Act all suspicious.

Upon pressing "undo" accidentally in File Explorer on my Surface Pro 3, Windows 8.1 performs bad behaviour.  See details and frustration others have had here:  answers.microsoft.com thread It seems Windows 8.1 made all the contents of the folder disappear as a consequence of undoing a previous rename of the folder from "New Folder".  That is, the file entry in the Master File Table was lost. Hopefully the entries were deleted and the space is reusable (I'm not sure what how Windows manipulates the MFT in this case). So, I wanted to recover the files from that folder.  I first found out that Windows 8 has two kinds of "backup" systems, one called File History that is intended to make regular replicas of the tracked Libraries to a separate physical disk or to a network share.  Since this File History wasn't configured and not turned on by default on my SP3, I looked toward Volume Shadow Copy, which appears to be enabled by default on the C: drive...

Apple is so lame! This is another reason why I don't own any Apple products: they require me to install bloated iTunes software just to send a digital iTunes store gift card. Meanwhile I purchased a physical gift card at the Source (by Circuit City) and the complete idiots there did not activate it properly. They required the physical card to activate it, which I gifted away and did not have access to for months.  Then the Source was unable to activate it and I lost my money!!!  The Apple Store was also unable to help as it is outside of their system... I am so pissed at the Source; that company had better disappear. As for Apple, making it near impossible for me to buy a digital gift card without an Apple product or iTunes, I can't express the numerous other reasons why Apple still sucks.  I even tried asking someone who owned an iPhone to help me make the purchase via their phone but they thought it was too complicated.  So frustration! Months after giving ...

Finding working drivers for D-Link DWL-G122 Rev. A2 USB Wireless Adapter to use in Linux Mint 14 (32-bit) based on Ubuntu 12.10. The adapter is only compatible with WPA and WEP security modes; not compatible with WPA2.  PSK can be used.  This adapter could not connect to a router running in 802.11g/n mixed mode; but does associate with a router set in 802.11g mode. On Mint/Ubuntu, attempts to use the native p54usb kernel module, and the necessary isl3887usb firmware placed in the correct /lib/firmware path resulted in dmesg log lines "authentication with AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF timed out" despite success registering drivers to the interface.  See firmware installation instructions at http://wiki.debian.org/prism54 . There appears to be a newer version of the isl3887usb firmware available here, http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54 , which I did not try I had success using the old method I had running on an earlier edition of Ubuntu. Ie. load ndiswrapper Use nd...

This post summarizes my experience with flashing my router's stock firmware to an opensource firmware to enable it to use the USB port as the WAN connection. The Internet (WAN) connection is provided by an Android-powered smartphone via USB tethering. Specifically, I have a D-Link DIR-825 Wireless N router. HW Rev. B1. It has one USB port. The phone is a Samsung Galaxy S 4G (SGH-T959W); it is not the same as a Samsung Galaxy Vibrant. My cellular provider is Mobilicity and my phone number is.... j/k. I'm not releasing that.  So I first tried flashing the DD-WRT firmware to my DIR-825. This is a very nice firmware: nice GUI and excellent features, most of which I don't know how to use. It can bridge the various interfaces such as WiFi to the LAN, it can act in a Wireless Distribution System, it has various hotspots for potential revenue-generation using landing pages to share Internet, it has awesome graphs for monitoring bandwidth and usage, and it has support for v...

Here is a very quick review of the music download service available in Canada. urMusic.ca - Is limited to Rogers Wireless customers (can only register if you have a Roger's phone number) - other features like selling tickets to concerts and events. - Appears that only the pay per song and pay per album downloads are DRM Free - Fairly good rates for per track download in Canadian dollars - Very confusing language and clauses in urMusic's Terms and Conditions. They have a number of sentences existing in the Terms and Conditions that ostensibly portray all downloads from urMusic are limited to registered devices (whether technologically enforced by DRM technologies or only enforced by acceptance to the Terms and Conditions). But there is also language in there that suggests Content is not protected by DRM technology. The Terms and Conditions appear to be out-of-sync with the service's marketing department's pitch that they have DRM-free tracks. The language makes it un...

I was unable to find a web service or calculator on any websites that had a simple interest calculator in which the total of the loan was being payed down regularly. I was forced to make one in Excel. There are plenty of amortization calculators out there that generate the schedule for a loan with compound interest, like a mortgage, but none that show the schedule for a simple interest loan, like some HELOCs (in Canada). My Excel spreadsheet allows one to compare an amortization schedule on a compound interest loan to a schedule for a simple interest loan. This is useful if you want to see the affect of making payments on a simple interest loan, equal to the same amount at the same time of the month on the same frequency as you would on a mortgage. The spreadsheet assumes interest for the simple interest loan is calculated daily and that payments against the loan are applied to the interest accrued first, and then toward the principal. It can be tweaked if you wanted to calculate i...

Thorough testing on my part has proven that Windows 7 can not receive large files, approximately anything larger than 225 KB, from some Bluetooth devices. In this case, my Nokia 6301 can not send to the "fsquirt.exe" utility on Windows 7. I tested this with 3 different machines running Windows 7 (6.01.7600), two laptops with built-in bluetooth and a desktop using a bluetooth dongle. The error message offers no clue as to why or what happened. All it says is " Bluetooth file transfer not completed " " The transfer was cancelled by the Bluetooth device or Bluetooth enabled computer. " However, the Nokia 6301 has no problem receiving large multi-megabyte files from a PC running Windows 7. The Nokia 6301 is also able to send/receive large files to other devices (phones, PDA's), and computers running Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS X. On the other hand, Windows 7 was able to receive files over bluetooth from other bluetooth-enabled devices, including: com...