Posts by happygeek

Welcome both

Did any of this help, Anna?

What problems were you having with Classic Start? I'm running it here under 8.1 without any noticeable problems.

Eraser is a good, and free, utility for secure drive wiping under Windows. Supports the Gutmann method, a 35-pass overwrite, which should do the trick for most people...

Moschops has already been interviewed - he's MotM in the current newsletter.

Everyone nominated here has now recieved an invitation to be interviewed, and you can expect to read their stories spread across the coming months.

Thanks everyone!

Not just you, I was experiencing the same lag earlier with DW taking much longer than expected to post replies (this was mainly while sending PMs in my case) and then get back to my inbox.

[edit} seems to have improved, for me, over what it was an hour ago at least

Try asking this as a new question, with specific details of what your problem actually is (the more information the better) and in the appropriate forum as I'm guessing it's got nothing to do with either web development or JSP, and you might find that we can help you.

Hijacking a five year old thread in an unrelated forum, with a very vague and detail-light series of shouting (uppercase is never a good idea) posts/rants is not likely to get you much in the way of targeted help, let alone quick help. Just saying...

Today is another of those 'Hallmark' IT security days; in the case of Tuesday the 11th of February 2014 that means 'Safer Internet Day'. I'm not going to start yet another rant about the pointlessness of this, and why every day should be Safer Internet Day. If you want to know my feelings, go and take a look at what I said in my article 'Data Privacy Day sucks elephants through a straw, and here's why...' a couple of weeks ago. Instead, I'm going to concentrate on just what those of us who are in the business of trying to educate and inform regarding data security and online privacy issues are up against.

Research undertaken by an independent UK broadband news site under the title of ‘Big Broadband Survey’ and questioning more than 7,000 Internet users about their online habits and opinions, has confirmed what most of us in the IT security business already know. When it comes to online anonymity and privacy issues the great British public, and to be honest the same will apply to most nationalities, don't really know what they want.

And that's the real problem; when people don't know what they want it's just about impossible to deliver it to them. Obvious really, but none the less worrying for it. It highlights how important education is, and although I said I would repeat myself I'm going to, how pointless a single day of focus that is soon forgotten and sooner ignored …

Small/Regular (depending upon coffee shop) black Americano with an extra shot. Nice and simple, hits the spot.

My other half is a liuttle more complicated, she always has a regular decaf soya cappuccino with no choc sprinkles but with a small jug of hot water on the side.

Can't remember the last time I went to a StarYucks. Quite apart from political reasons for not visiting them, there's also the small matter of whatever that syrupy-slop they serve is it certainly ain't coffee as far as I'm concerned. I always try and find a small, local, independent coffee shop to frequent.

Welcome

I have the same problem with 'hacker' movies and find them very hard to watch as a result.

You may also want to check the walkthroughs here which may well help get you up and running.

Check your account properties in Outlook and make sure that the outgoing SMTP server has 'log on to incoming mail server before sending mail' (or something like that) checked.

France vs Italy pretty much as expected, no upsets this year there then.

I think the crunch match is going to be England vs Ireland at the moment, although given current form and looking at the points difference aspect of the table I will put my hands up and say that if I was a betting man then my money would still be on Ireland for the 6N but not the Grand Slam or the Triple Crown for that matter.

Yep, there are plenty of 'start menu' apps out there, and Classic Shell is another good one.

Mea Culpa. Bad habit from some time ago when we used to sticky news/editorial content to prevent if from immediately being drowned out of sight in busy forums. I need to wean myself off of still doing it :)

anna -

Have you ever been able to send email via hotmail or is this a new account?

Great film. Yessssssssssss. :)

True story: I once told Jules Holland (Squeeze keyboard player) that I preferred the Lawnmower Deth cover of Up the Junction to the Squeeze original. As I recall, he didn't seem best pleased at the time...

England looking good, managed to close down Scotland completely. Always nice to take the CC at Murrayfield :) I think 20-0 could have been much more though, still some sloppy finishing to get under control...

Sorry Alan, but that was a really poor performance. Should have been more than 26-3 to be honest. Ireland looking good for 6N, if not the GS perhaps.

Looking forward to the matches today, and rooting for a Wales win (despite having Irish roots) as I think it will make for a better competition if things remain close to the end. England should destroy Scotland, but then the Tigers should have destroyed Worcester yesterday and that was a devastatingly close match which, as a Tigers supporter, I have to admit Worcester should have won. Never write off the underdog. :)

Happy to invite you again if you like?

