Markymark2

Ok I can suggest this idea I came up the other night clearing out my loft of old toys and bits of Lego my son doesn't play with any more..I had the idea of an on-line swap shop for toys.you could adapt this idea for many other things..you say that the people are poor in the area you had in mind..this would work well i think..Ok here's how it would work..You set-up a list of peoples contact details..name..phone..email etc..ask them to fill out a list of things they want to swap such as a table lamp..a hovercraft..a toaster..Then you make a nice easy to use page on your Asta hosting linked to a Mysql database on your Astia Hosting that displays tables of things that people want to swap..The person can then get in contact with the person willing to swap and they negotiate over it..So in the end you can list any item that a person is willing to swap listed and people can search for things they might need..Lets take this one step further...let me explain the Mark420 favour for favours rule!!I'm pretty much a techhead..I can fix anything with a plug attached to it! pcs..TVs..phones..u name ill rip it apart and fix it for you.I fix so many pcs for people I know-I go to their houses or they drop them off here for me to fix.I never ask anything of these people in way of cash payment (that's against my principles!!) but every person in this world has some skills to offer..My heating goes wrong..what do i do? phone a plumber from the phone book? no! I remember that I fixed a pc a few months ago for a building contractor and he owes me a favour...My car is making a dodgy sound and i know nothing about motors...but other guys do that owe me a favour...I'm DJing in a club on Saturday my girl wants to come..we need a babysitter!! oh its ok I unlocked the girl down the roads phone last week...she can do it..Imagine on the site you build you could have a list of people with skills to offer on the site to trade against other peoples skills.Ranking the skills against each other could be hard though..example..I rebuild someone's pc and it takes me 2 hours..how much babysitting time is that worth? how much gardening time? how many hours of a builders time is that?Once you make a ranking system the people involved are happy with it should work pretty well.I would love this idea to take off!!Imagine a Myspace kinda viral promotion so that these kind of swap shop works worldwide..but hey if Ive thought of the idea...theres bound to be sites like this already running...such is life!!!

Ive hacked an old xbox to bits and made it into a GeexBox Ive got an old p2 500mhz with 128megs of RAM made that into a Geexbox. Take a look at this ...boots from a CD or DVD and turns virtually anything into a media center. You can modify soo much of the Iso Image before you burn it also..I burned it onto a re-writable tried it first time..then modified the backgrounds some of the Xvid settings.channels for my tuner..then burned it again with these new settings...worked with my TV card right away when i tried it on my pc with hardly any config. Plays mp3s and movies-Xvids divx..u name it!! plays DVDs fine. Its well worth a try out for the price of a blank disc GeexBox Homepage

Hehe thats true!! Thats why I use such an old winamp...it doesnt search my HD on startup etc like most players do to try to index your collection against the index it keeps itself.. The worse offender of all time for this imo is Musicmatch Jukebox..I had an old mp3 player that HAD to use this garbage program to TX mp3s over to the Mp3player;( Jukebox uses this WatchFolders thing where it seems to be scanning your HD every ten mins for changes...thats a big performance hit on a 250 Hd !!! The best program ive seen for handling huge collections like mine is Traktor but hey I paid hundreds of $ for it and its a proffesional package for Djing..you can store an amazing amount of mp3s and it actually analyses each mp3 you play on it and it writes a tiny text file in its dir with things liek BPM-Pitch-Key-Analysed DB so if u copy that dir..u got all the data on your tunes backed up too...when you start Tracktor it does an check of this dir and works out if youve moved or deleted files and looks for them for you..but once its all set..it can load thousands of mp3 and have them waiting in a que ready to play...truley the best mixing or listening program there is...ever get annoyed that one mp3 is louder than the next on the playlist? Traktor will autogain all your tracks to a specific DB if you like no more diving for the volume as a super loud track kicks in!! Wanna slow down or speed up tunes? Wanna Play 4 mp3s at once? wanna use effects on all of those mp3s at the same time? wanna record stuff and alter its key/pitch/speed Traktor Homepage If people like this Traktor and get into it...Ive been using it since it came out..beta tested different versions and post on the forums a bit..I could make a How To for this site of the basics of using it.. Mark420;)

Very nice Mr Wolf...Im jealous !!I suck so badly at anything art related ;( You seem to have a good talent there..I liked the other stuff on the devient art site too.Keep it up and remeber you have this telent for a reason..use it

