Monroe

OK ... I guess I never quite understood the problem with USB 3.0 not working with XP. So then my question about the above USB 3.0 driver listed for the ThinkPad W510, W701, W701ds computers ... having one of those Thinkpads with XP installed ... there would still be no USB 3.0 working in one of those computers with XP installed ? ... only USB 2.0 ? It lists both XP 32-bit and XP 64-bit ... I have little knowledge of XP 64-bit but I'm guessing that USB 3.0 also does not work in XP x64 ... only USB 2.0 ? Supported operating systems: - Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit - Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit - Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 - Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 ...

Over the last two years or so ... I have occasionally searched around for news that USB 3.0 may finally work on an XP computer. I don't "catch" all the news and am just asking to be brought up to date if anything has changed with USB 3.0 and XP. I have a Thinkpad T41 and T42 and while searching around today ... I came across: USB 3.0 Driver for Windows 7, Vista and XP - ThinkPad W510, W701, W701ds http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds001501 README for USB3.0 Driver txt 6.970703125 KB Windows 7 (32-bit) Windows 7 (64-bit) Windows Vista (32-Bit) Windows Vista (64-Bit) Windows XP (32-bit) 1.0.19.0 Tuesday, June 02, 2015 ------------------------------------- USB3.0 Driver exe 5840.4921875 KB Windows 7 (32-bit) Windows 7 (64-bit) Windows Vista (32-Bit) Windows Vista (64-Bit) Windows XP (32-bit) So I guess my question is ... there are some drivers for USB 3 to work on XP ? Does anyone know more about XP and USB 3.0 drivers and could I possibly get USB 3.0 to work on my T42 ? ... are there any modified drivers anywhere or a project someone is working on? Thanks ...

I probably wouldn't have bought it myself ... it was a super buy going for $700 but really worth millions. A discovery like the gold coins and baseball cards that I posted about earlier. Anybody in this forum could have had a shot at this ... a person that knows cars. $700 Craigslist car find worth millions http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2016/05/29/700-craigslist-car-find-worth-millions/?intcmp=hpbt4 By Jerry Garrett Published May 29, 2016 Have you ever looked at a Craigslist car ad and thought, “I wonder if I should take a chance?” Here’s one that was posted on Craigslist in the Tampa Bay area of Florida about five years ago: ”SERIAL # X53L on documented 1953 pre-production Corvette Frame. We believe this to be a 1953 Pontiac prototype that was to assume the name Longoria? Info received todate indicates that ZAGATO designed and PINNAFARINA constructed the body for GM in late 52.” The typos and misspelling might have been one clue that the person who wrote the ad did not know much about the car being offered. “Might anyone have knowledge of some former FISHER BODY executive that could assist in further identifying this automobile?” the ad concluded. This basket case could have been yours for perhaps $700. To no one’s surprise, it didn’t sell. Here’s what that wreck actually was: arguably, the most sought-after Corvette ever built. Today it is very likely worth several million dollars. It is the storied No. 1 Cunningham Corvette. Instead of a “documented 1953 pre-production Corvette Frame” this car is a 1960 model that was among three turned into racecars by the sportsman Briggs Cunningham. He raced them at the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year; the cars, marked “1”, “2” and “3”, took turns leading the race and delighting fans with their thunderous V-8 engines. Numbers 1 and 2 did not finish, but number 3 did, winning its class and a permanent place in Corvette lore. It was expected the cars would be preserved in a museum collection after the race, but Cunningham turned them back into street-legal cars and they were sold through a Chevy dealer. After that, the cars disappeared for a number of years. Number 3 was found first, and restored by the late Chip Miller and his son Lance. Number 2 turned up in an Irwindale, Cali., junkyard a few years ago; it was eventually acquired and restored by Bruce Meyer, a collector and Petersen Automotive Museum board member. But Number 1 proved elusive until a few years ago, when enthusiasts looking for it discovered the purple beast in the Craigslist ad. A years-long tug of war over ownership ensued. To make a very long, tortuous story short: The Corvette—now positively identified as the Number 1 Cunningham Corvette—is owned by Gino Burelli, an Indiana car dealer and collector. Under terms of a 2015 legal agreement, Burelli will commission noted Corvette restorer Kevin Mackay of Valley Stream, N.Y., to bring the car back to its original glory. Mackay earned acclaim for his restoration of Miller’s Number 3 Corvette. The restoration, estimates attorney Bryan Shook, a vintage car legal specialist who helped Mackay through the legal dealings, could take a year and cost more than $500,000. (As of this writing, the car is in Indiana, in Burelli’s possession, awaiting a final payment agreed upon in the legal settlement, Shook said.) Shook said he expects Burelli will sell the car. “He’s shopping it,” Shook said. And a price of $3 million to $7 million – “possibly more” – is not unlikely, Shook added. The exact story of where the first Cunningham Corvette was for the half-century it was missing may never be fully known. But it appears that at some point it was intended for use as a drag racer. Its blue-on-white racing livery was replaced by gaudy purple paint, poorly applied. And key components, including the original engine, disappeared. But Mackay said he has molds and rare spare parts still available from his restoration of Miller’s Corvette to finish the job to a very high standard. When it goes up for sale sometime in the next year or two, don’t expect to see it on Craigslist. You missed your chance. ...

