Root Access

somequixotic

15:01

is this good subjective or bad subjective?

0

Am working a bit on CUDA, most of the examples and tutorials i see deal with implementing mathematical functions on the GPU ( Like some vector / matrix calculations). I was wondering if we can directly use the GPU to work on strings, no mathematical functions. maybe something like matching a bu...

jokerdino

subjective is bad. unless I posted it

Duikboot

@Bob There are no walls, ( all walls are open) Many glass not much walls.

Journeyman Geek

hm

I need to get a link over to my OS/2 box

jokerdino

where's the Boris comment about /2?

somequixotic

@JourneymanGeek NO

Journeyman Geek

15:10

;p

somequixotic

@JourneymanGeek if you mean hyperlink: tinyurl or bit.ly

Journeyman Geek

@somequixotic: trying to see if I can get a SLIGHTLY more modern browser on it ;p

yeah

somequixotic

it would be awesome if you could port Chrome 28 or Firefox 22 to OS/2

Journeyman Geek

actually, I think sourceforge crashes netscape

somequixotic

probably easier to do FF but both would be hard

@JourneymanGeek just grab a direct link from a mirror, dude

surely it can do a basic file download with mime-type: application/octet-stream

Duikboot

15:11

What about this ? :D dx.com/p/1000mw-2-4ghz-300mbps-802-11b-g-n-wlan-ap-router-71892

somequixotic

@Duikboot 1 Watt of EMF? you might want to wear a lead suit when you use that

Journeyman Geek

@somequixotic: was thinking of dumping it on my server

somequixotic

tomshardware.com/forum/8931-43-legal-power-output-country

oh nvm

Duikboot

Is it too much ? 1 Watt? :P

somequixotic

the North America standards for 802.11 b/g state that the maximum tx/rx power of a signal on the 2.4 GHz band is 1 Watt

so you're simply using the maximum legal TX power, if you live in North America

in Europe it's actually 100 milliwatts though

yeah, be careful with that 1 watt, it could be illegal on some frequency bands in some countries

for reference, 1 Watt is the amount of EMF that a microwave oven leaks to the environment when it cooks something on "High"

you definitely don't want that constantly transmitting all day if you're only a foot or so away from it

user88311

15:17

Hey does anybody know a place where a person could get a VGA to composite cable to hook a computer up to a tv for display, seems I've got a capacitor going in my monitor as I get the shimmering black lines on startup for a minute or 2, on that note anybody know of a good place to buy capacitors

somequixotic

many laptops can only transmit WiFi at 32 milliwatts; many standard desktop cards can only transmit at 100 milliwatts, and 500 milliwatts is a typical cellular phone tx power

so yeah, 1 Watt is a relatively large amount of electromagnetic frequency in the air. on a wire it's a very low power, but in the air it's a lot

user88311

@somequixotic seems we are talking to ourselves

Duikboot

Who can give me a good extender then if 1 watt is too much? :)

somequixotic

@user88311 did you look on amazon?

user88311

No credit card remember

somequixotic

15:23

no, I don't remember

Journeyman Geek

@somequixotic: superuser.com/a/628192/10165 this is partially your fault ;p

somequixotic

are you looking for a brick and mortar store? or do you have paypal or something else?

user88311

Ah well, paypal is all I have

Online, of course

Journeyman Geek

@user88311: you might want to identify which capasitor is faulty

and capasitor failures can cascade

Bob

@somequixotic powerful enough to cause ionisation? cause I really don't know

user88311

15:25

If I wanted to pay 20 bucks for the cable I'd go to a store

Bob

@Duikboot Keep in mind that your client device is unlikely to be very powerful, either.

user88311

I meant for just capacitors in general journey

Bob

Again, get a repeater. A lot of medium power APs spread out is better than one powerful AP.

Boris_yo

@somequixotic The more Watts in the air, the higher is cancer risk?

