CoffeeFiend

Basically, the 360 only connects to XP MCE - which is why I'm not interested in one. It doesn't connect via SMB and play other codecs like that. There are projects like transcode 360 that you can look into, but for playing stuff like that, nothing beats the original XBOX with XBMC.

I would normally 100% agree with you on that point - old, obsolete legacy junk I don't want near any of my systems. But it's a CNC machine. Lots of machine shop tools like that run plain old DOS on very old hardware (most of the time 486 and older, and a bit of "newer" P1's). Personally, I'd opt for upgrading the drive in the CNC controller if possible though - it's supported by BIOS, OS and all on the CNC machine (unlike say, using USB flash drives instead or such), and there's no need to downgrade your XP or look for specific software to write to older floppies and such (every PC with a floppy drive these days supports 'em). And you get twice the space on your floppies (transfer twice as much) and no need to scotch tape the other hole (what an annoyance).

I'm sorry, that was rather 45$ (Canadian), it's gone up 3$ since last time I've checked: link 32 amps on both 12v buses (which is pretty much the double as the one he posted pics of). And it does have all the plugs you need (20/24 pin, SATA, PCI-e and all). Nice 120mm fan too. BTW, these guys make the PCU's for OCZ. Personally, I wouldn't buy anything with less than 30 amps on the 12v buses.

That's a rather weak PSU, just check the 12v bus. A 42$ Fortron Sparkle PSU can nearly deliver twice that. Never heard of the brand either, and the ratings don't speak for it either. If you can afford nice parts like that for the rest of your PC, surely you can afford a nicer PSU than that.

[Nevermind - answer removed] Not like a student can just disregard a 1000$ price tag (plus those of 3D CAD apps and others), and you're asking about installing some warez tweaked version of XP...

Actually, thinking of it, it can't be too much longer before they release version 2007. One just might be better off waiting and buying that one then. I hadn't mentionned it as I have not tried it yet, nor had I looked much at it. I wasn't sure of how the new GUI would be and things like that. But i just saw a couple videos and it's looking very very nice. 5 min video using word 2007: create "21st century" documents in word. There's a bunch of other videos too. It looks promising - at least when it comes down to styling stuff and XML support/usage. I'll definitely be upgrading

I very highly doubt it's a the small device compiler - if he was into compiling C for microcontrollers, he would definitely know (funny how I know about atmel/pic compilers I have installed and use). Can't be that. And as for Visual Studio, I have no idea where you got that from. I have 2 versions of it installed, and there are NO traces of that file anywhere (and I was quite surprised that there could have been some executable/command line tool in VS I didn't know of yet too). 100% sure it isn't related. Find the said exe, right click, properties, version. That should give you a good hint. Most companies embed some "infos" in their files like that. Try on another exe if you want to compare (likely there should be company, version, etc). You can also try to monitor network activity and such things too (so many options/ideas). But either ways, I'd bet it's malware (or worst case scenario something that's totally unecessary and just eating away system resources). Especially if you're out to try to find what it is, it's likely because you're having some issues (virus/spyware), and this very well could be it. Often malware uses file names similar to legit processes (svohost instead of svchost and such), and sdss looks somewhat like smss - not almost identical, but not like the average user would know the difference (not like they have clue what smss is in the first place, let alone what sdss could even be) - and it's still somewhat similar to a few other system processes what end in "ss", like csrss and lsass. I just can't see it be something critical for your system to work either (it would be documented somewhere as it would be some common process).

Hard to tell... Personally I don't use any of these apps as Visual Studio will let you create your own services when you need one... (and even an installer for it and all - example with source code here) But there are likely reasons to run other apps as a service like that (not that I've ever had the need - most apps that need or would benefit from this already take care of it, like web/ftp servers). I can understand he wants to charge for it though - not that it's a very complex app or anything, but it takes time to design/code/make installer, write proper documentation, create a website for it (pay associated costs too), pay for hosting, end up having to support people (some people will ask questions - so you need email or a forum or something - and it can take a fair amount of time to answer those), maintain/bugfix/enhance it, etc. Understandable he wants to get some of that money back (or be paid for part of his time spent). So he's putting some artificial limitations on it to get their users with the most needs to pay for it. Thing is, it's easy to create a simple app like that, and there's already some free & open source options (I bet one would find some stuff on sourceforge too). So people are mostly paying for convenience (they don't want to have to write or compile code or such things) - that and support. Someone with some knowledge and time will use something else or just "roll their own" basically. People with simple needs will use the free version, others will either pay ~20$/PC or find something else if that's too much (but then you need to spend time looking for something else and such - not as "convenient")... Personally, I'd rather use something that I have the source for (willing to fix/enhance/modify it as req'd)

There's a chart on that page. SMP/CPU binding only in pro version; Lite version limited to one service/machine only Pro version has offline help and support. Absolutely! I would, but there's no need for that as there's also a pre-compiled version along with the source in the zip file. If you have no account (req'd to download) and don't want to signup, then try bugmenot.

