shadowx

I do work, my salary is enough!I should remind you of the way the credit/cent system works, posting topics such as this wont get you many cents or credits. You need to post long, original, decent posts. Just a tip

Shows how much i know about cameras : What is your opinion of the G1? Is it all its cracked up to be?As i can get the G1 online for a stated price of about ?550, but i know if i go in a shop i can get it for under ?500 when i flash the cash So i reckon i could probably get the Camera kit (comes with a a sort of combo lens that has zoom and wide angle or something... i think its 15-45mm or something around there) and a standard tripod (tho i would like the gorrilla one) all for that ?550 price, if not lower. Might even be able to get a memory card too (any suggestions for size? For a standard 5mp camera id try to get 1gb but if i have a 10-12mp camera im assuming the images will be much bigger in filesize and perhaps a 2 or even 4gb card will be necessary?Also what is the UV lens for? Is it protective for the lenses or just better image quality?This is really helpful, at least i know roughly what im talking about in the camera shop now :angel:

Did i forget to mention i was a millionaire! :(Im thinking of spending up to 400-500 pounds, ideally less because i only get paid just over 1000 and i dont wanna spend it all!I think the only difference between a digital SLR and an ordinary one is the fact it records to digital media and has little digital effects, so they do have interchangeable lenses which is good!Cheaper lenses should be fine i think, most of the wildlife i hope to capture will be fairly slowish (compared to a cheetah!) Id like a telephoto lens, id obviously like the biggest and best for long range shots! But in reality i guess something between 30 and 70mm, from what ive read this would give me the best balance between distance, field of view and price!Id like to get a polarizing lens/filter as i wear polarized sunglasses and it helps you see through the waters reflection, so often i can see fish but my camera cant! I have to shoot through my sunglasses! But in all honesty i think thatll be one of the many upgrades i do over the next year or so rather than buying it all right now!I assume, but im not sure, that the cameras have their own, in built, lens? So if i were to buy just the camera i can still take photos? In which case ill see what the camera's own lens is like and get a lens that covers other options (EG if its wide angle on the camera then ill buy a telephoto, if its not wide then ill get something that can do both). And when they say "body only" i assume that means the camera, charger etc... but no lenses?I get paid on tuesday so ill probably visit a few shops between wednesday and the weekend and make my final decision at the weekend.

Just got a job and get paid in a few days, i do a lot of fishing and i love the outdoors so i really want to get a decent camera, im currently using my phone camera which is rubbish Anyhoo, the advert for the lumix G1 camera caught my eye so ive been looking into getting a DSLR camera, but im baffled by the terminology!Im not techno-illiterate, i like to think the opposite! But they keep talking about focal lengths, apertures, shutter speeds etc...So, if i say what i want it for perhaps someone can give me some tips about what sort of ranges to be looking at. PRimarily the camera will be used for outdoor shots, i have no interest in photographing people at all and no interest in indoor photography unless its some ultra special occasion. Most of my shots will be of me holding fish ive caught (dont worry, they go back live and healthy afterwards!) or of interesting scenes (sunsets, nice lighting, nice scenery) or of wildlife, primarily birds i expect but perhaps squirrels and other small mammals, in the UK its fairly rare to see an elephant stomping through the forest :(As for the distance id say for the wildlife could be anywhere between 10 and maybe 100ft (3-35m roughly) for scenery i guess it doesnt matter too much, as long as i get a nice fairly wide shot.I know the basics of lenses, Wide angle, telephoto etc... ideally id like two lenses, one for longer range wildlife photos (so i guess thats a telephoto lens? But what size?) and one for wide angle scenery (again, what size?)The camera itself id like to have between 6-10mp, if it has less than 8 then it needs to make up for it with a really good price of exceptional extras (like lenses).In terms of extra features im not sure what i need, i guess stabilization would be *very* useful as i wont always be using a tripod, in fact, most of the time i wont be... and some sort of auto shoot mode too, im fairly inexperienced at photography :angel:If anyone can give me a hand with what i should be looking for then that would be great!Itd also be useful if someone can explain how things like the aperture, shutter speed and such affect my photography, i wont be using them for large prints, only small prints and mainly on screen display on my laptop, but if i get an exceptional photo i might be tempted to frame it and its likely ill display them online on various sites. That brings me to another question, about mega pixels, as im not going to be using the images for large display im undecided about the number of MP i will need, i would like more than 6 for sure, id like 10 but do i really need that many? I know MP relate to image quality, but image quality is also related to scale... i wouldnt want to shoot with 100MP and only view it at 800x600 size or 96DPI, it would look compressed and shabby (i think? due to the pixels being dropped or merged) but equally i dont wanna shoot in 2mp and get an image i cant scale much about 400px or something so im guessing 8mp would be ideal?