Bob

@user88311 uhh.. CRT or LCD monitor?

user88311

15:26

@JourneymanGeek also I intend to, but I want to order that cable first

somequixotic

I am in awe, sir. You are a time traveler. I'd upvote this by the number of years between the last time OS/2 was popular and 2013 if I could, but unfortunately I can only meagerly +1 it. — somequixotic 7 secs ago

@Bob ionization isn't relative to the tx power, but the frequency, I think. I think.

you could send several megawatts at a low frequency and it wouldn't ionize crap. see for example, a shockwave from a traditional bomb

the difference between a conventional bomb and a nuclear one is that the nuclear one emits EMF at extremely high frequencies, while the conventional emits EMF at low frequencies

Bob

@somequixotic Mostly frequency, yes.

I've been arguing that point for ages.

user88311

@Bob it's about 6 years old, so safe to say it's CRT

Bob

Though, low frequency with (very) high power does have the potential to cause ionisation, I believe.

Hm. I may be misremembering.

@user88311 Uhh... I'd advise you to get a new monitor.

somequixotic

@Bob how? that doesn't make much sense to me. you're saying you could create a really powerful low-frequency shockwave (think of an elephant stomping his foot, times, I don't know, a million) that would ionize stuff?

Bob

15:29

Capacitors in CRTs can kill, if you're not careful :P

somequixotic

ionization only comes from high energy particles hitting other particles "hard" enough to split them up

Journeyman Geek

er

Bob

@somequixotic Keep in mind that the microwave band is far higher than.. wait, a physical shockwave isn't even EMF.

somequixotic

when you send a high amplitude, low frequency wave, you're sending a lot of low frequency particles

Bob

Apples to oranges.

Journeyman Geek

15:30

CRT = fat and can kill you in 20 different ways

LCDs are reasonably safe

somequixotic

@Bob physical shockwaves are based on the same quantum and electromagnetic principles as EMF :P

user88311

I have 5 extra monitors bob, plenty to use in mean time, thing is none of them match the quality of this one @Bob

somequixotic

not apples to oranges :P

stomp your foot. congratulations, you've created an EMF wave!

frequency of maybe 1 Hz but still

user88311

@Bob I think you got a bit confused, or somebody did

Bob

@somequixotic They require a medium, while EMR does not...

user88311

15:31

@Bob I'm looking for a capacitor for my monitor, the TV which is a CRT I am looking for the vga to composite cable for

Bob

Ahh

user88311

I assume that makes sense now

What the hell is this, dealextreme, newegg, ebay, all I can find is TV out VGA to composite, no PC out

somequixotic

@Bob I think if you took an oscillator and started at 1 Hz and kept increasing the frequency of the oscillations higher and higher, eventually your mechanical waves that depend on a medium to propagate would become so high frequency that they reach the electromagnetic spectrum, and they can then "fly" without depending on a medium

Bob

> Even microwave radiation, which has a photon energy well below that of visible light and is usually considered non-ionizing, can be considered ionizing if it is intense enough

somequixotic

there's a breakaway frequency somewhere in there, there has to be, because waves are waves are waves, fundamentally they're the same, it's just that under a certain threshold they can't propagate without a medium to carry them

user88311

15:35

@Bob Know of any sites that actually have a PC out vga to composite cable

Bob

@user88311 nup

never needed one

I've more or less permanently moved to DVI/HDMI

@somequixotic Don't forget propagation speed.

user88311

Well this can't be right

Bob

Don't forget that one is energy/photons (no mass, except mass-energy equivalence). The other is massive particles.

