Info and forum posts by 'Jemson'

RE: Random numbers

The C route is much easier and quicker, don`t forget to seed the random number generator too as it they are not really random - just algorithms.

RE: Beko 17" Widescreen LCD TV * GRADE A STOCK* £199.99 + del

IIRC the UK TV PAL-I signal is about 520 lines of picture and the outside lines for teletext. which means that this monitor either has a native resolution of 480 lines and therefore downsamples the TV signal, or upsamples the 640x480 PC signal and makes a horrible mess.furthermore, if the resolution is actually 640x480 pixels, then the pixels can`t be square, which means a PC signal will appear stretched. worse still, a true widescreen TV signal will be resampled to fit the 640x480 pixels, thereby wiping out yet more resolution.

Nn the flip side, if the resolution is actually 16:9 aspect, then the 640x480 PC signal is going to have to be resampled making a total mess again. If this is a true WS tv then it`s hopeless as a monitor. if it`s a true 640x480 monitor then it`s hopeless as a tv.

moral: get a WS tv which will support WS PC resolutions.

If you can`t afford a better TV/monitor then don`t bother as something like this is a waste of money.

RE: Deleting sensitive items from my hard drive?

Mike,

The Guttman method doesn`t use magnetic forces to wipe the hard disc. It uses a pseudo random method of overwriting the hard disc but Peter Guttman himself admits "it is effectively impossible to sanitise storage locations by simple overwriting them, no matter how many overwrite passes are made or what data patterns are written".

Yes you are correct in that the more times the disc is overwritten the more tricky it is to recover the data and therfore costlier but magnetic force microscopy can be used to recover data.

RE: Is it possible to unshrink a mpeg 2 movie to DVD and improve the picture quality?

DVD Video specification is MPEG2. The bitrate is the publisher`s choice, though typically it`s 9600 kbits/sec (about 1.2 mbytes a sec) for feature films. The MPEG2 specification does not specify bitrates, it`s just a standard, i.e. it defines the method of compression, not how aggressively you carry out those methods.

You do not need to uncompress it, and as alluded to earlier, you`ll gain nothing from doing so (although I suppose you could perform some post processing sharpening or whatever, but that`s gonna take a while). If you have a compliant MPEG2 stream it will be very simple in any DVD authoring software to plonk it on a DVD.

RE: iTunes converting to MP3

Chug a bug,

There are several ways to doing it my choice would be to google dbPowerAMP version 10 (the last free version.)

iTunes provide the facility for MP3 encoding.

You`ll then need suitable CD burning software such as Nero and burn it as a MP3 format audio CD

What is an MP3 audio CD. MP3 is data.

Burning the mp3`s direct to CD using XP won`t work

Of course you can burn MP3s and any other files for that matter direct to CD using Windows XP!

RE: Top Laptop

Quote:
I think it is generally recognised that Intel took a step backwards when they moved from P3 to P4.

Well that`s kind of right and wrong. At equivalent clock speeds, the launch P4 was slower than the P3 in many scenarios I grant you (much like the K6-3 against the Athlon) but there was no way they could scale the P3 and K6-3 much further. The architectural differences meant that the P4 and Athlons could scale to much higher clock speeds (10ghz claimed Intel at the time - oops!), so it definitely was a case of a step back to take two steps forward.

RE: Ghosting software for copying old HD over to new HD

Quote:
I was going to let this go as a solution had been found but I thought I`d better clear a few things up in case someone decides to reread this thread looking for an answer. A previous comment by MikeElliot was a little misleading though I`m sure it was unintentional.

Mike`s comments seemed fairly clear to me.

Quote:
The last Windows operating system to need a bootable boot sector was in Windows 3.11 (you used to have to use the SYS command to set up the boot sector and boot files to get a copy of the old Dos 6.22 to .. oh what`s that word ? oh yes.. boot)

With all due respect, that`s utter rubbish. A BIOS has absolutely no way of knowing what OS is on a hard disk. When a PC is booted (yes, the term boot applies to the PC, not just the OS - in fact the OS doesn`t boot per se, it loads), the BIOS reads the first sector of the disk, and on a hard disk, this is known as the Master Boot Record (MBR). Note that this is NOT the boot sector on a hard disk, although the first sector on a floppy IS the boot sector. The MBR contains partition information, hence there`s no need for it on a floppy. (In fact, that`s not techincally correct - the MBR *is* the boot sector).

