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I'll be calling them on Friday to discuss the details and to see if they can help me with this venture. Intially, I avoided it because I had a feeling that they were going to give me the workaround that there is no Linux support, which would mean 10-15 minutes of wasted elevator music and a 30 second-long call before a hang-up.I actually am starting a maintainer's gig at WineHQ (which is still to be reviewed and approved, as I posted it yesterday), and I hope to be able to throw some contribution as to getting this thing working. A tester in the past got Peachtree Premium Accounting 2006 to work pretty well, so I will be striving to make this work as well.I could throw out the suggestion also to try free accounting software alternatives too, but there's also the argument that our existing databases are already Peachtree-based, that everyone who works with Peachtree would have to be retrained, etc. (The company has been working with the Peachtree legacy since 1999, I believe.) And it may be apples to oranges, but the last time I tried a free alternative to Microsoft Money for my own financial tracking, it was vastly underpowered and very much lacking in the feature department. (I think it was GnuCash and/or KMoney that I tried.) I'm not saying that they suck, but it might be insufficient for the application of a small business's accounting needs. And even if there was a good Linux alternative, there's the even-harder part of swaying the company to switch over and be retrained with new software.

To be more descriptive...I'm trying to use WINE to run Peachtree Quantum 2009 accounting software on a PC to test whether our company can use Linux on our new server due in May of this year. I've successfully updated WINE to version 1.16 (latest and greatest) and successfully ran the installer (after hours of fidgeting with trial and error with Pervasive SQL) . However, the installer insists on conducting a network test to complete installation, which it fails because a firewall is preventing Peachtree services from functioning correctly. I know that WINE doesn't imitate the Windows environment (or maybe I'm wrong?), and I know that Peachtree detects the "presence" of XP's firewall, but of course I can't change the exceptions to it because it doesn't exist. I've tried various compatibility modes (of which Windows XP and later only work with the Peachtree installer), all the way up to Windows Server 2008. I've also tried modifying the firewall settings for Ubuntu using ufw, and even just disabling it. I also tried Firestarter with no luck. I am rather stuck as to what to try next to get this to work.I am using Peachtree Quantum 2009 (by Sage) and Ubuntu 8.04. (The reason why I'm using 8.04 and not 8.10 is because my tc1100 doesn't like Intrepid.) I updated everything I could using the Update Manager and WINE's repository. Any insight?

Very well spoken, RJM. With what you put out, I'm assuming that you are a conservative at heart. I would like to see an educated Democratic point of view to counter this argument to round out the debate a little bit.One thing that you might have overexaggerated is the notion that government projects and jobs ONLY generate revenue which will be later paid back with taxes. But whether you have a government job, work at the local McD's, or are the CEO of a small business, you do spend money, right? You pump gas. You purchase necessities. You pay rent and the utilities. And once in a while, when you feel financially-comfortable, you go out to eat, or see a movie with friends, or buy yourself something nice. THAT would be the point where the consumer, now being part of the "job orgy," will be able to contribute back to the economy by purchasing goods and services or even other people for their goods and services, which means that they in turn will spend their money elsewhere. You have a point, but you might be missing this one.Also, you're not only to blame. Feel better in knowing that the American consumer is part of the squabble that made this mess. Just for the record, I don't claim to be anything politically, just because I hate political rabble. (But sometimes the rabble can be interesting.)

I actually agree with you there, and I actually do the same. Every single time I log into Xisto, I head over to View New Posts to see what's up. If there are any threads I want to read or participate in, I open them in new tabs in FF to peruse later. This approach is good for me, personally, in a number of ways: I don't revive a long-dead/solved thread I don't spam (as much) I'm up and current on recent issues as opposed to replying to someone's problem from 3 years ago I don't waste hours sitting online at Xisto trying to post on every single thread, offering better contributions to what I can instead of what I can't Those include my pet peeves, which of course I have no control over (people who first join and immediately think to post a ton of one-liners in random threads to earn MyCents). The Open Discussion default page is something I can agree with you on. No one should have to scroll down a mile of TEXT to try to find what topic they're wanting to post in. (It's a web-design eyesore.) It seems to be a working template though that others copy or use, because of the fact that if you do a bit more than your usual surfing, you'll most likely find other forums in the same style as Xisto. However, in defense, I'm sure it IS a pain in the sack to try to reorganize what Xisto already has for posts into categories that actually fit. To redesign the default opening page wouldn't be much of a problem so that all the categories would be available to you on first glance (with drops to sub-categories), IMO, but to organize, let's say, General Discussion... I don't really want to be the guy stuck with that job (unless I get paid for it). Also, remember that most members and staff are on a voluntary basis. Not to mention the fact that I still think that Xisto is based on a bought template, but if Opaque had exclusive access to the code to modify, then it would be child's play for a good handful of our more tech-savvy staff to make Xisto a more user-friendly interface.