That's some prime FUD - just like what we'd expect from Symantec. Mind you, anything to mislead you so your computer has "problems" likely makes for higher sales for them - why trust anything they say? What's in your best interest is basically what would kill their business model - why would they help you stay secure? IE 6 is old and crusty software that hasn't been updated in years besides patches (mature AND stagnant). Compared to all the other browsers which are in active development - getting new features and such, which always makes for a few new bugs. And some of those browsers are open source, so there's more peer review (and there's even been several automated bug checks done) - which finds more, and makes it seem more vulnerable. But give us the IE codebase to look at, and we'll see their bug/exploit count go thru the roof... Thing is, most malware writers mainly target IE (article says "69 percent of all browser attacks targeted specifically at that browser alone" - and add all the others who also happen to work on other browsers; that's got to be close to 100%). And the type of people that don't update regularly are often IE users as well (computer newbies also happen to be IE users for the most part). And not only you're the target as a IE user, but patching delays are quite long. Just look at how long it took 'em to fix the WMF exploit (a few weeks), and again how long it's taking them right now to have a fix for the VML exploit. Pretty much all other browsers have shorter average delays to get patches (1 day for firefox article says, 2 for opera). So again, you're the main target, and also using the software that takes longest to be fixed (longer exposure window). As if that wasn't enough, IE is also the browser to have the most critical exploits - since Jan 1st: IE: 2 extremely critical. FF/Opera? None. IE: 19 vulnerabilities out of 106 unpatched (18% - both the largest number AND percentage). FF: 3/36 (8%), O8: 0/15 (0%) So they're also the company ignoring/not patching the most vulnerabilities too. I mean, just look at the big picture. Nothing quite like the WMF or VML vulnerabilities have been found in any other browser than IE, MS takes FOREVER to fix even those very serious ones, ignores/doesn't patch the most, etc. And those Ie vulnerabilities are also those being exploited in the wild - there were code generators to exploit the WMF vulnerability, and this time, they are using a cPanel exploit to distribute malware using the current unpatched and extremely critical VML vulnerability. Oh, and there's another unpatched extremely critical vulnerability for IE (daxctle.ocx keyframe method) - and there's some exploit code available for it too (although this one is ActiveX based and can be disabled). And like someone said, Symantec uses their own numbers for those "studies" - they're the numbers of vulnerabilities reported to Symantec AND which the vendor has acknowledged to Symantec, so they claim 47 for FF and 38 for IE, whereas it should be 50 for FF and 57 for IE. And if they did a weighted sum (the more critical ones counting for more), then IE would be at a even higher disadvantage. Or even better - count how many days each was open multiplied by how bad it is... That would widen the gap much further. But again, recommending IE makes for higher sales of "security products" (I use that term loosely here) for some people... Just like they're objecting to the new security in Vista. I mean, if it's a secure OS, who's gonna keep buying their junk? Of course that makes them unhappy... And we're still disregarding worst standard support and lack of basic features that IE has - and countless things that make developing for the web a nightmare (like not even supporting the right xhtml mime type!) And most of these issues are not addressed in IE7 either (it has tabs, and that's about it). I can't think of a single reason to use IE at all... Worst piece of s*** ever made by MS (far worse than WinME IMO), and perhaps also the worst web browser ever.

Their desktops aren't THAT bad (not very big on their laptops actually - Thinkpads is where it's at, but their servers are pretty good - mind you I prefer nice Sun Operton boxes). They may not be the best choice for home users and gamers, but for businesses, it's a pretty good pick/good value. They have a pretty good enterprise support (bronze/silver/gold/platinum) - they fix things in a very timely manner. Never had a problem with 'em. And they have some of the best tools/systems for companies. Like, they actually use things like asset tags in BIOS, which is very handy (again, not very much to a home user/gamer, but in a business it truly is). Tons of PCs return a LOT of junk when you try some basic WMI queries (or even via SMS) - because the SMBIOS info is just crap (BIOS sucks, it's seemingly rushed out the door). And that goes for a LOT of systems out there - including most "white boxes" (not like they manually customize every motherboard's BIOS to have relevant info). Often they just error out on basic stuff as it's just not even there, otherwise you'll get a large batch with all the same serial (such as 123456789), and all kinds of other wrong stuff (CPU/RAM misreported, etc). Whereas most Dells I've tried always returned correct, and very comprehensive information. You'd think other companies would start to get it by now (older PCs truly suck at this)... I've seen MANY oher lines of desktops (by other mfgs) be much more problematic in many ways. "Ok" prices (especially if buying in volume - and often they'll even give you like bronze support or better for free when you buy in large enough batches), good support and good management features - that's pretty much what any business wants/needs (again, not that I'd buy one for home) They're shipping a LOT of systems for a reason...

