We are very fortunate in having contributors who are willing to share their vast knowledge of the Wonderful World of Computers on this Forum. Rather than bringing their technological expertise into other threads, it would be useful to have the information here.

Recent messages which appeared on the Forum from Alan Turing and Another_Lurker concerning I.T. will follow almost immediately.

You [Doctor Dominum] are very wise to have resisted the upgrading of your computer. In over 40 years working with computers I have come to the conclusion that one should only upgrade when whatever one is using has been superceeded by at least two good later versions. That's why my PC Windows OS of choice is still Windows 98, although I have to work with all versions. Windows 2000 is fine, but Windows XP is rubbish and Vista is a bad joke, hence the 'two good later versions' rule has not yet been met.

A rare occasion where I have to disagree with Another_Lurker:

Windows 98? If you're going back that far, a much better choice would surely be NT4.

Hi Alan Turing. I trust that you did note the [smiley] at the end of the post in question!

Seriously, yes, NT4 is (or was) more secure. However drivers for it are rather rarer than the proverbial hen's teeth, since it was intended entirely for commercial use and 'home' type peripherals are simply not supported, at least not in my experience. IMHO for home use Win2000 gives most if not all of the advantages of NT4 and none of the disadvantages, and the same goes for Win2000 in comparison to the dreadful, bloated and slow XP. Vista I won't even discuss, although I have to support systems running it. It is simply an abortion pretending to be an OS.

Win98 is still my favourite, although realistically I wouldn't recommend it for general use. I have a system which I have been using since 1999 without other than minor repairs and one clone to a new drive when the old one got a bit tired , certainly no complete reloads, despite being used regularly on the web. Contrast that with many of the XP systems I deal with, which seem to fall victim to malware or other problems about every couple of years and need major surgery depite good security software.

Ultimately of course a good knowledge of DOS is all you really need, whatever Windows version you are using - and there's no smiley after that statement!

Research Assistant 2, please accept my apologies for causing you the extra work involved in setting up this thread. I shouldn't really have posted my little essay on OS's. My excuse is that Mr Turing does wind me up something rotten!

I hate to complain, but in transferring the posts you have omitted a vital (or alternatively [smiley]) at the end of the second post in this thread. Vital because of the first line in the 4th post in the thread!

Drivers? As someone who once ran the Alpha RISC version of NT4, I don't need to be told about drivers! (Or software, for that matter, though the incremental code conversion utility did seem to work reasonably well.)

However, I really must take exception to the notion that I spend my time winding Another_Lurker up. After all, he's not made of clockwork, is he?

Hi Alan. Can I take that to mean that in general, and without totally committing yourself, you're more or less agreeing with me about the drivers? How about getting one of those infernal four in one scanner, printer, photocopier, fax units to work on it for instance?

My sincere apologies for the winding up remark. How could I ever have imagined that you'd do such a thing! :

A_L, I was interested in your statement of being involved in computers
for forty years! I was told the early computers were almost house size,
would this be true?
I would be really interested in your answer.

At the Melbourne Museum, we have CSIRAC which was the first computer in Australia and (allegedly) the fourth stored program computer in the world and the oldest surviving computer (it isn't in working order but is mostly complete). We take junior boys on an excursion to the Museum each year and one of the things they look at is CSIRAC. They seem to get a kick out of me telling them that CSIRAC was the first computer I ever saw and how different it is to modern systems (not to mention the fact that I'm old enough that my first computer is in a museum). Truth to tell, my only use of CSIRAC involved carrying things around for one of my lecturers - I would have loved to use it, but they didn't let undergraduates near their new toy.

It's not the size of a house - not quite. More like the size of a mini bus with a grand piano attached to it.

DOC

My Sarah started work in 1978 at the local Water Authority. The computer then was housed, if that's the word, across 3 sides or walls of a large room. That was a Honeywell, and was outsourced from the HQ.

And all the data for analysis had to be input via paper tape; Sarah tells me this was a major leap forward from punch cards, which I assume is what your machine ate?



Steve M

My first introduction to computers was in 1965, on a school trip to a nearby FE establishment which has an Elliot 803 computer. Programs and data were entered using punched tape (five-hole, not eight-hole!) and the programming language used was ALGOL-60. Those of us who felt inspired were invited to write a program for this beast, and I wrote one to work out the first few perfect numbers. Some time later, our maths teacher (who had organised the trip) presented me with two reels of punched tape and a printout.

I can't remember how big the computer was. But in the seventies I saw plenty of commercial systems, and was once presented with an exchangeable hard disk. This was about a foot across, and had maybe eight or nine platters. The disk drive (into which this disk had to be loaded) was about the size of a washing machine. And the capacity of this monster? A whopping 60MB! (No, that's not a typo, I really do mean 60 megabytes.)

Was it Dave Cutler (ex of DEC, so he knew about operating systems) who designed NT? It did actually work properly, though I agree that trying to get peripherals to work with it was not for the faint-hearted,

And as for Vista? It's best trick was when it unilaterally decided to change the screen resolution, and then displayed a dialog box complaining that the chosen resolution didn't match the display hardware! As they say in the S*n, "You couldn't make it up!".

Just noticed -- we're remaining on GMT+1, so those of us in the UK will feel comfortable with the time again as, last weekend, we moved on to Summer Time.

Hi Paul B. I'm no expert before my own time, and not much of an expert even then, because prior to the ubiquitous PC there were a huge variety of computers and I only worked on relatively few of them as an operator or programmer.

It is difficult to define what we'd mean by a house sized computer anyway. After all how big is a house? Do we mean the 60,000 square foot Bill Gates mansion or the just under 100 square foot house in Conwy, North Wales which is reputed to be the smallest in the UK? In any event it is probably better to think bungalows rather than houses. In the days of physically very large computers they usually didn't go up very high, because the components were pretty unreliable and failed at a rapid rate. Height would have made it more difficult to replace any bits that failed.

You'd have to go back before my time to find the really big brutes. In the 1950s and early 1960s there were certainly computers being built which everyone would accept as house sized or even mansion sized. The SAGE computers used in the early 1960s US air defence system weighed 275 tons each with the cabinets containing the components requiring 20,000 square feet of floor space, and that was without space for the operators!

The physically biggest machines I ever worked on, in the early 1970s, were pretty ancient transistor based systems called LEOs. Their distant ancestor had been produced by the Lyons organisation - Joe Lyon's Corner House Restaurant chain, hence the name LEO, for Lyons Electronic Office.

They each sat in their own computer room about 25 metres by 25 metres, with big 7 foot high cabinets stuffed with electronics round the walls on two sides, a bank of 15 tape decks for 12 inch diameter reels of half inch wide magnetic tape on a third side and giant printers along the remaining side. Additional floor space was taken up by the operating console, two types of paper tape readers, four big punched card readers for two sizes of punched cards and storage for tapes, trays of punched cards, reels of paper tape and operating manuals. In theory it needed a team of 7 people to operate each machine, but you were seldom that lucky.

In terms of calculating power they were significantly less powerful than the very old 1·2 GHz PC I'm posting this on, but they had excellent input and output facilities for their day and one of those machines was capable, for short periods at least, of processing the quarterly billing system of a major national utility for half the UK. Computer programs and Billing systems were much simpler in those days!

Of course, I really ought to point out that Bletchley Park is the place to visit. The computing equipment there used valves (= vacuum tubes in the USA) rather than transistors or -- heavens above -- integrated circuits! One of these computers was called "The Bombe", and you can see a picture of it here. In fact I even get a credit for helping to develop this particular computer!

Hi Alan Turing. Elliot 803, what a magnificent computer they were! Programmed one a bit as well. 5 track paper tape, been there, done that. Deadly stuff when you had to bring it straight in from a cold van and read it without letting it acclimatise, used to break and shoot all over the room. Ditto 8 track, but that was slightly stronger! Punched cards were the most fun though. The 80 column variety were fine, but one mistake with the 40 column card reader with its horizontal hoppers and you'd spray cards all over the computer hall - and the input sequence was critical!

Your Winchester disk pack sounds about right The 100 Mb ones I remember were 18 inches across and about 10 inches deep. I can't recall the number of platters or the exact cost, but the latter was certainly some hundreds of pounds! I recall watching with absolute horror as one of my staff carrying two of them rather carelessly fell down the hole where an engineer had removed a floor tile. He shot vertically downwards into the 3 foot deep cable void under the floor but with superb presence of mind whipped his arms up so that the disks didn't hit the floor. Amazingly he wasn't hurt either!

I can live with stuff like the screen resolution bug in Vista that you mention. What drives me mad is the 'Are you sure you want to do that?' followed by 'Are you absolutely sure you want to do that? and so on ad idefinitum, or at least it seems like that! Plus the fact that everything remotely useful to do with non-routine tweaks is buried so deep and is so well protected that you despair of ever hacking your way through to it. Basically it's designed for idiots, and if you're not an idiot (at least, in computer terms ) it's just too painful and frustrating to use. I love the accessories strip though - I'm a sucker for a stylish gimmick.

Hi Mimi. Again, great to have you back! At 19:59 on 6 April 2009 in the 'Childhood dreams' thread you said:

A L your memory is slightly amiss as we once discussed my use of Win 98 and download speed a while back.
My Comp is 9 years old, has never broken down and does all that is required. Its only disadvantage compared to the more modern thngs that often go wrong is its lack of capacity and lack of any memory stick compatability.
Now I have got rid of antivirus software it is up to reasonable internet speed.
I never use comp based e mail and only visit secure sites such as yahoo for mail.

I have to say though that you are slightly mistaken. We did indeed discuss your loading speed difficulties, but at no time did you say that you used Windows 98. My memory is by no means perfect, but had you said that it would have been so unexpected as to be indelibly fixed in my mind, as indeed it now is!

You will find the relevant exchange starting at 00:01 on 11 October 2008 in the 'get real girls were never spanked' thread here where you said:

About time to lock this thread and start a new page as its a sod to load when you have not got broadband.
Its bad enough having to tap into the wires with an extention lead and crocodile clips when you live in the back of yonder.

I responded to you at 02:30 on 11 October 2008 by starting the 'For Mimi - off topic' thread here and subsequent discussion continued in that thread.

There is no mention of Windows 98 in either location.

I am absolutely astounded to find that there is another Windows 98 user on this estimable Forum. I am not though surprised to hear that your system is also going strong after 9 years continuous service. Windows 98 is far more resilient and stable than either XP or Vista. In this respect its only competitors in the Windows line-up are NT4, as discussed above by Alan Turing and Windows 2000.

I have to say though that you are taking a big risk running without anti-virus and anti-malware software, though not such a big risk as you'd be taking if you did that with XP or Vista. Just because nobody targets Windows 98 anymore doesn't mean to say there aren't any nasties still knocking around out there. I've been attacked twice by Trojans here on Network54 that were capable of infecting Win98 if they hadn't been caught. They weren't there for long, presumably found and removed by Network54 staff, but they could have done damage. You also mention:

secure sites such as yahoo

Sadly my response to that has to be ROFL!

I trust you are using a firewall. Even if you are now on broadband and have a router which provides a hardware firewall against most incoming probes you really should have a software firewall to tell you what is trying to call out from your machine!

However, some people are just born lucky, even where computer nasties are concerned, and you may be one of them!

A_L,

You may be able to help me. It's school holidays now and a lot of work is being done in the school cleaning various things out. One potential casualty of this are a number of very old computers - TRS 80s with black and white screens and tape drives - that are kept on shelves in one of our mathematics rooms. The room is used by the school's chess club. These computers are scheduled to be disposed of, and somehow news of this has got to some of my students who have e-mailed me frantically begging me to save these computers. Apparently a number of the chess club members have been plugging them all in during their lunchtimes and playing around with them, writing their own programs and playing around with them generally and are horrified to discover they may be thrown away. They claim - and this is where I'm wondering if they have a point or not, it sounds plausible to me, but saving these computers will probably involve a four hour round trip on my behalf - that they are learning things about programming and computers and logic and planning on these machines that they wouldn't learn as readily on modern computers. Something about being extremely restrained by memory concerns that they can normally ignore, and being able to program at a much more fundamental level of the computers structure than with a modern PC.

I pride myself on being relatively computer literate, but terms like a86, assembler, direct architecture access, are beyond my ability to easily assess for truth (one disadvantage of being able to fake it and make students think you are nearly omniscient, is that soemtimes they seem to expect you to be nearly omniscient!). I don;t want to throw anything out these boys really do find of value - this lunchtime chess (and apparently antique computing) club is highly important to a number of boys who don't have much else going on outside the classroom, but I also don't want to look like a fool to them, who they tricked - and a couple of them would find that funny.

Doctor Dominum, just a passing comment while Another_Lurker takes a well-earned rest!

The remarks made by your students seem quite plausible to me. I once wrote a modified operating system for the Apple II, using the firmware "mini-assembler" provided, and that really was like using machine code as it didn't provide symbolic addressing for the memory locations. It was only slightly better than using hexadecimal numbers throughout! But even using a proper assembler is really quite different from using modern high-level programming languages, for exactly the reasons suggested. In particular, there are no such things as "structured variables" -- records, arrays, etc, or even strings, integers or reals -- you need to build everything yourself using bytes. Nor can you take advantage of the powerful algorithms used in the built-in methods and procedures of object-oriented programming: you have to do everything yourself. It's a wonderful incentive to pursue efficiency and compactness of code.

Hi Doctor Dominum. A tricky one, particularly if there is a possibility, as you suggest, that the boys may be attempting some sort of joke. A joke in very bad taste I'd say, if it involves a 4 hour round trip for you and lugging a number of TRS-80s about. I've never handled one, but machines of that type were not light-weights!

My answer ought really to require knowing what model TRS-80 they are - there are quite a few variants. If they are b&w screens and have cassette tape drives they are most likely to be TRS-80 Model I or Model III, though they could also (I think) be Model 4 (the model number changed from Roman to Arabic). It is unlikely they are model I, because they caused horrific RF interference and you'd probably have had complaints. Most probably basic specification Model III, as the Model III was also available with an integrated disk drive. Unless we go into heavy detail though the model maybe doesn't matter that much.

TRS-80s were one of the early home computers, sold by Radio Shack. I've always known them as Trash-80s, because that is how they were generally referred to in the UK, though not by the suppliers! It was almost an affectionate designation rather than a description of their quality - they had their problems but you won't find many of today's personal computers still functioning after around 25-30 years! It is interesting to reflect on the fact that though I was earning prety well when the TRS-80 came out, I certainly wouldn't have brought one. I can't remember the price, but they weren't cheap!

The TRS-80 used the Zilog Z80 processor, an 8 bit microprocessor which also powered the contemporary (Clive)Sinclair Z80, Z81 and Spectrum computers which were much more popular in the UK, because they were a lot cheaper (you had to buy your own tape drive and use your TV for output, but the Spectrum did have a massive 16 colours!)

You can indeed do some very fun things on Z80 processors - if you are what you describe as 'boys who don't have much else going on outside the classroom'. A very significant phrase! I wasn't a boy when the Z80 was around, but I was an out and out Geek with no real life outside computers. When I wasn't dealing with the operating systems on very big Main Frame computers I was immersed in the fascinating world of the little Z80.

I could probably rummage around now and dig out half a dozen Z80 computers as well as a few based on other microprocessors. Darned if I'd be able to do much with them though except brush up my very rusty BASIC, a computer language, which, in the versions around at the time of the Z80, was reputed to tip you towards madness, and probably did! It allowed the dreaded GOTO instruction, which led to code ilke a very tangled bowl of spaghetti! All the machine code I lovingly absorbed has gone completely. Haven't used anything like it for years, not likely to ever use anything like it again, even in it's grown up version of Assembler.

Now machine code is what your boys are referring to when they talk about:

being extremely restrained by memory concerns that they can normally ignore, and being able to program at a much more fundamental level of the computers structure than with a modern PC.

It involves coding programs (or rather routines, which are then collected together to form programs) at the fundamental hardware level of the computer processor, pushing and pulling bits (the constituents of bytes and the actual O's and 1's that are used as a simile for the way data is handled in a digital computer) backwards and forwards in processor registers and similar exotic actions. It is hugely intellectually demanding because you have to think of everything, but at the same time almost mind-numbing because of the concentration required and the huge amount of effort to achieve even quite small steps in the process There are no friendly Compilers or Interpreters to pick you up and dust you off when you get it wrong, and if you do get it wrong you'll probably have to shut the processor down and reload to recover. Programmers who write in much more useable high-level languages refer to machine code programming as 'bit twiddling'.