At some level, they are both waves.

user88311

Stackexchange doesn't seem to want to log me out of chat

Bob

But they can be clearly separated into two categories.

user88311

15:40

Hey guys when you go to chat.stackexchange.com/users you should have a option to log out right

Journeyman Geek

hmm

is there a direct link to mobile chat?

somequixotic

@Bob categorization is useful insofar as it has some practical explanatory power for our daily lives, but on a purely physics/mathematics level, if two putatively "different" phenomena can be proven to operate under the same set of rules or equations, they aren't objectively in different categories

ruda.almeida

@user88311 I had a logout issue here but I don't have access to that machine anymore:

2

Q: Still logged in even after clearing browser data

Before closing my browser on a shared computer, I usually clear the browser data. On StackExchange, I am still logged after clearing my data. open http://superuser.com/users/login log in with google visit http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118/root-access click login link on bottom ( http://ch...

bug login

somequixotic

for instance there's no physics reason to separate out 10 pound bags of luggage from 20 pound bags of luggage, but an airline might care because one can be carried on the plane and the other can't

Journeyman Geek

and they can charge people more money ;p

Bob

15:43

@somequixotic But luggage of zero mass, which also behaves differently in significant ways, would be separated out.

somequixotic

@Bob electrons don't have zero mass

one electron weighs 9.10938291 × 10-31 kilograms

Bob

@somequixotic EMR isn't moving electrons.

Or, it's not commonly visualised as such, anyway.

user88311

@ruda.almeida my problem is a little different, on the chat.stackexchange.com/users page, there is no logout button, I logged out of SU and main SE site but nothing

ruda.almeida

WTF @JourneymanGeek has 50k rep! O_o

somequixotic

> Electromagnetic radiation is a particular form of the more general electromagnetic field (EM field), which is produced by moving charges

charges = electrons

Bob

15:48

@somequixotic Produced by.

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: I have for quite a while ;p

Bob

In the same way sound waves/vibrating air particles != your speaker

user88311

@OliverSalzburg Know of anyway a mod could perhaps force a user to log out of chat

somequixotic

well EMR is "visualized" as a wave because of the way that the particular electrons involved are moving through space, but the key observation is that the waves occur that way because there are actual moving particles (which particles? electrons) moving at the speed of light to produce those waves.

the way they're represented and the actual instantaneous physical occurrences are two different things

what happens when EMR is emitted? electrons are moving through space

how do we explain it in terms of our physical models? usually via the propagation of waves

Bob

@somequixotic That's the thing. Electrons do not move at the speed of light.

They have mass. Thus, as long as the special theory of relativity is accepted, that is impossible

Also, EMR is supposed to be able to propagate through a vacuum. Which, by definition, has no particles.

jokerdino

15:52

This question appears to be off-topic because it is urgent. — PeeHaa 26 mins ago

somequixotic

@Bob but how can something (electrons) produce something which is going faster than itself? if the thing that's traveling at the speed of light is going faster than the thing that's producing it, there's a bit of a conundrum there... and also, if the wave itself isn't made up of electrons moving in a wave-like fashion, then what is the wave?

jokerdino

Guess who? Pringles guy.

somequixotic

I think the whole EMF theory about waves propagating at the speed of light is idealized and not taking into account special relativity

that is to say, the actual speed of the electrons moving as part of a propagating wave phenomenon, whether in a vacuum or not, are moving at relativistic speeds, but not at actual c

Bob

@somequixotic Electrons do not move (i.e. from one place to another) as part of EMR.

They oscillate, IIRC. And EMR is emitted perpendicular to the direction of oscillation.

somequixotic

okay; so you have a vacuum, i.e. a region of space with no matter (nothing that has mass) in it; and you send EMR through this region of space. we already know and accept that the EMR will propagate through this vacuum even though nothing was there preceding it. the EMR is matter, though, because it's not simply a massless vacuum that we're sending, right?

Bob

15:56

Take electricity for example. The electric field is effectively instantaneous (i.e. very very fast), while the electron movement is measured in centimetres per second.

somequixotic

the EMR is composed of an extremely small amount of matter; particles (electrons) made up of quarks, etc. otherwise it wouldn't exist. you'd see nothing.

Journeyman Geek

@ruda.almeida: I think there's a clear difference between tasks that need processor power, and fundamental rendering. I think I can get SU chat or discource working on a hypothetical PII, but not say youtube

somequixotic

nevermind, the EMR is made up of photons, which are theoretically massless

Gowtham

Everything that travels at the speed of light is made of photons

Bob

@somequixotic Photons were explained to me as energy packets..

Zero rest mass, but it does have "mass" via mass-energy equivalence.

Gowtham

15:59

@Bob quanta

Bob

@Gowtham Ya.

Gowtham

Read stephen hawking theory of everything and the grand design

pretty darn interesting book ;p

Read it after I could not understand the theory behind wormholes in Micheal Crincton's Timeline

Journeyman Geek

and... mr pringles strikes again.

Bob

Aha!

@somequixotic

0

Q: Are Electrons Electromagnetic Waves?

I encountered a thought provoking article suggesting that electrons are electromagnetic waves. Is this possible? I may not agree with their entire model, but surely there is the possibility that an electromagnetic wave might impersonate a some aspects of a point charge through aligning its electr...

electromagnetic-radiation electron electric-field

4

A: Why don't electromagnetic waves require a medium?

Yes you are completely right, but it took an intellectual revolution for physicists to realise that it made sense to have a wave that wasn't the motion or jiggling of some physical medium, a wave that could exist equally well in empty space. All light is electromagnetic radiation. But to ask « ...

Gowtham

Bob

16:07

22

A: Why is light called an 'electromagnetic wave' if it's neither electric nor magnetic?

Light is an oscillating electric and magnetic field, so it is electrical and magnetic. Later: re the edit to your question, I think there are two issues. Firstly the interaction with electric charge and secondly the interaction with magnets. Light does not carry any charge itself, so it does no...

Gowtham

Gravity can bend light tho ;p

Bob

This has been adressed ad-nauseum. Photons have energy, which is "relativistic mass" (meaning just energy divided by c^2 so that it gets units of mass) and "relativistic mass" is the source of gravity, not "rest mass". The rest mass is zero, but the energy is not, and energy is the source of gravity. There are at least two other questions here about this, but I don't remember which. — Ron Maimon Dec 30 '11 at 13:33

jokerdino

when electric and magnetic sources in perpendicular do some crazy stuff, EM waves get produced in a perpendicular direction to both of thm.

JAN ORTS

16:30

.

Do I get +10 reputation each month for nothing?

Or I only get "points" when somebody upvote my question or my answers to other's questions?

somequixotic

16:47

@JANORTS no, there's no free rep

the first time one of your stackexchange accounts reaches 300 rep, you get 100 rep free for any new account you create - that's the only free rep

you get rep for upvotes on your questions and answers, or for accepted edits up until a certain threshold

Oliver Salzburg

17:07

@user88311 Any user can log out of chat whenever they want

Gowtham

General relativity

General relativity, or the general theory of relativity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916 and the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of ...

Oliver Salzburg

17:24

iKlsR

Bob

@somequixotic Also, +2 for accepting an answer, +15 for having an answer accepted, and bounties

Ali

Hi

2

Q: Windows taskbar unresponsive and always showing the busy Icon. Explorer.exe process crashes frequently

I strongly suspect a rogue application (or service or bug) in my Windows 8 laptop which kills my explorer process and at times makes the taskbar unresponsive showing the busy icon all the time. Hence I have to use Alt+Tab to switch over between application. When the taskbar becomes unresponsive ...

windows windows-8 windows-explorer crash taskbar

two very high rep users seem to get fighting over trivial matters in above question , is there anyone who can resolve this?

they have downvoted each other good posts , which seems unfair

(some of the abusive comments are deleted though)

Also,Is there anyone that can answer the above question?

Oliver Salzburg

17:49

So many wishes at once...