I'm curious to hear what's really better about the older version. I just can't stop wondering. There's many improvements to PPT 2003 - and not only backgrounds, animations and transitions (mind you that's already quite nice to have). Things like smart tags, package for CD (no need to have ppt nor the viewer installed on client PC - it makes your presentation 100% self-contained!), better menus and task panes - including new slideshow toolbar (very neat) and reasearch pane, thesaurus (finally), ink support (just give it a try - there's no turning back), sharepoint support (a must for those working in teams), improved viewer, better image support (when exporting or optimizing), better auto layout, the little autofit thing that appears when you paste too much text in a box (offers to autofit text or to split it to another slide automatically - I use it quite often), new media player for those who tend to put some clips on presentations (not uncommon at all) - which is quite improved and supports things like playlists or playing fullscreen, producer 2003, very cool custom animations (you can even use paths - even hand drawn ones! And it has good sequencing too) - I mean, just check these... Honestly, I've tried very hard, but couldn't think of a single thing that was better in the previous version, yet doing the inverse was trivial. Powerpoint 2003 is FAR better IMO, they don't even compare. Same applies to every single one of the other apps from the suite.

It really depends what you want. There are many types of slideshows. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Picasa at all... I much prefer paying 150$ for Photoshop (upgrade price). I didn''t know picasa could create slideshows though. No idea what format it uses though (a video file? flash? and windows executable? plain web pages with javascript? ... no idea) What I personally do when I share photos like that with others is either: -give 'em a CD or DVD with just photos (not what you want seemingly) - almost everybody has a viewer with a slideshow feature nowadays (from the built-in XP preview thingy when you press F11 IIRC, to freeware apps and what not) -or same thing, but also with screen-res versions and thumbnails on web pages (like an offline gallery, sort of) - the big advantage being that any system (no matter what OS or anything) can read web pages and images -or if I really want it to be a slideshow, I use S5. It even works better than even powerpoint for some presentation purposes. For the main part I just ship full DVDs (Taiyo Yuden media) to my dad as "offline backups" in case of fire or such, and just let friends/family access them online. Not an option if some don't have internet access though.

I wish there were some afforadable water cooling kits (which also performs decently - I've seen some super cheap ones, just too bad they were almost worse than stock HSF though). Something for an OC'ed Core 2 Duo would be nice, but the stock HSF isn't bad either (main issue will likely be the chipset - this being the main reason of interest in a water cooling kit). Until they come up with something that doesn't cost like 200$+ (aimed at "enthusiasts" who don't mind spending a lot for these kind of things), I'll just buy decent HSFs with heatpipes.

I wouldn't expect too much more ideas. There is only so much you can do with old/slow hardware. And for the most part, I wouldn't even use it for that, I'd rather have one PC with VMWare Server and a dozen Virtual Machines/Appliances eating ~200w in total instead of a dozen old clunkers lying around each one using up 200w. Old PCs are slow, not so reliable, replacement parts tend to cost more (like older RAM) or even be hard to find (e.g. socket A or 370 CPU), etc. It also takes up a fair amount of space, and makes a wiring mess: for a dozen PCs, you'd have 12 network cables, 12 power cables, 12 video cables, 12 keyboard and 12 mouse cables - 60 cables in total. You'd also need an expensive 12 port KVM switch and a medium network switch (another expense, another thing lying around, etc). Like someone said before, I'd pick the "paperweight" option if this was a poll. Mind you there's always a few more uses: interfacing using old and cheap ISA cards with 8255's on 'em, or over parallel port (or serial if you're into UARTs a lot), hobby CNC machine controller, good enough to communicate with (or program or debug) embedded systems and microcontrollers (atmel/pic/arm/whatever) over rs232 or rs485 or jtag or i2c, good enough to plug and old eprom programmer to it (like willem), good enough to control lab equipment or do logging over rs232 or gpib, etc. Mind you, I do all these things using a newer PC - it's just that the old one is "good enough" to do it. But mainly, 99% of folks use 'em for those things mentionned in the first post. I've seen some ppl keep an old box around with old OS'es (dos/win98) on 'em to play older games too.

