EugenyG

Why would one want a flexible keyboard anyways? Is it THAT hard to control your emotions and not bang on it? :-/

Ok, 0000 did the trick. It also worked substituting other IPs (like have rs.com go to yahoo). Isn't this kinda dangerous? Seems like a phishing heaven. Since the hosts file isn't protected or anything, just about any trojan could, say, redirect your credit card website to a fake identical-looking site at a scammer's adress, and you'd give away your CC number (unless you suspect a scam it would be VERY hard to detect, since your browser won't give any symptoms of redirection typical of regular phishing sites).

Both, and I tried setting runescape.com, http://www.runescape.com, and *.runescape.com, all to no avail.

Hmm, the hosts trick didn't work for me? I wanted to try it out, so I put in "127.0.0.1 runescape.com" line (no quotes) in my hosts file, restarted (checked it's still there), but Runescape still works fine. I also had another line there, 127.0.0.1 localhost, I tried either removing or keeping it (while having the RS line) and nothing changed, runescape.com still works fine. I'm connected through a router. I also tried putting 192.168.1.101 (internal IP) instead of 127..., and still to no avail. Windows XP SP2. Anyone knows why?

Hmm.. What if you had the following system: Hotkey activates a special program which opens a file full of random patterns of characters and randomly copies and pastes the characters that make up the password into your password field. The value for the letters to pick is stored in the program in encrypted form (the encrypted password is a one-time (until a password change) copy by means of a diskette from a sister program located on a different computer which has no connection to the internet and is presumably keylogger-free. For increased security, it can cut and paste the characters in random order.

In RS: The first person who reached 99 smithing made billions The tenth person who reached 99 smithing made millions The 1000'th person who reached 99 smithing made JACK SQUAT. In RL: Before Win 95, the market was fairly evenly divided between PC and Apple. At the time only a limited number of people used computers and tehre wasn't nearly as much software, and almost none of the current level of interdependability. Windows was the FIRST to realease a glitchy, buggy, flawed, insecure, but BLOODY SIMPLE OS to use for the masses. And so they won the consumers, and naturally businesses started to adapt all their products to them. And then the ball started ralling. Businesses kept making programs for Windows only, consumers chose Windows, and as greater interdependability and compatibility issues arised (especially with expansion of Internet), a choice of a SINGLE OS became critical. That OS became Windows. The market level passed the Point of No Return when it comes to platform of choice, and Microsoft became a standard. After that, nothing really matters. MS controls the market, and as far as I can envision into the future, this is the way it will stay REGARDLESS of who makes what and how.

doublepost, sry

Something you guys don't realize. Yes, Windows is buggy. Yes, it glithes. Yes, it has security holes larger than the holes in my pants after 2 weeks of mountainclimbing. Yes, it has unwieldy code and ultraproprietary attitude to any outside development. But there is one single thing that overrides all that and more when it comes to sales. Windows has a good feature: ANY MORON CAN USE IT. It doesn't matter how innovative, flexible, sophisticated or secure are alternatives. Until someone develops an os that is AS DUMBFOUNDLY EASY to install and use as Windows, and is as DUMBFOUNDLY AUTOMATED FOR THE TASKS 90% OF USERS (READ NON-EXPERTS) use them for, Windows will remain a monopoly (with all mentioned consequences). That's also the reason why people like AOL so much. The soccer moms and sunday-newspaper-dads value smilie faces and nice sound effects more than compatibility, features, or (until recently) security (which somewhat changed only because of the media attention of stolen identities and such, and naturally only then got MS off their [wagon] to at least start fixing their holes).

The keyboard will also feature ANIMATED KEYS!!! Now how cool is THAT!

In the release version of Windows Vista, sometimes in 2006, a new versionof IE will be released -- 7.0 I don't know any details about it, but maybe some of you do. Anyone knows what new featuers it will have? At least according to Microsoft IE7 will focus on security, so it's be interesting to know if it will be able to sort out it's current problems and security-wise match FF or other browsers.

Scientifically, the correct form of pluralizing "virus" is "virii". At least as far as biological virii go. Why, when referring to computer virii, we always call them viruses? The argument that computer terms don't follow rules does not hold. For example, we still call computer mice mice, not mouses. Anyone knows why?

To you and me the keyboard is just cool, but for people who work with a f...ton of different encodings, crypts of language sets (translators, researchers, cryptologists, some programmers) and who can't memorize 2 zillion key sets this thing would really be invaluable. Although you'd need the other-end software makers to make a visual keyboard layout for their software/language pack/etc, since even if the user of the keyboard can do it, it would take too long to design each character set. I guess the keyboard could import symbols from unicode or other designed character sets (at the very worst the user will just have to design their placement on the keyboard)

For an over-year-old computer yours is top of the line. I strongly recommend getting a better card then 9600XT since it would just be a waste; your CPU and RAM can easily handle a better card. Get at least a Radeon X700Pro or Nvidia6600GT. They are only around $100 more expensive then the card you're buying, and pretty much twice (or more) as fast.

I am using Windows XP SP2 (all updates), Norton Firewall and Antivirus (always on and up to date). I have a cable internet connected through a cable modem and then router. Recently my firewall began blocking and reporting BO activity. It both comes from external IP's but also from IP 0.0.0.0 (don't know whether it's just a masked or actually means my own comptuer generates it). These scans come on a regular basis several times a day. I did not get such alerts at all before the last week or so, and I have not changed any hardware or software that has to do with my internet connection, IP visibility or firewall, so I'm surprised. Perhaps someone is deliberately targeting my IP (for reasons unknown). The firewall seems to be blocking the scans (it obviously blocks everything it detects), but it may not be able to detect everything. I did a full system scan with Norton Antivirus, then with latest AdAware and SB:SaD, and they all came clean. I also made a HJT log. I used an analyzer and it came clean too, here it is anyways: I'm not sure what else I can do to prevent these BO scans (or maybe more then scans, I'm not sure how to find out). I'd appreciate any advice or suggestions concerning the matter.

