Hi folks,


First of all, my thanks to this forum.


In a way, this thread is based on an earlier thread:

http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...sc&start=0

"defragmenting your computer"

hence the link.

So here's my/our problems and questions:

My friends and I are having problems with our computers. As we’d like to see if we could get help for free—before paying some expert-and because we are novices at computers, some of you might be both able, perhaps easily able, as well as inclined to help out.

Your comments would be quite appreciated.

(1) First the comparison

I used to go to a cyber café. There was a computer I’d frequently used there. On its Kaaza, I’d download 2 000 songs and over 100 videos—including TV shows.

I’d visit all sorts of weird and/or wonderful sites. I even checked out a few porn sites—and not the Playboy/Sports Illustrated variety. I mention this because they seem to be notorious for pop-ups, “circulars,” and all sorts of annoyances.

Goodness knows what kind of crap I got into the computer—how many cookies I got. It’s as if I worked in many quarantines bare-faced and bare-handed, I was perhaps so vulnerable to viruses. Yet for the most part, everything seem to work. I could open 16 Explorer windows: having to wait only a few seconds, perhaps a few 10’s of seconds.

Occasionally a virus would come in and wipe out all my files, but that happened about every 4 months—giving me ample time to download onto floppy disks and CD-W’s.

To be honest, some of my more recent written CD’s from there don’t have all the 80 minutes used up, and a few songs were scrambled, and after about a year “rot” has set in; but my older ones are full and fine. Besides, the cyber café proprietor told me the particular burner wasn’t a particularly good one.


(2) I have a friend. Call him “B.”

(a) B’s computer has about 38 Gigabyte capacity and we have used, at most, about 7 of them.

The way I figure it, if we were to pack in 2 000 songs--at about 3 Megabytes each, we might use another 6 Gigabytes.

I didn’t, nor, to my knowledge did he, trawl cyberspace. He has a few select sites he frequents and has a coterie of cyber pals who E-mail each other.

True, I downloaded a Kaaza program to his computer from some site and got about 20 files from it.

Since then, his computer is painfully slow.

So we eliminated all sorts of files—including Kaaza, and while there is a little improvement, it’s still slow.

We tried disc cleaning and defragmenting, but it’s still slow.

Nor is this for internet stuff, but for all functions on his computer: “My Computer,” “My Documents.”


I mean the way I figure it, 32 Gigabytes is a heck of a lot of memory. I compare it to a big swimming pool. I suppose a 64 or 128 or something-like-that Gigabyte would be like an Olympic sized pool; but still, 32 Gigabytes impresses me as a good-sized memory.

Okay, he says he gets “limited high-speed,” but I see a telephone line.

I suppose that’s like, not filling the pool with a fire hose, not even a garden hose, but rather with a drinking straw.

That would explain why it takes so long to download.
It would explain why, if I were to fill that bucket with a straw, I’ll be waiting a long time.

It doesn’t, however, explain why I can’t get that same bucket, walk down the steps and down the incline of my 5% filled pool and scoop out a lot of water from there—taking at most a minute or two.

There is a lady we all knowed.
She said it’s all the cookies.

Yet the cookies seem to take up memory in the kilobytes--mostly single digit kilobytes.

This “Intel chip” thingee—processor?—he has is recent and I understand in the 3 digits of megabytes.

So what the heck is going on?

(b) He also gets this “Smiley Emoticon” ad that’s annoying, as well as some tune that comes on randomly—a few seconds of some techno music.

How do we get rid of them?

(c) He also says that when he E-mails friends, those whom he E-mails to can’t get any of his attachments.



(3) Yet another lady we know is connected by phone line—which can simultaneously still be used as a phone.

She has this “media player”—"Microsoft Media Player" I think—the one with the bull’s eye markers—or, if you know what I’m talking about that thing you’ve might have seen on some ELO records (Out of the Blue, Discovery).

I downloaded a few non-RIAA tunes and put them in the “Media Library”—thinking they were there at our disposal.

But when I turned on the computer again, I try to play them and they seem to take as long to “buffer” as to download.

I thought I’d download a 3-minute video (MP3) from a website—but the computer said it would take about 8 hours.

Perhaps in time we will try it anyway, and see how long it takes to play from the library (as compared to downloading), but for now, based on my earlier examples, it doesn’t bode well.