In the case of NT-based operating systems, the MBR then (in simple terms anyway) loads the boot sector, which loads and executes NTLDR - the NT boot loader. This in turn loads the OS menu and can be used to load other boot sectors - in fact, judicious use of the debug command means you can save, say, a Linux MBR to MBR.LNX for example, point an entry in boot.ini to MBR.LNX and launch Linux from NTLDR.

Therefore, in the case of DOS floppy disks, the bootsector files cannot be copied across by xcopy, because they have to be the first physical sector, and xcopy doesn`t write there. In the case of NT, you need the MBR to boot from, and the MBR isn`t a file, it`s code which is put in place by the NT formatting procedure, and hence can also not be copied using xcopy. When you install Linux, this writes to the MBR too, and that also can`t be copied with xcopy or standard Linux commands. But you can point Linux and NT boot loaders to boot sectors stored as files, as all they are are 512 byte pieces of code, and can be copied across. But I reiterate, the key to all of this is the MBR, common to every single bootable operating system, which just cannot be copied with xcopy. Understand?

Quote:
The only thing that might cause a problem is if you have software on your system that uses sector based security checks to ensure you only have one copy of it. If you do you`ll have to reinstall it after booting up the new drive so that it can recreate its special sector, or else use a program that they will provide to transfer the sector information from one drive to the other. It`s an usual form of protection and you`re unlikely to see it on software costing under several hundred pounds.

I`m sorry, you`ve completely lost me on that. I`m guessing you`re touching on the MBR issue with all this talk of "special sectors", but what protection and hundreds of pounds have got to do with it I have no idea.

This item was edited on Monday, 26th September 2005, 19:26

RE: PC keeps rebooting on startup Help Required

Well I would suggest EmilyHoward`s idea of trying the trying unplugging components and then elimnating different possibilities. Failing that, softaware drivers are also notorious for causing these symptoms and a Windows install is a good idea too. The notion of cracks on motherboard is very rare and I wouldn`t go out an buy a new one willy nilly. The chance of a crack on the board is about 0.00001%.

RE: Bad Torrent?

Quote:
To use QuickPar just install and double-click on one of the PAR files. When QuickPar opens, tick the "auto-repair" box. It will do it`s thang. Do not ask me how it knows how to do the repairing, I am certain it does it with actual magic!

The PAR files are parity check files. Traditionally with parity checking, for every 7 bits of data, the eighth bit of data is a 0 if the sum of the previous 7 bits of data is even, or the eight bit of data is 1 if the sum of the previous 7 bits is odd. This is a very crude contingency check and obviously means you are adding 12.5% of redundant data if all goes well.

Parity checking is used mainly for telecommunications and real time streams to detect an error during transmission, so that a retry attempt can be made. It`s next to useless for non-real time transmission, for example when you are uncompressing a file.

The whole ethos around compression, such as rar, is to remove as much redundant data as possible, and get as close as possible to the entropy, or minimum theoretically possible size, of the data. You can`t determine entropy, but you can estimate it.

The PAR files might work ok for some types of data, such as audio or video data (assuming it`s not an error in the metadata or keyframe info areas) because all it will do is guess which of the 7 bits is to fault and the end result will be a blip in the audio or a miscoloured pixel. But for programs, it will fail miserably.

I`m not sure what the level of parity checking is for this freebie app, but given that the whole point of compression is to minimise file sizes, it`ll probably be 1 bit per 15 bits, or maybe more, otherwise the redundancy in the data would be fairly significant.

It`s not magic. It`s guesswork. And if you`re lucky, it will work. But quite often, it won`t.

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Quote:
I`ll give you brownie points for trying but a bunch of test carried out in OCT 2003. Doesn`t go far enough to debunk all the evidence I provided above.

Nobody is trying to score brownie points or debunk the evidence you provided. When will you realise this? The point is that the P4 EE outperforms the FX in *some* tasks which is pretty much the conclusion that you have to come to after reviewing all this "evidence".


Quote:
2 of these test were DEMO`s. Hardly real world versions suitable for testing purposes.

I don`t see what that has to do with anything. The venerable Quake 3 timedemo isn`t "real world" as you describe.

Quote:
One of these benchmarks wasn`t even fully optimised when this test was conducted. I quote, "New optimization patch has been released. It presents significant speed improvements especially on newest Athlon64 and Pentium4 processors, Hyper-Threading and SMP systems. God only knows what they weren`t supporting."

This is precisely why you can`t trust benchmarks. Who is to say that there isn`t any bias in the benchmark results that you`ve provided? The only way to truly benchmark a system is to benchmark it yourself, doing what you normally do day in day out.