In Windows I use a very old Winamp..I think its version 2.03 Check this site out Old Verions.com It has every realease of Winamp in there as well as many other apps.. These older versions of Winamp run soo freaking fast compared to all the new players on the market today. I dont need the media guide 5.1 sound etc that the new verions give you and nearly every mp3 I have (over 200gig !!) is tagged and is included in a playlist somewhere so I dont need the playlist support. For movies and video clips I use VLC player-yes your right about VLC dying with too many things in the playlist ;( I killed it many times with my music collection ;( but for video its the best thing around I think..I hate MS Media players!!! I hate Apple! so an open source alternative is a MUST for me! In Linux I use Amarok for mp3s-just love the basic skin and the features like album art..lyrics..biogs etc I use VLC and Xine for playing movies..

ahh theres a much better product to use than this! Try + Proxy + This has ALL the features your looking for and the ability for you to make your own ports ( for instance I use port 66666 for torrents..I can just add a port map from a pc behind the proxy to to allow it to work.I also map out IRC ports so I dont see any problem with MSN etc working thro this software.. Take a look and good luck getting it working !! I would advise removing all other proxys first or you will end up in a WAR over your port 80 or 8080

ahha !!! Ive seen this before many many moons ago...Like a lot of Winblows "features" this comes back to DOS and the way the file system works..I bumped into this problem years ago when messing around with networked printers..I had to set up 5 new printers and I tried to name a folder "lpt1" for the name of the first printer and then i was going to put the drivers in that folder and share it out to all users..but I had the same problem..it wouldnt make the folder at all...I did some research and found out its because of DOS..also making folders with names such as anything starting in "com" such as "com1" give the same result..Its DOS reserving these names because it uses them itself to address these ports.But hey theres a trick!!! try this!!-goto the command line then type thiscd\mkdir \\.\c:\conSee how this works???now try to delete it!! in explorer---hahah!!!The reason this is possible is down to UNC naming conventions..by adding the \\ in the statement it makes windows ignore the old DOS command to reserve this folder name..Years and years later MS still finds funny quirks in DOS for us to play with ))Ok I will be nice and tell you how to get rid of it...Its a simple as this..rmdir \\.\c:\conHave fun!!Edit:Damm someone beat me by 30 secs to get the reply to this post ;((

Good Call Yordan about linking to the Nai Alert pages...I find these pages soo helpful when I have to de infect someones pc.I would suggest looking at the removal instructions on that page and save the page to the desktop so that you can read the pages without having to connect to the net ,force an update of AVG- boot into safe mode then take a look for the files and registry settings it suggest to delete/modify.Also look at the outgoing traffic report on the nai site..make sure you ban these sites in your firewall so even if you dont fully get rid of it..it cant contact the makers of this peice of crap trojan to update itself.Now run AVG and do a FULL scan of the C drive( a tip !! delete your browsers cache before any virus check ..this speeds it up because it doent have to scan thousands of jpegs gifs etc ..and also there could be something nasty in there form the trojan..) ..hopefully this should remove anything thats lying around you didnt remove manually. ( some ppl would do it the other way round..scan then look and delete manually..I do it the other way round just to make absoluty sure theres nothing left.When your done go back into windows normally..first thing to do is to disable your network connection...literally pull the plug out..only way to be sure no data is being transffered, then run another virus check ( a tip !! delete your browsers cache before any virus check ..this speeds it up because it doent have to scan thousands of jpegs gifs etc ..and also there could be something nasty in there form the trojan..) and also open up the folders and look to see if anything was copied back to your system during boot up, do the same in the registry and remove any bad entries listed on the Nai site..After the last virus check is done..reboot again and you should be Virus free!!!!!Good Luck and if you stil have probs..you can Pm me and I will try to help you!! We ALL hate crappy Trojans/Spyware/virus etc etc

I dont have much experience in these "free" domain names but I have had about 4 or 5 different .co.nr domain names over the last 4 years orso..I have never had a problem with the sign in to make a new name..any adverts or popups aprearing on my sites.They ask you for a link back to them and supply you with a small gif 88X31 for your "first" page of the site..I have been using a page as the Index with a welcome banner for the site and the small gif at the bottom of the page that you have to scroll to see and they seem happy with that..so the link is no where on your site apart from the Welcome screen...seems fair enough to me!!I would take a look and register your name at .co.nr ..hey if you dont use it you can just point ppl to a different link to get to your site if you dont have your own domain name registered..