Keep in mind that the medium you use to interact with the Internet SUPPORTS their specified maximum bandwidth, and therefore it doesn't necessitate that you will get faster speeds with wired connections vs. wireless. You just have more of a potential to gain from having a higher capacity.If you're connected to a server that's having a consistent transfer rate of 28KBps on your wireless connection, that won't change if you switch over to a wired connection. It will still be 28KBps until changes are made on the server end.However, if you have a server that consistently transfers at speeds over 80MBps, most wireless connections will cap that speed at 54MBps (with exceptions to progressive technologies that allow wireless bandwidth up to 108MBps), but as soon as you switch over to a wired connection, you can reap the potential of your 100MBps and have data transfered to you from that server at the 80+ MBps the server is capable of. (However, I have yet to see any connection on the Internet that has been faster than 600KBps, which is barely 0.6MBps. Add a few clients to the network with traffic, however, and you'll see some slowdowns in most home network scenarios with DSL or cable.) Remember your bottlenecks, people. Also, wireless connections are actually rather secure with WPA and WEP (64-bit and 128-bit encryption), but nothing beats the security of a hardline. Keep in mind, though, that once someone breaks into your network from any point, everything else that's connected to that network is free game. (That's why I have a WPA key AND specify MAC address filters, but a well-educated hacker would be able to gain access IF he/she knew what MAC addresses to spoof, I'm sure.)

To keep it simple: Have you NOT received IMs from someone who told you they sent you something earlier? Does AIM have a way to keep this from happening?To make it complicated: One of the questions that aroused my interest in doing some (so far) fruitless research is whether OSCAR (AIM's instant messaging protocol) has some sort of redundancy-until-reception check, called a frame check sequence (the stage where the protocol does an integrity check of the data being received before accepting the payload of data or dropping the packets to request the payload again) or not. I'm just wondering if AIM's protocol performs this or not to ensure that your IMs make it to your recipient in one piece without losing any data packets, and if it does do this and your IM really doesn't make it to your recipient, whether it sends you an error message or not.I have personally never gotten an error message from AIM, but on GMail's GChat, I would get the occasional "XXXXX did not receive your chat," but sometimes the chat actually makes it through even with the returned error message. GCHat does utilize AIM's OSCAR protocol/API, but AIM never tells me that an IM never made it. I've also used Trillian and cannot recall any error messages with AIM.Can anyone enlighten my curiosity?

I also want to throw in this awesome reference as to how many pirates there are (that are tracked by The Pirate Bay, anyway), worldwide. The tracker updates users every 24 hours. The nuclear symbol represents higher percentages of people using torrents to illegally-acquire software, with China doubling the numbers of the United States, and smatterings of pirates all over the globe. With all of these numbers, they are hardly staggering compared to the reality of the issue of losing supposed "potential sales" of software, media, and whatnot. If you really wanted to, you could add all of the users world-wide and take a general assumption of each and every person purchasing one DVD or one piece of software and see the impact that piracy has on companies and the music/motion picture industry. Will it make you feel better if you pirate software or other things? Most likely not. Will you care, knowing that these companies make millions of dollars in sales anyway? Probably not.