@Ali I've looked over it just a few minutes ago

From my point of view, there's really nothing to be done

It's a pretty horrible troubleshooting question and one user gave you a list of troubleshooting tools while the other did some troubleshooting with your dumps, yay

Boris_yo

@OliverSalzburg How about bringing task manager and narrowing down to processes that take high CPU usage? Usually rogue processes do that.

somequixotic

owliver :P

Oliver Salzburg

@Boris_yo Don't ask me, ask @Ali

somequixotic

> Help me debug this error and trace the rouge App

didn't know apps had inherent colors associated with them

Oliver Salzburg

@Ali And, just FYI, full memory dumps of central processes like explorer.exe could potentially include information you might want to keep private

somequixotic

17:56

chrome.exe is red, winword.exe is blue, etc.

and sidran32 is black ;-)

Ben Richards

:P

What's going on?

Oliver Salzburg

Bob

@BenRichards You just got recoloured.

Oliver Salzburg

I can even configure my colors! :)

Ben Richards

:P

What program is that?

Oliver Salzburg

17:57

@BenRichards Process Hacker

Ben Richards

Ah

somequixotic

@OliverSalzburg the rouge program (rouge in French = red) is preventing you from configuring it

Oliver Salzburg

But Process Explorer has a similar dialog

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Huh, there's a category for .NET?

Oliver Salzburg

@somequixotic Nooooooo

Bob

17:57

That seems completely unnecessary.

somequixotic

we need to find the rouge program !

Ben Richards

I only ever used stock Windows tools for process management...

somequixotic

@Bob it can just read the Win32 PE header and determine if it's native or MSIL

Bob

:Same, most of the time :P

Procexp when I really need it (usually a fresh download)

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob I find the highlighting terribly annoying and not useful actually :P Maybe I should disable it... I can never see which one is the selected process

Bob

17:58

@somequixotic Ya, but is there a point?

Ben Richards

I remember in XP that I used the resource monitor to deep dive into some process performance issues, to great effect.

Bob

Also, POSIX process?

Unless it's under SUA.

Boris_yo

@Gowtham WTF!

Bob

Also, 32-bit process? That seems like it would overlap a lot.

somequixotic

@Bob sure - if you're having problems with the .NET Framework improperly loading an executable, using the wrong .net framework version, or crashing very early (in a class loader or assembly)

Bob

17:59

@somequixotic Still wouldn't help to highlight .NET processes and libraries.

In that case, you'd want to attach a debugger.

somequixotic

I guess if you just wanted to see what are the .net executables running on your system... for whatever reason

Bob

lol

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob It's so that when you want to see what is using up all your resources and you open the Process Hacker that you can go "Oh Jesus effing Christ!!! It's one of those stupid .NET applications again!!!"

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Oh, as opposed to all those non-.NET applications! I see!

Oliver Salzburg

Exactly

somequixotic

18:01

it's funny too because you can actually load a .NET Framework Runtime into an ordinary native process, and the process hacker tool would be none the wiser if it's just reading the PE header

Bob

Incidentally, Firefox at 891 tabs (lost 600 earlier today D:) is eating up about 1GB

somequixotic

you could start a Java program and invoke the appropriate APIs to load the .NET runtime into a Java VM

Darth Android

There's a library for that, actually.

Bob

Lots of possible CLR hosts

IIS itself does that.

I think SQL Server can, too

somequixotic

it would be awesome if you could load .NET into a SUA executable (POSIX subsystem)

then again i have no idea what kind of weird restrictions and environmental parameters are assumed when you declare an application to be in the POSIX subsystem

it might not even be able to map native Win32 images into the same process space as a POSIX executable

Bob

18:05

@somequixotic Win32 is distinct from SUA.

somequixotic

they should make the POSIX subsystem a default, builtin feature of all versions of Windows ... to make the Linux/UNIX guys happy... Cygwin would become fairly pointless once the userland tools built up around the POSIX subsystem (provided they were open source tools, of course)

Bob

IIRC SUA sits directly on top of NT

@somequixotic Or, they could deprecate it. cough Windows 8 cough

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob How did you just lost 600 tabs?

somequixotic

:(

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Session restore shensnigans. Accidentally copied/deleted the wrong file.

I'm back to early May now...