Quote:
The point I made with reference to Beebs P4 commentary was how an ideal such as this gets miscontrued as fact. If AMD tried this and failed miserably as INTEL have in this forecast they`d ha`ve been laughed out of town! They would be derided by all and sundry for failing to execute!

No, they`d have been derided by all the people who let this sort of thing get to them. Anybody else wouldn`t really care, just as long as the job got done.

Quote:
10 ghz for a cpu approaching 2 ghz on its debut sells. Those sort of comments was and still is to some good bragging rights! Too bad marketing people hadn`t consulted engineers on this.To hit the wall over 6ghz short of that goal isn`t even close.

Yes, bragging rights to people fooled by marketing and hype and buzzwords. Given your knowledge of the subject, I`d expect that you`d be informed enough to turn a blind eye to this, and let the less knowledgable fall for it. But why you have to go about parading all this I don`t know. It didn`t matter then and it doesn`t matter now.

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Overlord

I`m no expert on the multitude of benchmarks available (I stopped taking an interest in them a long time ago) - all I know is that quite a few of them are manupulable as you suggest, for example the 3dmark 2003 debacle with ATI`s drivers. So given that, what makes you think the benchmark results you posted haven`t been manipulated in any way? The fact is that both the top line P4 EE and Athlon FX are close in terms of performance, and neither offer any semblance of value for money as they are bleeding-edge technology. Whether this is due to market forces dictating that neither company can afford to unleash their 2006 technology in 2005 and risk letting their secrets out of the bag, or whether they`re in cahoots, or whether they`re really pushing the limit just to edge ahead, I don`t know, but the fact remains that there isn`t a great difference.

PC Pro`s tests show that the AMD FX has the edge in real-world application tests, which at the end of the day is what matters. Only that it isn`t. I do some scientific computing, and find that as the size of my data sets increase, the Intels scale much better than AMDs (this is fairly traditional, rather than restricted to just the current generation). Not that this matters to most people, of course. But the point that Mike was trying to make (I think - Mike correct me if I`m wrong) is that both processors have their own forte, and it depends on what you need to use them for.

Quote:
I mentioned Beeb to highlight how early in P4 life mainstream press was reporting this 10ghz scalability. I can`t comment on editorial content don`t professto be a journalist!

What`s this got to do with anything? Firstly the BBC technology pages are woefully simplified, and secondly, what`s the point you`re trying to make? I don`t see how it relates to the current crop of chips.

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Quote:
Ogster, I think Jemson made a typo and intended to say PCI E rather than PCI. It`s quite evident from the previous sentence.

Hi Mike, no I didn`t make a typo. It`s 2am so I guess you just misread - even the best of us make mistakes!

This whole thing is pathetic, if you ask me. It seems only yourself and The Ogster have actually helped out the original poster with the Aldi PC, by either pointing out that having a transfixion with one company will not help you make an informed buying decision (especially talk of benchmarks, P4 EEs and Athlon FXs when the thread is titled Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99), and will actually cloud your judgement, or actually giving some advice, like the Ogster has, about the actual PC in hand.

This item was edited on Monday, 29th August 2005, 02:22

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Quote:
he`s talking about PCI-Express not standard pci

I`m aware of that - I`m making the point that he`s a twit for forgetting about the AGP/PCI transition. I don`t think you picked up on what I was getting at.

Quote:
&the comparison between (original) pci & agp doesn`t really work

That is the comparison I was making, see. Maybe you did pick up on what I was getting at.

Quote:
even tho the early agp card were not much (if at all) better than standard pci cards, but agp soon totally outgrew the pci spec, making pci redundant in comparison, just as PCIe will eventually do to agp (tho i don`t intend to keep up with the Joneses "just"yet )

Well that sounds like the comparison DOES work - it`s completely analagous to the current AGP/PCIe situation. That was precisely my point, and I`m glad that on this occasion we agree.

This item was edited on Monday, 29th August 2005, 02:01

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Oh for goodness sake.

Quote:
I think INTELS business practices STINK of dog s***.
Their no.1 policy is to screw you as the customer over.

I would hazard a guess that their no. 1 policy is to make profit, like most businesses.

Quote:
Creating the PCIe standard "just because" there`s plenty of UNUSEDbandwidth left in AGP. X8 wasn`t being used to it`s full potential. There is no difference between AGP and PCIe YET but it is the future.

Twit. AGP was released before PCI reached its limit.