I can see how "potential" sales can be lost when people download "copies" of programs, music, video, and whatnot. That could be a point in the RIAA/MPAA/whatever's favor. However, this is the way I see it: With programs, you are downloading a copy of it to utilize and essentially, try out. For the majority of pirates that jump onto the bandwagon ship, I don't think there are much if any that actually utilize illegally-downloaded software for commercial applications. I would see it as wrong to make money off of products that were made by a program that the person didn't even pay a license for in the first place. However, I don't see much in the way of obtaining software for personal use. You may "lose" potential sales in the private sector, but the commercial sector will very well make up and even supercede your return on investment, in my opinion. And if it doesn't, it's most likely because the software is inferior. *coughVistacough* Also, I believe that most licenses are valid for one running copy of the program at a time. If I want to work using Photoshop on two computers, what's the incentive for me to run both at the same time? Even if I did for some odd reason, would it kill anyone? (Now, if you deployed the same program on multiple computers with multiple users, that's a different story.) As for games, there aren't enough pirates to take away much of a PC game's sales. I believe the figure is up to 25%, which can be rather significant, but that's why you try to port your games to other consoles and expand your sales to cater to more audiences (owners of different consoles). Again, the try-before-you-buy concept applies here. There are some games that seem good but become a waste of money when you realize that they are buggy, crappy, or not what you expected. Some don't even run on select systems, like one of our Xisto members here who now can't play Age of Empires due to a hardware/software incompatibility (and not an inferior system). And of course, if you like a game on your PC that doesn't run it well, maybe you'll like it better with refined graphics on your XBox 360 or PS3 when you go out and buy the game legitimately. For music, the whole idea of it all is to share what you've made. Music is a great thing... and I understand the whole plight of trying to make it in the music industry with the dread that you won't make any money due to piracy. With this reality, however, you can bend the concept of peer-to-peer sharing to your favor. The more people that like and share your music, the more people that will be willing to purchase your paraphernalia, go to your concerts, attend your special events, and whatever lucrative opportunities that you can think of. It's not all about the record sales. Then again, that's what it is when you look at it from the record agencies' point of view... which really, I don't have an answer for. Edit 02/17/2009: I also want to add that there is a bill paying songwriters for their songs every time that they are aired, and they're pushing for one for musicians as well. Movies are probably one of the most pirated items on the Scene. But what ever happened to movie theater sales? People still buy things on DVD and BluRay, and nowadays I'm sure there are royalties to the HD streaming that we have today. I think that everyone should have the right to make a digital copy of their movies, because we have kids who like to destroy our discs, dogs that eat them, accidents that leave hideous marks, and even gone-bad disc players that eat them up. Physical media is nice for on-demand, but digital media can serve the same purpose AND preserve the media much better (assuming you have stable, reliable media to back it up to). I don't have a real stance as far as for or against the right to share movies illegally, but then again, everything makes it to cable eventually, so why not just expediate the process? There are different viewpoints on illegal filesharing, and if you actually look at it from these different aspects, you will probably be able to see why it's an actual arguable debate with good points on both sides.

Clicky Is this relevant to the problem you're having? If so, you might be S.O.L... but then again, maybe it's time to upgrade?

@ Flashy: I'm not dead sure how it works, but it makes sense that if you're connected to the Internet, it would be able to disable W7b when the deadline approaches. You could possibly tinker with your BIOS clock to keep Windows 7b working, but that's too much of a hassle to keep an OS that isn't in full-fledged status yet... IMO. @ Ash-Bash: I actually have never experienced a BSOD with Windows 7. The OS works great... until you do something it doesn't like. (See my "The Windows 7 Experience" thread.) Then the whole thing just hangs, which is just as bad anyway.

Article Just because it's the military doesn't mean that the people who run the show aren't infallible to the same circumstances that Conficker/Conflicker relies on to propagate. I would say much more about our military's vulnerability or preventative measures against Conficker but I don't want to breach OPSEC.

The last thing you'd want to do is to make Windows 7 BETA your main operating system. Even the M$ geeks will tell you that... to include the supporting arguments of it: - being a BETA - already having corrupted MP3 libraries - becoming absolutely useless as it expires in August 2009 - not being as functional as pre-existing Windows releases I had to drop using the beta after a week because I was so frustrated with not being able to do what I wanted to do with it because of incompatibility of software and limitations. Windows 7b seems like it's going to be the greatest thing since XP SP2, but as far as using it as an everyday Beta OS, it's out of the question. If that's what you're personally doing right now, I'd advise you have a backup of everything you have if you haven't done so already. Playing with anything in its alpha and beta stages is like playing with a brand new grenade with an untested prototype retaining pin.