In practical terms, if your boys using the TRS-80s aim to stir the linkages in their brains up a bit, which I believe is generally regarded as a good thing, playing with the TRS-80s will be great. It will also give them a much better understanding in general terms of how computers work. People do still program in machine code, but not much if at all on Z80s. However once you've mastered the set of machine code instructions for one processor it is not too difficult to learn another processor. The problem comes with where you'd actually use it. Pretty much high usage bits of mission critical software, specialist peripheral drivers, odd bits of code where extreme execution speed is required. Not a lot of call for it in fact!

If they really crave the machine code experience they could have a slightly more civilised version of it by using an assembler package on a PC. A86 that you mention is an Assembler package. I could certainly use an assembler package on my ancient pentium 3 running Windows 98 but I'm not sure what's available for modern hardware and Vista or even XP. Probably nothing, who would want it! There's more likely to be something available for Linux. It used to be possible to find TRS-80 emulators to run on a PC. In other words turn your x GHz PC into a 1·7 MHz Z80 machine to play on! I'm sure they'll still be around somewhere, but I can't find one at present. Such emulators would be written in Assembler, and like Assembler packeges they probably wouldn't run on modern hardware or modern Windows operating systems. That reminds me, I must dig out my Spectrum Emulator. Last time I ran it was under DOS5 on a PC-XT. I wonder if it will run under windows?

Returning to the TRS-80s. You also need to bear in mind that these are very old computers. They might die of old age any time. I'm surprised that the tape drives haven't given up the ghost long ago. You certainly won't find any spares for them., though you might be able to mix and match to keep a dwindling number going.

I'd have said that your boys would have to be extremely devious to try to trick you on this particular issue. I'm betting that they really have been playing with the computers and enjoying it. However, I'm surprised that you haven't previously heard of it. I know it is a big school but I'd have though it would have been something sufficiently unusual so that rumours would trickle up through boys to the staff. I'd say it is worth saving the computers if there is going to be room for them. If you have doubts, ask the two boys you suspect might be looking for a chance to trick you to email you details of what projects they have undertaken on the machines and what facilities they have used to carry them out. If you post the answers here I'll do my best to advise you if they seem genuine.

Doctor Dominum, Alan Turing has summed the matter up very well indeed, and he seems to have come to the same conclusion as me, though much more elegantly expressed - as normal!

Alan, a splendid post. I become more and more convinced that you know far more about computers than you generally chose to admit. But then you should, with a name like that! Be honest, were (or are) you actually a computer man who did some maths rather than a mathematician who did some computing?

You say:

while Another_Lurker takes a well-earned rest!

Lurkers seldom if ever sleep, though they do sometime go into a brief state of suspended animation at the key board. When you've been an operator on 3 shifts doing lots of weekend overtime, then a system support person on call 24/7 and frequently having to work from Friday evening to Monday morning non-stop you simply don't have a sleep pattern or even a rest pattern any more!

I am, actually, a genuine mathematician (in which subject I have a PhD). I've never taken a computing course in my life. But one learns by playing: indeed my namesake never took a computing course either, because they didn't exist in those days!

Thank you Alan. The PhD explains a great deal, and not just with regard to your Mathematical and Computing input here!

Hi Doc


Congratulations on your promotion.


When I mentioned your "find" to Sarah, she quipped it was like The Lost World & dinosaurs.

And, as we have a PROFESSOR Challenger in that work...........!!

The next practical problem if you keep those is where your erstwhile programmers go next. Probably the Amstrad PC1512, and floppy disc copies of COBOL,FORTRAN & other programming languages.

All of which is also distinctly old hat, BUT is a useful step up in programming per se.

Steve M

Dear A L obviously my mistake about 98 etc.
Yes I had some viscious trojans back in Blighty which is why I installed Norton to remove them.
Since being in Eire I encountered no virus problems for 4 years.
The only problem being Nortons constant uploading of anti virus etc with the consequence of Norton virtually running my computer.
Even starting the thing took ages while Norton checked it all out.
I don't have any personal data on the system or trust on line anything so if anything gets in good luck to it.
Yahoo mails are screened by Norton apparently, so they are doing the work of the ex software?
Its starts and runs perfectly.

Hi Mimi. Yes, to be fair, Yahoo is pretty good on webmail security. I'm not so happy outside webmail though. You are quite right about the personal data. I try not to risk this either. Sadly for most people on-line banking, shopping etc. is one of the things they buy a computer for, and they want to use these and other even more risky facilities.

Generally speaking, IMHO the ultimate secret of keeping a computer reasonably free of the various varieties of nasties is never to allow a male between the ages of 12 and 30 to use it on the web. Every system I clean that has a really spectacular infestation turns out to have been used by such a person. I really can't imagine what sort of sites they visit!

Well, actually I can easily tell. Porn, gambling, gaming, football and social networking! Browser records are very hard to eliminate unless you know what you're doing. Distributors of Trojans etc. are looking for a big and quick return. They are not going to distribute their wares through some obsessive's website dealing with the finer points of croquet hoops and visited by fellow obsessives about 5 times a year. Instead, naturally, they go where the crowds go, especially crowds of young males, whose brains tend to be either inactive or otherwise engaged and who won't notice the often evident symptoms of a malicious upload.

As regards Virus Checkers (which nowadays almost invariably check for a lot more than viruses), they just can't win. They have to download bigger and bigger updates as the number of new nasties each day spirals ever upward. The resulting bandwidth requirement annoys users on slow links. At the same time the increasing number and complexity of things to be checked for means a scan takes longer and longer. Due to the nature of scans even users with powerful machines can find themselves annoyed by this.

The answer is very simple, but in my experience you simply cannot get people to do it for some reason. Schedule the updates and scans for a time when you will be around but are very unlikely to want to use the computer. Meal times, favourite TV programs, or even overnight. Most reputable security software allows this scheduling to be set up. Make sure the computer is switched on at the appropriate time and let nature take its course. You'll still get the odd bit of interference when you are working on the machine, but all the heavy stuff will take place without causing you any major inconvenience.

And the final point to watch. The most common refrain I hear is 'I've got a virus checker, why has this happened?' Well, if it's the 3 month free trial that was on the PC when it was brought 18 months ago the answer should be obvious! However even a current fully updated security suite can't guarantee protection. No suite or individual program covers everything, and none of them can fully protect against new threats that haven't been identified, catalogued and incorporated into updates. Part of the answer is a spread of carefully selected protection to cover more bases.

Ultimately though, the price of liberty is eternal vigilence. Never download something just because a site says that you'll need it to view its contents or recommends that you install it. Never download something just because Google presented it first when you were searching for a particular utility. And most important of all in the download context, never download something just because your mate down the pub recommends it or says it's great. In all cases do some far reaching and comprehensive research first to see if anybody reputable says the download contains malicious content.

Finally, if anything you don't understand, unexpected router or modem activity, sudden hang ups or unexpected screen changes etc., happens while you are entering or in a site bail out quickly, switch your internet connection off and immediately do a full check with all your security software. Sometimes it may pay to do this with the system running in safe mode. In any event the occasional scan in safe mode is a good idea.

Thank you A l common sense wins everytime.
If something dodgy happens I immediatley pull the plug.
The problem is that its difficult ( impossible ? ) to get anti virus for 98.

Hi Mimi. You are absolutely correct, it is quite difficult to get an anti-virus program for Windows 98. I use one of the big name anti-virus suites, but do do so I have to do things such as using the DOS prompt and running the system in Command Prompt Only mode to install updates.

I'm not supposing that you'd wish to do that sort of thing, so if you did want to run anti-virus I'll make another suggestion, avast! Home Edition. If you check on the web I think you'll find that it gets quite a good write up. I use it on a Windows ME system I run, which is also used on the web occasionally. It will actually run on Windows systems from Win 95 up except for 'Server' versions (Windows NT/2000/2003/2008 Server) and is ICSA Labs and Checkmark certified.

For Windows 98 the minimum hardware requirement is a 486 Processor, 32MB RAM and 100MB of free hard disk space. You also need Internet Explorer version 4 or later. It is free to use for non-commercial users. The current version is v4.8

You can download it from CNET here and the avast! Home Edition home page, with links to information about the product is here.

The program interface is, perhaps, a little different compared to most commercial AV programs, but it isn't too bad once you get used to it.

If you decide to try it and need any assistance tell me what the problem is here and I'll try to help.

A L thanks for the information.
Only thing is it will take 3 hours to download! and I bet my connection fails at 2 59

Oh dear Mimi, sorry, I totally forgot your connection speed.

I'll install avast! on a spare machine to remind myself of exactly what the download consists of. If it is a free-standing exe file that installs the program, and not just a downloader that then downloads a stack more stuff before the program is installed I'll stick it on a CD and post here to the effect that I've got it.

You obviously won't want to publish your address here, or indeed anywhere else, but I'll use my email address for that post (I'm sure you know where they appear) and if there's business or a Post Office or similar that would hold it for you for collection you can email it to me and I'll happily send the CD there.

Thanks A L
Its not even just a matter of posting an address as I have not got one!
The posty delivers by name! via a jaunty cart! Its that basic.

In the Teachers Who Paddle thread at 23:07 on 19 April 2009 American Way asked:

BTW can anyone tell me why the Malaysian girls freshly caned palms picture^{Note 1} comes out at times in the thread and other times you have to go to the URL to access it.

Note 1:  See his post at 18:21 on 17 April 2009 in the 'Corporal punishment in Malaysia' thread here.

The reason this happens is that the link that you (or rather Network54 on your behalf) have set up to the picture concerned is an embedded link. Embedded links to pictures on other websites are not a good idea unless you control the website (or at least the pictures) concerned. If you do not have control over the website whose pictures you embed the webmaster of the site concerned can block display of the picture.

The usual reason for doing this is that embedding pictures without permission is regarded by many webmasters as theft of bandwidth. Every time anyone opened the thread concerned in this estimable Forum the picture was automatically downloaded from the blog site, taking 151 kb of that site's bandwidth. A trivial amount you may say, and so it is, but multiply it by 100s or even 1000s, and remember that webmasters have to pay for their bandwidth. In this case, since the embedding worked initially, the webmaster of the blog site has presumably noted the extra bandwith usage, tracked down the cause, and blocked it. It is worth noting that blog sites often operate on strict bandwidth limits and are more likely to take this sort of action.

The correct way to link such an image is using:

<a href="image url">click here to see the image</a>

Thus:

click here to see the image

You may well say what's the difference? In terms of bandwidth, absolutely nothing. In terms of how webmasters perceive it, a world of difference! In this case viewing the image is perceived as visiting the site, which all webmasters want to encourage. Funny lot webmasters, I know 'cos I are one!

It is also worth noting that once the picture is in your browser cache, by whatever route, either by visiting the blog or by clicking my link above, if you then open or refresh the 'Corporal punishment in Malaysia' thread the embedded picture will appear correctly. One of the little wonders of HTML and browser caches!

A_L

Thanks for putting up that picture of the caned Malaysian schoolgirls. It looks very genuine to me. The marks of a caning on the hand would last for hours, so the fact that some of them are smiling does not mean they didn't get caned. The actual pain would only last less than a minute.

Does anyone know the background to this, why they were caned, and who by.

Hi Declan. I'm guessing that you've found some of the answers to your queries re the picture, but if not have a look at the currently active 'Corporal punishment in Malaysia' thread and see American Way's post at 18:21 on 17 April 2009. The second of his links (the Charlotte blog) will take you to the blog where the young lady posted the picture. Quite old though, it dates back to July 2006.

It would appear (insofar as I can decipher the language) that the girl was 19 and doing her A-levels (maths, biology, chemistry and general paper). Looks as if she had the A-levels coming up in November. She (and presumably the other girls in the picture) appear to have been caned for missing school the previous day on the grounds that the schedule that day required her to stay at school until 17:00 for a workshop for 5th and 6th formers and, in her words, she 'dun feel lyk going'. It would appear that a number of pupils were caned as she says 'da boys kena da backside.... us gals kena palm lorx........... not painful actually.....'.

My guess was that at least some of the girls in the picture had actually been caned. I am glad to have your expert confirmation that the marks are probably genuine.

Two of our contributors, JJ and Jetta, have mentioned that certain punctuation marks do not appear in their messages.

It seems that the Network54 software does not recognise apostrophes and quotation marks that are created in Microsoft WORD and Works Word Processor. These punctuation marks need, therefore, to be inserted in preview mode of the post.

Ah yes. What happens with MS Word is that, when you type an ordinary quotation mark (that's shift-2, and looks like this: "), the software replaces it with a "smart quote" which is either an opening or a closing one, depending on what happened previously. With the usual Times New Roman typeface, the smart quotes look rather curly. So I guess they don't work here.

If, in Word, you click the "undo" button immediately after typing the quote, it ought to revert to the vanilla version.

Hi Alan Turing. You give excellent advice above regarding Word for those who use that abortion of a program to format their text.

What word actually does is substitute ASCII character 34 with ASCII character 147 at the start of the 'quoted' phrase and ASCII character 148 at the end of the phrase.

You can produce ASCII 147 and 148 quite happily when entering or pasting text into the Network54 Message Text box, but as soon as you press the 'Respond!' button for some reason best known to Network54 they are stripped out of the message as displayed in the thread. One of Network54's many interesting little tricks!

Having just read the post by JJ which Research Assistant 2 refers to above, I note that JJ's problem involved the apostrophe. For the sake of completeness it may be worth adding to my post above that in the case of the apostrophe Word substitutes ASCII 39 with ASCII 146. Again, for some reason peculiar to Network54 ASCII 146 can be entered or pasted into the Message Text box but is verboten in threads.

As doing things websites don't want me to do is one of my favourite occupations I have just spent a little time using various methods to fool Network54 into displaying ASCII 146-148 in threads. I regret to report that so far I have failed miserably.

This is probably of absolutely no interest to anyone else, though Alan Turing might just give it a passing glance. However, to obsessives like me it is the very stuff of life itself!

There are a number of ASCII characters in the range beyond 0122 (lower case z) which can be entered, or pasted, to appear in the Message Text box, but which will be stripped out by the Network54 software when the 'Respond!' button is pressed.

In addition to the already discussed ASCII 0145 thru' 0148 (curly opening and closing single quote and curly opening and closing double quote as per Word documents) these include some useful ones such as ASCII 0153 (the TM Trade Mark Symbol). Curiously ASCII 0169 (the © Copyright Symbol) is unaffected!

However, this censoring of apostrophes and quotes (and possibly other symbols) by Network 54 is a relatively new thing. In the course of making another post tonight I happened to notice that in preview mode an apostrophe disappeared from some text I had copied and pasted from an earlier thread. Closer examination revealed that it was in fact an ASCII 0146 (curly closing single quote) character!

The thread I had pasted from was the Kinky Teachers - maybe not? thread dating from late August 2008. Even a cursory examination of that thread will reveal curly opening and closing single and double quotes, and curly apostrophes. There is no way (at least none I can find) that those characters can be made to appear in a current thread, and if text containing them is copied/pasted from the old thread they will disappear when posted.

It would be fascinating to know why Network54 made this change to expunging certain characters. They have made a number of changes affecting HTML formatting while I have been here, all of them damaging, but HTML formatting changes were only ever going to affect a very small minority of people like me. The censoring of certain ASCII characters affects, as we know, everyone who uses Word to set up their posts and is bound to have annoyed quite a lot of people as I assume it will affect all Network54 forums, not just this one.

I take a fairly close interest in security matters, and as far as I know there are no dangerous exploits which can be triggered via specific ASCII characters. The whole thing is very strange indeed!

Perhaps, A_L, you could post images of these useful characters somewhere on the web, and those who wanted (eg) curly quotation marks or a TM symbol could just link to them!

Sarcasm is unworthy of you, Mr Turing!

Help please A L
When instaling a new ( well old ) printer on my windows 98 comp. do I have to remove the old driver software first?
I ask this because dispite the new printers software being accepted on my comp. and selecting it as the primary printer it refuses to print anything, even a test page.
When an image/letter is selected for printing it just generates a window that says print to file!
The new printer cable is a USB fit wearas the old one was the screw down multconector effort.
Any assistance wellcomed.

Hi Mimi, sorry to hear you have problems.

This is a tricky one, for the simple reason that USB wasn't completely implemented on Win98 and I have come across USB devices, including Printers, that simply won't run on Win98 without some fiddling about. Of those devices sadly a few wouldn't run even after the fiddling about. Some devices, including some printers, will only work on USB2 and most systems that came with Win98 only had USB1 or USB1.1. USB2 can usually be implemented on older machines via a PCI card, but this isn't guaranteed to support all USB2 only devices.

Hopefully your problem will be one of the ones which can be overcome.

First, you ask if you need to uninstall the drivers for the old printer. You shouldn't need to do this. If the old printer is broken and you are never going to use it again, or if you might use it again but have the installation disk that came with it if you need to reinstall, then uninstalling the drivers for it won't do any harm. However, I'd be quite surprised if it fixed the problem.