Oliver Salzburg

18:06

:(

somequixotic

I would be very happy if they would flat-out remove the WScript / CScript / JScript host processes for VBScript from Windows 8.1 or Windows 9

then I could push my PowerShell and/or C# agenda

Bob

Which reminds me, I really do need to set up automatic backups on my laptop.

@somequixotic That'll break a bunch of things.

somequixotic

@Bob and I would be happy

Bob

Incidentally, I think the licensing program is still a VBScript.

Ah yea, there it is.

C:\Users\Bob>where slmgr
C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs

somequixotic

I don't think it would take Microsoft all that long to re-write any software they ship to customers either in Windows or in one of their other products that uses VBScript -- they could rewrite it pretty easily in C# or PowerShell. that said, it would indeed break a crapton of third-party software, and ALL of our testing framework written in VBScript

would I miss our VBScript testing framework though? NO

Bob

18:08

@somequixotic PowerShell has nice cmdlets, but I really hate the syntax...

@somequixotic The problem is the third-party crap.

somequixotic

@Bob I gradually learned how to write C#-equivalent-stuff in PowerShell, thereby making most of PowerShell's syntax irrelevant, and only using a very sparingly few cmdlets

the array unrolling is my least favorite feature in PS

Oliver Salzburg

> ALL of our testing framework written in VBScript

O__O

2

Bob

@somequixotic Well, you'd just end up with something even more broken. Probably written in JavaScript running in IE with additional privileges through an ActiveX control.

somequixotic

@OliverSalzburg yep, ~50,000 SLOC

@Bob no. actually, no. not at all. we have actual sane people here, a small number of them, who are using Selenium with PhantomJS and WebDriver, and writing a separate test framework in Java, although it can be interfaced to with C# and a few other languages

Oliver Salzburg

The worst part about WSH is that there are some things you simply can't do with JScript

somequixotic

18:11

as long as VBScript exists, though, they're going to allow the VBScript framework to continue to be the main one for almost all projects

Oliver Salzburg

I once wrote some script, don't even know what it was anymore, and then I got to some point where the documentation said "not supported for JScript, lol"

somequixotic

the Selenium framework is for a few lucky people who have special needs that the VBScript framework can't accommodate

honestly I'm surprised they didn't hack around it using SendKeys and simulated mouse clicks

Bob

@somequixotic Ooh, that sounds fun.

MS removed VBScript? Let's port it to AHK!

somequixotic

@Bob -_-

Bob

If there's a syntax more ridiculous than PowerShell/VBScript/Batch, it's AHK.

somequixotic

18:13

no, I meant in VBScript -- VBS has SendKeys and simulated mouse clicks too

I actually rather like VBScript's syntax, and it'd be fine/good/great with .NET supp --

uh...

wait, that's VB.NET :S

Oliver Salzburg

@somequixotic Dim wat as String

Bob

...

Good lord.

97

A: What does DIM stand for in Visual Basic and BASIC?

Dim originally (in BASIC) stood for Dimension, as it was used to define the dimensions of an array. (The original implementation of BASIC was Dartmouth BASIC, which descended from FORTRAN, where DIMENSION is spelled out.) Nowadays, Dim is used to define any variable, not just arrays, so its mea...

somequixotic

@OliverSalzburg Line 1, Char 9: Unexpected token 'as'; expected: end of line

Bob

I almost forgot. Implicit declaration.

Ali

@OliverSalzburg Does it include passwords?

somequixotic

18:15

implicit declaration is in PS too, and type inference, but you can also explicitly declare a variable of a certain type in PS, and it's necessary to do so on rare occasions when using .NET

Bob

Option Strict, please.

