Mike Rochip

Ponch and Jon are the best CHiPs.

I'm a big Nellie McKay fan (which apparently means I'm part of a "cult following") but anyway I was quite surprised to learn that Columbia aka Sony BMG has dropped her and cancelled the release of her new album as well as an upcoming DVD because: "McKay, 21, wanted Pretty Little Head to include 23 songs, lasting 65 minutes, while Sony's Columbia Records wanted to release 16 songs, lasting 48 minutes." quote from contactmusic.com I have a theory. Sony is trying to prove that the only thing stupider in this or any universe (real or imagined) than the new PSP commercials is Sony itself. In my opinion, they are trying too hard. After First 4 Internet Rootkit Disaster #1, Spyware Installing and Malware Gateway Enabling Fix for First 4 Internet Rootkit Disaster #2, MediaMax DRM Disaster #3, and It's Like Cheese You Can Listen To Outside PSP Ad Disaster #4, I was already convinced. Label Drops Artist After Dispute CNN.com EDIT: Forgot about Fake Graffiti Disaster #5

Ahem... I really appreciated your compliment until many hours later when it dawned on me the year WAS ALL OF ABOUT 4 HOURS LONG! Good one!

OK I followed the link you gave me and it appears you sent me to some sort of Computer Cyborg soft porn site and I quote: It was IBM that decided on the prefix of "hexa" rather than the proper Latin prefix of "sexa" And then: An older term was the pure Latin "sexidecimal", but that was changed because some people thought it too risqu? And this: However, the word "sexagesimal" (base 60) retains the prefix. The earlier Bendix documentation used the term "sexadecimal". Well it turns out my computer is actually ambihexadecisesexagesimaltarious and can go either way so there should no problem. For some reason I feel like I have to mention I'm not ambihexadecisesexagesimaltarious...

I'm not as knowledgable as other members such as rridgely, Andavari, Tarun etc. so my answers are from my personal experience. I wouldn't say that Housecall is better than Ad-Aware. I've noticed many people have different results than other other people using the same products. On my PC Ad-Aware hardly ever found anything other than cookies, which CC removes when you run it. MS AntiSpy never seemed to find anything on my PC and locks up quite a bit. Other people thank it's the best one to use and I do use its Real Time Protection feature. Some people have a favorite scanner and don't use any others. I use quite a few different ones and run one every couple days so that they overlap. It's pretty much a matter of personal preference of how they work on your PC and which features you like best. One thing is critical to either method which is to check for updates frequently. Malware authors are always trying to outsmart the AV scanners and find new ways to get into your PC. I would try to run Housecall before doing anything with Ad-Aware to see if it works. The advice to remove Ad-Aware is from Trendmicro's web site. It says Ad-Aware has a feature that prevents Housecall from updating files it needs to run when using Firefox. I think IE works with or without Ad-Aware. The difference between using IE verses Firefox is that IE can use ActiveX or Java whereas Firefox only works with Java. If you use the ActiveX version you may have to give Housecall permission to install the ActiveX control and with Java you may have to update to the newest version. Housecall will let you know either way. This link is to Housecall 6.0 which is an older version for IE only that is quick and easy to use. This link is for Housecall 6.5 which is the newest version. It allows you to choose either IE or Firefox. It's a little more complicated (more features and scanning options) and it takes quite a bit longer but seems more comprehensive than 6.0. If you're pretty consistent with how often you scan and update, after a little while the scanners won't find malware very often which of course a good thing! Good Luck, Happy New Year, and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!

About a half hour ago my monitor's display suddenly became much clearer with much better detail and sharpness then it ever had before. Then I remembered that my computer has been acting kind of strange and that it started acting wierd right around Halloween. So I started wondering if maybe a witch put some kind of curse or hex on my PC. But I used Spell Checker and ruled that out. Then I found out exactly what happened. It's my monitor's New Year resolution.

