Root Access

@shelvacu: Wanted to try arch, but the last time I tried a distro without an installer, I spent a day getting it running, then realising I needed to recompile the kernel for X

thats goes from 38hrs to like 5

@JourneymanGeek I remember telling someone I run arch, and their response was "ooh, you're hard on yourself"

It helped when I had lots of free time way back when I was just getting interested, as well as an arch-expeirienced friend nearby

ya, the free-time thing is probably a factor

(I'm tempted, I have a system that needs a bleeding edge kernel for wierd reasons)

But now I have less free time but still love it to death, its just the startup time

7:07 AM

oh, you might be able to tweak that

Find a free weekend or something, even if you give up you'll come out having learned something

(but I run windows 8 and SSDs quite a lot)

so... fast boot

sorry, i meant startup as in initial install, not bootup time

@shelvacu yeah, that experiment with gentoo was educational

ahh

Oh man, I've yet to try gentoo

I've heard things though...

7:09 AM

Oh, its fairly similar to arch

You copy over a stage 3 (?) install,chroot, do stuff

but there's a ton of compiling involved

Yah, that's what I've heard XD

I'll try once I get that 128-core computer I've always wanted

Then I won't have to worry about compile times.

lol

actually

more singlethread power would be useful

And then also I wouldn't be able to afford windows XD

and this was on a pretty shit rig

lol

I haven't paid directly for windows in ages

I thought compiling went very well multi-threaded

7:13 AM

My desktop's on a copy i got from school

laptops came with windows (7, going to switch to 10, and 8-bing edition ;p)

It always feels wrong to me. The supply is literally infinite.

therefor price should be near or at 0

lol

Development/marketing/sales costs?

naw

ubuntu/debian/centos/etc get along just fine

But economics! If what I'm willing to pay, and what MS is willing to sell a copy of windows for don't match...

@shelvacu: different business model tho

yah, i know

7:16 AM

and to a large extent they package existing contributions

And I forgot ubuntu does have a version you have to pay for

as does redhat

and suse

and..

but not arch linux

MS also gives free/discounted copies of their OSes

(dreamspark bizspark etc)

indeed

7:18 AM

@shelvacu I've played with Gentoo using a Hyper-V virtual machine. It was a lot of work and it pushed the limits of my hardware during compilation. I ultimately just archived the VHDX files and abandoned it.

mostly to students

That might be a good or a bad thing

so that the students learn MS

and are uncomfortable switching

@shelvacu: pretty much

erm

its almost worse than not giving it at all

7:18 AM

not really

Dreamspark is CS only in most schools

The good thing is that you can set something like march=haswell for maximum performance.

people are already used to windows by the time they get to uni

Well thats the other problem, yeah

well less so these days

People are more used to other platforms again, smartphones and tablets

is there any laptop that comes with linux out of the box?

7:20 AM

@JourneymanGeek True. We require that a student be taking at least one CSC course to access DreamSpark.

@shelvacu System76, built around Clevo hardware.

@shelvacu hm. Dell has one model, system 76 has many....

@JourneymanGeek System76 is a company

HOWEVER most linux users are technically savvy enough to do it themselves

let me clarify

AND intel's hardware generally has excellent support for linux

Excellent support yes

(and yes, I do do linux installs for clients on request for very reasonable fees ;p)

Which generally is "Pay for transport, and whatever you feel like paying me for it"

tho, I don't do reinstalls often, and that was a last gen netbook with a REALLY shitty fedora spinoff I reinstalled with UNR (yes, that long ago)

That said. Windows XP needs to die :/

7:27 AM

Well, I'd agree but not quite the same way, I'd say the windows OS needs to die

meh

I like 8

I do want MS panicy tho

Its a good way/time to score cheap/good hardware ;p

Running XP is like clinging to ubuntu Warty, debian woody or FC3

...or openSUSE 10.1

I mean, before I installed some IDE and such, I'd regularly have updates that would shink the amount of space used

lol

On my arch machine I mean

7:30 AM

funny thing was Opensuse 10.1 was my first proper linux install

might have been 10.0, the one with a broken package manager on release ;p

Q: RealTek sound card driver not working with Windows XP SP2

8:45 AM

1

I’m running Windows XP SP2 and it has no sound. No it’s not on mute. I have recently got a new hard drive and had sound working fine. I have tried to install the driver for the sound card (three times), but I get the BSoD (blue screen of death) halfway through the install, the driver was from Rea...

People still use XP SP 2?

Sabre Tooth

yeesh, some people get a bee in their bonnet

9:03 AM

@Bob Hi. Thanks again for the help. One problem I encounter is that the Toolbox/Browser Toolbox says “Style sheet could not be loaded. chorme://mopapps/skin/pref/pref.css”.

