The New Computer Problems Thread

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Heh.

Although, if you can find someone with a key and disk, the licence for Vista -should- cover you for a licence of XP installed on the same machine, PROVIDED that it's instead of Vista.

So you don't necessarily have to pay for another copy of windows.

You might want to check on that, but that's my understanding of the situation.

[Ryudo Lee]

I don't have links this morning, but there are reports from Slashdot that manufacturers are refusing to honor warranties or do tech support if the OS is changed from Vista.

I read that too.

Linky

The unfortunate thing is that they have every right to do that, even though the OS has nothing to do with the problem he was sending the laptop for.

[Goatmon]

The thing I really don't get, is why companies and manufacturer's are treating Vista as though it's quality **** and that you have no reason to not want it, when that's clearly not the case.  Sure, it has awesome features that trump what XP could do, but at what cost?  You have less control over your PC than ever before, and it's nowhere nearly finished. 

This isn't a case of, say, simple opinion over how things should or shouldn't be, where both sides have good arguments and no one is completely in the right, such as with the Console Wars.  Vista is an incomplete system that was  thrown together.  It clutters things up and makes things run far slower than than would be running on XP.  It wouldn't be such a tremendous problem if they allowed people to buy ANYTHING ELSE. 

They care about is making sure everyone is using Vista, more than having satisfied customers, more than giving their customers a choice in how to do things, more than doing fair business.  I've never really had an experience that made me realize just what a dick Microsoft is, until I found myself stuck with this piece of **** OS. 

[Ryudo Lee]

There's money involved in there somewhere.  I'm thinking that they get a kickback from Microsoft whenever they sell X many copies of Vista, and they probably can't get any more copies of XP.  Most everyone I know that's in the biz can't stand selling Vista, much less telling people that that's all they get.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

It's not so much a kickback as it costs less than listed price to sell -all- your machines with Vista.

You get a kickback for not selling any other OS, and Microsoft gets to list what you're going to sell. If you're selling PCs, you're following Microsoft's rules. But they're not a monopoly, honest.

*cough* Sadly, all this is hearsay, because anyone who can confirm or deny it is under NDA...

[DarkAudit]

If it's a name-brand PC like an HP or Sony, usually somewhere in their support folder there is an option to burn a recovery disc (using my HP Pavilion as an example, it's in the PC Help & Tools as HP PC  Recovery CD-DVD Creator). This is a vendor-supplied app, not Microsoft.

If the Vista-disc-demanding app you were using was a Microsoft app, you may not be as screwed as you thought. You may have just been looking in the wrong place.

If there's no vendor support folder in All Programs, a browse through the Program Files folder may be needed to find what we're after here.

[Reese Tora]

The thing I really don't get, is why companies and manufacturer's are treating Vista as though it's quality **** and that you have no reason to not want it, when that's clearly not the case.  Sure, it has awesome features that trump what XP could do, but at what cost?  You have less control over your PC than ever before, and it's nowhere nearly finished. 

--snip--

Name them?

Anyway, if firefox isn't working properly... is IE working any better?

I'd guess that there's either a problem in the high level area of the notwork network stack, or with the specific application.  If it's the latter, a reinstallation of your browser of choice might fix things.  If it's the former, you might as well be reinstalling the whole OS.

(right now, you can get an OEM copy of XP Pro for 150-160 USD, and that includes the license.)

--edit--

fixed network... freudian slip, there.

[Goatmon]

If it's a name-brand PC like an HP or Sony, usually somewhere in their support folder there is an option to burn a recovery disc (using my HP Pavilion as an example, it's in the PC Help & Tools as HP PC  Recovery CD-DVD Creator). This is a vendor-supplied app, not Microsoft.

If the Vista-disc-demanding app you were using was a Microsoft app, you may not be as screwed as you thought. You may have just been looking in the wrong place.

If there's no vendor support folder in All Programs, a browse through the Program Files folder may be needed to find what we're after here.