(4) I was given a used computer. I tried to spark it up. It said “inset disc and press key.” I re insert discs (floppy and CD-Rom) and press key. It says “CP Backup” or something that I need a new disc—I wonder if that would help.




(5) I have an old computer that uses DD discs containing Word Perfect 4.5 files. How can I convert them into Write or Word files?




(6) How can I get fancy characters, fancy forms of writing (such as “Script”), and foreign alphabets into my Word programs—and perhaps for a computer in general.


(7) I understand that with MP3’s, you can compress music to 1/10th the memory without appreciable loss of quality.

But then, I see the videos.

Dear me, my old videotapes are better.

Are there any players that play a better quality music and/or video even if it takes more memory?



(8.) If it comes to it, how do I get paid help and how much should I pay?

Again your help--one and all-- is appreciated.

You would be wise to not so proudly advertise your illegal activities.

A Kaaza program? Kaaza? Kaaza Lite? Some other Fastrack client? Unhacked Fastrack clients tend to come with a wack of malware. Time to bust out spybot.

You're right. 32 gigabytes is a heck of a lot of memory. It's not quite so much discspace, though. Memory is RAM, which is still counted in megabytes.

... Could you have picked a more confounding analogy? Download speeds are not realistically limitd by memory or discspace. It's all bandwidth.

Not cookies.

This “Intel chip” thingee—processor?—he has is recent and I understand in the 3 digits of megabytes.

*blink*

So what the heck is going on?

Something is eating up all the RAM. Run adaware, spybot S&D, and a virus scan.

Adaware, spybot, virus scan.



She either has a line dedicated for her computer, or you're confusing phone cables and ethernet cables.

Windows Media Player. You probably have it too. Google "Microsoft vs EC"


I have no idea what you're talking about here. Connection speed and WMP have little, if anything, to do with each other.

WMP only really buffers files if it's streaming them, ie from a website. In that case, every time you play it, you're redownloading it, which is why it takes just as long.

mp3s are not videos.


Only bootable floppies will work. If your bootable discs are damaged, you will need new ones.




Open them in Word. Save them as a new format.




Google for "free fonts"


Video quality has nothing to do with the viewer, and everything to do with the ripper. A highly compressed video file will look bad in any program.


Drag your computer to the nearest non-crooked dealer. Cost will depend on how long it takes to fix the problems.

__________________
"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

Had the same problem when it first came out, and jumped through major hoops to get rid of it as soon as I could. Check to be sure you eliminated every part and everything associated with it---that first version should get some kind of award in the Malware Hall of Fame.
Interesting Wired article on Kazaa.

Hi Ut and sarongsong,


First off, thanks for the advice: you have both openned my eyes to a number of things:

Is there good version of Kaaza and a good way of getting it?


Check this site out:

http://www.whatacrappypresent.com/


Good question, but I always figured making good use of the delete button--though I suppose we might be missing things to do.


Uh huh,
But still, even Megabytes are pretty sizeable.


The bandwidth is the hose or straw, the memory is the pool. I know I currently can't get stuff from the hose/straw quickly, but why can't I get water (files) from the pool?


"Not cookies" as they aren't the problem, or they take more than the little memory I suggested they might be taking?


I thought videos could take MP3 form.

What is "ripper?"


Well, for now, I'm logging off soon; but rest assured, I'll be back for the advice--who knows what you two and others might save me in dollars, time, and aggravation.

Thanks again!

Not sure about videos but MP3 is a way of slimming down a file. It takes similar sounds and instead of telling the computer the info for each sound all it does is says to repeat that sound multiple times. Thus a MP3 is not as "rich" a sound as non compressed versions. But most people cannot tell the difference.

MP3 is specifically MPEG-1 layer 3.

MPEG-2 is the audio/video standard used in DVDs.

MPEG-4 is what DivX is based off of.

http://www.mpeg.org for more details.

__________________
"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

To the best of my knowledge, the Fastrack network has been fiddled with to try and prevent hacked versions of the software from getting any usuable connections.

I bring it up because there are various copywrite holders who frequent this site, and think everyone would prefer to avoid a flame war.


Suggest you use Windows' Add/Remove tool found in the Control Pannel from now on.


Depends on how many of them. 128MB of RAM is barely cutting it if you're running higher end programs. No amount of RAM will prevent bogdown from malware or viruses.