@k.stm You can probably ignore that.

What you want is the inspector.

Select element. Point it at the tab.

I'll be away for a bit.

Okay, I found out that unchecking the box corresponding to “-moz-binding: url('chrome://browser/content/tabbrowser.xml#tabbrowser-tab')” reomves the border.

/The shape I want to have removed.

9:36 AM

The relevant bits seem to be hidden in 'chrome://browser/content/tabbrowser.xml#tabbrowser-tab', and I don’t know how to read xml (I don’t know how to read css either, but it’s not too hard).

@k.stm Don't worry about XML or XUL.

Just worry about the CSS.

Find out which selector that -moz-binding is under.

Override it in userChrome

What do you mean by selector?

10:06 AM

Here’s the binding: pastebin.com/g4uhNeiW – I really don’t know where it get’s that hill-shape information from. tabbrowser.css doesn’t seem to contain relevant stuff.

10:25 AM

@k.stm developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Page_Inspector/How_to/…

Select the element.

Which you seem to ahve done.

You've found the style name.

Now find the CSS selector that is used.

If you don't understand, well... you'll need to read up on CSS.

Can't help you there.

Boris_yo

"The universities are a big joke. I made a semester abroud in USA and saw what and how they are study. I couldn't believe my eyes! You get sooo easy excellent grades for knewing easy and logical things. Thats so unbelievable. And most of them are stupid as fuck and i met a lot of americans they were just stupid. When my friends or family got told me that americans are dumb, i thought they had just met only some stupid ones who are in every country."

"But i was wrong! Its so true that americans are dumb as fuck. For sure not everyone but i think about 80%. Its impossible to talk with americans about policy and the world. Even about USA. Oh i am sorry, i was a lil'bit off topic."

Don't bother hunting in CSS files and especially not the XUL files.

Boris_yo

Not sure I want to drain myself with hater...

Just use the devtools to find out which CSS selector it is and use the same one to override it.

10:46 AM

@Bob Okay, I’ll see what I can accomplish. I will accept your answer now since it really did answer my question.

11:23 AM

@k.stm ^

that bit to the left of every { is a selector

in your override CSS, you'll want to specify the same selector, probably with the value display: none;

Maybe display: none !important;

Yeah, I tried that and somehow this messed up things: Tab names didn’t show at all and I couldn’t even open tabs, so the thing is a bit more subtle.

At “I couldn’t even open tabs:” Some weird error messages popped up (in my vimperator extension) and I realized that was a bad idea.

But I settled with installing the firefox theme restorer and using “squared tabs v2” (instead of firefox default curved tabs.)

(I mean that extension: addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer)

11:58 AM

The projected battery life on this is crazy

Also nirsoft.net/utils/battery_information_view.html is super cool

12:28 PM

20% battery life drop after 2 hours. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Q: Windows 8.1 Update 1 Disk Usage 100%

Blah 100% disk usage half the time

Something's wrong

Pagefile is written to heavily even when my RAM usage is 1.3 gb out of 4 gb

34

Background Information / Computer Specs I have a 14-inch Samsung Series 5 Ultra. Core i5 CPU, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000. I've had the computer for about 1.5 years with no major problems. Problem The issue appeared at the beginning of April this year, when I updated the OS from...

windows-8 hard-drive memory windows-8.1

Exact same issue

And lo behold it is superfetch

Hmm disabling windows search

12:44 PM

@JourneymanGeek Depends what you do with it:P

My tablets can last for a whole day easy if I'm just leaving it there

@Bob: normal use, couple of tabs including SU, IRC

watching a video? watch the battery life plummet

rated battery life for this is 9 hours

Blah superfetch is supposed to improve performance not make my lap hang :|

@JourneymanGeek Nice, it shows current power draw

And according to it my battery has a capacity of 27kmWh

and I am drawing 5k milli watt per sec

in low performance mode

powercfg does a few neat things too

@Bob: uses ~3x the power while playing youtube videos ;p

12:56 PM

@JourneymanGeek I prefer HWiNFO

@Bob: Oh, this thing does one thing ;p

@JourneymanGeek I find myself wanting to know temps more than battery draw, usually

uhh that's bad right ?

hmm

kiiinda

Batteries to wear out yanno

yeah but that much a loss in a mere 2 months ?

I rarely use it plugged out

12:59 PM

true

I'm not sure ._.

Perhaps I should maintain battery level at 50-60%

I'm not either .-.

I never do that

(and my X220 is a deskbound system these days)

Well I used to use it in school a fair bit

It's pretty annoying to maintain it aat that

Hm

I might have to steal @JourneymanGeek's idea and get a ~~pencil~~ case for my tablet :P

lol

1:04 PM

Huh.