wmv isn't your favorite codec, but it ISN'T crap, no matter how you dislike it and want to believe that. It fares pretty good against other codecs (check doom9's codec shootout if you want). And it's particularly good with high-def content, unsurprisingly. And if it was crap, do you think it would be used for both HD DVD and Blu-Ray? Because it is (under the VC1 name), and everyone so far says it looks great. And there are perfectly good reasons to use the format - like when someone wants to stream using WM Services (we do that a lot). And codec support is pretty good out of the box - you don't have to tell someone to download codec xyz or codec pack xyz and install that (and hopefully it won't host their system - some bad codec packs often to that) and then hopefully it'll play it - anyone with WMP installed can watch WMV files - which is pretty much anyone with Windows installed (just not the 3 persons or so who might have bought that "N" edition) If something sucks, I'd say it's autogk. GK is FAR better - you can actually pick what you want (not a one click app, but the results are well worth it). I'd do it all by hand WAY before I'd use autogk. And if wmv doesn't cut it, then why even bother with xvid which is only marginally better, instead of a true next-gen codec like H.264? (x264 is quite good, so is Ateme) And while we're talking about crap, avi is not exactly a great container either. More like a hack of an old container to get it to support new codecs. If you didn't want crap, perhaps you'd mention mkv, ogm or mp4... Use xvid if you want, but let others use whatever they like/want/need...

You can monitor the worker process' (aspnet_wp.exe for IIS5 or w3wp.exe for IIS6) memory. There are some performance counters you can look at also (for IIS, the .NET CLR, ASP.NET and ASP.NET apps) There are some settings you can change in machine.config so it recycles the worker process if it eats up too much resources (i.e. processModel) Look at the event logs! Look specifically for events like this: A worker process with process id of '1234' serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' has requested a recycle because it reached its virtual memory limit. or A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' terminated unexpectedly. The process id was '1234'. The process exit code was '0xc0000005'. That alone should be enough to find the culprit. There's also some IIS diagnostic tools worth trying. But your main issue here is finding your source of problems. For all we know, it could even be someone abusing the session objects, putting tons of data there. Combine that with long sessions and you've got very high memory usage - but not a memory leak (even though it will look similar). Or some process working with ridiculously large datasets. You can move the session state to see if that helps (will only help if you're abusing the session obj - not if there's a leak, but would rule out a simple yet common problem). But really, if you want to do more than that, it gets quite a bit more complicated. You can dump the memory (big files!) and check the managed heap for some clues, look if there's GC issues, look at the cache, etc. For this you'll need the Windows Debugging Tools. And don't expect no simple GUI, point-and-click stuff, because WinDbg isn't it! (more like pages full of hex numbers) If it comes down to that, you might have to hire someone to do that for you. You can try running a profiler too (can't hurt). But honestly, I'd try the session thing, and having a look at the code built in-house (if there's any), see what kind of mess it is. If ASP.NET apps leak memory like that, there's a big problem somewhere! And sometimes, it's a seat-to-keyboard interface that is (the one who can't write code that works to a basic level). We've made countless ASP.NET apps (even some were made by a webmaster - not a programmer at all), and none so far with such bad issues.

Agreed. I see so many websites that use flash pointlessly (for things like a plain navigation menu instead of just hyperlinks). And since flash is used mainly for those annoying ads (like "hit the monkey" and such) - with the exception of some video sharing sites - lots of people end up blocking flash altogether (I do). And it's annoying having to download some plugin to view a web page when it isn't installed (it's commonly installed, but not always - not like it ships with the browser). Oh, it's also seemingly used by those annoying and totally pointless site "intros" that just make you wait forever to load before giving you a "skip" button too (I hate that). Waiting for pages (or flash) to load forever plain sucks. And as Chozo4 said, there's accessibility problems. Not only that screen readers won't work. Also that people can't change font sizes or colors/constrast in flash stuff (neither do my userContent.css rules work). Neither can people bookmark stuff easily, nor can they easily copy/paste stuff... Even for regular users it's a pain. And flash is usually pretty bad for search engine placement too. Nothing indexes better than [x]html - certainly not flash. Good luck getting search engines to spider/index contents inside your swf files! Unless you start doing fancy things like dynamically replacing (DOM manipulation via JS) your site text for flash contents using javascript - not that javascript support is universal either. Some search engines won't spider/index flash at all. I'd use flash if it was the only thing that could do the job (and that's hardly ever the case - except if you're into those flashy "hit the monkey" things).