To, at least on the Tech Forum, remove the ultra long (CAUTION: executable file) automatic replacements of exe's. Change exe to e3e if you want, I can understand the reasons, but PLEASE remove the long caution words AFTER it. It makes HJT logs and other datalogs extremely difficult to read. IE: Instead of changing file.exe to file.e3e (CAUTION: executable file) Change file.exe to JUST file.e3e. This would both remove the security risks and allow comprehendable understanding of logfiles without causing permanent brain damage to those who try to read them. I posted this as a topic instead of a PM, since I also would like to know if the rest of the community supports the proposal. Once an admin has read it though it's up to them whether to act or it or not.

I absolutely hate the "moral police" around here who comment on a "bad game" because the person didn't talk to his mother about it, and other similar comments telling people how they should behave. Either help the person or stay quiet. Anyways... Install the game on a different system, then log all new files that have been installed (not only into game dir, but also Windows dir). Then boot your computer outside of Windows (DoS or Linux dis, there are bootable CD's with Knoppix for example) and copy file for file all installed files. You'll still have a prob with registry though (not sure how you can edit registry outside of being logged in Windows, and non-admins can't do it then). Game may or may not work.

Good always prevails over evil -- therefore, whoever prevailed, automatically becomes the Good one.

Wow this was nice. They should make a RL movie about RS. :) What's the name of the soundtrack from the VERY beginning of the first movie?

Besides, the graphics card on that system is absolutely horrible -- and I mean that. It's much worse than even my 3-year-old budget graphics card. You will NOT be able to play any reasonably new game on it.

When the byte was defined as a basic unit of information, it was decided to have 8-bit. Back at the time all software was 1-byte based, so it was referred to as 8-bit. Since then we have moved to 16-bit, 32-bit, and now moving on to 64-bit with the introduction of Athlon 64's, Itaniums, and now the new Windows x64. However, all that happens is increasing the number of bytes per unit of information. 16-bit has 2 bytes, 32-bit has 4 bytes, and 64-bit has 8 bytes. Question: Seeing as a "byte" is not the basic building block anymore (up to 8 are required nowadays), why not just get rid of the concept of "byte" (just keeping data at the bit level), or define byte to be the basic block for a system (thus a byte on a 32-bit system would have, well, 32-bit, etc.) Just because a byte was designed in order to be a complete, independent piece of data, but it isn't anymore, so it's whole purpose is rendered obsolete.

Realms of Arkania -- Blade of Destiny

Don't tell me you LOWERED it now...

OK, so Knoppix is the noob version of Linux, so I decided to try it out since I never used Linux before. I have a 250GB SATA drive and have partitioned it the following way: 200GB Main NTFS partition with Windows XP and all my data. 30GB RAW partition on which I want to install Linux 4.25GB FAT32 partition intended for Linux swapfile (may buy more RAM in the future so what the heck). The 30GB partition can't be formatted in FAT32 because it's too big, and formatting it in NTFS would make Linux not work on it. As well, I have already burned an ISO of Knoppix on a CD. It booted fine (loaded the GUI and seemed to work properly), but when I tried to install it on a hard drive (ran knx-hdinstall), it said my Hard Drive has no suitable partitions. I understand it not liking NTFS or RAW, but I don't see why it didn't detect my FAT32 partition. I need detailed (step by step) help on installing Knoppix on a separate partition(s) of my hard drive. I don't intend Knoppix to be my main OS. I do NOT want to have to change anything on or to my main partition (including it's size, OS, filesystem or any data). I do have a free ~35GB though, not part of the main partition, which I can use to create those 2 Linux partitions, but I need to know how to format them in the nessecary filesystems, and any other info I should know. I read several guides on installing Knoppix on an HDD, but none answered these questions.

My CD-ROM is quite noisy, sometimes it causes lag in games, and generally it's annoying to have to get the game CD into the CD rom every time even though it's already installed on my system. Is it possible to create an image of a CD on a hard disk as to not have to play a game from the CD? Every time it would ask for a CD, it would be redirected to the CD image on the disk. I only need it for disks I have legitimately purchased and own; I'm not going to use it for piracy, so I don't want any CD cracks or illegal circumventions. I'm asking whether there is a legitimate way to do so. I also don't care whether the CD image is copyable across hard drives, just as long as it works for the same drive as I created the image from. I'm also NOT looking for simple archived .ISO files; I need to create an image that can actually be ran from instead of a CD without unpacking or reburning.

On the more intensive scenes in HL2 (like the Water Hazard where you race at high speed through a huge and very detailed terrain, as well as a flying helicopter and lots of other characters shooting), at1024 8x AA 6x AS it occasionally drops to 25 FPS, so at that point the framerate drop is noticable, but still playable. In most outdoor scenes in HL2 at these settings I get 35-40 FPS (very minor if any noticability in gameplay), and indoors it's pretty much always 50+. As well, at 1024x768, with an unaided eye during gameplay I failed to see any difference between 6AA 8AS, and 8AA 16AS. After taking 2 screenshots and looking at them at photoshop at 300% zoom, yes I see a difference, but not in the game, so I don't care. PS. I'm not going to overclock while the parts are on warranty. :wink: