Info and forum posts by 'bytemaster'

RE: Nigerian Fraud

I think this is brilliant.

It is worth following the links out to the other sites.
www.anewidentity.com

www.buydhmo.com

RE: British courts System, what a joke!

You had to pay to get your stolen van back! (Where is the smiley for shocked speechless)

RE: AVG - Latest Update

Avast. I have used it for years and never had cause to complain. I think it is still the only free AV to support IMAP. Fairly light on resources and has never let me down. I have tried Avira and AVG but have never seen any advantage to them.

The M$ AV seems to be getting some very positive reviews, but more as a `making good progress` rather than `an excellent finished product`. I think that recent reviews have shown it still has a lower detection rate than the competition, but that it is maturin far faster than most people would expect from M$

RE: Ins & Outs Of Benefits

Quote:
Ive been told that if i stay at the house more than 2 nights a week (planning to go fri-mon) then that counts as coinhabiting and she could lose what she claims. Someone else told me any regular stop over would cost her the benefit.

I suspect that the second piece of advice is more accurate, I don`t think that there is a `two nights per week` rule. You need to get some authoritative advice on this. Check with your local Job Centre and the CAB.

BTW. Your situation sucks and I truly feel very sorry for you, and hope that things improve (in whatever way they can). I am a divorced father with two young daughters, but I am in the fortunate position of having unrestricted access, and the girls spend every weekend with me.

RE: Nostalga - Trying to remember old 8 bit computers

Quote:
It was definitely similar in size to a Spectrum or Oric 1...

Jupiter Ace?

RE: Nostalga - Trying to remember old 8 bit computers

Nascom 2 (about 3000 hand soldered joints), ZX Spectrum, BBC Model B, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga 1000, Amstrad CPC 464 and CPC 6128, Atari Portfolio, Psion MC400 and Psion Series 7. Since then it has all been x86 based and all the fun has gone. However I am awaiting delivery of a Zipit Z2 and that should be a bit of fun.

Coincidenatlly I was telling my girls that in 1980 I bought, and assembled a 16KB memory extension board for the Nascom - yes that is 16 KILObytes, cost me £178. For comparison I was holding a couple of 8GB microSD cards that cost me £20!

£11,392 per MB then vs £0.00125 now. That is 9,113,600:1 ignoring the decreased value of £. The board would have been about 8" x 8" so to complete this boring fact fest, enough boards for 16GB would cover more than 10 acres.

RE: What a Joke?

In the same vein

This item was edited on Thursday, 25th February 2010, 17:56

RE: Car Advice...

Paid a bit under £300 last year for replacement on my 03 plate Renault Megane Cabriolet - Independent garage.

Going to need a new clutch, anybody have an idea as to what that is going to cost me?

RE: OPERA

I do use Opera, but mainly for its email handling. The browser isn`t bad but I do find that I have to use Firefox or Chrome for some sites.

I do like Chrome, from the little that I have used it, and will try to use it more.

My frustration with Firefox tends to come from the memory usage, which is something they have failed to control.

RE: Chimley pots

This could become a very long thread.

My current peeve is the misuse of `like` as in "I like, didn`t say anything.", others are "give it me" rather than "give it to me", and "he won me" rather than "he won" or "he beat me".

I do not claim that my use of English is perfect, but some of these abuses do irritate.

RE: Just won a small arguement with Vodafone - so why am I still ticked off?

I won`t bore you with my 30+ email exchange with Vodafone.

In a nutshell:
Me "I want to terminate my contract please."

Urmi/Dhaneshwari/Nizel/Rohit/Minaz/Diwakar/Pramod/Ismail/.....
"You still have 12 months left on your contract"

Me "No I have the contract in front of me, it clearly states 12 months."

Urmi/Dhaneshwari/Nizel/Rohit/Minaz/Diwakar/Pramod/Ismail/.....
"You still have 12 months left on your contract. We cannot send you a copy"

Me "I don`t need a copy. I have the original here. You are welcome to inspect it at some convenient time."

Urmi/Dhaneshwari/Nizel/Rohit/Minaz/Diwakar/Pramod/Ismail/.....
"You still have 12 months left on your contract. We cannot send you a copy"

Repeat literally 12 times. So cancelled the DD then someone from Vodafone UK emailed me to confirm that I was correct.

Oh sorry. I did bore you.

RE: 80gb ps3 or ps3 slim

It looks like the fat may soon have its security broke open and exploited, indications are that this may not extend to the slim.

RE: help please. beer spilled on netbook

I was going to suggest using a straw to recover the lost beer, but I now see that it is the keyboard that was causing concern. Are you sure that you have your priorities right?

RE: ACER Revo/ Linux question

Sorry, me being ambiguous. I meant wireless keyboard and mouse. They all have wifi b/g.

There are several choices for running XBMC. You can run it as an application under Windows or your chosen flavour of Unix. As an alternative you can install the XBMC linux distro. This is built on a stripped down version of Ubuntu and will boot straight into XBMC. It is basically an OS setup dedicated to running XBMC.

If you choose to use the XBMC distro then you can either install to hard drive or to an SD Card (or USB stick). If you choose the latter route you can either set the bios to boot from SD, or at boot time you can hit the function key that gives the boot device selection menu (f12 from memory but I could be wrong).

There is plenty of info out on the web, and from the comments I have seen, the XBMC on SD card seems to be a popular route to go.

RE: ACER Revo/ Linux question

These are great little units, I have just ordered my third. If you need wireless and W7 then the more expensive bundles may be worth considering. I have only bought the cheapest so far.

I have additional RAM but I haven`t actually installed it yet. I did buy one of the chepies yesterday and ebuyer are offering a bundle with a 2GB stick of RAM which save a few quid (just under £30 for the 2GB)

One of these is used by the girls for Internet WP etc. This unit has Ubuntu and XP dual boot, I don`t think they realise they are using Linux, they just think the wallpaper is drab.

With 1GB I only notice a slow down when I have say 15 tabs open in Firefox, another 2GB will fix that.

Have XBMC installed under Ubuntu and it runs well (always used to use it on the XBOX1)

The `Linux` that is supplied on the Revos is just a bare-bones `instant boot` product and is useless. However installing Ubuntu is easy.

I managed to get a bargain external DVDR from Currys for £20.

I am about to try the PS3 remote with the Revo, not sure whether it will be easy or not.

I decided not to pay the premium for the wireless keyboard/mouse. You can get a decent Logitech set for under £15, and for Media Centre use I would want a combined keyboard/ trackpad. Ogster made some posts on these recently.

Anyway, as I say, great little units. Just hide away on the back of the monitor.

RE: i5/i7 vs skt775 Core2Quad..

You should be able to get a 125W 965 for around £130.

I built one recently on a cheap Asrock m/b. My nephew has just put one together using a £60 packaged water cooler and is running at 4.1 GHz stable without any voltage tweaks

RE: i5/i7 vs skt775 Core2Quad..

The latest PC Pro has a comparative review of 50 CPUs.

In summary.

AMD Phenom 965 is best bang per buck.
Socket 775 is now `retired` Although you can obviously still build a very capable systems on that platform the benefit of a new build really doesn`t compete with the top end Phenoms.

i3, i5 and i7 are looking good but currently at a price premium.

RE: SM bus controller

Have you installed the motherboard chipset drivers? The SM bus controller is part of the motherboard chipset.

Have a look here.

This item was edited on Thursday, 21st January 2010, 22:14

RE: Memory & CPU stats during web browsing...

I have just opened one page in Chrome; to make this posting.

Task manager shows three entries for chrome 13K, 29K and 25K.
CPU usage when idle goes between 0% and 6%. The only real increase is when the Flash banner at the top of the page transitions to a new image, then the CPU usage can go to more than 50%, but only briefly.

This is on an old Pentium M 735 1.7GHz laptop, with 2GB ram. So not much more processing grunt than your Atom, but more RAM.

It is possible that the high CPU usage is reflecting paging activity because of limited RAM, that is the only benign explanation that comes to mind.

See how you get on once you have upgraded the RAM.

BTW I am running Chrome 4.0.249.11 on XP Pro SP3

RE: Looking for a Cheap media box for streaming avi`s to tv...

Xtreamer

RE: Anyone know of a good/cheap online shop for Tassimo Pods?

Quote:
I`m lucky enough to have a bean to cup machine
Which one? How long have you had it? Is it reliable? Would you buy another? Does it give a good brew?

