COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Steven Chorkley]

As for recording I use this software. i-sound recorder It's free to try out, and not too expensive to buy. ( about $30)

You could just try Audacity?

[Pluggy]

Audacity would get my vote as well. Completely free - open source even - but that's an alien concept in Windoze Land I use it on Linux and Windoze, and I've used it on Mac in the past.

[PanBiker]

Audacity was the choice of the A Level examiners who came to school to record the oral foreign language tests. Each year I had to set up four laptops, two for use and two for backup in case of failure. I had to flatten the laptops and set Audacity as the only application on the machine and sign them off to that effect with the examiner on the day of the tests. Recordings were then saved with the students exam number and transferred to USB pen drives.

[Steven Chorkley]

Audacity was the choice of the A Level examiners who came to school to record the oral foreign language tests. Each year I had to set up four laptops, two for use and two for backup in case of failure. I had to flatten the laptops and set Audacity as the only application on the machine and sign them off to that effect with the examiner on the day of the tests. Recordings were then saved with the students exam number and transferred to USB pen drives.

Audacity is brilliant. I used it whilst doing my Music exams. Brilliant support and fantastic plugins.

I actually use a lot of Open Source applications. Windows certainly doesn't have much support in that category though. Windows is my OS of choice at the moment, although I really want to look at Debian and Ubuntu when my exams are over.

[Tripps]

Maybe I've missed it, but for me it does not seem that Audacity does automatically timed recording, nor does it split tracks, and label them from a data base. It does thousands of things that I don't want to do. iSound just makes recordings. I prefer it.

[Stanley]

I've always thought it should be possible to get radio via the web without the computer but didn't realise we had already got there. I may be coming back to ask about this.....

[Tizer]

Maybe I've missed it, but for me it does not seem that Audacity does automatically timed recording, nor does it split tracks, and label them from a data base. It does thousands of things that I don't want to do. iSound just makes recordings. I prefer it.

What I get from my Pure Digital DAB radio is EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) recording, i.e. just like on the TV, bring up the guide, look for the programme you want to record, click it and bingo, it does the rest. I can set all the programmes for the week I'm on holiday. Can you do that with any of these software packages or other types/males of radio?

[Tripps]

" Can you do that with any of these software packages or other types/makes of radio?"

I think so. Try the free download and see if it suits?

[Stanley]

Thanks to the lads. 30mb of Firefox downloaded and installed. Wonderful service. ( Let's hear it for Ubuntu and Mozilla!)

[Stanley]

Thanks again to Mozilla for a new version of Thunderbird.

[David Whipp]

The build of my PC is done (or rather the rebuild of Tom's to an even higher spec and an accumulation of cast offs in a case for me).

Tom didn't get an OS, as I'd mentioned possibly using Ubuntu. Eventual decision was to go with Windows 7 though and it was duly ordered on Amazon.

My signature was needed on a delivery yesterday, so I thought it'd arrived in good time. It turned out to be addressed to Alison and was a thin floppy package which had come from China complete with 'China post' and custom's stickers.

I met up with Alison up town when she finished work and mentioned the intriguing parcel. 'Can't think that I've ordered anything from China?' she said.

Eagerly, the family gathered round as Alison teased open the package... to reveal a mouse mat!

[Stanley]

The Chinese economy is safe for another nano-second!

[Tizer]

Eagerly, the family gathered round as Alison teased open the package... to reveal a mouse mat!

It might look like a mouse mat, David, but beware, it could be a Trojan horse! In the middle of the night a flap will open and tiny Chinese robots will march out and invade your house. Or it might be recording all your conversations and transmitting them to China to show manufacturers there how people live in Britain. Now, you might think that last idea is far-fetched but in the 1970s the Japanese car manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda covertly sent young men to the USA as students and had them live as lodgers in the homes of ordinary Americans so that they could feed back information about what the Americans wanted out of their cars and other products. The little Japanese sports cars like the MR2 evolved from that project.

[Tripps]

I swear this is true.

I was thinking about buying a bottle of orange squash later today. I did my daily surf of the news, and the next site I looked at had an advert, and 50p off voucher for Ribena Orange Squash, running down each side.

I know computers can follow you and put in suitable ads, but can they tell what you are thinking now? Very scary.

[Stanley]

There's a chip in that cheap toupee you bought on line. It's monitoring your brain waves and reporting back to the search engines!

[Pluggy]

The return of the screensaver email attachment.....

Many years a go it was an established method of distributing Windows Malware, and about 10 years ago it faded into obscurity and you didn't see any. In the last couple of weeks almost every attachment carrying Malware I've received has been an .scr Screeensaver. Hardly a welcome return but it makes a change from .exe files.

