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A forum for discussion of Crash's retro-style arcade game based on Star Fleet
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Vanessa
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Post by Vanessa »

My Dell XPS M1210 has the same SIM card tray under it's battery compartment as well.I never figured out how to use that tho'... I know what you mean about your Dell, I have similar high regard for mine, especially now it has a Solid State Hard Drive in place of the HDD. It's now blazingly fast!! I'd highly recommend this mod, although it was very kindly fitted for me by someone with vastly higher computing abilities than mine It was Vodafone who I fell out with.When I first got my Laptop, I had a special PCMCIA Card which took a SIM and had a little fold out aerial. It was (I guess) a fore-runner to the now plentiful USB dongles that one can get for mobile broadband.I had an account with Vodafone and could get high-speed HSDPA internet access before it was readily available on the high street.It was £50 per month but that was for supposed "unlimited" access. Suffice it to say that this was total BS, and I got a bill of over £500 in one month for usage. This was totally wrong and I refused to pay it, but Vodafone had a ridiculously unhelpful and inefficient customer telephone helpline and they would not sort the bill out. Instead I got a CCJ lodged against me for non-payment So I settled this and paid up, Not because I wanted to go back to Vodafone, but because I wanted to clear my credit history.But even though I have a clear credit history now, I remain unable to get any kind of Mobile phone contract/account, regardless of which provider I approach. I can only assume that all the mobile phone companies have some kind of blacklist database that they share with each other, meaning I can get no-where, even though I owe Vodafone nothing.So I'm strictly PAYG God I HATE these corporate monstrosities that walk all over the "little guy", with seeming impunity.So I sympathise with you there Shane.
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Shane
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Post by Shane »

QUOTEI heard from someone on another forum that their grandmother or whatever had been conned into buying a bluray player rather than just a DVD player "because the bluray players were harder for hackers to break into".... WTF??? And these people are for real.That's just terrible! It makes me think about my folks who know very little about modern technology. I'm glad they don't have a computer as I fear they would be scammed in 5 seconds flat. QUOTE had an account with Vodafone and could get high-speed HSDPA internet access before it was readily available on the high street.It was £50 per month but that was for supposed "unlimited" access. Suffice it to say that this was total BS, and I got a bill of over £500 in one month for usage. This was totally wrong and I refused to pay it, but Vodafone had a ridiculously unhelpful and inefficient customer telephone helpline and they would not sort the bill out. Instead I got a CCJ lodged against me for non-payment So I settled this and paid up, Not because I wanted to go back to Vodafone, but because I wanted to clear my credit history.But even though I have a clear credit history now, I remain unable to get any kind of Mobile phone contract/account, regardless of which provider I approach. I can only assume that all the mobile phone companies have some kind of blacklist database that they share with each other, meaning I can get no-where, even though I owe Vodafone nothing.Again, that's quite criminal really and completely out of order of them. I really don't like that these big companies appear to have all the power. I swear their customer service lines are designed to be so stressful that they hope you will just give up. I think that's pretty disgusting that they were basically holding you to ransom over your credit rating though. I agree with you - at least with PAYG there will never be any nasty surprises at the end of a month.
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

Fitting a hard disk to a notebook is like falling off a log. I did it with my other one. It had a much greater capacity but it was a terrible Seagate. The original Seagate was 160GB 7200.2 and it was lovely, quiet and very reliable. The 500GB 7200.4 replacement was a complete bitch and just a shoddy example of engineeering and support.It was actually quite disgraceful for their top-end product to operate like that and with no support or anything. Seagate just denied that a well-known fault existed (funnily enough I had to lift a firmware from Dell's own website to fix it and stop the disk from seizing and generating a barrage of retract-count errors). Even after that it wasn't quite perfect, generated reallocated sectors and the performance was measly for a 7,200 rpm disk.This Dell has two 250GB Western Digitals RAID-0'd together though. So it's pretty pacey. I might upgrade them in the fullness of time but they're nowhere near full. It would be good to have an SSD and a big, low-power 5400rpm HDD and have the best of both but I'm not as dependant on the lappy for storage now as I was in Germany obviously. I'm not sure how the SIM slot works either. I was a bit "oh look, whatever".How did they get a judgment against you without you defending the matter in court?I suppose they threatened court action but ... presumably they never obtained the judgment so at least your credit history wouldn't have been affected.Personally, I would have been tempted to see them in court but county court is always a complete gamble and it's not worth the stress. Take it from me.It might just be £500 but it just swallows your life that way.
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Mach1na
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Post by Mach1na »

You're right Crash. The limit does deter people from hosting whether that be gaming servers or web servers. That's why my clan has a hexicore 1U monster set-up in a local data centre. The upload speed to some extent will be capped to balance the network. Achieved line speeds will always very from user to user based on so many variables. ISPs cannot always detect filesharing especially when its a fully encrypted secure connection. I also agree in relation to HDD. I used to swear by Seagate but since they purchased/merged with Maxtor the quality of their products has taken a nose dive. I had a 2TB 'Green' drive from Seagate and within a year it had started to fail. Luckily for me I saw the symptoms arise before it totally went kaput and I managed to copy it across to a Western Digital Ecogreen 2TB drive. I'm currently running a 240GB Vertex 3 as my OS drive with a 1TB Samsung as the main storage drive. I have a spare 1TB Samsung that I use as a mirror. I've always wanted to try RAID 0 but I'm too cowardly and would want redundancy as well but now I have an SDD I don't need to.



