eh, the bitcoin craze will pass by soon I think, unless you can get tons of "free" electricity from a wind farm or something

@Hennes heh. geographical restrictions are imposed by the RIAA, not by Amazon... if they had a choice, all songs would be available globally and even on Mars

Well, it is bad enough that I do not even attempt to buy any songs from amazon.co.uk or amazon.de

Anyone up on VHD's? I've converted old PC drive images created with Acronis (.tib files) with VMware vCenter to .vmdk, then converted that using Starwind V2V into a .VHD for use in Microsoft Virtual PC... Can mount it fine, but am unable to run the Windows boot repair/recovery...

@Hennes I've purchased songs from .co.uk and .fr without even leaving the US ;-)

proxy FTW

"oh... hello there, UK citizen IP address! Wait, this is a U.S. debit ca-- ah, I don't care, I'll take your money anyway!"

@HaydnWVN I think Acronis had a built in utility to convert to VHD...

@Bob I've not got a full version of Acronis and don't want one, they were created with a free copy from Hirens Boot Cd

My health insurance just sent me a letter. It tells me that I'll get 80 € back!

...at the start of 2014

A bit premature I'd say

@OliverSalzburg either the year is wrong, or you're going to be happy in a year :P

@HaydnWVN why can't you run the repair/recovery?

unless you mean it's failing to run from the VHD

use the DVD

@allquixotic The best part is that they're calling it a bonus, when it's actually excess income they have to give back.

"Aren't you a lucky customer?! You get back all the money you paid extra last year!"

hehe, we get income tax returns, which is at least honest

but I think I'm going to have to owe money this year because of the mostly-unresolved fiscal cliff thing :/

it.slashdot.org/story/13/01/25/132203/…

wtf

@OliverSalzburg LOL

PEBKAC. GitHub shouldn't have to disable anything.

stupid people not paying attention to what they commit is TRWTF

always look at the staged list of files before tagging a commit in git

@allquixotic Indeed :D

github.com/blog/1390-secrets-in-the-code

@Hennes I'm wondering, would you have time to tell me how to retrieve Ghost's image from the virtual drive (and whether I eventually ruined it)?

The ghost image is fixed. Booting the VM does not change it. So the ghost is safe.

@Hennes I had booted it before making the ghost, that's what worries me.

(Much as booting a computer does not change any songs stored on it. It is just a file)

If you booted it before making the ghost it will undo the sysprep cleaning

Which means it probably has all the drivers for the virtualbox 'hardware' again.

@Hennes well it didn't boot completely. It was like "Please wait while Windows prepares to start", and then I panicked and turned it off. Ruined or not?

Worst case: Just rerun sysprep and re-ghost. (Not sure where it was when you panic-reset it)

@Bob I should be so lucky, the old installs an OEM, the only recovery i have is from a different OEM or a retail, neither gives me a repair option :/

Awesome! :D voxeljs.com

@Hennes question while I wait for dd to finish, any ideas if there is way to emulate a way to rotate a screen if the hardware doesn't support it

As to getting the image off the vm, you had USB support, so you can just boot the VM, plug in the 15GB pen drive and copy the file from the second drive to the USB pen drive. Or use the shared folders, no reason not to reinstall the vbox stuff after you made a image.

Okay

Rotate screen: which drivers do not support that?

Well, since I just received my new PSU and am going to install all the new hardware, and new SSD and hard drive are much quicker, I'll redo it once i'm done with that. Thanks a ton. :3

Hmm, ugly as hell thought: can RDP rotate and RDP back to your own desktop? (possibly via anoter computer and start RDP in RDP). Ugly as hell though

Doesn't Windows support screen rotation natively?

In win XP it was still done with the GPU drivers

it's a emachine netbook running seven starter, real pain, intel graphics media accelerator driver for mobile

Nothing in control panel ?

Netbook... Excuse me, but why would you want to rotate the screen if the keyboard is attached to the screen?

First place I checke

d*

reading

Uhm, all right.

not using the keyboard just wireelss mouse,

wireless*

reading a book since dd takes a while

Never used or tried by me, but: softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/iRotate.shtml

less scrolling involved if I could rotate the screen

Honestly if I were you I would just scroll down, but that's irrelevant.

Which chipset/GPU? and which drivers?

Also, TN or IPS or VPA display ?

Aargh BOINC is hanging my computer :(

Hey, I have a PDF file open, and there's a bunch of text in the beginning I want to remove. Is there a way, apart from just deleting the page?