A few questions:

Can you post the make and model of the new printer please so that if necessary I can look stuff up.

Do you have the box or the manual for the 'new' printer. The box will often say what operating systems it will work with, and the manual should always do so. If those OSs include Win98 then we can assume it should work. Even if they don't include Win98 it doesn't mean it won't work, but it is a warning sign. Also check if the USB level required is mentioned. Some devices that say they require USB2 will still work (though rather slower) on earlier versions of USB, but some must have USB2.

Can you run any tests on the printer just using controls on the printer itself. Usually the manual, or a sticker iside one of the access flaps on the printer, will give details if this is possible. If so, do all these tests work ok?

I suspect that the computer is not seeing the printer. Have you noticed anything that would convince you that it is? For instance lights on the printer flickering or coming on/off when you try to print to it. If you have no evidence that the computer can actually see the printer try:

1. It is not unheard of for USB ports to die. You should have more than one USB port on the computer. Try the printer cable in each available port in turn. Do a restart after each change, shouldn't be needed but sometimes is. If you have any other USB devices that work ok, try their ports first.
   
   
2. USB cables are notoriously unreliable. Unless you have another device that you can use to test the cable you are using, try to substitute (borrow if necessary) an equivalent cable that is definitely currently working.

Does the printer have a seperate power supply? I assume it does, and that this is working ok, so that things like the power light on the printer are on ok. A few printers draw their power via the USB cable. This is problematical. This type of printer may only be able to get enough power via some, not all, of the computer's USB ports and usually won't work at all via USB extension hubs, even powered ones.

You should be able to see all the printers in 'My Computer\Printers' or 'My Computer\Control Panel\Printers' I assume that's how you've set the printer as the default. If you right mouse click on the new printer and select properties this will sometimes give access to various printer set-up, fault diagnosis and test utilities via a tabbed display, possibly under 'Utilities' or something like that. Alternately the printer installation may have installed a program to run those utility routines. If you haven't already done so try running any test routines from the computer. Does anything happen? If not it may confirm that the computer isn't seeing the printer.

Let me know if any of the above helps, and anything you think might be relevant if it doesn't. If no joy let me know the Make and Model of the printer and we'll go into the next phase.

Dear A L thanks for the trouble you have taken to help me.
I have checked things through and it still does not work.
Its a Lexmark Z33 about 7 years old ( its not on the range of printers that show up on the comps printer types but I assume that having loaded the disc and it showing up on the list that its installed okay)
It is suitable for 98 and was on a ME edition comp before.
The USBs appear to be enabled and work as they recognise my digital camera.
Have not got manual but will get hold of it.
Power to printer is stable and it has its own supply.
Upon starting the comp it says that there is a current workload ( the things I have tried to print ) when I tell it to print is says that the system is busy?
It will not print a test page.
I will get a manual and see if it helps and let you know.
Thanks again.
( PS have learnt a bit about the inner workings of the thing after all the fiddling about )
The old printer will never work again, I took it to bits etc, you can guess the rest !

Hi Mimi.

There is a PDF file describing the set-up of the Lexmark Z33 on the Lexmark site. It is less than 1 Mb so shouldn't be too much of a problem to download. You can download it by right clicking on the 'Download' link below and selecting 'Save As'.

Download

It is mainly standard stuff, but on page 11 section 'Need help during setup?' subsection 'The printer isn't working' is something which is worth checking.

Open an application you print from, Word would do fine if you have it.

In the menu bar click on 'File', 'Print'. A Print box should open. Somewhere on this you should see the Printer identity and also an item 'Where'. 'Where' should say USB. If it doesn't you'll need to go into the 'Printers' in 'My Computer' (or in 'My Computer', 'Control Panel') and right click on the icon for the Lexmark Z33. Note that this icon should have the little white tick in a black circle, indicating the default printer, and there should only be one icon for the Z33.

When you right click on the icon you should see a tabbed display. Click on the 'Details' tab. You should see a box headed 'Print to the following port'. This should say (I think) USB. I don't have a USB printer I can try, so I don't know exactly what we'll need to do if it doesn't. First thing to try is the dropdown arrow at the side of the box and see if your options here include USB. If they don't, try setting it to each of the COM ports in turn. You'll probably need to do a restart after each change to see if it has made any difference.

I'm looking to see if I can find how to get the USB to connect in case this is the problem, but I'll post this for the moment to see if it is any help. I'll also see if I can find an up to date Win98 driver for the printer anywhere. Keep me posted if you make any progress.

Hi Mimi.

The answer to just about every problem with this printer quoted by people on the web is try a different USB port or a different USB cable. I conclude from that that it has some problems with USB on some machines! However I infer from your last post that you've now eliminated those two items as far as you can.

Lexmark only seem to provide drivers for current printers. Do you have an actual Lexmark CD to load your drivers from? If so, does it have a version number on it please, and what is that version?

There are plenty of Win98/ME drivers available for download on 'driver' sites, but this is an area fraught with danger as spoof drivers for trouble causing devices are a common method of spreading nasties. If you've got a kosher CD and it includes Win98 drivers it is probably best to stick with that for the time being.

If you are still stuck after trying the stuff in my post above it may be worthwhile uninstalling your old printer, killing off all the jobs in the print queue, uninstalling the Lexmark Z33, making sure everything is gone then reinstalling the Lexmark strictly acording to the instructions in the PDF file in my post above.

Another possibility, though one we won't try just yet, is to put a PCI USB2 card in your computer and see if the printer would work from that. They only cost a few £, £6 including VAT at my local computer shop, probably cheaper on the web, and are easy to fit. There's absolutely no reason why USB2 should make a difference in this case, but once you get into 'clutching at straws' mode anything cheap is worth trying. Hopefully we are not there yet though! Keep me posted.

A_L Hope you dont mind me picking your brains.

Searching the net Im having conflicting advice as to whether you can use a 3 mobile dongle with a Linux operating system on an Acer Aspire AOA110. notebook.

I certainly cant find a link to a suitable driver, and Im not getting much help from 3 mobile helpline or Acer. My gut feeling dongles only operate with XP or Vista, or if such a driver does exist, not being familiar with Linux, IMO a non friendly operating system, I might be driven to despair before I can get any network connection.

Ketta

Hi Ketta. Let me say at the outset that I am not a Linux expert. I'll put that another way. I'm not really an expert in anything, but I can bluff my way through fairly satisfactorily in a number of areas. Sadly those areas do NOT include Linux!

However I'm reasonably good at Googling, and a quick Google of 3-mobile dongle linux seems to indicate that unless you are reasonably proficient in Linux or have access to someone who is, you are going to have problems.

As far as I can see the first issue to resolve is what type of dongle you have or are likely to get. There seem to be at least two types. The HW220 (described as a 'large white one') is apparently easier to get working than the HW E16xG (described small and 'pen like').

Getting either (and by inference I assume any other type of 3-Mobile dongle) working on an Acer Aspire Notebook running Linux does not appear to be a simple matter of downloading a driver. It would appear that you are very likely to need to use a great deal of trickery and various specialist utility programs to do the job. However people do seem to have been sucessful.

If you Google the string I've italicised above you will find a number of hits which may be useful. If you are happy doing this sort of thing yourself have a look at them and see what fits your own situation best. If you'd rather not do it yourself but have access to a Linux expert, get him or her to have a look. If neither situation applies I suspect that you will be best to look for another solution other than the 3-Mobile dongle.

I'm very sorry that I can't be more helpful than that. We may possibly have an Acer Aspire Notebook Linux user who visits this estimable Forum and knows the answer. In that case may I appeal to them, or indeed to anyone who might be able to assist Ketta, to please step forward and at least comment on the problem.

Thanks again A L.
The link to the manual pdf is similar to the info displayed on the software display.
To cut a long story short I kind of deleted the lot, reconnected the printer to the usb and the computer said it recognised new hardware.
I then installed the software, following primts that appeared to be slightly different to previously.
I managed to do the realign of paper thing, the ink check thing and then a test page printed.
Success I thought!
Then I tried to print a letter and it came up with comp cannot comunicate with printer..,,,,,,
Odds blood an all that...........

A_L

Thanks for trying; I dont think I have the expertise or the patients for finding the Linux dongle solution, an ever increasing nightmare. My daughter rather naive in the technicalities of operating systems purchased the machine with the intention that my other half could keep in contact while off Island during periods of treatment, hence the need to use a dongle, Wi Fi not being an option. A change over to XP seems my best option, hopefully Linux is a system that can be easily removed.

Hi Mimi. If it's worked once it should work again. You don't say what application you tried to print the letter with. Did you check out the stuff on page 11 of that PDF that I mentioned in my post above at 01:02 on 13 May 2009 for that application? It does sound as though that particular printer sometimes has problems printing from applications on some systems.

I'm referring to the actual 'printed' page number 11 in the PDF text NOT the page number shown by whatever PDF reader you use - they usually differ! The bit near the top of the right hand side of the page where it says:

   ·  Check the printer port:

If the page 11 stuff does check out, ie 'USB' is shown in 'Where', then I'd try deleting everythind and reinstalling in accordance with the instructions in the PDF again. Let me know how you get on.

Hi Ketta. Oh dear, I'm very sorry but I'm afraid that once again I have to sound a note of caution. It doesn't sound as though switching your machine to XP will be easy, although infuriatingly Acer have (presumably after yours was brought) issued the same hardware with XP loaded.

As a first step Google this string:

xp on Acer Aspire AOA110

The page here may be helpful to read initially. This is a review of the device, but for the review they brought a Linux version and then switched it to XP. The reason they give for this is:

The tested model was supposed to be used with mobile internet, but lacked the possibility of testing a service provider's configuration with a UMTS modem. Therefore, Windows XP was installed on the system.

which sounds like a problem familiar to you!

They do go into some detail on how they installed XP. One of the problems is that the notebook device lacks an optical drive, so you can't use an XP installation CD without an external optical drive (although see later). This is only the first problem area though. These were obviously an experienced team but they had a number of shots at it before they found a way to install XP sucessfully.

The Google search will give you other relevant hits, including one which tells you how to install XP using a flash drive (USB memory stick type device). This is similar to the method your documentation will tell you to use if you need to use the Linux recovery CD and haven't got an external optical drive. I have to say that when applied to installing XP the method sounds as though a fair amount of expertise is required.

I'm very sad to be the bearer of what is probably bad news once again. Please don't hesitate to ask if you decide to attempt XP installation and think I might be of any assistance.

Dear A L thanks again for all your help in this matter.
After about 20+ attempts when the screen prompts etc seemed to be slightly different each time the thing spontaniously loaded itself and works perfectly now.
I think the machine just gave up to give itself a rest from my investigation of its innards.
Perseverence in all things seems to work and it did in this case.
Many thanks again you are a gentleman.

Hi Mimi. I'm very pleased to hear that you have cracked the printer problem. Perseverance is indeed a virtue when it comes to computer problems. Even with the most up-to-date operating systems and brand new peripheral devices freedom from difficulties cannot be assured.

I can't actually imagine a link long enough (or at least with sufficiently lengthy individual levels in it) to distort the layout of this estimable Forum, but according to the President Garfield Diary thread American Way managed to find one, so here is a work around that may help him keep up the flow of CP references that his research reveals.

First of all, when you are in the post composition page, check that just beneath the 'Insert Object' button (which is just below the text entry box) the box entitled 'Enable formatted text (Huh?) has a tick in it. This is the default state, or at least it is when I log in!

It is vital that you follow the subsequent instructions exactly. I cannot be held responsible if you accidently expunge Network54 or declare war on Russia!

Copy your incredibly long link into the clipboard. Although not nearly long enough to do damage, let's say the link is to your thread 'The Courage to Submit: An Unlikely Role Model'

As normally posted this would appear as:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/thread/1244563606/last-1244563606/The+Courage+to+Submit-+An+Unlikely+Role+Model


To post this link without risk of distortion you need to type as follows:

<a href="Paste your link here, between the double quotes">Type a short name for your link here</a>

Note that:

1. The double quote symbols are the keyboard character " NOT the opening and closing quotes produced by Word etc.
2. The blue text refers to your link as pasted from the clipboard.
3. The green text refers to a short name you chose to identify your link.

So your complete entry for your link above might look something like:

Click on the thread name to visit my thread called <a href="http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/thread/1244563606/last-1244563606/The+Courage+to+Submit-+An+Unlikely+Role+Model">The Courage to Submit: An Unlikely Role Model</a>

And this would appear to readers as:

Click on the thread name to visit my thread called The Courage to Submit: An Unlikely Role Model

This should work for valid links of any length. The actual link does not appear on screen, only your name for it, so there is no risk of distorting the screen in the thread.

Hope this helps. If it doesn't, or you have any queries, please don't hesitate to ask.

I've no idea what the very long link you posted was, but if you want to give me a clue how to find it (search pattern etc., I'll verify for you that my method will work with it.

http://www.disciplinedfeminist.blogspot.com/2009/04/courage-to-submit-unlikely-role-model.html

I hope this isn't too long for standard screen.

Is it not wonderful that computers have made everything so easy and user friendly.........

Hi Mimi, you say:

Is it not wonderful that computers have made everything so easy and user friendly.........

Indeed it is, as I was at pains to point out to the 2 former colleagues, one former climbing partner and one relative whose fancy modern XP systems running on fancy modern hardware I have had to rescue from sundry vicissitudes during the past week. If only they'd had the sense to stick to Windows 98 on ancient hardware like you and I!

I was going to say a decade and still working but that would be tempting fate

Hi Mimi. It would indeed be tempting fate, but not nearly as much as those of our fellow contributors who've been claiming that the F** P**t**s have returned whence they came!

American Way, 30 odd years ago, when I was still gainfully employed, my boss said to me in my annual appraisal:

M***, your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. Once you've got your teeth into something you don't let go!

Nothing has changed in the intervening years, and right now I've got my teeth into a little project involving you and your links. I know I'm probably doomed to failure, but the aforementioned strength/weakness coupled with my natural inclination to give all possible assistance to an Honorary Life Member of this estimable Forum compels me to keep trying!

In your post at 16:18 on 17 June 2009 in the Moolightin' thread you gave a couple of links to images. Because you were concerned about upsetting the page width you split up each of the links into two with two linefeeds (ie a blank line). Now what that means is that in order to use those links your eager audience have got to copy and paste each of the two bits of the URL into their browser address box to build up the full URL, ensuring that they don't pick up any spurious spaces along the way. They've then got to hit 'Enter' or press the 'Go' button to see the picture. Devoted as they may be to your offerings they are going to be a bit fed up by the time they've done that for each of the pictures!

Why not just try the method I gave at 23:01 on 13 June 2009 in this thread in response to your query in your second posting (entitled 'HELP') in the 'President Garfield Diary' thread. I assure you it is really easy (ignore the joke about expunging Network54 or declaring war on Russia) and once you've learned it you will be able to post links of any length without worrying about upsetting the page width. Plus (and I'll let you into a little secret here) a long time ago in another life I wanted to be a teacher. I actually started to train, but a fight with a headmaster over a matter unconnected with school, kids or teaching caused me to take another career path. To this day however one of my greatest pleasures is to teach someone something useful and see them utilise it and benefit from it. Thus, you'll be making Another_Lurker very happy, and what could possibly be more worthwhile than that!

The Method Again:

First of all, when you are in the post composition page, check that just beneath the 'Insert Object' button (which is just below the text entry box) the box entitled 'Enable formatted text (Huh?)' has a tick in it. This is the default state, or at least it is when I log in.

I'll use one of your links mentioned above, the one to the picture of the rather amusing article on when you can legally spank your wife (in the USA at least) to demonstrate the method again.

In the example of what you'd type given below I'll put the link itself in red to make it stand out. For technical reasons to do with displaying HTML I've put a space in J PG. YOU WOULD NOT NEED THIS SPACE! All you'd need to do would be to paste the link in between the two double quote chatacters. I'll also put the link your audience would actually see in blue, again just to make it stand out. Everything else is in black. So to summarise you'd type the stuff in black and blue, and paste in the stuff in red (the link). The colours are just for information. All of what you actually type and paste would be in black as normal!

What you'd type (black & blue text) and paste (red text):
Click <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oygY3akPF8Q /SjgbHauqfnI/AAAAAAAAED4/dB2rPXRvgAE/s1600-h/grant.J PG">here</a> to see an article from May 1968 by renowned humorist Art Buchwald that I thought, although off topic, may be of interests to some.

What would appear in your posting:

Click here to see an article from May 1968 by renowned humorist Art Buchwald that I thought, although off topic, may be of interests to some.

In the above example of what you'd type and paste you can of course use your own wording for the black and blue text. Only the red text (the link) is a fixed format. The method will work for links to anything, pictures, pages, PDF files, anything! Remember that the blue text is the link your viewers will see and click on. This can be one word as above, or a short phrase, as you wish.

