h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think your rates are too low, Zomnker.

The biggest thing that I can say is to move that off of the free accnt, the sponsered links on the right directly compete with what you are offering. Best thing is to get an install of apache, host the site yourself, and get a domain.

Witty, what would your suggestion be?

All in good time Marv. It's in the plans.

I really don't know, Zomnker, I'm not that familiar with the business. But I do know that Sears Repair Service charges me $75.00 just to walk in my front door and diagnose whatever appliance problem I am having at the moment. That also covers the first hour of labor. Parts, of course, are extra.

I wouldn't blink if the local computer geek charged the same.

Are you familiar with the Geek Squad? They do service for Best Buy. They can charge for brand recognition, you shouldn't have a problem pricing below them yet still making decent income.
http://www.geeksquad.com/main.asp
http://www.geeksquad.com/_assets/pdf/GS_Home_Prices.pdf

Woot!

I found an RFC for netiquitte that describes the difference between top posting and bottom posting and why top posting is bad manners! I Love RFC 1855!

And yet again M$ is the root cause for most people top posting. The default behaivour of Outlook (and indeed most mail clients) is to top post.



>Hi Marv, I have information for you.
>I think you are cool.

Hi User,
You are right, I am cool



Hi Dude.
I like Microflacid LookOut
I r teh R0ck!!!1!
>Hi Luser,
>Please don't bottom quote, it makes it hard to follow the thread of the conversation.
>Great Appreciation,
>Marv



RFC1855. It is codified!

To clarify the above:

Top qoute= bottom post
Bottom quote= top post

$15 seems too low to me too, you might not recover the cost of your travel time and expenses, depending on how far you have to go. I think Witty is right, find out the going rate for your area and price yourself out accordingly. And get thee familiar with Macintosh hardware and software, it can only increase your business (and it's not hard to learn).

Personally I top-quote or bottom-quote depending on the circumstances. When I bottom-quote/top-post, it's because my message can stand on it's own without the quote, and the quote itself is there only as a convenient reminder of what came previously. Top-quote/bottom-post, which I normally do, is only useful when the quote can be cut down to a brief, pertinent point -- otherwise the reply gets lost way down the bottom of the scrolling window.

http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html - I don't see that as being a definite *always* top-quote.

If it's a long email/news posting I prefer to intersperse my words with the quote. Then you can see the context of what I'm writing.
It gets really annoying when reading newsgrops on google ( http://groups.google.com/ ) and you have loads of top quote and then only a few lines of me too at the bottom (after clicking to read the rest of this message).

Is there a special circle of hell for people who get daily digests, respond to one of the messages and then leave the rest of the digest appended to their response, untrimmed? If you are yourself a digest reader, it makes the whole thing pure-D impossible to read.

Lil, you just nailed my pet peeve. Add to including the whole digest the attachments that come through as encoded text and the outlook messages that get mangled by listserv but don't include a plain-text version and the reply to the reply to the digest that includes the digest reply TWICE!!! and on top of that I tend to read lists in digest form so I get an ENTIRE DIGEST full of the above!!!

<-- goes into emergency calming mode

w00t!

marvthegrate.org and marvthegrate.com are both up and running!

now I just need to populate my server with some content, not just my /pics directory.

Nice goo color, Marv.

that was quite intentional. When I get around to actually populating my swerver with something interesting it will be all goo all teh time.

Well, I finally got myself a new computer - a notebook: HP Pavilion R3200 or some such (at w*rk currently, can't check) with Windows XP and loads of programs installed.

I had a look in the task manager, and whoa! 38 processes running!

I tried the Windows help, but it only tells you how to *add* to your start up, and not how to remove things from the start up (and when I had a look in the folders you are supposed to add to, they were empty - and yes, I checked that I had the 'show hidden files' marked).

So a bit of help would really be appreciated.

Things I'd like to get rid of, but haven't figured out how to:

1) msmsgs.exe

As I understand it, this is something called Windows Messenger. I found a page on the net saying 'go to control panel, add/remove programs, add/remove windows components, uncheck the box for messenger'.

The box is unchecked, but I still see msmsgs.exe every time I start the computer. This is nothing I ever intend to use, so I'd like to kill it, permanently, with as little damage as possible. How?

2) iPodservice.exe and iTunesHelper.exe

I will probably be needing these in the future, since I've just ordered an iPod Mini - but I don't want them to start up automatically. However, I need to know where to find them/how to start them running once I have need of them.

3) Norton Anti-Virus

Several of the exe-files seem to belong to NAV, but I don't really see the point in NAV running when I'm not connected to the net and when all I want to do is play a game or another.

I've got the auto-protection disabled, but something is definitely running in the background and has interrupted me in the middle of a game more than once! Such as 'warning! your virus definitions have not been updated' or a scheduled virus search.

Same as number 2 - I don't want it to start automatically, but I want it to be easy to find and start manually.

Oh, the joy of having enough hard drive space to be able to just install one game after another without having to worry about how much space it will take up!

*currently playing Neverwinter Nights and The Return of the King*

T, they're probably started as 'services' - background processes that start (or don't depending) when the computer starts up. To find them go into the control panel and the Administrative tools. In there is a program to check what services are running and to turn them off or to turn them to manual startup.

Ti,

To get msmsgs out of there, there are 3 things you can do.

1) Completely uninstall the MSN messenger using Add/Remove programs.

2) You can also open it up click Tools, select Options, go to General tab. Deselect the "Automatically run messenger" box.

3) Click start then run. Type in Services.msc. Look for Messenger and double click it. Set the startup type to disabled.

Note that # 3 is really just a security measure that disables the Windows Messenger not the MSN Messenger.

For the iPodservice.exe and iTunesHelper.exe, there should be options in the ipod software to disable the automatic startup.

Where Norton Anti-Virus is concerned, unless you have another AV installed that you are using as primary, I would not turn it off.

Titania, there's a program called msconfig.exe that will allow you to disable startup programs. Just go to Start -> Run and type msconfig in the window.

There are a few apps on my machine that high-handedly take it on themselves to install start-up programs that check for updates to themselves. HP printers do that. Pisses me off.

msmsgr and msn messenger are two different programs. Definately turn it off however.

Lil, that will work for a lot of programs, it will not work for the MSN messenger though (found this out first hand).

Can someone tell me what rundll32 does and why it wants to contact the net at startup?