No :)

I think it's more the case, or at least has been in the past as some people have explained it to me, as not being interested in 'publicity' or essentially being 'a private person' who simply isn't interested in telling the world about themselves. Which again, is fine; newsletter interviews are not compulsory ;)

What's you favourite first line, or start, to a song?

Mine varies according to my mood, but currently it has to be:

"Everybody here comes from somewhere that they would just as soon forget and disguise"

Supernatural, Superserious - R.E.M

Welcome aboard...

Alan (diafol) has been featured but his Featured Poster badge fell off, now pinned back on to his profile.

ddanbe has been invited before, but declined (as is his right - and as have a number of folk I would have liked to feature, usually for privacy reasons)

That's kind of to be expected though. They are probably looking for help on a specific subject, and so searching through postings initially related to that. Then they start browsing/exploring the site in more depth as they discover just what a vibrant community we are.

Those members who have been here longer will have settled into whatever niche they are most comfortable with, and I'm guessing pretty much stick in that particular general category or sub-forum, only ocassionally straying out into less familiar territory.

This kind of forum territoriality is an online cultural norm, and one which has been directly lifted from 'the real world' where we do pretty much the same thing across most social and business experiences. Take shopping for example. The first time you visit a new mall you will spend hours exploring it, popping into loads of shops and buying lots of stuff. As time passes your visits are better planned and you spend less time there in fewer shops and buying only what you came in for.

The trick is coming up with increasingly fiendish methods to encourage mall shoppers, and the same applies to forum visitors, to spend more across more disparate shop units... :)

I am currently looking for members of the DaniWeb community who deserve a little recognition for their participation here, the help they provide and the support they give to others. Yes, I'm talking about the Member of the Month interviews in the DaniWeb Digest, our community newsletter that goes out to the best part of a million members every month.

So, here's the thing; up until now the nominations for member of the month candidates have largely come by way of suggestions put forward by moderators or from the DaniWeb editorial team itself. This month I'd like to change all that and throw the nomination process open to everyone!

If you think there is someone who is deserving of getting the Member of the Month staus, and who you would like to see interviewed in this way, then now's your chance to let me know. Simply post their username in this discussion thread, alomng with a brief reason why you would like to see them featured, and I will take it from there. If the person you want to nominate has already been put forward, just use the up arrow to like it so I can see who the most popular suggestions are at a glance. I cannot guarantee that everyone nominated will end up being featured (indeed, not everyone wants to put themselves in front of a million folk in this way), but I will investigate every nomination and take it from there.

Thank you!

[update] Please do no …

The start button does make a comeback, sort of, in Windows 8.1 but it's still not enough to satisfy the die-hard 'I got Windows 8 but miss Windows 7' brigade. Not least as when you click the Windows 8.1 start button it doesn't pop up the old folder-structured start menu that many people miss so much, but instead it just takes you back to the start screen which those same folk have such a dislike of. Of course, if you right click the start button in Windows 8.1 it does produce a start menu of sorts, with one-click access to everything from Control Panel and Task Manager through to Run and Search. If this is still not enough and you really miss the Windows 7 look and feel, all is not lost; there's an app for that.

Actually, there are any number of apps for that and the choice is quite frankly bewildering. Classic Start, however, is the most popular of the free start button apps available in the Windows Store, and having tried a few I would say it has achieved that position on merit. When I say 'available in' that's not actually really true, as all that's available there is a description of the app and access to user reviews and screenshots; to install it you have to click the link and visit the app developer website. So let's start this step-by-step tutorial right there, at the beginning...

Step 1: Visit the Windows Store from your Start Screen …

Hippo Burpday AD!

Interesting point about the home wins. Looking at the fixtures I'd say that, if you are happy to agree the big four are all equally average in terms of on the pitch play at the moment, England may have the advantage with some big home games coming up. Wales are going to have to pull a real blinder if they are to upset previous form at Twickenham.

Looking like the most open 6N for some years. Ireland got the result, but they didn't shine (and against that Scotland in the last 40 they really should have scored twice as many).