Of course if you're looking at them with Windows and you haven't changed the default behaviour, you won't see the extension.... It was a stupid decision when they first implemented it ( in Windows 95 I think) and even stupider that they left it as default in later versions of Windows. The horse is still in the stable and Microsoft refuses to bolt the door....

[Stanley]

Either I have a good spam filter or Ubuntu won't accept malware for Windows. I never see any of these.... Of course I don't want to, but it's curious.....

[Stanley]

90mb of new OS this morning. Amazing service.....

[Stanley]

Microsoft support for Windows XP ends on April 8th. See this REPORT for almost £6million of taxpayers money going down the drain because the decision to upgrade to new versions wasn't taken on time. Government spokesman says this is a splendid example of joined up thinking but they will have to spend on new systems anyway. Pity they can't see the light and go over to free software like Ubuntu and spend the money adapting their systems to the new reality. It's estimated that 25% of all PCs in the world are still running on XP which was possibly the most reliable version of Windows.

[hartley353]

Have you researched the word Ubuntu,it can mean anything between humanity to others, to human roughness depending on the dialect. This was a system designed for beginners running on the linux platform, I doubt it will ever catch on big. It is used because it is free.

[Gloria]

I'm still on XP rightly or wrongly Think I will carry on till this laptop dies, it has to be on it's way out----8yo and counting.

[Tizer]

Ubuntu... I doubt it will ever catch on big. It is used because it is free.

Not quite true...there are many large organisations that have switched or are in the process of switching to Ubuntu because it saves them vast sums of money, avoids `vendor lock-in' and doesn't have the security dangers of using MS Windows. Just one example - there are now 220,000 Ubuntu Linux-based PCs in around 2000 schools in Andalusia, Spain. Organisations in countries around the world are taking up Linux in place of Microsoft but Britain is slow on the uptake and, as usual tends to do what the US does - and the US, naturally, supports Microsoft.

[Pluggy]

Trolling a bit slow over on climate change Hartley ?

End of support for XP this month has been publicised by Microsoft for around 2 years. Its not like its snook up on anyone. At the other end of the argument, some (including many public bodies) have a huge investment in software that either won't run on anything later than XP or has to be upgraded at serious expense to work on later operating systems. An example I recently saw was an engineering firm with a lot of CNC machinery which is perfectly serviceable but no longer being made, and can only be programmed over a network using an old protocol called 'Netbuei', it was abandoned in favour of TCP/IP when the internet came along, the last available support for Netbeui was [you guessed it) Windows XP. Engineering firm either hangs on to XP or finds millions to buy new machines that can be programmed with something later...

The last LTS version of Ubuntu (12.04) is a viable upgrade to XP machines that are too old to take Windows 7. I suspect the upcoming 14.04 LTS will need something beyond 'Old'. The present 13.10 doesn't run as well on old kit as 12.04. Its either called progress or software bloat depending on your point of view.

[Steven Chorkley]

Any news on the fibre rollout?

[Stanley]

"Have you researched the word Ubuntu,it can mean anything between humanity to others, to human roughness depending on the dialect. This was a system designed for beginners running on the Linux platform, I doubt it will ever catch on big. It is used because it is free."
'The World is Flat' by Thomas L Friedman contains the best brief history of the free software movement I have ever read, and yes, most of us were aware of the reason why the original designers chose Ubuntu as the name for their free Linux system. My late son in law Harry Protoolis alerted me to the advantages of Linux twenty years ago and I tried to load and use it but it was beyond my capability. When I decided to change it was good enough for me to switch cold turkey from the constraints of Windows to Linux thanks to Pluggy's expertise. It is totally brilliant and has capabilities far beyond Windows, this is why it is used by the most advanced software engineers working in fields far beyond what we can even imagine. Look for NASnet on the internet and you'll begin to get some idea (Note that a certain H Protoolis was one of the lead engineers). What isn't mentioned is that this technology is the basis of the Battle Space Management systems used by the world's navies and the most modern programmes used to keep position on free floating drilling platforms to keep the drill string vertical in the worst conditions. So before you dispense your edicts from Mount Hartley I suggest you consider there is just a faint possibility you might be mistaken. In this case you certainly are, it is used because it is better.
Closer to home, Windows is Pluggy's best friend. He makes a good living out of mending Windows problems that are beyond the ordinary users capability. If everyone was on Ubuntu he'd be running a market stall! My life used to be dominated by Windows and its shortcomings, running 12.04 64 bit I never even think about the OS until a free upgrade comes in. Rock solid, does what it says on the tin and yes, it's totally free and legal.