From what I can tell with some quick Google-fu, you might have a bad download or a bad burn. I have the Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 download, and the ISO file is 3.15GB (3,387,011,072 bytes on disk). If you have any other builds, I can't help you too much on that... but if you have the same build as I do, check the file size. If it doesn't match, I would suggest you download it again. (You can probably check hashes - MD5 - to make sure you have the right download, but I am not very knowledgeable on that topic.) Some people found out that their downloads were corrupted or actually incomplete when downloading with Internet Explorer (go figure ), so if that's the case, you're going to have to suck it up and try it again with Firefox or Opera. Since the official download site is now unavailable, you're stuck with either finding a physical working copy from a friend or looking to torrents... which can be a scary ordeal all in itself if that concept is foreign to you.

Being broke and wanting to find a way that I can score revenue from something I already do, it's always in my best interest to look at opportunities like these. However, I wish that there were sites that actually worked like Xisto in the rate plan. These sites that pay you to post aren't too interesting, both in discussion and in pay plan. I tried one out and quit the same day after posting some replies... there was no real intelligent discussion going on. And the pay plan was a fixed amount regardless of how much content (or thought) that you put into the post... you get XX cents whether you put a stupid, pointless one-liner in or if you put an essay response to the topic at hand. It's dumb. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but I really wish that there was a site that paid you to post following the payment scheme of Xisto's myCents concept. That way, you have good moderators to skim through content, get paid for actual contribution, and learn a thing or two while you do your thing. I love how Xisto offers free web hosting, but if I could convert what I've earned to cash, I would definitely stay here forever. (Lucky for you guys... I can feel how much you all just love having me around. ) Did I also mention that I actually do like reading some of what you guys have to offer? It's not just about free web hosting... for me, anyway.

I agree very wholeheartedly with this truth. Nowadays, even in this age of technology, paper is very important. If you don't have a diploma, certificates, or any fancy paper with your name on it, or any credentials to back up key magical words on your resume (like degree, certified, etc.), it will be much harder to convince anyone to hire you based on your skills. At the same time, anyone can go through the motions, graduate with a degree, and be incompetent with their supposed acquired skills. (A degree or certification says that you met the standard, but how well did you progress and retain the information?) I guess I can be somewhat put into OP's subject topic category, since I am somewhat proactive on learning things on my own. Just about everything that I know about computers, I learned by myself with hands-on, tutorials, research, and simple observation. It's funny to say that I've never built a desktop computer, yet I am 100% sure that I can pull it off because of the time that I've virtually "tinkered" with components. TrueFusion is right about building computers from scratch being much like connecting the dots... especially today, with color-coding, one-way insertion, and a little common sense. (An LGA 775 socket in a motherboard may sound like Greek to most people, but most people would also make the connection that a processor with an LGA 775 form factor will fit in that socket. Likewise with RAM - matching supported clock speeds and type, video cards and AGP/PCIe, etc.) If you really want to utilize the meaning of the term, everyone is a self-learner. Life teaches us so many things when we venture out and make mistakes, and even lessons are learned through the good things. You will find out that haggis actually tastes good to you or not... if you try it. You will find out that you like or don't like skydiving... if you try it. Sticking a fork into an outlet back when you weren't old enough to know better will teach you about the conductivity of electricity. Being around kids will remind you that the simple things can be the best things in life. Becoming a parent will test you in the most difficult ways possible, and experience will teach you to an extent what to do and what not to do. Reading will teach you vocabulary and grammar structure, and if you look into it even more, style of writing, history of literature, and even new ideas and concepts that can spur the imagination into developing those ideas and concepts into reality. Playing games can inspire you, work on your eye and hand coordination, and you can even learn from them. (I've played enough FPS's in my time to know more about combat than you'll ever know.)