Not the problem. Cookies are text files or scripts that keep track of user information for websites.


Check out my post replying to Humphry.

Someone, or some program, that encodes and/or compresses digital media. When you convert a CD into mp3s, it's said you're ripping it.

__________________
"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

Hi folks,

Hi Humprey, saronsong, and Ut.

A little update:

I haven't seen B in a while though last time I saw him, he still had trouble.

He has Norton and spy-bot.

He downloaded one of the anti-virus programs and it said he had up to 750 or so files that had to be deleted, but that he would have to pay to find out.

#3 had her computer flushed by those who installed her programs, and re-installed. She sez that she was lucky to have a warranty or she'd have to pay $100's.

While she ain't accusing me of anything, she's not allowing me to use her computer due to the paranoia of it all--though she was good about it--we're still friends.

The funny thing is, she says she's not gonna download anything at all--lest she get a virus.



So for the while, I'm sticking to cyber cafe's like the one I'm at now--this accounts for my infrequent entries.






If you're up to it, the video I tried to download was My Bloody Valentine's "Soon."

It's available at this site.

http://www.irishmusiccentral.com/mbv/videos.html

Don't worry about it: there aren't any swear words--actually it's hard to understand anything in it, and while I think the bassist is quite attractive, her demeaner is more Enya, and less Aguillera and Britney.

I just downloaded it on the coomputer I'm using right now--took a minute or so. On B's computer (the one where I downloaded a Kaaza program) it took 30 minutes, and on #3's, it would have taken 8 hours.

Again thanks for your time, attention, and help--I'll still be at it.

My advice:

Get rid of Kazaa IMMEDIATELY. The unhacked version of Kazaa comes with an unbelievable load of malware on it. You really do not want it.

If you really, really must use a p2p client for some reason, I reccomend Shareaza or some other free Gnutella client.

Gullible Jones,

One thing, what if I used a cyber cafe computer to download stuff from Kazaa on disk or CD Rom and then put that in the computer that I had at home? Would that help?

Like what if I downloaded, let's say, Motorhead's version of Neverland, or certain videos and pictures I have an interest in, from Kazaa and some particular kinds of sites, and fed those into the computer, would I be safe--or at least safer?

Your advice is valued.

It would probably be no safer. [Nor would it be any more legal.]

__________________
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Well, then you'd be getting screwed over on the cybercafe's computer in all likelihood.

And it wouldn't be any more legal, as Musashi mentioned.

(Dude, just how many songs do you have on your HD? I few I can understand... But there's a point at which it gets a bit ridiculous!)

I have 777 songs on my HD, but they are all from CDs I own.

__________________
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

For legal reasons, I'm not going to tell you how to pirate music. But transfering exclusively media files, to which you own or have licensed a copywrite, from one computer to another via CD-R causes fewer problems than loading your computer up with spyware.

I still strongly suggest you look into Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, and Spybot: Search & Destroy.

__________________
"I'm making wheatloaf. It's like meatloaf, only with wheat"
"Isn't that just...bread?"

Hi folks,

Hi Musashi, Gullible Jones, and Ut,

Uh huh. :-k

See the thing is, I don't want to bring problems to the cyber cafes. It's just that I get the feeling that their capacity to deal with problems can far exceed mine. I've seen them take care of in seconds what I and my friends might take hours to do.

As for transferance,

the idea is to turn an MP3 audio file in to a CD that can be played on a CD player--which I've done.
Now, would this CD be safe to put on my own computer--for private listening and making compilation CDs?
Ditto, to an extent with videos.
It may sound like I'm asking the question all over again--and forgive me if it sounds like it--I just want to make it clear.


As for why I want so many songs--I suppose I'm one of those "rock nerds."

Take the song "Wild Thing." It's not enough that I have the Trogs version; I want the version from Hendrix, X, Sam Kinnison, from the Something Wild soundtrack, even the Creatures version.


As for Ut's advice--which sounds perhaps the most useful here--as good as the others are--the idea isn't (just to) pirate those who are insistent on copyrights. There are a number of Websites that are quite open about sharing their stuff;
http://www.gaiaconsort.com/lyrics.html
and I think that the laws may not apply to some of the other stuff I'm been trying to download--such as Paul Robeson--who died 28 years ago, and likely has songs recorded 22 years earlier.

Again, I'm trying to avoid this "malware" as you folks have been calling it.