That's true but I thought it may be good for people who have banished IE from their computers like englishmen has. I usually rotate the AVs I use so it's good as way to doublecheck the others. Except for MSAS which freezes and causes millions of page faults. This is what Housecall 6.5 found: KEYL_SE.67682, ADW_SE.70084, and TROJ_SE.69649. I'm not fully convinced that they are malware because I couldn't find much info on them. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Trendmicro Housecall 6.5 works with Firefox and Dr. Orca. However, you have to uninstall Ad-Aware SE because it is incompatable with Housecall 6.5. Personally, I like Housecall 6.5 because it catches stuff other scanners (SpyBot, MS Antispy, Ewido Online Scan, etc) do not detect on my PC. It's not nearly as fast as the IE version but seems like it has definitions others don't. The stuff it flagged I Googled and most of the info from the Web was in languages other than English. Ironically, a lot of the websites were in French . You have to use the Trendmicro EU site here.. And yes, I realize that I seem to be the only person on the planet who uses Dr. Orca.

You may have heard that Santa's delivery route ends in California. In order to relax a bit the riendeer throw themselves a little party in the Sierra Nevada Mountains every year (the snowy mountain landscape reminds them of their native Lapland). However, Rudolph always arrives later in the evening because he flies Santa back to the North Pole first. It has to be Rudolph because his glowing nose is required by the FAA's "Things That Can't Fly but Fly Around Anyway Must Have at Least One Red Light and/or Glowing Red Animal Nose On Them Preferrably in the Front" rule. Donner is always in charge of setting up the party and he lets the Ranger at the bottom of the mountain know exactly where the party is so Rudolph can check with him and get directions to the party when he gets back from taking Santa home. Apparently Santa doesn't join in any of the reindeer games. One year everything seemed to be going well as usual. Rudolph dropped off Santa at the North Pole. Then he stopped at the Ranger Station and got directions to the party. The Ranger even drew him a map to make it easy for Rudolph to find the party. It was easy to follow because it was actual size like kobrakommander's map of Cuba. Strangely, when he got to the place where the party should be there were no reindeer. But there were people. Not your average group of people though. Rudolph was getting a little bit uneasy as he looked them over. These people were real skinny, unshaven, with tattered clothes, and they looked really stressed out. But the part that was starting to scare Rudolph was their expressions. A few people were actually drooling and others were kind of licking their lips and staring very, very intently at Rudolph almost like they had never seen a reindeer before. And it got worse. More drooling, and now they all seemed to be staring and licking their lips and kind of quietly trying to get closer to Rudolph. Then Rudolph thought he heard a growling sound. Not like a wild animal would growl, but maybe more like when someone's stomach growls. Then he started hearing whispering like these people were coming up with some sort of secret, sneaky, surprise plan or something and he even thought he heard the clink of a carving knife. Finally, trying to be polite. Rudolph spoke up. "I'm sorry, but I guess there's been some sort of mistake. The Ranger gave me these directions to a party, but this is not the right one." One of the drooly, lip licking stomach growlers then replied: "Oh really? Maybe we can help. What is the name of the party you are looking for?" Rudolph was thinking to himself that drooly, lip licking, carving knife brandishing, emaciated, haggard stomach growlers, who seemed to be inching closer and closer to him might not be really all that sincere with their offer to help. Rudolph finally decided it probably couldn't hurt to ask and besides, they just might know where the party was. So he replied: "I'm looking for the Donner Party." UPDATE: Santa had a close call as well. Rudolph apparently didn't notice that when he dropped off Santa at the North Pole Santa fell right through the ice. (Global Warming + Overweight (but Jolly) Guy = Disaster). Luckily, a group of penguins that were in the middle of their 70 mile trek to have sex (with other penguins, NOT Santa) happened by and pulled him to safety.

Real nice. You think the French will grow on us? Like a mole or a fungus perhaps? I know you're trying to be nice but apparently your subconcious dislike of France is still showing. I bet you think the Statue of Liberty turned green with envy seeing how much better the USA is compared to France! A health bronze brown?! I suppose pasty white French people aren't healthy. I'm kind of pasty white and I'm healthy! Physically. Besides, the Statue of Liberty is made of copper. So it's only a matter of time before some crackpot steals it and tries to sell it for scrap metal. Impossible you say? Hardly. Just ask Baltimore, Maryland. There is only one good reason to hate the French and that's because they tricked us into thinking Puegots were cars and we foolishly bought some of them.

Ouch! Well I enjoy a lot of your contributions. You have a good sense of humor and just enough paranoia to make things interesting. Of course if the NSA had a field office inside of my computer and everything I typed, looked at, said, and thought about was downloaded in real-time to George Bush's iPod, I'd be paranoid, too. Of course you don't have to worry unless he figures out how to actually work his iPod, which most experts feel is pretty much statistically impossible.