Finally, here's an easy copy and paste template. Replace Link with the link and Word(s) they'll click on with the word or phrase you'd like your viewers to click on to go to the link, then wrap your own words round the whole thing. Remember to leave a space before and after the template when wraping your own words round it.

Easy copy, paste and replace template:

<a href="Link">Word(s) they'll click on</a>

Try it. Remember, you've a chance to earn good karma, brownie points or whatever you measure personal merit in by making Another_Lurker very happy!

Note that any 'page format' distortion caused by the above post (happily it is only minimal) has happened because of the need to show a long link on screen in the example. The method described will avoid exactly this problem, since the actual link doesn't appear on screen in the thread!

The Network54 formatting mechanism plays some strange tricks when entering text in the composition box. In particular when posting links using the method described above, despite typing/pasting stuff in the composition box in sequence, the formatting will usually impose ending a line with the and starting a new line with the href= as above. This does not affect how the link and associated text actually appears in the thread.

GOING+OUT+OF+MIND

I'm stuck on stupid. I just popped my lense and jammed my printer and now this snafu in just five minutes. It worked for me in the Roots of Heaven picture but I copied and paste the link as you printed and this Google Not Found came up. I did find an alternative to circumvent this in a subsequent posting in the Moonlightin thread to keep us a Happy Circle as to avoid the pain of joining links. Can you imagine 1949 just sixtry years ago that was the state of woman's rights?

Hi American Way. Your link above, and your two new-style links in the 'Moonlightin' thread would have worked perfectly but for one thing. You've either copy/pasted the link out of my posting above, or you've ignored my note saying that the space in .J PG was just something I had to put in to make on-screen HTML display correctly and that you wouldn't need to put an extra space in your links!

Without that space everything would have been fine and you'd have been ready to deal with even the longest link to be found on the WWW, should you ever need to post it. I hope you'll try again and see that the method will work if and when you ever need it.

To Another_Lurker:

You said, on 17th June,

It would indeed be tempting fate, but not nearly as much as those of our fellow contributors who've been claiming that the F** P**t**s have returned whence they came!

Well, I was wrong. But they did have some time off, though -- perhaps it was exam week? We'll probably never know.

Oh, and by the way, I'm glad to see that not only are you one of the few people who still uses whence, you're one of the considerably fewer who uses it correctly and doesn't say from whence they came!.

Apologies, abject or otherwise, are neither expected nor appropriate Mr Turing. Without your sterling efforts this estimable Forum would long ago have disappeared from view beneath a heaving mass of 'fun' posters.

Umm, hadn't given any special thought to 'whence', I guess I've always presumed the 'from' was superfluous. But then I'm with Humpty Dumpty, when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less!

As a lifetime member in good standing of this esteem Forum entitled to all the priveliges and benefits afforded to me I now consider logging in no longer an option but a duty. Upon viewing the Bacon girl thread I thought of Wimbledon. Paddling would mar perfection but with a caning any part of the line is good assuming it falls on the bathing suit area!!!

I cannot log in because of cookies

Hi American Way. You say:

Paddling would mar perfection but with a caning any part of the line is good assuming it falls on the bathing suit area!!!

I'm glad that you admit that paddling is a dreadful thing to do to a shapely bottom - my sentiments exactly! As for where the cane fell in the case of the young lady in Mr Turing's foundation post in the 'The Bacon Girls' thread we must sadly remain in ignorance. She said of her caning during the previous week:

For my double offence, as he described it, he chose to cane me. I was due four, but because I initially refused and mounted a strong protest about being caned because I was a fifth form girl, he increased it and gave me six - over the desk.

We do not know how many days had elapsed between the caning and the holiday shot, so the absence of evidence on the young lady's derrière may be due to:

• 'Over the desk' not meaning on the bottom.
• Several days having elapsed so that the marks have disappeared.
• The caning having been recent but very light so that the marks have disappeared.

or, as you suggest,

• The marks remain but fell within the bathing suit area!

Life is full of tantalising mysteries!

And back to computers. You say that you cannot log in because of cookies. I'm assuming you mean you can't ever log in, though that surprises me. Please say if this is not the case.

Cookies are a common problem in many contexts on the web. Network54 uses cookies to keep track of where you are and whether you've logged in. You may have a browser setting which is inhibiting the placement of certain types of cookies, or you may be running software which does the same thing. The position would, I think, be no cookie, no log in.

Cookies get something of a bad press, quite wrongly in the vast majority of cases. They are a perfectly legitimate mechanism for a web master to use for a variety of purposes. You don't want them hanging around long-term on your system, but if you ban them altogether you will get the problems you are encountering.

Personally I allow cookies but clear them completely every time I close my browser. This isn't ideal for everybody as they may want to retain cookies to hold formatting details about a page they visit, or to give a log in free entry to a page.

Let me know what browser and browser version you run, and whether to your knowledge you are running any software to block cookies, if so what. I'll try to help but I won't promise, the solution to this sort of thing tends to be very individual.

Well, I don't log in because, by deliberate choice, I haven't signed up for membership. I recall starting to on one occasion, but then deciding not to for some reason (I can't recall now what it was).

The result is that my post (that's on this site) about the modification to Leas post (that's on the FR site) won't appear until this evening, by which time you'll see that her post no longer says "over the desk"! I actually had to submit my post twice, because the first submission -- sent in before my post (on this site) about the modification to Alison's post (on FR) -- somehow got lost.

Oh dear. That's as clear as mud. But maybe, when everything is up there, you'll be able to work out what I mean!

I've tried creating an account, so I want to see if this message pops up straightaway, or if it still has to hang around ... please bear with me!

Thank you for registering, Alan.

In future, if you log in, your contributions will appear on the board without delay.

Thank you, Research Assistant 2, for your prompt attention to this matter.

Hi Alan Turing. As you may have noted from some of my efforts to solve American Way's long link problem it is perfectly possible to display HTML on screen, but you have to do it the correct way or browsers become confused. Network54 does have its own little trick in this area, mentioned later, but even if you'd got round that one your efforts still wouldn't have displayed properly.

What you were trying to show was something like:

<img src="what you've copied from FR gets pasted here">

You are quite correct in saying that you need to use & lt ; instead of < and & gt ; instead of >. As you already know, but for the benefit of anyone not familiar with it, there are no spaces in those & strings in actual use.

Just using the & strings isn't enough though. You have to embed them between bold tags thus:

<b>& lt ;</b>

Again, no spaces in the & string in actual use. I've had to put spaces in or the string will be converted by browsers.

And that little Network54 trick? Well, when you are doing this specific HTML display operation it will comprehensively screw up all your careful formatting each time you do a 'Preview' so if there's a chance you won't get it right first time (and with this sort of fiddly stuff few people can guarantee to do that) set up your text in Notepad or Wordpad and copy/paste it into the Network 54 composition box. Clear the box after each preview. When you get something that previews ok clear the box again, paste again and press 'Respond!'.

Sorry for the long delay in responding to this Steve. I have been trying to get a few things clear in my mind. Sadly I have not yet succeeded!

It is clear to me that this is one of those many instances in computing where there are different ways of achieving the same end. More specifically, what you see and do when you are posting an image in this Forum clearly differs considerably from what I see and do to accomplish the same end.

You mention an 'icon' for photobucket which is now missing and that you are getting 'something up' (on screen presumably) for the Network54 Realm image storage facility.

The problem I have is that I don't see, and never have seen, any of those things. Nor can I see any options or whatever that might enable me to see them. I looked up Network54 Realm on Google (this article) after I noted where your last two images were stored, and that's where I saw that images in the Realm temp folder (where your images appear to be) could be deleted by Network54 in 7 days or so. Not 'would be' but 'could be'. Nothing in the article made any sense insofar as anything I see and do on Network54 is concerned. It may be that I don't see any of this stuff because I chose to run an 'obsolete' operating system. However, I certainly meet the stated requirement as regards my browser. In any event it all sounds much more complex than the method I've always used.

So, a long way round the houses to explain why I didn't simply say 'do this and all will be well' when you initially raised the query!

Now down to business. Since you raised the issue of the missing photobucket icon both Halfpenny and Big John Peacehaven have posted images, several in Big John's case. They've both posted images stored on photobucket, so presumably they aren't suffering the missing icon problem or like me they don't post images in the same way as you. That isn't to say they use the same method as me though as that may not be the case. So:

• Have you still got the problem you mentioned?
• If you have still got the problem do you still want to use photobucket?
• Do you know how to upload images direct to photobucket? (ie by logging into photobucket rather than Network54 and uploading the images via photobucket's upload dialogue.)

If the answers to the above are all 'yes' then no problem, simply try this:

• Upload your image to photobucket directly by logging in to photobucket. Be sure to keep a careful note of what you've called it - steve.jpg or m.gif etc.
• Go into Network54 and open the Forum and thread you want to post in.
• Open the posting window.
• Near the bottom of the posting window make sure that the little box marked 'Enable formatted text (Huh?)' has a tick in it. It usually does have by default.
• Type away.
• When you want to post your picture start a new line.
• Copy and paste the line below into your text. Alter the image name as required (see the notes) and then start a new line for any more text or more pictures.
• Preview it to check it's ok, then post it. Job done.

<img src="http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h318/theblackferret/image name">

Notes:

1. I've assumed that you only use one Photobucket account and it is the one you've used here before.
2. Simply replace image name with the actual name of the image, eg steve.jpg or m.gif etc. Make sure you don't delete either the / before the image name or the " after it.

There are various refinements which really ought to go into posting an image, but try this first and see if it works for you.

Another_Lurker:

I'd figured out that previewing was causing a problem. If I type the escape code for less-than, and preview, I see a less-than symbol. But if I then select Edit, I don't get the escape code back again, I still have the symbol. So Network 54 has saved my text in a processed form, rather than in its original form.

Yes of course, the thing to do is to compose the post in something like Notepad, and then just keep copying it from there. Sometimes I do that: for instance, with the post about Leah's amendments, which I thought I'd posted, but apparently hadn't, but there was a text copy saved which I could re-use. But normally, if I want to respond to something off-the-cuff, I type straight into the Respond page.

Incidentally, you might have noticed that I never use the b tag, but use strong instead. I guess the philosophy is to tell the browser the effect I want to achieve, rather than how it should go about doing it. This comes from being a mathematician. I don't actually use raw HTML all that much; but I do use TeX a great deal for writing papers and books, and that adopts the same philosophy ("Proud not to be WYSIWYG!").

Hi Alan Turing. You say:

Incidentally, you might have noticed that I never use the b tag, but use strong instead.

Yes, I had noticed that. Naturally I scrutinise the source of all your posts to see if you've discovered any little tricks I don't know about!

<strong></strong> will work just as well as <b></b> to embed those & strings when you are wanting to display HTML in a browser as indeed will other open/close print formatting tags I think, but <b></b> is quicker to type!

I'm not familiar with TeX, I must have a look at it. We used to use a mark-up language for reports and manuals in those far off days when I worked for a living, but I can't remember what it was called and compared to Hyper Text Mark-up Language it was ludicrously complex.

Another_Lurker writes:

but <b></b> is quicker to type

Of course, to type that he actually had to type:

but <b>&lt;</b>b<b>&gt;</b><b>&lt;</b>/b<b>&gt;</b> is quicker to type

(Sorry, that's an extremely nerd-ish joke, but A_L will appreciate my interest in it!)

Hi American Way. On the day which celebrates the Declaration of Independence by your great nation, you have made a citizen of the nation you were declaring yourselves independent from very happy indeed! As I said in an earlier post, nothing pleases me more than to show someone how to do something and then see them use the technique. Thank you very much!

Hi Alan Turing. As one nerd to another I have absolutely no hesitation in acknowledging a magnificent tour de force sir! Even if I had the patience to try I couldn't have got that lot to display correctly on screen! The pupil has certainly gone on to put the teacher well and truly in the shade! (I'll bet your Maths teachers at school said something like that as well! )

For the benefit of those not into this sort of thing, when you look at the line following

Of course, to type that he actually had to type:

in Alan Turing's post above you are looking at the tip of the iceberg. In order to produce that he had to input about ten times that many symbols in exactly the correct order.

Oh, and BTW Alan I am indebted to you for demonstrating to me how to display

<b>&gt;<b>

on screen without putting spaces in the & string. Why on earth didn't I think of that?

This would have gone in the 'Those Bathing Suit Areas in Full' thread, but as that thread is now quite rightly locked, this seems as good as anywhere to post it.

American Way, I really am pleased to see that you have totally mastered the control of links and giving your own title thereto. However, please remember that the British Way is moderation in all things and that this is a family Forum! I don't want the Powers That Be in this estimable Forum to ban me from giving you, or anyone else, a helping hand with HTML in the future!

American Way, at 12:57 on 07 July 2009 in the Male Teachers Spanking Girls thread you said, with regard to the New York Times article here:

Maybe someone from computer corner can tell me why I cannot copy image & paste here but can on Word Document so I can share the relevant portions here.

When you view the New York Times Article you are actually looking at a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. Unless you have the correct software (full version of Adobe Acrobat or equivalent capability) you cannot normally copy and paste extracts from PDF files (though you may be able to copy/paste the entire article). In this case, even when you have the correct software to unlock the PDF you cannot readily copy and paste extracts because the majority of it is not text but consists of three images. These are the headline and sub-headline, the body of the article, and the New York Times logo. The only bit of the page which is text, and which can be copied and pasted, is the very last two lines, under the New York Times Logo.

To reproduce any part of the main text in this estimable Forum or elsewhere you would either have to resort to OCR software (see my response to prof.n below) to convert images to text or display images, either extracted from the PDF or grabbed off the screen. Since the article is endorsed 'Copyright © The New York Times' any of these methods would of course put you at risk of litigation!

prof.n, at 13:25 on 07 July 2009 in the Male Teachers Spanking Girls thread you said:

Unfortunately it was sent with some form of copy protect which prohibits me cutting and pasting , or reposting , otherwise I intended to post a section on the site. for comment. If I can work out how to get round the problem I will do so.

I am not clear if the problem is one of obtaining permission to reproduce a section of the article or if the limitation is merely the software locks. If the latter and if you use a PC there is a way to 'unlock' screen sized sections of the article using 'Print Screen'. You should find the 'Print Screen' key to the right of the function keys at the top of your keyboard.

Simply view the article (or at least the part of it you want) and press 'Print Screen'. You can then paste the screen shot into virtually any graphics package, including the free graphics packages (Paint etc.) which come with the various Windows versions, crop it down to the relevant text and save it in an image format.

If you have OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, such as that built into Office XP you can then convert it to a text format which you could copy/paste. Alternatively, if the section you wish to reproduce is not huge you could simply post the image.

The above is a very simplistic overview, and by varying screen resolutions, using OCR software etc., almost any objective can be attained. In general, if you can see it on the screen, text or picture, you can grab it for your own purposes. Whether you should or not is of course a consideration sometimes.

If this sounds likely to be applicable to what you would like to achieve but you'd like further assistance I'll do my best to help on request.

Another Lurker,

Thanks for the advice , i have got part way with this.

Being unable to liberate the images, which , and I read your previous posting on adobe acrobat, are infact in an adobe format, I had found it resistant to being saved directly. in other words I could read it, but not enter it, and had to download on each occasion. so I tried attaching the entire file into a email to myself between my two providers ( e.g. talktalk to btinternet) and hey presto I could liberate the file from the email and save as adobe.

Tomorrow we'll see what we can do with it.......

In the 1970's ther was a model of politics developed, long since discarded which could be called for simplicity the black box theory. In this approach you knew what went into the system ( pressure groups representatives, etc etc) and what came out ( law, policy, etc etc) but it was held that the inner workings of the system were resistant to analysis.

This is how I see the pc I'm afraid. all I need to know is which buttons to press to achieve a given outcome , why and how does not excite , for some reason, my normal insatiable curiosity. I believe this happened because I'm not a 'finisher',( you can see that from my typing and proof reading!) and the most miserable time of my life was one wet wednesday trying - over and over again - to ensure there were no errors on typed cards which were supposed to operate some simple task on SPSS- in the days when computers filled a room the size of a lecture hall.

I never succeeded , and I hate to fail....therefore computers and I , have a healthy disrespect for each other- a hate hate relationship!


So your instructions are great and simple to follow... .Many thanks !!!

Hi prof.n. You seem to be solving the problem very well by yourself, but in the event that you do get stuck just shout.

As regards PC problems generally I commend to you the technique we used to use when showing awe-struck visitors around the installation, back in the days when, as you put it, computers filled a room the size of a lecture hall.

Having greatly talked up the power of the equipment and the complexities of the job one would confidently pronounce:

But of course, the thing with computers is that you have to show them who's boss.