Well the answer could be quite simple really ... no one else had one. Not much good if you have the only iPhone in 1670 ! Also, often things are "forgotten" until rediscovered again in the future. Look at Antonio Vivaldi's wonderful music ... after he died in 1741, his music was mostly forgotten until 1926 and the 1950's. It's always been very hard to understand how something like that could happen ... so all through the 1800s ... I guess no one heard any of Vivaldi's music. If it had been played anywhere ... you would think some interest would have surfaced. http://blog.adw.org/2016/05/some-things-you-may-not-know-about-vivaldi/ Some Things You May Not Know About Vivaldi Msgr. Charles Pope • May 3, 2016 "5. Vivaldi’s works all but disappeared after his death in 1741 and were not heard regularly or known widely again until the 1950s! In this sense he was an “opaque luminary.” (This expression refers to a person who shines brightly in his own time but is largely forgotten after death.) From his death until 1950, the name Antonio Vivaldi was largely unknown. 6. Vivaldi’s works began to come back to light beginning in 1926. It was at this time that the Salesian Fathers, wishing to sell a large number of old volumes in their archive, invited Dr. Alberto Gentili, professor of music history at the National Library of Turin, to assess their value. Many of the 97 volumes in the archive contained Vivaldi manuscripts. And thus Vivaldi music reappeared on the landscape. Although the Second World War slowed the process of compiling and collecting the full library of Vivaldi music from other sources, the hunt was on! In 1951, concertgoers in England were among the first to hear this newly rediscovered baroque master. Since then, Vivaldi has assumed his place alongside Bach and Handel, and is considered by most to be their equal. With them, he paved the way to Mozart." There is more interesting reading at the link. ...

All these new ideas of today seem to be "old history" ... an iPhone in a painting from 1670 ... pictures at the link. Ye Olde iPhone spotted in 346-year-old painting by Apple CEO Tim Cook http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/iphone-painting-1670-apple-ceo-tim-cook Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, but it was actually invented in 1670. Maybe. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, says he saw an iPhone in a 346-year-old painting, contradicting everything we thought we knew about the history of the smartphone. Cook’s comments came during an interview at Startup Fest Europe in Amsterdam. The CEO was describing a visit to the Rijksmuseum the night before, where he was accompanied by Neelie Kroes, the European Commission for Digital Agenda. During the interview, Kroes asked Tim where the iPhone was actually invented, to which Tim Cook replied: “You know, I thought I knew until last night. Last night, Neelie took me over to look at some Rembrandt, and in one of the paintings I was so shocked. There was an iPhone in one of the paintings.” ... pictures at the link.

Thanks for the language clarification ... the more I looked at the web page it started looking more like something from a Scandinavian or Nordic country ... not that I know any of the languages fluently. ...

For many years I have used a Custom Blocking List with SpywareBlaster ...that is in addition to the list updates provided by SpywareBlaster. I have used the list made by DAK for over ten years but sadly in 2007 DAK, the creator of this list passed away. Dak's Customblocking for SpywareBlaster....RIP http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18195561-Dak-s-Customblocking-for-SpywareBlaster-RIP There will be no more SpywareBlaster Custom Blocking List updates. After a year-long battle with a terminal illness dak passed away on April 4, 2007. I continued using the last list that he worked on and posted which I think was October 28, 2006. Over the years ... I have looked many times on Google to see if someone had created a newer updated "Custom Blocking List" ... DAK had 355 items in his list and I have wondered how good is his list almost ten years later. So today I searched around and found a new Custom Blocking List from this past April with 9,239 items on the list ... it is dated April 03, 2016. Google search: spywareblaster custom blocking list https://www.google.com/search?q=spywareblaster+custom+blocking+list&sa=G&complete=0&hl=en&gbv=2&sei=UldAV4esC4T_-AH4j7HIDQ&gws_rd=ssl and at the very top or listed first on the page was this new list from April ... SpywareBlaster customblocking list - Nimimerkin Ad-Awaren Custom Blocking listan päivittäminen http://pattaya1.mbnet.fi/swb3.htm This is the actual list: http://pattaya1.mbnet.fi/customblocking.txt Now the web page is not in English ... it could be Polish or one of the European countries in the area ... maybe Croatian ... I may be close but also maybe completely wrong ... maybe Swedish or Finnish. Is anyone familiar with this Custom Blocking List ... I also post this for anyone that didn't know about also using a Custom Blocking List with SpywareBlaster. I am sure it is an added benefit to the program. I have removed the older DAK list and am using this newer list at present. If someone can read over the web page and give their thoughts on this newer list. Since DAK's list was 355 items and this newer list is over 9,000 items ... I have not noticed any slowdown or any drawbacks so far. Of course there are also warnings to "be careful" about using a Custom Blocking List created by someone else. Any discussion or thoughts would be appreciated by me and maybe others. ... having this newer list installed may actually allow my web pages to load faster ... it seems that I notice web pages loading faster but there may be no connection ... it's early Saturday morning and there are probably less people online for now. *** Just to correct my post ... I dug out an old XP Software DVD from some years back and found the original DAK Custom Blocking List that I had burned to the DVD. I mentioned earlier that DAK's list from Oct 28, 2006 had 355 items in it ... it only had 335 items. I think I "vaguely" remember adding some items myself at a later date ... so sometime after 2006 I added 20 more items on my own. ...

