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876

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 24, 2016, 11:42 AM »

EIDE hard disks do not come with a SATA interface.

Your desktop may or may not have SATA connectors on it. In case you have a SATA hard disk in your laptop, but no SATA connector on your motherboard...then you can forget about using your laptop hard disk inside your desktop.

This is a real possibility, the SiS chipset is more often than not of low quality and low in features. And as you have a close to 10 year old PC, you might just be out of luck. Without the name/model of the motherboard in your PC I can't tell. Or it might be the same misery as I had here with such old motherboards (based on the Via chipset, one small step up from SiS). I couldn't install Windows XP on it's SATA ports without a floppy disk. Yes, I actually needed a working floppy, a floppy drive a cable to connect it to the motherboard, a CD/DVD player and a cable to connect it to the motherboard as well. Yes, those boards didn't have an option to boot from USB at all. Then I needed to start the installation procedure from the install CD and after a while it would ask for the floppy with a special driver on it that would make Windows recognize the SATA interface and when all went OK the installation continued.

SATA can be real "fun" on old computers. They gave the PC to you, perhaps not from the kindness of their hearts, but to prevent paying for this crap to throw it in a landfill. This is common in the Netherlands, You'll need to pay for throwing away electronics, you'll need to unload it into a special container where later on someone comes and takes those old consumer electronics apart, removes as much of the toxics as he/she can, throws the remainder into the landfill and recycles the toxics. I assume that there is something similar going on at municipalities in the UK too.

In the municipality where I lived that was actually quite expensive.

Anyway, if the same is true for your motherboard, good luck finding that special driver, a working floppy drive and a working floppy. You can't buy those new anymore, even here in Paraguay. Paraguay is a rather poor country, especially when you leave the cities. About 5 to 6 years ago I was asked to help someone out with preparing written off "clunkers" to be donated to charities for children. The amount of child mothers and single moms is very high, especially outside the cities. There are tribes of indians (Guarani) here where the boss of its elders makes any 11 or 12 year old girl a woman, because of their traditions. It's unprotected, so you can see those girls begging for money at traffic lights, baby in hand. It is also not unheard of that those girls get STDs and associated health problems from this tradition too.

Back to the topic: while I still had a lot of those laying around, it took hours before I had found a working combination of floppy drive and floppy to be able to install an operating system onto such systems. And, mind you, I had all of that hardware and the required software driver still in storage. If you don't...good luck.

10 to 11 years ago the transition to SATA started and not all motherboards were created equal around that time. Your PC is from that era and it uses a chipset that has a bad reputation. Now I'm hoping that your PC isn't plagued by all of this crap, but I am expecting it will be. Hardly worth spending any more time or money on than you already did.

You'd better start saving for a newer "clunker" that is based on a Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. These are much better equipped to handle the extra load that TOR requires and have no problem with Windows 7. And have motherboards that work much better with SATA devices and usually come with a 100/1000 MBit/sec onboard NIC. Those shouldn't be that expensive, as these are 9 to 10 years old.

For reference: I have a 8year old Core2 Duo CPU (2.6GHz) based motherboards (Asus) myself, it has 4GByte of RAM, 4 SATA2 connectors and about 1.5 years ago I put in a Samsung 840 EVO SSD hard disk in it. Even watching 1080p video that is encoded using the x265 video encoder works flawlessly. I also have a 1 year old PC with AMD APU 10 (APU stands for CPU and GPU combined and this one works at 4GHz). It has 8GByte of RAM and I can tell you that it is seriously faster than my old Core2 Duo PC.

I bought the PC case and all other parts for the Core2 Duo PC for 500 USD. Not including a mouse, keyboard and monitor, I easily spent 200 USD on a high quality mouse, keyboard and about 100 USD on a 19 inch monitor. After 5 years I did spent 50 USD on a good new power supply. Last year I bought a much better PC case and all other parts for the AMD APU 10 for 350 USD. Then I spent 150 USD on a 28 inch 1080p monitor and spent 50 USD on a decent enough mouse and keyboard. There was a power supply included with both PC cases, so there was no immediate need to buy separate ones. 750 USD for the old Core2 Duo PC in total, 550 USD for my new PC.

So if you are able to save 350 USD you can buy similar parts and have a much better PC (that won't even blink at the extra load of TOR). I think you can shave 75 to 100 USD off, if you go for a less powerful AMD APU (APU 8 or APU 6), buy a cheaper brand motherboard, less and/or slower RAM, smaller hard disk and PC case. Whatever you do, that new box will work fine with the monitor, mouse and keyboard you are using right now. There are many videos on the internet that show you how to build your own PC, step by step ('Linus tech tips' is a site with lots of videos on how to build PCs). The story above should make it clear that I can/do/want/need to build my own PC's.

