Off-Topic Questions Thread - closed. Open new threads for specific questions please.

[Rule One]

My brother's laptop has got a virus. He got an e-mail the other day that said it was about problems delivering a package. As he had been expecting a package to arrive he opened the e-mail and its attachment. He realised that he had made a mistake immediately and ran Norton etc. He thought that he got rid of whatever it was but this morning the printer began printing out huge amounts of porn. Does anyone know what virus may be responsible and how to get rid of it?

 

Try this: Hitman Pro

 

I've used on some right nasty bastards and its always seen me right. Do take care in reading the instructions first though!

[Loki]

Most of the stuff I download isn't .rar any more anyway, it's just wrestling that's still holding onto that anachronism. Wrestling rips are always the ones in stupid video codecs too. Something about wrestling attracts the geekiest of geeks I guess.

[patiirc]

A few questions.

 

1. What are people's daily commutes to work like time wise? I've had two placement offers thus far, but have declined them due to travel (And I was torn whether I should as I felt I should take them anyway). It's not distance that is the issue, the placements are only 6 miles away. The travelling however is horrendous equating to a 1h 30 minute commute by bus to get there. It's a 20 min walk to the bus station, 50mins-1hr bus journey as it goes all round The Wrekin and then another 10-20 minutes walk the other side. (By train is 30min walk, 10 minute train journey and and then another 30 minutes walk the other side)

 

I guess I want to know if I'm being over cautious, too expectant or not? I could commute to Bolton, Blackburn and be in Salford/Manchester by train just about given that time table and have a larger net of places where I'm able to work.

 

 

2. Men's trousers. I'm trying to get some work clobber, but am having a torrid time getting any trousers to fit. I've put on weight being off and inactive, but that isn't the issue. The space in the 'bucket' is too constricting and the leg width make it look like Im wearing pantaloons/ harem pants. They look ridiculous when I've been trying them on. I've got a very high waist, so tend to wear trousers and jeans on my hips. Even if I pull the trousers up to my waist the legs still look awful. Any ideas as to what cut I should be looking at or shops I should seek out? I'm a 40/42 waist trouser at present (not happy about that and it will change!) if that helps any.

 

Cheers

[Chest Rockwell]

Right, and what do you suggest instead of .rar, Pitcos?

Uploading a video without splitting it into fifty chunks that it then has to be extracted from.

 

But you can't rebuild a single segment with parity bits doing it that way, or just redownload that segment, you'd have to redownload the entire video again you bandwidth hungry fiend.

 

Do you do that a lot? I've never done that. I wouldn't even know where to find parity bits from or how to rebuild a file even if I did.

 

 

Most of the stuff I download isn't .rar any more anyway, it's just wrestling that's still holding onto that anachronism...

 

It depends where you're downloading from. "Scene" (ugh!) release are mostly still in RAR format originally for pretty much everything (films, DVD rips, games, donkey pr0n) because of its efficiency and that large single binary files shouldn't be posted on newsgroups.

 

Everyone is always talking about how newsgroups and shit are the best way to download stuff and that torrents are for suckers. Well, I'm a sucker. Could you give me an idiots guide for getting into this shit please?

 

the best thing I've found is typing in what I'm trying to find on filestube or just putting in the word 'blogspot' after whatever I'm looking for in the search term. It's hit and miss and a bit of a pain in the ass.

 

Other than that I use torrents for TV and films cos it's very easy.

 

 

 

Edit: In response to pat's question - 6 miles is not far. I take it you don't have a car.. Is cycling out of the question with your back issues? An hour and a half is not that bad though. I wouldn't do it for a shit paying job, but an awful lot of people do that and longer on a daily basis.

 

As far as the trousers go I can only offer that you should continue not to wear them on your waist because it looks stupid.

[chokeout]

A few questions.

 

1. What are people's daily commutes to work like time wise? I've had two placement offers thus far, but have declined them due to travel (And I was torn whether I should as I felt I should take them anyway). It's not distance that is the issue, the placements are only 6 miles away. The travelling however is horrendous equating to a 1h 30 minute commute by bus to get there. It's a 20 min walk to the bus station, 50mins-1hr bus journey as it goes all round The Wrekin and then another 10-20 minutes walk the other side. (By train is 30min walk, 10 minute train journey and and then another 30 minutes walk the other side)

 

I guess I want to know if I'm being over cautious, too expectant or not? I could commute to Bolton, Blackburn and be in Salford/Manchester by train just about given that time table and have a larger net of places where I'm able to work.

 

Cheers

 

My commute to work now I've moved is 5 minutes walk (which means i'm always late for work because im a lazy bastard and cant be bothered getting out of bed), before that it was a 30 minute bike ride. When I used to work for the premiership on a match day my commute could be anything up to 8 hours each way (My record was taxi to train station, 3 trains from Preston to Portsmouth, taxi to the stadium, then back again, 8 hours each way door to door before i've even done any work. For a daily commute i'd say 90min is about the maximum i'd do

[King Pitcos]

Right, and what do you suggest instead of .rar, Pitcos?

Uploading a video without splitting it into fifty chunks that it then has to be extracted from.

 

But you can't rebuild a single segment with parity bits doing it that way, or just redownload that segment, you'd have to redownload the entire video again you bandwidth hungry fiend.

 

What would be the cause of someone having to do either thing? I can vaguely remember having to do that once or twice in about 2004, but surely it's only ever necessitated by the uploader being too thick to .rar it properly in the first place?