A new version of SpywareBlaster has been released - SpywareBlaster v5.5 (05-18-2016) http://www.brightfort.com/spywareblaster.html System Requirements: SpywareBlaster works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10. (32/64-bit) ...

I use the ESR release which also came out today ... Extended Support Release - Flash Player 18.0.0.352 (Win & Mac) for my IE 8 version. At the K-Meleon forum JohnHell just posted the plugin version ... which I use for K-Meleon and Pale Moon (Atom). General : K-Meleon Forum - NPSWF32-all versions http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/list.php?1 It's on the last page 17 ... http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?1,114856,page=17 Re: Flash Player 21.0.0.242 & 18.0.0.352 ESR Posted by: JohnHell Date: May 13, 2016 03:59AM NPSWF32_18_0_0_352.7z (ESR) Previous version being exploited in the wild... after you download it you have to rename it to NPSWF32.dll and copy it into the K-Meleon plugin folder or Pale Moon plugin folder. Just to add: this is where I get the ESR version for IE 8 ... there seems to have been an update already. Version Flash Player 21.0.0.242 (Win & Mac) and Extended Support Release - Flash Player 18.0.0.352 (Win & Mac) https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html ...

There's a video at the link with the story ... Mother Goose Seeks Out Police Assistance to Help Her Trapped Baby Jessica Schaldebeck - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS - Thursday, May 12, 2016 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/goose-seeks-police-aid-trapped-baby-article-1.2634845 Old Mother Goose she needed a hand, so she found a cop since he’d understand. And while it sounds silly enough to come straight out of a nursery rhyme, it did actually happen. A mother goose on Monday started pecking at Sergeant James Givens’ cruiser door after she was unable to free her trapped gosling on her own. “It kept pecking and pecking and normally they don’t come near us,” The Cincinnati officer told WKRC. “Then it walked away and then it stopped and looked back so I followed it and it led me right over to the baby that was tangled up in all that string." The goose’s baby somehow got tangled in a Mother’s Day balloon string and other litter near a local creek. Specialist Cecilia Charron, who was with Givens at the time, called the SPCA, but no one was immediately able to come out. So Charron picked up the baby goose and started to untangle it. “Well she has a couple of kids of her own and I guess that motherly instinct must’ve kicked in because it was like they communicated,” Givens said. “So Specialist Charron came and untangled it. It took her awhile because it was all wrapped up.” After the little goose was freed, it sprinted off and her Mother Goose followed behind. ...

Just a few weeks ago the world's oldest dog passed away and now a 30 year old cat ... who is still very much alive. So more humans are reaching 100 yrs + and now the animals are also right in there ... at least a few anyway. World's Oldest Cat Dethroned by Even Older Cat Scooter By AJ Willingham, CNN Tue May 10, 2016 http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/health/worlds-newest-oldest-cat/ Gaze into the eyes of Scooter, the new World's Oldest Living Cat. Scooter and his wise old eyes have been around for 30 years, and his achievements in extreme elderliness have now been recognized by Guinness World Records. Gail Floyd -- who generously houses Scooter even though he is a grown adult and should probably get his own place -- says her companion has always been a lively people cat. When he was a kitten, he would play in Gail's hair and ride on her shoulder. Now in his golden years, Scooter still rises at 6 every morning. If he could talk, the Siamese from Mansfield, Texas would probably credit his geriatric vigor to years of travel and indulgence. Scooter has been to 45 states and enjoys regular servings of chicken, his favorite protein-packed treat. A cat also doesn't live this long without being spoiled. Scooter fits in his "me-time" with the occasional bath and a blowdry. He's earned it. As a Thirtysomething, Scooter has survived five presidencies, all nine seasons of Seinfeld, and is probably almost halfway through repaying his student debts. Scooter's achievement eclipses the previous World's Oldest Cat titleholder Corduroy, who is only in his late twenties and has a lot to learn about life. ...

