moonwitch1405241479

Thanks Nils I'll try to get her to register here, although knowing her, I'd prefer D to register here, she learned to not dive in and start tweaking settings without knowing what they do (mind you, I learned that the hard way too LOL - ever made your laptop say "there's no CD ROM drive, and then try to reinstall the drivers and get asked to insert the DISK?? LOL) And I have to admit it, I hadn't even thought about an infected BIOS or rootkit... *starts to bang her head on the desk* But there is no way I am going to even try to explain all this to her, it would be the same as explaining this to my 4 yr old sister So I will tell her to get the puter to a decent HW shop and get it tested. If it is a MB of CPU failure, then it would happen in a curve right? (sorry for the lack of ability to explain this, my English is pretty good, but sometimes still inadequate ) You've certainly given me some new leads to look into thank you

I have no idea why this error occurs or how to solve it, I am not much of a windows techie... This is a friends puter, the main issue is she's in the UK and I am in Belgium. So I can't really get "hands-on" information. I too have to go by what I get.System Tech :Win 98 Se (temp solution due to previous issues)AVG Antivirus, Sygate Firewall, Ad aware and Spybot installedRecent hardware, new HD (40GB), new RAM (256MB) The issue started a while back, while the system was still running Win XP Home. AVG 7 Pro prompted about a virus, it would be deleted, but after a reboot (or just shut down and boot up the next day ) it would return. While trying to delete the virus with AVG, scans on Adaware also had issues. Soon after these issues, the pc seemed to have "lost" it's internet connection. For some odd reason, the technicians of my friends ISP told her the pc had lost it's IP address and she had to reinstall windows. Luckely she listened to myself and D (another friend living close to the friend with the pc issue) and didn't reinstall just yet. However, the next day the pc had stopped working all together, it gave an error of not being able to find a drive at all. So they reinstalled, the "no internet" issue was still present. After a lot of reformats, reinstalls, my friend chose to buy new memory (on the advice of the ISP technicians), which didn't help. Then she went out and got herself a new HD, which got reformated, and fitted with Win 98 SE on SOMEONE ELSES pc (so the hardware config of that pc, which was different from my friends pc). Now she is back online (in the end it turned out that her ADSL modem was broken, which was the cause of the "no ip, no internet" issue. She still had multiple issues, under which one with a scrap file (file with .shs extension) hidden behind her recycle bin. The file got deleted, which seemed to end that issue. At this point the only problem is not working sound (for which she intends to buy a new graphics????? card... I told her that graphics and sound is not related.. but I had to give up after a discussion about this for over an hour)Just a few hours ago, she tells me about a new problem (at this point, I have had it with her pc - and feel like telling her to take the thing to a decent hardware store and a few other things I can not type here )... She gets a Blue Screen of Death, telling here there is an error, that the pc can not write to C drive. It pops up and goes away again. And it seems to keep on returning. My friend went quiet in chat, so I think it is safe for me to assume her puter went nuts on her and it's not working LOL. Personally I think the issue is spyware/virus etc related. I don't know HOW she gets it though. Last night I talked her through installing Sygate Firewall - she has AVG Pro, Adaware and Spybot. And I just don't know anymore, I am absolutely at my wits end with her pc... Any suggestions that don't involve what I really wanna do?? (go over there, throw that pc out of the window, bang the womans head into the wall for letting her 9 yr old play and surf the net without supervision and downloading all she/he/they can find)P.S. This is written in a state of severe frustration and aggrivation, I apologize for typos, bad grammar and/or spelling.

Well, I just spent some time looking at the Wacom site, I love the Graphire 3 Studio XL, but I still think it is pricey for me, since I am just a poor student thing Has anyone tried the Volito? Maybe that's a good one to get a feel for tablets? The Graphire 3 Studio (A6) format is ok qua price (still pricey, but oh well) but so small! Or am I being too greedy? Maybe I should look into some other brand? I'll let you know how it goes...

Oh, I do have MSN, I just don't use MSN often so I didn't bother to set GAIM up for MSN, since I mainly have family on there and members of a PBERPG (http://www.usi-rpg.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page). Most I talk to have Yahoo or AIM hence me not using MSN on GAIM.