Oliver Salzburg

@Ali "potentially"

somequixotic

@Bob you know what's even better? (and this is COM in general) -- if you just "Let" (the default operator for =) a variable to an object, you get an error, but if you wrap the object in a Variant, you can Let the variable to the variant

Bob

Reminds me of my stint with PAWN. Gotta have that #pragma semicolon 1

Ali

procdump ? how to use it for my case?

somequixotic

18:17

Dim a 'implicit type: Variant
a = CreateObject("foo") 'error
set a = CreateObject("foo") 'success
a = Variant(CreateObject("foo")) 'success, but you pay for it with a variant wrapper, which is slow

Bob

@OliverSalzburg destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

Oliver Salzburg

@Bob Seen it, loved it :D

0

Q: How to delete "Program Files (x86)" folder

So i need to delete Program Files (x86) folder. It won't happen because some dll cannot be deleted. First of them is common/.../dao360.dll Like in this tutorial http://www.001easytricks.com/2012/06/delete-program-files-x86-from-windows-7.html I've tried to change ownership to my Admin user usi...

windows-7 windows delete x86 program-files

Good question!

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Most definitely an XY problem.

Ali

@Boris_yo that was my first approach 2 weeks back

somequixotic

0

A: How to delete "Program Files (x86)" folder

Just mount the volume read-write on another operating system that can read and write NTFS (for example, Linux's ntfs-3g, or another Windows computer), then delete the directory. Done.

kind of a sarcastic answer; I don't actually expect that deleting that folder is going to do him any good :)

Ali

18:20

2

Q: Windows taskbar unresponsive and always showing the busy Icon. Explorer.exe process crashes frequently

I strongly suspect a rogue application (or service or bug) in my Windows 8 laptop which kills my explorer process and at times makes the taskbar unresponsive showing the busy icon all the time. Hence I have to use Alt+Tab to switch over between application. When the taskbar becomes unresponsive ...

windows windows-8 windows-explorer crash taskbar

how to get MS support for this question? using remote assistance?

I have a licensed copy

Oliver Salzburg

@Ali support.microsoft.com

@somequixotic @Bob Well, the blog post he linked gives an explanation for why he wants to delete the folder

Bob

@OliverSalzburg I'm not really in the habit of clicking random blog posts in questions :P

somequixotic

yeah, "001easytricks" is extremely suspect

can you summarize the concept of why the blog is advising him to delete it in the first place @Oli ?

Oliver Salzburg

> Though you did a clean install from Windows 7 (64 bit) to Windows 7 (32 bit), you still had a "Program Files (x86)" folder and a "Windows.old" folder. You are able to delete the "Windows.old" folder but the "Program Files (x86)" folder will not be deleted without trusted installer permission.

Not sure if that makes any sense though

somequixotic

the guy just replied in a comment to my answer

he says that basically, he wants his Program Files (x86) folder to be a symlink to a folder on another drive letter

Oliver Salzburg

18:27

@somequixotic Okay... no further questions :D

somequixotic

I don't think that would break many programs, since almost all programs will automatically dereference the symbolic link (NTFS symlink, not a Windows Shell Shortcut; very different) or indeed not even be aware of the fact that it is a symlink

it seems weird but I don't think it's outside the realm of semi-reasonability to try to do that

Oliver Salzburg

Well, yeah, it isn't

As in, you can do that

You can also drive a car with your feet

somequixotic

@OliverSalzburg what do you drive it with? your belly button?

Oliver Salzburg

:D

somequixotic

(I press gas and brake with my feet so I drive my car with my feet)

Oliver Salzburg

18:29

It amazes me that he would attempt such an operation while the system itself is live

And then run some command line that takes over ownership of every single item in that folder in an attempt to delete them

Like, has he even made a proper copy of the data to his new target location?

Bob

@OliverSalzburg Ugh. Messing with permissions.

That really needs to have a knowledge quiz.

Don't pass the quiz? Not allowed to touch permissions.

somequixotic

superuser.com/posts/628266/revisions

that makes it so much clearer now

Oliver Salzburg

I mean, I guess I did worse shit when I started to learn to computer

somequixotic

is SU having moderator elections this year @Oli ?

i want to nominate myself so i can lose ): and so we have someone to compare JManGeek's winning nomination against

Oliver Salzburg

@somequixotic There's nothing planned

somequixotic

18:37

@OliverSalzburg ohh wow ok i thought every site had new elections every year

too many cooks in the kitchen?