Maybe it contains "Human DNA" ... even vegetarian products might not be 100% pure if the sampling and testing is to be believed. From the article below: "Upon ordering a burger in a fast food chain, diners might have already come to terms with the fact there is a very slim chance of horse meat lurking under that tomato. But the additions of rat and human DNA could be harder to swallow. A new study from US-based food testing company Clear Labs has discovered, from a sample of 258 burgers, two cases of meat in vegetarian products, three burgers with rat DNA and one case of human DNA." Burgers Contain Rat and Human DNA, study finds A study of 258 burgers in the US finds unexpected additional – and lack of – ingredients Rachael Revesz 4 hours ago http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/burgers-contain-rat-and-human-dna-study-finds-a7023661.html Upon ordering a burger in a fast food chain, diners might have already come to terms with the fact there is a very slim chance of horse meat lurking under that tomato. But the additions of rat and human DNA could be harder to swallow. A new study from US-based food testing company Clear Labs has discovered, from a sample of 258 burgers, two cases of meat in vegetarian products, three burgers with rat DNA and one case of human DNA. “The most likely cause is hair, skin, or fingernail that was accidentally mixed in during the manufacturing process,” it read, referring to the human DNA. “What many consumers don't know is that some amounts of human and rat DNA may fall within an acceptable regulatory range,” the report added. It also found that there are “gaps” in food safety and quality standards, but overall the beef industry has “benefited from stringent regulation and aggressive testing requirements”. Of larger concern than the “unpleasant” DNA findings was that almost a quarter of vegetarian burgers have different ingredients to those on the label. Two veggie burgers contained beef, and one black bean burger contained no black beans. ...

jumper ... thanks for confirming the error message. I was thinking .NET Framework might be involved somehow with that message. However, I didn't give it much thought since the other program that I downloaded first ... FAT Sorter v1.0.4 ... had a message box pop up immediately saying: This setup requires .NET Framework 3.5. Please install the .NET Framework and run this setup again. Actually, I really don't need manual sorting anyway ... I'm happy just to have the ability to do "a simple sort" ... big improvement over what I had with files all over the place. Thanks ...

VB.NET does not work with my XP setup ... it was a manual sort program. Has anyone else with XP tried this program and have it working on their setup? http://www.public.bplaced.net/ I get this message box: FAT Reader.exe - Application Error The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application. ------------------------ If it required .NET Framework it would say that would it not? I don't see XP listed as such but it says this ... "Should work on all NT-based Windows versions" ... it's too bad this program doesn't work, looks very good. Anyone have any input or another manual sort program. Will search around for one. ...

jaclaz ... thanks for reading and supplying more links and information on the subject. I was going to post that one link but you posted it ... the MurrayMoffatt.com link. http://www.murraymoffatt.com/software-problem-0010.html That's a good page and also where I discovered the Anerty's Lair - DriveSort program. Didn't bother trying the other links after I tried DriveSort program and it also didn't need any version of .NET Framework to work. I would like to have the ability to do a "manual sort" so I will try the one you posted about: "whilst this one (VB.NET): should be the most "flexible" one (as it allows manual ordering too)." http://www.public.bplaced.net/ I also don't have a lot of files to store but I might in the future ... last summer I bought eight - 16 GB USB Flash drives from the summer "back-to-school" sale at Walmart ... they were only $4.97 as I remember so instead of burning DVDs for video files ... the 16 GB Flash Drives will hold almost four burned DVDs and then items can be added or removed with ease ... and storage of many little flash drives is much easier than many DVDs. A small little square plastic empty butter container will hold many small flash drives over boxes of DVDs or CDs ... and they stay clean of dust and moisture. I need more 16 GB flash drives so I am hoping Walmart will have that "back-to-school" deal again in July / August. ...