Whereupon one promptly prostrated oneself and performed obeisance in front of the operating console.

Funny thing is, we usually had the feeling the visitors thought we were joking!

prof.n you're bringing back memories of my science labs with the least square fits giving me fits but it sure beat crunching out numbers unassisted. You learned to speak Fortran with the computer learning the language of deleted expletives when your IBM card indicated output suppressed. We had bigger machines to kick and master. We knew logarhythms and Boolean algebra. I went to an all male college and the day I graduated alas it became coed as our class said it became safe to bring on the girls and sadly safe from my slide ruler. No wonder prof.n since you've recently restarted posting on this estimable Forum I've found you to be a kindred spirit. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs would never become multi billionaires without us pioneer fossils. I don't feel bad about not being into pc. As a physics major I never learned how to write but it has never kept me from writing as you all must know by now.

Amercian Way,

Slide rules!!!I'd almost forgotten them...couldn't have done Physics, maths or whatever without ! Plus in the days I was in th sixth the tube for the rule was a pretty good place for illicit contraband.......

But , totally irrelevant to the topic and thread , your mention of your Physics major ( I only studied it to A level) brought back a memory of what I think was a very early example of student centred education which I know we all support wholeheartedly............

When I was about 14 I had a physics master who for some unknown reason found my writing illegible........anyway he kept writing more and more insulting comments including buy a new pen ( why didn't he get an eye test!)- until one day he threatened put me in detention .because he said my preparation ( homework) was completely illegible. I pointed out , that logically it couldn't have been .he had given it , and every other paper that year an alpha., so he MUST have been able to read it !.) He was rendered speechless!!??.....but as for detention that didn't happen....it never did to us top of the A stream hothouse plants.....

As a good trade unionist (?!) I decided to go on strike in protest at his most unreasonable and , as it was coming up to Christmas , unseasonal behaviour.. So his rank order 1 A stream student soon became rank order 20 by just not submitting work....... So he gave me an 'unsatisfactory' report grade. This meant war! In the end of term exam I came not my usual rank order1 but 26....... Now in some schools I suppose I would have found myself on the end of a short sharp shock, probably a lot earlier than this !, But in my school this called for really drastic action.....we can't upset the brightest kids, so the teacher was reassigned to a lower stream, harmony was restored and I went back to stream A Physics ,rank order, 1 average grade alpha.....and all again was right with the world(?)

I believe this to be an early example of forward looking student centred learning....... negotiated outcomes.....and the primacy of self assessment techniques ( I knew I was an alpha student all along ).A few years later recounting this story to my girlfriend. It was overheard by her mother, and my then Deputy Head Miss F , I was told she would have called it insufferable arrogance , insolence plus defiance,and dealt with it as such! Must be something they put in the water on the other side of the pond........

A-L

My apologies, buried in one of the threads, you asked which search engines I utilise. Seemly all quite on the Western front as they say, those that should not be mentioned, may be responsible for me missing your question.


Most of my initial searching is done through Google sometime Dogpile comes up trumps. I have a tendency to search out of the box rather than the obvious; it comes from my training that two pieces of insignificant information will heed enough to become fruitfully significant. The disadvantage, you can become easily sidetracked, researching something completely alien to the original to the extent my favourites are inundated with links, containing some of the most useless information known to man, to say nothing of my image files. Fear not I do clear my cache and temp files down on a regular basis.

Ketta

Hi Ketta. Google and Dogpile, the very same two I use myself. I shall just have to concede that you're better at it!

Hi Steve. Did you read my post in this thread at 04:24 on 03 July 2009, and did it make any sense?

Reason I ask is that you've just posted a picture in Ketta's Uniform debate thread. Like your last few pictures posted here this has gone into the Network54 Realm Temporary Folder, and like other picturwes you've posted recently it will doubtless disappear in a week or two as Network54 seem to clear the temporary folder regularly.

For instance your images posted at 16:03 on 27 June 2009, 15:21 on 28 June 2009 and 16:14 on 29 June 2009 in your The film of the series;off topic! thread have already gone, as have those you posted at 11:15 on 01 July 2009 in Alan Turing's The Bacon girls thread.

Note that you may still see the images when you look at those pages. If so this is because they are still in your browser cache or a proxy cache operated by your ISP. Trust me though, they've gone, as you'll see if you clear your cache and refresh the page.

It would be a pity for future students of School CP researching in the annals of this estimable Forum to be deprived of your pictorial contributions. Hence I thought you'd want to know what's happening.

If my 04:24 on 03 July 2009 post referenced above doesn't help, give me a shout and we'll see if we can find another way round if you wish.

PS: As noted in my post referenced above, various other people still seem to be using Photobucket ok. I did wonder if you'd cancelled your Photobucket account and hence weren't seeing the icon you mentioned that you used to see, but your account still seems to be there as witness Click Here! Remember him?

Thanks!!!!!!!!!


Steve M

Hi Steve. I'm sad to see that the dark coloured Mustela putorius furo has been replaced on Photobucket, but I'm pleased that your problem is solved. And if you solved it using my post you must absorb information at a ludicrously rapid rate and type even faster!

Hi American Way. You said in the Male Teachers Spanking Girls thread that you had had problems expressing this Google Books link in a shortened form. As you can see it does in fact work just fine.

I suspect that when capturing the link by whatever copy to clipboard method you use you have inadvertently missed one or more characters at the beginning or end of the link. This can very easily happen if you use the method of highlighting the link and then using Ctrl C to copy it to the clipboard.

A better way to capture links for incorporation into shortened form links is to use the following methods:

• For links you are picking up from your browser address box right mouse click in the address box and left mouse click 'Copy'.
  
  
• For URLs you are picking up from a printed link on a page, such as  http://www.google.com right mouse click on the link and left mouse click 'Copy Shortcut'.

In both cases you can then use Ctrl V to paste the link into the shortened form link HTML.

These instructions are of course for Microsoft systems. If you use Mac or Linux and still have problems let me know and I'll try and find the relevant methods for those systems. No promises though.

I don't use Google Books much, but I notice that there are a number of useful features available. If I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs (a UK expression meaning telling you something you already know and that I ought to realise you already know) please forgive me.

Top right of the page is a blue link marked 'PDF' with a down arrow on the left. This enables you to download the complete document to your own system as an Adobe PDF file. If extensive research is required this may be an easier method than reading the document in Google Books.

To the left of the PDF link is a link marked 'Clip'. This enables you to select a part of the page and display it as an image, thus:
But possibly the most useful link of all is to the left of 'Clip'. 'Plain Text' enables you to display the book, in 5 page blocks, as plain text. You can then copy and paste the text directly to use as you wish, thus:

In reply to the statement that flogging is more generally practised in the schools of Europe than in our own, Dr. Wyman addressed inquiries through the ministers to the various foreign powers, with the following results:

" Corporal punishment is now prohibited in Prussia in all cases, except at the request of the parents in particular cases."

" The Netherlands laws on education do not allow corporal punishment in the schools. It is not practised in the public schools : if, very exceptionally, an instance of it occurs, the authorities immediately intervene. In the private schools, which in this respect are less restricted, corporal punishment is, for as much as the Government knows, also not practised."

" In answer to your letter of the 15th instant, I beg to state, that neither in Austria nor Germany is corporal punishment practised in the schools. . . . The severest punishment is usually imprisonment for a certain number of hours."

" I suppose you would not find a public school in the French empire in which a blow is allowed to be given by a master to a child."

You've got to hand it to Google - they might want to grab every scrap of information about you to generate revenue for themselves, but they do produce some useful stuff!

Hi KK. You said elsewhere that you couldn't view a YouTube video because your software didn't allow it. If you use a PC running Windows you might find a free bit of software called 'Youtube Video Downloader' by DownloadToolz.com helpful. I use this myself because I do not run the Adobe Flash software required to stream videos from YouTube on my system.

In essence you give the downloader the URL of the YouTube page by copying it into your clipboard, in the case of this Forum by right clicking on the link and selecting 'Copy Shortcut'. The software will then download the video from YouTube and save it on your hard disk wherever you tell it and in a format you select. I'd recommend MPEG, which plays in Windows Media Player (and should play in any other general purpose video player you happen to use).

The downloader software can be downloaded from this page

I have been using this software for some time now, as have various other people I know, and none of us have had any problems. The only disadvantage I have found is that the file as saved is about twice the size (Mbytes)of the FLV file as played by YouTube. In addition as always you have to remember to delete any files you decide not to keep after viewing them. However, in recommending it the usual caveats must apply:

• In general any site on the web ending with 'z' should be avoided like the plague as they are frequently Warez sites used for all sorts of nefarious purposes. As far as I can tell this site and the download software are quite safe, but your mileage may differ!
  
  
• Sadly it is impossible to predict how a given Windows system will react to a particular bit of software. I know of no one who has had problems with this downloader, but again your mileage may differ!

If you decide to try the software and require any assistance setting it up or using it post here and I will try to help.

Another lurker,

Many thanks for your useful (July 3rd) posting about photobucket.

As you may have seen even a technophobe can get it right first time, and second time too. As I also hold an award for being the world's worst ( most inaccurate) typist.....that's really something. Some tell me the problem is something called 'typing too quicky', 'sloppyness' and 'failure to proof read' , (because it is boring and can't be done at the speed of light). Naturally, like the criticism many years ago from my Physics master who hated my writing, I believe this is completly misguided, discriminatory and wide of the mark.

The REAL reason is because I suffer from the as yet undiagosed condition of 'missing secretary keyboard dyslexia'. The remedy? Recognition by the state of my special need for 24 hour free secretarial support...it would cure the paper volcano on my desk as well...and they might even get their tax return on time!!!

On today's posting I only counted a mere 7 typos....8 if you count 'can' being reproduced as 'cane' ....but that could be a Freudian slip, who knows?.....

Anyway , thanks to you the whole world can see the charms of Miss Valerie Thornton in her prime.......something I am sure for which her ex students will for ever be eternally grateful......??

Hi prof.n. You say:

Anyway , thanks to you the whole world can see the charms of Miss Valerie Thornton in her prime.......something I am sure for which her ex students will for ever be eternally grateful......??

That's a terrible responsibility to lay at the door of a fellow contributor to this estimable Forum!

Seriously, you are too kind, and I'm sure that you would have worked something out even without the coincidence of my note on Photobucket.

If indeed the note was of help to you I am very pleased. I delight in giving people information they find useful as I guess I'm really a frustrated teacher who somehow found himself in computers instead. Many many years ago I did set off along the route to being a teacher, but an argument with a headmaster over facial hair (mine not his) convinced me that perhaps I wasn't going to fit in. Probably just as well really, as it was still very much in the CP era and I might have found myself here now doing a JJ type series!

I see that this is the ninety-sixth post in this thread. Recently we have seen the hundredth post in the thread Teachers who paddle, and Another_Lurker has given us the traditional celebratory decorated post (albeit a little late, for which tardiness he has offered profuse apologies).

My purpose in this post is to request that the title of the present thread be acknowledged by delaying the celebratory decorations until post number 0x100.

Thank you.

Hi Alan Turing. I am beginning to wonder if my intellect is no longer adequate for this estimable Forum. American Way has baffling me with around 60% of his posts recently, and now I have to decipher ypur post above!

If I remember my maths correctly zero is a strange beast because:

• 0! = 1
• n⁰ = 1

but

• n × 0 = 0

I assume therefore that your request is for any celebratory posting in this thread to have taken place before anything was posted in the thread. This is of course an impossibility since such a celebratory posting would itself constitute the first posting in the thread and thus could not be the zero'th posting.

In the absence of a more logical explanation I shall take it that for some reason a celebratory post in this thread would distress you, and I shall therefore not make one. A pity, because I had prepared a montage of old computers which have played some part in our respective lives.

The '0x' indicates hexadecimal (base 16) rather than decimal (base 10). '0x100' is equal to 256 in decimal terms.

I am indebted to you for that information Doctor Dominum. I am amazed! I have been messing with computers for well over 40 years, and earned a pretty good living from them. Good enough in fact to retire shortly before my 50th birthday (though in fairness it has to be said this was pretty much the norm in that 365/24/7 environment). I have supported a range of operating systems from those running on giant mainframes down to those powering tiny pocket computers. I have also written application programs for a similar range of hardware in a variety of languages. And despite this I have never encountered that usage! I've only ever seen 100h or 100hex or 100₁₆ or in HTML #0100. We truly do live and learn!

I am delighted to be able to make post number 0x64 in this thread!

Thank you, Doctor Dominum, for providing the correct interpretation of this notation. (So I can't have been making it up! But I can't remember where I've seen it used.)

Hi Alan Turing. Hmm, I'm still not sure if I've been had! I have 'phoned two of my ex-colleagues and they haven't come across 0x or 0X for hex either! However a quick Google confirms its authenticity, as in this snip from a development site:

Saw this great little question on the Macromedia instructor's mailing list, and it had me stumped. What's with the odd "0x" in front of hex colors instead of the standard # sign? For example, 0×000000 vs. #000000. Why is it "0x" rather than something else?

Ken Fricklas had the answer, "Just zero, then x is short for 'hexadecimal'. In the old days we also had binary, decimal, and octal to deal with. For binary, you didn't put anything, for octal you'd start numbers with 0, for hexadecimal 0x and for decimal nothing. BTW, 0x indicated that the hex digits would be lowercase, e.g. 0xabcdef and 0X would indicate uppercase (0XABCDEF)".

Something oddly satisfying about knowing the history of these arcane minutiae.

It would be interesting to know where Doctor Dominum has encountered this usage as you can't remember!

It would be interesting to know where Doctor Dominum has encountered this usage as you can't remember!

I certainly can remember. It cost me a Mars Bar.

Periodically junior and middle school boys are given the opportunity to try and stump me on a matter of scientific knowledge (and mathematics is included in this). If they succeed, they win a Mars Bar.

A few years ago, a boy hit me with a question that was along the lines of:

"Which of the following is correct?

12x818=9618
11x733=8773
10x532=5230
9x762=6958
.....
1x178=718
0x100=256"

(There were 12 of them altogether). Obviously the boys are trying to trick me when they do this. His worked. After carefully checking them all on paper, twice, and obtaining his agreement that I could use a calculator, I concluded all of them were wrong. And so I confidently answered "None of them." thinking that was the attempted trick.

Turned out it wasn't.

Thank you Doctor Dominum. I'm afraid I'd have lost the cost of a Mars bar as well! I'll bet the lad went on to study University Computer Science!

I trust they don't get the opportunity to try that sort of thing on you too often. If the cost of Mars bars in Victoria is comperable to the cost here frequent exposure to trickery like that could impact your personal wealth! How do they qualify to have a go, and what sort of success level do you reckon to achieve in defeating their dastardly ploys?

Just thought I'd mention that, after this one, we will need only another 0x98 posts before giving Another_Lurker the opportunity to show us his photomontage of ancient computers!

And now we shall need only 10010111₂ or 227₈ or 151₁₀ or 97₁₆ or 47₃₆, whichever we get to first!

Reading yesterday's paper, what with all this talk of Mars bars, Dr. Dominum might like to know that the welfare of both his pocket book and students is being carefully monitored, I hasten to add within strictly enforced scientific guidelines, by I think it was our UK food standards authority ( well it was one of the many food and health quangos...there are so many of them , if it wasn't the that one it was one of equal standing , if not considerably better standing )

Anyway it has just been announced by the same, that due to the excessive load of calories in a Mars bar , and the problem of child obesity in the UK, the content of said 'standard' bar will be reduced in the next couple of years from 58g to 50g.....one hopes with a commensurate reduction in price. Well we live in hope and die in despair................

Doubtless the ever vigilant 'real' scientists on this site...ie not the 'social' ones like myself, will with their assortment of calorimeters, calculators, slide rules, and computers, be able to watch the Mars corporation to ensure that any diminution of weight is , for the sake of our overweight youngsters, matched by a diminution of available kcalories / kjoules of energy and that we continue to receive at least the same 'value for money' than at present.

Also perhaps you could encourage the manufacturer and regulators to express food energy content henceforth to a hexadecimal base so that the general public can no longer understand it , and are once more, as in my distant youth, able to get their sugar hit without a simultaneous guilt trip.You see maths can be really useful........

Dear prof.n:

Why the problem with the hexadecimal base? Don't you (and a significant proportion of the general public) remember pounds and ounces?

Hi Alan Turing. You say:

Don't you (and a significant proportion of the general public) remember pounds and ounces?

I certainly do, together with stones, quarters and hundredweights (but not tods) I use them frequently to torment a trendy friend my own age who insists in expressing his weight in something called 'kilos'. Even with a flying start like that he still can't do a BMI calculation though!