I have to admit Sony's put out a lot of high quality and innovative products over the years. But there are some that flopped miserably. Like a few years ago they came out with a slow vegetable and stew cooker that was so small and lightweight you could clip it to your belt and use it while walking, running, jogging, etc. I think it was called The Sony Wokman.

Consider the source, they probably think a rootkit is like a rock you can put in a bathtub that won't float unless you drain all the water out. I'm hoping you've seen their commercials... Of course there's a lot of stuff that only seems to be broadcast to my TV and no one else's.

Yeah but now he made it a thumbnail and it looks like I think Cuba is like 2 in. by 4 in. Then again it also looks like he has no idea what "bigger" means.

I agree with englishmen, we should be respectful. Besides, the Statue of Liberty has to be one of the coolest gifts ever. And the Revolutionary War wasn't working out real well for the US until France lent us a hand. That being said I did find this on the CNN website regarding the bizarro Winter weather attacking Europe lately: "In northern France hundreds of motorists were forced to spend Wednesday night in community centers and hotels near Nancy as road crews battled to clear snow from the roads." So in fact at least some of them are indeed Nancy boys .

I agree this is a great forum. If you want to make it more lively just bring up "prefetching" and explain that CCleaner shouldn't clean it because it might cause the Earth to wobble off its axis and plunge willy-nilly into the Sun, or worse !

I've never seen a life size map before . However it makes perfect sense. You just put a giant piece of paper over a country and trace it, ensuring 100% accuracy!

Sony is using fake graffiti as advertising. However this does explain one thing: After inhaling (a lot of) spray paint all day they came up with the idea for their new commercials. Apparently they are meant to be funny and clever. They kind of are but only until the the paint fumes wear off.

Active X is software a site downloads onto your PC for both good and evil reasons. A good example is many online virus scanners use Active X controls. Internet Explorer allows Active X to be downloaded onto your PC without your knowledge unless you specify very restrictive security settings. Firefox does not support Active X which is one of the main reasons it's considered to be much more secure than IE. This is also the reason many scanners don't work with Firefox. One of the things that HiJackThis is very useful for is listing Active X installations on your PC that you may not know are there. They are often found in the Downloaded Programs Files Folder. Often they have names that are confusing or intentionally misleading. This is an example of one that is OK: O16 - DPF: {17492023-C23A-453E-A040-C7C580BBF700} (Windows Genuine Advantage) - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=36467&clcid=0x409 It is the MS Verification Utility (or something like that). One of the big pains about Active X is that it can be very hard to remove from a PC.

Incredible. DisplayPort is apparently also going to be a component of "Trusted Computing" and will be internally used in some systems so you won't have a choice as to whether you want to "participate" or not. Extremetech

If you have 2 hard drives moving the pagefile to the 2nd hard drive will reduce the time the computer needs to read and write to it. This can be helpfull on ram challenged computers such as mine .

Unfortunatetly this post won't be helpful but... I think what you want to do IS possible because I somehow did it accidentally on my PC. My computer always booted to one account, no password needed, but I could go to the start menu and Log Off the current user, click Switch User and Log In to another account that appeared to be almost identical to the first one. I eliminated the second account once I found it. If I can figure out how I did it I will post again. What was strange to me is that the second account never appeared in the Users section of the Control Panel. I had started a thread some time ago asking if anyone else had encountered this but got no replies.

Elimination of free software appears to be one of the major goals of the misnamed "Trusted Computing" initiative discussed in other threads in this forum. Although not eliminating free software directly, it would accomplish this by making it impossible to use free apps in conjunction with paid ones, for instance OpenOffice would be prevented from working with any of MS's applications. I don't know which is worse, stupidity or greed...

No problem I doubt that the EU would allow France to do it anyway. I was looking for info on the EU and found an article entitled: More Sucking Sounds at Sony I can't stop laughing long enough to read the article.

Do I detect some Frenchophobic hostility in your reply? How do you know I don't live in France? Maybe I'm a Frenchman with a Mac using Internet Explorer with Norton AntiVirus that never defragments any of my hard drives! Would you like FREEDOM fries with that?!