Have been storing more video type files on flash drives ... since newer DVD players and TV have USB connectors. When you put files on a flash drive they are usually in the order that they were placed on the drive ... which means the files (audio or video) will not be in the order that you might like them to be. When you connect the USB drive to your computer ... everything looks great and new files being added or older files being removed will look OK until you connect the USB drive back to the DVD player. I'm sure many people here had a solution for the problem and after about a month of searching around for a program that would fix this problem ... I was ready to ask on the forum and then early this morning I found such a program. It works like a charm ... to put all files in a "simple order" on a flash drive. I was searching Google with a wrong term or I might have made this discovery earlier ... FAT32 USB File Sorter ... when FAT32 was added to the search, several hits and programs popped up. In January I decided to remove .NET Framework from my computer and after cleaning, searching and more cleaning ... I finally had success and made new backups for the future. I can always put a .NET Framework version back on in the future. So the first program I found really looked great ... downloaded it and then discovered it requires .NET Framework 3.5 ... went back to the search and found several more FAT32 sorting programs ... the second one I found is perfect ... no .NET Framework required ... it just works. All my files are in a "simple order" on the flash drive. I post this here for anyone else with this flash drive sorting problem looking for a solution. The name of the program is: Anerty's Lair - DriveSort http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort.php DriveSort v1.223 DriveSort sorts the directory tables of a volume formated in FAT12/FAT16/FAT32. This sort orders the files in each folder according to their short or long names alphabetic order. The majority of recent operating systems sort the files before showing them to the user, either by name, by size or by whatever the user choose. However, it is not always the case in embedded OSes on small portable devices like MP3 players. On these platforms, the lack of resources (CPU, memory) can lead the developper to make it display or play the files in the order in which they are on the disk. This order depends mostly of the order in which they were added to the disk. DriveSort can change this order to help such devices to play or view their files in the order you want, by putting them on the disk in a customizable order. Two automated sort method are available : The "LFN Sort", which sorts the files and directories according to the alphabetic order of their Long File Names. The "SFN Sort (I-Bead)", which sorts the files and directories according to the alphabetic order of their Short File Names. ( A file or directory on a FAT volume has always a short file name, which is the old MS-DOS 8.3 name format. It means that the name part of a filename must have at most eight characters, and its extension at most three. A file or dir can also have a long file name, which can be a bit longer than 250 characters, and supports Unicode characters. If a filename contains mixed case, or has one part that doesn't fit in the 8.3 convention, the file has both short and long filenames. ) ... there is more description at the home page link. Now the program only has three file extensions ... .MP3, .OGG and .WMA ... but it is very easy to add more extensions ... click on the Extensions tab and you can add: avi, mp4 and so forth ... both audio and video files can be in the same order as you see them on your PC and now on the DVD player. Took me 30 minutes to figure it all out ... and don't forget ... after you add additional file extentions ... you have to hit "Save" ... finally got that figured out but it was 4 am in the morning ... kept going back several times from the PC to the DVD player and the files were not in the correct order ... until I thought it all out and searched around for the Save tab. This is what is mentioned about Extensions: The playlist mode is initially able to move .MP3, .OGG and .WMA files around, to avoid files that are not really part of a playlist, like system files. If you want to add other extensions to these, use the Extensions... menu in the playlist menu, or add them to the RecognizedExtensions option of the DriveSort.ini settings file. As I said that can be avi, mp4 or whatever. Now for those that have .NET Framework installed ... you might want to check this program out. FAT Sorter v1.0.4 http://fat-sorter.software.informer.com/ ...

I still wonder, for example ... if there are four or five people in a vehicle ... carpool or family ... all with personal smart phones set up in a similar way and the vehicle is going at a speed of 35 or 40 mph ... can information be read from all the phones in the vehicle in the one or two seconds passing the billboard? If a vehicle is going at 65 / 70 mph ... can all that information be collected. There might be something for sale in the future ... a diffuser or product placed in or on the vehicle ... to keep phones from being read but would the phone still work for calls? ...

I guess you could call this an update of sorts ... if it goes anywhere. 'Spying Billboards' Under Fire for Tapping Into People's Cellphones By michael balsamo, Associated Press NEW YORK — May 1, 2016 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/schumer-probe-billboards-phone-data-track-shoppers-38794906 A U.S. senator is calling for a federal investigation into an outdoor advertising company's latest effort to target billboard ads to specific consumers. New York Sen. Charles Schumer has dubbed Clear Channel Outdoor Americas' so-called RADAR program "spying billboards," warning the service may violate privacy rights by tracking people's cell phone data via the ad space. "A person's cellphone should not become a James Bond-like personal tracking device for a corporation to gather information about consumers without their consent," Schumer, a Democrat, said in a statement ahead of a planned news conference Sunday in Times Square, where the company operates billboards. But the company, which operates more than 675,000 billboards throughout the world, argues that characterization of its program is inaccurate, insisting it only uses anonymous data collected by other companies. In a statement, company spokesman Jason King said the RADAR program is based on a years-old advertising technique that "uses only aggregated and anonymized information" from other companies that certify they're following consumer protection standards. King also provided The Associated Press a copy of a letter it sent earlier this year to another lawmaker who has similarly raised concerns about the ad service and consumer protections. The company "does not receive or collect personally identifiable information about consumers for use in Radar," CEO Scott Wells wrote in a March letter to Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat. "It's not necessary for the insights we are offering our advertising customers." The ad program is a partnership between Clear Channel and other companies, including AT&T and technology companies that collects location data from smartphone apps, company officials have said. In a video on its website, the company says it "measures consumers' real-world travel patterns and behaviors as they move through their day, analyzing data on direction of travel, billboard viewability, and visits to specific destinations." That information, the company says, is then mapped against Clear Channel's displays, which would allow advertisers to buy ads in places that would "reach specific behavioral audience segments." Clear Channel uses "aggregate and anonymous mobile consumer information," the company said. The program gives marketers a "solution that provides a more accurate way to understand and target specific audience segments," Clear Channel's vice president, Andy Stevens, said in a news release announcing the initiative in February. But an investigation into the company is necessary because most people don't realize their location data is being mined, even if they agreed to it at some point by accepting the terms of service of an app that later sells their location information, Schumer said. The Federal Trade Commission did not immediately respond requests for comment. ...