I'll look for that, thanks for the tip.  And to the other question, I didn't really have specific manufacturer's in mind when I said that.  I just mean that other companies are forced to support Vista as well, whether or not they think it's shit.  Like others have said, you can act ually lose your warranty for installing something other than Vista, which would make a tiny amount of sense if Vista was not a horrible OS (But we've already come to that conclusion, haven't we? ;P)

[GabrielsThoughts]

Why is Adobe software so expensive???

It also concerns me that the price of older versions of the software cost more than the that of newer versions.

[superluser]

Why is Adobe software so expensive???

What software are you looking at?

There are alternatives that may be almost as good, as good, or even better than some Adobe products.  Some are free; some are not.

[RobbieThe1st]

Ok, I have a problem:
I am attempting to use JavaScript to grab the URL(and also the source later) of an iframe on my page. This page is local, however the page loaded in the iframe is *not*. I could probably use IE and it would work, however I will do that only as a last resort. Basically, I am attempting to *open* an XSS hole in Firefox for my locally-hosted page(and ONLY locally hosted pages).

This script is going to be running in iframe #1 of this page, with the page I am attempting to track in frame #2(called 'twwindow'). Sofar, I have this code:

Code Select Expand

<Script Language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">//<
var curloc = "http://remote-page.com";
function getLocation() {
var loc = parent.frames['twwindow'].location.href;
if(loc != curloc) {
alert("page has changed");
curloc = loc;
};
setTimeout("getLocation();",100);
};
getLocation();

</Script>
This code basically checks the URL of the frame 10 times a second(Or at least should), and upon a change, triggers an alert(), and sets the new URL to its var.

It seems to work in Firefox with other local pages(same domain), but I get permission denied for another domain. (Yes, I know its supposed to do that, but how do I allow it for a certain page/site?)

Once I get this working, the alert() will be replaced by a custom function which will check the url against a list, and if it is in the list, it will grab the source(Via innerHTML) and run through it, adding new/updated data to what is displayed in this frame.

I hope someone knows how to do this(some special Greasemonkey script perhaps?), and can tell me.

Thanks in advance.


-RobbieThe1st

[Reese Tora]

This is only a guess, mind you, but I think you would have to enable, in your browser, cross site scripting (or, atleast, enable it for the domains involved).

[RobbieThe1st]

This is only a guess, mind you, but I think you would have to enable, in your browser, cross site scripting (or, atleast, enable it for the domains involved).

Yea, I thought of that myself, but I didn't find anything in the options dealing with enabling it, and a search of google turned up just about nothing(theres quite a lot about how to stop xss though...).

If the current version of firefox doesn't support it, I guess just find me some non-IE based browser that I can use for this purpose...


Edit:

It seems that what I am trying to do is not practical to do via normal javascript, so I have decided to go with a firefox plugin, which will do the trick, once I figure out enough XUL and plugin-Javascript to get things working properly.

-RobbieThe1st

[Goatmon]

Why is Adobe software so expensive???

It also concerns me that the price of older versions of the software cost more than the that of newer versions.

I'm guessing they're forced to adjust costs to discourage illegal downloading, since piracy is the only reasonable method to get their software.

Honestly.  Their video editing software, Adobe Premiere Plus 2.0, costs $848.99.  $848.99, for video editing software.  When we're talking enough cash to buy a PS3 and  Wii (before tax) your software costs too much fucking money. 

[Reese Tora]

Why is Adobe software so expensive???

It also concerns me that the price of older versions of the software cost more than the that of newer versions.

I'm guessing they're forced to adjust costs to discourage illegal downloading, since piracy is the only reasonable method to get their software.

Honestly.  Their video editing software, Adobe Premiere Plus 2.0, costs $848.99.  $848.99, for video editing software.  When we're talking enough cash to buy a PS3 and  Wii (before tax) your software costs too much fucking money. 