As you already have a "zombie" PC (it should be dead, yet it lives) you have time to hunt for computer parts within your means. The reference above is just to indicate that you really don't need to spend that much on brand new PC hardware. People tend to charge a lot for second hand computer parts and if you keep score of what you have spent on those old computer parts to make your old clunker barely usable and what you would spend on brand new parts, the balance tips very quickly to getting brand new parts.

Keeping a modern PC up-to-date is also not that expensive. heck, a 60 USD SSD hard disk made my not-so-modern Core2 Duo PC practically a joy to use again.

877

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 21, 2016, 11:59 AM »

Intel is by far the best brand. And a network card (NIC) is something you should buy and forget about it. Intel cards are very well supported on Windows, Linux, OSX and BSD. If you need to buy a new NIC, seriously, get one from Intel.

Here in Paraguay, the only brand you can get easily is TP-Link. Any other brand you must import yourself. While decent enough for Windows use, it does show some less than stable behavior under BSD. Which I use for my router. Which was previously used (for 8 years) as a Windows PC. I mean to say that it is never certain what the PC you have will be used for over it's total functional life span. You are far better prepared for whatever you want to do with it, using an Intel NIC. TP-Link is the only brand you can get here easily.

TOR is the main cause of your slow surfing speeds. Generally speaking, your traffic is being diverted over several TOR nodes to mask its comings and goings. There are much less nodes available to TOR than for standard traffic. The most optimum route TOR traffic can take to your traffic is therefore much(!) less optimal than with a standard connection. Not only that, the type and connection speeds of TOR nodes that are available to you will vary a lot. The creation and re-assembling of your anonymized traffic will also put an extra load on your CPU too. Privacy/anonymity comes at a price.

From previ8ous post I understand you are dead set on using TOR, so in your case I would use add-blockers/script blockers when surfing. These prevent a lot of ads/scripts to be loaded and reduce the amount of traffic that has to pass through your TOR nodes. Less traffic also means your CPU has less work to do. This will affect the functionality of most of the sites you wish to visit and you will need to spend time honing those blockers to give you the best compromise between functionality and speed of the websites you visit.

If you can, use TOR only when you absolutely need it, that is the biggest speed increase you will ever get. Buying a new NIC for a TOR speed increase won't do you any good. Getting a much bigger plan for your internet connection will help much(!) more with TOR.

For example: say that you currently have a plan that gives you 2MBit/sec download speed and 1MBit/sec upload speed. If you would subscribe to a new internet plan that gives you 10MBit/sec download speed and 5MBit/sec download speed, your TOR setup has now 5 times the amount of bandwidth for the TOR traffic. This has serious impact. Your current NIC can handle 100MBit/sec speeds for up- and download. Even with the new plan almost 90% from the capacity from your current NIC isn't used. As said previously, privacy/anonymity comes at a price.

Consider buying this new/faster NIC only if:
- you have a computer network at home and often transfer GigaByte sized files from one system to the other. In this case you must buy a switch that can handle those faster speeds as well. Else the NIC won't be able to use the extra speed anyway. And that is with the assumption that each of the computers in your network has a 1000MBit/sec NIC in it and you have used the correct (CAT5E or better) network cables (UTP).
- you want to make sure to have better network capabilities support with non-Windows operating systems.

For your current computer setup, your current NIC is more than adequate.

See the amount of hardware on Intel NIC and NICs from other brands? That extra hardware makes sure that the NIC itself doing all the work. All the others need Windows and the CPU in your computer to do the same job.

878

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 20, 2016, 08:42 PM »

In 'Advanced System Settings' you can set the minimum and maximum of storage space you want to reserve for paging. That is usually meant by 'Virtual memory'. This Microsoft kb article explains exactly what you must do to get rid of this error message.

A general tip, in case you didn't know: When you see a window appear with an error or warning message, make sure you have that window "active" and press key combination: CTRL + C. This copies the complete content from that window into the Windows clipboard. This works with any error message window. Use that content with google/bing/duckduckgo/whatever and chances are you'll find the answer for your error in the first 5 links of the search engine results.

879

Living Room / Re: Email whitelist

« Last post by Shades on September 19, 2016, 09:48 PM »

I assume you mean that any mass mail message that you send isn't automatically flagged as spam by the receiver's mail client (or their mail server or their ISP).