I so hate the fact that you *have* to upgrade. Yes, it gives you the stupid naggig screen, usually if I then click NO, MSN Messenger just shuts down. The point is - or upgrade or miss the program. Sadly they never even thought about people, using their program, on older pc's. Some pc's just do not have enough resources to run MSN Messenger. I would be exstatic if they'd release a lite version, without all the unnecesary things. I would keep the emoticons though. But all the other stuff?? Naah. let it go LOL. For the record, I use MSN Messenger 6.2 mainly to talk to some of my relatives who happen to swear by MSN. Other than that, I use Trillian or GAIM to connect to AIM and Yahoo. Works fine and smoothly (although Trilly uses quite some resources too - which is why I am switching to GAIM). I have tried the 7.0 Beta. The nudge is the Yahoo Buzz feature renamed, the ads are horrid (This is the ONLY reason I have msg plus on 6.2). Basically some of the feature make me want to stab my eyes out to put it that bluntly. The winks are nice, don't get me wrong, but all the *fancy* stuff, hogs resources and the sounds just are annoying. This of course is my personal opinion, and yes, I am tired and therefore more blunt than normal

Well, I don't know if I am allowed to reply to this, but in all honesty, I think this is a violation of the TOS here.... Since the programs are not legal.

For the more basic stuff I use NotePad ++ (which is like notepad with some extra's like syntax highlighting for the most common languages), for the advanced HTML, CSS, PHP etc I use Dreamweaver MX. I also have HTML kit, which is nice as well, but you can do practically the same with NotePad++ which loads way faster I (of course LOL) also use Flash MX 2004 Pro, for the graphical side of sites I use PhotoShop, ImageReady, Illustrator or Fireworks MX (I also have Freehand which I don't use often). I have tried Adobe GoLive 6, but it is too heavy and I don't like it that much. But then again it's all in personal preference Now if I am not on my own puter, then of course regular notepad is used Links HTML kit Notepad ++

Depending on what OS your school uses on the puters and which server OS.... In my case, we had Red Hat (and UNIX - just command line on server), then you'd just open a command window - log in on the server, start the browser from there. Gah, I used to know how to do this, I suppose not being in school kinda made me forget some of these things . Hotmail is probably just blocked, your friends band site however I don't see a direct reason to block it, unless there is "mature" content there. I vaguely remember something can be changed in the Browsers connection settings. I will try to look it up in my old notes, can't make a promise though..

Well, I can understand Google keeping track of searched words/phrazes for statistics. Also Google is a company, people work for Google, so the better they can direct their ads etc the more income they have as company. As far as not deleting? I agree with k22 And the internet can be monitored, our ISPs can easily say which sites we've visited, how long we've been there etc, perhaps even what we typed there? There's probably a pretty big chance that some agency somewhere can easily read everyone's email, provided that there are enough people to actually do the reading. But who says, there is not a "search" engine that looks for coded messages in emails to help fight terrorism? I just don't worry about these things, it is not like I, as single person, would be able to stop them. I typed this, not to cause a riot, I am just stating my personal opinion...

On topic : I have several Gmail Accounts and there are notifiers for Gmail accounts, it's a small program that you load and then it checks if you have new mail. THis is NOT a mail client. You can grab it https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10960?hl=en Thunderbird and FireFox: I have both, for a very short while I did use Outlook Express but after a while the constant virusses gertting through, the huge holes in security got me so annoyed I started looking for a new client. I was going to download the Mozilla suite, but clicked for Thunderbird because I liked the name And after reading up on it, I downloaded it and installed. Even though I could have gone for a lighter email client because I am on a fairly old system, I love my Thunderbird and highly recommend it. As far as not being able to have several accounts, I run Win 2000 Pro (on a IBM Thinkpad 380E PII 333MHz 256MB Ram and ONLY 12GB HD) and have several accounts on Thunderbird But I can't really tell you how it works with only one account being visible as I am the only user of this pc, and I don't even have different Win logins (heh, I know bad for security, but I just got fed up with switching accounts to install something). As far as FireFox goes, you won't hear me utter ONE bad word, I just adore FF, since the switch to both FF and TB I haven't gotten any problems one normally encounters when surfing . One disadvantage (and it's not FF - it's Microsoft's fault) is that with FF (or any other browser but IE) you can not post from the web in MSN groups, you can but without being able to click on the Formatting things, there is an easy solution for this though. Just use plain HTML as I do

