The NR How To Thread...

[shayo4real]

Originally Posted by Chxta

Winrar

...izzz a lie....

thank u much dear...
will check it out...hope it works...(be preapared for more questions o !!!)....

[Chxta]

Nothing much to say...

[Chxta]

Most of the time, when you download something it's a file archive of some kind - usually a tarball or a zip file. This could be some source code for an app that isn't included in Gentoo's Portage tree, some documentation for an internal corporate app, or even something as mundane as a new WordPress installation.

The traditional way of downloading and untarring something in the terminal would be something like this:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

tar xvzf latest.tar.gz

rm latest.tar.gz

Or perhaps the more compact form:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz && tar xvzf latest.tar.gz && rm latest.tar.gz

Either way is a bit clumsy. This is a very simple operation, a powerful shell like bash should allow such a task to be performed in a more "slick" manner.

Well, thanks to a useful little command "curl", we can actually accomplish the mess above in just one piped statement:

curl http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz | tar xvz

No temporary files to get rid of, no messing around with ampersands. In short, a highly compact, efficient command. In fact, from a theoretical standpoint, the curl method can be faster than the concatenated wget/tar/rm mess since stdout piping will use RAM as a buffer if possible, whereas wget and tar (with the -f switch) must read/write directly from a disk.

Incidentally, tar with the -v option (the way we're using it in all the above examples) prints each file name to stdout as each is untarred. This can get in the way of curl's nice, ncurses output showing download status. We can silence tar by invoking it without -v thusly:

curl http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz | tar xz

And that's all there is to it!

[OluwaMeki]

Originally Posted by shayo4real

...izzz a lie....

thank u much dear...
will check it out...hope it works...(be preapared for more questions o !!!)....

hey bebe!

[Chxta]

Just switch to Linux.

[Chxta]

Just lately it seems to be the fashion amongst writers on the internet to compare and criticise operating systems. While one user talks up the merits of Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista on her blog, another is quick to criticise Ubuntu’s lack of user friendly features and available software. In this article I am here to sing the praises of the old dog Windows XP. Once the all singing all dancing multimedia darling, XP is now the older brother of the much younger and trendier Windows Vista. While Vista can be the life and soul of the party, it is still very much a problem child for many users who are frustrated with incompatibilities, poor driver support and degraded performance in multimedia applications and games. If, like me, your Vista experience wasn't all you hoped it would be, read on as we take another look at Windows XP and find that you really can teach an old dog some new tricks.

Security

One of the biggest shocks long time Windows users had to face when upgrading to Vista was the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls. Microsoft's answer to the problem of rampant malware on Windows machines was a barrage of security checks which can quickly become daunting. While emulating this feature might seem like a bad idea, UAC is a partial solution to a very sticky problem and the alternative, allowing malware to continue to spread unhindered, is not really an option. Although you can't have Vista style user account control under XP, there are a number of alternatives. An aggressive firewall product such as Outpost firewall not only monitors internet traffic but also alerts you when programs misbehave or perform potentially dangerous operations. Outpost costs $39.95 per year and includes a regularly updated spyware scanner.

Sudown is similar to UAC and allows you to temporarily elevate the privileges on a limited account to that of an administrator account in order to run programs such as installers. Sudown is less intrusive than UAC but arguably less secure and less complete (you may find that you still have to log into the administrators account under some conditions). Sudown is a free utility and is available from sourceforge.

Windows Explorer

Windows explorer featured several significant upgrades in Vista. Handling of photographs and multimedia files was improved and search was fully integrated. “Breadcrumbs” were introduced, this is a somewhat bizarre name Microsoft gave to their new windows explorer extension that allows for convenient browsing between directories and subdirectories.

While you cannot reproduce the Windows Vista explorer completely, you can actually go one better. Directory Opus is the most powerful file manager/explorer on the planet and works extremely well with Windows XP. If a little intimidating at first, most users will quickly learn to appreciate the power and flexibility this utility offers. Surpassing Vista’s new Windows Explorer in almost every department and with powerful photo/multimedia features, Directory Opus really is worth the learning curve and there are many comprehensive tutorials available on the internet to help ease new users in. Directory Opus costs around $70 per licence. If you want to learn more about this superb utility then start here.

Search

Windows Vista’s integrated desktop search is one of my favourite new features in the operating system. Here, XP lags a little behind its younger sibling but it isn’t an entirely lost cause. Many users do not realise, but Microsoft Desktop Search is also available for free for Windows XP. While it lacks the slick integration with Windows Explorer, it is still a powerful tool. You can download Desktop Search for XP here.