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Crash
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Post by Crash »

THAT is exactly what I said when they purchased Maxtor.I said the quality would probably suffer and it so did. I bought a Barracuda 7200.11 a year earlier and that was DOA.Having said that, I have a 2003 DiamondMax9+ (IDE) and it's still going strong.You can use Speedfan to check your HDDs SMART data every few months. It can take the SMART data online and compare it with other units and give you a proper, human-readable report.This machine came pre-configured with the RAID-0 and I started using it as it was, I was surprised that it came with an OS because I was told it would be blank. I think otherwise I would have turned it off but it does have an effect. It's much snappier than otherwise.I think the machine can do RAID-1 instead as well. It would be strange if it didn't.I was talking to some coder someplace else and he had on his forum sig "real men don't take backups, they just cry a lot". Not sure I subscribe to that. I usually take crap backups and feel bitter a bit afterwards.I always keep utorrent set to force encryption but I think the number of connections, changing port# etc give it away. They can't see what you're getting but they know generally what you're doing. I would think, even if you abused the TOR network for all its worth or use a darknet, they might have a fair idea what you're up to because that usually hides you from the other uses, not the network hardware itself.I got my Barracuda repaired (read: replaced). It's behaved since then and I got a 2TB Sammy F4, which is very good. It seemed the clear best option when I got it. There was a big difference in spec and performance btw Seagate, WD and Sammy 2TB ~5400rpm disks but practically no difference in price.Unfortunately those two drives use both SATA ports on my ancient desky so after these are filled, it's time to move on.



Dream big and bold and daring.
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Vanessa
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Post by Vanessa »

@Crash: QUOTEHow did they get a judgment against you without you defending the matter in court?I suppose they threatened court action but ... presumably they never obtained the judgment so at least your credit history wouldn't have been affected.Personally, I would have been tempted to see them in court but county court is always a complete gamble and it's not worth the stress. Take it from me.It might just be £500 but it just swallows your life that way.I don't know, I just left it all and didn't open the envelopes in the end... Yeah I know that's like burying one's head in the sand, but I was major pi**ed off at the time.Somehow my credit hsitory was affected, because I checked it and saw it for myself. It was then that I decided that it's "just" £500 and so decided to pay it and thence restore my credit worthiness, but I still can't get any mobile phone contracts and this was all sorted 4 years ago...sigh.As you say, it's just not worth the stress
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

Bastards - I can't believe they just make an unsupported claim, file it against you and all the mobile providers corral together to deprive you of a post-paid phone. - Even after you paid it off as well. That's merciless.I might not be around much this week because I have a mini-pupillage in Newcastle at one of their Barristers Chambers there.I'm not too worried. As far as I'm concerned, with the state of barrister trainee recruitment, they have to sell the whole thing to me.Their Barristers course is better than the solicitors but is more expensive and, as present circumstances all conspire together, it's almost a crazy decision to do it.I'm not sure I want to work for a profession, whose regulatory body effectively takes steps to make it impossible for anyone without a truckload of funds and a (probably overconfident,) reckless nature to train and qualify.I read a speech on the subject where they tried to rebadge is as: "we'll just get the most determined, best candidates this way".Another way of looking at it is: "we'll just get the richest, most arrogant candidates this way" because the odds are so slim that academic merit and aptitude has almost nothing to do with it.



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Shane
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Post by Shane »

I've been slowly adding episodic X-Bomber screen-grabs to x-archive.We're now up to Episode 10:http://www.xbomber.co.uk/xarchive/thumb ... =27&page=1
I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
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Crash
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Post by Crash »

I'd noticed that myself - I'm very grateful to you.They're very good as well.If anyone ever needs screenshots of absolutely anything/everything, they can always get them here: http://www.xbomber.co.uk/iv....enGrabsThere are so many that it makes it unwieldy to make a gallery of them.How are you Shane?I was nearly driven to distraction today because I, like 41 out of 65 people on my course are having to resit Contract Law and the University Admissions office wrongly told me today that I couldn't take next year's course (for which they already accepted me) because I was having to use one of my 2 permitted resits in a module that they didn't teach properly.It's taken me all day to get to the bottom of that (which I could have been using to code or revise).It's quite stressful going from "OK, I'm taking a £6,900 course next year" to "OK, I need to find a job for next year instead" then back to "OK, I'm taking a £6,900 course next year" all the space of 6 hours.Absolutely unbelievable. Once I'm actually on this course in September I'm going to cause some trouble for her.
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Shane
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Post by Shane »

Hey Crash,Wow your own screen grab endeavors make mine seem redundant, and I mean really redundant!  I hadn't realised you had all those babies at hand.   I'd actually uploaded my images to help out bladez who wanted an image from each episode for his episode guide on his ace supermarionation site, but I think you've got the screen-grab thang well and truly covered.   On the University front - That sounds like some real tomfoolery going on there fella, it must be very stressful not to know what state of mind to put yourself in - study/work/study.For what it's worth, if you can stay in higher education for another year, it will save you from the absolute jungle that is the job market at the moment.



I like parties, I like fun, I want to live in a hamburger bun!
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