Which program did you open the PDF with? Acrobat (writer/full version)

intel(r) graphics media accelerator 3150 chip type

Or a viewer such as FoxIT or acrobat reader

Adobe Acrobat Pro 10

" the 3150 supports screen rotation in Windows 7 Starter on the N450. " Source communities.intel.com/message/88146#88146

igdumbx32 main driver

@Ariane I never used that. Later acrobat (full) I used was version 5, long long ago. I suspect it has changed quite a bit since

Heh, okay. Makes you quite a dinosaur. :p

yeah al;ready been there, there is no optino for enable display rotation

option*

We made a magazine (in LaTeX), printed to PDF, opened it in acrobat 5 (local copy of the printer) to change the margins a few mm and then printed it

User: Most up to date drivers?

yep

check for updates once a week

and normal/intel drivers or OEM (Dell/HP/...) drivers

yep

Any disabled services?

none

which is why I asked since I can't see anything myself that would prevent me

I know the intel accelerated graphics drivers for XP used to start a service needed to rotate. We usually disabled that to prevent users from accidentily rotating the screen and calling IT in a state of panic

it's got hotkeys setup to autocorrect to right side up though so it's got me wondering

Which model computer is it?

emachine em350

netbook

Hmm, acer. And the link I had complains about it not working on acers

Can't you do it in 7 regardless of card

most intel/nvidia/ati adaptors can and have done for a while

I got my catalyst center open at "common task - rotate displays" in win7.

Since my new CPU cooler has a pretty complex fixation system that I figure will take me a while to figure out and install properly, is it safe to just clean the CPU of its previous thermal paste, then install the new cooler without any thermal paste, and then remove it with the simpler last 4 screws only, put the paste, and install it back again?

Em350 uses an Intel Atom N450, which has integrated graphics of the type "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150". I am pretty sure they did not add a second chip to a netbook (power/cost reasons). And win7 starter supports rotating. So it only does not work because either Acer specified drivers are used, or because acer sabotaged it

If you have a CPU that was assembled using the cooling compound pad that is often found on stock coolers, when trying to improve heat distribution by applying additional heat compound, should you remove the pad prior to doing so?

Guess I'll be scrolling for a while

Are you asking me? I have no idea. I think the stock cooler came with paste, not a pad, sealed with a plastic thingie.

@user88311 The only thing I can think off: 1) uninstall the graphics driver. 2) Reboot. 3) try thing one downloadcenter.intel.com/…

@user88311 What are you reading?

(Untampered drivers from Intel)

Oh, if you have win7 32 bit change to the right drivers. I linked to the 64 bit ones

Alright, I'll do that in a few while I make lunch

oh finally dd finished

Ariane: Please do not try taking short cuts. The CPU should shut it self off if your cooling is not good enough. So it should do no harm. should

@user88311 if you're reading a local file that can be used within a various range of applications, or a Web page you can open in a variety of browsers, perhaps you can find a piece of software that itself rotates, instead of the whole PC. It can be a workaround.

Yeah, I'm in chrome so probably easy to get extension

hello

dd, 152628 records in, 152627 out

1 difference

@Hennes I'm not planning on turning it on without any thermal paste. Just there, sitting on the table. In order not to put paste all over the PC/desk/fingers/planet.

Ah

indeed 1 difference, last I checked there should be none

One note about thermal paste, if you use the white stuff it may have Titanium in it. (poison - heavy metal warning)

So wash your hands after applying it

Artic silver 5 here

Same here. Came with the Nehalems (After market cooler)

Good stuff.

yep

@Ariane I'm asking the whole room ;D

@Hennes any idea what would cause 1 record to get "lost"

I get this a lot recently

@Hennes Heh, I have nothing so premium. Just the Cooler Master tube that came with the cooler. So anyway, is it safe to do that? Installing it and then partly uninstalling it.

@OliverSalzburg I wasn't aware the current i5/i7's could go that high without shutting down?!

@Oliver Ouch. I think you should remove the pad and then put on paste. The paste/pad is used to remove microscopic gaps between surfaces, not to conduct better than the cooler's metal. So the less stuff in between, the more hermetic it is, the better, I think.

@HaydnWVN No shutdowns here

@Oliver Shut it down yourself. It'll melt. xD

@Ariane It's more a happy medium - you need enough paste so there's no air in the microscopic valleys, but you also don't want too much as it can start to insulate leading to 'hot spots'

The fan also doesn't go above 2400RPM even when the CPU is at 96°

Which I find confusing

@OliverSalzburg rofl

@OliverSalzburg Either use the pad or the paste. Never both

Cooling set to passive?