HI Opaque, I figured saying hi would be nice ... First of all, great job really! As for things I would change or may change... Flash header What I would definately try to avoid (someone mentioned it in the thread) is the sound, it is nice when you first open the site, but it plays each time you click on a link and that can get quite annoying. (I apologize for the lack of tact, I am pretty tired, got bronchitis and am not even native English ) Also the moving elements are wonderfully done, kudos to you, but to me they seemed confusing, especially the arrow, it sorta seemed like a link, which it isn't. But as I said, it may be due to me being tired. There just seems too much movement, which may be distracting from the actual content. And where's the latest news? (the title is displayed, but that's it - am using FireFox on Win 2000 Pro) Content First oopsie I noticed was on the lower part of the page, where you point out the key features of the three packages. First package you use the phraze "unlimited everything else" and in the other two package "unlimited everything", I'd just leave that away all together. And where you can click for "More info", I'd make the colour slightly darker, it is pretty pale and therefore not that visible. Links? http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ -> error page, file not found? http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ see the oopsie in the URL (.htmll double l) - about, contact and support links have the same issue and none of those can be found... I know this seems like a long list, and maybe it even makes you feel bad, because of the length. But you did an AWESOME job on it so far.. keep up the good work... *idea* Since you've used flash so much already, maybe it would be easier to use dynamic text in a movieclip within a flash file? That way the header doesn't always reload (and also prevents the sound from playing every reload), the text can be styled with CSS and then you only have to create text/html files. Maybe a useful idea? (don't ask me exactly how to do this, since I am trying to figure this out for my own site LOL)

Well, I voted for the "had a class" and wanted to tick "by example", because both apply. Yes, I have learned HTML and CSS in school (I did drop out before PHP got into it )Now, how weird it may sound, the first class HTML I ever had, was not even on computer. The teacher asked us to take pen and paper.... We had to draw an outline of something that we perceived as being a good lay-out. Then we had to come up with a general topic for a site, which would become our project. We then did a few basic classes on HTML, with computer this time We went through some tutorials, which had been set up by our teacher. After which we were allowed to use the net to research/look up tags. But again we went back to writing the HTML down on paper. Even though that may seem dumb, it did teach us to visualize the code as we went along :(After that, we only used paper to draw a lay-out or to write down a scheme (navigation wise). Now, I learn things on my own, usually by looking at the code of sites, and then trying to do it myself. I also switched to Dreamweaver for more complex things, however NotePad ++ (syntax highlighting I do like) is the normal HTML editor I use.It still happens that I don't know off the cuff how to do certain things (heh, you can't know everything out there), so I look it up Learning never stops!

Ah, a thread to my liking I got introduced to MUDs on ShadowMUD and that is basically the only mud I play. I am not that great at it, and on Shadow I know my way around . I have however tried a few, like Vincent's Hollow. On VH there usually are almost no players, it is a very quiet mud, the benefit is that the connection is good. I found VH pretty tricky since it doesn't save the inventory and the MUDlib is different from ShadowMUD (Which is what I am used to). ShadowMUD is pretty newbie friendly and all that. There is so much interaction that I usually have to shut down some of the channels (or lines) LOL. Anyhow, on there I am Aymelek. So in case you happen to go there, and you see me, feel free to drop me a tell I haven't played Primal Darkness too much, but it is really nice too I can recommend it..