Prof.n's mention of Mars bars and the forthcoming weight reduction brings back embarassing memories. In the days when standard Mars bars were somewhat larger than they are now, but still rather smaller than they used to be, I observed a very young female colleague, whose father worked with me, buying a Mars bar in the staff canteen. Without a moment's thought I said 'Ah, Mars bars, I can remember when they were so big it took two men to carry one'.

Unfortunately it is well known in computer installations that Systems Programmers are sober and serious persons whose onerous responsibilities weigh heavily on their shoulders and who never joke about anything, except very occasionally if an operator is so unfortunate as to fall through the hole where someone has carelessly left a tile out of the false floor. The next day my somewhat irate colleague asked me what on earth I'd been telling his daughter about Mars bars. Apparently she had taken me at my word and quizzed her dad at some length about size changes to Mars bars since his youth! Thereafter I made a point of smiling broadly if making facetious remarks to those of tender years!

Hi Alan Turing and Another Lurker


I promise not to post off topic any more but........



I remember in the lower sixth our physics and chemistry ( but as we did a different biology board not that one ) were changing to SI units. A brave new world.... We were faithfully informed that we would NEVER have to use silly old standard imperial or other units ever ever again , not even the strange things that occasionally arose out of the USA.......in our life...What's more like the code Napoleon SI could be enforced.......Of course all our text books were non SI and when you translated the calculations you needed to work to about 90 significant figures , as nothing worked out in the examples to nice round numbers any more....Energy was to be in joules ( conversion factor 4.2 joules/cal ? I think )..Anyway at the time I knew them all, thankfully no longer...and neither seems anyone else. to bother ...so what happened to this world wide super highway? Today I bought a quarter of wine gums....very SI that!

Mention SI you don't today even get a s****** .just told to consume no more than 2,500 calories.......surely schools and industry must have it right now ..please!!!!!...

A funny thing happened on the way to implementation.......???????

Hi prof.n. You say:

I promise not to post off topic any more but........

Don't worry about being off topic, at least not in this thread, somehow we've got to raise another 10010010₂ posts so that I can do my celebratory thing in the thread!

SI units, wonderful stuff! Long long ago pmc (pre major computing) and probably around the time of your lower sixth experiences I had a job with an examinations board which essentially consisted of ensuring that their exam papers complied with the then newly introduced SI standards. Mainly Craft and Technical exams, but some ONC and HNC. What fun! The HNC and ONC papers weren't too bad, but in whole chunks of the rest the examiners hadn't heard of SI, the moderators hadn't heard of SI, the markers hadn't heard of SI and the students hadn't heard of SI - or at least that was how it seemed!

I've still got my 'bible' somewhere, a yellow booklet which was the ultimate arbiter in the event of any disputes or attempted back-sliding by examiners or moderators. Happy days - after that wrestling with antique giant mainframes, bolshie operators, even more bolshie engineers and devious and desperate users seemed like one long holiday!

Now Alan turing and American way ....anyone

Funny how this site has a habit to putting itself back on topic, apparently without human intervention.......

I just posted to you a flippant piece on SI.

In the penultimate paragraph /line I wrote a word ( your starter for 10) Verb intransitive and noun '(Utter ) half supressed secretive laugh' ( illustrated oxford dictionary)( alternastive clue or hint for DR. D (who won't need it) , schoolboys are prone to do this..... seven letters beginning with SN ...pressed respond ...you get s******. automatic pc ultra sensitivity ?

Get it ? Answers as to how to avoid this please.............

Hi prof.n again. Hmm, posting at exactly the same time as Another_Lurker! That probably accounts for your problem, and then there's the seven years bad luck on top of that!

I'm sure you can see why you've been censored - presumably by the Network54 Politically Correct Filter, rather than by the Moderators of this estimable Forum who carry out that sort of task under the aegis of larry1951.

So, what to do.

Well, you could try HTML special characters - let's see if that works:

s******

No, they're wise to that one!

So lets try this:

s

n

i

g

g

e

r

Yes, I think that's going to work, proving that all censorship can be beaten - eventually!

Sadly, I don't think you'll want to know how I did that. Alan Turing will almost certainly guess, and if he doesn't guess he'll know how to find out, but I don't think many other habitués here will be able to do either.

I can cut the work involved down considerably anyway, and even more so if I use a slightly bigger font, thus:

sni

gger

But even so it still involves typing 120 odd characters (I can't be bothered to count them exactly) which must follow an exact sequence to display 7 characters on the screen!

By your own admission prof.n you're not a fine detail, tie up all the loose ends man so I can say with some certainty my solution isn't going to help you. I hope that someone else can come up with a better way, but failing that I'd try a different word or hypenate it or something.

Ah just had another idea. I think the first two will work, but let's see if this much simpler method does:

sni­gger

or

snïgger

Thanks Another Lurker,

you've done it , but you also read me right to get 120 symbols in CORRECT sequence....well, no not my bag...but thanks for showing the B******* cant grind us down.......

Ok, I now have a perfect way to do it,like this:

sni­gger

Virtually no extra work at all.

But sadly I can't say how yet. I'm sure most people wouldn't misuse it, but some might, and I can't take the risk of making extra work for the Management of this estimable Forum.

Forum Management: Your advice please as to whether I can assist prof.n and others to use perfectly legitimate words that the Network54 software is stopping, at the risk that some people might misuse the method to bypass words which really ought to be caught by the Network54 software, or should I keep it to myself?

Forum Management: Your advice please as to whether I can assist prof.n and others to use perfectly legitimate words that the Network54 software is stopping, at the risk that some people might misuse the method to bypass words which really ought to be caught by the Network54 software, or should I keep it to myself?

Please go ahead with this. The Posting Tracker is showing some amazing results for July and it is time to celebrate.

The contributors who have full posting rights would never use words that are unacceptable on a family forum and messages from the others are carefully scrutinised by our highly-trained team before appearing on the board.

A few months ago we had someone using a numeral instead of a letter in an obscenity. He then denied that he had written anything inappropriate. Silly man!

R.G. Tracker

That Lincolnshire town ???? Now I can see perhaps where that's coming from , and I can can see a possible logical connection which the topic, but as I must be geographically challenged, I cannot for the life of me get the town name that fits the criteria!!!!! it is probably staring me in the face..

This is all the more embarrassing as, for a good portion of my somewhat younger life I resided in or near that Leicestershire town,( betwixt Lincolnshire and Rutland) set in rolling hunting country, which ( don't s!!!!!!) is renowned for its large cattle market , world famous Stilton cheese .........and pork pies! Yes I do not jest , the town which in those days was dominated by the huge green buses of the quaintly named 'Lincolnshire road car company', and is known to those with a modicum of geographical knowledge as Melton Mowbray ! And to those on this site and elsewhere as a subject of hilarity!

At least Lincolnshire has a number of towns.......However had the joke been about Rutland,the other adjoining county now not being able to answer it really would have been embarrassing.......

This is where common sense and the obvious fail those of academic persuasion!!!!

Thanks R G Tracker'

Now I see. what with being a family forum an' all, my brain wasn't looking in that direction. I agree, by the way, the town is the pits......

To prof.n

Delighted to hear that you're a former resident! You might be interested to know that there have been a number of posts about this little town, including several concerning the question of the height of a tower from which one could see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. If my memory serves me right, the tower would have to be about 12,000 miles high; but unfortunately the Forum Search isn't working very well at the moment, and so I can't check (or provide a link to the post).

In an earlier post in this thread Melton Mowbray (to whose part in the development of computers and computer programming we are all owe a huge debt) mentioned the calculation of the height of a tower of pork pies to be built in Melton Mowbray to enable the inhabitants thereof to broaden their horizons by viewing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. As prof.n is a former Melton Mowbray resident he may find the accounts of this epic enterprise of interest.

It should be noted that the issue arose because one of our 'fun pesters' (a term coined by Melton Mowbray in one of his various other manifestations in this estimable Forum) regularly claimed that the truth of complete nonsense (punitive use of liquorice tawses etc.) was 'as obvious as the Golden Gate bridge on a clear day'. Melton Mowbray frequently pointed out to the individual concerned that even on a clear day the Golden Gate bridge was not at all obvious from Melton Mowbray. It was to rectify this iniquitous situation (and to piss off the fun pesters ) that the great project was begun.

The details are to be found in the Tuckshop tawsing thread. Melton Mowbray gave a last reminder about the visibility problem in his post at 21:06 on 10 May 2009. In the immediately following posts Steve M and I tossed the idea of a suitable viewing tower around a bit and Alan Turing, who understands that sort of thing, set out the mathematical basis of the calculations. At 20:06 the following day I undertook to carry out the calculaions, following which Alan Turing gave me a very important clue, which I didn't really believe at the time!

I published my results at 05:05 on 12 May 2009. For technical reasons the calculation was actually performed for Oakham, which is of course slightly further east than Melton Mowbray, so the answer should still be valid for the latter town. The height of the pork pie tower required was found to be 19922 km or 12379 miles, and as I noted at the time, that's a lot of pork pies!

I am proud to say that Alan Turing was kind enough to grant me the Golden Biscuit Award for my efforts, which I shall always treasure. My acceptance speech at 20:54 on 12 May 2009 brought the house down - not! The Golden Biscuit Award should not of course be confused with the Golden Rivet Award. Our marine engineering expert StevefromSE5 baffled the fun pesters with that one!

Following the authorisation given by R.G. Tracker at 07:00 today on behalf of the Management Team of this estimable Forum I am happy to reveal, for the benefit of prof.n and others how to defeat the ever monitoring Network54 Politically Correct Program should you wish to post a sentence such as:

It is completely untrue that I would sni­gger over a co­ck and bull story about Scu­nthorpe.

The secret is to use the HTML special character 'soft hyphen' to break up the part of your word which may fall foul of the censoring software. So you might break up sni­gger into sni gger and insert the special character into the space thus:

s

n

i

size="3">&

#

1

7

3

;

g

g

e

r

The larger characters and Clarendon setting are just to make it easier for you to see what is required. Don't try highlight/copy on the 6 characters of the HTML soft hypen as show above, for technical reasons you won't be able to from this post.

Hope this helps.

However please note: Our transatlantic cousins are somewhat fragile about any attempts to bypass their computer security, as an earnest seeker after the truth about flying saucers will sadly find out real soon now. Network54 computers are situated in the US. You have been warned!

Arragh! Network54 will always get you in the end! Well no, actually this time it's finger trouble. HTML formatting is totally unforgiving, and for technical reasons my demonstration line had to be embedded in a table. One misplaced character in that table, result disaster!

The line should have read:

s

i

n

&

#

1

7

3

;

g

g

e

r

Which will appear as 'sni­gger in your final post.

Hope that makes it all clear.

Oh dear, the gremlins are really out tonight - or possibly I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. Possibly you didn't notice that in my post above the example line

s n i & # 1 7 3 ; g g e r

has mysteriously transformed into

s i n & # 1 7 3 ; g g e r

The latter will give 'singger' which I am sure is completely inoffensive insofar as Network54 is concerned, even without the soft hyphen, but the former will still give 'sni­gger' which isn't!

Anyway, I'm sure that by now you have memorised the magic characters for the HTML soft hypen, but just in case here they are again:

&

#

1

7

3

;

Another lurker / Melton Mowbray,

Thanks for all your effort.

yes I notice the glitch but IHMO given the state of my typing, I felt I was the last one to have cause to complain about a jumbled letter however it happened.

Anyway I am busy building my tower of pies.....from Frisby on the Wreake which is at least much higher thsan Melton Mowbray being its highest hill....and there is in the valley below an excellent pub that still plays village skittles....... Alternately I could try Uppingham or Stamford, for they, as I recall, like Melton and Oakham have (King) 'George' pubs ( of various vintages), although I do believe the one at Oakham is now called the Whipper Inn..... if I get peckish i can always eat a pie......

Hmm, I think you may be a bit more technically minded than you are letting on prof.n! Otherwise how would you have realised that you'd need to put spaces between the characters of soft hyphen to use it as the title of your post!

You say:

Anyway I am busy building my tower of pies.....

Excellent, as soon as you spot the Golden Gate Bridge post here and I'll be down to have look and help you eat the surplus pies!

Another Lurker,

You have an enquiring mind!!!!...No I'm not quite technically bereft just .well to a fellow insomniac, I'll expand a little, although its all rather mundane and uninteresting. in the great scheme of things.....

When I was young I was fascinated by science, you know the big bang or steady state , how and why light travels and that sort of thing. Later science got pretty cool with explosions and colour changes and as science wasn't popular and was thought of as 'difficult', teaching staff sold it hard, and made sure those who were any good at it .did it . A primitive sort of market economics , like banks selling current accounts you have to pay for. I guess I was some good , well I got the royal flush at A level mostly 'A's plus an odd 'B' ( in the days when that meant something) ( Maths physics chemistry biology and the old banker general studies along with a couple of S levels) BUT and there was a but , as I've told you I'm not a finisher.

I enjoyed the theory and the odd thunder flash whatever, but I found out that much of your time was spent doing repeat experiments that required long term patience( haven't got any) , precision (ditto) and slog.(allergic). .

( Now this bit I never understood ) . You see some of my mates were happy to look at mystery substance 'A' and spend half the afternoon proving it wasn't something grotesque like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane , .which I knew it wasn't because if it was we would all be dead before next weeks titration! .

So I preferred the 'inspired hunch' approach combined with a bit of Sherlock Holmes,-chat up and flatter the lab assistant to find out what goodies she had on the 'trolley' for the senior lab today, ...then, in class, a few 'inspired ' hunches. Reduce the necessary time on 'experimentation' to a minimum., and ensure the write up was completed ,and ,where necessary invented, whilst the other teams were still scrabbling round for molar this or that.......and writing up tonight.

So to cut to the chase, I can think scientifically, and be interested in what I'm interested in, but actually be a scientist even in the widest possible sense, a bit too hard work , too precise and too time consuming, and too many I's to dot and T 's to cross.........

But SOCIAL science ...well there you go, you're getting paid to tell stories and argue about them .......and that's something on which all my friends and detractors alike agree , I never tire of........!!!!!.

Completely off , indeed running away from topic.........

What an interesting forum we are. A biologist reading our esteemed forum in the early hours ( my time) kindly emailed me direct to inform me that :-

'Your exposure had it happened to dichlorodiphenyltrichloride, which, whilst a serious breach of current heath and safety guidance , would have been unlikely to kill you all off before the next week's titration because LD50 in the rat is reported as 113mg/Kg. However you might have become sterile, and/or died of cancer some years later.'

Thank you ,Sir, for those words of comfort?!

Well its strange what you can learn at 4am in the morning...........

At 22:12 on 26 July I recommended the free DownloadToolz.com YouTube video downloader for anyone who had difficulty watching YouTube videos because of their system configuration. I don't know if anyone tried this, but if you did you will need to update as YouTube have just changed their interface and the old version no longer works.

A new freeware version 3.2.1 which overcomes the problem is available here.

Sadly it can no longer be loaded up with lots of downloads and left to get on with it, it will now only do one video at a time - but then you could only watch one at a time on YouTube anyway!

In preparing posts tonight I have once again been struck by the sheer perversity of the Network54 Forum Search Engine.

On many occasions a lot of trouble can be saved by simply referring someone to a previous post. Clearly it is preferable to do this by giving a link direct to that post, rather than saying 'at such and such a time and date in this thread'. Some of our threads are, happily for the fortunes of the Forum, extremely large, and even knowing a time and date it can take a long time to wade through them.

I normally look for an unusual word in the post I wish to identify and then search for that word. Sometimes this works, but more often than not the search engine denies that the word occurs anywhere in the Forum, or brings up several posts that don't contain that word at all! More than one word as a search pattern is usually a waste of time since dozens of posts will be found, generally not including the wanted one.

I understand how the algorithm Network54 uses to identify single posts works and could eventually derive the address of any post, though with some difficulty because sadly the information available from an actual post allows 60 possible addresses and it would be a matter of working through them until the correct one was found.

There is a way of uniquely identifying one's own posts and addressing them, but it's a load of hassle to remember, and anyway is useless for any other posts.

I am probably going to raise some of these issues on the Network54 Technical Forum eventually, but just in case I am missing something, has anyone else found a way of always, or even very frequently, getting what they want from the search engine? If so are you prepared to reveal the secret please?

A_L

I have always found the best way to find anything on this forum is to mention it and rely on you to do the searching! Not very helpful and very lazy, but I'm afraid my computer skills are as good as non existent.

On a serious point is there an easily accessible site for beginners, the " computers made easy" type of book seem to tell you everthing you don't want to know but fail to address what , for instance , all the functions of the keys are.

Hi Declan. You say:

I have always found the best way to find anything on this forum is to mention it and rely on you to do the searching!