Looking to really get organised? Desktop search is good, but many of us have piles of CD-R or DVD-R disks kicking around our workplaces. Wouldn't it be great if there was something that could neatly catalogue all those files too? Well, there is. The aptly named “WhereIsIt?” is able to neatly organise and catalogue not only files on your hard disk but files stashed away on removable disks too. WhereIsIt? Is shareware, with the full version costing $39.95 per licence. Enter “WhereIsIt” into Google to find out more.

Look and Feel

For those systems able to run it, the new Aero interface in Windows Vista is both fast and beautiful. By comparison, the blues and creams of Windows XP look distinctly last generation. Of course, beauty is only skin deep and what really matters is functionality. That said, a little more eye candy obviously appeals to a lot of people, since numerous web-sites and utilities have sprung up for Windows XP with the sole aim of making the operating system look better. The pinnacle of these utilities is the Object Desktop suite from Stardock. With a few clicks you can instantly transform your XP desktops look and feel into any of hundreds of visual styles available for download from Stardock’s website. Want Aero-like special effects on Windows XP? Object Desktop Window FX can do them and you can even customise exactly which visual effects to use. Want two start menus? No problem, with Objectbar you can do that too. Want Windows Dreamscene animated wallpapers? Well sorry, you are out of luck this time. The price for all this desktop pimping? $49.95. To find out more, or download a trial version, enter object desktop into Google. All this talk of desktop enhancements brings us nicely on to:-

Sidebar and Widgets

Windows Vista comes with it’s own sidebar with detachable widgets, but sidebars and widgets are old news in Windows (and indeed in most other modern operating systems too). My favourite XP sidebar is the somewhat unoriginally named “Desktop Sidebar”. This sidebar is highly configurable, uncluttered and includes the best RSS news reader/ticker out of all the sidebars and widgets I have ever tried. In fact I even run Desktop Sidebar in preference to Vistas own sidebar on my Windows Vista installation. Google search for “desktop sidebar” to find out more.

If widgets are you thing then there are currently several competing standards. The Open Widget Engine is gaining momentum slowly, with the aim of one day uniting the efforts of widget makers across the world. Until that day comes, you can choose between Google Desktop, Desktop X and Yahoo Widgets. Desktop X is a powerful widget engine that is included as part of the Object Desktop suite that I mentioned in the Look and Feel section. Yahoo and Google’s respective offerings are free and hence much more popular. Yahoo widgets probably includes the best selection of widgets out of all the widget engines available. Again, do a quick Google search on the program that interests you the most to find out more.

Media Centre

Windows XP media centre edition has been around for a while now, but an upgrade to Vista Ultimate or Home Premium will give you full media centre capabilities included in the price. If you are using vanilla XP home or Professional and you want media centre capabilities, they are available for free in the shape of Media Portal, an open source and highly configurable media centre application. Also free and worth a look (at least if you are American) is Yahoo Go For TV. Based on Meedio, which was one of the best commercial media centre products for Windows, Go For TV seems to have been left to stagnate since Yahoo took control. Nevertheless there are already a wide range of plug-ins and accessories available for it that were previously developed for Meedio. Bizarrely, Yahoo currently insists on locking out all users outside of the United States, so if you live elsewhere in the world, give this one a miss. Set Google hunting for “media portal” or “Yahoo Go for TV” to find out more.

Games and Direct X 10

As any PC gamer will tell you, XP is (at the time of writing) the best operating system for games. With Vista, Microsoft introduced DirectX10 and made it Vista only. A number of breathtaking DirectX 10 games are regularly plastered over the preview pages on major PC gaming websites and magazines. To date however, aside from a few update patches for older games, Microsoft’s cutting edge games for DirectX10/Vista basically consist of Shadowrun (an above average multiplayer FPS) and Halo 2 (A conversion of an old Xbox game). Re-hashing a previous generation console title to demonstrate your bleeding edge graphics technology must have made sense to someone in Microsoft but it makes little sense to gamers assessing if an upgrade to Vista is worth their money, especially in light of the performance handicap or crippled sound that some games exhibit under Vista. However, like every new gaming platform, fast forward to Christmas and XP gamers can expect to be enviously eyeing up the new Vista only games starting to appear. If you are hoping that I’m going to tell you now some way of getting DirectX 10 to work on Vista, you are going to be disappointed. A company called Falling Leaf systems claims to be working on some sort of project that would accomplish this feat, but they still have a lot to prove especially considering early versions struggled to run the most basic of DirectX 10 demo code. Unfortunately, it looks like DirectX 10 is one trick that XP isn’t going to be performing any time soon, if ever.