@JourneymanGeek Apparently Amazon currently has free shipping to Singapore :P

Over a certain value, yes

actually may get my speakers from there

lol

(They are impossible to find here. May need to ask @OliverSalzburg if they are smps powered)

download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/…

Lenovo has a pretty damn good guide for tearing apart my laptop

1:39 PM

lol

a legacy of IBM I suspect

despite my boss' dislike of em, IBM really did know of to document stuff well

1:51 PM

HP also publishes the service manual for my laptop :P

Say what you will about their build quality, and how crappy their website navigation is, it's better than Lenovo and Asus :/

@Bob why so ? ;p

2:04 PM

TIl there's an Indian company that makes RAM

hynet.in

prices are 10$ lower

I don't have the confidence to buy those

@HackToHell Was a pain in the arse trying to get support from them.

Oh

HP probably has better experince with customer support as they bulk sell their stuff

Haven't really seen ASUS and Lenovo do stuff like that

2:19 PM

@HackToHell Both companies might as well have told me to go screw myself.

@HackToHell: THEY HAVE AUDIO ON THEIR SITE.

@JourneymanGeek Is this a good or bad thing? :P

@JourneymanGeek I KNOW, I AM NEVER BUYING ANYTHING FROM THEM

@Bob o0 perhaps it's localized to Aus or something

@Bob: Their web designer needs to be hit on his nose with a newspaper. Repeatedly

Lenovo's support here is IBM

Its... meh compared to old IBM

Dell's a bit dumb from my experience

@HackToHell: donno, @nhinkle seems to hate HP ;p

nathanhinkle.com/blog/2014/…

(of course, I just bought a HP, and will let you know if she explodes, stop working or otherwise requires warranty support. or if 2-3 years from now, I end up handing down/giving away a well loved piece of hardware ;p)

> ALL LENOVO PRODUCTS including ThinkPad, IdeaPad, Yoga, and all others are NO LONGER RECOMMENDED due to Lenovo pre-installing spyware on their computers.

lol

2:30 PM

@JourneymanGeek Oh, their consumer crap doesn't tend to last that long.

Do you guys really keep all the shit they install

Never had issues with getting them to repair under warranty, though.

@HackToHell: usually not really

(There was that one repair that took a whole bloody month due to a clusterfuck of mistakes, but I'll blame the service centre for that... I believe they're contracted?)

on this tho, not much crap to remove

Only the AV

and office 365 once my free subscription runs out

2:32 PM

I never installed the AV that was in the driver cd ;p

pros of getting a laptop without a OS ;p

Oh this had a preinstalled copy of mcafee (lenovo did norton... eww)...

I just go MSSE

Not much other crap on this box

Speaking of OS Microsoft still hasn't sent me the MSDN access confirmation mail

I was supposed to get it last month -_-

Bob was right :/

@JourneymanGeek My friend got a HP envy, it had so much junk

about?

@Bob: this dosen't have much to break tho

@HackToHell: wierdly, this feels SUPER well built

like zero flex anywhere

@JourneymanGeek Mine felt that way when I got it.

@JourneymanGeek the msdn access permit coming super late

2:34 PM

Took ~8 months for the hinge to fall apart.

(and yeah, if it outlasts the warranty, its less than a dollar a day anyway)

Apparently it's a known problem - they skimped on the hinges to fit the shitty Beats subwoofer in there

lol

I'm convinced the subwoofer is just a chunk of plastic without any internals

lol

2:35 PM

certainly never actually heard anything from it

The speakers on this are in front

Mine has a Dolby Certified bullshit speaker

@HackToHell I was right? o.O

@JourneymanGeek I dunno... I might actually take Norton over Mcafee.

Prefer neither, though.

@Bob: I just go for MSSE/Defender

Ya.

2:38 PM

Dec 16 '14 at 11:11, by Bob

@HackToHell s/4 to 6/6 to 8/

Ah.

read up for context ;p

@JourneymanGeek Avast is crap these days

Tempted to switch to MSSE

But it's rating is pretty low

I'm scared ._.

@HackToHell: I've personally had good luck with it

The lag if Avast is switched on is real

And it's bloody annoying

@HackToHell I'm at the point where I'm more annoyed at false positives than actually getting malware.

It's not hard to avoid if you don't do stupid things

Turn off plugins, chuck out Java and Adobe plugins, disable plugins, remove plugins, and keep things up to date.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not too fond of plugins.

2:43 PM

@Bob Avast figures everything I compile is a malware -_-

@Bob I do that but I am scared I'll do something stupi

Ah screw it

MSSE it is

$100 for a BlackWidow Ultimate :P

Except they're not using Cherry MX switches anymore. Bleh.

howtogeek.com/173291/…

3:55 PM

o.O

> According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), beryllium and beryllium compounds are Category 1 carcinogens; they are carcinogenic to both animals and humans.