@Hennes Well, the pad is in there right now and was working fine since I built this thing

@Haydn Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks. ^^

@HaydnWVN Don't know, maybe I should check the BIOS

I find best practice, spreading the paste, use a razor blade or paint scraper, put a thin lin along the edge, just glide it accross

line*

@OliverSalzburg Windows power settings is a good place to start (hey no reboot needed!)

I already cleaned out the computer a few days ago. That didn't do anything. I ordered paste yesterday, now waiting for it

and the paste is not supposed to conduct the heat. The intended goal is "CPU-heatsink part: in contact with the "cooler-heatsink-part". With just a tad of paste to fill any holes in the metal.

Uh. I'm just gonna follow the guide and put a drop in the middle, and then press hard and remove any excess on the edges.

the goal of paste and pad is same thing

just different methods of same result

I don't even have a razor thingie. And I have zero dexterity.

Use a small drop.

the pad will expand to fill in the spaces, the paste does that on contact

@user88311 In ideal situations yes, or like me fiddling with desktop pc's it doesn't overly matter with - using cheap thermal paste, apply a rough line and then spread it with an edge from a ripped sheet of paper... Just when seating heatsink give it lots of wiggling xD

Anyway, @Hennes, what about my question? Is it safe to do what I said?

same

I used a plastic bag (for sandwiches) over my finger and spread a tiny drop around. That looked silly but it worked.

@Haydn ^^' That's putting paper particles in the paste. Probably a pretty awful idea. xD

@Ariane Doubting the quality of my paper? ;)

Hehe.

the real pain

cleaning artic silver 5 off

Anyway. Is it safe to do that? Installing it and then partly uninstalling it to put paste, and finishing up the installation?

As long as you do not turn it on before the cooler and paste is fullly in place I do not see why not.

However I am not sure how you would need to install the cooler.

and you're probably right, but these are basic workstations, the fans will be full of dust long before the CPU's are over-heating

@Hennes Wouldn't 1 missing record out mean it's not a perfect copy of the drive

I had to disassemble the PC, remove the motherboard from the case and then mount the backplate for my cooler. Quite a lot of work

@user88311 I am worried about which copy it is

Last block?

Well, there are complicated plastic and metal plates to put under and over the motherboard, and I need to figure out first-hand how to put the screws in and all. It's complicated and my manual abilities are close to zero. They say to put the paste on first, but really, I just cannot do that. ^^'

dd didn't say

Ariane: Just put the paste on when you are ready

@user88311 It might have failed to write the first block (MBR, on a mounted disk)

one way to test that out

Okay. Also, how long should I leave my PC turned off before starting to fiddle with it? I'm guessing it needs to cool or something. Is there a way to accelerate that by running the fan and cooler, but not the rest of the PC?

restart

Ariane: might be easiest to remove the whole board, install all parts of the cooler and remount the board with the cooler already in place

Ariane: No need.

Ariane: when you turn the PC off it is already at a safe temperature, and it is not generating more heat

@Hennes Yes, that's the plan. I need to anyway, since there's a complicated frame to put underneath.

@Hennes Really? o: I thought it needed to cool. All rightie then.

Just make sure it it turned off. :)

Lol. Once ON the desk it cannot be anything but turned off. :p

And before doing much, make sure power if off. Really off, (e.g. pull the plug) and that you are grounded and not wearing woolen clothing

I might be pedantic about this, but I have seen people 'power off' a pC from windows, then plug in a card and look up in panic when the PC started during the placement of the card

@Ariane You say that... I always fire up new mobo&cpu's before mouting in cases... On my desk, on top of a book or 2 lol

The look on Davids face was priceless :)

Nothing will be plugged to the PC, of course. I need to change the PSU, so. But uhm, what do you mean, grounded, exactly?

@Haydn You're scary.

@Hennes I've always left plugged in, but turned off, that way the chassis is grounded still, but all UK plugs have a ground...

Just touch the case or the heating before touching electronics.

@Ariane Tell me about it, but been building PC's for 15+ years so old habits die hard ;)

To prevent a static discharge

@HaydnWVN Aye, the plug should be grounded. And it is safe to assume it is not.

Maybe I just saw too much bad stuff.

Always assume the worst, like unplugging the PSU before doing anything major - including RAM changes

Such as a power extension cord in a power extension cord in a power extension cord ... the one near the socket got HOT

at least by the time you've done that the whole thing should be discharged

hometime for me anyways, cya o/

Hennes, I don't understand. What should I do to be "grounded"? I suppose me on a chair and the computer on a wooden desk is not "grounded".