Workers unearth large trove of Roman coins at Spanish park Published April 30, 2016 - Associated Press http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/30/workers-unearth-large-trove-roman-coins-at-spanish-park.html?intcmp=hplnws MADRID – Workers laying pipes in a southern Spanish park have unearthed a 1,300-pound trove of Roman coins in what culture officials say is a unique historic discovery. The Seville Archaeological Museum said the construction workers came across 19 amphoras containing thousands of bronze and silver-coated coins dating from the end of the fourth century. The coins are believed to have been recently minted at the time and had probably been stored away to pay soldiers or civil servants. Museum director Ana Navarro said the discovery Wednesday in the southern town of Tomares outside Seville is unique for Spain and of incalculable value. She said the coins studied so far bear images of emperors Constantine and Maximian, with a variety of pictorial images on the reverse. She told reporters the museum had contacted counterparts in Britain, France and Italy and that the find appeared to be one of the most important from the period. The regional cultural department said Friday that construction work in the park had been halted while archeologists investigate further. The clay pots, 10 of which were said to be intact, were found just over a yard underground. The cultural department said the museum had no similar coins in its collection. Once the find has been fully investigated the pieces will be put on display in the museum. The Romans began to conquer Spain in 218 B.C. and ruled until the fifth century. -------------------------------------------------------------------- More pictures at this link ... 1,300 Lbs Roman Coins Found in Spain http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/1300-lbs-roman-coins-found-in-spain-160429.htm ...

Some nice pictures at the link ... 'World's oldest dog' Maggie the kelpie dies at the age of 30 leaving her owner devastated Australian dog Maggie the Kelpie has died at the age of 30, her owner said The beloved pet was thought to be the oldest dog in the world She was the best friend of Victorian dairy farmer Brian McLaren Mr McLaren said he was very 'sad' at the death of the Australian sheep dog By Jenny Awford For Daily Mail Australia Updated: 05:55 EST, 19 April 2016 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3547370/Maggie-kelpie-dies-age-30.html Maggie the Kelpie, an Australian dog that was thought to be the oldest in the world, has died at the age of 30 leaving her owner devastated. She was the best friend of Victorian dairy farmer Brian McLaren who confirmed the news, saying that Maggie passed away peacefully on Sunday night. The beloved dog was still wandering around the dairy in Woolsthorpe, west of Melbourne, and growling at cats in the weeks before her death. But Mr McLaren said that the Kelpie, who was more than 200 in dog years, went downhill in her last two days. 'She was 30 years old, she was still going along nicely last week, she was walking from the dairy to the office and growling at the cats and all that sort of thing,' Mr McLaren told the Weekly Times. 'She just went downhill in two days and I said yesterday morning when I went home for lunch ... 'She hasn't got long now'. 'I'm sad, but I'm pleased she went the way she went.' Maggie has already been buried beside the McLaren's other dog in a marked grave under a pine tree. 'We were great mates, it is a bit sad,' he said. Maggie was a contender for the oldest dog in the world, but Mr McLaren lost the original paperwork for the dog, meaning that her age could not be independently verified. The Western District owner previously spoke about the fact that his youngest son, Liam, was four years old when they bought Kelpie Maggie as a young pup. Liam is now 34. Officially, the title of the oldest dog in the world still belongs to Bluey, an Australian cattle-dog from Rochester in Victoria, which reached 29 years and five months. According to the Guinness Book of Records his owner bought him as a puppy in 1910 and he grew up to work among the sheep and cattle until he was put down in November 1939. ...