Quote:
Making people buy DDR2when there`s no real benefit and latencies are thru the roof. That`s why AMD haven`t bothered with DDR2 and will probably jump straight to DDR3 in `07

Quote:
Making people buy price-fixed RAMBUScrap memory again poor latencies

They`re not making you do anything! If they choose to design their processors to work with DDR2 then that`s their choice - and it`s your choice as a buyer whether you want to go down that route or not.

Quote:
LGA775 mobo? Wanna go dual core? "SORRY"you need to buy A BRAND NEW MOTHERBOARD because we like screwing the customer and a BIOS update would be too clever.

You could, of course, decide to stick with what you`ve got rather than upgrade for the sake of it. Or would that be too clever? And anyway, by your previous arguments about PCIe being "the future" but not what`s needed now, don`t you think dual core is exactly the same? There aren`t massive benefits to be had with most mainstream applications at the moment, so why aren`t you screaming at AMD/Intel for bothering with dual core and "forcing" us all to upgrade?

Quote:
so yeah INTELsucks and is responsible for GLOBAL WARMING with their 100w+ CPUs. AMD have cool `n quiet which downclocks the CPU when not needed! genius!

Ever heard of SpeedStep? And anyway, again if you really care about the environment, just don`t use a PC - that way you`ll have a zero-emission computer. Or are you just running out of arguments?

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Quote:
I am not an AMD fanboy just a realist. Infact I bought DELL 8400 last year. Not so much for the 3GHZ P4 inside but for the ATI X800 GPU that came with it! Before that a Celeron 300 I O/C to 500 MHZ.

It seems like your post is exactly the type of post that an AMD "fanboy" would put up actually, and I think you`re aware of this fact, as you seek to justify yourself by trying to point out that you`re not one of them

RE: Aldi Medion PC next Thursday - 499.99

Mike, AMD processors are not specifically designed for ATX cases, are you off your trolley?

This item was edited on Saturday, 27th August 2005, 15:27

RE: Google Talk

Quote:
Free calls, at the moment only PC to PC and with Google Talk installed. In the future they hope it will be to landline and mobiles, all free.
PS. Just installed it. You have to have a Gmail account.


I don`t see what the hype is. It does less than what Skype can already do. And even Microsoft don`t force you to use a hotmail account with MSN. I can`t believe this made the front page of the Evening Standard.

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
i never said he was, i was obviously stating MY position and saying i`m not arguing

You can only agree to disagree if both people agree to do so. I don`t think Mike would agree, but maybe he can put me right on that.

Quote:
i still believe i`m correct but sometimes adults do disagree, hence the term "agree to disagree" (i am very sorry that i actually had to dumb that down enough for you to understand)

Sometimes adults also accept that they`re wrong, especially in light of overwhelming evidence against them, and don`t try to worm out of the situation by "agreeing to disagree".

This item was edited on Sunday, 14th August 2005, 18:07

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
i`ll agree to disagree with mike, he at least has a reasonable argument, unfortunately jemson is seemingly incapable of any kind of sane correspondence you`re arguments is as flawed as you`re personalaty (sp) and i don`t think you`re gonna be capable of giving a proper response.

Er, he wasn`t offering agreeing to disagree. He was disagreeing with you, and yet you still can`t accept that he`s right, despite you admitting his argument is reasonable. That indicates that "you`re" personality is flawed.

Furthermore, it would be nice if you could point out what`s flawed about the sandwich analogy, but it seems you can`t.

Quote:
but i`m sure you`ll let me know that i`m just another ham sandwich from tesco`s lol

Eh?

This item was edited on Sunday, 14th August 2005, 16:30

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
but if you can buy the printer with the adaptor IN THE SAME BOX then surely the printer is network ready ?

You can buy a ham sandwich from Tesco in a single box. But that doesn`t make bread a sandwich, nor does it make ham a sandwich.

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
"you can buy the r200/300 with the adaptor bundled, thus making it a network printer"

You can buy a Canon or HP or Lexmark or Brother from Dabs or Ebuyer or Novatech or Misco or Savastore with a Bluetooth USB printer adaptor, thus making them all network-ready printers.

You can buy bread from Tesco. Would you say that the bread is a sandwich, just because you can buy bread with filling in it from the same place in a pre-packaged box?

This item was edited on Sunday, 14th August 2005, 13:16

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
Quote:
network ready


not true, you can get a bluetooth adaptor for it. (i`m assuming the r200 has the same port as the r300)

Just as you can buy a Bluetooth adaptor for any printer (although apparently they don`t work too well with multifunction printers, but I`ve not tried them). By your logic, almost all printers are therefore network ready. So I`d suggest that you might want to think about what network-ready actually means.

