03/07/07 Wed Nite KH Computer Help Desk Chatroom Summary

[mommalina]

03/07/07 Wed Nite KH Computer Help Desk Chatroom Summary


We had a full house last night, as did other computer chatrooms. We
placed 4th in rooms most of the night. Visitor armadillo115nc and I
closed the room at about 11:40 pm.

Vivienne's absence disappointed us and crushed Lawrence.....all he talked
about all night was Linux ........... a poor substitute for Vivienne, but hey, it
keeps him animated! (Just kidding. Lawrence's computer expertise and
participation always embrace Windows as well as Linux. And he keeps us
up to date on many other subjects).

Vivienne, we send you prayers and/or positive thoughts from us all for a
successful surgical outcome and recuperation for your elderly
mother-in-law. Take good care of yourself so you can weather this storm.
:grouphug:

Doug, we missed your wry sense of humor to supplement Dan's. You two
can make our day--I mean evening. Fortunately, N3 managed to fill the gap
last night.

Tony and Pete, we missed your input!



WHO WAS THERE

KH Members - Lina, Lawrence, Fred, Elliot, Dan, Photolady, Rich,
Annie, Pi, Rob (kern), Al, N3, Billy.

Visitors Who Chimed In - armadillo115nc, MacGyver3944, myhdissata
(14-year old wonder), Lexicon 7, Bye Bye Blue, Huywer, CheapHeat1998
(he flashed by, posting an url no one dared to try!).



COMPUTER-RELATED DISCUSSIONS

*VISTA

Al mentioned that Nod32 now works with Vista--but Fred said that
was news to him! (Fred is an Authorized NOD32 Antivirus Reseller.)

Rich sounds like he's in love with Vista.......he has it tamed, thinks the
graphics are great! .. ;)

Photolady received notification Vista shipment will be there soon.
AAAAHH....anticipation!

Rich told her she'll have fun, and then no fun -- printers are the biggest
nightmare, but Epson is okay. Photolady already has the driver for her
Epson, and it's now installed on her last Vista beta.

You will never turn Photolady's head to other operating systems. She loves
Windows, XP and Vista!


*LINUX

Elliot just received Puppy Linux in the mail. Good luck!

Lawrence mentioned VECTOR LINUX LIVE VL5.8-STD-LIVE-BERYL-
B4.ISO and explained that "live" means run from a CD .. :doh: .. (I can ask
the dumbest questions!)

Beryl is on the New Vector linux live distro just released. (beta4)

Visitor armadillo115nc has Beryl 3d on a Mepis, but he doesn't boot into it.
All that eye candy annoys him! He likes his desktops simple, doesn't like
pop-up tool tips or any of that stuff. He thinks Linux is so easy to
customize. He doesn't use multiple desktops; he may have 20 browser
windows open. But Lawrence uses the multiple desktops constantly. (See,
even in Linux, there is room for different strokes for different folks.)

Linux innovations include new widgets, detecting gadgets, automatic
instead of manual configuration, and new Rescue CD to rescue Windows
(and Lawrence assured me that Bill Gates doesn't mind at all!).

Lawrence and young visitor myhdissata had a long discussion
about Knotix 5.1*See EDIT below. It all sounded like rocket
science to me. Sorry if you would have been interested and missed it.


*RETRIEVING PHOTOS FROM A DEAD HARD DRIVE

Three cheers for Rob (kern)!!!! His neighbor's harddrive crapped out, taking
over 5,000 photos from his business with it. He put the hard drive in the
freezer for an hour (Rich recommends 2-4 hours). He booted it up as
slave, but the data was unreadable. Drive is a Maxtor 500gig. Rob had to
use his spare 250gigs to transfer data to.

Rob worked on it while he visited with us in the chatroom, running On Track
data recovery utility as we spoke. He recovered 4403 photos. The rest
looked unrecoverable. He had one 400mb folder of unreadable data. The
guy owes Rob big time!.


*GROUP THERAPY
Everyone pitched in to help visitor Lexicon 7 get his microphone working.
myhdissata did an admirable job walking him through all the steps to get it
working, with some assistance from the posse. When the old fogies (me
included) thought Lexicon 7 left without thanking us, myhdissata was there
to translate "ty my, ill reboot peps. thx 4 helping"!


*FREE STUFF
Everything armadillo115nc runs is free. myhdissata interjected that a
virus is free also. Soooo true!



OTHER TOPICS DISCUSSED

*9/11
Demolition of World Trade Center buildings a conspiracy? Thermite
effect more credible theory.

*HEALTHCARE
If you have a car accident in Australia, yes, an ambulance will take you to
a hospital emergency room. N3 quipped that in the U.S., they fix the car
first! .. :rofl:


Until next week, ciao,

Lina

*EDIT: This should read Knoppix. See comments by Lawrence and
Tortanick in their posts which follow.

[photolady]

Nice summary Lina. I had to leave early because I was tired of having to reboot to get my sound back and missed a lot of the discussions going on via mics. I'm not sure if the problem was Paltalk or my onboard sound, though other sounds are fine. Maybe next week it will be ok.

[Seth]

Sheesh...I gotta' get in on this.

[qldit]

Good Evening All, I must say I was impressed with that young girl that appeared (myhdissata) she certainly is up there with the texchinical stuff.

For some reason or other we did mention this stuff called "thermite" during the session, have a look at this URL http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7231843493488769585

Remember that this stuff is essentially only powdered aluminium and powdered iron mixed together.
A simple experiment can be done by obtaining a bit of fine domestic ordinary steel wool and teasing out a section roughly the size of an egg and lighting it with a match, amazingly it burns on it's own.
Now if another piece of steel wool is teased out into a longer shape, say three inches long and a half inch in diameter and carefully placed on a brick in the clear, then a small amount of aluminium powder or fine filings are sprinkled on one end, when the steel wool is set alight it will smoulder along it's length until the area with the aluminium powder is reached where-upon a thermite reaction will normally happen.
Remember this reaction is impervious to water so anyone trying it should be extremely careful.

