vizskywalker

There are also very cheap devices that can measure the power usage of electronic equipment. One such device I know of is called Kill-a-watt and goes for like $20. You plug the equipment you want to check power usage for into the device, plug the device into the wall, and it will tell you the power consumption. This can be useful for getting an estimate on how much power you need, then you can round up to figure out how powerful a UPS you need.~Viz

Well, for a server to do anything useful, it has to be on. If it isn't doing anything, though, then it probably won't consume much power, especially if it is a more modern low power usage CPU. Or, if your computer has wake-on-LAN, you could keep it off, send it a wake signal, then start using it again. Not useful if you want other people to be able to use it though. Also, to have remote access, you'll need either a static IP or something like dyn-dns to connect to your server.~Viz

So, I know that under Windows you can format a floppy disk as a system disk. I thought you could also format a USB drive as a system drive under windows on the format menu, but I'm not sure. It won't copy many useful utilities, but you can grab the ones you want from the Windows menu on your computer and add them.~Viz

That's probably true. The different versions of Windows have different special keys and what not which means most things have to be specially customized for those versions. It's probably unlikely that this site does work for non-English versions of Windows. And has anyone confirmed whether or not it works for Vista?~Viz

Keep in mind, however, that changing your IP can have negative consequences. Changing it to something random will almost never work. Also, this changes the local IP of your machine, not the Global one. If your computer is connected to a router, the rest of the world will still think you have the same IP as the router's IP will not have changed.~Viz

Sounds intriguing. forgive me for being ignorant, but since you never mention the site or its url, I'm curious as to what the final project will be. I'm not entirely clear on what "steampunk" is, I guess.~Viz

That's not true anymore. Although it was true of old fiber optic systems, advances both in the understanding of how light travels through devices with high indexes of refraction and advances in manufacturing technique allow fiber-optic to be extremely flexible. Especially fiber-optic cable that's wrapped. For example, Yale has been using extremely flexible fiber-optic cable as a security system in their computer labs for years now. The cable runs from a source through the lock slot on their computers to the input spot on the source. If the signal ever ceases, then a computer has been moved since the cable has broken, and the alarm goes off. It used to be quite annoying because it meant monitors couldn't be moved very far, but now it's not an issue. Also, one fiber-optic cable is extremely cheap. In fact, the gold used in high quality USB 2.0 devices (which adds maybe between 10 to 50 cents to the cable's cost) probably costs more than the amount of optic cable being put in USB 3.0 devices. Large bundles of fiber-optic that are inches thick is expensive, but each individual cable is about as thick as a hair. I think this is an interesting idea. It could even make networking via USB far more feasible, which would be cool. ~Viz

I have several devices that produce output sound or input sound. However, I only really have room to set up one set of speakers. Some of these devices are, for example, a PS3, a computer, a webcam, heaphones with a microphone, and my laptop. Now, currently have the wires and adapters to hook any one of these devices up to computer speakers. What I would like to do is be able to hook all of these devices up to one computer with several sound cards and use that computer to mix all the output sound, and send it to speakers. This is the easy bit. The hard bit comes from the fact that I want to hook up headphones to this system occasionally, and when the headphones are hooked up, I want the output to stop going from the speakers but instead to the headphones. The only way I can think of to do this is if I can detect when the headphones are connected. So I was wondering if it is possible to detect when headphones, or speakers, or a microphone, or any device, is connected to specific ports of a sound card, and if so, how to do it. Language isn't important, although I prefer C#, C++, Perl, Assembly, or C. Also, OS isn't important, although Linux and Windows XP are really my only feasible options right now. I may be able to do an OSX setup.~Viz

So, I'm trying to create a utility in C# that reads input from the microphone and draws the wav that is being recorded. Interestingly, though, I have three device shown in my Capture Device enumeration. The first is the apparently default or stub or something device. This device never actually gets input in. The second device is my USB webcam with microphone, this microphone claims to have no functionality. The third is my sound card. This device works. Now the weird issue is that if the only microphone I have connected is my USB webcam, then trying to read in sound from the microphone still fails, but the sound card device accurately records the incoming sound. Any ideas as to why this might be? Camera is a Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision.~Viz

Although NVidia drivers aren't open, they have full support for the cards capabilities in Linux. Also, due to the way NVidia does drivers and cards now, it is more likely that new drivers will benefit your card than ATIs under Linux. My understanding is that although ATI drivers are more open, the NVidia drivers still work better. ~Viz

If you're looking for a Geforce card for the purposes of playing the next gen games, you definitely want something in the 8 series. Which one depends on how serious you are about the graphics quality and frame rate of your games, as well as your budget. The high end 7 series are also good cards, and are very cheap now that the 8 series is out, but they don't have hardware support for DirectX 10. This doesn't mean they can't play DX10 games, they just won't be as fast at it as the DX10 cards such as the 8 series.~Viz

This looks like it could turn out to be a useful resource, but is rather empty at the moment. Unfortunately, I have a feeling it will probably stay mostly empty or not up to date, which will be problematic. One of the problems I have with Linux is that many distros release new releases twice or year or thereabouts. While it is good that fixes are being implemented, many of the new releases change numerous things that totally invalidate the old workarounds and drivers and other things people have come to rely on. So this project of creating good documentation will become nigh impossible as time goes on.~Viz