Freehand is a vector graphic program, yes. But it also has an animate feature and can export to .swf (I haven't tried that though) *goes to check what she said and opens Freehand* LOL Ok, it does export to movie That's the Flash Toolbar in Freehand. Now as far as Flash MX goes, I didn't know scratch about Flash (still don't). And I started in Flash MX (the 2002 version), which seemed endlessly complex for me. So I decided to give Swish a try, and for some reason that seemed even more complicated than the smooth, easy feeling lay out used in FLash. So I tried Swish ONCE, and uninstalled it. I figured that if I wanted to learn Flash, I would be better off using decent tools. So back to Flash MX. Now I am using Flash MX 2004 Pro (which to be honest is pretty complex, the non pro version seemed easier for web stuff, and the Pro is more directed towards Flash Application devellopment). On a side note, I still don't know anything about ActionScript LOL. But here's a link to a banner I did in Flash, which took me ages to do. I only made one big screw-up, which was to import a jpg. Bad idea since it looks pretty blurry and looks very unprofessional. Please bear in mind that this was and is my first banner (and it was over 300 frames and 50 layers) SIFBanner

At the moment I have PhotoShop 7 and PSP9. PS CS is too much for my pc LOL. I have been playing around with PSP since v6 or so, I have no idea how long that is LOL. PSP has always met my needs, there was only one major downfall, which I noticed from v7.04. When applying filters etc it would take ages, and the program had become a major resource hog. A friend told me about PS and I got the try out version. Much to my surprise PS was actually more powerful, with more options and required LESS resources. But I was so used to PSP that the switch to Photoshop was a major shock to me. I didn't even know how to add layers in PS. Now a few weeks later (and I do mean a few - about 2) I haven't even opened PSP, only Photoshop. Yes, I am again stuck doing tutorials to find my way around in PS, but that is temporary until I know where what is. At this point, I do recommend Photoshop to friends, of course it depends on what you need. For the basic graphic stuff, I'd stick with PSP since it *does* have an easier GUI, however if you want raw power, then I'd go for PhotoShop. For the time being I am keeping both PS and PSP, just in case I need to quickly do something and don't have the time to look for certain filters.

Photoshop has only basic vector capabilites. Illustrator aims for all vector graphics. A good idea is to google for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), that may show you the true power of vector based graphics... W3 SVG site. You may need a plugin to see it. For IE it is simple, for Firefox you need to manually install the Adobe SVG viewer 6 (beta). Take for example a simple line... in Photoshop that would be the pencil tool, line tool, etc and will be a raster layer. In Illustrator anything you put on the scene will be a vector layer. Now back to the topic I have both Fireworks and Photoshop. I can't really say I can compare both, since Fireworks lies closer to ImageReady (personal opinion). I started out in Paint Shop Pro, and found it inadequate for what I needed, but it all depends on what you are looking for of course. PSP uses more system resources and seems slower than PS. Fireworks however is excellent to prepare gif's for the web, I found the optimizer better than the one in PS or ImageReady and the *button state* editor is more user-friendly in FW, but then again I haven't been using ImageReady long enough. Other than that I don't use FW much. All I can say is I prefer PhotoShop over PSP and FW for the graphic design. FW rocks in graphic editing solely for the web Hope this helps some..

Yep, there definately is a Linux equivalent for Photoshop... It's called The Gimp. I have to say I haven't tried it that much, from what I've tried it is definately worth the try, it is ported into a Windows version as well. And it is FREE.

Well, I hope I have something decent to add here . I had very little computer experience other then gaming (the good old DOS days) when I applied for Computer Sciences. Much to my surprise we used Linux in school, and therefore also at home. Red Hat to be precise. I knew nothing about computers, let alone Linux. But little by little, I tested the water, and to be honest, I ended up using Red Hat solely for over 3 years. The only issue I ever had was sound. For some reason I could not get the sound to work properly in Red Hat 8.0. I blamed it on the soundcard and the inability to find the correct drivers I ended up missing music and switched to a dual boot with Win XP. And then I managed to fail in overclocking and ruining my computer. Now I am running Win 2000 Pro on an IBM Thinkpad 390E, which allows the laptop to run for 40 min on battery. In Linux (I've tried) this goes up to 2,5 hrs. That alone should tell you something about the excellent system resources management in Red Hat. :)I have to admit that command line is scarey at first, but after a while of testing with trial and error, you'll learn to love it as I did. For me, Red Hat is easiest, the install flies and is very intuitive. :)If only more programs would be ported to Linux...