The problem lies in the fact that we're individual consumers trying to buy corporate level software.  Adobe, most of thier product line, is produced to be sold to companies who will be using the software to turn a profit, and can justify the cost.  The consumers that buy it are a small group of people, and the companies that use it, while alrger, do not make up a large group for the msot part.  Most consumer copies of this software are copies that, one way or another, they did not originally pay for for personal use. (company getting new version, giving away the licenses, employees taking home an instal disk, illegal copying on other forms)

The sad fact of the matter is, companies over-charge for software and hardware meant to be sold to other companies.  It's part economy of scale, part the fact that buisnesses will pay what they're told to pay, becasue they don't know any better, especially when if comes to technology.

Adobe does make consumer versions of some of thier software that costs less, but it also has less functionality. *shrug*

[Tapewolf]

I'm guessing they're forced to adjust costs to discourage illegal downloading, since piracy is the only reasonable method to get their software.

More likely because there are people out there who will only use Photoshop.  That means they can charge what they like.

Honestly.  Their video editing software, Adobe Premiere Plus 2.0, costs $848.99.  $848.99, for video editing software.  When we're talking enough cash to buy a PS3 and  Wii (before tax) your software costs too much fucking money. 

I disagree.  To keep things in perspective, the full version of AVID is about $9000 and that's way less than I was expecting.  You'd probably need a training course to use it properly, mind.  Not too long ago you would have done this on film or videotape and for a proper postproduction suite with audio facilities you'd be talking the best part of a million dollars for all the machines you'd need... editing unit, magfilm dubbers, console and probably a 24-track Studer as well.

$900 worth of software would probably do you some pretty slick training videos, but I doubt you're going to be making a feature film on it.  A guy I know did the training videos for Thorn EMI and he had about $60000 worth of kit, just to do fairly simple things on UMATIC and SVHS etc.  I'll have to ask him what software he uses nowadays.

For some crappy home video editing, you probably aren't going to be looking at Premiere in the first place.

[Goatmon]

It depends.  I used to be into AMV making, and there are some amazing vids out there that use premiere-level software.  Though I suppose it's pearls before swine, for the most part. 

[gh0st]

hey umm i have a micro innovations webcam but i lost the driver for it does anybody know how i can get it?

[Ryudo Lee]

Well if you know the model number, you can probably Google it.

[Tezkat]

Why is Adobe software so expensive???

It also concerns me that the price of older versions of the software cost more than the that of newer versions.

I'm guessing they're forced to adjust costs to discourage illegal downloading, since piracy is the only reasonable method to get their software.

Honestly.  Their video editing software, Adobe Premiere Plus 2.0, costs $848.99.  $848.99, for video editing software.  When we're talking enough cash to buy a PS3 and  Wii (before tax) your software costs too much fucking money. 

I don't really buy the piracy argument. Most people pirating that kind of software wouldn't have paid money for it in the first place (and are probably just doing it for the lulz). Even students too cheap to fork out for the academic versions could be future customers when they graduate and still need the software for work. And a lot of the people pirating Photoshop, for instance, don't actually need Photoshop. Their requirements could be satisfied by cheaper (or free) software. The current generation of free software is really good. The GIMP is almost Photoshop, and it can easily match some older versions of Photoshop in terms of functionality. But if you're gonna pirate anyway, you may as well pirate the best, amirite?

Still the differences, between free/cheap software and the pro stuff matter enough to be worth the money, if you need it.

For a more practical example: I use an older version of Adobe Audition for my audio stuff. I got hooked on it while working for a local public radio station. You can do a whole lot of stuff with Audacity, which is free. Tapewolf uses it for most of the Radio Project mixing. I still use it for a few things, as well. In truth, you can accomplish almost anything you could in Audition with Audacity, some plug-ins, and some patience. But many things that you can do in Audition with a few mouse clicks require several minutes of fiddling in Audacity (or expensive external hardware). So I had to ask myself: Is "free" software worth wasting all those extra hours on projects? Audition isn't that cheap, but relative to what I spent putting the rest of my home studio together, it's fairly par for the course.