The best advice? Use a mass mail service with a good reputation and "swallow" the costs. Tariffs are usually based on the amount of recipients you want to address. But by all means, use a service with a good mail reputation, else your message will end up in the recipients spam box anyway.

If you want to use your own mail-server for this, better think again. There are a lot of organizations that keep a very watchful eye towards mail traffic. And if they see a mail-server they don't know about, pushing a lot of mail messages out in a whatever period they deem short, your mail server gets flagged and you must request them to lift this flag. Until they do so, don't expect any mail from your server to arrive anywhere.

SpamHaus is a good example of such an organization, but there are many, many more of these organizations. It can take a week or two before you are off their shit list. However, if your server is again flagged as spammer in a grace period they define, getting of that list will take a lot longer. Do this often enough and your mail-server gets a permanent ban.

Now I say the whole time: 'your mail-server' but you can substitute that term with 'your domain' but that won't change the story. Getting flagged as spammer is easy, getting rid of that is time consuming.

If you are still hell bent on using your own mail server, make sure it is configured correctly. And that takes a whole lot more than just "install this (free) mailserver software and you're done." There are so many reasons for your message to be undeliverable. And some mail servers configured to be very picky about what they deliver to their users. It usually takes quite some time, money and expertise to make mass mailing an option.

Actually, more often than not, it is cheaper to send mass mail messages through a mass mail service than to do it yourself. Besides this, mass mail services come with tools that let you create your mass mail message very easily and you can be certain that the message will show up nicely on whatever device the recipient receives your mass mail message.

Making a nice looking HTML formatted message yourself that shows up correctly in webmail (browser), mail clients on PC/Mac/Linux, mail clients on Android/Apple/MS tablets or smart phones...that is a serious exercise in frustration. Not to mention time-consuming.

Honestly, if you don't do weekly mass mailings to a big amount of recipients, the headache and frustration of doing this yourself isn't worth the measly sum you have to pay to mass mail service to do this for you.

880

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: Synchronize 2 usb disk

« Last post by Shades on September 18, 2016, 01:49 PM »

PathSync v0.35.
Very small (200KByte extracted, including 140KByte of source code), open source and portable sync software. For its size a very capable synchronizer. You need to indicate which drives/folders need to be synced, choose the direction of the sync and after that hit the 'Analyze' button so get a list of the differences and the action PathSync is about to execute. Click on the 'Synchronize' button to do the actual syncing (duh).

Optionally you can apply filters for files and/folders to be included/excluded and you can store these settings in a text-based configuration file for later use. You can make as many of these configuration files as you want. You can even configure a (portable) diff program to help you figure out which file does need to be synced or not, in case you have a doubt.

The speed with which it analyzes differences between folders is a very pleasant surprise. And it works on every version of the Windows operating system (including Windows 10).

881

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is Google Translate suddenly greeting me "Error 403 (Forbidden)" ?

« Last post by Shades on September 17, 2016, 02:09 PM »

Perhaps they think you have bested their translation service and act like sore losers about it...

On a more serious note: a string of text is passed to Google when you do the translation request. This string of text is like to be formatted in a certain way. Chances are that this format isn't accepted anymore by Google. Or maybe it is accepted from logged in users only. While they do have several impressive server parks...those are "hammered" 24/7. Google isn't a charity and with other Google services they have seen the impact when they applied the policy change to provide the best/full options of those services to logged in users.

It is likely that Google ((more) actively) implemented this policy now also to their translation service.

Now I don't have the translation option either in my Firefox 47.0.1 with only 10 add-ons/extensions (5 are for adblocking/security, 3 for development, one for tab handling and the last one for downloads). From your previous postings I understand your Firefox has much(!) more add-ons/extensions, so I think it is safe to assume one of those gives you the translation option in the context menu. Perhaps that one needs an update or allows you to alter the string in such a way that it is accepted again by Google. 

882

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 16, 2016, 06:18 PM »

SiS....that is more or less the "bottom of the barrel" brand for computer hardware. Looking for SiS-661GX, Google gives me this. So that is not the brand of your computer, it is the chipset. And that chipset is commonly used on motherboards with CPU socket 775. This is a very, very old type of processor (Pentium 4 class). I certainly hope that you didn't buy this computer, but that you got it as a present.

Now I know the brand of your motherboard and the CPU socket, I wouldn't upgrade your CPU even if you had that option as I expect the functional life of this computer to be (very) short. Especially with a SiS chipset. That would be a serious waste of money.