I saw one the other day in a shop and I wanst too impressed with it.. My Girl Friend is nearing the end of her contract so I was out looking for a good phone for her- she currently has the Sony W800i mp3 phone. Theres somethign about it which says to me that the LG is cheaply made for reason..it feels like a toy in the hand.. One thing that screams to me NO! is the camera..who puts in a 1.3 megapixel camera these days? hmm its behind the times.. I can only imagine the state of that nice shiney black case in a few months time when its been in your pocket with loose change or car keys ;(( Also I noticed that operating the keys on the front took a lot of effort to work and grease from my clean fingers was visable all over the phone after 20 secs of use..so you clean it ..and maybe scratch it at the same time? My Girl likes it and wants it..but I will find a similair model from Nokia-I find thier phones to be better quality than the rest in terms of featues and build quality. But what phone does Mark420 use?? Heheheh the BIG DADDY of ALL phones....The Qtek 9090 The only weak point on this phone is the 1.3 megapixel camera..everything else is of the highest spec..I think they actually ran out of room fitting a good camera in it! Its got bluetooth ofc and Wifi-I actually have Skype on it and a wifi radar program..it tells me when an open Wep node is available...so guess what cheaper phone bills each month cos I use Skype a lot on someone elses Wifi )I have certain spots around town that I goto if I need to make a call when im out and about. Mine is heavly customised and has 4 gig of storage inside it..perfect for taking home torrents downloaded at work for instance or watching full length films in divx on the train being able to keep loads of Mp3s without having to change the bit rate down to fit them in the phone. SO dont go with LG!!! go with a Qtek ))

Damm and there was me thinking it had nothing to do with the batteries!I thought Apple were recalling thier products because they were crap

Everything fine over here I have to report...whats your domain name?Mark420

You missed out DARK GALAXY This is a Galaxy conquest game similar to Planetarion but much better imho.. You start off with one planet and have to research-build etc to get different building/ships etc the Tech tree is pretty large and also quite a few different classes of ships to use in battles..Its tick based 1 tick = 1 realtime hour..there are speedgames some weekends when the tick rate =30 secs or so so you get months gameplay in a few hours. The game is organised into rounds that last soo many thousands of ticks..normally about 3 months per round..and theres 2 games running at a time so you could play on the two servers at the same time if you wanted. Been playing this for 5 years orso..I was on the first beta round and have seen this game grow and grow! Very nice GUI for the game,really nice gameplay...amazing IRC and forum community behind the game.. There are soo many ways to play this game but being part of a team is what really counts in this game..the team I play for has been around for a long time in theis game and we have been fortunate enough to be on the winnign side a few times...nothing like having thousands of ppl cursing your names across the world for invading and taking over thier planets they have spent months developing Go check it out...i would recommend it to anyone....

Nice advert! gosh you did a lot of typing there! Or would I be too cynical to say that you cut and pasted it from this URL? http://www.btsoftware.com/products/cuteftp.htm c'mon thats soo lame......

Knoppix Homepage Knoppix will give you all the whistles and bells that come with a full Linux install-the cd seems to use up all 700MB and the DVD is pretty packed up too the DVD edition gives you a lot more software of course than the CD version. There are soo many packages installed for you and it sets up a nice working environment with KDE-KNoppix detects every bit of hardware on my pc..Wireless mouse-wireless internet-bluetooth-USB external HD-19way Card reader-a really old PCi-2X IDE card and it seems to love my Nvidia Graphics card giving me a wider range of desktop resolutions that winblows. Slax HomePage Slax also boots up into a KDE desktop but has less programs installed in it ./.but if you goto the homepage and look for downloads..you can add hundreds of packages to the ISO before you burn it giving you more options. If I were to recommend one for you to use I would recommend Knoppix for a first time user of Linux..its just easier to burn the cd or dvd with tons of packages already there. If you use them and like them as others have pointed out both will ask you at boot time each time if you want to boot from the cd or install Linux..you will gain some much more performance out of Linux when its installed properly onto the Hardrive. Good Luck and happy Linuxing...

Have you tried a look at Save and Restore? Save and Restore Very good and proffesional for all needs.. Good for backing up the whole pc or just certain folders and files..also with built in encryption. Good Luck! Mark420

I found Getright Getright site to be the best on the market I even bought it about 6 yrs ago and still use the latest version off my origonal $20. I used to be on a dial up which was free in the evening and Getright allows you dial at certain times cut off at a time limit or at the end of file..turn off your pc etc etc A nice feature is being able to do an auto search of differnt mirrors for the file and check the speeds and get chunks of the file from the fastest host. Also you can download all files from a page say a photo gallery or set of videos with one download..it can even make a folder and rename all the files for you as it does it.. Well worth a look guys..its the best!! Mark420

Sure I understand what your saying about some of the artists but this mix was made to be played in a club that plays Indie/Alternative tunes..it was made to be a dancefloor filler with lots of tunes on people would recognise instantly such as Take Me Out or Mr Brightside..It did the job..I got the gig now I play regular there the owner compliments me by saying that I actually mix not fade! unlike most of the Djs hes had there.

