A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own

[T42]

The two ends do stick to each other so that the thing makes a nice wee loop. Could hang it from a peg. If I had a peg. Ah, what the hell.

[Dibdib]

I half-remember some yacfers - possibly Mr Larrington - bemoaning Apple's decision to kill off the big iPod Classic.

Well it's (kind of) back, with a new 128gb option:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/apple/2015/07/the-ipod-lives-mid-year-bump-adds-new-colors-and-128gb-64-bit-ipod-touch/

[Mr Larrington]

Not big enough

[woollypigs]

Ah the joy of not using ones passwords often enough, after one have updated them, so therefore one can't remember them ... 

[Oaky]

So what's the point of a USB lead with magnets built into the plugs?

Probably to prevent them from getting rheumatism, or travel sickness or something.

[T42]

A constipated USB connection I can imagine, but rheumatism?

[Mr Larrington]

Please would whatever it is that has turned the external sounds in ETS2 up to 11 please turn them down again?  It sounds like I'm driving with the truck's windows open   And the cheesy Russian pop music no longer sounds like a bad Tom Waits impersonator¹, which at least had a certain joke comedy value.

1: Is there such a thing as a good Tom Waits impersonator?

[Mr Larrington]

Mention of sound cards elsethread prompts me to ask:

My desktop Babbage-Engine has its sound wossname on the mofoboard and, at times of stress, sometimes decides to go all quiet.  Well, apart from the fan.  Might a sound card prevent this reprehensible behaviour?  It's only doing stereo coz the amp it's plugged into was not designed for people with four ears, and through shit speakers at that, so doesn't need earthquake-triggering levels of 9:11 7.1 sonic badassness

I should have robbed the sound card out of the ancient XP box I gave Lt. Col. Larrington (retd.) last month but it probably wouldn't fit or wouldn't have drivers available or something.  I can probably nab it anyway the next time I'm there coz the chances of him connecting loudsqueakers to it are this: p<0.

[Biggsy]

Adding a sound card could solve the problem if there's a hardware fault (unlikely), or just if it uses a different driver, as rather brutey forcey solution.

[woollypigs]

Build up my laptop with a basic Debian 8 install. It now boots up with Openbox, Tint2 at under 200Mb RAM used, with a terminal window with ssh onto the "server" to my favourite IRC channel to idle on. With Chrome, two taps open (gmail and yacf) it is at 1Gb. Easy had 500Mb RAM extra lost on boot before, not too bad on a laptop with 3Gb and 1.2Ghz/800Mhz dual core.

[citoyen]

I don't think this really warrants a thread of its own...

Does this laptop look suitable for a student to do their homework on?
Acer Aspire V3 112P – £170 at PC World

Doesn't need to be used for games or heavy photo editing or anything like that. First impression is that the processor might be a bit feeble and there's not a lot of memory, but it seems to be quite reasonable for the price (as far as I know what to expect for my money), and the memory can be upgraded to 8GB. I would also consider upgrading the HD to an SSD but maybe not immediately.

[Biggsy]

I don't think this really warrants a thread of its own...

Does this laptop look suitable for a student to do their homework on?
Acer Aspire V3 112P – £170 at PC World

Yes, but it would hardly be better than a second-hand laptop off eBay for nearly £100 less, eg, Dell Inpsiron 1525.

[Mr Larrington]

Laptop, why are you not rebooting?  Just sitting there saying:

ASUS
Inspiring Innovation * Persistent Perfection

may be persistent but is totally uninspiring, not at all innovative and very far from perfect.  Get with the programme, ratso

[matthew]

My desktop is not booting, I just checked and the bios is not seeing the hard disk with the boot partition.

Fortunately I have my personal files on a separate additional disk so my data is safe, unfortunately I don't have access to a different machine to check the disk to see what state it is actually in.

[Mr Larrington]

Gave the laptop the full duration of some rubbish I'd recorded off the telly about the Loch Ness Monster before giving it the "have you tried switching it off and on again" treatment.  At which point it decided it couldn't see Pop Tart Mark, the external HDD.  Gave that the "have you tried switching it off and on again" treatment.

Nothing.  Arse.  Fortunately some jibbling in Device Mangler has restored Pop Tart Mark to rude health.

[Biggsy]

I proved the Monty Hall Problem Solution to myself tonight by writing a Commodore 64 BASIC program.  Now I finally accept it.

