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

Oh, I forgot. That chinese thingy that Kasperski spent a whole day getting rid of, IS BACK. This time it says it's a microsoft product, in chinese, and unsigned. But it is the same thing I know it is, I got a gut feeling about it.

It shows two copies at the exact same address. But you cannot see them in a search.

"What is the best way to install windows"

In a virtual machine under Linux?

I taught myself DOS on a commodore 64, I've used it in windows 95, but now everything is different. Format C: will no longer work and if this lot goes down, I will have to format from XP. I did this in February where I found after re-installation a registry full of old values.

So soon to reboot, but first some backup, wait a minute if it has a trojan it might be in a file I backup.

I think it was called assembly 6502 or something, maybe similar and DOS 6 in windows 95.

However, I didn't need to do anything after re-installing IE7, it was using 100% cpu with two copies running.

I then installed IE8, and it's CRAP. What happened to positioning, I've got a second hand on my clock moving all over the page. Generated content works, but what happened to my tables.

Opacity doesn't work and even colours are different. It's too different to be compliant.

In future I'm not even writing for IE, I shall concentrate on the others.

"I think it was called assembly 6502 or something"

6502 Assembler would have worked on a Commodore 64; it used a 6510 CPU which was essentially a 6502 with an onboard PIO and some other I/O. I used to write 6502 on a BBC Micro.

"Opacity doesn't work" - yes it does, the same way it does for other "standards compliant" browsers, using PNGs. IE's transparency extensions no longer work with IE8.

What happened to positioning, maybe it's wrong in all the others. The tables, you don't have to specify width height of cells in the others, they are rendered to fit. Or are tables deprecated now, since nobody uses them apart from engineers and mathematicians.

Maybe you got to learn microsoft developer skills, they downloaded this big thing without my knowledge and installed it on shutdown, with the message do not switch off or unplug your computer as this could cause damage.

Then I find that it is an instructional tool for M$ web development with only a full degree of knowledge in computing as a prerequisite. You only need to know and have developed Polymorphs. The closest I came to that was a C++ template class.

It's just too hard to be fussing at that level and trying to do maths aswell.

So I aint going to bother, I will put a leader on my web page, doesn't work in IE.

My first computer was a commodore 64, I couldn't afford a BBC micro.

I got it because it had a massive memory, dynamic and you could use almost all of it.

The ex wife sold it for a pound. She did that a lot, she tried to sell our brand new car for £1 once and blokes actually turned up demanding I hand it over.

So I got a zx spectrum and wrote a graphics program using optical illusions to make the curves look smooth. I didn't know of Bressenham's curve drawing algorithm, probably wasn't even discovered then.

I even tried to start a business called SoftED writing educational games such as 'Pythagorean Golf'. Alas I couldn't get any financial support with banks poo pooing the idea, since if it was any good it would already be done by professionals.

But now I got this problem, I want to re-direct IE8 users away to a message, same as is done in noframes. Their conditional comments don't seem to work and javascript slows down the download.

Also I have 'reboot.exe' chinese version back again. This is not a windows thing, it was introduced by slack manufacturing security in 2003. Their are two of them at the same address, but you can't see them. Somehow I managed to copy one some time ago, but can't remember how. I need to do it again to send to Kasperski Labs. It can be removed but takes an expert who knows his way around the most basic parts of an operating system.

Yesterday, when backing up to my F drive, as soon as F drive was opened windows tried to load one of those uninstall programs I deleted from my main drive. I wonder if they had a timer on them to uninstall C++ compiler, which is gone anyway.

"So I got a zx spectrum and wrote a graphics program using optical illusions to make the curves look smooth."

Which, of course, because of the block colour attributes, was impossible...

As for the uninstaller firing up, that's not standard Micro$oft behaviour. Let http://housecall.trendmicro.com scan your whole machine, just to be on the safe side.

Incidentally, my first "proper" computer was an Amstrad 464 that was lent to me by a company I was working for, then they "forgot" to ask for it back when they had to let me go. (Sort of unofficial severance pay - the manager of our branch knew I had it, but he just wrote it off from the inventory. ) Three or four years before that I had a six-month loan of a Sharp MZ-80K. I used an Apple ][ in school.