I saw a report on BBC world that was filmed by someone on thier phone at a conference..all these business men were sitting down watching a presentation when someones Dell explodes and catches fire in a big way causing them all to run away from it!!There were romours for ages that these batteries were not good but heres the proof!

Hey guys, For those of you that like Indie Music maybe you would like to hear my latest Indie Mix. I Used to be a professional dance music DJ but I have always loved Indie music..over the last few years there's been a lot of really talented bands coming through and I really like the new style of indie mixed with the older stuff.I actually try to mix properly with tunes of the same key and tempo alongside each other-something quite rare in Indie mixing..I guess I'm using the experience of years of mixing dance music to a new style! Give it a listen-you shouldn't be disappointed Here's the track list... 1. Fingers in the Factories - Editors 2. Mr Brightside - The Killers 3. Crazy In Love - Snow Patrol 4. Cigarettes & Alcohol - Oasis 5. All These Things That I've Done - The Killers 6. Work Work Work (Pub Club Sleep) - The Rakes 7. Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand 8. Black and Blue - Snow Patrol 9. Eating Glass - Bloc Party 10. 22 Grand Job - The Rakes 11. I Bet You Look Good On The Dance floor - Arctic Monkeys 12. I Predict a Riot! - Kaiser Chiefs 13. Helicopter - Bloc Party 14. Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers 15. Every Day I love You Less and Less - Kaiser Chiefs 16. Watford - The Rakes Click here for the Mix Its on a crappy hosting place atm..just look for the file Indiemixmp3-Mark on the Decks.mp3 on that page. Enjoy!! more mixes to follow!! Mark420

Lol probably they have not setup a proper billing platform cos they are soo used to consumers using pirated copies they only service business payments fast.I guess not many copies are bought because most are bundled with a shiney new pc.Good thread and discussion-I was thinking of stepping up to 64bit soon myself but Im not waiting for Vista ill prolly use a nice Linux distro on it most of the time and use Win2k(I preffer a more stable OS not an example in concept of an OS that is XP in any flavour!!) and take the performance hit in the windows world when i play games-thats nearly all I use winblows for these days..Mark420

Sure migrating to Linux would be a pain in the *bottom* for a lot of winblows users but imagine an installation package that would boot the linux kernel scan your hardware scan your current copy of winblows and its installed programs then a new shiney interface for Wine that could scan the Winblows and copy all of the Dlls that are working for Wine..also a lot more added program support for Wine.It would also be nice to run a "light" copy of Linux in the Winblows partition for a few weeks to get used to it..then when you are ready to change to Linux..for it to blow out the Windows partition and then so a rescan of apps dlls hardware etc and rebuild Linux into new fully sized partitions with the workign winblows apps settings copied over too.It would be much easier for first time Linux users to see a lot of thier winblows apps sitting on thier desktop on first boot in a fully loaded Linux distro.Like I was talking about in my post..google will be in a position to do this..because users of the new google OS would be familier right away with all of the intergrated google apps.

I have a massive collection of music and I am starting to get it all organised and tagged the right away -its a major pain in the *bottom* but I am gettign there slowly.. I have found now that I want to add album art esp because it looks so good in Amourok player Ive tried a few packages but Album Cover Art Downloader 1.6 http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ its the best one that I found so far-try download.com for it I can..It allows multiple search locations such as amazon and wallmart-they have 500X500 pixel art!! If your mp3s are in folders its a breeze to use and to start tagging them all..I tried the autodownload feature but it seemed to get a lot more wrong than right ;( SO far Ive tagged over 10000 tunes with it and counting

Im using the latest version and i love it!! I love the album art and the lyrics feature..very nice esp when your working away on something and the little now playing window fades in and u can see the album art :DVery easy to use and a bright understandale Gui also makes this a winner!

Its Probably reffering to updating your driver for your video card..Goto the card manufacturers site and look for the latest driver for it..install it reboot change the settings of the desktop etc from their default vales ..then load the game and cross your fingers