I can`t afford one at the moment, but if the finances improve it is on the `want to get` list. I used to have a Krups B2C but they wanted a ridiculous amount to fix the grinder.

RE: Windows 7 Professional - Upgrade £36.95 or Cheaper delivered

Did you get your shared folders problem sorted, it caused me some confusion initially?

Using the Vbox manager you define a folder on the host that you wish to share. It shows up on the VM as a network share.

RE: Tesco Petrol Stations, anyone have the complaints number?

Try this one.

Terry Leahy, Chief Executive yhael.yrret[at]moc.ocset

RE: Windows 7 Professional - Upgrade £36.95 or Cheaper delivered

Virtualbox works well. I have an XP VM running on XP so that I can run Office 2007 without clobbering my Office 2003 setup.

RE: Let`s share our good news!

My oldest daughter has just started at Grammar School, having been head of house for the last year at her previous school; finishing the year by winning the form prize. She is the charity rep for her class and for Christmas she wants a donation made in her name to GOSH. (Same as last year)

The youngest daughter ( 8 ). Finished the last school year by winning the form prize for the second consecutive year. She has a reading age of 11+, and is top of year at Maths.

They both have keen, inquiring minds, and a very proud daddy.

This item was edited on Thursday, 12th November 2009, 12:28

RE: how should i cut my .mpeg format video?

MPEG Streamclip

RE: The MMR jab has not caused an increase in Autism.

Quote:
As a parents we all want to do the best for our children BUT non immunisation isnt necessarily the best option.
I agree 100% but why is there such obstinate refusal to allow single shots? The authorities blindly persist on their chosen course, the effect of which is to deny children the protection which would otherwise be available.

Quote:
All I can say is, having watched more than one child die, because of a disease which was vaccine preventable
Which leads to the question "How many of those children would have been vaccinated if single shots had not been denied?"

This item was edited on Thursday, 24th September 2009, 23:50

RE: The MMR jab has not caused an increase in Autism.

What offends me as a parent is the beaurocratic stance that `Nanny knows best`. We are offered no choice, and the state does everything it can to severely restrict the available alternatives. There may be sound clinical reasons for administering `cocktail shots`, but in the absence of clear information, it seems reasonable to assume that the driving force is economic.

The only potential clinical benefit that has been offerred is that of synergistic benefits when more than one vaccine is administered at a time. However I am not aware that that has been established beyond doubt.

There are plenty of individual vaccines which have been shown, over a period of many years to be effective and with low, known risks. However these are effectively denied to parents by the beaurocrats.

There is plenty of publicity regarding the loss of herd immunity due to low vaccination rates, yet the solution is so simple.......

The original research regarding MMR and Autism seems to have been dismissed, but exposing poor research doesn`t necessarily disprove the original postulate. The level of anecdotal evidence seems high, and whilst many cases may be due to other causes I would still have lingering concerns.

The establishment refuses to give clear honest information. When my first was due for the jab that includes Pertussis (Whooping cough) I did a fair amount of research as this vaccine has a significant history of related problems. I was fortunate that the local hospital referred me to the local communicable disease expert (I can`t remeber her title). We had a lengthy informative chat, as a result of which I learnt of Acellular Pertussis Vaccine (aTP). Basically aTP had been shown to be as effective as the older whole cell vaccine, but with far fewer short to medium term side-effects. The USA, Canada, Japan and certain Scandanavian countries had standardised on aTP, and in some case had banned the older vaccine. We were advised that aTP would be available to special order so that is what we did, but it was an uphill battle at the surgery who only conceded to our request when I referred to the communicable disease official. In fact the Sister who actually does the shots tried to just give my daughter the standard cocktail but I checked and stopped her. We could then hear her bad-mouthing us in the corridor.

Sorry this is such a diatribe, but I am a concerned parent living in a country which denies informed choice. We have neither the information nor the choice.

RE: People with 50mb broadband?

I get just over 7 on Sky at home and around 13 here at work. Both are limited by distance from the exchange, I never see any contention issues from Sky. I would be extremely surprised if an O2 connection was any faster as it is using the same technology down the same bits of wire. Virgin can offer higher speed as they are using co-ax rather than ADSL2+ over PSTN lines.

RE: Tricity Bendix Strata oven not reaching temp?

It might not have taken two weeks though.