It is said that everyone has a place, however humble, in the great overall scheme of things. Perhaps that is mine!

And you also say:

On a serious point is there an easily accessible site for beginners, the " computers made easy" type of book seem to tell you everthing you don't want to know but fail to address what , for instance , all the functions of the keys are.

I am in full agreement with you about the 'computers made easy' type of book. I have never seen one I thought to be any good. Some people say that the 'XYZ for Dummies' series has helped them, but sadly I think that this is sometimes because having spent money on the book they are reluctant to say that it didn't benefit them. As regards a good web site for beginners, I can't really help there either. There are plenty of good sites which will get you up to speed on hardware or graphics or website production or individual software applications or whatever but I don't know of one that does it all.

In my opinion the best way to learn is to be inquisitive and say 'now what does this do'. I'd like to say do this on somebody else's computer if you can, but sadly this isn't an option open to many people now! I learnt my PC basics sorting out problems for other people for about two years before I got round to acquiring a PC of my own. I did though have the benefit of many years in big computers, in those days the knowledge transferred fairly readily.

Nowadays the web is a good source of information on almost any specific computer problem. My advice is to type the problem into Google in your own words and then look at several of the resulting hits, not just the first one or two. You'll almost certainly see a pattern emerge, and the odds are that your solution lies somewhere in that pattern. If your first shot doesn't seem to produce anything useful try a slightly different description of the problem.

You ask specifically about key functions. The actual Function Keys (F1 thru F12) can have various uses depending on the application, though some tend to be common to most applications, F1 will usually bring up some sort of help window for instance. However, there are a vast number of general shortcuts and commands which can be used in windows via various key combinations. I assume that you are using Microsoft XP. Here is the official Microsoft page on the subject. If you are using Vista here is the equivalent page. Nobody learns them all by heart though. Just pick out and try the ones you might find useful.

Obviously if you get problems you can't overcome post here. Somebody will probably know the answer! If all else fails you're not far away and as I spend half my life sorting other people's computers for a cuppa and some intelligent conversation one more on the list wouldn't be a problem. We can devise a means of contact if needed.

Some visitors to this estimable Forum have to use slow Internet connections and may thus experience difficulty in viewing threads which contain substantial picture content.

I am familiar with this problem from my own fairly recent experience of having to use a dial-up link before I was able to upgrade to ADSL2+. There are various methods which can help. The simplest to operate, if your browser permits, is to switch off pictures when loading picture heavy pages. This loads the text, but leaves blanks where pictures would be. Because only text is loaded the page loads very fast. Individual pictures can then be displayed as desired, without the overhead of trying to load all the pictures at once.

The method is very easy to operate for the Internet Explorer series of browsers, and I give details of how to do it below. If anyone uses a different browser and would like to try the method but cannot see how to do so I will be happy to investigate providing the browser is a reputable one and can be downloaded without cost.

These instructions are applicable for IE6 and IE8. I assume IE7 will be identical but I don't currently have this on any system.

To switch pictures off:

• In the menu bar click Tools.
• In the drop-down menu click Internet Options.
• Click the Advanced tab near the top of the Internet Options window.
• In the Settings box scroll down to the left side section header Multimedia.
• Scroll down further until you can see Show pictures.
• Click in the small box to the left of Show pictures to remove the tick. The small box should now be blank.
• At the bottom of the Internet Options window click the Apply button then click the OK buttton.

This change does not require a system restart and can readily be done and reversed again as many times as required, depending on the pages you are looking at.

To switch pictures back on again

• In the menu bar click Tools.
• In the drop-down menu click Internet Options.
• Click the Advanced tab near the top of the Internet Options window.
• In the Settings box scroll down to the left side section header Multimedia.
• Scroll down further until you can see Show pictures.
• Click in the small box to the left of Show pictures to set the option. The small box should now have a tick in it.
• At the bottom of the Internet Options window click the Apply button then click the OK button.

When browsing with pictures switched off you will see an empty area representing each picture. In the top left hand corner of this will be a marker box (tiny red square and blue circle and triangle inside a square box). If the picture has an 'Alt' attribute set in the 'Img' tag displaying it this will appear as well. In Network54 the default 'Alt' attribute is the name of the picture file, but some posters may have provided a description of the contents of the picture. I usually do this as it aids people with visual problems who are browsing using screen reader software.

As noted above when browsing with picture display switched off you can easily show any pictures you want to see.

To show a picture when browsing with pictures switched off:

• Right mouse click on the marker box in the top left corner of the image.
• In the small menu window that opens click on Show Picture.
• The picture will load and remain visible.

The show picture method can be repeated as many times as you wish to show whatever pictures on a page you wish to see. Each picture shown will remain visible but the overhead of trying to load many pictures at once is avoided.

Hi American Way. What follows will probably be unfamiliar and a little daunting at first. Trust me, it isn't difficult, you just have to keep a clear head and follow instructions. Once you get used to it you'll do it without giving it a second thought.

What you've now hopefully got in the form of the file matrix.htm is an HTML file containing what is called a table. In this case it is a table with 4 columns and a number of rows of cells comprising your disciplinary matrix. Each cell contains text of some sort, a heading, an offence or a penalty.

The ideal way to proceed is probably to keep the matrix as an HTML file while you modify it, so that you can easily open it in your browser to check that you've got what you intended, then to copy/paste from it when you want to post a new version in your Forum thread.

Unfortunately Network54 only allows a rather dated and unnecessarily complex HTML structure when dealing with tables. This makes things a little more difficult than they need to be, but I hope we can avoid you needing to alter the HTML structure. The file you have is the original you referred me to edited to make it Network54 compliant.

When editing HTML you need to use a text processor such as NotePad, rather than a 'proper' word processor like Word. The latter is simply too complex and unless you exercise constant vigilance it will make your files unuseable. I'll refer to NotePad here, but take the instructions to refer to whatever simple text processor you chose to use.

Open matrix.htm in NotePad. Pattern is very important in HTML files, and you need to be aware of it.. Here you'll see a pattern of blocks of long lines separated by </tr><tr>. Those blocks of long lines are what display each row of your matrix.


Now look at the blocks of long lines more carefully. You'll see the first block contains the 4 'Offense' headings. Each block after that contains an offense, followed by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd penalties for that offense. There is one exception, the 'Threatening a life of student or staff' block, where there is only one 'penalty' cell in the block.

As you look at the HTML you'll see that the headings and the offences are delineated by <b> </b> . That's because they are displayed in bold. You can amend (edit) any of the text between, but not including, the <b> </b> to change headings or offences.

Looking at the penalties you'll see that they are delineated by <font size="2"> </font>. This is because in Network54 text in tables will display too big unless we tell it the correct size - one of the annoying Network54 restrictions I mentioned above. You can amend (edit) any of the text between, but not including, <font size="2"> </font> to change the penalties.

In some cases in an offence or penalty line of text you'll see <br>. This is an HTML 'break' tag. All it does is force a new line when the text is displayed in a browser. You may need to delete break tags, or put your own into any changes you make, to ensure that the table looks how you want it to look when it is displayed. You'll soon get the hang of this with a bit of experiment.

In cases where empty cells are displayed in the table you'll see that the 'penalty' will appear as &nb­sp; which is an HTML non-breaking space. This is just a device to kid the displaying browser into thinking that there is something in that cell and stop it upsetting the table structure. If you eliminate any penalties altogether you'd need to replace them with &nb­sp;

If you wanted to eliminate a whole row of the table, for instance if you combined two offences, you'd need to delete everything from the </tr><tr> before the removed offence up to, but not including the next </tr><tr>.

If you wanted to add a new offence you simply copy everything from any </tr><tr> before an offence up to, but not including the next </tr><tr> and paste it in before the </tr><tr> which is before the offence you want it to go above.

All much more complicated to describe than to do! Play about with the file. I suggest saving under a new name each time you make a change, so that you don't lose previous sucessful changes. I go something like matrix_01.htm, matrix_02.htm etc., but chose your own system.

Once you've got it how you want it you can post it in a thread by copying everything between and including <table width="600" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4"> on the 4th line of the file to </tr></table> two lines before the end. Paste this into the posting box on a new line after any text you want before it and the job's done.

Any queries, don't hesitate to ask. Good look, but I'm sure you'll be fine. Just take your time and don't rush things. By the time you do a few changes you'll probably have gained a good idea of how HTML tables work and you'll be able to write your own!

As Another_Lurker says, if you use a big wordprocessing program like Microsoft Word to prepare posts for this forum, you are likely to land up with all sorts of problems, because Word takes it upon itself to "intelligently" modify your text. For instance, it turns ordinary quotation marks, like these: "quotation marks" into things called smart quotes which get mangled when you post them to Network54.

The standard alternative is to use something like Notepad, which is a plain text editor. But this also has its problems, because it sometimes inserts hard line breaks into your text. You can see this when you copy and paste your text into Network54: there seem to be lots of blank lines in the middle of paragraphs. So you diligently go round removing all the blank lines, but of course you miss the line break which really does happen to be at the end of a line, and then when you press the Respond button everything gets reformatted and you still have an ugly blank line in the middle of your paragraph.

I sometimes (though not always) get round this by using Wordpad. You don't have Wordpad? Actually, if you have a Windows PC, you do: it comes automatically with Windows, and you can find it in the Accessories folder of the Start menu. Wordpad doesn't insert extra line breaks, but because it's a bottom-end word processor it doesn't fiddle with quotation marks and the like.

Wordpad will, by default, save your file in .rtf format (that's Rich Text Format). If you subsequently find the file in Explorer, you can open it in Wordpad again by right-clicking and then selecting Open With (Wordpad). If you double-click the file, it'll open in Word, which you don't want!

Alternatively, Wordpad can save the file in .txt format, and it will then pretend to start a new line every 72 characters (though this will not be saved in the file). Again you have to right-click and Open With to reopen in Wordpad; if you double-click then the file will open in Notepad. I prefer to use the .rtf format.

Somewhat late in the day, but I commend the recommendation of my distinguished fellow contributor Alan Turing with regard to Wordpad. I use this most of the time for my own preparation of websites and material for the web.

The reason I sometimes recommend Notepad, as I did to American Way above, is that with Notepad there should be no risk of saving a file as anything but plain text, essential if the material is HTML based. Wordpad, left to its own devices, will NOT save as plain text!

I have to confess that I haven't encountered the problems with Notepad that Alan Turing relates. This may be a version thing - his version will undoubtedly be from an up to date OS, whereas mine is certainly not. In computer software, as in so many aspects of life, olden is golden, at least IMHO!

Interestingly my version of Wordpad saves by default in Word for Windows 6.0 .doc format not the .rtf format mentioned by Alan Turing as the default for his version. Again this may be related to the OS the software came bundled with.

Is it just me, or are pages on this estimable Forum really taking longer to load and become fully controllable via the slider bars than they did last night?

Hi Another Lurker,

You have encountered the same problem as I. I thought it was a temporary problem in my machine and re-booted.....but the sliders froze randomly last night . When I investigated, I was told there was some incompatibility between the BT/Yahoo browser I was using and ' Verizon' if that means anything. so I switched to firefox , as the update promised , wasn't to be found where BT/Yahoo said it was.......

Following so far?

So I used firefox , fine except for its usual propensity to crash out of frame for no apparent reason, but this isn't unique to this site , stability isn't a firefox stong point in my opinion ( although I know little of what goes on within the box sat on my desk ......or down the wire..or..through the air come to that! ).

I did notice that this problem is concurrent with noticing for the first time that , again apparently randomly, certain words at the top of the general postin list ( eg 'retired' before 'Headmaster George') have taken to appearing in underlined green. the same apparently happens on some posts again without any apparent reason.


Am I just going crazy!!!!!! Maybe I don't want an answer to that !!!

Hi prof.n. You say:

certain words at the top of the general postin list ( eg 'retired' before 'Headmaster George') have taken to appearing in underlined green. the same apparently happens on some posts again without any apparent reason.


Am I just going crazy!!!!!! Maybe I don't want an answer to that !!!

No, you are not going crazy, and I think you have put your finger on the problem. The green underlined items are some sort of advertising - in effect they turn certain words into links. I think the extra page loading and stabilisation time is caused by the need to scan the page looking for whatever words are currently set to be green-lined. I suppose that Network54 have got to raise revenue where they can and whoever benefits from the green lined links doubtless pays Network54 for the privilege.

I would like to share this link not because there isn't anything new here but it puts the various superb things altogether. It's probably not of value to anyone but me but I'll post it anyway. Could you do me a big favor and walk me through as slowly as possible how I can create a chart found from a linear list to a chart? I won't find you condescending. I'm ready to create a trial balloon disciplinary matrix for consideration. I may have a physics degree but that's not where I have my masters and the hardest thing I have found of late is to master are computers. Pretend I am learning disabled but don't paddle me more often for being so. I don't even know how to make smiley faces.

embedded links

Hi American Way. Anyone asking anything as politely and pleasantly as that will always get a response from Another_Lurker!

A query about what you want to do is below, but first the link you've posted. I think you will find it is one that Doctor Dominum has already posted here. I can find no fault with the information given, other than the fact that she uses upper case letters for some HTML tags. This will work fine on Network54, but it isn't a good idea. Some web servers will not permit websites with upper case HTML to operate so it is best to stick to all lowercase for everything in HTML, both tags and attributes. I have been called on several occasions when people haven't been able to get their home written websites to work, and that is the most common problem.

I most strongly disagree with the statement on the site that:

These tags can be either CAPS or in lower case; it matters not. Some folks prefer to type the html in ALL CAPS, making it easier to identify.

That simply isn't true if you live in the UK and want to put your website on the web servers provided by certain ISPs. I have no idea about the rest of the world, but better safe than sorry! However I'm not going to inform the lady whose site it is, because I don't want to interact with someone who describes herself as:

a sanguinarian, or "blood feeder", the Head for the Kansas Branch of ShadowLore, which is a network and group for vampires, donors, otherkin, fae, elves, dragons, therianthropes (were-creatures), and witches

Not the sort of person we retired System Programmers are trained to deal with. Although come to think of it, some of the operators, especially the tape loaders ........... (Private joke. Sorry Jenny, if you happen to read this! )


American Way, you say:

I don't even know how to make smiley faces.

Easy peasy:

• For a smile type :­) and get
• For a wink type ;­) and get
• For a sad face type :­( and get

You also say:

Could you do me a big favor and walk me through as slowly as possible how I can create a chart found from a linear list to a chart?

and

I'm ready to create a trial balloon disciplinary matrix

I need to be sure that I understand exactly what you need to know so that I don't waste your time with stuff that is no use to you.

By 'a trial balloon disciplinary matrix' do you just mean the sort of matrix I did for you at 1:11 AM on September 12 2009 in the 'School Corporal Punishment Part 1' thread here and the coloured background one I did for you in another thread which I can't track down at the moment?

Note that this type of HTML matrix can be published in a thread here, and indeed on any website. However, it wouldn't be much use if you wanted to print it, unless you printed it from a web page.

By a 'linear list' do you just mean a list of offences (possibly 1st, 2nd, 3rd offence etc.) and the penalties for those offences, similar to the one I did the 'coloured background' matrix from?

If you will confirm the above, or put me right if I've got something wrong, I'll certainly try to help. It may not be in the next 36 hours 'cos I'm a bit busy, but I'll do my best after that.

Another_Lurker

a sanguinarian, or "blood feeder", the Head for the Kansas Branch of ShadowLore, which is a network and group for vampires, donors, otherkin, fae, elves, dragons, therianthropes (were-creatures), and witches

Not the sort of person we retired System Programmers are trained to deal with. Although come to think of it, some of the operators, especially the tape loaders ........... (Private joke. Sorry Jenny, if you happen to read this!)

LOL!!

Easy peasy for everyone but me. The offenses would go top to bottom and the penalties would go from left to right so more the repeats the wider. Right to left about one more box and a half dozen top to bottom. Don't worry about the 36 hours as long as I can do it by the end of the month and if I prove invincibly ignorant I might need it done for me again. I like Winona but not for its calibration of code and consequence and length of offenses but the shape and proportional size of the boxes. It may become more rectangular so be it and color would be a bonus. Printing it sounds like too much trouble but it would be even better. Mighty obliged for your expertise and kindness and you patience.

I am invincibly ignorant.

I know the size of the boxes means the chart must configurate by the data submitted. I'm sorry I meant take off half dozen from top to bottom. Horseplay can be broken down in fewer offenses than I originally thought so multiple delineations need not be created. As the Angelic Doctor (Aquinas) wrote: "If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices." Unless of course you're pro n who has been on the recieving end of both paddle and cane.

Winona Discipline Matrix

Hi American Way. You haven't actually said so, but I assume that the answer to the two questions I posed above was yes.

You say:

if I prove invincibly ignorant I might need it done for me again.