About a year later I swapped it for a BBC "B".

Two years on, I bought an Atari STFM 1024.

During that time I worked on some "Educational" adventure games for the ZX Spectrum 48K, editing all the text on a Sinclair QL with Microdrives.

I was proficient in BASIC, pretty good in 6502, Z80 and 68000 Assembler and OK in FORTH. I also did a (very) little 6809 Assembler on the Dragon 32.

But now my memory is going. I have to have a reference book within reach to do Javascript, which is laughably simple compared to the Assembly lanhuages. I just can't remember the syntax.

Block colour? I wrote a program to show some pixels not sprites, and some others intermittently. A bit like old cinema film. I reckoned if the right frames per second was achieved the eye could be fooled into believing it was looking at a smoother curve.

It was not fantastic but I reckoned better than the chunky look achieved otherwise.

As for free stuff, never had any. People tend to try and take away what I've got rather than give. I would never get a job as a programmer, as I can't follow rules.

When I was at Birmingham a graduate senior programmer/analyst showed me some of the crap they write, this was in COBOL. About 100,000 lines I could write in one line, and mine is absolute, theirs was wrong.

She was also flown out to Malta, to sort out a firms serious problems. All expenses, five star hotel, private plane. Must be really hard problem. She solved it in ten seconds, the plug ought to be in. The power supply was shared, and corrupted power caused the problems.

I could go on for years writing examples, and I've got some corkers, even better.

The only reason I got turned down financially to start my own business, is I am too working class. The educational software wasn't being done at all, not as a game.

You think your memory is bad, mine's worse since being hit on the back of the head by a five ton truck. It knocked 20 points off my IQ at a stroke. I used to be in the top 99.95% in terms of mathematical ability, but could not afford to take job offers down south because I was married with children and accommodation is very expensive. I do not get on with authority, so I became a truck driver and run over.

Now I am fighting to recover some of my ability, by writing a web page about mathematics, and learning some simple programming.

Why do you think Trend micro will find anything more than Kasperski, I have been scanned by OneCare, MacFee, Zone-Alarms, PcCillin, AVG and others, non have reported any problems.

Reboot.exe was copied and sent to microsoft, who said on its own is harmless, but is part of a virus introduced in the manufacturing process of some companies in 2003.

Their are two copies of reboot.exe at the same address. These can be seen in RegCure, however, cannot be seen by any other program on my pc. Somehow I managed to copy one of them but can't remember how. The address is not shown now I'm just assuming it's the same as before; 0x0.... all zero's.

"Why do you think Trend micro will find anything more than Kasperski"

Because there are viruses out there that will specifically target anti-virus applications and "patch" them to ignore their activities. "Housecall" downloads into, and runs in, Java so there's no simple way its runtime can get infected.

It's also the most up-to-date virus scanner you can use; IIRC its definition files are reviewed hourly and updated if necessary.

Generally speaking, it can't do much harm, either, so no downside.

Found 1 adware BESTOFFER from amazon, and 1 cookie in 4 hours

IE8 will be fixed, its got a completely new engine I'm told. Don't Panic.

I've taken my web page out of frames, now it doesn't work at all in any IE.

But while I was doing that I had to wait for my server on loopback, because it was busy

How did it manage to be busy?

How were you connecting to it?

127.0.0.1/myfolder

Then I'm puzzled.

I'm obviously to risky to be free from snoops, those that think a disabled old bloke is a risk to the empire.

Or am I suffering from paranoia.

Nothing gets into my system that easy, I just checked out the security flaw test for windows/safari and it didn't get run.

Some chappie has put a dll called schannel on the security site at the Washington Post, and it didn't open notepad. My safari, which actually renders my web page best of all now, downloads to SafariDownloadFiles and not the desktop.

Can you see why I have to set the seconds dot to top:-5px to get it to line up at the top of the face but still inside its parents box.

http://arithmetic.890m.com

again