@Ariane It's safe enough to 'touch the heating' as Hennes said - basically means touch some other metal device which is itself grounded so you are sure your body isn't carrying static

The goal is to make sure that you do not have a static charge. Which is unlikely except if you are wearing robber shoes (insulating electricity) and a woolen sweater (nice for generating static electricity).

The combination of those two can cause you get get enough of a charge to 'zap' someone

I've never used a static 'wrist strap' and all i've done is kill a couple of RAM chips in my 15+ years

Or rub a balloon again the woolen sweater and stick it to the ceiling. Held in place by the charge

All right then

Usually it is not a problem

I've had more 230V+ shocks from badly maintained equipment/buildings than caused static damage

But it does not hurt to make sure you are discharged

Well, I'm not wearing them today, but the warm microfibre socks I often wear make me very staticky. I made the thermostat's LCS screen go black for a few minutes once with a static shock. xD

Have some thermal TEC label printers here that are great for generating static though xD

@Haydn. You ARE scary.

Still, it is a good habit to touch a grounded case or a heating pipe.

Understood.

@Ariane What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger... Or bald and grey, not sure which it's ment to be...

I'm gone anyways, i'll leave you with this: gizmodo.com/5955244/…

Bye ~

Good luck. And have fun with the new hardware

the 1 record still worries me though

act.demandprogress.org/sign/wh_ortiz/…

@Hennes mbr is fine, but the 1 record worries me, still though think I should dd again, more time to read I guess if I do

I wish there was a tool that would set the hotkey of all debuggers on my system to the same keys...

Power-off key?

hey hen, think I should worry about that 1 record, the drive I intend to use to restore all the files on finished with same amount of records but the second backup didn't

@Hennes I'll take no response as don't worry or busy

I was out shopping.

I am not sure if you need to worry. If you have free space at the end of your disk (an there is often 2-8 mb free at the end of a disk) and the sector was from the end. Do not worry

there is a few mb free, but it never said where it was from which is what worries me

You can chop the dd job in parts witk skip and seek

i may do that tomorrow, nI have the day off

@Hennes Nice answer! superuser.com/a/541211/36744

Oh, the VGA one.

I always get surprised by this.

It seemed such a simple quickly typed answer

Lacking confidence seems more interested in writing to VGA though. But if he (she?) thinks that it easy to just bang the hardware on a modern GPU then someone is going to be unpleasantly surprised

Oh, LaTeX…

Somehow it keeps generating the same chapter numbers for references.

fun times ahead

@Sathya I just saw it. Looks fun!

(Well, not for all reviewers cough, but… fun anyway)

also, added another bunch to shit Stack Overflow sends list

Wow.

I found LaTeX quite easy software for basic text (notes of meeting since I was the secretary for the university computer club). Add a makefile and all is well.

@DanielBeck Wait, you didn't expect that? :)

Make print4 (latex x3, divtops, ps2ps for 4 sides per page, print)

@Hennes I usually go from Markdown to LaTeX later, but the actual writing is tedious IMO

@slhck Well... it wasn't unexpected, but I had hoped it wasn't.

I used to keep a old file around. Header prepped. empty context.

copy, enter stuff. Done. Do not worry about the layout, TeX will do that for you

Same when graduating.

Except it had to be in word. So LaTex -> ps -> scan each page. Insert pictures in word

@Hennes It had to be in Word?

Nice hack by the way, I'm sure they were happy.

I think they needed it in word so they could print spare copies

@Hennes PDF?

Also, there are the people who failed when I mailed them a 8MB verslag.doc (2x4MB uncompressed bitmap logo included) as verslag.bz on a floppy with two files. The other file was bUnzip.exe

Nope. too complex

also, I hate word.

Insert logo.jpg -> unsupported, must be a bitmap

load paint, convert to bmp

Insert logo.bmp -> unsupported, must be a bitmap

Apparently it was a compressed bitmap and it needed to be a uncompressed bitmap

Original file: 12kb

FIle to insert (which worked) 4MB

One thing I will not forget: Auto save (every 5 minutes)

Time to save the large document: 3 minutes

@Hennes So you had two minutes to disable it. Should be plenty...?

Aye.

Still annoying enough to remember, along with "Een ernstige fout is opgetreden!"

(A critical error has occured!)

I had write protect on on my floppydisk

Continue? Y/n -> only keys to press: j/n

(J from the dutch word 'Ja' which is Yes)

Multilanguage mix OS... fun (not)

Interesting!

Don't you just love software that doesn't handle system date changes?

@Hennes Reminds me of the arts history thesis I had to typeset for my girlfriend.

With more than 130 figures.

After I tried hacking it together in Pages.app I ditched that and did it in XeTeX.