Code: [Select]

4 REM ********** MONTY (C) BIGGSY **********
6 INPUT"NUMBER OF GOES: ";N
7 REM ****** WELL, IT CHECKS THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR ******
8 PRINT:PRINT"**** STICK ****":PRINT
10 FOR I=1 TO N
100 P=INT(RND(1)*3)+1:PRINT"CAR:  "P
110 G=INT(RND(1)*3)+1:PRINT"GUESS:"G
120 IF G=P THEN S=S+1:PRINT"WIN":GOTO 140
130 PRINT"LOSE"
140 PRINT:NEXT
150 REM****** AND NOW TO SWITCH EVERY TIME ******
200 PRINT:PRINT"**** SWITCH ****":PRINT
210 FOR I=1 TO N
220 P=INT(RND(1)*3)+1:PRINT"CAR:  "P
230 G=INT(RND(1)*3)+1:PRINT"GUESS:"G
240 IF P<>G THEN GOTO 340
250 IF P=1 THEN X=INT(RND(1)*2)+2:GOTO 400
260 IF P=3 THEN X=INT(RND(1)*2)+1:GOTO 400
270 X=INT(RND(1)*2)+1:IF X=2 THEN X=3
280 GOTO 400
340 IF (P=1 AND G=2) OR (P=2 AND G=1) THEN X=3:GOTO 400
350 IF (P=1 AND G=3) OR (P=3 AND G=1) THEN X=2:GOTO 400
360 IF (P=2 AND G=3) OR (P=3 AND G=2) THEN X=1
400 PRINT"GOAT: " X
410 IF (G=1 AND X=2) OR (G=2 AND X=1) THEN G=3:GOTO 500
420 IF (G=1 AND X=3) OR (G=3 AND X=1) THEN G=2:GOTO 500
430 G=1
500 PRINT"SWITCHED GUESS:" G
520 IF G=P THEN SW=SW+1:PRINT"WIN":GOTO 540
530 PRINT"LOSE"
540 PRINT:NEXT
600 PRINT:PRINT"STICK WINS:   "S "/"N
610 PRINT"SWITCHED WINS:" SW "/"N

...
STICK WINS:       3342 / 10000
SWITCHED WINS: 6754 / 10000

The Commodore 64 has a true random number generator that samples analogue white noise from the sound chip, although I must admit that I ran this program on a PC, with Vintage BASIC with a pseudo-random number generator.

[SteveC]

Voice mail from Mother (77 next birthday). I'm locked out of my computer, can you help? ...but not until after the Bake Off!

So I phone from the hotel having managed to download another copy of Team Viewer and discovered that the Cloud has remembered my password!
A bit strange thinks I. If she's locked out, how come I can see the screen and everything via Team Viewer?
So she types away and nothing appears in the password box. So I try typing and the dots appear.

Is your keyboard unplugged, Mother?  Try using the one on the laptop itself.

I wish all support calls were that easy!

[David Martin]

The Monty Hall problem is easy to comprehend if instead of considering it as two doors, you consider it as one door and (all the other doors at once).
Expand the problem to 100 doors and the answer is always switch.

[Gattopardo]

Have an dell inspiron zino htpc with 8gb and dual core athlon.  Currently running 32bit version will I gain anything running the 64bit version?

[hellymedic]

My mouse pointer disappeared when I had the Islam Channel open on one tab of Safari and surfed on other open tabs.
Weird!

It showed the pointer on the Islam channel but not on the other tabs.

(Partner is being interviewed on Islam Channel shortly.)

[fuaran]

Have an dell inspiron zino htpc with 8gb and dual core athlon.  Currently running 32bit version will I gain anything running the 64bit version?

What version of Windows? I think most of the 32-bit versions won't let you access more than 4GB. Check System properties to see how much memory it says is usable.

Apparently there's way of hacking 32-bit Windows to access more memory, not tried it myself. eg http://www.unawave.de/windows-7-tipps/32-bit-ram-barrier.html

[simonp]

traceroute bad.horse

[ian]

Have an dell inspiron zino htpc with 8gb and dual core athlon.  Currently running 32bit version will I gain anything running the 64bit version?

What version of Windows? I think most of the 32-bit versions won't let you access more than 4GB. Check System properties to see how much memory it says is usable.

Apparently there's way of hacking 32-bit Windows to access more memory, not tried it myself. eg http://www.unawave.de/windows-7-tipps/32-bit-ram-barrier.html

Hmm, I'm not convinced. How does a 32-bit OS address that additional memory space?

[mrcharly-YHT]

Have an dell inspiron zino htpc with 8gb and dual core athlon.  Currently running 32bit version will I gain anything running the 64bit version?

What version of Windows? I think most of the 32-bit versions won't let you access more than 4GB. Check System properties to see how much memory it says is usable.

Apparently there's way of hacking 32-bit Windows to access more memory, not tried it myself. eg http://www.unawave.de/windows-7-tipps/32-bit-ram-barrier.html

Hmm, I'm not convinced. How does a 32-bit OS address that additional memory space?

So they are suggesting running some code from a Russian programming group that hacks your kernel? No thanks.

[simonp]

Have an dell inspiron zino htpc with 8gb and dual core athlon.  Currently running 32bit version will I gain anything running the 64bit version?

What version of Windows? I think most of the 32-bit versions won't let you access more than 4GB. Check System properties to see how much memory it says is usable.

Apparently there's way of hacking 32-bit Windows to access more memory, not tried it myself. eg http://www.unawave.de/windows-7-tipps/32-bit-ram-barrier.html

Hmm, I'm not convinced. How does a 32-bit OS address that additional memory space?

Whether or not it's a dodgy hack that will give away your bank details, having a larger physical memory than per-process virtual address space is entirely feasible, and I don't really understand why a 32-bit system should be in principle limited to 4GB of RAM.