It is usually not a problem to buy a new network card and use that instead of the onboard one. 10/100 is more than enough for most use-cases for a internet connection at home. Getting a new faster network card just to connect to internet won't make a difference. That is, if the one you have still functions ok. New network cards hardly cost anything, You should be able to get a decent brand network card under 10 USD. Intel is the most stable/best brand and you are likely to get one of those on eBay or web store for that price.

I think we are getting a bit side-tracked here at this thread 

883

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 15, 2016, 09:51 AM »

There is no technical reason that prevents you from using your laptop's hard disk in your desktop.

However, it is more than likely that the Windows 7 from your dead laptop is an OEM licensed version. That means MS doesn't allow you to use that Windows 7 license key in your current desktop PC. There are many more restrictions on how you are allowed to use an OEM licensed version of Windows, but I won't bore you with that.

Besides this, the hardware inside the laptop and desktop PC is very different. In general, most Windows installations that are transferred from one PC to another try to install whatever they need to copy with the hardware changes automatically...which usually results in such a mess that you need to re-install from scratch.

Transferring a hard disk with a Windows installation on it between computers with identical hardware (and that includes similar devices being connected at similar PCI (express) lanes) most of the time does work. But it is still something you are not allowed to do with an OEM licensed version of Windows.

Retail versions of Windows are much more expensive than OEM versions, but those are allowed to be installed on any one(!) computer, such as a desktop or laptop.

You can find out which version of Windows you have by opening the Start menu and right-click on the 'My Computer' link inside that menu. A context menu should appear where you can select option 'Properties'. When you do that a window will open where you see the current Windows version (and service pack) near the top of this window.

Looks like you can still download XP Service Pack 3 from FileHippo. Maybe there is still a forgotten corner in the Microsoft website where you can download SP3 for XP still, but by the time you find it there, you will likely have downloaded it from Filehippo in the background.

If you do add the laptop hard disk in your desktop PC, you shouldn't have to worry. According to this Wikipedia page the core NTFS file system didn't change between XP and Windows 7. So you should be to access or write files on that hard disk without problems. 

884

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 13, 2016, 08:31 PM »

Tnx. I'm using an old desktop celeron; works good with 2gb ram.
The Avira link download failed to open; maybe because I'm using Windows XP. I'll try the oldapps version;
http://www.oldapps.c...hp?old_antivir=16155

-holt (September 13, 2016, 04:14 PM)

Thing is that you shouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security by getting an AV from oldapps.com. New apps aren't necessarily better than old ones, that is true. Anti-virus software is the exception to the rule. Don't expect to get the latest anti-virus signatures for older versions of AV software. Those signature files are the main reason AV software is able to detect viruses.

If that didn't happen yet with your AV software, it will. And when that happens, you essentially are running your computer without AV. Actually it is worse, you lose precious resources on checking files for old and/or obsolete viruses.

Run as much script and ad blockers as you are comfortable with ('ublock origin' and 'umatrix' recommended), get the best/aggressive firewall that still works with XP and use a lot of common sense when surfing. That will help you more in the long run than obsolete AV software ever will. A (real-time) malware scanner would be preferable too. Anti-malware software has the same problem as AV software under XP.

If you can expand your RAM to 4GByte, then Windows 7 will run quite smooth. Even with a Celeron. AV software support for Windows 7 is much better and will be around for quite some time. While Windows 7 will work adequately within 2GByte of RAM, a lack of CPU "horsepower" will make that experience painful. 

885

General Software Discussion / Re: how should I roll back java?

« Last post by Shades on September 13, 2016, 01:13 AM »

Not sure which of the free AV's still support Windows XP.

BitDefender, Panda, Avira and Avast are the usual suspects when I fix computers for others.

ClamWin is the only open source AV I know and I would guess that it still supports XP. It doesn't come with real-time protection by default. There are 3rd party tools that make real-time protection possible with ClamWin, but usually at the cost of resources, something Celeron-based processors do not have much of. Not in desktop PCs and definitely not in laptops.

886

General Software Discussion / Re: Hacking Windows 10's My Computer context menu?

« Last post by Shades on September 11, 2016, 10:29 PM »

Which Windows 10 edition are running?
Did you try to 'Run as admin' regedit.exe and import your registry files using its GUI?

Specific files and folders (especially on the C:\ partition) have been getting less and less accessible with each new iteration of Windows since Windows Vista. And the 'Run as admin' functionality has been degrading since Vista too. All done for extra stability and security, as Microsoft deemed best.