The former is unlikely, as regards the latter we'll see! If you can post it here as a list I'll have a look. It might actually be a lot quicker for me to do a matrix from it than to set you up to do it, though I'll still try to do the latter if you want to get your hands dirty. In any event we'll try to find a better way to get a copy for you to play with than the method I used previously. Am I right in assuming that you didn't follow through on that?

You also say:

I know the size of the boxes means the chart must configurate by the data submitted.

You are absolutely correct, the size of the boxes (cells) in the matrix will expand to accommodate the text that has to go into them. However, we normally fix the horizontal width of the boxes to keep things looking even and tidy, and to make sure the matrix fits on the screen reasonably well, so any expansion is only in the vertical plane. We can also vary the size of the text, subject to legibility considerations.

And in addition you say:

color would be a bonus

Colour is actually the easiest bit. If you wish you can even have the actual offences backed in one colour, the repeats header line backed in another colour and the penalties backed in a third colour! I haven't actually tried this with Network54's rather limited implementation of tables, but it should work. In any event you can certainly have a single colour like the one I did for you  Here is a chart of the 216 colours that browsers should render correctly, take your choice! I'd just need to know the code to the left of the colour block, 6 alpha-numeric digits preceeded by #. Until Network54 made some changes recently you could have had a picture of a student being paddled backing up the matrix. On an ordinary website you still could!

Anyway, as noted above, post the list if you'd like me to have a go and I'll see! If you want to do it yourself I need to know how many individual offences and what the highest number of repeat offences is is, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. For instance the answers for the Winona chart would be 22 and 3rd.

Finally you say:

Easy peasy for everyone but me.

I'll expect to see an emoticon (smiley) of some sort in one of your posts soon. Read my post above again. It really is easy, honest! Just colon immediately followed by close bracket etc. as I show, with a space before and after them.

Even with the physics degree unless I spent a day or so I wouldn't be able to do the matrix. I'll need your help for the trial balloon and when it gets honed by suggestions. Now I can do long links, bold and italic. Thanks. My very first time!!! emoticons are easy peasy.



How to emoticon emails so I can impress my friends? Is there a link that puts it altogether you can refer so as not to be a pain?

Hi American Way. You say:

Even with the physics degree unless I spent a day or so I wouldn't be able to do the matrix. I'll need your help for the trial balloon and when it gets honed by suggestions.

Ok, you've convinced me. Post it somewhere when you are ready and barring unforseen circumstances you are covered for one matrix from the original draft and another when you are satisfied that all the revisions are in. You'll probably have to do me a list of which of the latter you've accepted though. Don't forget to have a look at the colour chart link I posted above and tell me a few of your favourite colours.

And you also say:

Now I can do long links, bold and italic. Thanks. My very first time!!! emoticons are easy peasy.

Well done. I thought you weren't going to try, and in that case you'd have got a . (See, somebody appreciates your efforts, Ketta! )

As it is we'll have you writing websites in next to no time. I recommend the Another_Lurker 2 day intensive course, as validated and attested sucessful by thousands of satisfied customers - well, two ex-colleagues anyway!

And finally, you say:

How to emoticon emails so I can impress my friends? Is there a link that puts it altogether you can refer so as not to be a pain?

No question of being a pain, but you might find your friends aren't impressed. Some people here don't like emoticons and it tends to be a love or hate thing for the population as a whole.

If you want to try I'll do my best, but no promises. What is almost 100% certain is that you won't be able to do them the way you do here.

What email client do you use, Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora etc.?

Or do you use some form of webmail, either provided by your internet service provider or by something like Hotmail, Gmail etc.?

Thanks again. I do have Outlook Express.

Hi American Way

This might sound a bit complicated, but just take it step by step.

First you need to get some emoticons to use. There are all sorts of web sites which make these available, such as the site where Ketta found her new range. However, initially let's keep it simple and use the ones you are now used to here. I'm sure Network54 won't mind. There are inevitably copies on your computer anyway in your browser cache.

So: Look at your post above where you used all three emoticons (October 14 at 2:27 PM). Place your mouse pointer over the first one (the smile) and RIGHT MOUSE CLICK on it and on the drop down menu click on 'Save Picture As'. You'll see the file is called happy.gif. Save it somewhere on your hard disk where you'll easily be able to find it agaim. Ideally set up a new folder called emoticons in My Documents - or however you organise these things. Do the same for the other two, which are called wink.gif and sad.gif. You've now got all three ready to play with. Remember where you put them though!

Next, open Outlook Express. Our versions may differ, so some things may be in different menus on yours, but let's see how we get on.

First you need to open a new message window, so do that by whatever method you normally use.

Now you need to check that you are set to HTML. You may have this as your default, but check as follows. In the new message window menu bar click on 'Format' and in the drop down menu click on 'Rich Text (HTML)'.

Now click on 'Format' in the new message window menu bar again and in the drop down menu check that there is marker at the left of Rich Text (HTML). Look on down the drop down menu and check that there is a tick (check) to the left of 'Send Pictures With Message'. If there is just click in a blank area of the new message widow to clear the drop down menu, but if there isn't click on 'Send Pictures With Message' to select it.

Now prepare your message as normal. Ideally address your first attempt to somebody with whom you can easily check that it worked - I usually send tests to myself. Type your email to the point where you'd like to put an emoticon in, remember to leave a space after the text before the emoticon if you want one.

To insert the emoticon click on 'Insert' in the menu bar of the new message window. In the drop down menu click on 'Picture'. Rather than using the menu bar you may have an 'Insert Picture' icon in the font control bar, if so you can just click on that.

A Picture (selection) window will open. At the top of this you'll see 'Picture Source' then a box with a 'Browse' button to the right of it. Click on the 'Browse' button and navigate to where you stored the emoticons on your hard disk. Double click on the one you want to use. The location of the emoticon will appear in the 'Picture Source' box. To put it into your message just click the 'OK' button to the right of the 'Browse' button. You'll see it appear in your message. Repeat process as required to insert any other emoticons you want in the email. Job done!

Once you get used to it it won't take you any time at all!

Send your email and get feedback. Be aware though that there can be difficulties depending on what email client your recipients use and how they have it set up. The world of in-line picture insertions is quite a turbulent one, sadly! See how you go. If you've got any problems post here and I'll try to help. When you are happy with the process also let me know and we'll try to connect you to a few more emoticons if you wish.

Hi Can anyone advise/ suggest why this is happening.....

Until a few weeks ago when i updated by browser version, every time I logged in , the log in remained effective for some time, certainly enough to write a longish post. Now I log in , fine.....write the post 9 if short straight on the page. Alternately i write it on the WP package (open office 3) and then I open the respond page and log in fine. Paste to the page fine, check the preview...fine ..any final editing....and presto the log in has vanished. If I re log in fine, it posts, if not it goes the long way round. if I notice this, I re log in , post and it posts.

I'm using Mozilla FireFox, with windows XP,and come in through google search , or yahoo bookmarks with AGV....... and this only happens on irregular occasions both ways !.Normally there is no error message, but on occasion I get 'problem with cookies' but investigation shows the network 54 cookies are installed and working at my usual ( moderately high) level of security.

If I go the very long way round , ( IE into 54, my account , to the site and then proceed) the log in seems to last for a lengthy session...... )

Further sometimes the browser seems to have a long fight when I try to post and informs me it is blocking popups and goodness knows what else.....when this happens the log in usually closes on me !

Is this the price I must pay for making the sliders work properly, managing long threads, and not being bombarded by pesky ads from cyberspace?

I am hoping this isn't causing management too much work with doubler posts that need deleting in the system...........

Any advice appreciated.

Is it my imagination, or have those scripts which slowed everything down finally been dumped?

Hi Alam Turing,

you might have something there Alan. I've just opened BT/Yahoo browser via Internet explorer, and you are right, peace and quiet!!!! no pesky redirects!!!! not green lines ( or green people).....or slow cursors......or logging in problems.

Have the advertisers realised , when you get too many ads you block their entry???? and maybe this change explains why my other browser is playing silly beggars.......with the log in. The security is redundant. Fingers crossed......

Off on holiday to BT open world ?//?????

Hi Alan Turing and prof.n. It would appear that we are indeed temporarily spared the green horrors. However, we should not celebrate yet. This particular scrip has appeared for periods of various duration in the past. I assume that the advertiser pays Network54 to run it as and when they think it will bring in results.

In the past it probably didn't cause problems for broadband users, but I was on dial-up much later than most people, and it used to cause me minor problems, though not sufficient to need to tweak the browser. I think the problem in the most recent manifestation was that it seemed to be highlighting many more words than before. One would assume it uses a list and that this was simply extended. However, the problem was so extreme that possibly it might have completely (and very badly) rewritten.

Our best hope is that Network54 have received a vast number of complaints and won't allow it to be used again in the same format. However, in this area money talks and it wouldn't surprise me if it returned and caused exactly the same problems, or possibly worse ones if they add even more words to be highlighted! Never let it be said that Another_Lurker isn't a natural born optimist!

Hi prof.n. Your loss of logons/posting problems. I'm not clear if your comment 'The security is redundant. Fingers crossed......' means that now the green horrors have gone, temporarily at least, you don't have these problems any more. If in fact you do still have the problem you posted about at 12:47 today post again confirming this and I'll try to help.

Hi Another lurker,

Thanks.

Yes i do still have the problems, I can log in on the btinternet/yahoo via internet explorer now with no green lines etc. But Firefox/Mozilla, which has a much higher security setting, and I access from that either via google or Yahoo which is modified by AVG safe search , and the problems exist, that the log in holds for short periods only and logs off if I preview before posting........Occasionally I get a message cookies! but they seem to be installed and working ok for 54. No problem however if I log on through my 54 account instead on on the forum.....


Does that make any sense at all!!!!


Same problem if i access yahoo groups from FireFox, it asks me to confirm my password every few minutes....its set to ask every two weeks!!!!!

any help or suggestions appreciated!

Hi prof.n. Sorry for the delay in replying. For some reason your post didn't become visible to me when I looked earlier. The first thing to say is that if there were 10¹⁰⁰ contributors to this estimable Forum there would be 10¹⁰⁰ different methods of starting up a browser, going on the web and posting in a thread here. Everybody does that sort of thing their own unique way, and often, as I know to my cost, they can't understand why anyone would want to do it any other way. I certainly wouldn't suggest that you are in the latter category, I'm sure you're not. Equally though you probably don't want to make major changes.

On that basis I'll try to make some suggestions that don't involve too much change. You'll probably find some of this ultra boring, but you've absolutely no idea what a fascinating path you've sent me down, just the sort of stuff that keeps Another_Lurker willing to bother getting out of bed in the morning! It's a sad thing to have been a system programmer, and even sadder that once a system programmer always a system programmer! And if you think I'm bad, look what it's done to Jenny! Sorry Jenny!

So, first, why do you get no problem in holding your log-on with your Firefox/Mozilla browser if you log in via the Network54 home page and then go to this estimable Forum and post, but constant problems if you go direct to the Forum, log on there, and try to post?

The answer, as you obviously suspect, is almost certainly cookies. If you open the network54 home page a cookie is set up on your system. If you then log on on the Network54 home page that cookie is modified to include two keys, key d and key v. However there is still only one cookie. Incidently, although I can read cookies, it should be noted that it is virtually impossible for anyone other than the person who designed a cookie to understand what its content means. I can guess that those keys have to be present in a cookie on your system for you to be regarded as logged on (and confirmation of that comes later) but I can't tell what they, or other items in Network54 cookies actually do.

If having logged on via the Network54 home page you then go to this Forum the same single cookie stays on your system, and if you open a thread and click on 'Respond to this message', when the 'Post' window comes up you are already shown as being logged on, complete with email address (which you can of course delete if you wish). At this stage there is still just the one Network54 cookie on your system, with the two keys. Very minor changes have been made to it along the way, but essentially it is as it was immediately after you logged on on the Network54 home page. As long as your browser (or other cookie controlling software) regards that cookie as friendly and lets it stay on your system, you'll stay logged on and be able to keep posting. And clearly your cookie control software (in this case almost certainly just your Firefox/Mozilla browser) does regard that cookie as friendly, or you wouldn't have been able to open the post window and be ready logged on.

Now, why are things different (very much worse) when, still using your Firefox/Mozilla browser, you go direct to this Forum and log on via the 'Post' window instead of via the Network54 home page? Well, for some reason known only to Network54 the cookie mechanism is rather different, and more complex. When you open this Forum a cookie is set up on your system. When you log on that cookie is modified to include key d and key v. So far, so good, exactly as using the Network54 home page route. But here's the rub! At the same time another very small cookie is set up on your system. As far as I can see one of the things it does is say you are logged on - it actually contains the string 'sigon' with a few numeric strings. And clearly if you've logged on via this route that second cookie has to be there for the log on to stay valid. When I deleted it I lost my log on. At this stage I should say that, as with cookies in RL, computer cookies come in various flavours, with different security implications, at least insofar as they are viewed by cookie controll software. In reality most of them are harmless, but (and this is a different issue not relevant to this discussion) from a security viewpoint it is best to delete them all from your system after every session on the web, or at minimum once a day, at least IMHO.

As I've said I've no idea why there have to be the two cookies if you come in directly via the Forum and log in via the 'Post' page. That's just how Network54 have decreed it shall be! And what I think is happening is that your Firefox/Mozilla browser, because of its security settings, is happy with the big cookie with the keys but doesn't like the little cookie with the sigon data. If that cookie isn't acceptable sooner or later,and probably sooner, you'll lose your log on! I can't help with your Yahoo groups problem at the moment, but I'll bet the persistent cookie (persistent in the sense that it is meant to stick around on your system) that enables you to stay logged in for a long period is also rejected by your Firefox/Mozilla browser security settings whereas it accepts the short term cookie which gets you in for a short session.

So what to do? Two immediate possibilities:

1. Tweak the cookie security settings on your Firefox/Mozilla browser (assuming it has the necessary controls) 'till we find a level where it is happy with all the cookies for Network54 and Yahoo. Note that it should be possible to do this without affecting the dreaded green underlinings horror story, that's down to scripts not cookies. I don't use Firefox/Mozilla, but someone who does may chip in with the necessary settings. Failing that if I can get the same version as you (I think that browser is a freebie) I'm quite happy to load it and have a look. Or
   
   
2. Make it easier for you to log on via the Network54 home page and then get to this Forum. I'm not sure that I follow how you do this at present, but it sounds a bit complicated. It should be possible to go 'click' Network54 home page, sign in, 'cliclk' index page of this Forum. Doesn't solve your Yahoo problem like alternative 1 hopefully should, but if it is the way you'd like to go I'll advise

Let me know if you'd like to try either alternative, and if alternative 1 tell me (if possible) your Firefox/Mozilla browser version.

The Firefox cookie control is under Tools/Options..., and then in the Privacy tab. If the "Accept cookies from sites" box is cleared, you can click the Exceptions button, and then list the web sites from which you will allow cookies. I have quite a few on my list, but I always set them as "Allow for session", so that the cookies will be deleted when I close the browser.

Hi another Lurker and Alan Turing,


Thank you both for the advice. It has helped clear the problem . I'm sure if/when the pesky ads come back I will find the BT/Yahoo browser freezing again and will have to shelter under the Mozilla Firefox again.

Firefox release used is 3.0.15 released 27/10/09 which is when the firefox issue came up
( after the update). And yes it is free download so will help if the ads return A.L.!!!

Hi Alan Turing. Thank you. I might have guessed who would come up with the required information! And I was hoping that Firefox would have that control!

Hi prof.n. Alan Turing has indeed very kindly provided us with all the additional information needed to tweak your Firefox browser settings to safely work with Network54 however you log in.

I do strongly recommend that you set any sites you add as 'Allow for session' as mentioned by Alan. As I noted in my post above it isn't wise to let cookies linger on your system and they really are best deleted after every session as both Alan and I do. This will probably preclude your password on Yahoo persisting for 2 weeks as you said above it was set to do. You'll almost certainly need to enter your password once each session. I can assure you though that keeping your password valid for two weeks isn't a very wise thing to do anyway. I'm sure you won't come back with the argument I sometimes encounter to the effect that 'if it wasn't ok to do it they wouldn't provide the facility'. However, just in case, my answer is usually along the lines of 'Windows provides you with the facility to delete lots of files that will render your system inoperative - but that doesn't mean it is safe or wise to do so!'.

Post if you have further problems. I'm sure Alan will assist if it is a matter of the Firefox settings and I'll do my best to help generally.

Thanks again A.L.

I've done as you suggest with cookies, the new update gives lots of options to clear from 'Never' to 'every session' . I've chosen the latter......


Anyway I thought cookies ought to be kept in a jar, and if not they'll be pretty stale in two weeks