[jaces]

Please, does anyone know how I can copy shared music from itunes?

[Chxta]

Change your avatar then we will consider responding.

[jaces]

Originally Posted by Chxta

Change your avatar then we will consider responding.

If you do not want to do it, just say so...My avatar has nothing to do with what I asked for.

[Chxta]

Your avatar gives me the creeps.

[maestro]

"A BitTorrent client is any program which implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. A peer is any computer running an instance of a client.

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a "torrent." This is a small file which contains metadata about the files to be shared, and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file." Source
This is like the most powerful and reliable file sharing medium. I see people starting threads asking to be hooked up with this or that. YOU CAN DO THIS YOURSELF!!!. And that is the essence of this post. Using torrents. You can get stuff from movies to software, as long as your ISP hasn't blocked torrents.

1.Download a torrent client, I recommend utorrent, because its what I use. Its light(170KB), you dont need to install it, it can run from a memory stick

2.Download a torrent file. This is a very small file that contains information to the location of the stuff you want to download. It is very easy to get. you can use google, and use search strings like burning train+torrent(replace burning train with the stuff you want to download) OR you can check any of the torrent search engines e.g http://torrentspy.com, http://demonoid.com (u can google for a more comprehensive list)

3. Open the downloaded torrent file with Utorrent (right click on the file and choose open with).

4. Set the directory(folder) you want the download to (see screen cap below)

5. Just click ok and you are on your way to bliss

[Chxta]

Windows is well-known for having driver and .dll conflicts, as well as all sorts of software that causes problems with your computer. Luckily there's a System restore feature that can return your computer back to a known working configuration, as long as you've created a restore point.

Note that some software installations will create restore points automatically, but you should run it manually before installing any questionable applications. (Or better yet, don't install questionable applications!)

Creating a Restore Point Manually

To create a Restore Point click on Start \ programs\ Accessories \ System Tools \ System Restore, and you'll be given a wizard screen.



Click on "Create a restore point" and then click the Next button. You'll be brought to a screen where you can type in a description for your restore point. Use something memorable if possible.



Once your restore point is created (which might take a while), you will get a confirmation screen.



All done creating the restore point!

Restoring from a Restore Point

To restore from a previously created restore point, open System Restore the same as above, but this time we'll select "Restore my computer to an earlier time". Note that System Restore is going to reboot your computer in order to restore.



Click the next button, and you'll be shown a calendar with bolded dates wherever there is a restore point. Click on the date, and then click a restore point in the right hand side.



You'll get a confirmation screen asking if you really want to do this. We'll assume that there's a problem requiring you to restore, so go ahead.



Your system will reboot and then restore your computer back to the previous configuration.

[OluwaMeki]

some geeky thread....aliya well done oo..keep derepping me for all i care.

[shayo4real]

boda maestro and uncle chaxta you are doing a great service to NR and we appreciate it...
...yall should do one for uploading one of those pqbaum music player thingies....
jus saying....

[Chxta]

I know that this one is of concern to a lot of potential parents out there, so here goes:

The new Parental Controls in Windows Vista will allow you to filter the content your children can view on the web. You could, for instance, block your kids from using MySpace or other similar sites. Before you set this up, you should make sure your child has a non-administrator account so they can't immediately reverse the changes.

Start by opening the Control Panel and select "Set up parental controls for any user" under the "User Accounts and Family Safety" heading.



You could also just type "Parental Controls" into the start menu search box to get there…



Now you should see a list of accounts, so click on your child's account on the list. We'll use Johnny as the child in this example.



Now you will see a screen with a whole bunch of options that we will discuss in future articles. Today we're just trying to filter the web sites.

Under "Parental Controls", click the radio button for "On" to turn on the parental controls. Now click on the "Windows Vista Web Filter" to take us to the next screen.



Now you'll want to check the "Block some websites or content" radio button, and now you have a choice… You can check the box for "Only allow websites which are on the allow list", which means you'll have to add each site you are ok with to the list of allowed sites. We'll choose that for this example.



Click the link for "Edit the Allow and block list" to take us to the next screen, which will allow us to specifically block or allow certain sites.

Enter in the website address of the sites you want to block or allow, and then click the Allow or Block button accordingly. Note that if you checked the "Only allow websites which are on the allow list" that you don't have to add anything to the blocked list, as everything will be blocked by default.



Now when "Johnny" tries to go to MySpace.com he is greeted with the Parental Control screen.



Editor's note: Don't use these features as a substitute for watching what your kids are doing… kids are smart, and could find a way to get around these filters by installing another browser or using one of the many open proxies on the internet.