However, by typing 'regedit.exe' (in full!) you should be able to open the graphical registry editor, where you have 'Import' and 'Export' menu options that handle your registry files. It might even give you a more descriptive reason if it isn't able to import your file(s).

The only version of Windows 10 I have access to is Windows 10 Enterprise. Not sure if Windows 10 Home comes with 'regedit.exe' or not. I always operate under the assumption that every version of Windows comes with this editor, but I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft removed/disabled it in Windows 10 Home editions. Unfortunately, now and in the future I will have no way to verify this for you...as I have absolutely no interest to work with anything less functional than Windows 10 Pro (from the Windows 10 family of products).   

887

General Software Discussion / Re: calendar that is happy in Windows and on tablet

« Last post by Shades on September 11, 2016, 09:53 PM »

Further research revealed: https://www.ominder.com/  which seems to be quite interesting and free/cheap. Not like this one.

888

General Software Discussion / Re: calendar that is happy in Windows and on tablet

« Last post by Shades on September 11, 2016, 09:28 PM »

As designs go, that pimlical site is fugly indeed.

There used to be something called OpenCal. This would allow you to create your own schedule, look into shared calendars from others (friends, family, coworkers) and there was an option for businesses to share their events as well. But it was gobbled up by Groupon in 2011 and well, nothing.

Google provided this overview of alternatives (https://www.getapp.com/customer-management-software/a/opencal/alternatives/). Perhaps one of them works for your intends and purposes.

889

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 12 Released

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2016, 06:22 PM »

As long as there is no push to a new version of Dopus, how relevant is the period between new versions? And if the "grace period" for upgrading your existing license is indefinite...there is no added pressure on existing price conscious license holders to upgrade (I didn't see this on the official directory opus upgrade webpage).

michaelkenward is right about the 'under-the-hood' changes of Windows 10, which could negatively affect the functionality/performance from earlier Dopus versions. Better to be ready and prepared for this. The added functionality does warrant a new version number for Dopus in my eyes.

In short, I don't see much problems if there are 30 months between version instead of the 36 months suggested here. Didn't find that tidbit of information not on their website, admittedly I wasn't looking too hard for this info. Nothing to get your panties in a twist about it.

890

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Shades on September 10, 2016, 03:02 PM »

This is how every error message should be represented:
https://httpstatusdogs.com/

891

General Software Discussion / Re: Dropbox alternatives

« Last post by Shades on September 07, 2016, 09:40 AM »

If you mainly use dropbox as a way to share files between devices, than you could consider setting up your own "cloud" (NextCloud is open source and quite easy to setup yourself (in combination with XAMPP or similar tool.)). Besides an online interface, it comes with clients for iP(ad/hone), Android, PC, Mac and Linux.

But if you mainly use dropbox as a way to store data off-site, then hosting your own "cloud" isn't such a stellar idea. Setting up your own "cloud" is initially a headache and you remain responsible for maintenance/upkeep, it also gives you much more control to share data between family and friends, if you so desire.

First, make sure that if you setup your "cloud", that your ISP doesn't object against such things. Or that you don't exceed the limits of your metered internet plan, if you were tricked into getting such a type of internet connection.

892

General Software Discussion / Re: No video after resuming from sleep - Windows 10 Anniversary Edition

« Last post by Shades on September 05, 2016, 12:44 AM »

Failing fans on GPUs is quite common where I live. Subtropical ambient temperatures and often humid...that doesn't help with longevity of fans. That is to say, GPU fans. Case fans are much "sturdier" in my experience and if you don't care much about the looks of the GPU inside your case, then try to fit a case fan onto the heatsink of the GPU.

Fugly, but your GPU is getting lots of cooling and depending on the model case fan, it can be a very quiet solution. Even if you cannot mount a case fan directly, putting an extra case fan as close as possible to the GPU also works quite well. Especially if you can make some sort of funnel to pull the heat from the GPU. Case fans are much easier to replace or maintain and usually cost much less than a new GPU.

893

General Software Discussion / Re: Trigger the Send function in a new email from command line

« Last post by Shades on September 05, 2016, 12:25 AM »

While blat offers their command-line mailer for free (non-commercial use only), I found it to behave problematic in an automatized process, where I generate a custom mail message with attachment. Then I found CMail (commercial use allowed) and that worked much more reliable in my scenario. Perhaps this is of some use to you too.