This is an incredible process that has effect in a lot of designs, burning aluminium substances in proximity to iron substances often produce thermite type reactions without anyone actually realising or admitting that this happens.
Warship design is a classic example.

Railway tracks are commonly welded using this process, but it has incredibly useful applications in most insitu welding processes.

Thermite applications can also be used underwater or military use as incendiaries.

In a modern passenger aircraft there multiple oxygen generating cannisters buried in the seat backs or overhead areas, these have a supply capactiy for at least 30 minutes each, so we are talking an enormous amount of pure oxygen availability as well, so consideration of multiple effects creates an unimaginable conflagration possibility when all these factors are involved, even without accellerants like kerosene which would then become super accellerants.

I really enjoyed that afternoon Momma, once again you have an excellent report.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[PeteF]

03/07/07 Wed Nite KH Computer Help Desk Chatroom Summary
Tony and Pete, we missed your input!



Hi Lina,
I haven't forgotten about the Wed Nite sessions, it's just that I'm going
through some very difficult times with a parent who lives far away
with dimentia and who also has some people around him that are trying
to get at his assests. It's taking most of my time dealing with all this.
I come to KH Forums from time to time to get my mind off things.

---pete---

[mommalina]

Hi Lina,
I haven't forgotten about the Wed Nite sessions, it's just that I'm going
through some very difficult times with a parent who lives far away
with dimentia and who also has some people around him that are trying
to get at his assests. It's taking most of my time dealing with all this.
I come to KH Forums from time to time to get my mind off things.
---pete---

Been there, paesano! It brings back memories and tons of obscene and
derogatory Napolitano exclamations! Parent was not demented but very
ill and weak and being abused in a nursing home, as financial shenanigans
were being attempted. Was very tempted to hire Tony Soprano to break a
couple of legs. We prevailed, however, without violence. I don't think
that nursing home staff will ever forget me! And neither will the dishonest,
greedy relatives .. :puke:

Hang in there, Pete. I know how difficult it is to deal with this long
distance. Good luck.

Lina

[kern]

*RETRIEVING PHOTOS FROM A DEAD HARD DRIVE
Rob worked on it while he visited with us in the chatroom, running On Track
data recovery utility as we spoke.

Update:
Most of the photos were recovered.
My neighbor now has a brandy new Western Digital 500G harddrive, AND, has been schooled in using Acronis to regularly backup his data!

[qldit]

Hi Lina,
I haven't forgotten about the Wed Nite sessions, it's just that I'm going
through some very difficult times with a parent who lives far away
with dimentia and who also has some people around him that are trying
to get at his assests. It's taking most of my time dealing with all this.
I come to KH Forums from time to time to get my mind off things.

---pete---

Good Evening Pete, many of us have been there, seen that, done that, there are a few hindsight issues that may be worth discussing on the chat in a few spare minutes.
I dealt with it entirely differently to most other people!

(I don't think that excuse is good enough by the way!)

Cheers, Lawrence.

[Tortanick]

(See,
even in Linux, there is room for different strokes for different folks.)

Lina, you do realise you're talking about one of the most customiseible OSs on the planet, it has multiple GUIs, rangeing from more flashy than OSX, to lightweight. Heck it even has lots of different command lines for people who like different syntaxes. even the kernel can be customised in a verity of ways.


Lawrence and young visitor myhdissata had a long discussion
about Knotix 5.1. It all sounded like rocket science to me. Sorry if you
would have been interested and missed it.
Last thing I heard Knotix was dead. Is it back?

[qldit]

Good Morning Tortanick, this young girl that was on the chat would be a good mate for you, but she would definitely need taming!!! (plus several more years in age!)

No the actual system she was asking questions about was Knoppix, I didn't think it needed altering in the report.

By the way did you note the Kanotix fellow went to one camp and has now moved with others to Sidon. They have just released a fresh distro version, it may be worth watching.
Shame about Kanotix, I have it on a couple of machines here and was most impressed with it.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[Tortanick]

Pete, My simpathies, and best of luck.


No the actual system she was asking questions about was Knoppix, I didn't think it needed altering in the report.
Knoppix and Knotix are very diffrent things, the origoanl report should be edited

By the way did you note the Kanotix fellow went to one camp and has now moved with others to Sidon.
Sidux ;)

[qldit]

Good Evening Tortanick, as you would be aware "Kanotix" was an additional variation based on "Knoppix" so I really don't see the point in any editing inasmuch as we have covered the issue here.
You would have to laugh, I was watching a documentry on Lebanon when I wrote that post mentioning "Sidux".

Cheers, qldit.

[Tortanick]

According to Wikipedia Kanotix is based on debian sid with a little knoppix on the side.

[mommalina]

Lawrence wrote:
No the actual system she was asking questions about was Knoppix, I didn't
think it needed altering in the report.
Guys, I still didn't know what you were talking about .. :noidea: .. meant to ask Lawrence,
but forgot. .. :sorry:

Tortanick replied:
Knoppix and Knotix are very diffrent things, the origoanl report should be edited
Thanks, Tortanick! .. :) .. Done!

Lina

[qldit]

Good Morning Tortanick, here is an entry from the Kanotix site............
KANOTIX
2005-04 RELEASE
This is a Linux Live CD based on KNOPPIX technology using mostly pure Debian/sid.

Maybe the wiki is incorrect. So Knoppix uses Debian, and Kanotix is the Daughter.

I actually prefer using Kanotix to using Knoppix, it is a little more polished from my point of view.

Cheers, Lawrence.