 

 

Anyway, new question:

 

Tried to log in to Hotmail this morning and got the "you have tried to log in too many times with the incorrect password" message, with a CAPTCHA. I did that, and it still said wrong wrong wrong. I tried to sign into Messenger and that said wrong password as well. I reset the password via the security question, but it still didn't let me sign in with the new one. I logged in on the Mac then, and that worked. There's no evidence in the account of any tampering, nothing in sent messages etc (though that could've been deleted by anyone who had been in, of course). So do you reckon someone's actually hacked it, or just tried loads of passwords and that's why it got locked and Messenger said the password was wrong? I was also using a VPN/Proxy thing on the PC, which probably didn't help.

[LaGoosh]

A few questions.

 

1. What are people's daily commutes to work like time wise?

 

20 minute walk to the train station, 15 minute train journey to Clapham Junction, change to the London Waterloo train, takes another 5 minutes, then a 5 minute walk to work. Usually takes 45mins-1 hour. It's quite tame really. i know of quite few people who work in London that have 90 minute to 2 hour commutes each day.

[GlennCullen]

A few questions.

 

1. What are people's daily commutes to work like time wise?

 

20 minute walk to the train station, 15 minute train journey to Clapham Junction, change to the London Waterloo train, takes another 5 minutes, then a 5 minute walk to work. Usually takes 45mins-1 hour. It's quite tame really. i know of quite few people who work in London that have 90 minute to 2 hour commutes each day.

 

That'll be me. Spend 3 hours 45mins commuting every day. Leave the house at 530 and get in around 8.

[patiirc]

Cheers for the answers thus far regarding commutes. As said no problem going for a longer commute if distances are larger, just the hour and half to do 6 miles thing was a bit nuts. To whoever asked. I do have a car, but it is shared with the ex, and she needs it for her job. As she pays most of the bills for it,sco it would only be available when she isnt at work or working from home. As for cycling, I will wait until my stamina is up a bit, I've not got a bike currently either. But would be a good way of getting fit to boot so will look at that depending where I get a placement.

 

The latest offer is bang on a bus route and is about an hour commute, will have a chat with the manager on Monday and then get a monthly bus pass effort for 30 quid or so if they want me for the placement. It's a year contract so will be great stuff if it comes off.

 

Finally getting my life back together yay!

[NEWM]

Holy fuck, some of these commutes sound brutal. Is that actually a tiny bit of a positive of not living in London or something? Or is the Sunderland/Newcastle area just really well tied up in Metro's, busses and the like and I've just been lucky?

 

I've got a lush 30 minute stroll to and from work these days, but even when I worked north of Newcastle, travelling up there on the Metro was about 50 mins/1 hr tops, with no changes, and it was virtually door to door for metro stops getting on and off. Most people I know that use the metro daily piss and moan about the service, but I always thought it was pretty great and pretty far reaching in terms of where it stopped, and it sounds especially tough compared to some of the ones mentioned above. 5:30am to 8pm, in particular, must be tough going on a day to day basis. I bet you fly through books.

[GlennCullen]

Holy fuck, some of these commutes sound brutal. Is that actually a tiny bit of a positive of not living in London or something? Or is the Sunderland/Newcastle area just really well tied up in Metro's, busses and the like and I've just been lucky?

 

I've got a lush 30 minute stroll to and from work these days, but even when I worked north of Newcastle, travelling up there on the Metro was about 50 mins/1 hr tops, with no changes, and it was virtually door to door for metro stops getting on and off. Most people I know that use the metro daily piss and moan about the service, but I always thought it was pretty great and pretty far reaching in terms of where it stopped, and it sounds especially tough compared to some of the ones mentioned above. 5:30am to 8pm, in particular, must be tough going on a day to day basis. I bet you fly through books.

 

I won't be doing it forever, but if its what I need to do to establish myself at the start of my career than it is what it is. You are right though, my kindle library takes a battering. The upside is I'm a right productive bastard on my days off as I can't sleep past 7, and even then I feel like I've had a nice lie in.

[SiMania]

20 minutes drive to the office if I go in.

20 seconds from bed to the couch if I work from home.

[Ghostface1982]

Right, and what do you suggest instead of .rar, Pitcos?

Uploading a video without splitting it into fifty chunks that it then has to be extracted from.

 

But you can't rebuild a single segment with parity bits doing it that way, or just redownload that segment, you'd have to redownload the entire video again you bandwidth hungry fiend.

 

What would be the cause of someone having to do either thing? I can vaguely remember having to do that once or twice in about 2004, but surely it's only ever necessitated by the uploader being too thick to .rar it properly in the first place?

It's one of the problems of downloading things from newsgroups. Some parts get corrupt or end up being removed from the server. Usually the .par files are bundled with the download though and some programs do the repairing and extracting for you anyway.

[Halitosis Romantic]

My commute is pretty sweet, and I can vary it - if I'm up early enough to get out by 0700 (I start at 0800), I can get the bus downtown, and then switch to crosstown in Chinatown. If I'm up at the normal time, and have to rush out at 0725, I can get the slower subway to practically my office door, 35 minutes door to door, or the fast one and have a five minute walk further on the way to the train, and five minutes from the train.

[Forrest]

I can take 1 of 2 commutes:

 

Train - 20 minute walk to train station, 20/25 minute train journey to Partick, then a 5 minute journey to High Street and a 5/10 minute walk.

Bus - 25/30 minute bus journey, followed by a 15 minute walk.

 

Trains are every half hour, so I need to leave an hour and a half before work to make it comfortably, but buses are more regular. Train is cheaper, but a bus takes me straight to my front door, so both have positives.