Liam

The standard of these competitors is amazing. Back in the day we didn't have this many members.

What you need to be careful of here is once a server starts to send out large quantities of similar emails it doesn't take long for them to end up on automatic SPAM blacklists, its certainly possible but depending on the volume & frequency it could backfire. One other point...for the love of god don't write anything in perl...php, python, c/c++, bash shell script, anything but perl. For me, perl>>all else. If you just want to get a job done, nothing comes close -i.e. simple jobs that would take me hours in c. Off topic, though.

You could quite quickly knock up some perl scripts to do the job. It wouldn't take long, there's likely to be modules to do exactly what you need and you'd have full control over everything. Bet it could be done in 50 lines of code or less. Hell, if you're looking at paying a small fee to do it, I might even be able to find time to put something together.

Did you see this a couple of years back? http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-09/092807reply.html#i4 Having trouble finding the info on Randi's site, but basically he offered his $1M prize to anyone who could identify the Pear cables repeatedly in blind listening tests, with any reference kit they should choose to supply. The thing is, there are scientific and engineering projects that rely on similar principles and which don't have cost limitations, but cables like these are not considered useful. The company I work for manufactures subsea detection kit at £100k+ a pop. This kit works on audio frequencies, and the design of the output stages is basically an audio amplifier -a very good one. If these cables gave us even a slight benefit over dirt cheap cable picked up from Radio Spares, we would use it. $7k for 12 feet would not be a huge hit on our BOM cost. The same can be said for scientific experiments, medical instruments, defence technologies.

That's got to be a joke! Do you think?

Is 64bit going to make a big difference to music production? When performing computationally intensive tasks involving large datasets, then 64bit registers will provide significant benefit. If you were in science or engineering, or at a push perhaps video editing, then I'd say yes. As it stands I doubt you'll see any real benefit, and as Steve says you could potentially run into driver issues.

http://clonezilla.org will do the job. It might be worth looking at Win7 next time you flatten and start again, but if you're all set up with XP, don't worry about it.

Just get your porn from a newsagent and skip the 'genuine Rolex' offers. Over the last few years, I've been called in to fix many people's computers that have 'a virus'. More often than not it's just something they've messed up. "user32.dll? I couldn't possibly need that. I'll free up some space!" *click*

^ what he said. Also: apologies for feeding the troll. I should know better after many years on the internets. p.s. Technics are better than Vestax.

A Unix-based OS is susceptible to a virus just as Windows is. It's often argued that Windows has far fewer (identified) security holes than OSX does. Given that Apple's market share is increasing significantly, OSX will become a target. Besides, the point is becoming somewhat vague; exploits are shifting from OS vulnerabilities toward browsers, software etc., Abobe Reader being among the most targeted. But I digress... There's plenty of free disk imaging software out there. What exactly are you trying to achieve with it? Backup a fresh install with all your default software?

Even if your hardware supported iOS4, I would warn against it. All the iOS4 features worth two shits are dependent on newer hardware. iPhone 3G owners have been struggling with severely reduced speed and many have downgraded to 3.1.3, which is generally thought to be the best for all but the fastest models.

Work/gym/life -not much time for computer stuff these days. Thought I'd check in, see if the old board is still here. Much changed?

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/sega-urinal-games/ Sorry if this is a repost...

Much as I hate to admit it, Sky provide a decent basic service. If you have any of their other services, it also works out cheap.

A long shot, but check wake-on LAN isn't enabled. Some broadcast packets can wake up every system on a network. Also exists in newer implementations of WiFi. Could be that there's a device on your network that makes use of broadcast. Check 'Scheduled Tasks' in Control Panel, check anything that's in there. Open each task individually, and under the 'settings' tab you should find something along the lines of 'Wake this computer to start the task'. If trying the above gives you no joy, post up again. I don't check this board often but I'll try and remember to check back.

I can't see that you would have damaged anything. Do you have access to a simple multimeter? Would help a lot with diagnosis.

I once heard registry cleaning compared to "cleaning out a space roughly the size of a car park in the whole state of Texas". I'd say this isn't too far from the truth.

Say what? Do you mean you're using a step up/down transformer rated at 500w or something? Transformers of any kind can certainly create mayhem. +1. Most kit can handle 100-250VAC, some kit will have a selection switch. Before you do anything else, check if you can eliminate the step-down transformer. EDIT if you're unsure, check here and ask

The gf loves 1vs100, she's really looking forward to the new season. I think it's brilliantly executed, pseudo-synchronous coordination of sessions numbering in the tens of thousands is no mean feat. They could really work on the host/guest side of the presentation, though.

Very cool. Didn't know most of this.

Get the iP. If you can't type faster than on a qwerty pad, you're doin' it rong. A couple of days to get the hang of trusting the corrective input and you're golden. I'm someone who does all his work at the command line, needs all the special chars and uses his iP for the UNIX-like OS/shell, SSH etc. This absolutely requires decent text input, and there's no question that the iP is fastest. Obviously YMMV, but I think a lot of the negative opions are based on inferior (resistive?) touchscreens. My better half is a long term BB user, but decided to switch when she left Ralph Lauren. Power user, emails all day long. She chose a G1 on the strength of physical keyboard. Although the G1's keyboard is very slick, she's faster on my iP. She often borrows my iP to hammer out an email/text "because it's quicker". I've had other touch screen phones and the input was gash. Nothing else has managed to get it right. Don't get me started on the Storm, I can't think of a worse idea than a mechanical click action on a touchscreen. As for the O2 signal, why not hold off and get it on Tmob/Org/Voda?? I'm not a BB hater, but I don't think they currently have a product to match the iP.

I once bought this weird flashy light toy thing which bore the warning "small parts leaded into the mouth may cause to stifle!" I'll see if I still have it

Wonderboy in Monsterland, Master System Fatal Fury Special, NeoGeo

I had a very brief look, don't take my word as gospel but it sounds like the model you have been offered as a replacement has the updated Bravia Engine 2 (in lieu of BE1). So, marginally improved post-processing, I guess. Otherwise, very much a like-for-like swap. Take the replacement. Interestingly, the older screen claims 30000:1 contrast and the newer 25000:1. Contrast ratios never did carry much weight with me, though. It's all about gamma linearity, and Sony have always been top notch in this area.

No. It pisses me right off that you can't specify different screen options for Xbox originals, either. You have to live with horrible borders unless you change the aspect ratio each time. Back to the original point: almost all games on Xbox 360 are natively rendered in 720p anyway. You aren't gaining ANYTHING in terms of detail by setting your XB to 1080 lines for games like GTA4. The Xbox is having to upscale the image, which *may* be the root cause of the percieved improvement in "sharpness": it may be a better match for the native resolution of your friend's LCD. That having been said, if it only does 1080i and not 1080p ("full HD"), I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the LCD itself doesn't render a full 1080 lines either, so you're probabbly scaling 720->1080->720 again. Aside: funnily enough, GTA4 runs with only 640 lines native on the PS3, considerably lower resolution. My advice is to stick with 720p for the simple reason that most games render at this resolution, and the upscaling built into a decent television ought to be a good match for that specific panel.