problem. She does not want that. She has spent "hours and hours" customizing her desktop. She wants the laptop "fixed back to exactly the way it was before - except working." (Interesting way to phrase it, don't you think?)

She's a 'very good friend' of the very important client who gave her my name.  :-\

Long night...

Kinda goes with the turf.

Welcome to the world of tech support. ;D

Update: It is now 5:38am...

8396
General Software Discussion / Re: Let's try to create our own suite for internet security.
« Last post by 40hz on January 13, 2011, 08:54 PM »
@Bamse - I was familiar with Ketarin. Use it all the time. But SARDU was a new one for me. Thanks for sharing that. Looks likely to become a very useful addition to the toolkit.
 :Thmbsup:
8397
General Software Discussion / Re: Let's try to create our own suite for internet security.
« Last post by 40hz on January 13, 2011, 06:56 PM »
At the risk of getting flamed, I'd like to add any live Linux CD to the mix for mega-safe browsing.

Very difficult to infect read-only optical media. At least last time I checked.

Pick your favorite flavor. The latest Ubuntu 10 releases finally got wireless fixed. Most NICs will now work right out if the box. It actually works with my old Belkin USB Wireless G MIMO (FD9050) - which happens to be one of the more notoriously fidgety NICs out there. It even gets fussy under Windows. No wonder Belkin abandoned it.

FWIW It performs flawlessly using Ubuntu's 10.04 32-bit live CD.
8398
Living Room / Re: R.I.P. MySpace
« Last post by 40hz on January 13, 2011, 03:18 PM »
Can't wait to see where some of the idiots who were still hanging in there end up roosting once they shut it down completely...
-40hz (January 12, 2011, 09:29 AM)

Regular users will probably move to Facebook, and bands will probably move to Last.fm and those with CC licensed works to Jamendo, unless something even better comes along.
-app103 (January 12, 2011, 09:47 AM)

That's fine.

But I was really more wondering where the idiots would end up.

I want to make it a point never to go there. ;D
8399
Developer's Corner / Re: "competitive upgrade" - is it ethical?
« Last post by 40hz on January 13, 2011, 03:09 PM »

Wherever in the world if a director doesn't do all they can to maximize profits for shareholders they are in a breach of trust situation between themselves and the shareholders and will probably be voted off at the next shareholder meeting.

-Carol Haynes (January 13, 2011, 02:49 PM)

@Carol- Agree on all your points except for the above as it relates to what goes on in the States.

Over here shareholders have virtually no real say in the composition of the board of directors. Most shareholders mindlessly proxy their votes over to the board, or vote the slate whenever it's presented. And that's assuming they even read what they receive. Part of the problem is that large chunks of voting stock are held by mutual funds and other investment companies. So while it may be possible to mount a proxy battle, in practice it's extremely difficult to assemble enough small share votes to do anything. It usually takes something just short of major civil disobedience at a shareholder's meeting to get somebody sacked. Most times, the person in the crosshair negotiates his/her "resignation" (complete with heavy bonus and buyout package) to "spare the firm" the "expense and inconvenience" of a prolonged proxy struggle.

"So it goes"  -Kurt Vonnegut  :-\
8400
Developer's Corner / Re: "competitive upgrade" - is it ethical?
« Last post by 40hz on January 13, 2011, 02:55 PM »
Eh, OK, I think it would not hurt anything at this point - it is RealWorld Icon Editor - as the name suggest, tool to primarily make .ico files or other application or web graphics.
-vlastimil (January 13, 2011, 02:00 PM)

Looks to be a very nice app. Wish I had the talent and know-how to write something like that.  :Thmbsup:

How about also identifying the competition's product (IcoFX by any chance?) and maybe provide a link to their advert page so we can analyze what's happening with them and maybe offer you some better suggestions for how to deal with or work around it?

Note: you're in position 9 on a Google search for icon editor. That puts you just "below the fold" on the average monitor. You'll want to do something to improve your ranking since there are 5 competing products (1 which got two separate hits) a Wikipedia page, and 2 big download sites above you.

Also - Wikipedia has a page with a list of notable icon editors here. I'm not sure what the criteria is for being considered "notable" but you should try to get your product listed on that page too while you're at it.

------
Note: if you do a Bing search on vlastimil and software it gives two possibly good hits. One is a guy that wrote a single free app. The second pointed to RealWorld. Figured that had to be you. Especially with the competition for software in that area.
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