The thing that stinks about scheduling is that my girlfriend plays World of Warcraft at sporadic times of the day. And of course, she'll access the Internet when she wants to. I would LIKE to dynamically-shape bandwidth towards uTorrent when she's not using the Internet, but so far the solutions that I've seen only affects traffic shaping on the computer that the program is loaded on and does not affect anything over a network (which is something I'm trying to achieve).

In my opinion, I'm not sure as to why people go out and purchase graphic tablets as opposed to snagging a cheap tablet PC at a similar price.The reason why I say this is that the Intuos3 12x19 graphic tablet already costs more than what I paid for my tablet PC (a used HP tc1100). Granted, it's a 12x19 workspace compared to the 10.4" viewable screen space on the tPC, but with the tPC, you can actually write on the screen as opposed to writing/drawing on a tablet and looking up at the screen to see what you're inputting.I would figure that would be a better deal, but then again, it could be just like keyboarding where we've learned what keystrokes input what... as most of us who actually type without looking at the keys do. Then again, we have typos...

It's time to give yourself up, SM. If you think it's chump change, throw some my way after you collect your reward for turning yourself in. Offering a reward might spur some white-hat hackers (or security exploit specialists/analysts, whichever term you prefer) to do some homework for a chance to snag some cash, not to mention some fame. The Conficker/Conflicker worm is pretty famous already in terms of infection rate and for keeping the French military on the ground at home (but were they even planning on going anywhere, ever?) , so if you were some middle-class specialist sitting at a terminal of thousands for a huge company or some Joe Schmoe living in mom's basement, I would think that the combination of dough and fame for the feat is nothing to sneeze at. At the same time, I don't see why Microsoft even wastes time with offering rewards to dispel a threat that it already created preventative measures towards, not to mention that commercial anti-virus giants like Norton have already updated their definitions to detect, remove, and prevent this threat. It could be a public-relations-related move, but whatever.

Is there a way to prioritize certain packets so that you would "request" packets at a lower or higher priority than another?I was confused at first when trying to set up my D-Link DGL-4300 with GameFuel. I was under the impression that I could shape traffic to my will, prioritizing what kinds of traffic would come and go through my router. Unfortunately, I was wrong, after learning that GameFuel only affects outbound traffic.Basically, what I would like to do is set up my network to prioritize incoming HTTP traffic and gaming traffic (by specifying port 80 and whatever ports that specific games would use) over my P2P traffic, which I would like to keep constantly on as I love to utilize the crap out of my bandwidth. (The way my mind works, I hate knowing my computer is on for nothing at home while I'm at work... I'd rather put it to work downloading things.)I have one computer upstairs in the bedroom which serves as a streaming machine that feeds media to my XBox 360. It also serves as my uTorrent machine. My girlfriend is using my other computer downstairs to do AIM, surf the net, watch her shows, play World of Warcraft, and whatever else. When I start torrenting, obviously it hogs the crap out of my itty-bitty 192KB/s (1.5Mb) connection, which means that even surfing the 'net is actually painful. I could set uTorrent to limit its transfer rates so that I don't hog all of the bandwidth when I set it and forget it, but that means that there's precious bandwidth not being utilized if no one else is using the Internet for anything. I wish to set up my network so that the router knows to push all bandwidth usage towards my computer upstairs to feed uTorrent, but as soon as my girlfriend fires up World of Warcraft for a raid or something, I want it to be smart enough to prioritize traffic to feed WoW primarily and my P2P secondarily.Is there a way? My Google-fu fails me, and I'm thinking the answer is no. Prove my thought wrong... please?

Er, what's the point of removing it? The beta includes the feedback tool so that you can tell Microsoft to work. Why would we want to not have the ability to do that? Thanks for the heads-up on how to kill it though. It might come in handy when the RC comes out and M$ forgets to remove it... or leaves it there since we all know a M$ RC is actually the actual beta release, with SP1 or SP2 being the final.

