mats

Looking forward to hearing what the battery life is like!

There's always portable python. Host the exe(s) somewhere and run from a shortcut. Not done it, but might get round to it one day.

Unless you treat drug addiction as an illness (like we do tobacco addiction) and try to treat the users. No users = less crime (to pay for drugs) = no market for dealers. With that analogy, you work out what would stop people illegally downloading content. Making good streams / downloads cheap, user friendly and free of DRM or limits on what you can play on would be a start. Thing is, the dealers, sorry, studios still think that the 'control everything' approach is best.

13% northern. I still regard Leicester as up north despite having lived there for years.

Pirated content: No restrictions on what you can play it on or from, no irritating trailers that you have to sit through, no anti piracy message you have to sit through, no limit on when you can play it. Legit content: Almost none of the above. Talk about an industry intent on punishing its consumers - one can understand why people might choose to download stuff. As for the way this government has introduced a universal filter with little or no oversight (think of the children!), and started to police what we download - we used to criticise places like China for that kind of behavior.

Almost 150 FREE Microsoft eBooks, covering Windows 7, Windows 8, Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 365, Office Web Apps, Windows Server 2012, Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2012, SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Server

Have a play with Rubular: a Ruby regular expression editor and tester - it's a great tool for helping build regexes.

Had a play with a late beta the other week. Works in a virtualbox vm and is very interesting.

This informational post is for the benefit of people unfortunate enough to be asked to deploy Optoma DC300i visualisers on a network. 1. There is no msi available. There is an exe but CC4 can't / won't make it deploy properly 2. If you manually install it on a machine, there is a good chance you'll get a black screen instead of the output from the camera. It will be able to take stills though (wtf!?). 3. Optoma tech support do have some knowledge of this product (they seem to concentrate on projectors these days) 4. The DC300i camera is fairly standard as usb webcams go. 5. This means the wonderful VLC can display its output. 6. To run VLC from the command line and show the camera - \vlc --no-audio --fullscreen "dshow://" 7. VLC is so cool it can even run from a network drive so you can just distribute a shortcut. 8. Using VLC instead of the Optoma cr4p means you loose the onscreen controls (zoom, focus etc) but these exist as hardware buttons on the unit itself. You also loose the ability to draw over your video (boo hoo). All testing done on a CC4 network. YMMV. VLC. Ace.

I had 20 turn up in a school. We didn't even put them on the school wireless (no point - proxy in use). I bought a 15-odd way usb hub and wrote batch files to copy files over. They were a pain in the backside tbh. Kids used them for a while, think they fell into disuse in the end.

Yes, because the most tiresome thing about a car is having to keep it clean. Let's all ignore the pollution made by all those < 3 mile journeys in urban areas though. It's all those OTHER drivers that are the problem.

I've posted a voice activation notice on the copier. Just got to wait for a TA now...

It is an issue, but they're going to have to learn sooner or later that " jsmith" is not the same as "jsmith" or "jsmith ". Same goes for passwords. Have you tried telling them to press crtl-a and delete before entering their username?

Scholastic. You produce books with 100 lessons in for teachers. I'm sure you are very proud of the "Digital Content" you include with each book and I'm sure it works very well when just one teacher buys and uses your product on one non-networked pc. Thing is, some of us run things called networks. We don't allow people to run executables from random cds - which is required to get to your marvellous PDFs and PPT files. This means that for a whole school, some mug has to copy the content of 18 CDs (3 subjects, 6 years) onto their file server. Just for kicks, I ran a duplicate file finder against the 1900+ files in your 2014 set. Some files are duplicated 19 times, many others 16 times. 986 duplicate files in total - what a waste of a gigabyte. The actual content is about 25% of the disc space. To add insult to injury, the CDs need to run once with admin privs to download more precious content. 18 CDs? 18 programs to run and wait for. I have a better idea. We have a thing called the internet. You could put the whole lot on there and not need the CDs. You could even issue schools with a password to stop bad people looking at things they shouldn't look at. Really, loads of CDs with executables which need to update over the internet just to download some PDFs - it makes no sense at all. Please get with the times. You utter idiots.

If you fancy playing more with proxying there's the upside-down-ternet. Upside-Down-Ternet

I built a capslocker a couple of years ago. Might have to leave it in the office. Stealth USB CapsLocker | macetech.com The old 'invert all the screens in the ict room' trick might come out too. Tell the kids it's a problem with gravity or something.

There's a BSA 3-speed for sale on a card in my local co-op. New tyres and a rack - £8. Yes, £8. For that kind of money you could even forgive the fact that the brakes will be non-existant in the wet. I suspect it will go on for ever as long as you replace tyres every couple of years.

You'll still be getting grit & dirt in the chain which causes the wear - surely better to work on that than oiling it all the time. The chainguard you had leaves the bottom run (nearest the gritty road) exposed - I'd be looking for a way to protect that. Also - do you have mudguards? They do reduce the amount of much flying around. You mentioned earlier using 3 in 1 as a lubricant. I might be wrong but isn't that an easing oil, designed for unsticking things rather than lubricating?

You oil your chain after each ride?! Wow - I'd get a chain guard and forget about it. Easy without a derallieur. Luckily I never had to change a chain as a kid (no tools & wouldn't know how) but that's probably because I didn't ride as far / fast or weigh as much as I do now.

Oh yes, it's wrong that MPs get to vote for things that benefit companies they profit from. If you're still not sure about which side of the political spectrum the Wail is on - how about the "The man who hated Britain" hatchet job they did on Ed Milliband's dad?

The DM's political agenda is pretty clear. It's owned by very wealthy individuals who want low taxes, small state and the best possible environment in which they can make even more money (eg weakened laws on pollution / wages / etc etc). The Tories are clearly their party of choice. As for "the BBC are left wing" elsewhere in this thread - so how come they've almost completely ignored the NHS run down and sell off agenda the government are currently pursuing?

That component is a 0.33 ohm resistor and is unlikely to be the cause of your audio problems. Try to clean / replace the potentiometers and as others have said, check for bulging capacitors.

3 miles? Stick with the bicycle and get a motorbike for weekend entertainment!

I have 2 schools that use RM smartcache but it's going out of support soon. They don't have £10k for smoothwall either. I could set up on a linux box but it's filter lists that are a) essential and b) only available as part of a commercial product. I don't want to spend my life adding and blocking random sites - cheap / free filter list or web filter suggestions gratefully received.

2.8 miles according to google maps. Under 15 mins by bike - regardless of traffic conditions.