Quote:
Quote:
or capable of printing CDs,

Bollox cd printing is the main selling point of the r200 & 300

Yes, you`re right, the R200 does print CDs, something I admittedly overlooked. Not sure about it being the main selling point however, but that`s subjective.

Quote:
he seems more acurate than you

Well that`s subjective too, because all he said was that the R200 was great, and the accuracy of that statement is inherently dependent upon which side of the Epson fence you choose to sit on. For the money you can get a much better printer than the R200, too, but that`s going off the point.

If you have a problem with axe-grinding then I suggest that you might want to refrain from using aggressive language.

This item was edited on Sunday, 14th August 2005, 11:34

RE: Which printer to buy?

I don`t know how you can be so specious in believing the Brother is a value for money printer when it produces amateur-ish results and with the print speed to match. The HP 1215 is half the price and produces much better prints at a far superior speed. If you don`t believe me then ask for a demo in a decent computer store. Do you actually own a Brother 5440 or maybe you havn`t really seen other printouts to really notice the difference?

RE: Which printer to buy?

Do you know what a print server is? You and your "girlfriend" (cough, cough) are using one!

This item was edited on Sunday, 14th August 2005, 01:05

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
The Canon & Epson units will give better PQ than the Brother. However the Brother is Network ready and has a decent document feeder. The Brother is actually an outstanding bargain if you value its advantages.

Network ready is only useful if you need to share a printer through a print server, say in a small office. And I`m not quite sure what`s so good about the Brother`s document feeder - can you enlighten us as to what separates it from those from the likes of the big names of Canon, HP and Epson?

If you don`t need that, then I would say go for a HP 1215 if budget is tight - it`s less than £50 and offers reasonable quality, not at breakneck speeds, but reasonable again.

If you can afford it, go for the Canon. The print quality is streets ahead of most multifunction printers (although HP have some decent ones too), the separate inktanks mean less wastage and the speed is class-leading too

RE: Which printer to buy?

Quote:
i`ve got a epson r200 it`s great
bill bayley


The R200 is neither multifunction, network ready or capable of printing CDs, so how your advice benefits anybody I don`t know

RE: Free Sample of the new Fragrance from Lacoste

Er, why not just go to Boots and try on the real thing for free?

RE: Windows XP Media Centre edition

Quote:


from what i`ve read about it, it`s actually a stripped down version of
XP Pro rather than Home....but obviously has a more media intensive
approach. there`s also an official M$ remote handset available for about £20
on ebuyer.

the OS is apparently, quite easy to hack so it could be joined to a domain
should the need to arise....

Miles, I don`t know what your source is, but that is complete nonsense. XP Media Centre is a full superset of XP Professional.

As for the OS being easy to hack, what are you talking about? And "joining to a domain"? Are you talking about joining to a domain in networking terms? If so, you need (obviously) a domain controller, and should be thinking about Active Directory policies (assuming it`s a Windows DC)... All of which, of course, has nothing to do with hackability, hence my confusion as to what you are talking about in your last statement. You`re not jumping on the "Windows is insecure" bandwagon, are you?

This item was edited on Saturday, 6th August 2005, 17:18

RE: Free anti-spam download

The poor success rate of algorithmic spam filters is due to the fact that they can not be overagressive as they`ll delete emails that are genuine, and this in turn means that their algorithms are easily circumvented: see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3458457.stm

So popfile needs to be trained? Sounds awfully like cloudmark, which was free, but now attracts a very small monthly fee. But the huge database of spams and contributing users it has amassed is it`s strength. It relies on its (millions of) users to report spam. If a spam is reported by enough people, then all subscribers to cloudmark will no longer get that spam (or it will be moved to a junk folder). With such a wide user base, it is streets ahead of any other system available.

This item was edited on Friday, 5th August 2005, 17:57

RE: Phishing

I don`t know how any sort of phishing attack can be plausible, even to the most naive internet user. The banks tell you time and time *and time* again that they will not ask for details via email. If this doesn`t send alarm bells ringing then I don`t know what will.

I`m interested to know, purely out of curiosity, which bit of the email made you "nearly" fall for it, because for somebody who is "quite aware" of this sort of scam, I really cannot see anything that differentiates this from the "we`ve updated our security application. please click here and enter your user name and password" emails. If anything, this is less sophisticated than said emails.

This item was edited on Friday, 5th August 2005, 17:28