894

General Software Discussion / Re: Webapp from an existing database to manage digital collections

« Last post by Shades on September 03, 2016, 02:03 PM »

https://www.sqlmaestro.com/products/mysql/phpgenerator/  - While it isn't cheap (159 USD is their lowest cost license), it appears to be able to do what you ask. Looks like they do have a trial version.

They have similar software for Oracle, Firebird, Postgres, MS-SQL, DB2, SQL lite, SQL anywhere and universal (ODBC) databases.

895

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Shades on August 31, 2016, 07:54 PM »

I foresee the return of the 'luggables' again...

896

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: How to consolidate separate/disparate CHS databases into a single one?

« Last post by Shades on August 27, 2016, 02:58 PM »

Never installed the software and haven't got any other experience with CHS.

There is a manual way of doing this if those CHS databases store their content in a text-based file (which you can easily find out by opening these files in the text-editor of your choice). You might be able to copy the content of one database file into the database you want to keep.

If these are text based files, links to images (and their associated content) should remain intact.

Re-attaching orphans you could do by matching their ID with the clip ID you desire.

However, if CHS databases are spread over multiple files, even if these are text-based, you will have a harder time (un-)matching IDs for all the tasks you have planned.

There is a piece of software called: FlowHeater Designer (free and commercial license). This software can create a 'connector' between databases and/or files for easy import/export of data in the way that you want. Not nearly as powerful as MS BizzTalk from yesteryear, but it uses those concepts quite well.

897

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop tool for programmatically removing URL's from PDF files

« Last post by Shades on August 27, 2016, 09:41 AM »

Do you use DNS servers from your ISP or public ones?

A public one, such as OpenDNS (P: 208.67.222.222, S: 208.67.220.220) has (free and commercial) filter options that will help protect your users from themselves when they click on links to bad sites.

But if you are a diehard, run your own/company DNS server and have much more control over what sites your users are able to visit at any given moment.
Or if you channel internet access from all your users through a hardware or software router device, try to find out if it supports the use of "blacklists". If that is the case, add whatever site to that blacklist and your users are protected as well. Do keep that "blacklist" up-to-date though. All of these pointers do not require you to batch edit PDF files for bad/hidden links. You might want to take inventory of new bad links in new pdf files that come in by batch/manual processing these.

Some routers even let you make a custom "landing" HTML page that is served to a user who tries to visit any link in that blacklist.

For example: I use an old AMD dual core based white-box PC with 2GByte of RAM and 3 network cards in combination with OPNsense router software (FreeBSD). I have 2 different ISPs, each using one network card, the last network card is used to connect to a big switch that provides internet to all computers  hooked up to that switch (by cable or access points). A rather basic setup...but I like things simple.

You manage this OPNsense router software in your browser and gives you a lot of control about what your users can or cannot do on the either the network or the internet at any given time. Routing, NAT, Firewall, DNS, DHCP, Blacklists, VPN, graphical overviews of (current and historical) traffic, it does everything. The amount of options it comes with, might be overwhelming at first, but once it is setup as you like it...you don't want to use any other system anymore. And there are free/open source/commercial expansions available if the standard functionality isn't enough for your intents and purposes.

The OPNsense router software is a fork of the pfSense router software, which is in turn a fork of the mO0nwall software. If you are interested in playing with these software routers, there is a lot of forums and instructional videos available for free support. Especially for pfSense. But if so inclined, you also are able to buy books and premium support for whatever exotic wish (regarding network setup) you might have.

My choice of OPNsense 16.1 over pfSense 2.3 is mainly its interface. Although pfSense version 2.3 has a drastically improved interface, I just like the OPNsense one better.

898

Living Room / Re: Hidden Netflix Marathon Gems to Watch Online

« Last post by Shades on August 26, 2016, 09:15 PM »

I'm in complete agreement with wraith808 regarding Stranger Things. Best to see it without knowing too much. And for some (read: me) it is a nice trip to memory lane too.

899

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop tool for programmatically removing URL's from PDF files

« Last post by Shades on August 26, 2016, 08:53 AM »

http://pdfedit.petricek.net/index_e.html  - this one should be able to what you ask for free.

Other non-adobe PDF editors that might prove useful:
http://www.tracker-s...t/pdf-xchange-editor
http://code-industry.net/pdfeditor.php
http://www.4dots-sof...pdf-metadata-editor/

900

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop tool for programmatically removing URL's from PDF files

« Last post by Shades on August 26, 2016, 12:22 AM »

https://appligent.com/server-software/redax-enterprise-server/

Not for free, but the redax server product of the linked company looks to be up to your task.