Story highlights from the article ... Ten cases of Elizabethkingia infection identified in Illinois The Illinois cluster is a different strain than an outbreak of the same infection in Wisconsin (March) Source of infections is still unknown http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/20/health/elizabethkingia-illinois-cluster/index.html New Elizabethkingia cluster found in Illinois By Debra Goldschmidt, CNN Wed April 20, 2016 A new cluster of Elizabethkingia infection, previously rarely seen in humans, has been found in Illinois, health officials said Wednesday. Testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the Elizabethkingia anophelis infection in 10 Illinois residents, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Six of those individuals have died. Most of the infected patients had underlying health conditions, and it's unknown if they died from the infection or pre-existing conditions. The Illinois cluster of cases is a different strain of infection from the one identified in an ongoing Elizabethkingia outbreak in Wisconsin, first reported in March. Fifty-nine cases have been confirmed in that state since November. Eighteen have died. Officials there have said all of those infected had "at least one serious underlying illness" and most are older than 65. The cases began in 2014. Dr. Chris Braden, deputy director at the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said this cluster of cases in Illinois is not surprising but it is concerning. Federal and state health officials asked health care providers and health departments to be on the lookout for cases of Elizabethkingia last month. These bacteria are not mandated or voluntarily reported so clusters may have previously gone unnoticed. "We are identifying this because Illinois really looked for it," Braden said. Last week the Illinois Department of Public Health said it found one case of the same strain of Elizabethkingia identified in the Wisconsin outbreak. That person died earlier this year. Last month health officials in Michigan also found a case of the infection that matched the strain of the Wisconsin outbreak. "Although this strain of Elizabethkingia is different than the one seen in the Wisconsin outbreak, our investigatory methods remain the same and we continue to work with the CDC and our local health departments to investigate this cluster of cases and develop ways to prevent additional infections," said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. The bacteria are commonly found in soil, river water and reservoirs but do not commonly cause illness in humans. People with compromised immune systems or serious underlying health conditions are more at risk of infection. Previous outbreaks have been associated with health care settings. Most of the infections have been in the bloodstream, although some have been in the respiratory system or joints. Symptoms of Elizabethkingia infection include fever, shortness of breath, chills and a bacterial skin infection called cellulitis. The infection is often antibiotic resistant and difficult to treat. Health officials have not yet found the source of the Wisconsin outbreak. Braden said the Illinois investigation is starting by gathering information about each individual case, including where the person lived, what health care they were receiving and what facilities they had been to. It will also consider what type of infection the person had -- for example, was it in the bloodstream or on the skin? Because the strains are different officials are operating under the assumption the Illinois and Wisconsin cases are unrelated. However, there is a possibility that the investigation could find they are related -- for example, exposure to the same product. "Previously, health providers were not required to report individual cases of Elizabethkingia, so it is difficult to determine the degree and kind of exposure that results in illness. For the same reason, it is difficult to estimate how many cases of illness actually occur each year," a statement from the Illinois health department said. Braden said, "We haven't really been looking for clusters with this particular organism; it's possible we could see others as states request laboratories look for these and request them." With the source still under investigation, health officials said the best way to prevent this and other infections is to follow "good health practices," including frequently washing hands and requesting health care providers do the same. ...

Will be released December 31, 2020 ... it's still April, so maybe this is some kind of April Fools Joke. Ambiancé: The world's longest ever film gets a seven hour trailer. Well, seven hours and 20 minutes to be precise. Monday 18 April 2016 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/ambianc-the-worlds-longest-ever-film-gets-a-seven-hour-trailer-a6989561.html We're not entirely sure why you'd need to watch a seven-hour trailer in order to work out whether you fancy seeing a film that lasts for 30 days, but cancel your plans - one has arrived. Swedish director Anders Weberg has released a second full-length trailer for his upcoming experimental film Ambiancé and it runs for a total of 439 minutes. Weberg, who is also an artist, released a 72-minute long teaser trailer last year. He reportedly has an even bigger one due for release in 2018 (mark your calendars now) that will run for 72 hours. The abstract non-linear film features two performance artists on a beach in southern Sweden - and that's about it. There are no cuts. Described as a tale where “space and time is intertwined into a surreal dream-like journey beyond places," this film seems purely to exist for the most dedicated film enthusiasts. Will you sit through the finished product? Ambiancé is released on December 31, 2020. ...

