POST COMPUTER PROBLEMS IN THIS THREAD ONLY

[HappyTree]

It'll be very amusing to see the poo that flies once people realise plain PDFs can be edited. It's tragic that there isn't more awareness of the existence and importance of digital signing.

In Estonia it is de rigueur. Our ID cards have chips and PINs and you get a card reader USB thingy. Voting, banking, signing contracts. We all live in little bubbles and never even have to see anyone else, it's great! :-D

[MojoJojo]

Just don't lose your card, I guess.

It's a bit strange adobe haven't tried to push into that market - online ID is what google and facebook are scrabblng over now, and adobe already own it from the legal profession's point of view, and with some fairly small tweeks they actually could have a proper solution.

But yeah, obviously the big money is in Flash.

[Dusty Gozongas]

Here's one that has always baffled me...

Specific to using DAW software in this case, I've seen advice all over the place suggesting that creating a separate profile with various Windows Services disabled for that account is a good thing. Makes perfect sense on paper, but whenever I've been arsed to have a play with it all of my changes are copied to the other account rendering the whole exercise a waste of time.

Not an important one but now i have to undo the changes yet again and bin the useless secondary login.

Both are Admin accounts btw. Vista *spit!* if that bears any good reason for it not working.

[mook]

hello yet again.

the charger for my laptop has appeared to given up the ghost, is it worth buying the make brand, in this case lenovo, or just getting a compatible one from ebay for a quarter of the price?

thanks.

[Wilbur]

hello yet again.

the charger for my laptop has appeared to given up the ghost, is it worth buying the make brand, in this case lenovo, or just getting a compatible one from ebay for a quarter of the price?

thanks.

I used to get the cheaply ones on the grounds that they all come from the same factories but recently a lot of them have been so shit that I've started getting the genuine ones.

[mook]

right, i'll get the proper one then.

thanks Wilbur.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Can anyone explain this?



Only seems to happen when I stream video on Streamtorrent. Horrible blurry/artistic filter type thing going on. Codec problem perhaps?

[Famous Mortimer]

Watch a better team lol

I have Gmote on the media PC in the front room, so I can use my phone as a mouse / keyboard. Problem is, it tries to start it on startup, before the network kicks in (or that's my best guess as to why it throws up an error message every time I turn the damn thing on, I guess).

So, is there a way of telling it to re-try connecting to the network? Or is there a better alternative on the market for turning my phone into a mouse?

[Consignia]

So, that computer I was talking about buying earlier in the thread, I'm still umming and arring over it. I specced up one on that computer planet website, and it came to just over a grand. Just naviely picking out the same parts from Scan, it came to about £80 cheaper. I'm wondering is, it worth just going for the built one? I can easily build it myself, I've done it loads of times in the past, but the saving just doesn't seem worth it.

That said are the any better websites for buying computer bits from? I've used Scan a lot in the past, so they are my go to people, but they might not be the best.

[Too Many Cochranes]

Personally I would build it myself but that's because I'm a saddo and enjoy doing stuff like that. As you say you know what you're doing you'll probably build it with more TLC than someone who's putting together 10 PC's a day in a warehouse, so you'll probably get a better build doing it yourself as you won't rush the job.

The only problem I've had with Scan before is they use DPD couriers and I've had to go to the local depot if I've missed the delivery. Apart from that their stuff is well priced. Overclockers.co.uk, Dabs and eBuyer are also well priced. eBuyer is probably better for getting cheap peripherals/DVD burner drives etc.

For RAM I'd Buy It Now off eBay. I've had two or three kits made by G.Skill that look cool with their red aluminium heatsinks and bridge the gap between price and performance well.

[mcbpete]

Can anyone explain this?



Only seems to happen when I stream video on Streamtorrent. Horrible blurry/artistic filter type thing going on. Codec problem perhaps?

Yeah it actually looks like a similar post-processing filter you get on emulators to smooth off graphics (something like hq3x). Is there an icon that appears in your system tray when you play the files that give you any video options ?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Not that I've noticed. I did figure out a solution: Open it up as normal, right click>properties, copy url, paste url into VLC, and it plays fine in there. Bit annoying to have to do that every time, but I'll have a look at what you mentioned next time I use it.

[weekender]

Anyone decent on Excel and the usage of variables?  Here's the problem:

-Someone owes me £4,000.

-This person gets from me £2,000 a year

-This person would ordinarily get a 3% increase from me a year on their £2,000.  I want to stop them getting their 3% increase until such a time as my debt has been paid off.

In my head, here's how it looks:

-Year One - So their £2,000 in year one would notionally be £2,060.  I want to claim back the £60 and offset it against the £4,000 debt.  The debt is now £3,940.

-Year Two - In year two, £2,060 has risen to £2,121.80 by virtue of another 3% increase.  I want to claim back the £61.80.  The debt is now £3,878.20.

How can I tell when they will have paid back the £4,000?

[Zetetic]

If Year 1 is £2,000, Year 2 is nominally £2,060...

Then in Year 12 you'll be giving them (nominally) £2,768 and bit, but you'll only need £384 to finish paying back the £4,000.

So, I reckon:

Year 12 , and in that year you'll give them about £2,384.

Here's it with a load of extra columns for clarity.

(There's clearly a way to do this properly with maths.)

[MojoJojo]

Shouldn't you be charging them interest on the money they owe you?