@JourneymanGeek ^

Suddenly I'm mildly concerned about the Pistons :P

(Yes, I know it's probably trace amounts)

4:49 PM

O_O

Fire!

►

I want that torch :P

5:28 PM

I'm surprised how much the gaming peripheral landscape has changed

Some years ago, the gaming peripheral market was dominated by two companies, Razer and Logitech, with several smaller companies such as SteelSeries and Mad Catz (Cyborg).

Now Razer is going downhill, and a once obscure German brand Roccat is becoming mainstream.

When I got my Kone XTD about two years ago, Roccat was just beginning to make a name for itself here in the States.

(I believe the first product the company launched in the US was the Kone[+].)

By November 2013, I saw banner ads for the Kone XTD which struck me as surprising because the ad said that it was available at Best Buy.

I absolutely didn't expect Roccat to hit brick-and-mortar stores.

Fast forward to 2015 and most Best Buy stores carry at least some selection of Roccat hardware.

The famous camera store B&H now stocks a full line of Roccat peripherals, some time after it stopped carrying Razer.

Logitech recent revamped their gaming mice and they look really good, too.

Razer has shifted towards full gaming PCs, away from its core focus of gaming peripherals.

@HackToHell My laptop, like many Clevo systems, uses Onkyo 2.1 speakers. They're not perfect, but they're still vastly superior to my old HP laptop's much smaller Altec Lansing speakers and have none of the tinniness commonly associated with laptop speakers.

6:48 PM

Are you sure the system is compute-bound? Upgrading to a solid-state drive may be a viable option and will more likely than not substantially improve performance. You'll be surprised how many workloads are in fact I/O bound... — DragonLord 1 min ago

People always think the CPU is the limiting factor but fail to realize that disk bandwidth is almost always the #1 limiting factor in any PC not equipped with an SSD.

Even the type-Y ultra-low-power CPUs for Ultrabooks provide decent amounts of compute performance.

William Hilsum

@Bob guessing same one - wickedlasers.com/torch

ok, looks different, but same name...

0

A: Processor compatibility

The processor is not upgradeable—consider installing an SSD instead. Your laptop uses a soldered (BGA 1023) processor, which cannot be replaced without special equipment. You should consider installing a solid-state drive instead. The vast majority of consumer workloads are not compute-bound, b...

8:44 PM

Ahoy!

9:07 PM

ahoy!

Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge announced

I've skimmed through, whats the difference between the two?

"Samsung Pay works with both Near Field Communication (NFC) and Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST)"

wut?

@shelvacu You didn't skim far enough then, there's a comparison at the bottom.

9:30 PM

like the 0,1mm differences?

Q: How to convert a Voluson 4D ultrasound scan (.V00 file) to a video?

0

I have here a "4D volume cine" ultrascound scan (time series of 3D scans) created with a machine from GE Healthcare Voluson. The file is in their older, proprietary .V00 format. I want to create a video file from this that can be played in a normal media player. How to do that, ideally with free...

video file-conversion medical

uhh wha....?

9:48 PM

@MichaelFrank User answered own question.

I think it's too specialized as it involves medical equipment, so not sure whether to close it. The question does involve computer software, though.

@DragonLord I feel like it's a copy and paste from somewhere else...

@MichaelFrank Google doesn't seem to think so.

@DragonLord Yea, I couldn't find any ~~good~~ match.

The user has a record of good contributions.

Jason Aller

10:57 PM

What is the etiquette about someone self deleting their question after it has been answered?

@JasonAller It sucks and is frowned upon, but isn't against the rules.

Jason Aller

Ok. I felt I gave a pretty good answer and was bummed that no one will see it

@Bob a lot of the mainstream/gaming brands use their own switches

Q: Good question with accepted answer disappeared?

2

First off, this was a question I answered. And in in my humble opinion it was a good question that dealt with improper DNS name server settings being set on a domain registration, how to diagnose, how to resolve and the cause. A Google Cached version of the question and answer thread exists here....

support

You could possibly meta up and request the question undeleted.

@JourneymanGeek Who else besides Razer use their own switches?

@DragonLord Ugh. Probably won't be getting Samsung in the future if that's the way they're going.

Jason Aller

11:08 PM

Thanks Michael. I think I'm going to just let it go, although there are no other questions that address the particular issue.

11:18 PM

@JasonAller There's nothing wrong with self-answering questions. Perhaps you could suddenly have a similar problem?

@MichaelFrank logitech

@DragonLord: meh, razer's doing ok. And while their hardware isn't always as sexy as roccat (I miss the XTD), they do seem to be fairly reliable for me.

engadget.com/2015/03/01/sandisk-200gb-microsd-card THAT STORAGE DENSITY 0_0