Oliver Salzburg

@somequixotic Well, we got some intensely awesome moderators during the last election. Flags are getting handled like it ain't no thing

somequixotic

@OliverSalzburg pfft. YOU got elected last election didn't you? ;-)

Oliver Salzburg

@somequixotic Couldn't resist ;P

But, yeah, we got pretty low flag handling times and no complaints really. It would probably be nice to have some more diversity in active time zones, as Daniel, slhck and myself are in the same one

somequixotic

another USAian and a Singaporean would take care of that nicely ;-)

ahhhhemmmmmmm

Oliver Salzburg

I think KronoS is pretty high up on the wishlist actually

somequixotic

18:42

my activity on the main site dropped off a lot since i realized how fun / easy / casual chat is, so i'm an awful candidate :P would being a mod motivate me to do more? probably yes, but for the long haul? dunno, maybe, maybe not

and i'm already effectively a chat moderator by being a room owner :D

0

Q: Is XP going obsolete ? if so is it cheaper to get a tower built?

I have had minor problems with my emails, sending messages to contacts emailing me saying " email not received. But i am getting them. I am on XP and run my emails through outlook. I was told XP is going obsolete and Windows 8 means i will need anew processor and mother board. Am i better getting...

windows-xp microsoft-outlook

Oliver Salzburg

Being a site mod is very stressful, at least for me. It's just crap after crap and people starting fights and flagging stuff for stupid reasons. So, yeah, you should definitely run! :D

somequixotic

0

A: Is XP going obsolete ? if so is it cheaper to get a tower built?

A few things: Windows XP is not going obsolete; it's obsolete. Right now. It's flat-out ancient software. It has unresolvable security flaws. It has reliability problems that are solved in newer versions of Windows. New programs, and new versions of old programs, are starting to drop support fo...

Mokubai

Dang you @somequixotic

somequixotic

@Mokubai :-)

Mokubai

How've you been?

@OliverSalzburg sounds like fun

somequixotic

18:53

@Mokubai I've been good. Today is actually a slightly exciting day.

Mokubai

oh yes?

somequixotic

My mother is buying a new car. My car is new-ish (July 2012), but hers are well over 12 years old, and very undesirable to drive, as well as somewhat precariously balanced in that part of their lifecycle when they're over 100,000 miles, but somehow miraculously able to continue running without any obvious problems.

I'm going to take her to pick it up tonight, she already did all the paperwork.

Mokubai

@somequixotic that sounds like my car, 120k+ and still going strong

somequixotic

The car she's buying is a lot better than mine (as far as sheer features, and safety package and stuff), but worse gas mileage. It's a full-sized sedan.

I have a 2012 Honda Civic EX. She is buying a 2014 Chevy Impala. They completely re-did the Impala in 2014. It has a new engine, a new safety package including all sorts of incredible things that let you know before you get blindsided, etc.

Oliver Salzburg

@somequixotic oh my... it's from the future

somequixotic

18:57

I live with her, so I'll get to drive it occasionally, but to work and back every day I'll still be driving my car. The only techie safety feature my car has is the backup sensor, which provides a low-tech "beep! beep! beep!" noise if I'm within a few feet of hitting an object behind me.

hers has the backup camera, plus a lane drift warning, plus a "you are trying to merge into a lane where a car is in your blindspot, dummy!" warning, plus a "whoa, the people ahead of you are slowing down but you're not!" warning

Mokubai

@somequixotic my backup sensor is the bumper, if I hear a loud crunch then I probably should stop.

3

probably

maybe

ah well, too late, let's make sure...

somequixotic

Personally, for my uses, I would rather have my current car than the one she's buying, because I get much better MPG, which is good for the environment and good for my wallet. And my car is much cheaper, too, let alone the gasoline savings.

Mokubai

"lane drift warning"? so how does it tell the difference between a particularly slow lane change and a drift?

tapped-out

whether the turn signal is on

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