Yes, you should always remove an external hard drive that is connected via USB by going to safely remove hardware and removing the device. Alternatively, there is a setting, I forget where, to set all hardware to maintain a safe state for removal.~Viz

I believe that there was some work at one point on making VBScript run in other browsers. I'm not sure how far it got, because I never used VBScript, but I think it made enough progress that there were some plugins or things or modified versions of some smaller browsers that could run it. I think the newest Netscapes can run it as well, if you put them to render things as IE. But most of that work was when VBScript started entering its death throes. ~Viz

First of all, overwriting key components of Windows is not illegal, and is done through the registry. Modifying the source to Windows is illegal. Secondly, removing the My Computer icon is a lot easier than you think. On the Desktop, simply right-click (on the desktop, not the icon) and go to properties. Then go to the desktop tab and click the Customize Desktop button. Then simply uncheck My Computer. ~Viz

If you right click on a font file and go to properties, you can view the last accessed date. This will show you what fonts are in use. Having font files sitting on your hard drive should not cause much of a performance issue at all. The only fonts that will actually be loaded are the ones that are currently in use by some running service or application. A listing of all the fonts will be grabbed when you open the font picker in any application, but thats no different from getting a file listing in the open menu. The number of fonts installed should not affect boot up time unless you have a lot of applications set to load on boot that all use different fonts. Also, keep in mind that most font files are somewhere near 1/3 MB, so you would have to remove probably around 30+ before you could start to notice any effect, and that affect would be dramatically small. Really, removing fonts would only make a difference Once you start removing a couple hundred at least, and then only if all hundred of them are in use.~Viz

I use IE for windows update. In fact I use IE for many other things as well. I still use Firefox mostly because I'm too lazy to change my default browser, and IE isn't better than firefox. But IE7 isn't much worse. I think it's nice that some sites are making it possible to never use IE even for the things that require IE, but really. Unless you've uninstalled IE (which you were too lazy to do, right you firefox zealot) you should probably use the real Microsoft site. Unless you are using a pirated copy of windows in which case you can't because of WGA, in which case you are likely a semi-bad person. Or something.~Viz

No problem, I know Quicktime and I believe RealPlayer also have an option like that somewhere.~Viz

Have you tried changing the preference it has built in for run on startup?~Viz

Also, you said you tried If I remember correctly, you cannot, at least in PHP 5, which we now use, and I'm pretty sure in PHP 4 as well, assign to $_POST, $_GET, $_REQUEST, and the like. So you would have to assigne $_POST['command'] to something else, then try to strip them. Also, how do you know it is adding a one? What debugging code for that check do you have? ~Viz

what do you mean by that, exactly. If you just want to not have to click your user name at the log-in screen, then either the TweakUI method, or going start->run->control userpasswords2 will allow you to do this. Vista allows you to login from the log in screen before the system is fully loaded, but you also have limited capabilities while the system finishes loading. If you want to be able to truly log in before the operating system loads at all, then you can't. Until some (usually most) of the operating is loaded, the necessary services and command structure to verify users and passwords is not set up. ~Viz

That's not true, one common use of AUTO_INCREMENT is to give unique numbers to members of a group (like forums). While it does not necessarily matter if users are ordered in sequence, there are some functionality things that can be made faster if the assumption that there are no gaps to worry about hold. The reason to keep no gaps in numbers for entries isn't from the SQL perspective, but from the integrating other things with SQL perspective. That can be problematic if you have a large number of entries that are no longer relevant because some hosts and servers (such as, oh, for example, Xisto) place limits on the amount of space you have, and depending on what you use your databases for, they can grow very large very quickly. ~Viz P.S. try using periods as well as commas in your posts to make things easier to read. Just some more helpful advice we all (including me) should follow to make better posts.

Umm... there are probably lots of ways to do that via cookies, but all of them would require large cookies. Except one I can think of, which would be a compression/hash algorithm that could take every post and its state, compress it into a hash of some sort, and then decompress it when the server gets the cookie back to retrieve that information. but good luck accomplishing that, especially in any reasonable amount of time. As far as I know, most forum software does that kind of thing on the server's end, not via cookies, associating accounts with whether posts have been read or not. there are several reasons for this:1) It is nicer to the users.2) It means that the users information is preserved across multiple computers.3) It is usually faster.Also, most forums I know simply keep track of a new message state, rather than a read/unread state. This is a lot easier to do, as it just keeps track of last time logged in, and any posts made after that get marked new.~Viz

I don't know if PHP supports that, but in many languages, including PHP, the seemingly preferred way to have multiple cases do the same thing is switch (expression) { case A: case B: stuff break; case C: stuff break; default:}Instead of saying "case A, B:" you simply layer the cases. This is why cases run line by line once the appropriate case is encountered. Otherwise, requiring the breaks really is a silly concept. Also, apparently in PHP, the break statements can be replaced with "continue" statements, but I would advise against it as it can lead to confusion. ~Viz

Please excuse my ignorance, but what is the advantage of having a VPS over a real system? Is it just advantageous for someone who has a server which is not being used to its full potential? Or is using a VPS better than obtaining a system with the same specs?~Viz