Here we go again ... Customers Furious As Web hosting Company 123-reg Accidentally Deletes Hundreds of Websites from the Internet 18 Apr 2016 By Jeff Parsons The web hosting service 123-reg has deleted customers' websites after a clean-up error occurred over the weekend. http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/customers-furious-web-hosting-company-7780626 A popular internet company is facing the wrath of its customers today after mistakenly deleting huge amounts of data over the weekend. It accidentally knocked an unspecified number of VPS (virtual private servers) offline, meaning owners and visitors couldn't access their websites. 123-reg.com provides hosting services for websites and email accounts and has been working since Saturday morning to repair the damage. In the first of seven updates posted on its support page , the company stated: "This morning, our teams were made aware of issues affecting the performance of our VPS product. Our teams are continuing to investigate which has led to some customers experiencing denigrated service levels." By the fourth update, things were getting a bit more serious: "Our teams are continuing to work to restore affected VPS services back to normal throughout the evening and night, using both internal and external experts. If you are currently offline and would like to restore from your own backup to save time we can set you up a new VPS image. Please let our support teams know." As of Monday afternoon, the issue had still not been resolved. We are currently working on restoring your VPS packages using data recovery tools. For more info see our status page https://t.co/37s8eWkhJ7 — 123-reg (@123reg) April 18, 2016 Unsurprisingly, customers who rely on the service to host and maintain their websites and email accounts aren't pleased. @123reg @TomParty they don't want you to know the severity of the situation, I'm hearing everyone's VPS was deleted, so we are taking days — Mark Drummond (@mark_drummond) April 18, 2016 Oh my 123-REG seems to have wiped a couple of friends VMs down the toilet, the internet tells me it was a "script", wow nice blame job #fail — Steve (@JustMeFrom66) April 18, 2016 Do not use @123reg for your hosting. They just accidentally deleted my two VPSs, losing all my customer's data. No apology, no compensation. — Phil Emerson (@philemerson) April 18, 2016 The company informed its customers with an email over the weekend to try and explain what happened. "As part of a clean-up process on the 123-reg VPS platform, a script was run at 7am on 16.04.16. This script is run to show us the number of machines active against the master database. "An error on the script showed 'zero-records' response from the database for some live VPS. For those customers, this created a 'failure' scenario - showing no VM's and effectively deleting what was on the host. As a result of our team's investigations, we can conclude that the issues faced having resulted in some data loss for some customers." @ianhamilton_ @123reg this should hit the news. Just to make others aware . This will wreck my business & plenty of others I am sure — Its a Puzzle Thing (@itsapuzzlething) April 18, 2016 The company says it is working hard to try and reverse the error. "Our teams have been working long into the night to restore as much as we possibly can. We have also invested in external consultants to recover, in the best way possible." 123-reg has about 800,000 customers in the UK and hasn't said how many were affected, although it claims it is a "small proportion". ...

jaclaz ... thanks for all the new additional information ... and that the whole thing was just a hoax. Not too funny but it explains why the Server Fault page link no longer worked. I was expecting someone older ... after checking the photo out ... well, maybe he'll get a few new customers but the stunt may not be all that funny to many people. ...

I found some other articles with more information about this ... this is from Popular Mechanics and it may contain some of what was first posted at Server Fault before it disappeared ... the link in this article is dead also. It mentions that the guy has around 1,535 customers. Man Deletes His Whole Company With One Bad Line of Code Thanks to just one mistake, he instructed the computer to delete everything it could find. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a20405/man-deletes-company-and-backups-accidentally/ By Eric Limer Apr 14, 2016 The next time you accidentally close a file without saving, just keep in mind that it could be worse. You could be Marco Marsala, a hosting provider who accidentally and irrevocably deleted his entire business with a faulty line of code. As Marsala wrote on Server Fault, a forum where he was asking for help with the bind he'd gotten himself into, "I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers ...All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too." A dire situation for certain, but one that Marsala was apparently hopeful he could rectify. "How I can recover from a rm -rf / now in a timely manner?" his plea for assistance ends. That "rm -rf/" is the troublesome line that got Marsala into trouble. It is, essentially, a command that will forcibly delete data without asking for confirmation. As The Independent explains: The "rm" tells the computer to remove; the r deletes everything within a given directory; and the f stands for "force", telling the computer to ignore the usual warnings that come when deleting files. ... [Because] of an error in the way it was written, the code didn't actually specify anywhere – and so removed everything on the computer. Why was Marsala running this command at all? It was actually part of his backup procedure, presumably intended to delete old backups. But due to the lack of specificity, it just deleted everything it could get its hands on—including customer websites. Because Marsala didn't have a backup somewhere that was completely isolated from what this particular command could touch, it all went away. It's probably gone forever, according to the experts on Server Fault. The lessons to be learned here? A few: Always double check instructions to delete anything. Make sure you back up your important data offline. And last but not least, a computer will always do exactly what you tell it to do. If it doesn't do what you wanted, you are the one who messed up. Source: Server Fault via The Independant Also this link ... This is from developers.slashdot.org and has more information that could also have been in the original Server Fault post ... between the two links ... a person can have a general idea maybe what was originally posted. It also mentions he posted at the Centos help forum. https://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/04/14/1542246/man-deletes-his-entire-company-with-one-line-of-bad-code Reader JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Marco Marsala appears to have deleted his entire company with one mistaken piece of code. By accidentally telling his computer to delete everything in his servers, the hosting provider has seemingly removed all trace of his company and the websites that he looks after for his customers. Marsala wrote on a Centos help forum, "I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers. Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line. All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too because the remote storage was mounted just before by the same script (that is a backup maintenance script)." The terse "rm -rf" is so famously destructive that it has become a joke within some computing circles, but not to this guy. Can this example finally serve as a textbook example of why you need to make offsite backups that are physically removed from the systems you're archiving?"Rm -rf" would mark the block as empty, and if the programmer hasn't written anything new, he should be able to recover nearly all of the data. Something about the story feels weird. ...