Tis true, PHP is very powerful, i used the password example to show the differences between client and server side languages.This entire forum (and i believe the shoutbox too) is built with PHP in conjunction with (most likely) a MySql database

Too true, you need to be an advanced programmer to get a career in PHP. Can you code a whole forum, shopping cart, social networking site or CMS by hand under pressure? If not then a career on PHP isnt going to go to well... I was going to become a PHP programmer but it was too much to be honest!

PHP is one of many server side languages, others include ASP, PERL and i dont know the rest Basically all that means is that the code is run on the server itself. For example, javascript is downloaded by your browser and then run from your hard drive, so if it had code that said "Delete everything" then YOUR hardrive would be deleted (this isnt really possible, im just highlighting the difference here) but if PHP had the "Delete everything" code and you went to that page then the SERVER's hardrive would be erased. This is very important because it means PHP can be used for secure things like logins. For example the code would run like this (this isnt real code, just how it would work) this = password_user_enteredif this=the_real_passwordthen log them inif not chuck them out So in the example the right password is "the_real_password" If you were to use that code in javascript all the user would have to do is right click the page, click "view source" and all that code, including the password, would be on display, they just copy and paste the password and theyre in. But in PHP you wouldnt see a thing!! The only stuff you see from a php page is what i *want* you to see, so i use the ECHO command to show stuff to the browser, i still need to use HTML to format it like so: this = password_user_enteredif this=the_real_passwordthen ECHO "Welcome to my site"if not ECHO "Wrong password F00L" So if you enter the right password you get the welcome message, if not you get an error message. Even viewing the source of the pager you would only see the welcome or error message, nothing more. Good times 8) PHP stands for Hypertext PreProcessor (they just thought php sounded better than hpp) and it does what it says, processes hypertext (HTML) before you see it (thats the pre part) :angel:

I obviously have admin rights, but even i cant run it on a second machine im using even with my admin rights. I beleive this has something to do with the .net framework config, it is seeing the program as belonging to the intranet group (which in fairness it does, it comes from a server on our network) and the permissions for that group are too low, i can change that manually of course but on perhaps 200 machines thats not feasible.Though i havent tried copying the file locally and running it locally... that might just do the trick. But if i do that then ill need to make a batch file or something to send out the EXE file at every logon... or do it once and use a central text file on the central server to control things like the timeout period etc... Because if i push it out to all workstations and dont have a central way of configging it then id have to replace the EXE every time...

Thanks I shall give those a try, its not strictly necessary now as we are setting up some lesson monitoring software which has a shutdown function built in, whether or not the staff use it it s a different matter, at least 100 machines were left powered fully on over the weekend, not on standby but fully on. Ridiculous waste of money and energy!! EDIT: I wonder if there is a way to force apps to save their data if its not been saved (eg word documents) from VB/C... I could probably cycle through the open windows and send a key combo of CTRL+S and then enter to save as default but its effort! And there are too many variables to think about such as multiple documents of the same name, the ways different programs save etc.... But thats just a thought! EDIT EDIT: The first linky seems down, but ill check that later, the second one still requires the shutdown privilege: Which is where my problems lay, ill give the third link a go though, havent tried that yet but i fear it will still need the privileges. I was thinking of simply crashing the lsass.exe process the way the sasser worm did but that seems somewhat brutish!