[jakshep3]

I need help with my psx emu because every time i play a game there is no sound no matter what plugin i choose, or what i click, it won't work. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Ah, this is a much better place to ask.

/subtle

[Brunhidden]

Once again i sneak on from work when i shouldnt- to rant

okay, so about a MONTH ago i moved into a new place, shortly thereafter the computer was assembled and we got all the wires strung across the place to connect to DSL, all we had to do was call up earthlink and get them to switch our service from our old place to our new place.

we called, a few days later they sent someone to visit our house and plug something into the wall to make sure we had a signal, which we did, and told us to call back a few days later

a few days later we call, asking about our service, which they say they have to process for a minimum of 3 days, please call back

4 days later just to give them extra time we call back, they say they will try to work it out and will call us by next week when its running. actually WE told THEM to call because they thought the best way to tell us our internet was working was to Email us, which tipped me off that something is not right.

a week and a half later we call back, signifigantly more angry, and they say they should be able to turn it on by the end of the day, or the next day... the day after we call again...

and they tell us "oh, you cant get DSL where you live, you are too far away from our office"..... we moved less then 3 miles from our old place, TOWARDS a major metropolotin area. they then suggest we use regular dialup, which they will provide 10 free hours of due to wasting a full 3 weeks of our time while we were paying for DSL.

however our computer had some coniption over a year ago, probably involving certan inbred members of my family dropping it, it no longer recognises the existance of the port the dialup cord connects to the modem.

mayhaps earthlink, or the specific office we are under, needs a tech support visit.

and this is where i slam my head against the wall and cry, the wife said tomorrow she will look for any other companies that will support DSL in the area.

Internet withdrawl symptoms are not fun, and im not sure what all of them are even

[Reese Tora]

The phone lies are going to be the same, no matter who you pay for your DSL.  If you're really past the demark, you probably won't have any better luck with any other companies.  (Your local phone company would be the first to check with, they're the ones whose equipment everything will be running on.)

That said, I can't believe that Earthlink was d***ing you around like that!  I mean, incompetent tech support, fine, stupid sales reps, no problem.  But that they didn't just enter your new number in to thier little database and instantly determine your distance from the local switch and tell you flat out they can't offer service is downright criminal!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

That said, I can't believe that Earthlink was d***ing you around like that!  I mean, incompetent tech support, fine, stupid sales reps, no problem.  But that they didn't just enter your new number in to thier little database and instantly determine your distance from the local switch and tell you flat out they can't offer service is downright criminal!

... which says to me that they're still dicking you around, and using it as an excuse to avoid doing anything.

Generally, the demarcation line form the local exchange (which is not necessarily the closest town, so you -may- have moved 3 miles -away- from the exchange) is the point at which the signal becomes low enough that you can't get more than the specified minimum of bandwidth.

It -may- still work, if you're willing to settle for less than that.

.. and you can always get a USB modem, or an internal one, instead of serial.

[Ryudo Lee]

Hey, do any of you guys know of a freeware program to list IP's on a network?  I found a few shareware programs, but I doubt anyone here would want to pay for 'em.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

nmap?

You want just a list, or a list of the active ones?

[Ryudo Lee]

I need a list and the names of the computers that are using them.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Windows specific? Are the machines registered in the DNS, or are we talking WINS resolution?

Are you happy with "most, but a few leftover odd ones that need manually checking" ?

Something like this:
nmap -sP -R --system-dns 192.168.0.0/24 | grep -v down.

Would do most of the grunt work for you... Assuming DNS is up to date.

[Ryudo Lee]

Windows specific.  I got it to tell me which ones are up and what they most likely are, but I'm not getting computer names, which is what I need.

Thus far, my command line is nmap -v -sP -oN C:\output.txt xxx.xxx.xxx.0-255

And I get a list that's mostly useful with items like:

Host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx appears to be up.
MAC Address XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (Dell)

That's useful because I can differentiate which ones are my workstations and which ones are APC control cards, routers, firewalls, etc.  But I need computer names so I can match IP's to computers.  See what I mean?