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The Tech Help Thread

Discussion in 'Technical Board' started by rei, Oct 19, 2009.

  1. thabucmaster

    thabucmaster
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    I recently saw an Android app that I need, but for the life of me can't figure out what the fuck it is called or where I saw it. Basically, it allows you to use your phone as a mouse on your desktop. I want to be able to play movies via HDMI out to my tv, and then be able to play/pause/stop using my phone.
     
  2. Binary

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    <a class="postlink" href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/5-nifty-remote-apps/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/ ... mote-apps/</a>
     
  3. SilasGreenback

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    My mother runs a consultancy business and as such has to deal with a ridiculous amount of contact details, right now she keeps business cards and files on various people. This system is slow as hell though so she's asked me to create a database for her. Does anyone have any ideas which program or online service would be best?

    It needs to be something with a clean/easy to use interface with separate fields for Name/Job Title/Company/Address/Tel No./Email etc. More importantly it needs to be searchable so if she enters a company name it shows the details of all the contacts she has at that company as well as being able to search individual names.

    Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
     
  4. thabucmaster

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    Neat makes a fantastic product called NeatDesk. Allows you to scan in your business cards, expenses, receipts, etc. The business card portion has a fully searchable database.
     
  5. SilasGreenback

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    Very cool product which I'll send her a link to but I was thinking more of manually entering the info into a database (maybe Microsoft Access if that's suitable?) for her to get her up to date then letting her keep it updated as she gets new info. I've just never created a database before so not sure about what to use.
     
  6. Binary

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    Just a thought, but things like Google Contacts are great because they don't require local access to any machine. You keep all of your contacts in the cloud and they can be imported/exported for local use if you like, plus it's already searchable and can sync with a smartphone if you feel so inclined.

    You also ensure it's always backed up, and they just implemented a history for contacts so you can see something like 90 days worth of changes to a contact in case you accidentally change something incorrectly.

    I'm all for creating tools, but if the tool already exists in a fully realized, thorough, polished manner, and it's free to boot, I have a hard time figuring out why you would create a new Access database solely for the purposes of storing and organizing contacts.
     
  7. Nettdata

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    One of the most interesting and well-written articles about malware/virus I've ever read.

    Wired's article on the investigation into Stuxnet.

    <a class="postlink" href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/all/1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/0 ... xnet/all/1</a>
     
  8. thabucmaster

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  9. PeruvianSoup

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    I moved into a new place and had the Internet installed. The Medialink router is working just fine at close range. However, if I move about 35 feet from the living room into my room, then I lose the signal. Could the lead-based paint of my shithole of an apartment be the cause? If so, is there anything I can do to improve the signal? I noticed this on my Android phone as well. I can receive a strong signal in the living room, but the signal degrades as soon as I get to my desk on the opposite side of my apartment.

    Thanks in advance.

    [edit]: Figured it out. Just had to move the router more toward the middle of the living room to get a decent signal. Fuck this shithole.
     
  10. scootah

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    For 11 of the last 13 months, I've been supporting systems with Siemens Scada Infrastructure in place. Stuxnet is one of the single most significant game changers for IT security in the last 30 years. It has actually made people grow up and start dealing with their security because there is an in the wild computer virus that can fucking kill people.
     
  11. Dcc001

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    I-pod question for you IT wizards.

    I bought a 160GB ipod classic in March, so it's fairly new. My complaint is the shuffle function. Of the over 4000 songs on it thus far, I swear to god it picks the same 200 over and over. Is there some way to get it to have a bias towards the higher rated songs? Or, is there a way to set up a giant playlist of the stuff I really like and have it randomly select within that? I don't like knowing what's going to play next, but I don't like it coughing up the same tired crap over and over, either.
     
  12. rei

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    You can set it to shuffle within a playlist by going to the settings menu and turning shuffle on. It'll still be biased because it's a shitty shuffle algorithm, but it'll be confined to the playlist you defined. On your model you can also get to this shuffle option while a song is playing by pressing the centre buttons a few times until you get a prompt where the volume would normally be saying
    Shuffle
    [off]songs[albums] and just turn the wheel to select your preference.
     
  13. rexmundi

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    OK, not sure if this questions belongs in this thread or the programming thread.

    I have an excel spread sheet with about 30k entries that need to be submitted into a web form. The webform is really simple, just a couple fields and then a submit button. Obviously I am looking for a way to automate this whole process. Unfortunately this is pretty far from my field of expertise and am looking for a little direction. So, I have a few questions.

