Posts by Andrew Scott

25 years of PHP: The personal web tools that ended up everywhere

PHP

Personal Home Page using the extension phtml for web documents. Used a database called msql not mysql originally, I believe from new Zealand. Got originally because someone wanted to know how often their pages were viewed. Think i used with the ncsa web server, which is what "A Patchy" server was developed from. Back in the '90s. Continued to use when it became php because it was very easy to do simple things for simple dynamic web pages, embed the code in the html. Made modifying early html very simple, didn't have to abandon the first draft completely. Gradual improvements, added library's, extremely flexible to add features. Haven't used since version 4, 5 was just coming out. Don't do websites anymore. Used a text editor at the time.

We lose money on repairs, sobs penniless Apple, even though we charge y'all a fortune

apple warranty

most warrants are never used, bet apple didn't include the money taken in for warranty sales as offsetting their huge losses.

Symantec ends cheap Norton offer to NRA members

Guns

Not surprising that nra members would choose software from a company founded by a nut that loved guns and is a person of interest in a murder in Belize. Being arrested while carrying an unlicensed gun or any gun while intoxicated, just the kind of person who would attract gun nuts.

Comcast accused of siccing lawyers on net neutrality foe

Comcast customer best interest not Comcast's best interest

Comcast always seems to find a way to obey the law and rules while stretching the spirit beyond recognition. They should be treated as a utility as they have no regional competition.

Meet Hyper.is – the terminal written in HTML, JS and CSS

Old stuff. IBM had a working 3370 terminal emulator for browsers years ago. Around 2000 I think.

Walmart sues Visa for being too lax with protecting chip cards

Recently tried to purchase a book at Barnes and noble. Card reader uses chip, but buzzed and denied my purchase. Turns out reader only accepts 6 digit pins. Mine is 7 digits. Works at other stores. No wonder book stores are going out of business.

Wow, what took you so long? Comcast bends net neutrality rules

Re: Loophole Schmoophole

Aol didn't control the wire to your house, that was the telephone company. You could always switch to a different internet provider. For many people, Comcast is the only way to connect to the internet other than going back to POTS.

I use Comcast. Only way i can get high speed internet. I'm not interested in any Comcast only content. All the content I'm interested in comes from sources outside of Comcast. They only deliver the content I'm looking for.

Comcast repeatedly crams modem upgrade demands into browsers

comcast

They sent me a modem even though I told them i didn't want one. Now they're charging me for a modem i didn't request.

in the past, before they switched to encrypted tv only, they were required to distribute both HD and standard definition broadcast signals if they were offered by the broadcast tv station, so i could get hd channels for the standard networks (abc, pbs, cbs, nbc, fox, cw) . At the time they would periodically move the hd channels around, so every few weeks I was forced to have the tv scan for channels to find the HD broadcast. PITA. Now that they are encrypting everything, they don't have to offer the HD broadcast unless you pay extra. I am out of range of broadcast tv. so they are the monopoly I'm stuck with.

In addition, they keep trying to get me to buy additional services, but they won't tell me the actual cost. They'll only tell me the "special" 12 month introductory price, and I'm not going to buy it if they won't tell me the price! Really don't like Comcast, and I'd get rid of them in a second if there were any choices at all.

BTW, cable modem/router doesn't care what os you are using. Windows 10 irrelevant. The only real reason to upgrade is that the new modems are ipv6 ready, which an older modem may not be.

As far as speed goes, current system is plenty fast enough. Shared media, and many apparent speed issues are often actually other problems. Comcast should spend more time fixing it's really bad tv signal not to mention it's on demand system. During peak use, which for me is when the local University's are in session, on-demand frequently hangs or gives a try again later message, and regular channels are interrupted with broken images or dropped sound or sometimes blank screens for minutes at a time. Also had the cable box hang until unplugged and restarted. Takes forever to get the channel guide back..PITA.

Most consumer unfriendly company I've ever dealt with, and not very competently run. Fortunately i can get Netflix.

MS update ate my CPU cycles

Fix that works permanently

On every machine where I've encountered svchost.exe errors I have been able to permanently fix the problem by simply disabling hyperthreading and/or smp. No registering dll's or deleting directories. Biggest problem is machines where smp can't be disabled in bios, though removing the second processor will work.

This does impact performance obviously, but updates proceed normally and the error does not occur again. I have fixed 5 machines to date, and have never had to revisit them, going back about 6 months.

I understand that MS has released a fix for this, but in order for it to be installed via the normal update procedure you may find that this fix still helps, as you only need to visit bios before the update, and then after, assuming the fix works, re-enable hyperthreading/smp. Otherwise you'd need to install the patch manually.

I haven't had an opportunity to test the patch yet, but will install it later today, then wait for normal updates and see what happens!