[Zetetic]

I've now realised that I didn't read weekender's post properly, so I think it's actually Year 39, if you're just skimming the difference from one year to the next:

Spreadsheet link again.

[HappyTree]

39 years, blimey! And inflation would make this worth less and less as time went on. Not the best way to recoup debt, I must say. But perhaps the best option open to you.

[Big Jack McBastard]

If I owed you 4 grand and you continued to give me 2 grand a year (with or without a 3% increase per annum), well.. that's my kinda loan right there.

[Big Jack McBastard]

edit: never mind sorted it

[weekender]

Cheers guys.  I was hoping for a simpler Excel formula but I think I can work with what you've come up with to possibly derive one.

[falafel]

So, to be clear, you can't just keep reducing the payment to them to £2,000 each year? ie taking £60 the first year, around £120 the next, £180 the next and so on?

ie you're still happy for this person's income from you to grow in real terms despite the fact that they owe you £4,000?

Seems a bit complicated, is all. I'm sure you have your reasons. But if you really want to stop them getting 3% increases, then you just keep cutting it back to 2,000. Otherwise all you're doing is offsetting their increase by a year and basically absolutely never getting your money back. They don't really lose anything, nor do you really gain - not materially anyway.

Gah, I'm sure you have your reasons.


edit: Hmm, if you're looking for a formula that would show the equivalent of, say "how many times do I need to add 2 and 2 to get 240", in a single cell - that is to say, "how many iterations of X do I need in order to achieve Y", then I have a feeling you would need to use VBA / macros? I don't think there's a simple way of doing it. If that's what you are after.

[Zetetic]

I'm fairly sure you should be able to do by competent Maths though. Defining the function that takes you from the year to the amount retained is easy[nb]f(0) = 0; f(x) = 2000*(1.03^x) - 2000*(1.03^(x-1))?[/nb] and then you just need to find what range satisfies summing that function >= 4000.

Unfortunately:
these days I'm so fucking thick and
right now I'm a bit drunk,
so I can't do it.

[falafel]

Eureka!

Way simpler than I had thought.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3704869/Calculation.xlsx

You can get it more precise by doing a Goal Seek on cell D5 if you like (in excel 2013 this is done by the Data tab > What If analysis > Goal Seek).

[Blumf]

Anyone decent on Excel and the usage of variables?  Here's the problem:

-Someone owes me £4,000.

-This person gets from me £2,000 a year

-This person would ordinarily get a 3% increase from me a year on their £2,000.  I want to stop them getting their 3% increase until such a time as my debt has been paid off.

In my head, here's how it looks:

-Year One - So their £2,000 in year one would notionally be £2,060.  I want to claim back the £60 and offset it against the £4,000 debt.  The debt is now £3,940.

-Year Two - In year two, £2,060 has risen to £2,121.80 by virtue of another 3% increase.  I want to claim back the £61.80.  The debt is now £3,878.20.

How can I tell when they will have paid back the £4,000?

Warning! I suck at calculus, really, never do it, no good at it, no feel for it...

Formula for how much you 'save' on any year x:
= (2000*1.03^x)-2000

Integrate that shit!
f(x) = (67661.7*(1.03^x))-(2000*x)

So, year 0 is
f(0) = 67661.7

So you need to find:
f(x) = f(0) + 4000
        = 67661.7 + 4000
        = 71661.7

Which I did by hand honest!
= -12.3395 or 11.0027

So about 12 years ago, you were good. Why you bugging us now?

[olliebean]

Why not just decide how many years you want to spread the repayments over, divide 4000 by that number, then just subtract that amount from whatever you would otherwise be giving him each year?

[weekender]

So, to be clear, you can't just keep reducing the payment to them to £2,000 each year? ie taking £60 the first year, around £120 the next, £180 the next and so on?

I can restrict the payment to whatever I want, but I don't want it to be less than the £2,000 a year that they currently get from me and I want to understand the numbers if I were to allow for inflation.

Gah, I'm sure you have your reasons. Iterations/VBA/Macro code thoughts.

For various reasons I'm trying to avoid a solution which involves "Goal Seek".  It appears that the best solution at the moment might involve me learning calculus.

Thanks to all for your input on this, it's really appreciated.

[Queneau]

I was hoping to get to the Villa V QPR game this weekend but that can't happen now. Is there a way of tricking something like BBC Birmingham on their website into thinking that I'm based there? Every time I've tried it in the past it's picked up on my IP address or whatever. All I want to do is listen to the fucking game!

[Puffin Chunks]

I was hoping to get to the Villa V QPR game this weekend but that can't happen now. Is there a way of tricking something like BBC Birmingham on their website into thinking that I'm based there? Every time I've tried it in the past it's picked up on my IP address or whatever. All I want to do is listen to the fucking game!

They don't broadcast on the web, even if you're in Birmingham... Internet rights and that. Anyhow, I'll PM you a potential solution

[lipsink]

Here's one. I'm probably being extremely think, but, how do you print out an e-mail receipt so it just prints the receipt and not just the hotmail screen showing the Iyour hotmail screen cutting off half the receipt. I remember doing this before.

[Blumf]

If you mean just the header+body of the email, without all the Hotmail web UI stuff, there's an small printer icon at the top of the page, click on that and it'll open up a new window with a clean view of the mail and start the print job from that.