    1. Am I bad at google, and is there a 3rd party application or something that will do this automatically? Short of a ghetto "record and replay" script program, that will scroll down the screen and copy and paste info, then pause and loop.

    2. I feel like for this to work, the excel data will need to be exported into another format, possibly a data base or raw html.

    3. The best bet for the actual scrip I am thinking will be php. But again, I am not a programmer of any kind so I could be way off. I mean in school I would look at my code and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

    Any other advice or info will be appreciated.
     
  14. Jimmy James

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    Is there a decent app out there (free would be awesome, but not essential) that will allow one to access a shared public calendar in addition to their regular Outlook calendar for both Android and iPhone?

    Thanks!
     
  15. rexmundi

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    Thought yall might find this somewhat funny. HP sold someone I work with a new rig. Overall really nice, but check out the PSU they decided to include with this.



    HP Pavilion HPE h8se series
    • Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium [64-bit]
    • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-970 six-core [3.4GHz, 1.5MB L2 + 12MB shared L3 cache]
    • 12GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
    • 160GB solid state drive
    • 2TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
    • 2TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
    • No additional office software
    • Norton Internet Security(TM) 2011 - 15 month
    • 1GB DDR5 Radeon HD 6850 [2 DVI, 2 mini-DP, HDMI. VGA adapter]
    • 460W Power supply
    • Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
    • Wireless-N LAN card
    • 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, audio
    • No TV Tuner
    • Integrated sound
    • Premium HP keyboard and optical mouse
    • SAVE $50! Roxio Creator 2011 [Limited Time]
    Estimated build date: June 13, 2011
     
  16. Celos

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    A half decent 460W PSU is perfectly fine for that system.
     
  17. scootah

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    Running it through the vendor calculator (it's actually a pretty standard build) - 90% load with some fan upgrade kids and half a dozen USB devices running off it - it all comes out under 400W. New high end kit has way more efficient power draw than equivalent priced stuff a few years ago. You could overclock that and add a water cooler and only barely stress the PSU while running a heavy gaming workload.

    I generally go overboard with scoping PSU's - because the price difference is minimal and I'd rather have it and not need it than need it then have to buy a new one when I upgrade something or add a component - but that thing will run just fine as it stands.
     
  18. scootah

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    Randomly - my friend caught her kid on IMesh being inappropriate with a much older guy. Any suggestions for a free and easy way to keep kids away from webcam utils in general? Blocking IMesh seems pointless unless all the cam chat avenues are blocked at the same time,

    The laptop the kid was using is school provided, so can't just take the battery/psu away and the webcam is built in, so can't just remove it. It's also school property, so can't just tap the lense to make it unusable. The kid does have a genuine need to access the internet from home (school is progressive, lots of online stuff as part of her curriculum) - but parents would really prefer she wait until she she's a bit older to start cam whoring with middle aged guys. School provide some content filtering software - but it's clearly piss poor.

    Considering OpenDNS on the home router - but parents (Being friends of mine) would prefer that they still be able to do adult things online - so need to be able to lock filtering down to exclude the parent's MAC addresses or something (don't want to just block the kids mac because that's so fucking easy to dodge around).

    My friends are computer literate enough for basics, but I'm going to be the one who has to go set this up for them, so I'd prefer it be something quick and easy - they live in the burbs and I'm trying to avoid the burbs as much as possible lately.
     
  19. rexmundi

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    Shit, I ran it through a calculator and 460 wasn't even min. I wasn't saying it needed 800 or anything just laughing that they sold a machine that was under min.
     
  20. Binary

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    The calculators are all fundamentally flawed, anyway. They assume simultaneous access to every device.

    You think you'll be accessing 3 hard drives, 2 optical drives, stressing the memory card, maxing the CPU, filling up your RAM, etc... all at once? Of course not. But yeah, I ran it through two good calculators and came up with just over 400W.

    Power supplies are increasingly inefficient as your usage moves further away from their maximum rating, and virtually everyone assumes a far greater power draw than is actually needed. I'd far rather see a system spec'd with a 460W PSU where it regularly hits 80% of its capacity than a system with a 650W PSU running at half its max load all the time. I would consider that a suitable PSU for that particular system. Not much upgrade room, but big-box manufacturers don't sell systems with upgrading in mind anyway.