You've arrived at the right place then :)

Geeks' Lounge is pretty much meant to be eclectic by design; it's where 'everything else' goes that doesn't sit well in other forums, all the non-support chat in other words. I'm not sure that any kind of further sub-categorisation would achieve much, to be honest. The Games split happened because the nature of those threads meant they were pushing everything else out of sight, which was problematical to anyone not wanting to participate in them.

Yep, England suffered at the hands of inexperience at the back. Way too many cock-ups and the forwards just couldn't overcome them despite an epic performance. Excellent game to watch, even if the result didn't go my way.

Thought Italy played out of their socks, and Wales looked a bit tired to be honest.

Looking forward to Ireland this afternoon, maybe they will be the ones to show a spark of champions? So far no team has looked like the obvious winner it has to be said.

Microsoft should retaliate by closing down all double-glazing outfits which use the word 'windows' in their names and have websites. It's just as plain daft.

Or alternatively try searching for "using pointless questions to drive traffic to my signature advertising links" instead, which is actually about right isn't it David?

Hi Roger, good to see you on DaniWeb! Yep, quite how Microsoft rolled over without appeal on this is beyond me. The BskyB corporate pages claim there are 10.5 million Sky TV subscribers. Out of which just 17 contacted them claiming to be confused about the ownership of SkyDrive. As a percentage point there are way too many leading zeroes for that to be considered in any way relevant I would have thought.

As someone has pointed out already, quite correctly, the accompanying image should say 18 idiots as you have to include the judge. Or maybe 19 if you include Microsoft for not telling him to go take a running jump from a tall building...

So, Microsoft has finally announced that the SkyDrive cloud storage product line is to be renamed OneDrive. This isn't as a result of disappointing user take up leading to a re-branding exercise, it's much more daft than that. Six months ago a judge in a UK court ruled that Microsoft had to drop the name after 17 people contacted BskyB, which owns the Sky TV brand, thinking it also owned SkyDrive.

This despite the fact that if those 17 hard of thinking folk had looked at the website they might just have noticed the Microsoft branding. This despite the fact that if the hard of thinking judge had thought about it he might have realised that 17 people does not "a likelihood of confusion in the average consumer" make.

Seriously, 17 idiots got confused by something because it had 'sky' in the name and the courts said that Microsoft had to make a change? Who are these people, and do they think that a satellite TV outfit also arranges parachute jumps (Sky Diving) and sits in on company meetings pitching in suggestions (Blue Sky Thinking)? Maybe the judge involved in making that original decision needs to get in touch with Microsoft again, after all maybe people will think that OneDrive is a car sponsored by a boy band or be confused when they sign up that it doesn't involve flying past a cuckoo's nest.

Anyway, the deed is done. Or at least it will be …

Matt, send a copy of the release to me (davey@happygeek.com) and I will have a read through and see if it's something I can cover here at DaniWeb or in some of my other writing outlets.

Apparently it's Data Privacy Day tomorrow (January 28th) which, if you will allow me to quote the Stay Safe Online website blurb, is an "international effort to empower and educate people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint". Given the Edward Snowden NSA spying revelations that broke during the course of last year, and the fallout from the recent Adobe and Target breaches which is ongoing, I don't happen to follow the flock and agree that Data Privacy Day is a timely and important event. More quotes from Stay Safe Online simply fuel my anger on the subject: "Data Privacy Day began in the United States and Canada in January 2008 as an extension of the Data Protection Day celebration in Europe. Data Protection Day commemorates the January 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. Data Privacy Day is now a celebration for everyone, observed annually on January 28."

Celebration? Seriously, a celebration of what? A celebration of abject failure? A celebration of how the vast majority not only don't possess the slightest idea of how to truly protect their data but nor could they, if I may be frank, give a damn. Actually, it's not anger that this kind of rubbish fuels but rather despair. Despair that such days of celebration or awareness, whichever way you paint it, ends up revealing a drab and depressing portrait of a technology culture that doesn't care. Let's …

Welcome to the community

Good to have you with us

Welcome

Welcome Ainis

Good to have you on board.

The storytelling isn't as polished as Lock Stock, and the direction has a tendency to drift into being a little too arthouse at times, but you do get that 'care about the character' feeling which is the main thing. Well, about the main Asian characters at least - the other gangs involved are all rather marginal; so much so that the Yardies don't even feature in the first hour...

Worth a look though, if you can find it in a 2nd hand shop like I did for a couple of quid.