Just for everyone's information, it seems that the myCent rate is 0.05 mC per word for a post in a thread. (My exact calculation says 0.0532, but I rounded down.) Starting a thread either generates no mC or the same rate, because I only saw an immediate change after having posted a response to someone else's thread and not after having started my own thread. (I'm sure that the rules towards tutorials are different, if the case is true of no post count for starting a thread.) With this in mind, keep in mind that it's not the number of posts that you make, but the quality of the posts that you make, as inferred many times by many members. Please include this information and argument when introducing new members that may not be informed or letting others know for informational purposes. Edit 02/13/2009: It seems that new topics started generates 0.0918 mC. Makes sense if you're contributing by starting topics to discuss about, with responses at a lesser rate.

I find that the best way to keep your hosting up if you've already purchased it, or rack up the most myCents possible without inconveniencing you, is to actually participate when you can. Personally, I hit up Xisto whenever I have some time to kill, just to check on any threads that I can contribute to or whenever I want to start up a new topic. For the most part, I can find things that I can contribute some discussion to. There are times when there are no threads that I'm interested in being a part of; therefore, I visit at a later time. But one of the utmost, important things would have to be the quality of your posts. Short one-liners like I've seen just about everywhere that do nothing but take up space doesn't do much for you or the community, and people do it because they don't know about how myCents is calculated or they figure that they can accumulate more myCents in posting as frequently as they can, resulting in what looks like one member spamming the whole first page of new posts for Xisto. Post when you can and when you want to with thought put into your posts. That's really how you can get away with not posting every day, or even every other day. If you look at some of the regulars, note how they're appreciated for their contributions and not for the number of posts they make. There are people who lurk and hardly make posts and have been members for years, yet when they do post, it's usually something very thought-out - and thus, appreciated (discussion-wise).

This is going to be a toughie to ask, because I don't have all the details here.Our company runs Windows Server 2003. The gist is that our IT guy tells us not to delete hundreds of e-mails at a time to prevent crashing the server. Our e-mails are stored server-side and are not synchronized to our machines... and we don't have any PSTs locally stored on our client machines. We have computers up at the office that are tied into the local LAN, and we have clients that connect via VPN at the warehouse over 50 miles from this site. The IT guy recommends that we delete a few e-mails each day as opposed to emptying our entire Deleted Items folder every now and then.Can anyone give me an idea as to why this happens? I'm not asking for a solution, because I know I'm being rather vague with the situation here.

I actually did #1 after having slipped on a nasty, icy corner on a dirt road. Unfortunately, the pile of snow also had a nicely-sized rock in it... something you're not going to expect until you find out that fluffy pile of snow isn't so fluffy. #2 is just about impossible. You will be trying to make the car's clutch catch a gear spinning in the opposite direction... resulting in a lot of grinding noises and a burning smell. Newer cars will have an electronic lockout preventing you from even being able to do such a thing while traveling over a set speed (over 5 mph or so). Try #3 in icy conditions. LOL @ #4... you forgot to mention that your speed will exponentially decrease with each person you run over. Large, stable obstructions provide the best results.

I have another success story to add, this time for my work laptop.I work off of a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100. This thing, as old as it is, actually boots up faster than any of my personal machines... and it only boasts a Pentium 4 1.8GHz with 512MB of RAM. The wireless is dead in it, and the power board is infamously unable to utilize the battery as well as keep the CMOS battery in use, resulting in the system never being able to keep a system clock. (It always resets to midnight of 2000.)But enough about that.I did a minor spill of water from a bottle of water that I, for once, left haphazardly on the left side of the laptop. A swinging right elbow brought that disaster to life, and so I looked at the spill, looked at the LCD, then quickly unplugged the AC power adapter and removed the battery. I tilted it to the side, drained it, and out of curiosity, plugged it back in to see what would happen.The computer booted up into Windows, but the LCD was beginning to fritz out, displaying a screen-wide tint of magenta.I turned it back off, unplugged it, and called it a day at work.An hour and a half later, I proceeded to disassemble this thing, dried off what I could see, and put it back together. And as of right now, I'm still typing on it as if nothing happened a couple of days ago. I noticed that this laptop, as old as it is, actually has some plastic shields to cover the main board from any accidental spillage that leaks by the keyboard (which always takes the brunt of the spill). It's nice to know that there is some deterrent against liquid death, which gives me even more confidence that a lost fight with the morning coffee doesn't always end in despair.