Well, there's nothing preventing you from making a testsector directory and putting your testing stuff in there. Not that I recommend putting test stuff on your production server, but if you're willing to take the risk of test stuff taking down your whole server... You call. You could also do URL rewriting using a HTTP module. Not sure of what you mean about squid... Gets in the way of (something?) how? As for development, that should NEVER happen on your production server - EVER. There's NO excuses for that. The developers can use their local IIS on their own boxes for that (2k pro or xp pro) - even if IIS is crippled, it's still sufficient. Even if it wasn't for that, there's other test servers (like the testing one in VS that's based on cassini that works quite well).

Like Jeremy said, there are countless sites with tutorials and help (including forums) - even newsgroups! But anyways. You need the decrypted VOB files obviously (using favourite decrypting ripper or apps like AnyDVD). Also, you don't want the menu VOBs, so skip those. You're left with what is essentially a bunch of mpeg files (albeit with a ".vob" extension). One thing you'll need is a mpeg2 decoder (codec/filter) if you want to be able to encode it to something else; if your PC plays DVDs or has any popular DVD playing app (like PowerDVD) installed, you should be fine. Now, your only issue: you likely have a bunch of vobs, and you don't want to encode that in several .wmv files. There's several options, the 2 main ones being: -when you rip your DVD, use a "merge" option of some sort (or 'no file splitting" or whatever). Not all rippping apps have this though. (Some also will do stream editing, so you can drop audio streams you don't want either) or -use some app like tmpgenc (the tools in it - not the encoder) to join 'em (feel free to drop unwanted audio streams here too). There's tons of apps that can do this. Now just open your one big mpeg file with WME9, and encode away. As Procoder goes, it does nothing special IMO - besides costing a LOT of money that is (500$)! Considering you can easily do this job using free tools only... Even if I was going to buy some encoding app, I doubt I'd pick that one.

It's really not quite as bad as people like to put it. It has FAR better codec support than the iPod (H.264, MP3, AAC, WMA), also, they can, and likely will add more codecs via firmware updates (perhaps ogg or flac?). It has a nice screen. It plays videos (not that I'd ever watch a video on a 3" screen). Nice 30GB HD at pretty much same price point. Wireless. Very good tag support. Good interface (fast too). Looks about a trillion times nicer than iPods IMO. Bit will it sell more than the iPod? Definitely not. Kids these days want the "cool" mp3 player - it doesn't matter if it's good, what features it has, if it has battery issues, if it's ugly or anything - they just want the same thing as their friends. And I have a VERY hard time believing those stats about iPods being so common. It seems to me they're (perhaps willingly) forgetting to account for billions of little flash based players sold pretty much everywhere. So far, I've only seen 4 or 5 iPods in total. If they were really 75%, you'd think I would have seens countless hundreds by now. Yet, I've seen an unbelieveable number of those "no name" flash players. If I didn't already have a Gigabeat, I'd probably buy a Zune (otherwise perhaps an iRiver, or Creative as last resort).

Chances are, people will recommend all kinds of things, to high end corporate solutions (like sharepoint and such) all the way down to ghetto scripts. The thing is, there are countless ways to do this, and not everybody wants the same thing. What most companies do for calendar sharing and room booking is use exchange/outlook (no idea if you guys use those apps at all). As for "public" shared calendars (events), I had made a web app using ASP.Net (on our intranet). There are tons of ways to do this again... You can make your web server send SMTP mail too (could easily have been added to our app)

As there are some hosting issues, would you please provide a download link using any popular file host? (like uploading.com or rapidshare.de) thanks

Actually, that's not quite what he wants. Camstudio 2.0 is a free app. You're giving him a script for camtasia studio - a 300$ app by another company. I wouldn't say that's exactly the answer he was looking for. Besides, I don't see why anyone would use AutoIt when you could just use the usual wise-installer switches... I only use AutoIt as the absolute last option - I'll even consider not installing it at all before doing that. If he wanted to, he could grab the files (or even the source) right off sourceforge, and make his own installer using NSIS or such (not that hard, nor very time consuming either). But plain recopying the files, using SFX or repackaging are the easiest/quickest options here.

Here's how: Win 2003 Optimize Tool (notice the "Unattended install guide" link on that page too)