Again thanks for the help and comments of all.

I have to agree with Gullible Jones. I've just recently spent an evening clean my parents computer after one of my sisters download Kazaa. It not only downloaded a number of mall and spyware applications, one those brought in a number of trojans. While most of them were easily removable, it required me to download multilpe cleaning tools specifically built for many of the applications and lots of work in DOS mode to manual clean directories.

While programs like Kazaa may not intentionaly insert malicious code, they don't perform rigid testing of co-applications from sponsors code they include. Also, being a music writer, I can't say I really approve of using these type of programs - my 2 cents of the day.

__________________
Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

I'll back up Ut on his recommendations. My wife and I spent the better part of a day trying to clean a friend's computer using the excellent tools Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft's AdAware, and Norton's AntiVirus program. Unfortunately, the hard drive was so filled with malware, viruses and trojans that we eventually ended up wiping the drive and reloading the operating system and software. The system habitually ran slow and often locked up altogether.

We discovered the owner had "inherited" his computer from someone else who downloaded music and videos extensively; after a while, all the malware so badly corrupted the operating system code that, once the malware was gone, the operating system refused to run altogether.

Kazaa is notorious for allowing infiltration to the computer by malware, viruses, trojans, and "worms." I almost hate to say it this way, but playing with P2P sharing in general and Kazaa in particular is a lot like "playing" around with VD - the best method of prevention is abstinence.

Also, in a previous post, you mentioned that someone This is an example of a program that "plants" malware to "find". It is NOT SPYBOT SEARCH & DESTROY. Most likely, it is "Spyhunter" - or one of the similar varients. Some will find legitimate problems (and add a few of their own), find them (or not), then tell you that you have to pay to "clean" the problems (or detect them). These programs are a rip-off.

If you are at all interested in keeping your computer system as clean and well-running as possible, go to SpyWare Warrior and read about "rogue anti-spyware." Trust me, it's worth your time.

JT

__________________
"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." - Florence Ambrose

Thanks sidmel and jamestox ,

Love the Florence Ambrose comment.

So you're a music writer, sidmel.

I bought a few CDs--used CDs.
The cost a only a few bucks (I understand that the record companies would have re-selling records banned).

Anyway, the music has given me 10's of hours of enjoyment.

I'd like to reward them, but how and who.

Deliberately buying $30 CD's don't seem all that efficient--and I refuse to carry credit cards.

Consider, again,My Bloody Valentine:

http://www.irishmusiccentral.com/mbv/videos.html

The band has long since broken up and the company that invested, from what I understand, $1 million on the album Loveless, long since went bankrupt and was bought by Sony records (long before I developed an appreciation for them).

Maybe the producer had a role in the production, and though I haven't heard any recent stuff, it might be far less than what their product was a band.

How do I express my gratitude for the music?


Take 13th Floor Elevators: according to them, they were "screwed" by their record company. There music has also given me 10's of hours of pleasure since I first heard them in 2002.
The band broke up in 1973 and the lead singer is a drugged-out pauper.

There are attempts to correct this.

http://www.rokyerickson.net/roky.htm

http://www.rokyerickson.net/

It seems they aren't too positive about "file swapping," but they don't seem to be as condeming of it either--and it might also be a legal thing--positions of record companies and bands might differ.

Further one member, in an interview I read several months back, seem to endorse pirating--though that was likely before the whole internet thingee.


I'd be interested in your comments on the issue.

I've got I don't know how many thousand songs on my hard drive. Something in the neighborhood of 20 gigabytes, though. Almost all of them are ripped from my CDs so that I can play them in my car more easily (I've got an in-dash MP3 player) as I don't have to worry so much about fiddling with discs and ruining my originals or having them stolen. Your problem is, indeed, spyware/adware/malware, whatever you want to call it. Here are a few more helpful links.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/...y/spyware.mspx
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite
http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm
http://www.spywareguide.com/
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
The following site contains a fairly thorough list of suspected rouge/suspect antispyware products as well as some good ones. It also contains good information on how to get help with a spyware infestation.
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm

Finally, this last link I have found to have a pretty good walkthrough on removal of spyware. You will need to scroll down slightly to find the article.
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=132

Also, if you're taking media files around, you will be better off to take the original MP3s, not burn them to an audio CD and then rerip them at home as each conversion to MP3 will further lessen your quality.