This may be in the wrong subforum but i didnt see a C# one so here it lays. I have a program that i originally wrote in VB in SharpDevelop, it works perfectly in debug mode, and perfectly on my local machine. The only errors in the debugger are that some invalid options are sent to the compiler which i could easily delete from the build properties but cant be bothered to. Now, the problem comes when running it on a remote machine. Let me explain... The purpose of this program is that it will be scheduled by Novell to run at about 8pm and probably again at 10pm on the local machine (so the machine receives the instruction then contacts the server's shared folder and executes the EXE file) the program itself then displays a window warning of imminent shutdown and a timer of about 30 mins, thats fine and works a treat, when the timer expires it is supposed to use the Shell() command to run "shutdown -s -t 0" and hence the machine is forcibly shutdown. But it doesnt do it! I keep getting errors about the permissions being wrong, EG not high enough for the EXE to launch any other file/app/whatever I ported it over to C# using the converter in the IDE program, just because i thought it would remove the dependency for the .net framework, alas it does not, however, i still get the same errors with the C# version RE permissions. I dont code in VB or C but i do code in PHP so i have a good understanding of general programming, i also have a basic understanding of the permissions system in use here and that i need the system shutdown permission to use the built in C# shutdown function. I have copied code snippets left right and center and pasted them in, changed a few bits but not a single one has compiled properly, they all throw out critical errors before compiling fully and hence i cant even test them. ITs doing my head in, can someone *please* help me with this. They are running on school computers so the students/staff cant be required to input anything or interact in any way other than to cancel the shutdown if they are still using the machine. The computers will all be on the network if that makes any difference and i am reluctant to use impersonation as an admin in case the rights somehow leak and give them admin access to things they shouldnt have access to. My code is as follows: using Microsoft.VisualBasic;using System;using System.Collections;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Diagnostics;using System.Drawing;using System.Windows.Forms;namespace timeout{ public partial class MainForm { public MainForm() { // The Me.InitializeComponent call is required for Windows Forms designer support. this.InitializeComponent(); timer1.Start(); timer_update.Start(); } public void MainFormLoad(object sender, EventArgs e) { lbl_text.Text = "If you are currently using this computer click the button below and the shutdown will be aborted." + Constants.vbNewLine + Constants.vbNewLine + "This program will run periodically overnight to ensure electricity isnt wasted. Please ensure you save you work and shutdown all computers at the end of the day."; } public void Lbl_textClick(object sender, EventArgs e) { timer1.Stop(); System.Environment.Exit(0); } public void Button1Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { timer1.Stop(); System.Environment.Exit(0); } public void Timer1Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) { [b] timer1.Stop(); //Interaction.Shell("Shutdown /s /t 5"); //Process.Start("CMD.exe");// Start the process.Process.Start("notepad.exe"); System.Environment.Exit(0); }[/b] public void Timer_updateTick(object sender, EventArgs e) { int time = 0; string time_text = ""; time = timer1.Interval / 1000; time = time / 60; time_text = "" + time; lbl_time.Text = time_text; } public void Lbl_timeClick(object sender, EventArgs e) { } }} I have bolded the section that deals with the timer expiration and what not, as you can see im making it launch notepad so i know its loaded rather than have my machine shut down everytime i want to test something.... I just cant get this to work, itd be really, really helpful if someone could write a little code for me, i know its being cheeky but if someone could write the code to give the right permissions i would be eternally grateful, either in VB or C# or at least help me out!! Or if there is another way to shut the machine down then do tell! Ive tried the C# shutdown command with no luck, need the permissions again...

I KNEW it!!! There have been trenches dug and the large cable carrying plastic tubes laid near my house and on the road leading to the phone exchange and one of the workmen was wearing a verizon jacket so i suspected fiber to the cabinet was coming :angel: Good times! Just a shame its only to the cabinet Still gotta rely on old fashioned copper but were slowly getting there.

Listen... Swine flu isnt that bad!Its milder, or the same as seasonal flu, for which we dont panic. ITs death rate as of a few days ago based on 28,000 cases and only about 150 deaths is around 0.005% In the UK we have had over 1,260 CONFIRMED cases (could be double or triple not reported as they thought they had only a cold) and ONE death. You do the math... Its really not anything to worry about, not to mention the lady in question had underlying health issues that contributed to her situation. How to avoid swine flu? Easy, wash your hands. Done! The only other way you can get it is if someone coughs or sneezes in your face basically! Wash your hands and dont touch your face or food/drink with bare hands in public (its ok at home or if you've washed your hands) and you wont get ill. It really is that simple!People need to stop worrying!!

http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php Nice N Easy From the php site:

Evening all, the story goes like this.... Where i work (a school) one of the senior management team (SMT) has decided she wants a forum which the kids and staff can access. We all know this is a truly terrible idea, but there you go....Now, ive looked at the SMF forums, they are clean, simple and PHP/SQL based, as its a school however there are concerns over several things like bullying etc... but one thing i am concerned about, well two actually, is outsiders registering to the forums and not being able to trace an account back to the student (so if they are abusing people they can be dealt with by more than a forum ban!) my way to solve this is to require email authentication and have the forum setup to accept only the school email address domain (lets call it user@school.something.ext.ext that is the format, not the values). Ive been tinkering with the code for the registrations but i cant work out where i am in the overall structure of it all! There doesnt seem to a toolbox where i can search all files for a certain string (in this case strings that control and check the email values before inserting into the DB) If i can find the point of insertion i can easily add some code to detect the "@" character and strip the domain from what they entered. Ive modded the HTML to explain only to enter the "user" part of "user@domain.com" so its fairly obvious, but there will always be one who types "user123@hotmail.com" and i need to get it back down to "user123" it will then send an email to "user123@school.something.ext.ext" and if that account doesnt exist then they wont get their activation email and cant access the forums. It also prevents, to an extent, fake user accounts as to access it the student needs to have access to that email address. Easy to spoof by typing "spoofname" as the username and then "myname@email.com" but then they can only have one account per email so they wouldnt be able to access the system as themselves. I also need to mod the email change system to prevent them signing up with school email then swapping over to external email.This could all be in vain as the guy that wrote our intranet will be coming in and he may well just code his own forum but if not then itd be good to have a solution ready! So if anyone can point me in the right direction (some sort of SMF tool to search for variables etc.. would be handy ) id be eternally grateful.

the students noticing the program isnt an issue, i would make it run in the background and since they dont have access to task manager they wouldnt really be able to kill the program. I understand the need for the client/server relationship, thats not really an issue either methinks. Itd be handy if there is a commercial (be it free or not) program available. Im going to scour the various sites related to educational places (like RM) and see if they have anything. Currently were going to try to get the teachers to keep an eye on things but we all know they wont bother!!

Is it possible to detect the presence of a ps/2 keyboard and mouse, and also a USB mouse/KB?Reason being at work (a school, i dont work in an office of animals!) keyboard and mice tend to vanish or be unplugged, so i was wondering if there is a peice of software, perhaps a driver, that can be installed to check for the presence of the devices and then either log it locally (or just give an error message) or even better, send an alert across the network, perhaps via email, to notify us that is unplugged. Even better if it can log the time etc... so we can pinpoint those that seek to remove!!Any ideas? Im not even 100% that this is possible. I know the bios can detect it but thats more on the hardware level rather than software :|EDIT: Im thinking now perhaps some software to detect if num/scroll/caps lock is on. The reason being that the machines all seem to start up with numlock on. I know its easy to bypass but the students wont know the system is there, and wont know how it works... It would need to be trialed first but i wonder if its possible to do a check for these keys? Im not afraid to code, though i must admit to not knowing any true programming codes, i stick to PHP, JS etc... but i have some experience with VB, whether or not i can get my hands on an IDE is another problem but we will see....My last thought was some system to load with the BIOS as the BIOS is easily able to identify if a keyboard is present, and as a last resort enabling boot monitoring of some sort so that we can alter the BIOS to hault if a keyboard isnt present and then the boot monitor will send an alert through the network (we use novell, but ive only been here two weeks so i dont know if its possible as standard through novell. PPS: We use XP on the machines themselves but a novel preboot execution environment or PXE). If someone can point me in the general direction to get started id be very grateful!

RE: proxies for youtube, if you google free proxy or something similar you will be given a huge list of free proxies you can use, some might work, others might not. But beware, if you are in certain countries like china for example the use of proxies might be frowned upon or even illegal. Also in a lot of workplaces you arent allowed to use proxies as they can bypass security and other restrictions. But if at home and if its legal then theres nothing wrong with giving it a go :lol:You can also look for lists of proxy IP addresses which you can then enter into the settings in your browser.