Arh. See picture 1 and 2. Insert picture between those manually edit all reference in old word version

Aye. Tex reference just work.

Haha, exactly!

Because you reference a name

Yeah, I told her this madness had to stop. Each figure would get a unique ID which was its file name and its label name, and p0rblem solved.

Is the occasional ping of over 1000ms to the router from my PC over the wireless seem like a problem to anyone?

The reason I ask is I just replaced my router for the connection being "flaky" as in it would occasionally spike to several thousand ms ping or just all out time out for a few minutes... stablize for a while, rinse and repeat for anywhere from 20 minutes to all night, and then maybe be stable for a whole week before acting up again

So I replaced my router and so far everything seems fine except the occasional huge ping to the router, but its only ever one at a time.

I fear I might be in a "stable" mode right now and I'm going to continue to have problems and the 1000ms ping is a sign of things to come

@ToddersLegrande WiFi is inherently unreliable

@ToddersLegrande Huh. My router pings with an average of 750ms.

it runs on an unlicensed band; many many types of electronics and appliances "pollute" random interference into the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, even if they don't say they do... vacuum cleaners, microwaves, DC motors, cordless phones, bluetooth

@slhck most pings are 1-3ms

if you were in a faraday cage / cleanroom environment it would be good but if you are expecting any sort of consistent, quality internet connection over WiFi and you are not in a clean room, you should stop expecting that, because WiFi is unreliable by design

@ToddersLegrande Oh well, then I can't comment on that because my router seems to be too crappy :P

for reliable connectivity use structured cabling

@allquixotic I'll just take your response as "1000ms ping isn't anything you shouldn't expect on occasion"

@ToddersLegrande Well, you should expect it in a way

Mostly because 2.4ghz really really sucks

@Tanner lol that's the contrapositive

P isn't anything you shouldn't expect == P is something you should expect

@Tanner well thats more or less what I was asking. I was trying to figure out if I should be paranoid about my network issues not being fixed.

And it sounds like no. Don't worry about the 1000ms ping. Just play it by ear

I don't care that it goes above 1000ms once in a while. I care if it goes above 1000ms or even stops responding for minutes at a time with spats like that that lasts hours at a time

Sounds like I can't make a direct correlation from a single 1000ms spike once in a while to the issues I was having because WiFi is unreliable. As such I'm more at ease and I can feel better about the router purchase.

I wouldn't worry about numbers as much as I would whether or not it works in your eyes

All that numbers are going to tell is that WiFi sucks :)

Did you spring for 5ghz? That might help.

@ToddersLegrande Seriously, the 1 second ping could even be solar radiation. Who knows...

Yeah I've got a dual band that will do both at once. Gotta find the right drivers to get my adapter to detect the 5ghz band on Windows 8 though.

Ah, yeah, once you're rolling with the 5ghz any further improvements are going to take either significant investment or awful hackery.

Yeah.

@ToddersLegrande freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

That might help though =D

I honestly don't mind the occasional lag. What I do mind is full blown outages to my network.

Nice

I just had to share this...

ahahahaha

@terdon Ooooooh. Don't know if I should laugh or cry.

yeah... poor guy. He just didn't know any better

he will next time though :)

Hey, at least they took care not to touch his personal stuff :P

Yes, I thought that was kind of nice of them too :)

Seriously though, silly IRC pranks? That really takes me back... "Q: How can I change the color of my chat window? A: Alt+F4"

Yeah. Or… "If you type your password here it'll show as ********"

Alt+F4 was always the key combo for cheating in online games for me

@ToddersLegrande Yeah my younger brother tried that once. Three of his team members left...

lol

Back when Runescape was brand new the trick was to drop all your stuff on the ground and press alt+f4 to dupe it.

Seriously? Wow.

Good times

Though I think the first time I ran into it was playing StarCraft

What was the trick there?

I think it was just for a ton of minerals / gas press Alt+F4

ohhh lol

didn't Diablo 1 predate Runescape?

StarCraft introduced me to Korea, and the fact that Koreans play way too many online games. "Zergling rush! KEKEKEKKEKEKE" will always haunt my dreams...

Probably. I think I first played Runescape in 1999 or 2000

@ToddersLegrande seriously? I never knew that! D'Oh!

I was referring to the starcraft tip.

Diablo 1 introduced me to client-side data validation, and application security in general

@terdon hah yeah. Just don't actually try that in a game ;)

Awwww :(

if you are writing a wire protocol and you rely on anything emitted by the client to the server to be accurate in any way, you should be fired. the client should be given no more control than a guy on his couch with a remote control can control a TV