Humphrey's description of how an MP3 works isn't exactly correct. When you zip a file, that's exactly what happens. MP3 actually works by using perceptual audio encoding and psychoacoustic compression. It works by analyzing the audio waveform itself. It then takes the information that you really can't hear (you only hear a small part of the music) for various reasons (too quiet, too close to another in frequency, etc) and throws all that out, leaving only what you can hear.

How Stuff Works explains it MUCH better.

Slice it anyway you want, Vanion, but if you don't like being called a crook, don't post on a public forum for advice on how to recover from the side-effects of your criminal activity. Just suck it up, reformat, reinstall, and try not to do things that will infect you with several hundred varieties of spyware next time.

Vanion, to answer your question, it’s not that I am totally against downloading music. I have personly downloaded a few songs (and by a few, probably less than a dozen) that there was only one song on the album I really liked or an obscure version of a song that I’ve had a hard time finding in the store or online. On personal note, I just feel better about buying the album new or used.

From my perspective as a songwriter, I and my co-writer will spend a couple hours jamming to come up with new material. We may then spend the next few days to weeks rewriting and tweaking the song, and sometimes finally just throw the thing in the trash if it proves to be unworkable. Then we will go through the recording process where we have to schedule time and money to have the song professionally laid down in a multi-track recording. At this point, were still just getting started. We have to get the song copy written, find a publishing house to represent our songs to the artists by mailing out many, many, many demo CDs, negotiate contracts, which may once again require an outlay of cash for a lawyer. All of this with a large potential that the song will never sell, and if it does, it generally takes a minimum of year to year and half before it makes it on the air. So a lot of hard work goes into it’s production.

I know it seems that one person downloading and ripping and album doesn’t see like a whole lot, maybe a few cents out of my pocket. But multiply that by thousands of people world wide…well our work suddenly become less valuable.

I hope this doesn’t sound like me preaching from my soapbox, but just want you to see the other end of spectrum.

Cheers!

__________________
Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

Thanks Avatar for the info.

Hi mid,
It ain’t that.
First off, I don’t consider what I do being a crook.
Second, as I’m not a crook, I don’t mind being called a crook—no more than someone calling me a serial axe-murderer—it doesn’t hurt if it ain’t true.
Third, I see that this is a contentious issue, but I also see a degree of ambiguity in it.

On one side, I think it’s good that creators should be rewarded for their creations. Yet, there are limits to what I, and perhaps many others, consider are valid, yet the intellectual propertarians would cross.

Again, if it were up to Hollywood, we wouldn’t have video tape; if it were up to the recording industry, we wouldn’t have records played on radio for the past several decades, and we’d still be buying crappy CD’s for $30.

If what I do is wrong, then in a way I deserve all the problems I’ve had—and more;
but what if I’m not a crook?
What if it’s the RIAA boys who are the crooks for making means by which I can get music more easily and cheaper, harder?

It is in this air of ambiguity—technical, legal, and especially moral that I ask these questions.

Nonetheless, your comments are noted and appreciated.


Sidmel,

Which if the record industry—or elements thereof--had its way would ban. "After all, how dare you buy a used, let’s say, Beatles’ record?!? Buy your own damn (new) record! We didn’t give the previous owner permission to re-sell it—indeed, we might have written on the record—as it is written on some books—that they are to be neither lent, nor sold."

(One could imagine what some in the recording industry would have as laws--CDs for $100, CDs not being useed for more than a year or few, with a few hundred listens--better still rent, not sell, records--as they did with phones back when Bell had a (near) monopoly.)

About 20 years ago, I remember a blues fan who wanted an obscure record. The company that owned the rights went out of business and was sold to a big company years earlier and wasn’t re-issuing. He knew someone who had a copy who wouldn’t sell it to him, but would lend it for home-taping.

When he asked the big-shot record exec on the radio show if he could home tape it, as amicable as the exec was, he couldn’t contenance it.

And why not after all? That exec’s company would profit more if that blues fan stopped spending his time listening to a home-tape, and more on buying/listening to Aerosmith or Britney’s latest--there's more money in that.

So when this exec’s less friendly biz partners point their fingers at people like me and make all sorts of accusations, I keep such in mind.

Nor do I mind you “preaching.” Indeed, again, I appreciate your thoughts.
8) 8)

By the way, what do you think of this site?

http://www.downhillbattle.org/