I beleive that the issue is because YT are now filtering content based on the country the copyright is held in (so probably germany in your example) and the country you are veiwing it in (hong kong) and if the copyright doesnt match up (for example in germany it might be legal to view copyrighted materials with certain conditions, but in hong kong it is against copyright laws to view any copyrighted materials regardless) then YT will block access so as not to get itself in trouble. As for getting around this issue you might be able to define the preferences or settings in YT but if not you might be able to use a proxy server located in germany (or whatever country you want really, the source country is a good idea, so america for MTV/ABC stuff etc...). It does but YT dont have a choice, its either that or pay billions in copyright payments.

To do this without your friends consent would probably be considered illegal, if not highly immoral. So i dont recommend doing this. However, as a short educational introduction.... There are just a a few ways to do this. one is to packet sniff his entire network or internet connection. From there you can establish his IP address and if you can analyse the packet data you can find the server address (the destination address may or may not be the address of the website his is visiting depending how his ISP handles it and if a proxy is involved anywhere. Another is to place an event logging peice of software on his computer that will log websites he visits. But i must ask, why the hell do you want to do this?

To be fair yahoo is TERRIBLE!!!The webcam part doesnt dock with anything, its a whole new window, so whenever you click the thing to type the webcam goes to back and you have to bring it up again, only to have it go to back when you need to type!It's laggy, slow, expensive on resources and IMHO cheap and tacky!aMSN aint bad, MSN is too laggy for me, i tend not to use it in fairness, i tend to talk to my friends rather than type... in real life....But there you go!

Come to think of read/write access have you checked the status of your access rights? try checking all the properties on the drive with the right click>properties or check for a lock switch on the device. Just a little tiny switch that makes it read-only.You need to be more specific about what "indirectly" means as i have no idea what you mean!

I quite like the colours myself, i wanted to go dark, i was tempted with black and to try a glass effect but i just can do that, it just doesnt work for me! Once i have it coded ill stick it up on T17 and link it here so i can get some input and finalize it. I tried adding some sparkles to the logo text but it just didnt work! Im sure it can be done nicely but it seems i lack the skill and experience at the moment!

I too prefer xampp, no nonsense and perfect for me! If you wish to try xampp simply google it, download the WINDOWS version (they do linux etc... too so dont get the wrong one!!) download and install. From this point on whenever i say "your server" it means either WAMP or XAMPP, whichever you have. Ok start your server, double click on its icon or go through the start menu. If given a choice start the "apache" service. Your server will probably give you a message like "Apache started (80)" or similar. Now, in XAMPP the "live" folder is called "htdocs" on WAMP i understand it to be "www" Imagine this folder like a window. this is the ONLY folder that is visible through your browser. Any folder below it is never, ever seen by the user. You can place folders inside this folder however like www/myfolder/mysite or htdocs/myfolder/mysite and they are visible, but anything outside of htdocs or www is not visible. So make a simply php file. Open your text editor (notepad will do) and type: <?phpinfo();?> save it as info.php and place it inside the www or htdocs folder, depending what server you have installed. Now opwn your browser. Type in the address bar: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ OR: LOCALHOST it doesnt matter which. You should now be shown the "Apache is working!!!!" type message. Now add "info.php" to the address so you have something like http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists//info.php go to that address and you should be shown a long list of information with a title like "Php info" If this is so then you are all set up and working!!! You can delete all the files inside the www or htdocs folder and from now on its your own server, only you and other people on your network can see it, no-one on the internet can. So test your stuff out and when its time to publish it get hosting with T17 or another company!

Well ive tested it using my IE tab addon for firefox, which as far as i know simply renders the page using the version of IE's engine you have installed, which in my case is 7, though i havent tested in within IE7 on its own, ill do that tomorrow as ive spent too much time on it today The design is completely from scratch, i started following a tutorial for a blog layout which gave me the idea for the light panels and tabs, so i borrowed that idea but apart from that its 100% original, so im pretty proud

I sliced it up manually, i used the GIMP to design it so i just copied and pasted the various elements out and into individual images.I am indeed using a tabled skeleton for it, the original plan was to have 3 rows, one for the tabs, one for the content and one for the reflection, keeping all three linked together. I always have problems with DIVs when it comes to positioning and sizes but with tables its a breeze. I might try converting it tomorrow. The simpler solution is for all web users to use firefox But that wont happen!