12 | January | 2006 | Visible Procrastinations

Archive for January 12th, 2006

Windows XP Support

Published January 12, 2006 geek , microsoft , windows Leave a Comment

Due to the lack of a replacement, the Windows XP mainstream support which was to end on 31-Dec-2006 has now been modified to end two years after the next version of this product is released.

Windows XP Professional: Mainstream support will end two years after the next version of this product is released. Extended support will end five years after mainstream support ends. [1]

Windows XP Pro is considered Business class software. As such, Microsoft provides mainstream support for 5 years after the product was released, extended support for an additional 5 years and self-help online support for 10+ years.

What impact does this have? In our environment this would see Windows XP Pro being our SOE Operating System for 2006 and 2007, with Vista being reviewed for 2008/9.

[1.] Microsoft Support Lifecycle [Microsoft]

A few more audio tools [2]

Published January 12, 2006 audio , geek Leave a Comment

The ongoing saga …
By now we have captured streams to our machine and converted them to mp3 format; what’s next? How do we split and edit a 3 hour long MP3 file?

mp3DirectCut

I have found mp3DirectCut (FREEWARE) is a relatively simple tool to use to edit and split mp3 files. Good for carving up 3 hour shows into 3 files to burn to 3 Audio CDs

Quick Tip(s):
1. Load your mp3 file
2. Mark the start of the selection with *Set begin*
3. Mark the end of the selection with *Set end*
4. Save the selection * File : Save Selection … *

[1.] mp3DirectCut 2.01 [mpesch3's mp3 tools]

Being driven to drink?

Published January 12, 2006 geek Leave a Comment

And I thought it was just me …

IT stresses ‘driving UK to drink’
Thursday, 12 January 2006 [BBC News]

The modern annoyances of automated call centres, mobile phones and crashing computers are driving people to alcohol and cigarettes, a survey suggests.

The poll by UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships showed more than a third of men and a quarter of women have a drink to cope with stress.

Of the 1,000 people polled, 27% of men and 23% of women said they would light up a cigarette in such situations.

Almost one third said IT-related problems were a major source of stress.

…

TOP CAUSES OF STRESS
1. IT problems – 30%
=2. Change in financial status/personal injury – 24%
3. Commuting – 20%

…

And why does IT cause people stress?

DHCP Hi-jack

BUGGER!
Our test WLAN Diff mobility controller was acting up again this morning and possibly last night.
If anyone is having problems with DHCP and or has been getting IPs in the 167.0/26 subnet, renew the DHCP lease via the command line, disable and enable the network adapter or restart the machine to resolve the matter.

It struck again, and DHCPd is supposed to be disabled .. WTF! Of course this is occuring at the time that our Aruba test set is due to be returned

QuickTime 7.0.4 released
As we were advised via (AUSCERT ESB-2006.0020) [Win][OSX] – QuickTime 7.0.4 released to fix a whole heap of, for details have a read of security issues. A summary of these is available via About the security content of QuickTime 7.0.4. For Windows clients using the built in update “Update existing software…” fails with a *very helpful message* along the lines of “cannot make an Internet connection to the software server”.

QT Message